Detachment Focus: Mechanised Assault

Codex Astra Militarum unleashes five diverse detachments for the Emperor’s finest. In today’s articles, we’re breaking down what each and every one of these can do for you on the tabletop.

Perhaps your guardsmen feel the need for speed or maybe you’re a commander who has got a long way to go and a short time to get your troops there. Maybe you just think the Taurox hull is just the coolest thing and want to run 9. Whatever your transportation needs are, the Mechanised Assault Detachment is here to get you there in as few pieces as possible.

Detachment Overview

For the Guard officers who can’t stand hiding behind walls and instead want to hide in hulls, the Armored Fist Detachment rule delivers a heavily Transport-focused detachment that helps you get your units where they need to be, obliterate a target, then mount back up and do it again somewhere else. It’s a much more mobile and dynamic style than Guard has had access to before and while it’s CP and positioning intensive to keep your buffs ticking, the payoffs are worth it. Since there are only so many units you can plug into your transports, you want to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck so units like Kasrkin, Scions, and Ogryn are your best offensive bet. In addition, wrapping up your killing power in units like Kasrkin and Scions leaves you pretty vulnerable to Overwatch clipping the wings from your units when they deploy so having a plan to deal with these threats will be important.

Detachment Rule: Armored Fist

Each time an Astra Militarum Unit makes a ranged attack in a turn in which it disembarked from a transport, add 1 to the wound roll. Simple rule, ride up in your tank or airbus of choice then bravely get out and shoot somebody. There are several transport options available from Chimera to Valkyrie and although GW chose the coward path by forbidding Titanic units from benefiting from several of this detachment’s stratagems and enhancements, the Stormlord, Doomhammer, and Banehammer do work here.

Enhancements

A rare Enginseer enhancement fits it way in here and for 10 pts might see some use as a list filler. Bold Leadership opens up fun opportunities to keep your army moving from objective to objective while Smoke Grenades and Vanguard Honours offer a defensive and offensive upgrade to your transport’s cargo respectively. Vanguard Honors is a little limited on who can actually utilize it just due to transportation capacity on your standard transports, unless you’re Brave and understand the beauty of the Stormlord.

• Bold Leadership (25 pts) – Infantry Officer only. The bearer’s unit gains sticky objective and gives sticky objective to any transport they’re riding in. Pretty handy to have, although there’s no way to combine this with a scouting unit so there’s a small loss there. A unit of Cadians inside with an attached leader with this enhancement creates a nice level of redundancy all but assuring an objective will be captured. 
• Sacred Unguents (10 pts) – Locked to only Techpriest Enginseers, it can give a non-aircraft or Titanic transport within 3” reroll Hits at the start of your shooting phase. We were on the verge of greatness, or at least okayness, but as it stands you’re not going to get a ton of usage out of this unless you really want to buff up your Taurox Prime Shooting?
• Smoke Grenades (10 pts) – Infantry Officer only. Bearer’s Unit gains Benefit of Cover and Stealth while wholly within 3” of one or more friendly Transport models. A solid pair of buffs to apply, but it probably won’t keep a unit of guardsmen alive through hell. It might take your opponent an extra activation to kill them or make them durable enough to survive having a few models out in the open, might be worth a look if you’ve got some points you can’t fit elsewhere. Notably doesn’t need to be when a unit disembarks so theoretically could deepstrike, say, a full unit of scions with command and possibly have them live, but might be difficult to actually get 15 guys wholly within 3” of your transports.
• Vanguard Honours (15 pts) – Infantry Officer only. Bearer’s unit can get out of a transport after it advances. It counts as having made a Normal move that phase and cannot charge in that same turn, but can otherwise act normally. A solid effect, although Tauroxes already offer this effect, but if you want to sprint a Chimera or Banehammer up the table this is an option.

Stratagems

It’s crazy, but the Transport detachment really wants to support transports with its stratagemss. You’ve got 3 movement options, with a reactive move for a transport and two separate Stratagems to re-embark in transports out of phase. Clear and Secure is your bread and butter here, giving you a powerful buff following a Disembark.

• Vox Relay (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase. One Infantry Officer embarked in a Transport can issue orders while being embarked and can also issue orders to Transport units (excluding Titanic) anywhere on the battlefield. Half of this effect can already be found on the Chimera, but infinite range orders to Transports can occasionally come in handy to toss out extra movement or OC without using any of your precious Squadron orders.
• Rapid Dispersal (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Movement Phase. One Infantry unit that disembarked this phase can make a normal move of D6″. This is simple, but having the ability to advance a Taurox with 3” of extra movement from Move Move Move, disembark, then move d6” further is a huge projection range. A theoretical max of 30”. You can also combine this with the Vanguard Honours Enhancement.
• Clear and Secure (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase. One Infantry unit can re-roll all hit and wound rolls for the rest of the phase against a target within range of an objective marker, provided it disembarked this turn. Full rerolls Good, heard it here first. This combines with the detachment’s +1 to wound to deliver some serious pain with something like Scions, Kasrkin, or even Ogryn. 
• Swift Interception (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Movement phase, right after they finish a move that ends within 9″ of one of your non-TITANIC Transports. Your transport can make a normal move of up to 6″. Reactive move abilities are always great and having a reliable 6” is even nicer, although being limited to transports means sometimes you’ll have to plan out your escape routes so you don’t get pinned by terrain. 
• Hasty Extraction (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Charge phase after they pick a target but before they move on Infantry unit within 3” of a Transport. That unit can embark after being declared as a charge target. This is another wily movement tool to keep your troopers safe and rolling around in their party buses. Can also just completely ruin your opponent’s charge and has the potential to be one of the book’s biggest “Gotcha” moves. 
• Move Out (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the end of your opponent’s turn on one of your units within 3” of a Transport (every model must be within 3″) can embark. A second tool to redeploy your troopers into their boxes, this is a handy Stratagem to keep your units moving to where they need to be and to have further activations to proc your +1 to wound. 

