Hello Kill Team Fans! With the upcoming Shadowhunt Box set, the faithful warriors of the Adepta Sororitas are getting their second standalone Kill Team, the elite witch hunters of the Celestian Insidiants! As always, thank you to Games Workshop for providing us here at Goonhammer with an advance copy of the rules for the purposes of this review.

Team Overview

The Insidiants are the first non-elite team released this season, bringing a total of nine operatives to the table with no expendable bozos tagging along for the ride. Insidiants must take a Superior, who can be equipped with either an inferno pistol or relic condemnor stakethrower and relic bolt pistol. For the rest of the eight spots on the roster, you can take one of each specialist aside from the Cremator, which you can bring two of. Like other teams, you can bring as many warriors as you like.

For tac ops, Insidiants get access to Seek and Destroy and Security, which are fine for the team. I imagine we will see security get more use here than Seek and Destroy, as that family of tac ops really needs an elite team to really sing, but Envoy and appropriately Martyrs from security make for solid picks.

If you prefer a video review, John from Can You Roll a Crit? has one for you!

Faction Rules

The team has a whopping three special faction rules, and they’re all pretty strong to boot.

Credit: Warhammer Community

Inspiration

Inspiration is the main mechanic of the team, and it's a solid boost for the teams offensive output with straightforward requirements. Whenever an Insidiant operative incapacitates an enemy operative with 6 or more wounds, or performs the charge action (before it performs the move), that model becomes Inspiring. While a model is Inspiring, weapons on its datacard pick up the severe keyword. Alongside this, many of the team’s other abilities and ploys proc off of models being Inspiring.

Insidiant Kill Teams want to get as many of their models Inspired quickly to get the most out of their operatives, and fortunately both of these conditions for making a model inspiring are pretty easy to get. There are a few other ways to make your models Inspiring, but the most reliable method is to play aggressive and get stuck in. The team is vulnerable to getting rushed down before they start getting Inspired, so you’ll need to be careful with your positioning.

Weapons of the Witch Hunters

Then team’s anti-psyker tech, whose effectiveness varies wildly from “no problem,” if your team has no psykers, to “big problem” if your team is full of them.

The rule has a few parts, all of which shut down psykers and psychic weapons/abilities. First, your operatives cannot be targeted by psychic ranged attacks or abilities. Second, while within 3” of an operative, they cannot use psychic abilities at all, cannot shoot with psychic weapons, and any psychic melee weapons equipped by the enemy operative lose all special rules and drop down to damage 3/4. Finally, some weapons have the ANTI-PSYKER keyword, which gives that weapon lethal 5+ against operatives with the Psyker keyword.

For many matchups, this won’t come up at all, since psykers are pretty rare in KT. For the matchups where this is relevant, however, Weapons of the Witch Hunters is a brutal rule, able to totally shut down some of the nastiest tricks and deadliest weapons a team may have to offer.

Credit: Warhammer Community

Martyrdom/Benedictions

The last special rule for Insidiants comes in two parts, Martyrdom and Benedictions, though it may as well be one rule. In keeping with the Sororitas theme of sacrifice, whenever an Inspiring Insidiant operative is incapacitated, they can select one other Insidiant operative within 6” and visible to receive a Benediction, selecting from one of four abilities. They are as follows:

Buff APL by 1, to a max of 3
Give the Operatives weapons Ceaseless
Heal d3+2
Free 3” Charge or Dash, provided they move closer to the incapacitated Inspiring Operative

All four of these abilities are excellent, and you’ll want to get the most use out of Benedictions as possible to make the team truly sing, but there are a few catches. Notably, outside of one operative, the Denuncia, the only way to hand out these Benedictions is by losing operatives, specifically ones that are already inspiring. Losing one of your sisters who isn’t inspiring not only prevents you from using this rule, but prevents one of your potential uses of this rule for the rest of the game. Additionally, you’re going to need to make sure you keep your team close to one another so that you can hand out Benedictions when they come up, or again lose one of your potential uses for this rule for the rest of the game.

Like the Inspiring rule, the key with Martyrdom and Benedictions is going to be walking the tightrope on being the right level of aggressive with your operatives to make proper use out of the rule. Push too hard, you risk putting yourself out of position or losing too much steam too early. Play too defensively, and you’ll run the risk of losing your girlies before they become inspired and can pass on Benedictions to the team.

