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So, we've seen some parts of the new 1DP detachments and I'm really liking the specialized nature of them that will lead to a lot of mix and matching of various small numbers or types of units here and there into larger forces. I keep thinking of cool and flavourful different mini detachments we could get and wanted to know what you would all design if you had a crack at it. 

Here are the rules: 
- Detachment can only affect a small number of units for any given faction. 
- 2 "Enhancements" 1 Traditional and 1 Upgrade. 
- 3 Stratagems.

Here's what I've come up with:

Space Marines

Foebreakder Strike Force: When an enemy unit within 6" of a Reiver or Infernus unit fails a battle shock test, that unit takes D3 mortal wounds. 

Enhancement: Kingsbane: Reiver Character only. Melee attacks from this character have Anti-Character 2+. 
Upgrade: Promethium Grenades: When an enemy unit suffers a Mortal Wound from a grenade stratagem used by this unit, they must take a Battle Shock test at -1. 

Stratagems: 
(1CP) Sowing Discord: A Reiver or Infernus unit can Fall Back, Shoot and Charge.
(2CP) Here is your Warlord!: Use this stratagem only when the enemy Warlord is slain, and only once per game. All enemy units must take a battle shock test. 
(1CP) Hellfire Protocol: An Infernus units Pyreblaster gains Close Quarters and Hazardous. 

Simple little bits here and there, but I think this would be a lot of fun to play. What are your thoughts? Any subsets of armies you'd like to see get a 1DP Detachments? 

At the risk of being a sourpuss, can we talk about whether the mix & match detachment thing is actually a good idea in the first place?

The whole thing reminds me of both the "paint your marines so people know which buffs you have" days of 8th/9th and the "this unit is only good if you take it in this formation" days of 7th.

While detachments in 10th definitely ran into the issue of frequently buffing a certain subset of units and not doing anything extra for your other units, it did generally feel like units were designed to be useful regardless of which detachment you took.

Whereas now I'm worried that GW is going to design around the assumption that every unit in your army will be benefitting from some detachment or other. So instead of designing reivers to be useful in whatever detachment you take, maybe they assume you'll always be splashing in a Foebreaker Strike Force detachment if you're fielding reivers. So they design the reivers as though they have the Foebreaker benefits. And if you *don't* squeeze a Foebreaker into your list, you just end up with overpriced reivers.

Obviously it's too early to know if this will be the case, but we've seen GW do basically this exact thing in several recent editions now.

And while this is a matter of personal taste, I kind of prefer making people commit to an army-wide gimmick rather than just letting people take some gamey kill-more-betterer buffs for each clump of unit types.

Taking the not-Raven Guard detachment in 10th felt like you were committing to a stealthy playstyle with an emphasis on misdirection at the cost of not shooting as hard as something like the not-Imperial Fists detachment or the vehicle buffs of the not-Iron Hands detachment.

If you can give all your infantry the not-Raven Guard buffs and all your vehicles the not-Iron Hands buffs, it kind of waters down the theme, you know?

Sure, I don't mind having that conversation. As overall I do think it's a good thing, though I can certainly see where there could be issues.

To address your points in order.

They clearly learned form the 8th/9th mess of not knowing what was what. All rules affect the whole army, it's no different than it is now, it just sometimes adds a second layer. Sometimes both layers will affect the same unit, many times they won't, but there won't be any "does it apply to this unit?" more than there already is.

True. However, the alternate is what we have now, some units in each army are pretty bad and aren't taken at all. I'd rather have a single detachment where they are decent-good, especially if it can be amalgamated into an existing framework without taking it over, than them not be good at all. More viable units means more options, means a more healthy meta.

Yes, in 10th, some detachments were broadly good for everything, and are thus the 3DP ones now, but as more detachments come out, more are shifting away form that focus. You can only have so many jack of all trades detachments. The more specialized a detachment is, the less DP it's worth. I think this is a great way to be able to adjust the dial if anything turns out over or under powered.

You're correct, but as noted above, they're already bad right now, it's not working in the current system. We could debate the merits of making every unit good vs making every unit good in specific detachments, but whatever way you slice it, I'm happy with whatever version gets the most variety of units playable in some way.

