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Hey everyone! I have a question for those who play the current edition of 40k about some of the 11th edition rules previews…specifically about the concept of now being able to run multiple detachments in 11th edition.

I haven’t played 40k for real since 6th/7th edition, and one of the main things that drove me out of the game were the ‘formations’ they had back then, and the bonus abilities those formations handed out (just to the units from those formations). What irked me about that was that you could have two of the exact same model in your force (say, 2 Rhinos, for example) and 1 of those Rhinos could have a bonus special rule for being part of a formation. Why did that irk me, you might ask? Because then it was suddenly up to the opponent to remember throughout the game which particular Rhinos had the magical special ability assigned to it just for being taken as part of a formation.

While I never even tried a game of 10th edition, the simplified ‘2 pages of rules’ for each detachment seemed pretty good to me, and my understanding was that you essentially had to pick 1 detachment for your entire force (let me know if I’m incorrect on this).

Reading the 11th edition rules previews, I noticed that now you’ll be able to take multiple detachments in a single force now. My question to those of you who are well versed in 10th edition rules (and have read all the 11th edition previews) is:

Do you think in 11th edition, if a player takes multiple detachments for their force we could be back to a situation where two identical models in the same force can now have different special rules based upon which detachment they are taken from? If that is the case, it wouldn’t it seem like a big step backwards towards making it easy for the opposing player to keep track of which units benefit from which special rules in a force?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Yep.

In theory, you're incentivized to put all the units that will benefit from a detachment in that specific detachment, but it's plausible that we'll see units that could benefit from multiple being spread between them.

Either way, you have to keep track of which unit is in which detachment to know what set of passive buffs it's under, but also which stratagems it has access to. Plus there are enhancements applied to specific models/units, so you have to remember which units have those.

I think it's going to be messy. Maybe not as messy as 9th got to be, but definitely more to keep track of than 10th.

Edit: I'm wrong about putting specific units in specific detachments, seems they're all army-wide, so you'll just have to track which units receive which buffs and abilities.

While I never even tried a game of 10th edition, the simplified ‘2 pages of rules’ for each detachment seemed pretty good to me, and my understanding was that you essentially had to pick 1 detachment for your entire force (let me know if I’m incorrect on this).

You are correct about this.

Do you think in 11th edition, if a player takes multiple detachments for their force we could be back to a situation where two identical models in the same force can now have different special rules based upon which detachment they are taken from? If that is the case, it wouldn’t it seem like a big step backwards towards making it easy for the opposing player to keep track of which units benefit from which special rules in a force?

From what I can tell individual units are not part of a detachment who then gain the rules from that detachment but that the rules from each detachment will only effect certain units based on their keywords.
For example the Devotees of Destruction detachement said:

Friendly HAVOCS/OBLITERATORS units’ ranged attacks have [HEAVY].

So only units with the Havocs or Obliterators keywords would gain this special rule.
They have said that each of the previewed detachments are worth 1 point so I assume the more broad ones will be worth 2-3 so for example if a Chaos SM army takes the Devotees of Destruction detachement and one of the more broad ones, say for example one that effects all infantry units, all you would need to remember is that all infantry has the broad rule and only the Havocs and Obliterators would have both.

I don’t think there has been a definitive word.

None of the rules we’ve seen so far explicitly say “models in this detachment gain xx”. There could be two reasons for that. One is that in the core rules there is a explicit line (that we haven’t seen yet) that makes rules only apply to units taken as part of a detachment, so they don’t need to write it on every one. The other option is that your army rules are going to be the sum of your (up to 3) detachments, where every rule will apply to everything that matches it’s keywords and descriptions.

As far as I know we don’t have a solid answer at this time.

Which leads 2 likely outcomes.
One is the issue that plagued formations, where 2 identical units have different rules because they were grouped in different structures.
The other is a return of layered rules and unintended consequences where multiple buffs have the potential to wombo-combo break the game.

Or a 3rd option I don’t see.

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t think there has been a definitive word.