The Operatives

Before we talk about each operative individually, lets go over some things most have in common real quick.

Insidiant operatives each have 6” movement, and 2 APL outside of your leader, who has 3 APL base. Defensively, they are 9 wounds each with a 3+ save base, with the leader bringing an extra wound and the Abjuror rocking two extra wounds and a 2+ save. With some pretty easy damage reduction in combat available from a strategy ploy, this makes the team reasonably durable.

Offensively, there are two weapons that pop up frequently on the team: Null Maces and the Condemnor Stake Thrower/Bolt Pistol combo. Both of these weapons are solid, with the Null Mace rocking four attacks at 4/4 damage, shock, and ANTI-PSYKER and the Condemnor Stakethrower shooting with four attacks at 2/2 damage, dev 1, piercing crits 1, silent, and anti-psyker. The Bolt Pistol is the same as every other team, but still a solid choice for a little extra shooting juice.

Insidiant Superior

Credit: Dan "Swiftblade" Richardson

Your team leader operative, who’s both an important support and offensive piece on the team. For support, she can hand out Inspiring once per turn to a sister within 6” for an APL, which is a great way to get your buffs rolling in the early game. For offensive tools, she can select either a buffed up Stakethrower/Bolt Pistol, which picks up Lethal 5+ on both profiles, an extra devastating damage on the Stakethrower, and an extra crit damage on the bolt pistol, or an inferno pistol, a 4 shot 4/2 gun with range 3”, dev 3, and piercing two. The Superior also has a special rule that allows her to use one of your firefight ploys (including command reroll) on her for free if she is also Inspiring once per turning point, which is nice considering that Insidiants have a great selection of Firefight ploys to make use out of.

The Superior will be best utilized by the team by spending the early game handing out inspiring to a few operatives to get the ball rolling, before leaping in as a dangerous closer to mop up enemy operatives.

A quick note, there appears to be an error on the datacard for the Superior at time of writing. The Relic Condemnor Stakethrower has both Lethal 5+ base and the Anti-Psyker special rule. As it currently stands, this means Anti-Psyker does nothing on this gun, since it already has Lethal 5+. I imagine this will likely be fixed in an early FAQ for the team.

CYRAC: The leader is a solid buff-piece. Oddly I find her Stakethrower loadout much more reliable and threatening than her melta pistol. She’s also just okay in melee so don't get too crazy with charging.

Abjuror

Credit:

Abjuror? I barely knew her!

Anyways, the Abjuror is great, probably one of the nastiest single operatives on the team. Her defensive profile is buffed compared to other ops on the team, rocking 11 wounds and a 2+ save, making her even tankier than the Superior. She has no ranged weapons on her datacard, and two melee profiles with her sword and shield: a defensive or offensive stance. Both are four attacks on 3+ with 4/6 damage, with the defensive stance letting you use your blocks to block two successes instead of one, and the offensive stance picking up lethal 5+. The Abjuror also has a special rule that gives her a built-in once per turning point Get Down Mrs. President rule, letting her take a hit in shooting or fight in combat for a model within 2”.

In total, the Abjuror is going to be a workhorse on any Insidiant team, being both very difficult to remove while also acting as a dangerous beatstick. Plus, taking hits for other operatives with her impressive defensive profile is very welcome on a team with plenty of support pieces.

NotThatHenryC: of the two profiles I think you’ll use defensive stance most often. If she’s inspiring, and she will be if she has just charged, her attacks get Severe anyway. You don’t really need Lethal 5+ when you have a guaranteed crit that can party two enemy crits.

CYRAC: I can understand the 2+ save but not the +2 wounds, utterly crazy design decisions here. Defensive profile is the best but the operative is slightly limited at 4 attacks. Still amazing though.

Censor

The Censor is an odd operative, though that is not to say she isn’t a great operative. She has two abilities on her datacard, both focused on making her a strong control piece. She treats her APL as one higher on objectives, which is nice, but the star of the show here is Null Field. While within this operatives Null Field, enemy operatives are -2” to move and -1 to hit on all weapon profiles, which importantly is not cumulative with being injured. This range starts at 1”, and she can perform a 1 APL action each turning point to increase the range by 1”. So by TP2, when engagements start in earnest, she can have a 3” Null Field, making her very difficult to pick off if this operative is in conceal without dealing with the negative effects of the ability.

