Space marine Detachments

So a bit late, but here are the detachments for the marines, that were shown off a number of weeks ago. There is a lot that can be said about each one of these, and you can spend hours going in to details on each unit within each detachment and how they they work together. I'm not going to do that, at least not yet. I might do a deeper dive once 12th is out and the various detachments for Guard and Blood Angels are out but not right now. 

Fulguris Task Force is based around the various speeders, including the new land speeder. This basically means that speeders can deep strike. For a lot of people this is not going to be useful, unless your running a few of these units, which is possible given the relatively low cost of the units. (Points wise, money wise their actually quite expensive!). Overall I don't see this being used very often, unless the new speeders are cheap both points and money wise!

Librarius Conclave is the classic psychic detachment. This hasn't changed from the current version, as far as I can tell anyway. This detachment now actually makes sense, as before it could only be applied to a handful of unit, nine if you maxed out the psyker options (not including epic heros, but then it only really went to 10 units), however, this requires you to take three terminator and three phobos, which limits unit options. Now you can take your three Libby's and not really loose access to an actual army rule that will benefit the majority of your units. I can see this being the third detachment choice for a few people, probably me included. 

Subversion Assets applies to phobos and scout squads, giving them the ability to increase the detection range of enemy units by 3 inches, pushing it from 15 to 18 inches. This is similar to the Guard detachment that grants the same bonus to scout sentinels. I think this works better for scouts and phobos units rather than sentinels, as they are a smaller unit and have greater ground coverage, plus the some units have infiltrate, meaning you can take advantage of this detachment from the start. As yet, I don't know how important the hidden rule will be, so I don't really know how important this ability will be but I suspect this will get a fair bit of use. 

The Blood Angels: Wrath of the Doomed detachment seems good on paper but really doesn't do it for me. Your basically loosing one marine, possibly even two, for advance and charge. If your running 5 man units, it's pointless. If your running 10 man units your loosing up to 20% of your force before you even swing a blade. No, it's just not worth it for me. If it was battle shock, even with the new battle shock rules, it would be better but as it is, I just don't think it's worth the sacrifice. 

The Black Templars: Living Miracle is a very narrow detachment, because as far as I know, you can only include one Emperors Champion in your army. The only real use I can see here is the enhancements. If they are good enhancements, you could have several extra in your army, buffing more units and characters than usual but until we see the enhancements, I think this detachment is probably one of the worst on this list.  

The Dark Angels: Dark Age Arsenal on the other hand looks like a main stay of any Dark Angels army. Having +1 strength to all plasma weapons is always useful and really helps out on a number of fronts. The base strength going from 7 to 8 is the main bonus, as it wounds T4 on 2's now. There is less effect on supercharged, as it only goes from 8 to 9, going up to 10 would have been better. I think as a base detachment though, it's a good one. 

 Lastly, the Space Wolves: Champions of Fenris detachment. This is based around characters, which is useful, as you generally have a few characters in space wolves armies. Heroic intervention is not a bad stratagem, especially if you have a combat orientated army. If your going for a shooty army, this is pretty useless. Depending upon the army, this will be either good or bad, for most proper space wolf army players I suspect it will be pretty good. 

Overall the detachments seem pretty good, there are obviously some that are better than others, but I think it's a great start and look forward to seeing the rest of the Detachments. 

New Inquisitor model

 A quick one this time, as I wanted to have a brief look at the new Inquisitor model. Straight up, I don't like this model, it looks like something that got rejected AoS. 

I understand that they have gone for an archotech look, with the old style armour and weapons, however, I just don't like it. The animal is interesting, and it's good that they have gone away from the standard horse but there is still something about it that I don't really like. It might just being the paint scheme that makes it look rubbish but I have t seen it in any other schemes, so I can't say. 

The rules for this guy are pretty good though, his ability to grant re-rolls to units is going to be very useful for guard models, with their high BS. His rifles abilities are even more insane, granting extra damage and strength every time he hits, means by turn 5 he could be shooting a strength 14, damage 6 rifle. At -2Ap he might not be insta killing anything but still, there isn't much that can deal with that!

All in all, this is a fun little unit. I don't see him being a common sight on the table top but he could be a fun unit to just run around the table, popping the odd character. I will wait and see it in a different paint scheme to decide if I actually want one or not, but as it stands he interesting but not essential. 

Cadians kill team

A couple of weeks ago, a new Kill Team box was released, with Guard Vs Tyranids, or more specifically the Cadians Recon Squad Vs the Red Terror. Now I don't really care about the Nids but the guard is something different. Now, I'm a bit torn, as these are yet more Cadians, and could have been some many other cool models, Tanith first and only, Catachans, or even something like the Armageddon ork hunters could have worked (especially given 11th edition releases). Obviously I would have preferred Catachans, who would have been right at home here given their experiences with Catachan Devils!

The datasheet is a good one and has a few little tricks, which are very useful. There are five things that's jump out at me from my reading through everything. 

First, orders. When an order is issues to these guys, it does not finish at the next command phase as normal but continues until another order is issues, this means you can order it early game and just leave it alone, saving orders for elsewhere. This is really good and eases the orders conundrum. 