None of the rules we’ve seen so far explicitly say “models in this detachment gain xx”. There could be two reasons for that. One is that in the core rules there is a explicit line (that we haven’t seen yet) that makes rules only apply to units taken as part of a detachment, so they don’t need to write it on every one. The other option is that your army rules are going to be the sum of your (up to 3) detachments, where every rule will apply to everything that matches it’s keywords and descriptions.

As far as I know we don’t have a solid answer at this time.

Which leads 2 likely outcomes.
One is the issue that plagued formations, where 2 identical units have different rules because they were grouped in different structures.
The other is a return of layered rules and unintended consequences where multiple buffs have the potential to wombo-combo break the game.

Or a 3rd option I don’t see.

In this article, https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/95fucn12/building-an-army-in-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/, there is a line that reads; You'll still choose your army from your Codex, in much the same way as you do now. The Detachments will then give rules that will apply to your whole army, though certain Detachments and rules may only affect certain units within it.

This makes me think it is the one where the army rules is the sum of your detachments with keywords dictating which units are effected. So I see a lot of theory crafting and potentially emergency patches in the future.

 KingGarland wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
I don’t think there has been a definitive word.

None of the rules we’ve seen so far explicitly say “models in this detachment gain xx”. There could be two reasons for that. One is that in the core rules there is a explicit line (that we haven’t seen yet) that makes rules only apply to units taken as part of a detachment, so they don’t need to write it on every one. The other option is that your army rules are going to be the sum of your (up to 3) detachments, where every rule will apply to everything that matches it’s keywords and descriptions.

As far as I know we don’t have a solid answer at this time.

Which leads 2 likely outcomes.
One is the issue that plagued formations, where 2 identical units have different rules because they were grouped in different structures.
The other is a return of layered rules and unintended consequences where multiple buffs have the potential to wombo-combo break the game.

Or a 3rd option I don’t see.

In this article, https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/95fucn12/building-an-army-in-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/, there is a line that reads; You'll still choose your army from your Codex, in much the same way as you do now. The Detachments will then give rules that will apply to your whole army, though certain Detachments and rules may only affect certain units within it.

This makes me think it is the one where the army rules is the sum of your detachments with keywords dictating which units are effected. So I see a lot of theory crafting and potentially emergency patches in the future.

Ok, that does skew things away from having to worry about who’s from what detachment. Now GW just needs to work on balance. Thanks for the link.

There are going to be so many errata and nerfs. I suspect day one. Once we get the mostly complete leaks pre-launch, the mathhammer people should be able to get some broken combos off the bat.

While I’m getting bad 6/7th flashbacks, GW is much more agile in getting fixes out the door. Prior editions didn’t fix things so much, but relied on codex creep . Sure, your army might be busted powerful, but wait for the next guy to put you in your place.

The detachment point cost system gives them some flexibility in controlling what can be combo with what.

 Tyran wrote:
The detachment point cost system gives them some flexibility in controlling what can be combo with what.

We've also seen some with "This detachment is mutually exclusive with other detachments that have the same Keyword."

Yeah, to me all the previews read as a 'detachment buffet'; you pay the detachment points for specific 'servings', and they're all smushed together in one big plate at the end that covers your whole army. If anything, it reminds me of the old Guard Doctrine rules, just with a separate points pool instead.

Is it likely to be perfectly balanced? No, but, like...nothing GW does ever is. Regular detachments certainly aren't, a little customization won't set the system on fire.

Other posters have summarized it well.

Your army is no longer divided in detachments. 11th edition Detachments are just "build your own chapter" rules where you can mix and match unit buffs to get your personalized chaper/hive fleet/ork clan/regiment/whatever. You get 3 detachment points and can spend them in any way you like. All previewed detachments are 1DP, the current detachments are mostly 2DP.

In some cases, GW seems to be fine with units benefitting from multiple detachment rules. For example you pick both Taktikal Brigade and More Dakka!, a unit of boyz would both gain Listen 'ere (perform action after advancing) as well as assault weapons and conditional sustained hits.