The Censor’s melee is so close to being great, and she has no shooting to speak of. Her weapon, the Virge of admonition, is four attacks doing 5/5 damage each with Shock, Anti-Psyker, and Brutal. The problem? It hits on 4s. Yuck. At least you do have ways to give her ceaseless, but it does still make her offensive output super swingy.

The Censor is probably best going to be used on this team as a way to make a midfield objective an absolute pain to dig out, since it’s going to be hard for teams to deal with the Censor while staying outside of Null Field range. Keep the Abjuror close to her and watch your opponent pull their hair out trying to remove one of your toughest operatives while also hitting worse to boot.

CYRAC: I’d probably only use her on possibly elites and teams that hit on 4s normally. She’s really unreliable and requires a lot of APL investment to get a wider AoE debuff zone.

Cremator

Credit: Warhammer Community

The Cremator is good, and it is important to note you can take two of them, but it's also probably the first indication of the biggest problem that Insidiants deal with as a team, which is a whole bunch of excellent support operatives, with only a few heavy hitters to put those buffs on.

The Cremator has a Null Mace and a Hand Flamer with two profiles. The first is a basic hand flamer profile, at 4 attacks on 2+ to hit, 3/3 damage with saturate, torrent 1, and range 6”. Her second profile adds Seek Light for the cost of losing 2” of range and going to torrent 0”. Seek light is nice, but dubiously useful at 4” range.

Her main ability is inspiration pyre, which once per turning point hands out Inspiring to an operative within 6” of your Cremator if she does damage to an enemy operative with her hand flamer but doesn’t incapacitate them.

The Cremator is a nice way to get some Inspiring tokens handed out early, and is probably the best candidate on the team to get sacrificed early for potential Martyrdom. Inspiring really isn’t that hard to get though, especially since your Superior and Reliquarius can hand out tokens already, so there's likely matchups where the Cremator will stay at home in favor of more hard-hitting warriors when you need some extra punch.

CYRAC: You always take 1 Cremator normally, 2 on Gallowdark/Tombworld killzones. Seek Light weapons are great, coupled with the Inspire ability.

Denuncia

Probably the most important support piece on the team, the Denuncia is your only access to benedictions without losing an operative to Martyrdom. For one APL, she can remove inspiring from one operative within 6” and resolve a benediction effect against an operative within 6”. Note that this is not restricted to once per turn, so you could potentially give two models on your team a benediction if she counteracts and you have the inspiring for it.

As for as other abilities, the Denuncia can use the Suspect and Eliminate ploy for free as long as the target is visible to or within 6” of her (more on this ploy later), and has a cute little seek attack where she screams at someone within 6” for 1/1 damage, which also hands out stun. Her biggest downside is that her melee weapon is worse than the standard Null Mace, only rocking 3/3 damage and dropping the Anti-Psyker keyword.

You aren’t using the Denuncia for fighting, of course. She’s there to buff up your team, and keeping her alive as long as possible to do so is going to be pretty important to any Insidiant gameplan.

CYRAC: Another operative I'm torn on. I feel you always take her to quickly chain Benedictions but her damage output is really bad. I’d probably drop her vs 8 wounds or less teams as you can just naturally Inspire faster against those opponents.

Mortisanctus

The team beatstick, trading any form of ranged weapon for a nasty little 4/6 claymore with brutal and lethal 5+. Her card comes with two abilities in service of her combat bruiser status, the simpler one being the ability to skip the combat sequence and resolve a block first, much like the Deathwatch Blademaster.

Her other, more complicated ability will require you to play a bit of a head game with your opponent. The ability, Zealous Ultimatum, lets you once per battle pick an enemy operative as a strategic gambit to be the target of said ultimatum. Your opponent can either accept or decline this ultimatum, and if the enemy operative is an NPO this is resolved via a dice roll.

