A Review by Two Idiots | the Space Marine Detachments evaluated in a Sworn Hunters context

We have Opinions.

The sheer amount of detachments and now detachment combinations available to the Space Marines is absurd, particularly if - like my learned colleague here - you are vulnerable to the ol' decision paralysis. That's why I felt it might be useful - for me as well, since I have to play into this nonsense - to look over the detachments available to the Sworn Hunters in this brave new world of being able to take more than one at a time.

I keep trying to get out, but every time they drag me back in.
Seems I am back on the blogger train.  Now do I blame Von, or 11th edition?

First up, it has to be said that I have been regarding 11th with... caution.  Pessimism.  Scepticism.  Or, as Von will probably say... outright assumption of impending doom.

You have neither forgotten nor forgiven the sixth edition Dark Eldar codex. I know. I am rather more optimistic about the core rules at least, although you're right insofar as the Codex churn is the bit where things usually go sideways.

There are a few guard rails on this assessment. First: we will not be reviewing the Codex Supplements, since Garbutt does not play Black Templars or Space Wolves or Dark Angels or Blood Angels. Second: we will not be considering the impact of anything specifically Chapter-coded from the core Marine Codex, because Garbutt does not play Ultramarines or Iron Hands or Raven Guard either. We are aware that "paint doesn't matter" and you can use whatever rules you want, but - I'll let my colleague speak for himself on this matter.

You see... the thing is with my Marines is that over the course of the battles they've played, and with a lot of help from Von, they've developed a really strong identity.  I know exactly who they are.  There's history there.  And that naturally enforces a few rules/constraints in how I build lists and play them.  We're going to encounter a few of those rules as we look at the detachments. 

First up though is the one that Von has already described:  The Sworn Hunters are not Ultramarines, Raven Guard, Space Wolves or any of the other Big Names.  Therefore I do not use any of the supplements - only basic, vanilla Codex Space Marines.  Nor do I use any of the special characters - they all belong to specific Chapters and in my head it would get a Bit Weird to see - for example - Robot Gulleyman hanging with a force that started their career as a shamed Company on a Penitent Crusade.  So no Codex Supplements, no special characters.  At least until I get time to sit down properly with the Crucible Champion and make my own...

Talking of "pessimism, scepticism, sense of impending doom" - there's a set of rules I'm not letting myself be excited for. Anything that drops between the final Codex of an edition and the release of the next edition's core rules has a short half life. We'll all have forgotten Crucible by Christmas. You will observe that it's not in the app.

Let's be honest, when we first encountered them... we both did get excited, and then we both forgot.

Finally: we will not be reviewing the Deathwatch, because the last thing my colleague needs is an army of Main Character units with a bewildering array of upgrades and different profiles. Deathwatch are allies. One Kill Team, one Corvus Blackstar, one Inquisitor Draxus, that's enough.

Inquisitor Kyria Draxus is is the one sort-of exception to my 'no special characters' rule.  This came from the fluff behind the Sworn Hunters - Captain Kaine has developed a working relationship with Inquisitor Draxus (she hates Necrons too, so it seemed obvious) during his penitent Crusade and sometimes she accompanies the Sworn on missions.  The good lady would naturally need herself a bodyguard unit - she could just lead a unit of my Marines, but I wanted something different, I wanted her bodyguard to stand out.  An Ordo Xenos Inquisitor having Deathwatch as a bodyguard fits perfectly.

They are almost worth the small eternity and fortune in Nuln Oil it took to paint them. Almost.
I regret nothing.  But I HAVE learned things, and I would do them differently next time.

Three Detachment Points: no combinations allowed

Gladius Task Force (Priority Assets)

This one's really good. I know it gives you the brain worms because you have to decide whether or not you want to use a once per game ability and then which one of the three you want to use and the moment you see "once per game" you hoard those things like they're health potions in a CRPG, but it does have absolutely everything one needs in a Marine army and people can (and have) go years without playing anything else. The only downside I can see is that you're locked into the slightly complex Priority Assets missions and, speaking purely for myself, my brain doesn't have enough wrinkles to deal with that.

I initially played Gladius almost exclusively when Von dragged me into 10th, and they are not wrong about the hesitation I go through every time I have to decide whether or not to fire off a 'once per game' ability... what if I need it next turn???  Gladius IS powerful and flexible, but these days I tend more toward things that let me smooth-brain my way through a turn knowing that whatever my detachment rule is, it's just always there.  

Ceramite Sentinels (Take and Hold)

I think this one's going to be strong in eleventh edition, purely because the objectives are terrain pieces and this one gives you a whole bunch of bennies for occupying those. Want a whole unit to have Lethal and Sustained Hits, or reroll its reactive move when it's shot at? You can have that now. And it has Take and Hold as its mission disposition - the smoothest brained option.

