Warhammer 40.000 Killzone: Sector Mechanicus

As supplements for the Kill Team Starter kit Games Workshop released a series of specific Killzone Environments. These kits are bundles of already available terrain kits with added content for the Kill Team rule set at greatly reduced price.

In this unboxing and build review, I continue with the terrain kits after the Sector Imperialis Basilicanum and move forward to the Killzone: Sector Mechanicus.

For 65 EUR we receive a huge and heavy box, with a lot (and I mean it, a lot!) of sprues. I had to add the comparison with the Primaris Space Marine so you get a feeling for that huge stack of frames you get for that money. But that is not all, as mentioned above, this is not simply a discounted terrain bundle, this is a Kill Team Killzone supplement, covering a double sided thick card board gaming mat and additional gaming material, like an environment chart for the Sector Mechanicus, 4 new scenarios using the terrain from this kit and 12 new tactic cards.

There are 8 large sprues in this box, pre-coloured in a dark red colour. These cover the contents of the Thermic Plasma Conduits, the Ferratonic Incinerator and the Alchomite Stack. If you were to buy these sets individually you would already spent 115 EUR (30 + 45 + 40 EUR) just on the terrain, without the further content. The casting is well done, but the material rather dark so you it is a bit difficult to see some of the details on the pictures. Mould lines were moderate, on the larger pieces rather easy to clean but the cables and tubes took more time due to the surface. As this is a terrain kit, there are some rather large pieces in the sprues, meaning a lot of connections resulting in a longer preparation time to clean the parts compared to regular infantry or vehicle kits.

As these are multiple kits in a single box, the next steps are going to be a bit longer than usual. Let us begin with the Thermic Plasma Conduits. These are over the ground pipelines for plasma, what you can see below is included two times in the box. You have two times three different designs of straight pipes, two control points, four curves and four end points, along with 12 braces to connect the pipes to each other. The parts are modular and can be arranged in multiple ways. Unfortunately the braces don't work properly will all the pieces, so some configurations might be need to be glued in together.

Next up are the parts from the Ferratonic Incinerator and Alchomite Stack. These are highly interchangeable, so I'll build them in groups and show you how you can arrange them. The large container has four walls, and a there is a dome with a matching diameter, consisting out of four half shells and a top piece.

There are smaller parts of different diameter that are used along with these. The connection surfaces have two different diameters and can be assembled in different ways. You could glue those or magnetise them, depending on how modular you want to keep your set up.

Until this point we just build the main structures. There are a couple of further details that can be added and most of them have standardized sizes, so you can change them among and across the kits. The large container receives two valves, a massive door and a door panel. The door can just be placed there and stays in place by friction. The valves have the same size as the pipelines from the thermic plasma conduits and could be used to connect two or more pieces of terrain. But more on that later.

The tank receives a lid, a valve and a chimney. These are again interchangeable and share the diameter of the pipelines. So you could extend them if you want to.

The dome has a chimney as well. In this case it is multiple parts and comes with different options for the top.

You could build a shorter furnace, you have a tapering or grid like top piece. The valve comes in different variants. And you guessed right, these share the size of the pipelines.

The remaining pieces are a vault like hatch, a furnace extension along with an external pipeline. They are arranged in the third picture as the product image suggest. But as mentioned multiple times before, you can extend and connect these pieces rather freely and mix in the pipelines from the thermic plasma conduits.

For the Ferratonic Incinerator are a couple of Sector Mechanicus floor tiles included. There are two medium sized half-disks, two squares and two long floors. These are connected to each other by couplings that fit into the underside (explained below).

Beside the suggested cross like shape of the product image, there are a couple of different options to align the pieces. Here are a few that you could build directly from the kit.

We begin the assembly with the octagon shaped centre piece. As you can see the underside has a couple of holes, which will fit the couplings as well as the further detailing parts. The octagon plateau will be added to the large container.

The pillars of the Sector Mechanicus come in four different designs and fit the underside of the floors. The size is the same as the tanks, pipelines or the walls of the Sector Imperialis, making the whole range highly modular.

I decided to add the thinner pillars to the shorter tiles and stronger ones, with the heavier bar at the bottom for the long parts. I only glued the pillars to the floor and "hinged" the other side of the floor to the couplings around the octagon to keep them modular and be more flexible in transport and storage.

But this is just the basic structure. You can add further parts for a more impressive look to this build. There are chains, tubes and ladders that are added to the floor tiles and usually already hold just by pressing them together.

And then there are even more parts, like small wall pieces that are added to the sides of the floor tiles to give cover, along with further ladders and floor plates to support the connected floor tiles (I didn't use them, to stay modular). As you can see, you can mix the dome structure along with a chimney from the Alchomite Stack to build larger terrain piece.

As mentioned above, the Sector Mechanicus can be mixed with the Sector Imperialis, due to the same size. A few comparison shots of the assembled pieces with Primaris Space Marines. In the last picture you can see the whole length of the assembled Thermic Plasma Conduits.

The Killzone Sector Mechanicus comes with a double sized cardboard game board, 22” x 30” in size. One size matches the Sector Imperialis from the Kill Team starter kit and the other one the Sector Mechanicus design.

The game board can be extended with the other game boards, for example from the Killzone Sector Munitorum. The transition is well done, the colours are slightly off, but that is normal with prints in that numbers.

The whole set from the Killzone Sector Mechanicus assembled on the game board. As you can see, the pipelines can be used to connect the different terrain pieces with each other and you can rearrange the individual parts quite a lot.

Conclusion
Quite the impressive box. In fact, so impressive I got myself the Munitorum as well and already pre-ordered the Death World Forest. Why is that? The contents of these kits would be around 115-135 EUR, if you buy them individually, and you get them at almost half off with 65 EUR. And that is just the plastic. But beyond that, this box has a psychological component to it. You order this one and get it delivered or pick it up at a store and you feel this roughly 3 kg package, which is very satisfying. A positive feedback. It might trouble you the next time you buy something like a Redemptor Dreadnaught for almost the same money. On top of that you receive a neat game board that is double sided and if you're playing Kill Team another couple of items that re-kindle the game (if you need to do that so shortly after the release). So this is already quite a lot of content for the regular RRP of 65 EUR, if you're buying from an independent store and get a few % off. That it just very difficult to say no to.

The Sector Mechanicus is a generic industrial looking terrain, which was used with Shadowwar Armageddon and the Renegade Knight kits as terrain. It works great with Necromunda in the old style or with the Gang War supplements. The modularity of these kits, what you can do from the three kits in this box (let alone speaking about mixing two or three of these boxes and then maybe add the Galvanic Magnavent or Promethium Forge), you can go quite a long way at a still reasonable price. The production quality of these kits is convincing. You have a very modular range that works incredibly well together. There is lot of potential for kit bashing and conversions, simply by rearranging or mixing these kits, without the use of cutting or saw.

There were a couple of arguments about the "odd" size of the game board. Kill Team is meant as an entry level game. To lower the barrier for new people to start gaming. And you can not do that with 4 by 6 ft. tables. At 22x30 inch, ca. 56x76 cm, that is roughly the size of what a trading card game takes up (the two player mats for Magic are around 60x60 cm) and can be played on the regular folding tables. This is very appealing to shop owners, if you wanted to set up a wargaming event before you could maybe cover a third of the amount of people a trading card event would host, maybe half if you go with a skirmish. And more people means more starting fee, more revenue and makes wargaming a more competitive product compared to other systems local gaming stores may offer. Which should generate more events for the wargaming community. So quite a good move.

Warhammer 40.000 and Kill Zone are brands by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.