If your opponent accepts, you get plus one attack while fighting or retaliating against that model, and you get to keep that extra attack for the rest of the game should you incapacitate the ultimatum operative. In either case, your number of attacks is limited to five. If the enemy operative picks the path of the coward, they lose an attack on their weapons for the rest of the game, since they’re too busy filling their pants and being scared.

So any ability where your opponent can say yes or no is going to be a gamble. If you select an easy kill for the ultimatum, your opponent is just probably going to decline the challenge and let you murk them, which is fine and all but doesn’t give you that tasty tasty extra attack. This ability is probably best used early, on someone the opponent really does not want to lose an attack, for your best chance of your opponent accepting the challenge.

In any case, the Mortisanctus is probably the heaviest hitter on the team, and is probably the go-to for taking out the enemy teams most dangerous operatives.

CYRAC: Agreed, only the Unshakeable Pursuit ploy makes her truly broken but 5 attack elites/melee specialists will likely just decline the challenge and attack other operatives or just charge her anyway. She’s still great but just with an…odd rule?

Credit: Games Workshop

Reliquarius

You’ve heard of Lieutenant Sits-on-Balls, but now I’m proud to introduce to you a new member of the family, Saint Sits-on-Balls.

The Reliquarius has only a gun butt for fighting, alongside the regular Stakethrower/bolt pistol combo, and lives only to stand on an objective (probably your home objective, since she can’t fight) and hand out inspiring. As long as Saint Sits-on-Balls is inspiring, and controls an objective marker or mission marker, she can hand hand out inspiring to one Insidiant within 6 at the end of her activation for free, as the operative is so emotionally overwhelmed by Saint Sits-on-Balls commitment to standing on a circle.

She also has an ability to lower the APL of enemy operatives within 3” by one for the purposes of controlling an objective (so their actual APL stat is unchanged), making actually taking away her precious objective or mission marker a pain for your opponent. They’ll have to fight her for it, which, uh, won’t be very hard.

In any case, the Reliquarius is definitely the worst case of support bloat on the team, and she will probably get dropped in a fair few matchups for an extra warrior. She’s best if you plan to play more defensively in a given matchup and need to get the inspiring train going without engaging.

CYRAC: Once again like the Denunica, an operative you wouldn't take vs 8 wound or less teams. Even into teams you out-activate, you have to remember she basically has no damage output. Deffo a big candidate for Warrior-swap.

Warrior

Credit: Warhammer Community

The humble Insidiant Warrior is a great operative, and it would not be surprising to see Insidiant players lean into warrior spam builds if they want to trade some support pieces for extra punch.

The warrior’s loadout is simple, rocking the null mace and stakethrower/bolt pistol combo. Her ability is also simple: While she is inspiring, improve the critical damage of weapons on her weapons by one.

On a team with such easy access to severe through inspiring, this ability is absolutely nasty. Many of the Insidiant weapon profiled suffer from being just shy of hitting as hard as you like, and the Warrior fixes that. 3 damage stakethrower with an extra dev wound as a kicker you don't even need to leave conceal for? Null maces turning into chainswords? Hell yes. Even the humble bolt pistol can raise some eyebrows when a crit can sheer 5 wounds off an operative.

Since the warrior has great shooting and fighting abilities while inspired, she’s loves all of the buffs this team can hand out, and is a real workhorse operative. I don’t think she will become as spammable as the Goremonger’s Aspirant, but the fact that there are matchups where you’ll potentially want to take four or five warriors in order to focus on extra damage output speaks pretty highly of just how useful the Insidiant Warrior can be.

CYRAC: Getting +1 crit damage on both melee and ranged weapons on their datacard is a little too good due to how easy it is for them to get inspired. You'll need a lot of Warriors to be competitive and they are great, especially when they gang up on single foes.

Ploys

Celesian Insidiants have an excellent suite of ploys, but since they lack any way to generate CP, you’ll need to be careful not to burn all your CP in one turning point and get left hung out to dry when you need it. You do have the free firefight ploy on the Superior, and the Denuncia can use Suspect and Eliminate for free, and an Insidiants player will definitely want to lean on these abilities as much as they can.