Playing This Detachment

Your bread and butter in this detachment is going to be units of elite infantry jumping out of Transports and slamming Clear and Secure to sweep objectives clear. While Kasrkin and Tempestus Scions with their plethora of special weapons will serve nicely in this role, don’t overlook the cheap value of Ogryns dumping a pile of essentially ap-2 Heavy Bolter shots into a target.

With your cargo picked, now comes delivery. The Chimera offers a decently durable hull with a range of heavy bolters/heavy flamers and some chaff shots as well as Firing Deck 2, but the Taurox/Taurox Prime are likely the preferred choice here. The Taurox is extremely fast, and lets you advance and disembark while the Taurox Prime offers some okay long range shooting while you push up and reroll hit rolls for a unit that disembarks provided it shoots the same target. 

With these as your core you’ll want to keep transports and cargo safe so you’ll need to keep CP on standby Swift Interception/Hasty Extraction/Move Out as the situation demands. There’s no way around it that this army is extremely CP heavy, so the struggle be determining the time to push the offensive and when to hold back.  

Strengths

• Mobility – The plethora of transports you’ll be running along with access to a Reactive move stratagem and two Reembarking stratagems means that while you have CP available you can be all over the place with your army
• Objective Control – Bold Leadership is an excellent ability that combines well with the mobility of your army and lets you stay on the offensive, and while you won’t have as much OC as other guard armies, you will have the ability to sweep basically anything that dares to stand on circles 
• Damage – Full re-roll access is Pretty Good, and trivial access to +1 to wound on top of that means you can kill whatever it is you need to kill, provided you can keep your transports safe.

Weaknesses

• CP Intensive – There will be a constant tension between going hard and smashing enemies off objectives with Clear and Secure and needing to keep your troops and transports safe. You won’t have enough CP to pull all your tricks all the time so it will be important to gauge the flow of the game
• Vulnerable to Overwatch – A lot of your killing comes from t3 goobers who if they’re lucky have a 4+ save to protect them, any sort of decent overwatch can cripple a unit’s output so redundancies and finding anyway to mitigate Overwatch will be critical
• Lose a lot of power if transports are lost – Your army only works as long as you’ve got trucks to play with. Lose those too fast and you’re left with just some cool guys hanging around.

A Sample List

A Mechanized Assault list will boil down to picking which transports do you want a lot of and what do you stuff them with. The Taurox is probably the best transport available for speed and the Taurox prime for damage…Unless you take the super heavy transports. To that end this list will of course choose a Stormlord to insure this army never suffers from lack of Cool.

YEAH YEAH YEAH THUNDERSTRUCK - Click to Expand

This list is a little silly, but also consider: A full scion brick and some Ogryn firing out of their sick Stormlord or popping out to reroll hits and wounds on a target on an objective, then popping back in your opponent’s movement phase to load ’em up and do it again. Kasrkin in the Taurox’s can be flung around the table to melta mine and gun down scoring pieces, threaten objectives, or go play the mission. One squad will get Ursula to shout at your transports if needed with Vox Relay or she can pop out and further power up your infantry. 

The Castellan attaches with a second Kasrkin unit to focus a little more on killing while the commissar hangs with the Stormlord Scions to ensure that no matter what they can operate at max killing power or be kept seperate to be a cheap scoring piece depending on the matchup. The extra scions inside the Taurox Primes give you even more killing power into units on objectives with access to reroll hits and wounds between their two abilities. Lastly the Ogryn offer a bit more durability than your carapaced units and having effectively a few more heavy bolter shots to pop out with +1 to wound lets you tailor which units to fire out of your transports depending on the matchup and available targets.

Final Thoughts

All the fun movement tricks and shenanigans that this detachment offers still doesn’t quite dispel the notion that this might just be a worse Bridgehead. It still mostly rewards Scions, but doesn’t give them extra OC and doesn’t give the rest of your infantry reroll 1s. The Detachment ability is strong, but can come apart if an opponent can swiftly de-mech you while Scions in Bridgehead are offered the same buff but without needed a transport. That’s not to be all doom and gloom as this detachment feels like in the right hands it could actually prove to be a menace, but the real power beyond just slamming Clear and Secure is a bit more subtle. 

All that being said this detachment is extremely thematic for those who enjoy the Steel Legion archetype and want to roll a flood of transports around the table with and should reward a skilled hand who puts in the practice.

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