Yeah, totally agree on the final point. That's why the Not-Raven Guard and Not-Iron Hands are 2DP each, specifically so you can't do that. Instead, it's you take Not-Raven Guard for 2VP, and add a Librarius flair to it, with Librarius Conclave, or a Speeder Flair to it with the Land Speeder one since they are both 1VP, they are meant to accent the main army. It's like, if you play an RPG like say World of Warcraft, you play a Paladin, but can specialize into a Tank, DPS, or Healer version of that. The core of what you're playing is the same, but you add specialty and flavour to it. That's how I see the system having been designed. (Will it actually work that way? Time will tell, but I think it's built it a way that is easily correctable if outliers exist.)

Something for Deathmarks and Hexmarks in deep strike to intercept enemy reinforcements. I guess I could go some nostalgia bait with a Charnel Lychguard Enhancement, but that wouldn't necessarily be 1DP.

I don't know why 7th caught a stray, 8th edition codexes fethed things up in a unique way with Novokh/Blood Angels only being good for melee and being allied in with the only good at shooting Nihilakh/Ultramarines. I don't really think the formations were the problem in 7th, Decurion-style detachments were. A Destroyer formation was not that strong on its own, but it was the only way to get the additional buffs from the Decurion detachment. It's just a very different design and set of problems.

I don't like 9th edition's fix of not allowing you to soup different chapters, I think chapters/detachments being focussed on a few datasheets is just boring and bad design. Unless you need all the power available in a detachment rule to do something unique and thematic that cannot work for other units, it's just a bad idea. Doing mortal wounds to nearby enemy units that fail morale tests does not pass this bar at all.

A spooky detachment can work without the rule being specific to Reiver and Infernus units. Is it a big deal if a Dreadnought instead of a Reiver is doing this damage from a thematic or balance perspective? No it's just unimaginitive datasheet first design. "I need a Reiver detachment, what would be cool for Reivers to get?" I hate it.

8th edition indexes, people could spam melee units or ranged units, the addition of codexes massively rewarding more focussed lists only hurt more balanced army lists, they create nothing new by giving +1 to charge or fall back and shoot. Detachments should add something to the game, not take away and they only do that if they are datasheet-agnostic or do something very unique and thematic.

Tzeentch in the fluff has beef with Nurgle, if in the rules the 2 synergised so well they were always played together, a detachment that locks you out of one or the other could be very thematically appropriate. Most of the time though, there is nothing stopping me from spamming Flayed Ones or spamming Canoptek units and the datasheet centric detachment I get for them is completely unecessary, creating potential balance problems and introducing rules and mental load bloat without fixing any issues or bringing unique gameplay.

 vict0988 wrote:


A spooky detachment can work without the rule being specific to Reiver and Infernus units. Is it a big deal if a Dreadnought instead of a Reiver is doing this damage from a thematic or balance perspective? No it's just unimaginitive datasheet first design. "I need a Reiver detachment, what would be cool for Reivers to get?" I hate it.

Fair enough, though I was talking specifically for 1DP Deatachments. Making a spooky detachment more broad would push it up higher than 1DP. That being said, I do think the army wide version you suggest is a better design overall.

I suppose it is rather a backwards way of looking at it, but when you've already been given all the pegs, all you can do is craft the holes to fit them in.

 Tawnis wrote:
Sure, I don't mind having that conversation. As overall I do think it's a good thing, though I can certainly see where there could be issues.

To address your points in order.

They clearly learned form the 8th/9th mess of not knowing what was what. All rules affect the whole army, it's no different than it is now, it just sometimes adds a second layer. Sometimes both layers will affect the same unit, many times they won't, but there won't be any "does it apply to this unit?" more than there already is.

True. However, the alternate is what we have now, some units in each army are pretty bad and aren't taken at all. I'd rather have a single detachment where they are decent-good, especially if it can be amalgamated into an existing framework without taking it over, than them not be good at all. More viable units means more options, means a more healthy meta.

Yes, in 10th, some detachments were broadly good for everything, and are thus the 3DP ones now, but as more detachments come out, more are shifting away form that focus. You can only have so many jack of all trades detachments. The more specialized a detachment is, the less DP it's worth. I think this is a great way to be able to adjust the dial if anything turns out over or under powered.

You're correct, but as noted above, they're already bad right now, it's not working in the current system. We could debate the merits of making every unit good vs making every unit good in specific detachments, but whatever way you slice it, I'm happy with whatever version gets the most variety of units playable in some way.