Strategy Ploys

Your first strategy ploy is Suspect and Eliminate, where you pick an enemy operative or marker. If it’s an enemy operative, that operative and all enemy operatives within 2” get a suspicion token, and if it’s a marker then all enemy operatives contesting that marker gets a suspicion token. These tokens last until the end of the turning point, but while shooting, fighting, or retaliating against an operative with a suspicion token, your operatives pick up the punishing special rule. A nice offensive buff, though you’ll probably only pay CP for it in a pinch and instead let your Denuncia use it for free (on a target within 6”) while she’s still alive.

Two of the strategy ploys are pretty straightforward rerolls. Wrathful Determination is a defensive buff, letting you reroll one defense die while you have an engage order. Suffering and Sacrifice gives your operative balanced if they are wounded, which is nice but more situational since you probably don’t want to be running around with a bunch of hurt operatives (unless you take a particular equipment piece, which we will discuss later).

Finally, we have the star of the show, Holy Resilience, which reduces normal or critical damage of 4 or more on your Insidiant operatives by 1 while fighting or retaliating, so long as that operative is inspiring. This turbocharges the Insidiant’s durability in combat, since with a base of 9 wounds suddenly it will take many weapons in the game an entire extra hit to take you out. Since many of your weapons come with shock already, plus severe since you have to be inspired, theres a real chance that your ladies will either survive combats that should’ve take them out, or deal a nasty chunk of damage before they get removed from the Killzone. This is one of the biggest reasons you want to get inspiring out on your operatives as quickly as you safely can, it’s a nasty ploy.

CYRAC: Why does a 9 operative team where everyone is minimum 9 wounds and a 3+ save need damage negation like this? Once again bad game design strikes again but also highlights how out-of-control the damage scaling of current kill team that Celestian Insidiants apparently needed this ploy.

Makes a mockery of other 8 wound or less teams (really sucks to be an Aeldari player right now) and basically any kill team that isn’t an elite kill team due to how easy it is for the Celestian Insidiants to inspire.

At least it doesn’t work against ranged damage I guess.

Firefight Ploys

Insidiants are spoiled for choice on how to spend their CP, with a suite of outstanding firefight ploys alongside their strategy ploys. Your Superior will probably get mileage out of at least two of these every game, with a third ploy being very stong but matchup dependent.

Faith and Fury is probably the least exciting firefight ploy, but will still come in clutch when it’s relevant. Whenever you are fighting and hit an enemy operative with a critical strike, you can use this ploy to deal d3 damage to every enemy operative within 2” of the target you are fighting, rolling separately for each. It’s nice chip damage, or a great way to take out an operative on low wounds that’s hiding a little too close. You do get inspiring if this damage kills anything, which is very funny, but its probably best to only use this ploy when you really need it and save CP for other things.

Fervent Hate is great, but it will depend on the matchup. If your playing an Imperium team, it’s useless. If the enemy team doesn't have the Imperium keyword, it’s ceaseless on a stick after you roll. If the enemy operative also happens to have the Psyker and/or Chaos keyword though, its relentless on a stick after you roll. Against Chaos teams, or Xenos psyker operatives, this is a windmill slam ploy to boost big damage. Against regular Xenos, it’s nice if some dice go cold. Against other royal children of the Emperor, lol, lmao.

Which brings us to the last two ploys, and by far the strongest. Glory to Martyrs lets you resolve an attack in combat on the way out, and you can even pick up inspiring and resolve the martyrdom special rule if you kill whoever you were fighting with. This is a great ploy, especially when combined with Holy Resilience, as it makes the prospect of fighting an Insidiant without taking a hefty chunk of damage very difficult and makes said wounded opponent easy pickings for the rest of the team.

Unshakeable Pursuit is a speed buff, granting you the ability to ignore movement modifiers on an operative and also handing out +1” move if that operative is inspiring. Even better, if you use this as part of a charge on an operative this isn’t already inspiring, the ploy specifically states that you still get the +1” move since your model becomes inspiring from the charge, taking precedence over the rule that states that stats can’t change during an action. This is a great tool for setting up non-reciprocal charges against slower teams, and if you combine this with the free dash from benediction your Insidiants can suddenly start threatening charges from potentially 13” inches away for some really unexpected charge threats. Almost assuredly a ploy that will get used frequently in games.

