So you’ve finally fought your way past the Murderwing, clubbed a few witches over the head, and broken into a cold and silent Necron tomb. There’s nothing to stop you from opening the sarcophagus in the middle of the room, and after you’ve turned whatever’s inside into a holy pyre, the Imperium will be just a little bit safer. It’s looking like a really good day for the Adepta Sororitas.
Oops, it’s not xenos artifacts, it’s a shard of the ancient star god known as the Nightbringer, and he’s not a happy chap. Forget about destroying this monster, you’ve got to escape and warn the planet above. Can you?
Whether you play the Joint Ops or Adversary Ops mission pack in Kill Team: Shadowhunt, you’ll end up stuck in a dark room with a rather miffed Nightbringer. You might be commanding a crack team of elite operatives, but even they have their limits, and ending the star god’s rampage before it begins isn’t really on the cards. Instead, you’ll want to high-tail it out of there and, with any luck, a tank battalion will be around to level its entire postcode.
Both missions that feature the Nightbringer only end when all of your models escape, and the pursuing C’tan Shard will not stop coming – you can rattle it temporarily, but it’ll just reform and continue the hunt. Even knocking it down is a big ask, because, as you might expect, the Nightbringer has a serious datacard up its baggy sleeves.
You could be forgiven for looking at its stats and thinking we’re overblowing the threat a bit – 25 Wounds and a Damage 5/6 is good, but not incredible – but it’s the abilities that make our C’tan Shard a real boogeyman. To begin with, Mighty Foe lets it activate as many times as it wants so long as the 4+ rolls keep coming, testing whenever the NPO team activates. A bit of good (or bad) luck could see the Nightbringer tearing across a room and hacking up your elite squad before some of them have even blinked.
C’TAN SHARD OF THE NIGHTBRINGER
APL | MOVE | SAVE | WOUNDS |
2 | 5″ | 4+ | 25 |
MIGHTY FOE
This operative cannot have a Conceal order and cannot be in cover, obscured, readied or expended (meaning it can activate multiple times per turning point and the turning point will end when all other operatives are expended). Whenever it’s the NPOs’ turn to activate, roll one D6: on a 4+, activate this NPO (or skip the activation if it isn’t in the killzone); on a 1-3, activate another ready NPO (or skip the activation if there aren’t any in the killzone). This operative can perform two Fight actions during its activation, but cannot move more than 12" per turning point.
Don’t even think about hiding, either, because it can just phase right through solid terrain by sheer force of its Domineering Presence.* It even erases Light terrain from existence! Then, should you muster all your firepower and finally knock 25 Damage into its necrodermis, it just gets back up with all of its Wounds remaining. An Indomitable Reanimation indeed.
We’d say ‘that’s all there is to it’, but let’s not pretend it won’t be a mighty struggle to face off against the literal personification of death. Your mission is to get out in one piece… but if you want to go a few rounds to see how well you stack up against the Nightbringer, we think that would be pretty cool too.
Kill Team: Shadowhunt goes up for pre-order this Saturday, which also happens to be the day that the C’tan Shard of the Nightbringer hits store shelves. It’s almost as if we planned it!
* It’s so powerful that it specifically ignores the rule saying you can’t move through Wall features in close quarters killzones. Yeesh.