Yeah, totally agree on the final point. That's why the Not-Raven Guard and Not-Iron Hands are 2DP each, specifically so you can't do that. Instead, it's you take Not-Raven Guard for 2VP, and add a Librarius flair to it, with Librarius Conclave, or a Speeder Flair to it with the Land Speeder one since they are both 1VP, they are meant to accent the main army. It's like, if you play an RPG like say World of Warcraft, you play a Paladin, but can specialize into a Tank, DPS, or Healer version of that. The core of what you're playing is the same, but you add specialty and flavour to it. That's how I see the system having been designed. (Will it actually work that way? Time will tell, but I think it's built it a way that is easily correctable if outliers exist.)

Lots of good points here. In a roundabout way, it's a little bit like the 9th edition build-a-subfaction rules in that you essentially choose a combination of buffs for your army, except that the 11th edition version has you build a list of stratagems instead of giving you a bunch of faction agnostic ones to juggle.

I'm sincerely open to it and to it working well. I can just also easily see most players gravitating towards spamming the same 1DP detachments in every single list as people figure out the optimal choices. So everyone ends up splashing a librarius into their marine list just like everyone used to splash an aspect host into their eldar list, etc.

But if I think of it as, "Choose your main gimmick (sneaky, vehicles, etc.) and then add a twist to it (librarius, land speeder support, etc.), I start to see the appeal.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
Sure, I don't mind having that conversation. As overall I do think it's a good thing, though I can certainly see where there could be issues.

To address your points in order.

They clearly learned form the 8th/9th mess of not knowing what was what. All rules affect the whole army, it's no different than it is now, it just sometimes adds a second layer. Sometimes both layers will affect the same unit, many times they won't, but there won't be any "does it apply to this unit?" more than there already is.

True. However, the alternate is what we have now, some units in each army are pretty bad and aren't taken at all. I'd rather have a single detachment where they are decent-good, especially if it can be amalgamated into an existing framework without taking it over, than them not be good at all. More viable units means more options, means a more healthy meta.

Yes, in 10th, some detachments were broadly good for everything, and are thus the 3DP ones now, but as more detachments come out, more are shifting away form that focus. You can only have so many jack of all trades detachments. The more specialized a detachment is, the less DP it's worth. I think this is a great way to be able to adjust the dial if anything turns out over or under powered.

You're correct, but as noted above, they're already bad right now, it's not working in the current system. We could debate the merits of making every unit good vs making every unit good in specific detachments, but whatever way you slice it, I'm happy with whatever version gets the most variety of units playable in some way.

Yeah, totally agree on the final point. That's why the Not-Raven Guard and Not-Iron Hands are 2DP each, specifically so you can't do that. Instead, it's you take Not-Raven Guard for 2VP, and add a Librarius flair to it, with Librarius Conclave, or a Speeder Flair to it with the Land Speeder one since they are both 1VP, they are meant to accent the main army. It's like, if you play an RPG like say World of Warcraft, you play a Paladin, but can specialize into a Tank, DPS, or Healer version of that. The core of what you're playing is the same, but you add specialty and flavour to it. That's how I see the system having been designed. (Will it actually work that way? Time will tell, but I think it's built it a way that is easily correctable if outliers exist.)

Lots of good points here. In a roundabout way, it's a little bit like the 9th edition build-a-subfaction rules in that you essentially choose a combination of buffs for your army, except that the 11th edition version has you build a list of stratagems instead of giving you a bunch of faction agnostic ones to juggle.

I'm sincerely open to it and to it working well. I can just also easily see most players gravitating towards spamming the same 1DP detachments in every single list as people figure out the optimal choices. So everyone ends up splashing a librarius into their marine list just like everyone used to splash an aspect host into their eldar list, etc.

But if I think of it as, "Choose your main gimmick (sneaky, vehicles, etc.) and then add a twist to it (librarius, land speeder support, etc.), I start to see the appeal.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I saw it too, reminds me a lot of the build a custom chapter we had in 9th, just less tied to specific named factions. That was one of the few things I rather missed from 9th, niche playstyles that I liked to mess around with.

That is certainly a possibility within then meta of the game and will be up to the balance team to address. If the 1DP Land Speeder detachment turned out to be amazing, there's nothing to stop you from jamming it into every 2DP SM list. That being said, if we look to the current example of that, Imperial Agents, GW has a proven track record of nerfing something into the ground when it's broadly useful across a wide variety of armies rather that having its intended specialist function.

