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So, for those of us who care about competitive optimization, the Gladius Strikeforce Detachment seems overwhelming. Have people thought of lists that would be compelling in a GT environment that still utilize a CAD? What are they? What is worth giving up 350-550 (minimum!) points of free transports for?

The full company free transport list is a one trick pony: MSU spam. It does that trick well. But if you want to play any other list, you end up with a lot of baggage you don’t need.

That's my point though "if you want to play another list." If you're competitively minded, I'm asking, why would you?

If I'm not mistaken then you currently can't take mulltiples of the same detachment in an army list for most tournaments.

Since free transports come by taking two demi-companies, this is illegal as per tournament house rules.

Command squads are now Elite and not limited to how many Hq you take.

I would argue the CAD is super strong, bike lists benefit a lot after the new dex hit.


So for me it will be Standard CAD + the librarian formation.

 Frozocrone wrote:
If I'm not mistaken then you currently can't take mulltiples of the same detachment in an army list for most tournaments.

Since free transports come by taking two demi-companies, this is illegal as per tournament house rules.

This probably belongs in YMDC, but I think the Gladius is a single formation consisting of multiple Demi-companies. In addition, you may take a single Demi-companies in their own right.

Now, in NOVA format, if you take a Decurion/Gladius type thing, you may take no further detachments. #WorthIt

Personally, I think the minimum battle company to get free vehicles that everyone is doing is not as stroke as a full out demi-company. You have 10x 5man tactical squads. Some units you come up against require high volume of shots to deal with and if you take only the minimum you need you will never be able to achieve that.

The reason I would still take a CAD right now is to use some of the other formations in the book. Like the first company detachment. Plus it still gives me access to my FW units.

 Frozocrone wrote:
If I'm not mistaken then you currently can't take mulltiples of the same detachment in an army list for most tournaments.

Since free transports come by taking two demi-companies, this is illegal as per tournament house rules.

I haven't heard of any tournament limiting the Necron Decurion to only using each of the Auxiliary forces once, so why would they limit the SM "Decurion" (Gladius Strike Force)? It is pretty clear the new Force Org GW is pushing is this "Core, Command, Auxiliary" formations. The Necron Reclamation Legion demands one Core choice and 1-10 Auxiliary choices, in ANY COMBINATION. Again, I may be wrong, but I haven't heard of the Necrons or even Eldar being limited in their Craftworld Warhosts to not duplicate any of the Core, Command, or Auxiliary choices. If someone knows of a major tourney that does, let us all know so we can list-build accordingly. Because I know for sure I will be playing the Battle Company if I can.

 Frozocrone wrote:
If I'm not mistaken then you currently can't take mulltiples of the same detachment in an army list for most tournaments.

Since free transports come by taking two demi-companies, this is illegal as per tournament house rules.

Wishful thinking. The Battle Company is a single formation and perfectly legal.

I think some people would still like to try using the minimum scouts, centurion-star formations. With split fire and divination casters, it may still work well for some people.

Do the special formations come with a fortification and lord of war slot?

Fortifications are the hard counter to grav (grav does nothing to them), and you might want to squeeze in a lord of war.

-Matt

Doesn't really matter if the marine detachments include lords of war or not, can't they just take an allied knight detachment?

Actually, I think Daemons are the hard counter to Grav lol. Especially with the blanket -1 nerf to ranged D.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Do the special formations come with a fortification and lord of war slot?

Fortifications are the hard counter to grav (grav does nothing to them), and you might want to squeeze in a lord of war.

-Matt

Strike force command formation has a slot for Calgar, but none of the other LoW. You would need to take a normal CAD to have access to x LoW and x Fortification.

Reason to take take CAD
-You want to use FW LoW like fellblade and t-hawk.
-Biker army. The new rules around troop bikes actually improves them a great deal.
-Access to a variety of units outside of the restrictive formations. TFCs, Storm Talons and FW units mostly for competitive players. A CAD lets you take all of these easily. Much more hoops to jump through with a battle company.
-FA Drop pods + allies.

I think some people would still like to try using the minimum scouts, centurion-star formations. With split fire and divination casters, it may still work well for some people.

This brings up an interesting idea -- a cent star built around a battle company core...

haven't heard of any tournament limiting the Necron Decurion to only using each of the Auxiliary forces once

ITC format does just that, much to the chagrin of every necron player on the west coast. I believe that was the rule at Adepticon as well but not certain.

