My favorite Warhammer game just teased the return of a fan-favorite, and they're going up against an iconic 40K foe

An iconic Warhammer 40K model from the early 2000s just got one hell of a glow-up, and it seems to be dragging a revamped fan-favorite to Kill Team on its coattails.

Publisher Games Workshop just revealed a plastic C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer, and it blows the 2002 version up both in terms of scale and ambition. This ghostly alien god is at least twice the size of the original, Grim Reaper-esque model, but has more Necron digitization (and robot scarabs, of course) along for the ride. However, that's not the really interesting bit. Alongside being a Warhammer 40K unit, it will apparently serve as a "final boss" for your Kill Team squad at the end of the upcoming season. And what's included in a promo shot of the C'tan facing off with a couple of warbands? Well, I think it might be new Chaos Space Marine Raptors. I've certainly not seen those models before, and they don't match the previous miniatures.

In the Warhammer Community reveal post, this Nightbringer model (due to launch in 2026) will "become the culmination of the story that begins with the new Kill Team: Tomb World boxed set, which will be up for preorder in just a few weeks' time." If the supplied image is from an upcoming Kill Team box, it looks as if those new Raptors (in Night Lord colors) will be at least half of it.

Here's the picture in question, taken straight from WarCom.

Naturally, this is speculation – I'm pretty sure these are new sculpts for the Raptors, but it's hard to be 100% sure without getting a closer look. It's also possible they won't be a Kill Team at all and are just a Warhammer 40K drop planned around the same time. However, I don't think it's coincidental that WarCom promised two new Kill Teams would be revealed very soon on the heels of this news. That would suggest that we may indeed be getting a Raptor squad for the skirmish spin-off. Because Chaos Space Marines are my favorite faction and Kill Team is my favorite Warhammer game, I'm buzzing.

So, what could the other unit be? Well, that photo may hold the key. While the other visible Necrons seem to be rank-and-file grunts, there are Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle for golden oldies like me) warriors that I don't recognize amongst the chaos. I could be wrong, and they may be existing miniatures, but if I had to guess, I'd say they're potentially the ones going toe-to-clawed-toe with those Raptors.

Either way, I'm hyped to see the addition of a full-fledged 'boss' to the Kill Team system. I've already talked about how the addition of a third, non-playable faction you can battle might be a game-changer as is, so throwing in a leader for those gibbering hordes is an exciting step up.

The only question you might have is, why now? Tomb World was only just announced as part of the Big Summer Warhammer Preview, after all, so isn't the reveal of the "culmination" of that season premature? From my experience, it's not uncommon for Games Workshop to unveil the next step of the game before the current one has launched, and that's happened a couple of times before.

What throws me is the C'tan's 2026 release date, though. Based on Kill Team's usual schedule, we'd be due one expansion following Tomb World (which I assume has a September release date, based on prior seasons) sometime around November or December. Will this box be dropping before the C'tan arrives, then? Or are the Kill Team launches being more strung out than before? It's possible that the Necron-focused Tomb storyline will be a bit shorter than previous campaigns, and we're only getting two installments.

We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, let the speculation begin.

Getting into Kill Team

• Kill Team Starter Set: $125 $95.20 at Amazon
• Nemesis Claw team: $71.95 at Amazon
• Kill Team Core Book: $60 $51 at Amazon

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