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Now that 9e doesn't cause Detachments to generate Command Points, what are the benefits of taking multiple Detachments, as opposed to just fitting your whole army into a single Detachment?

Obviously if you can't fit your whole army into a single Detachment, due to having too many Elite/Fast Attack/Heavy Support choices, you will have to take an extra Vanguard/Outrider/Spearhead Detachment to fit them in. Same goes for Fortifications or Lords of War, which need their own Detachment no matter what. But is there any benefit to voluntarily splitting your forces up if you don't have to?

As far as I can tell, it's:

If you want to mix-and-match different Factions, and don't mind losing Faction Army Abilities as a result.

If you want to mix-and-match Subfactions, and don't mind losing Subfaction Army Abilities as a result (if your army has any - I think it's just Space Marines at the moment, due to the amount of benefits Chapters get).

If your Faction has some specific benefit to taking multiple Detachments or a specific type of Detachment, such as Drukhari (who used to get +2 CP for running the entire army as Patrols), or Dark Angels (who get benefits for using/including a Vanguard/Outrider Detachment).

Is that it? Are there any baked-in benefits to Detachments that I'm missing?

For me, different detachments can be used for several different things. First is if you play an elite army and don't want a whole lot of troops, you can take two patrols which eliminates one of the mandatory troop slot, while also allowing for one more HQ, FST, and HVY slot only losing 2 CP. For Thousand Sons it also allows you to take different cults or in Daemon armies for bringing units from different gods but keeping the locus (these two may change with new dex). I think there are a few others where you can mix and match in army.

But if your whole list fits in a battalion, you don't mind the extra troop choice, and you don't need to split for things like the Thousand Sons cults etc., yea there is no reason not to just do a battalion.

It's basically about trading away some CP to redistribute your force org slots and enables a degree of list skew not possible with a standard battalion.

List flexibility is the benefit.

You've p. much answered your own question tbh, OP.

I don't think you lose sub faction bonuses with multiple detachments, as long as each sub faction is in its own detachment.

Pretty sure I can run an OoOML detachment for my shooties and a Bloody Rose detachment for my fighties.

Both are Sororitas detachments, so I get my army purity rules; the OoOML detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait, and the Bloody Rose Detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait.

RevlidRas wrote:
Now that 9e doesn't cause Detachments to generate Command Points, what are the benefits of taking multiple Detachments, as opposed to just fitting your whole army into a single Detachment?

Narrative probably. I could maybe see a Comp angle but I don't really know how to Comp so who knows.

Obviously if you can't fit your whole army into a single Detachment, due to having too many Elite/Fast Attack/Heavy Support choices, you will have to take an extra Vanguard/Outrider/Spearhead Detachment to fit them in. Same goes for Fortifications or Lords of War, which need their own Detachment no matter what. But is there any benefit to voluntarily splitting your forces up if you don't have to?

I think the only time I've struggled to fit an entire army into a single Detachment was playing a 100 Power game using my R&H with AM rules. Too many Heavy Supports.

As far as I can tell, it's:

If you want to mix-and-match different Factions, and don't mind losing Faction Army Abilities as a result.

If you want to mix-and-match Subfactions, and don't mind losing Subfaction Army Abilities as a result (if your army has any - I think it's just Space Marines at the moment, due to the amount of benefits Chapters get).

If your Faction has some specific benefit to taking multiple Detachments or a specific type of Detachment, such as Drukhari (who used to get +2 CP for running the entire army as Patrols), or Dark Angels (who get benefits for using/including a Vanguard/Outrider Detachment).

You don't lose sub-faction bonuses unless you contain multiple sub-factions within the same Detachment. Otherwise, Drukhari wouldn't work at all.

RevlidRas wrote:
Now that 9e doesn't cause Detachments to generate Command Points, what are the benefits of taking multiple Detachments, as opposed to just fitting your whole army into a single Detachment?

Obviously if you can't fit your whole army into a single Detachment, due to having too many Elite/Fast Attack/Heavy Support choices, you will have to take an extra Vanguard/Outrider/Spearhead Detachment to fit them in. Same goes for Fortifications or Lords of War, which need their own Detachment no matter what. But is there any benefit to voluntarily splitting your forces up if you don't have to?

As far as I can tell, it's:

If you want to mix-and-match different Factions, and don't mind losing Faction Army Abilities as a result.

If you want to mix-and-match Subfactions, and don't mind losing Subfaction Army Abilities as a result (if your army has any - I think it's just Space Marines at the moment, due to the amount of benefits Chapters get).

If your Faction has some specific benefit to taking multiple Detachments or a specific type of Detachment, such as Drukhari (who used to get +2 CP for running the entire army as Patrols), or Dark Angels (who get benefits for using/including a Vanguard/Outrider Detachment).