Secondly, the Vox-relay beacon. This is another very useful ability, which I can see being used one of three ways. Leaving it behind with some support units, such as mortars or lascannons, so you don't need to leave an officer behind. Place them up and axis of advance, so that units that move more freely away from officers, or sacrifice them by putting them somewhere you want your opponent to think your going to go. Whichever way you choose to play them, they are going to be useful and a reason to take multiple squads. 

The third thing to note, and one I almost missed, the lasguns have the Assault keyword. Now, is this a unit specific thing, a typo or the new lasgun profile? I suspect it will remain unit specific, but I'm surprised they didn't call the weapon something else, like recon lascarbine or similar, like they did with the Scion weapons. 

Next up, is Infiltrate. We don't have many units that can infiltrate, the only ones that spring to mind are Ratlings and Gaunts Ghosts, so a max of 4 units, 3 of which are not great. Being able to infiltrate up to three decent infantry squads will be very useful for us. 

Lastly, the ability for the squad to take twin snipers or a heavy weapon in the squad is also very nice. Personally, taking the missile launcher in the squad is really useful. Placing the unit in a vantage point in no mans land, ready to either snipe some enemy characters or hit a vehicle early game is really useful. You'll probably not kill the character or vehicle but knocking a few wounds off them can really help and give your opponent cause to be more cautious. 

At 80 points, I think they are very well pointed as well. I had thought that they would be more but I'm very happy with where they are. They are not going to be game breaking but they will be very useful, especially early game, while the rest of your infantry move up the board. 

One last thing that WarCom called out was their interactions with some detachment rules, the one they names was Ruthless Discipline. 

With this rule, the unit will pretty much always be re-rolling 1's, as you'll give them an order turn 1 and they will carry that through the game. 
 

Overall, this is a very good units. The main question is how long will it last before it moves to legends? That and what the 11th edition changes will mean. 

11th edition box models

 Let's have a closer look at the new models from the 11th edition launch box. There are the usual assortment of characters and units and for once, there doesn't seem to be a random character that doesn't go with any of the units. 

The Captain is your classic sword and board captain, still he looks pretty cool. 

There aren't many options for the Captain, there is really only a couple of helmet options. It would have been good to see some other options, maybe a power fist or axe. 

This is probably the only character that I don't actually need. I have no need for another captain in the Eagle Knights, and all the other chapters are either Gravis armour or phobos. The exception is the Emperors Disciples, but they already have two captains and also Calgar. Granted it's the old one but it still works. 

Next up is the new Librarian, a update on the old Libby pose and I really like it. 

This is one of the few times that I like the open faced model over the helmeted version, as the helmet just doesn't have the same feel to it. This model will be joining the Emperors Disciples, as I have two Libby's for the Knights already and he won't fit with any other force. 

The next we have the two jump units, the chaplain and vanguard vets. The Chaplain model is a very nice looking model, the vets on the other hand are just lacking a bit of bling for my liking. 

The jump chaplain has a lot of detail, but not to much. Some models can just be a bit to busy. The new jump stands don't look to bad, a few people have criticised the smoke effect and yeah, it's not the best I've seen. I would have preferred to see a bigger, stronger looking connection but I'm sure it will be fine and easier to fix than the flight stands when it does break!

The vanguard vets are slightly disappointing. While they are nice looking models they lack some of the details from the old models. I get that they are more generic models, so will have more options for painting and playing but for me, they are just a bit plain. These models will probably join the Emperors disciples as well, as I have 10 stromcast eternals waiting to be converted for the Eagle Knights. 

At the moment we have not seen any other options for these guys, so no storm shields and the like. Hopefully we will see some more options for these guys further down the line when their multipart kit comes out. 

The new ancient also looks good, very dynamic. However, I have an issue again in that I have nowhere to put it. The only forces it fits in are the Eagle Knights and the Emperors Disciples, both of which have ancients, two in the case of the Knights. 

I will have to see where this model will go but I do want to paint him up as he is a nice model. 

The new intercessors, much like the old one. I'm not sure why they keep bringing out new kits, the old tactical marines lasted for ages! No much to say about these guys, they will be added to the Eagle Knights, bringing the total to 20 intercessors. 

It will be interesting to see what options come in the box, whether they will be the same as the current kits or reduced down again. 

The new Eradicators will be joining the Brazen Hawks and the other Gravis armoured marines. I am planning on getting some of the melta armed Eradicators as well, alongside some Aggressors. 

I do really like these guys and hope that we will see more versions, as I would like to see these guys take over all the Devastator roles. I really don't like the desolation marines, not only do they look rubbish, I feel that these marines fit the bill a lot better. 

Lastly we have the new land speeder, which I really love. This just brings the spirit of the previous model firmly in to the new era. This will go straight in to the Dark Guardians, taking up where the two old models left off. 

It will be interesting to see what happens to the other three speeders that the marines have, will they go in favour of more variants of this one? I don't know but this will fit nicely in the Dark Guardians, supporting the bikes and inceptors. I'm still not sure what all the weapon options are. I get the multimelta and Gatling cannon, plus there looks like a flamer option and missiles (what type? Don't know, I assume frag and krak) but what about the little things either side of the underslung weapon? Are these guns or sensors?

So, the new models are all very nice models, with some standing out from others. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on all of them though!