You can take four Enhancements in 2000 points now, and I feel like all of these are very... takeable. You have the "Gravis Captain stands back up" feature I know you like on Kaine, the "fall back and still contribute" option for your Infiltrators, Ignores Cover for your Intercessors just to make sure that bucket of dice hits, and a casual "redeploy three units." 

Finally, I think this is very appropriate for where we've talked about taking the narrative, with the Sworn on the defensive as a bunch of Canoptek Nonsense invades their protectorate.

Speaking of smooth-brain: Take and Hold!  I love Take and Hold.  Garbutt play simple game.  Garbutt touch divots.  unga bunga.
So a detachment that fits the current narrative state of the Sworn, lets me score VPs and buff my units at the same time just by hiding in a bush?  What's not to like?

Also the idea of an Intercessor squad lurking in cover, rerolling ones to hit and ones to wound, attaching a character with the 'ignore cover' enhancement and THEN spending one CP on them to grant Lethal and Sustained Hits is honestly hilarious. Intercessors go BRRRRRRRRRRT.

I can see myself using this one.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRT.

Armoured Speartip (Take and Hold)

This one's not for you. This is carving out a niche that is not the niche you've chosen to occupy. If you had a bunch of Repulsors or Lands Raider - but you don't.

Time for another of my self imposed rules - Vehicles in the Sworn come in two categories and two categories only:  Stuff with wings and stuff with legs.  No grav tanks, no Land Raiders, no bikes or buggies (unless I converted them to be jetbikes).

When you face the Sworn, you will see Dreadnoughts, Warsuits and various flavours of flyer zooming around the board.... but nothing with tracks.  By definition I am almost entirely unable to benefit from this detachment - it's built around Transport units that DON'T have Fly.

But having flicked through it, I think you could do some fun stuff if you had a horde of tanks...

Stormlance Task Force (Disruption)

If you were shifting to a more aggressive disposition in the story, I think this might have legs. You don't run Mounted stuff, but you do run Transports that Fly. You won't be making full use of it though - two Enhancements and a Stratagem are locked to Mounted units, and if this is your only Detachment I think that's a missed opportunity. 

Also, you'd have to play Disruption, and if I understand the missions correctly, that's the one with a lot of farting around deciding if your units are going to shoot or do actions, and that doesn't sound like your jam.

I feel like some of the named Chapters would love this one?  The clear favouring of Mounted units makes me feel it's more a White Scars thing than anything else.  It's the White Scars detachment from before we got that new White Scars character, and a new detachment that more or less insists you take said character.  Anyhow, given all my self imposed limitations, I don't think this is worth my 3 points.

Yeah, the Marine and Chaos Marine Codices tend to have clearly designed "this detachment goes with that Index Astartes article" pairings. Ask me how many Night Lords detachments there are. (The answer is "none you nana, what colour you painted your dudes doesn't gatekeep your access to rules any more, what do you think this is, seventh edition?" or "three," depending on who you ask.)

Two Detachment Points

First Company Task Force (Priority Assets)

This is another Speartip. You don't own Terminators or Veterans and too much of the functionality here is locked to those. Five entire Stratagems, two Enhancements.

Another of my self-imposed rules locks me out of this one.  The Sworn began as an exiled Company, cut off from support of their parent Chapter - and they weren't the First Company.  Therefore I don't take any First Company assets.

Anvil Siege Force (Take and Hold)

You're into this one. I associate it with being stonked in two turns by superior firepower. The thing is, it's going to stay good: Ignores Cover, Feel No Pain and Battleshock mitigation, Gravis characters not staying down when they're smacked and a Captain calling in orbital bombardments like it's Dawn of War all over again. You have two sources of +1 to Wound so you're going to cancel out a malus if that's applied, and you can reroll wounds into big stuff or gain 5+ Sustained Hits into anything. I also think the "fall back onto an objective" part is really useful to stop you over-extending. And it's Take and Hold - easy to learn the objective play.

I can see why you like it, but I'm going to come out and say that I both fear this and suspect it might be miserable to play into. Too many answers, too static a playstyle.

I DID do terrible things to you with this detachment.  The only extenuating circumstance I can come up with is that when you factored all the Crusade upgrades the Sworn have earned and stack it on top of this... ordinary Space Marines turned into tabletop war crimes. 

I totally agree with you about the static playstyle though - Anvil rewards sitting tight and just hammering the enemy with massed gunnery.  That, I suggest, could get a bit boring.  If I recall, the massed gunnery did its job so successfully that Captain Kaine and his deathball of Assault Intercessors + Apothecary inside the Stormraven never even got to debark.  The game was over before they had a chance.

There's a reason why the list I ran in that game is currently named 'Strayed Too Far From God'.  