Is that it? Are there any baked-in benefits to Detachments that I'm missing?

not really? since 9th ed, as far as i can tell, the main benefit to running multiple detachments was retention of battle forged abilities when running several subfactions (say a Admech Ryza melee force with a Mars firebase to support it), or doing a soup list (like say Tsons and deamons).

the big reason to run a Outrider/Vanguard/Spearhead is that you can run a battle forged list with radical composition (for example, a custodes pure bike list, or a deathwing army), but you do so at the cost of a few CP compared to a "standard" army.

but yhea, thiers not much reason to spilt between multiple detachments if you dont need to. most of my current list concepts are all in a single detachment, becuase i dont really need to spread out to several.

PenitentJake wrote:
I don't think you lose sub faction bonuses with multiple detachments, as long as each sub faction is in its own detachment.

Pretty sure I can run an OoOML detachment for my shooties and a Bloody Rose detachment for my fighties.

Both are Sororitas detachments, so I get my army purity rules; the OoOML detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait, and the Bloody Rose Detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait.

Talking about Army abilities, rather than Detachment abilities. Right now Space Marines are the only ones who have those - presumably because Chapters offer a huge number of extra Stratagems, Warlord Traits, and Relics, not just the one extra everyone else gets. If your whole army is Imperial Fists/White Scars/Dark Angels, you get a boost to Combat Doctrines.

It's about tailoring your subfaction color codes to the specific unit types they buff especially well.

RevlidRas wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I don't think you lose sub faction bonuses with multiple detachments, as long as each sub faction is in its own detachment.

Pretty sure I can run an OoOML detachment for my shooties and a Bloody Rose detachment for my fighties.

Both are Sororitas detachments, so I get my army purity rules; the OoOML detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait, and the Bloody Rose Detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait.

Talking about Army abilities, rather than Detachment abilities. Right now Space Marines are the only ones who have those - presumably because Chapters offer a huge number of extra Stratagems, Warlord Traits, and Relics, not just the one extra everyone else gets. If your whole army is Imperial Fists/White Scars/Dark Angels, you get a boost to Combat Doctrines.

The sisters DO have an army purity ability- it's their Miracle dice/ AoF schtick. It breaks if the army includes a detachment that ISN'T Sororitas, Cult Imperialis, Agent of the Imperium or Unaligned. It does NOT break if I include one detachment from one sororitas order, and another detachment for a different Sororitas order. Every army that has a 9th dex (to my knowledge) has an army purity rule, and I didn't think any of those purity rules were broken by including detachments from their respective subfactions.

I would assume it's the same for marines, especially now that DA, BA, SW are supplements and not dexes. I could be wrong- I bought the 9th ed SM dex, but I only use it with the Deathwatch Supplement to field mono DW, so I never checked how their army purity rule works, and I'm not at home so I can't check my dex.

PenitentJake wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I don't think you lose sub faction bonuses with multiple detachments, as long as each sub faction is in its own detachment.

Pretty sure I can run an OoOML detachment for my shooties and a Bloody Rose detachment for my fighties.

Both are Sororitas detachments, so I get my army purity rules; the OoOML detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait, and the Bloody Rose Detachment is pure, so they get their Order trait.

Talking about Army abilities, rather than Detachment abilities. Right now Space Marines are the only ones who have those - presumably because Chapters offer a huge number of extra Stratagems, Warlord Traits, and Relics, not just the one extra everyone else gets. If your whole army is Imperial Fists/White Scars/Dark Angels, you get a boost to Combat Doctrines.

The sisters DO have an army purity ability- it's their Miracle dice/ AoF schtick. It breaks if the army includes a detachment that ISN'T Sororitas, Cult Imperialis, Agent of the Imperium or Unaligned. It does NOT break if I include one detachment from one sororitas order, and another detachment for a different Sororitas order. Every army that has a 9th dex (to my knowledge) has an army purity rule, and I didn't think any of those purity rules were broken by including detachments from their respective subfactions.

I would assume it's the same for marines, especially now that DA, BA, SW are supplements and not dexes. I could be wrong- I bought the 9th ed SM dex, but I only use it with the Deathwatch Supplement to field mono DW, so I never checked how their army purity rule works, and I'm not at home so I can't check my dex.

For Space Marines, the so-called "super-doctrines" such as Mission Tactics for Deathwatch, or Legacy of Dorn for Imperial Fists (or successor) only apply if the whole army is from the same sub-faction (chapter), not including UNALIGNED units. AFAIK this is the only time there is a sub-faction specific bonus that is lost if you take detachments of different sub-factions in an army.