Detachment Focus: Black Spear Task Force

Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games. In this article we’re looking at the Deathwatch’s Black Spear Task Force.

In addition to getting an entirely new Index for their army, Deathwatch also saw the release of an updated version of their Black Spear Task Force Detachment. This is a Detachment which represents the standard, Kill Team-focused approach of the Deathwatch, using special tactics and ammunition to take down Xenos targets with extreme prejudice. It’s an update on a classic, with a few key twists that make it worth considering.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

This is the Deathwatch at their finest, using all their cool, bespoke tricks to take out big targets. This Detachment focuses on buffing your Kill Teams – the units specifically listed in Index: Deathwatch. There are a lot of tricks here but the three biggest ones increase your damage output via special ammo, giving you target-specific buffs that go along with the Detachment’s versatile Mission Tactics rule. It’s a solid Detachment whose power depends entirely on the power of those Kill Team datasheets. Fortunately, the ones in the Index are pretty damn good.

The Video Version

If you’re looking for a video version of this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered here:

Detachment Rule: Mission Tactics

At the start of your Command Phase, you can pick one of the following tactics to be active for your units with this ability until the start of your next Command phase. You can only pick each one once per battle.

• Furor Tactics: Your units’ weapons have [SUSTAINED HITS 1]

• Malleus Tactics: Your units’ weapons have [LETHAL HITS]

• Purgatus Tactics: Your units gain [PRECISION] on Critical Hits.

This is carried over from last time and it’s a solid rule to have, giving you three buffs to drop on your units during a game. You don’t have to pick one on a given turn, so you can opt to just leave them unselected in the first battle round if they don’t make sense to have active, and you can re-activate an already used tactic for a unit or two via the Adaptive Tactics Stratagem. You’ll generally know when and how you want to use these, and Precision may not always be what you’re looking for. As far as Detachment abilities go, this is just OK, but made better by the ability to revisit.

In addition to this rule, if you’re running the Black Spear Task Force, you can’t pull units from any other chapter, nor can you run Agents of the Imperium Deathwatch units. You also can’t take any small marine units, Terminators, or Scouts from the Codex. Most of these aren’t even in the Codex anymore, like Scout Bikes or Relic Terminator Squads.

Enhancements

The Enhancements from the original Index Detachment return and they’re all still pretty good. 

• Thief of Secrets – Astartes Model only. Gives you +1 Strength, Damage, and AP on the Bearer’s melee weapons. At the end of the Fight phase, if you killed any enemy models with a melee attack, that bumps up to +2 for the rest of the battle. This is incredibly good – it’s one of the best melee buffs in the game. It’s amazing on a Judiciar and equally great on a Gravis Captain, where tossing out nine D3 attacks is pretty nasty. 
• Osseus Key – Watch Master or Techmarine only. At the start of your Opponent’s Shooting phase pick a visible non-TITANIC enemy Vehicle within 12”. That unit has to take a Leadership test. If they pass, they get -1 to Hit for the rest of the phase. If they fail, they just can’t shoot. This isn’t particularly reliable, but when the effect hits it’s pretty nasty. This isn’t a must-take or anything, but it’s cheap enough to be worth your last 15 points.
• Beacon Angelis – Astartes model. Gives the bearer’s unit Deep Strike and you can target them with Rapid Ingress for 0 CP. This is super useful on a unit of Veterans, letting you bypass that pesky “being guys in power armor” limitation and get them onto the board and in position to rock something with thunder hammers.
• The Tome of Ectoclades – Watch Master or Captain only. Once per game you can pick a second Oath target. This is extremely good; getting full hit re-rolls against a second target will let you drop two key targets in a turn and you don’t need line of sight or a specific range to use this.

These are good enhancements, and it’s perfectly reasonable to take three in your list. The Tome is generally your first pick, with the Beacon and Thief of Secrets being more situational based on how you’re building your army and which units you’re taking.

Stratagems

These Stratagems are all returning from the Deathwatch’s initial Index, but with a key twist: The three special issue ammo stratagems all work on any KILL TEAM unit, and affect all of the ranged weapons in the unit, not just the bolt weapons. While there aren’t a ton of those, the effects here are significant enough to be a big deal, especially when combined with the updated kill teams from the Index.