However FLG guys it seems like they view the battle company as something else entirely and will probably allow it.

There are actually a lot of reasons to take a CAD over the Gladius Strikeforce Detachment. Some of these have been mentioned but I will re-mention them because they are good points.
1) LoW. The typhus being on top of this list. There are actually a number of good LoW options for SM and they are largely a good counter to grav spam and not easy to take out for most of the extreme alpha strike lists assuming you get them in some sort of cover.
2) ObjSec Scouts. Scouts may actually be one of the best troop choices in the SM codex. They were good enough to build a GT top 8 army list before BS WS 4 and now they are straight up better.
3) White Scars bike armies. These are still extremely effective army lists and they actually got somewhat of a buff as you can take units of 3 with 2 grav or melta as a troop slot now.
4) Minimizing points spent on non damage dealers. If you don't want to go with MSU ObjSec spam and want to rather take a list that wins from killing stuff off really well. ie cent star, Skyhammer Annihiltion Force, IH tanks, etc. then the gladius is way to many points wasted to justify. You want scouts or TAC squads that unlock CADs or allied detachments not another detachment just of them.
5) This detachment is difficult to make a list that has both a lot of firepower and covers it's target categories well. ie if you have a lot of damage output. This is the cost of formations. You gain benefits at the loss of being able to optimize appropriately.
6) Forgeworld. Many of the most functional vehicles in the SM army lists at GTs are forgeworld units. None of these units can be taken in the gladius yet. Which means you will need an additional detachment with all it's "Tax" units.
7) You cannot take extra drop pods. This means no grav centurions in drop pods or allied vanguard skitarii in drop pods.

This new codex has at least 6 different highly competitive builds that I have seen so far. Only one of those involves a gladius and 3 of them involve SM CADs.

Nice! Good to hear some optimism. Care to share the list concepts of these CAD-based competitive lists? That was my initial intention for the thread, to put some inspiration out there.

 winterman wrote:
Reason to take take CAD
-You want to use FW LoW like fellblade and t-hawk.
-Biker army. The new rules around troop bikes actually improves them a great deal.
-Access to a variety of units outside of the restrictive formations. TFCs, Storm Talons and FW units mostly for competitive players. A CAD lets you take all of these easily. Much more hoops to jump through with a battle company.
-FA Drop pods + allies.

I think some people would still like to try using the minimum scouts, centurion-star formations. With split fire and divination casters, it may still work well for some people.

This brings up an interesting idea -- a cent star built around a battle company core...

haven't heard of any tournament limiting the Necron Decurion to only using each of the Auxiliary forces once

ITC format does just that, much to the chagrin of every necron player on the west coast. I believe that was the rule at Adepticon as well but not certain.

However FLG guys it seems like they view the battle company as something else entirely and will probably allow it.

I checked the ITC rules and you're totally correct. I can't remember what Adepticon's ruling was on this, does anyone remember?

This is the baseline for a 1850 bike list i will be running tomorrow against a Eldar army.

Iron Hands

HQ - 475

Chapter Master, Shield eternal, powerfist, artificer armour, bike 245p.
Chapter Master, Storm Shield, Thunderhammer, artificer armour, bike 230p.

Elite - 480

Command Squad , apothecary, 4x storm shields, 4x plasma, bikes 240p.
Command Squad , apothecary, 4x storm shields, 4x plasma, bikes 240p.

Troops - 519

Bike squad, 2x grav, combi-grav, attack bike multi-melta 188p.
Bike squad, 2x melta, combi-melta, attack bike multi-melta 173p.
Bike squad, 2x flamer, combi-flamer, attack bike multi-melta 158p.

Librarius Conclave- 330

3x Librarians, force axe, mastery 2, bike 330

Let us know how i goes!!

I am extremely interested!

You cannot take the conclave unless you first take a cire and auxiliary formation.

You can if you don't take it in a Gladius.
It's an actual Formation, so you don't have to take a Gladius to use it, you just don't get the added benefits given by the Gladius (you still get the actual Formation's benefits, though).

The main reason is obvious: 6 tactical squads is a hefty tax.

 Frozocrone wrote:
If I'm not mistaken then you currently can't take mulltiples of the same detachment in an army list for most tournaments.

Since free transports come by taking two demi-companies, this is illegal as per tournament house rules.

Thats a pretty terrible house rule then.

Which I say as someone who thinks this formation is total nonsense too

The Shrike wrote:Nice! Good to hear some optimism. Care to share the list concepts of these CAD-based competitive lists? That was my initial intention for the thread, to put some inspiration out there.