While I'm sure some will settle as the consensus "best" 1DP to use broadly across each army, I don't think it will be too different from where we are at now where some detachments get a lot more love than others on the competitive scene. So long as the balance team keeps on top of things, I think we'll still be in a good place. For example, the Blade of Ultrammar and Gladius Task Force being the main consensus of "best" right now. Yet, someone recently 5-0'd a major tournament with the current Librarius Conclave that basically no one is playing competitively right now. That's the kind of thing I hope to see more of with the new system, people being able to create lots more new and interesting lists that have a real shot at taking on the field.

One thing that I think 40k has going for it over and above nearly any other game system, is that by the nature of how it's played, the meta is incredibly slow to shift, often taking months, and sometimes even years to realize a sub-faction or playstyle is actually very strong (you could even see this in 10th in real time for anyone that really paid attention to Kroot this edition). Sure, there will be a consensus on the "best" factions and lists at the moment, but it's impossible to test against everything even now, it will be even moreso when you add detachment combinations to the mix. I know not everyone is a list building connoisseur like I am, but the vast breadth of options that are going to be available is going to add a lot more uniqueness and personality to many games regardless of what the best option is. As for those who like to experiment, we are even more incentivized to do so.

The Librarius or Land Speeder support aspect needs to justify its existence in favour of just being a regular part in the army. I think that justification has to be a unique rule that only works narratively for them. Like psychic powers for Librarians and moving at superhuman speeds or evasive maneuvres for Land Speeders (even if Rhinos can be assumed to always be performing evasive maneuvers under fire, an evasive maneuvre with a fast skimmer at speed would grant it survivability on a whole different level that could not be justified for a Rhino).

So start with the fantasy "my Librarian knows the secrets of the warp allowing him to warp flesh in various ways", can work, "Librarians need a Detachment what would be cool" probably is not going to add anything meaningful to the game. Because I can just play the Librarians in my not-Ravenguard army and because they aren't in some OP Librarius Conclave Detachment they get to be cheaper and remain cost effective without rules bloat.

Something allowing characters to teleport to Lychguard might be cool. Necron Warriors and Lychguard don't really work, so it would make sense to have certain rules centred around materials aquisitions be tied to only Canoptek units and I could see DP being used to have this aspect design you mentioned, I play a tanky Necron infantry list, but I also have an aspect of materials aquisitions for my Canoptek units. Which is sort of like your Reiver thing, sorry if you felt I was too harsh, I just think most of my Necrons Detachments for 10th have been very boring and could have been applied to every datasheet.

I think this DP system is more trying to fix the issues of overly focussed detachments that end up creating the list for the player and allowing the player to only make that half their list and then actually take the other units they want. But the issue is if I want to make oops all Flyers viable, then someone making that Detachment 1DP because it only helps flyers means you can take Wraiths in a list with all these super efficient Flyers and still get all the detachment buffs you want for Wraiths, so all that power budget I wanted to make flyer spam an actual option, is gone now. I guess I want a flyer spam Detachment if the rules don't support it out the box, 10th has been awful for Flyers, 11th pretty much has to be better.

Really interesting topic and I'm excited to see which existing detachments get the 1DP treatment and how often GW will change DP costs.

 vict0988 wrote:
The Librarius or Land Speeder support aspect needs to justify its existence in favour of just being a regular part in the army. I think that justification has to be a unique rule that only works narratively for them.

sorry if you felt I was too harsh, I just think most of my Necrons Detachments for 10th have been very boring and could have been applied to every datasheet.

I think this DP system is more trying to fix the issues of overly focussed detachments that end up creating the list for the player and allowing the player to only make that half their list and then actually take the other units they want.

Really interesting topic and I'm excited to see which existing detachments get the 1DP treatment and how often GW will change DP costs.

I don't think you're too harsh, just having a different perspective on it, and a I agree to a point. Just because they could give every teeny tiny little unit a bespoke 1DP detachment, doesn't mean that they should. More and more detachments recently have been becoming more niche as that's where the remaining design space is, so I think you're spot on with how the system tries to fix the over focusing issue.

However, to your first point here, I do see this as narratively justified. Using Space Marines as the obvious main example here, think of how many Sucessor chapters there are for each Legion. Many of them fight wildly different from their parent Legion so having an extra slot to accent the main rule helps flesh those armies out. For instance, Blood Ravens, Silver Skulls, or Soul Drinkers players would likely use a 1DP Librarius detachment as support for their army as they are much more psyker reliant than normal chapters. An Eagle Warriors player would likely want an aircraft themed one, and on and on.