• Armour of Contempt (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Reduce incoming AP by 1 for a phase. The old standby. Super solid, and important for your army of black-armored glass cannons.
• Adaptive Tactics (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase. Pick two KILL TEAM units, or a single other unit, and pick a Mission Tactic to be active for that unit instead of whatever one is currently active for your army. This seems like the only way to get Adaptive Tactics on a non-Kill Team unit. 
• Hellfire Rounds (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase on a KILL TEAM unit from your army. Until the end of the phase, ranged attacks (excluding those with Dev Wounds) from the unit gain [ANTI-INFANTRY 2+] and [ANTI-MONSTER 5+]. These can’t stack with any other ammo Strats. This is super useful for a specific set of weapons, usually when you need to punch up with smaller arms fire like bolters. It’s more situational than the other two, as the current kill teams push you away from that kind of bolter-heavy approach and more toward using weapons that will already wound infantry on a 2+ or 3+ and vehicles on a 5+.
• Kraken Rounds (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase on a KILL TEAM unit from your army. Until the end of the phase, ranged attacks from that unit get +6” Range and improve their AP by 1. This can’t stack with any other ammo Strats. This is the most generically useful of the three ammo Strats, and it’ll be the one you use most often. Specifically, you’re going to be taking a lot of weapons that need the AP boost to get them over the top and using this to get them there.
• Dragonfire Rounds (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase on a KILL TEAM unit from your army. Until the end of the phase, ranged attacks gain the [ASSAULT] and [IGNORES COVER] abilities. These can’t stack with any other ammo Strats. This one’s also very good – very helpful for getting your ranged units the extra movement they need to get into position, and while IGNORES COVER isn’t quite as good as an extra point of AP, it’s often going to have the same impact, so this vs. Kraken Rounds will often come down to whether or not you need to move or stay still.
• Site-to-Site Teleportation (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the end of your opponent’s Fight phase. Pick up to two KILL TEAM units in your army or one other Infantry unit that isn’t within Engagement Range of an enemy unit. Those units go into Strategic Reserves and gain the Deep strike ability until the end of your next Movement phase. This is fantastic, and getting it on two units for 1 CP is a great deal. For Talonstrike Kill Teams it’s basically necessary to get their full value, continually setting them back up for the bonus AP. The big change here is that this now puts your units into Reserves instead of forcing them to return in the following Movement phase.

This is a solid set of Stratagems, and you’re going to be coming back to those three Special Ammo Stratagems again and again. They make it worth having a captain in your army, and it’s worth noting that captains and watch masters have differently-named abilities for free Stratagem usage, so you can use both in a turn. 

Playing This Detachment

The updated version of the Black Spear Task Force forces you into using Kill Teams even more than the old one, locking the Mission Tactics rule to units with the KILL TEAM keyword (which includes Veterans and Deathwatch Terminators), in a way that doesn’t happen often with other Detachments so if you want Mission Tactics on non-Kill Team units you’ll need to do it with the Adaptive Tactics Stratagem. 

So if you’re playing this Detachment, you’re going heavy on Kill Teams, if not exclusively. There are a few units in the standard Codex: Space Marines you might use, but those are largely going to be in supporting roles or as Transports. Infiltrators and Intercessors are still decent picks since they have important abilities you don’t get, and units like the Storm Speeder Thunderstrike can be great support for when you have to go up against heavier targets, giving you +1 to wound when you need to punch up. The good news is that the Kill Teams in the updated Deathwatch Index are really good – Veterans are still great melee missiles, with the ability to Advance and Charge with a Watch Master, and the new Talonstrike and Indomitor teams are just absolute fire, able to put out some absolutely withering volumes of high-powered shooting.

Your biggest challenge with this Detachment is going to be keeping your units alive. Kill Teams tend to trade out any semblance of defensive posturing for raw damage output, giving the army a glass cannon feel. You can mitigate this with Deathwatch Shields in your Veteran Squads, Armour of Contempt, and by putting some of your units in Transports, but ultimately your best defense is going to be offense – don’t be visible until it’s time to drop in and obliterate your opponent, then leave the table while they try to get into position to retaliate and drop back in the next turn to do it again.

Strengths

• Lots of customization options – you can tailor your strategy to the opponent.
• Ability to pick up two kill teams per turn and put them back down.
• Special Ammo Strats allow units to punch way up.

Weaknesses

• Detachment rules and Strats only really benefit bespoke Deathwatch units.
• Mission Tactics can only be used once, then cost CP to regain.
• Detachment locks you out of using Scouts, one of the best Marine units.

A Sample List

My first test list for the army is heavily inspired by Mark Hertel’s lists from earlier this summer, trading out the support units for the new kill teams.

A sample list - Click to Expand

Okay so the idea here is that one unit of Veterans goes in the Rhino, and which one will depend on the opponent. Another big unit goes with the Watchmaster, who gives them Advance and Charge, and the small unit goes with the Librarian, though those can switch up depending on your Deep Strike needs. Speaking of Deep Striking, there are two Talonstrike Teams here and one Indimitor, ready to deliver haymakers at various ranges. They’ve got support from a Land Speeder Thunderstrike, who can pop out, tag a target, and then you can use your Indomitors to light it up, using Kraken Rounds to extend your range and AP as needed.

This list almost certainly needs some refinement, and taking five units of ten marines is certainly a statement of some kind. It may be that it wants more small units of Veterans to work with, or a second transport.

Final Thoughts

The Black Spear Task Force isn’t exactly new – it’s largely what we already had – but with the updates to the Deathwatch datasheets and Kill Teams in their Index, it combines to give us something much better than what we had. This may not be the best way to run Deathwatch – there’s a lot to be said for the Gladius and Vanguard Detachments with the army – but it’s easily a top contender.

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