But you are right - I DO like it.  It's simple, direct and robust.  I don't have to be clever to run this, I don't have to plan three turns ahead or decide when I'm going to use my Single Use Thing (apart from that Orbital Bombardment) - I just have to sit tight and keep the pressure on.   And with it now being a 2DP option, I could stack some proper nonsense on top of it.

But with that said, these days I run the most vanilla of vanilla Marines as far as the rules are concerned - I'm not even Ultramarines!  And that means I get +1 to Wound VS my Oath Target.  OK, so it's not an army wide +1, but I can still buff my guns vs. a given target each turn.  Perhaps it's time trade in that detachment +1 to Wound for a different utility that Oath doesn't give me?

Which brings us nicely to:  

Bastion Task Force (Take and Hold)

The sweaties are already talking this one up and it also happens to be the one I like. It's probably because my smooth brain doesn't want to deal with the Marine range as a whole and filling my boots with various flavours of Intercessors suits my infantry-heavy playstyle.

This does everything you need for Battleline infantry - advance or fall back and still shoot/charge or perform actions, spread the rerolls around so you're not as dependent on Oath of Moment, and grandfather one unit from elsewhere into the Battleline category as long as it can be led by a character. (You'd do it with Infiltrators, and don't tell me you wouldn't. You'd probably put the Librarian and a Lieutenant in there to give them Precision at range as well.)

The downside, and it does have one, is that most of your collection isn't Battleline and doesn't have a way to become Battleline. I can see you making this work at 1000 points with the two Intercessor squads, the Infiltrators with the Invictor to look after them, and appropriate character support. Beyond that you'd need a second detachment to support the rest of your stuff and none of the one-pointers really do that for you.

This one caught my eye before I even knew the Sweaties were on to it.  I am not sure how I feel about being on the same page as them.
Getting to reroll ones to hit if a Battleline unit already fired at the same target is surprisingly useful  - your rerolls are not just limited to rerolling your Oath'd target.  

Looking at the Stratagems, I feel like this one really wants you to run multiple squads of Intercessors of either flavour - if it's a Battleline unit then once again we can hand out Lethal and Sustained Hits for the bargain price of one CP  (that will never not be funny to me).  Or debuff the movement/charges of an enemy they fired at.  Or debuff that same enemy's shooting - penalising their to hit rolls and potentially even their to wound rolls.

Underrated.

Firestorm Assault Force (Purge the Foe)

My business, you are up in it. Mobile, aggressive, short range preferred. A decent set of Enhancements but nothing that sets my world on fire. Wants you to play around Transports. Could be fun for the Stormraven and its cargo but doesn't do much for anything else. Same problem as Bastion I think.

I disagree with you here, a little.  YES this one leans toward transports, but I feel like what it's mainly going to do is reward sheer upfront momentum.

This is the 'WE'Z ORKS NOW' detachment.

There's some fun play to be had with Boyz brothers leaping out of transports and opening fire at point blank range, but mainly the way I would run this is like a mobile version of Anvil Siege Force - stay mobile, close the range and Just Keep Shooting.  

I would run this if I wanted a game where I really didn't want to have to do any thinking.

And because it's short ranged shooting, you don't even have to engage a brain cell or two to wrangle the charge phase. (Ask a competent Ork or World Eaters player - the charge phase is the most technical part of the turn, and "unga bunga" ain't it when you're making those armies sing.) Yeah, all right, you've talked me around on this one.

Headhunter Task Force (Priority Assets)

Vehicle focused. Literally excludes every vehicle you own. No benefit for Walkers or anything with Fly.

Yup - basically impossible for me to use.  My self imposed rules lock me out of this - can't use any of the Enhancements and only two of the Stratagems.

This is the detachment for the Treadheads - the guys who wanted to run an Armoured Company but didn't have the patience to paint hordes of Guard tanks.

"Father, why do they hate me?"

Ironstorm Spearhead (Purge the Foe)

How important are single die rolls to your plans? How big are you on single shot high value weapons? 4+ Feel No Pain on one of your characters is pretty juicy, and it has a Stratagem for cranking your Redemptor and Invictor, and I know you like your big stompy lads. I don't think it does enough for your collection but with the right bits at 1000 points it could work.

This detachment owes me.  It knows what it did.

You see at various tournaments under tenth edition rules, this detachment did some stunning stuff with multiple Techmarines zooming around the board inside Stormravens, using the auras you could gain from the Enhancements to do some truly beastly things.  Self-repairing Stormravens that had Lethal Hits and also granted it to anything within 6" of them... 

To bring this one under control,  not only did Games Workshop have to reword the detachment itself, but increase the cost of the Stormraven.  Twice.

God dammit, that's the only transport I can use! 

"They hate us all, son. Even Uncle Corvus."