Overall, I do think it's a good narrative option to be able to say, hey we're a sneaky chapter like the Raven Guard, but we specialize in psykers, while this other chapter specialized in terror troops.

Admittedly it does break down a little with factions that have a much smaller range and/or narrative well to pull from, but I'd like to aim for what would be great for everyone to be like.

1. Standard SM army.
2. Standard SM army with reivers.
3. Standard SM army with psykers.
4. Standard SM army with reivers and psykers.

All 4 use the same base detachment, with the rules as they currently are all 4 are viable. You can already create a Reiver or a Librarian army to express the backstory of your subfaction. Now we add 1DP detachments R and P that either add +1 to wound for Reivers or and one that adds +1 to wound for psychic weapons. You're nver going to use R for 3 or P for 2. Whether you use R or P for 4 comes is more of a math question than anything. If anything you are making 4 less viable because 2 and 3 gets to focus more on their secondary element while 4 has units with a less useful rule to themselves.

Worst case scenario Librarius Conclave is UP and Foebreaker Strikeforce is OP and Blood Ravens run Foebreaker Strikeforce because Librarius Conclave is gak. Worst case scenario is pretty likely, how many wanted to play Wordbearers back in early 8th when they were a complete joke? And for what? What was the important narrative addition of the Word Bearer's rules? Improved leadership from their faith in the dark gods, added nothing to the game.

I think Imperial Agents needs a 1 DP ALLY Detachment.

Something that adds flavor and usefulness to your army. Maybe it grants battleline to the Grey Knight Terminators or grants a bonus to Assassins.

Something that incorporates them better into your army than:

Here's Watch Captain Artemis, he can't interact with my army at all.

I'd like to see an updated version of a 2nd edition rule (Using the Knights/Chaos Knights version as a template)

In 2nd edition Chaos could take Imperial units but they had to pay a premium and only 25% of the army could be Imperial, to represent recent converts that aren't relying on ancient heresy-era gear.

Recent Renegades

- You may include Adeptus Astartes units in your army (See Codex: Adeptus Astartes). The combined points cost of those units cannot exceed 500 points)
- Your Warlord cannot be an Adeptus Astartes unit
- Friendly Adeptus Astartes units lose the Oath of Moment ability and gain the faction ability of your Warlord

Chaos Centurions? there you go!
Chaos Land Speeders? Easy!
Chaos Primaris? No need for a whole new codex!

You could use the same template for Chaos Xenos or Genestealer-infected Xenos or any other niche forces that don't see much play

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I think Imperial Agents needs a 1 DP ALLY Detachment.

Something that adds flavor and usefulness to your army. Maybe it grants battleline to the Grey Knight Terminators or grants a bonus to Assassins.

Something that incorporates them better into your army than:

Here's Watch Captain Artemis, he can't interact with my army at all.

As someone who doesn't think imperial agents should really be looked at as an actual standalone army, I feel like imperial agents are actually one of the places where the new DP system could actually work really well. 1DP to splash in an inquisitor and some units associated with their ordo (or their merry band of henchmen) feels very fitting, and the 1DP detachments have just enough benefits to convey some of that flavor without being clunky. A primarily guard army with 1 DP of DW or GK or sisters splashed in, possibly lead by an inquisitor, would be a great way to represent those factions and make them feel more "elite."

To get everyone back on topic:

Centurion Siegebreaker Cohort
The chapters Centurions are unleashed to root the enemy from their fortifications. There is no subtlety needed to destroy this enemy.
High caliber Omniscopes -
Ranged weapons equipped by Centurion units have ignore cover.

Enhancements:
Fury of the Machine spirit -
Centurion Assault Squad only. Melee weapons equipped by this unit have Cleave 1.

Moving artillery -
Centurion Devastator Squad only. Ranged weapons equipped by this unit have Heavy.

Stratagems:
(1CP) Sacred Oils - Centurion unit only. When making an Advance move do not roll a D6, instead add 6" to this units move instead.
(1CP) Crushing Impact - Centurion unit only. After a charge move, for every model in this unit that is in base contact with an enemy unit roll a D3. Inflict a number of mortal wounds equal to that roll to the enemy unit.
(1CP) Absolute destruction - Centurion unit only. Shooting or fighting phase, weapon attacks this phase have lethal hits.