CYRAC: While this is an amazing ploy, I once again hate how the developers designed this to specifically break the core rules of the game and prevent counterplay from movement 7 factions. It’s great, a really awesome ploy but way too good.

Equipment

Credit: Sky Serpent

Insidiants have four faction equipment choices like all other teams, with one very situational one, one very strong one, and two almost auto-takes.

Starting with the most niche choice, Auto-Flaggelator lets you deal damage to an operative to potentially gain inspiring. You roll a d6, and take damage equal to half the result, but on a 4+ you gain inspiring. You do this at the start of any friendly Insidiant activation for free, but can only inspire one operative this way. Inspiring is a very strong rule, and you want to get it out as fast as possible, but Holy Resilience really shines at that 9 wound breakpoint, and ways to gain inspiring on the team is already pretty plentiful. It’s kinda cute with Suffering and Sacrifice for lots of free rerolls, but the risk for getting inspiring likely isn't worth the reward here.

Psyk-Out Grenades is a great choice that will probably see plenty of use. Instead of taking regular stun grenades, you can take Psyk-Out grenades, which function the exact same as a stun grenade, but it does half of the stun test die worth of damage to the initial target based on the stun roll, provided the roll is successful. A straight upgrade to the stun grenade, especially since you can toss them at concealed operatives for some nice chip damage. If you happen to throw it at a Psyker operative, they just take the full d6 worth of damage from the stun test, and the idea of dealing 6 damage to some poor concealed psyker on top of a stun is very funny.

Psyk-Out grenades are very strong, but there may be some matchups they stay at home. That can’t be said about Vocifera Mortis or Saintly Relics, which are auto-takes for Insidiants.

Vocifera Mortis lets you resolve a benediction on any friendly Insidiant operative on the board when another Insidiant operative uses the martyrdom rule once per game. This can either bail you out from some bad positioning if an inspiring operative is incapacitated, or throw out a benediction buff from downtown on an unexpected target. The utility here is just too good to pass up.

Saintly Relics lets you roll a dice whenever a friendly Insidiant operative takes damage. On a six, you ignore that instance of damage. If the friendly Insidiant also happens to be inspiring, you can instead roll 2 dice, and if either of them are a six you can ignore the damage. There are some important restrictions here; you cannot ignore more than one attack dice per sequence this way, and you can only ignore two instances of damage via Saintly Relics per battle. Even with these restrictions, and despite the very random nature of dice, this is real good, especially on an inspiring operative with Holy Resilience up.

Rocking some quick math here, when rolling on an inspiring operative, you’ve got about a 31% chance of rolling at least one six on two dice, so basically a one in three chance. Since weapons like chainswords will need at least 3 attacks to drop an Insidiant, the odds of ignoring damage via Saintly Relics. Dice are dice, they will let you down when you need them, but the power of ignoring damage to keep a sister alive in a pivotal shooting or combat is too good to pass up.

Team Strengths and Weaknesses

Credit: Warhammer Community

Now that we’ve gone over the Insidiants as a team, let’s break down their strengths and weaknesses at a glance.

Strengths

Inspiring and Martyrdom are strong rules.
Surprisingly durable operatives across the board, especially when they become inspiring.
The Null Mace and Stakethrower are good basic weapons, with the former rocking a solid damage profile and shock and the latter giving you excellent silent shooting all over the team.
Queens of chip damage, between Psyk-Out grenades, Stakethrowers, Faith and Fury, and striking on death. Very helpful for taking out elite operatives who can’t heal.
The Abjuror and Mortisanctus are great beatsticks, and the Superiror and Denunica are excellent support pieces. Plus, the Insidiant Warrior is very good with its extra damage.
A strong suite of great ploys and equipment to choose from.
Hilariously good against Psychic teams and operatives.
Plenty of excellent tools team-wide for playing the Crit Op.