In other cases, they added weird keywords to prevent units from doubling up on powerful abilities.

Either way, all units in your army will have the same detachment rules applied to them at all times. Detachments do bring upgrades now though, so if you decide to upgrade one squad, but no the other, you might still have identical units with different rules.

I believe that the complexity will increase from "one page of rules", but not massively so. Many of the smaller detachment have just 0-2 stratagems and focus on a very limited set of units. Playing most games will likely feel like 10th edition, but with one unit type being improved with an extra stratagem or two.

I'm not sure this customization system will actually work out in the end. Even if it ends up balanced eventually, building the right detachment will likely be "solved" six months into the edition and at that time play the same as 10th for experienced players while increasing the learning curve for less experienced players.

The detachments we've seen so far are all 1-point detachments (out of the 3 you get at 2000 points). All of them have been pretty narrowly focused on specific units, like Transports, or Sanguinary Guard. You don't need to track which detachment a unit is part of, so it's just a case of tracking all the bonuses your detachment gives you. If you're running three 1-point detachments, it's likely just going to be some units get buff A, some get buff B and some get buff C, but there's no army-wide major buff like you can get now. I think those level of buffs will be reserved for the 3-pointers.

In theory it could work well. One of the problems with detachments now is they all "cost" the same so a detachment that gives your whole army massive buffs (like Gladius) is equivalent to one that only buffs Terminators and Sternguard, for example. GSC are a good example here, where all their detachments buff specific units and they don't actually have a generic, all-rounder detachment. Now GW can produce both and have a mechanism for balancing them appropriately.

That just leave the implementation for GW to mess up...

From what I've seen so far on this, 11th rules soup seems a lot friendlier on the brain than previous rules combos like formations.

First up, all detachments affect all units, so there is no book keeping around which units are in which detachments (some detachments only affect certain units, but that is no different to 10th). You might need to print out some reference cards to have specifically your detachment rules/strats/enhancements in one place, but this is all stuff that can be done before the game so has no real impact on the flow of the game itself.

Secondly, the detachment points seems better for smaller games - locking the heavy hitter 3 point detachments out of the game at smaller scales seems like a total win for balance.

Third - while it's so rare I don't think I've ever had it happen to me in a game of 10th beyond command point rerolls, stacking stratagems is gone. You will likely have access to more strats in 11th (from each of your detachments), but you won't be able to wildly supercharge 1 of 2 otherwise identical units.

The only ways so far to get different rules into identical units seem to be:
* Some enhancements can now go onto non-character units
* There seems to be a general relaxation on getting 2 characters into a unit (leader character + support character designations)
So I guess there could be a route to taking a couple of nearly identical units, but stacking 2 characters (each with an enhancement) plus a non-character enhancement into one of them. This will probably get abused at every opportunity, but as you can probably only get 1 such unit in your army I wouldn't worry too much about tracking huge rules variations across your opponents entire roster.

One thing to note is that your detachment choice determines your "Force Disposition" which in turn decides what missions you can play.

So in theory you can make say a main list with a 2 point detachment, and then slot in the third one as you like to give yourself the opportunity to play Take and Hold, Disruption, Purge the Foe etc.

For competitive purposes you'd probably want to pick this first and work back - but its an option for casual games.

I appreciate the ease of use for folks who just want to play the game. It's good (from the rules/ ease of use perspective) that we don't have to trach which units belong to which detachments, and I hope it stays that way for everyone's sake.

However, for me personally, detachments are connected to the fluff and the army back story, so I personally track this stuff in my own armies. For me, the relationships between the various units in my armies are important. In my Drukhari army, for example, one of my Wych Cults is financed by and loyal to the Archon, while another Cult is financed by and loyal to a Lhamaean who works with the Archon (most of the time). In the Sisters army, the Canoness keeps the Penitent units separate from the Holy units, lest their sin contaminate their loyal Sisters.

For me, detachments were always as much a way to define the background and character of the army as rules. As another example, I know which units in my Sisters army are more loyal to the Ecclesiarchy and which are more loyal to the Inquisition.