1+2) Scout spam is another very good army list that was placing top tier in GTs and has only gotten better. Usually they are best as Imperial Fists with dev support to open tansports and some AA support. However I am currently liking a off beat Raven Guard list that starts the game with a 2+ cover saves on all of the scouts. Extreme alpha strike lists have become a major thing so being able to completely exclude opponent's from getting within 30" of my important units and leave them shooting 5 man scout units with 2+ cover saves first turn can be a very good thing. I am not sure yet if this is actually better than the other scout spam lists that have placed highly at GTs but trying new stuff is always good.


3) White Scars are still excellent. However I think the old bike star list will either have to depend on a libby conclave to buff their durability or white scars should move more toward MSU to limit the damage from heavy alpha strike lists. My current list which I haven't gotten to test is in the spoiler but I really think that white scars + allies would be better to take advantage of the drop pods with skitarii vanguard in them or cult mech destroyers. Alternately I have been thinking of taking grav cents in pods with melta on the bike units. It is just too early for me to settle. One of the strong points of the list below is that 70% of the time this list is going to have 2+ jink saves due to shrouding from the libby conclave on a significant number of the bikes. It can also strip some cover using auspex. Overall I would say my list is probably on the weaker side of what white scars can do.


4) Is of course the grav centurion star. Though IMO the new librarius version of it is significantly more powerful than it was before. If you play UM you can even ensure at least 1 turn of reroll to hit. This army got significantly better in the fact that scouts and pretty much all the support units for this deathstar got better, cheaper, or didn't change. My version of this list is in the spoiler though the tried and true version uses draigo instead of the libbies;


I will try to remember some of the other really good lists I have seen. Of course you can always rent drop pods to the other high damage armies utilizing the superior SM troops instead of the in comparison mediocre troops of the other drop pod rental services. Imagine taking white scars bikes to unlock drop pods for skitarii or getting tiggy as your "tax" HQ so you can get 3 drop pods full of skitarii vanguard, cult mech, or IG.

You play Ultramarines and are going to take a Centurion Star or a Skyhammer list. Or you want to make 3 Rending Thunderfire Cannons with Tigurius/Telion fire every turn, and make the beautiful tears.

You play Black Templar and want to run Crusader Squads.

You play White Scars and want to use bikes. And now that you can have 3 Command Squads to run around with, each with 4-5 gravguns...

Most Tournaments ban more than two of the same formation, so you can't use the Battle Company, and thus, can't get the free transports. And unless it is the Storm Wing, it's not a very good auxiliary.

You want to play a themed list (1st Company, 10th Company, Armored Division) and have a literal nerd boner that you can now do that with the new Formations, and still be Battleforged.

It says that when you take two of them it becomes a battle company which is a new formation with its own special rules. In effect it is a new formation made up of two of the same formation.

In addition it is nowhere near as powerful as the other formations out there. To make the most of it you have to take some of the units with the lowest damage output in the army AND then take something else before you can even consider putting points into making the formation worth taking.

CAD is mainly until FW updates things, or if you want to have the freedom to make your army exactly how you want it. I want to run the battle company because I want to put those bodies on the table and have a chance(So many rhino chassis).

However it 100% depends on the missions that the tournament is using. If they are kill point heavy or a mission that is solely KP I wont take it. However if it is mission heavy then the Battle Company is awesome.

Iirc you can take a demi company as formation as well ( not part of the gladius) if you want to get ob sec on random usually non ob sec units.

Yeah it does obsec spam well (really well) and is certainly a viable tournament build.

Outside of that, there are still a lot of really good army builds (even tournament builds).

White scars are great (even better than they used to be due to some lowered costs) and have no need for the gladius strike force.

I even am in the process of constructing a drop pod salamander army with 5 drop pods and zero demi companies

For instance, did you know that Vulkan lets you master-craft your sternguard's combi-melta? OH YES. Master-crafted sternguard all day and all night.

That's mostly just because I like to be contrarian, but it's still a very good list.

Why would I? My commander doesn't fall into one of those neat HQ categories that is required by the formation so I would have to bring two additional HQs, my main emphasis is scouts and LSS so I am more likely to bring a CAD to enable my commander and a few scouts for troops since I am going to bring them anyway, while I would have to take 6 tac squads which I do not want to take at all. Then I will add in a few formations as well, whirlwind and 10th company formations, and then go from there with units here and there.