Weaknesses

The team suffers from support bloat, where there's lots of operatives to buff up the team, but it can lead to the team’s offensive capability feeling anemic if you lean too hard into it.
You’ve got solid weapon profiles across the board, but most are just shy of their ideal damage profile. The warrior does help with this, but taking out tough enemies in one activation will be tough.
Insidiants noticeably don’t have a big gun operative, like a lady with a meltagun or heavy bolter. Your ranged damage is excellent for consistent chip damage, but most opponents won’t be scared of any of the shooting you bring to bear.
Martyrdom requires operatives to die to get benedictions, specifically inspiring ones, meaning you’re going to be walking a tight rope between aggressive trades to hand out buffs and not being so aggressive you run out of gas early.
You have only one operative with 3 APL base, and benedictions can only be handed out so fast, so action economy is at a premium.
No access to double fight or double shoot, so dealing with Goremongers or Fellgor will be a problem.
Vulnerable to rush down teams who get in your grill before the buffs start going around. This does not help the aforementioned Goremonger and Fellgor matchup.
Seek and Destroy and Security are fine tac op choices for the team, but not outstanding.

Final Thoughts

Credit: Warhammer Community

Swiftblade: I know it comes off that I’m cold on this team with all those weaknesses laid out, but I assure you I think they’ve got the sauce. I ask that no one panic when I say this, but this team reminds me of Canoptek Circle in one very specific way: The more I think about them, the more tricks I find, and the nastier they become.

It’s interesting to see this team paired with Murderwing here in Shadowhunt. Both are fast, aggressive, and largely combat focused teams, with entirely different approaches. Murderwing is very straightforward in its power: Its gameplan is to basically break the opponent’s back in their big go turn, and will have a bad time if this plan goes sideways. Insidiants don’t really have the power to deal that big decisive blow like Murderwing can, but thrive in a knock down, drag out slugfest. They whittle down the opponent bit by bit with chip damage, like Stakethrowers, stay stuck in the scrum of fights just long enough to be a problem, before dealing the killing strike when an operative is hurt and out of gas.

Against other non-elite teams, the modest damage output of the Insidiants gets much more dangerous, probably quickly putting them as a frontrunner for one of the best non-elite teams in the game. Insidiants will likely even do well into elite teams without access to healing, where the opponent can’t so easily walk off the damage that Insidiants can bring to bear bit by bit. My poor, beloved Nemesis Claw (who never hurt anyone) in particular will have a rough matchup into Insidiants, since the Ventrilokar can’t use it’s tricks whatsoever and the Visionary will get lit up by the Anti-Psychic weapons the team has. I’d even be so bold as to say Insidiant’s have a decent game into Murderwing, provided they can stunt their go-turn, keep out of the Murderwing boost shenanigans, and position smart enough to control the flow of the game.

As far as problem matchups go, I suspect Insidiants will struggle into two groups of teams: Tough elites with big health pools, strong defensive buffs, and good healing options, like Ravenors, Plague Marines, and Canoptek. Insidiants don’t really have the killing power to eat their opponents lunch whole, they need to nickel and dime them first, and against these teams the Insidiants will probably struggle to get kills in before the enemy operative walks off the damage. Goremongers and Fellgor are the other problem team, both of whom are nasty stat checks for teams that don’t have great access to double shoot or fight options and both who are fast enough to get in an Insidiants player’s face before they can get their inspiring train going. I don’t think any of these matchups are unwinnable, per se, but its going to be an uphill game.

Overall, I’m really pleased with this team. It strikes an excellent balance between being a strong team with great options, while having weaknesses that are noticeable and important, but not so insurmountable that it prevents the team from doing well. After a whole season of elite team releases, it’s really nice to see GW knock the first non-elite team of this season out of the park.

CYRAC: I'm super disappointed with the Celestian Insidiants. While not as overly-powerful like the Murderwing, they highlight how messed up the Kill Team design methodology is right now. The Insidiant’s characteristics and operative size make a mockery of design themes for non-elite kill teams. Obviously I'll take this all back if all Aeldari kill teams suddenly get +1 too, but it really feels like Insidiants should be an 8 operative kill team.

I think they'll be hard to play without a second box and people won’t realise that the best way to play the faction is to turtle up then go playing from TP3 on wards. If you let the Insidants rack up inspiring too much, they will all become too hard to kill reliably late-game.

The faction has no double shoot or fight along with not great Tac Ops (with Approved Ops 2025) which are big weaknesses for them. However, I think people will find out how oppressive they can be when piloted by strong players.

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Tags: Kill Team | sisters of battle | adepta sororitas | shadowhunt | Insidiants