Orbital Assault Force (Take and Hold)

Maybe it's the Dawn of War II fanboi in me, but I like this one. Bringing things on from reserves or out of transports makes them more dangerous, and you can give a couple of units Deep Strike. Deep Striking Invictor and Infiltrators, anyone? Plus you own things like Suppressors that have the rule anyway. 

I appreciate that you don't own Drop Pods and wouldn't be gaining the full functionality here, but it's still an absolutely brutal close-range detachment with some fun movement tricks (jumping back into transports) and a nasty Precision ability (my poor Crypteks). It's also incredibly Space Mariney!

Look I'm not going to sit here and dissect the rules of this in detail... because I agree with you.  It's just a shame the one Enhancement is 'Terminators Only'.

Let me headcanon the drop pods as dropships or some sort of small airborne transports instead and I would run this!  Hmm, maybe I should look at what I could kitbash...

Vanguard Spearhead (Reconnaissance)

You own enough Phobos stuff to make this viable. It does a lot of annoying things, like interfere with enemy stratagem usage and give a Phobos unit a reactive move. You can redeploy two units. You can give a unit Precision. You can move out of charge range. This could be incredibly aggravating but it's another one for 1000 point games given that you have a bunch of vehicles and it does next to nothing for those. Except the Invictor. Redeploying the Invictor is an option.

"Carry on, my Favoured Son."

For all that this makes my fangs grow long, I can see some great story play around a Vanguard Spearhead infiltrating Necron establishments, and it's a self-selecting 1000 points for you to bring over to mine and carry out those operations. Maybe that's how we should be thinking about this? Real Life Writes The Plot in logistical terms - the forces we have available are the ones we can physically get to the game, and if we buy models those have been requisitioned to join our forces, no meta-currencies required.

This one does look fun, lots of ways to mess with the enemy.  And I can crank out 775 points before I have to take anything that doesn't have the Phobos keyword... 

One Detachment Point

Fulguris Task Force (Disruption)

Lands Speeder. You don't have the models. Pass.

Give me something like this, but for Flyers.  That is all.

Librarius Conclave (Reconnaissance)

This is the other half of the sweaty Battleline concept about which I'm hearing so much ado. I would want to combine it with Orbital Assault Force for the most Blood Raven list imaginable, or Inner Circle Task Force for a highly unreasonable Dark Angels army (4++ saves for days, baby!). Incredibly flexible toolbox for all your units led by a Librarian. How many Librarians do you own, again?

Only one, but it makes me desire more...
Just like the Bastion Taskforce, I spotted the potential in this one fast.  Even with only one Librarian, it's a great little toolbox for me to staple onto a larger Detachment.

"I need a peer group."

Subversion Assets (Reconnaissance)

OK, hear me out. I think this is your one-pointer of choice for big games and giving something like Firestorm or Bastion some extra teeth. You're extending the threat range of your Favourite Son and his associates by letting them spot units in terrain from further away, you're improving your ability to clear terrain features with that +1 to hit. Your Stratagem kit allows you to perform actions with those Phobos units that play upfield and hold objectives and still have them do stuff - less decision paralysis if you don't have to make them at all - and keep them safe from retaliatory shooting. And it gives you access to the more interesting Reconnaissance missions if you want to shake up the Take and Hold gameplan I'm recommending.

"I'm Taking. He's Holding."

If I was in your shoes, I'd be considering Anvil Siege Force and Subversion Assets as my go-to for 2000 pointers. More focused Vanguard Spearhead or Orbital Assault Force or Bastion Task Force plays coming in at 1000 when there are only two points to spend. Maybe Subversion Assets and Librarius Conclave if you wanted to use Cathartes' Phobos armour as the Phobos armour it actually is - and you do have a bunch of Phobos characters. Or, you know. Play Ceramite Sentinels and don't worry about it.

Ceramite Sentinels IS very tempting.  The danger for me here is going to be analysis paralysis as I try to find Best Combo - and avoiding that honestly makes Ceramite Sentinels MORE tempting - it's powerful and taking it just removes a whole layer of list building angst for me. 

As to Subversion Assets?  I am... not sold.    As we have said before, I am a hands-on learner.  I often need to see things perform on the battlefield to understand how they work.  (See also our 11th ed. Stormtalons vs. new Land Speeders discussion.)

True. I'm like that with missions. No amount of looking at the map and thinking and reading about scoring and moving and deploying will go into my brain. I need to set up (badly) and learn why bad setup is bad the hard way.

And perhaps because of that, Subversion Assets is simply just not clicking for me - I can't see the appeal.  On the other hand, for some reason Librarius Conclave DOES click.  It's right there and very reactive/adaptive to changing conditions - If I was not running Ceramite Sentinels, I strongly suspect Librarius is going to be my 1DP go to...