Detachment Focus: Questor Forgepact

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.

Scholars have debated for millenia on what kind of robot is cooler: Huge, stompy ones with huge guns, or normal sized ones that are effectively big calculators. This detachment asks “What if you didn’t have to choose. What if both types of robot worked together?” So Grab your Binharic-to-English translation book, because we’re taking a thorough look at the results. 

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

Detachment Overview

The Questor Forgepact Detachment centers around the close relationship between Imperial Knights and the Adeptus Mechanicus, allowing you to splash in some Adeptus Mechanicus models to your Knights army, giving you buffs to those units when they’re near each other on the battlefield. Because knights are pretty fast and footslogging Mechanicus units are pretty slow, this will often result in a more castle-focused gameplan compared to the index detachment, as you’ll be incentivized to stick together to keep all of your buffs active and online.

Compared to the Index Detachment, this one gives you better healing, but worse defensive buffs – you lose the Index’s Feel No Pain 6+ (which moves to a 5+ when you kill the enemy Warlord), as well as the ability to Rotate Ion Shields and fight on death. The upside however is that Skitarii give you access to some cheap, BATTLELINE units which can sticky objectives – great for playing games in Pariah Nexus – as well as a host of 1 CP-cost Stratagems, something you don’t find in the Index Detachment.

The Video Version

If you’d rather watch a video version of this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered:

Detachment Rule: Cogbound Alliance

The detachment rule has three sections. The first concerns your Adeptus Mechanicus allies. your army can include a number of points of Adeptus Mechanicus units based on the game size:

• Incursion: 250 points
• Strike Force: 500 points
• Onslaught: 750 points

The units you can take are limited to:

• Tech Priest Dominus
• Tech Priest Manipulus
• Skitarii Marshall
• Skitarii Rangers
• Skitarii Vanguard

Not having access to things like Pterraxi to help with the mission or offering some offensive capabilities absent from the knight roster is kind of a bummer, but Rangers are a great pick for their ability to sticky objectives. These units also give you more action play, and will generally have more synergy with your Knights than Imperial Agents units.

Curie: Not having access to Duneriders also makes me very sad.

Sacristan Pledge

Next up, all of your Imperial Knights units heal 1 lost wound in your Command phase, or D3 wounds if it’s within 3″ a TECH-PRIEST unit.

This is a pretty volatile rule, and to make the most of it requires you stay within range of your Tech-Priests in order to ensure consistent healing (though even then you may roll a 1). It’s a fine bonus but you may find it just doesn’t matter on things like Armigers where your opponent will rarely leave those alive. Compared this to the Index Detachment’s Feel No Pain, this could have more upside (consider a 6+ Feel No Paint to be a 20% increase in effective wounds on average, so 3-4 on a big knight), but you need to survive. Though it’ll be demoralizing on those occasions where an opponent can’t finish you off and you immediately heal back three wounds.

Divine Inspiration

Skitarii also benefit from this Detachment, gaining the ability to re-roll 1’s to hit all the time and re-rolls to wound when they’re within 6” of a Knight. This sounds a lot better than it is, once you remember that’s what the Marshal does and you’re limited to Rangers and Vanguard for your shooting. It’s certainly not bad, but not necessarily a new capability for the army.

Stratagems

There’s a nice mix of flexible stratagems here and most of them can be used without needing to have an Adeptus Mechanicus model in the mix, allowing you to be really flexible. They’re also all 1 CP which is a nice change of pace from the index detachment. 

• Omnissiah’s Grace (1CP) – Gives a unit from your army a 5+ feel no pain against mortal wounds. Considering how vulnerable knights are to damage that circumvents their Toughness, this is a great trick to have in your back pocket. I would consider this Stratagem to be this detachment’s Rotate Ion Shields in a lot of respects due to it being an on-demand flexible durability buff.

• Vengeance of the Machine Cult (1CP) – When a knight dies you can mark the enemy that did it and your Adeptus Mechanicus units get Lethal Hits against that enemy unit for the rest of the battle. This is an interesting one; on one hand it’s pretty flexible. It can be used in any phase and on any knight’s death, even just an armiger. On the other its going on Rangers and Vanguard, not exactly offensive powerhouses. That said when you combine it with the ability to re-roll 1s to hit from the detachment, this could give you the extra offensive edge you need.

• Bonded Imperative (1CP) – Allows you to use a Bondsman ability on an Adeptus Mechanicus unit within 12″ in addition to an Armiger (so you can use the ability on two units). Unfortunately, you can’t use this with a Preceptor for OC 4 Skitarii but the rest of the roster is wide open. Common staples like the Crusader and Errant are nice but the real winner here is the Castigator. Giving a Vanguard squad Sustained 1 and an extra point of AP can really increase the effectiveness of their weapons.

• Machine Focus (1CP) – Used in your Command phase on a Knights unit to let that unit ignore modifiers to hit rolls, wound rolls, Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill until your next turn. This one’s simple but highly effective considering how much Knights can be blunted by -1 to wound or hit due to their low volume of attacks. This also lets you get around the penalty for being battle damaged.

• Aggression Begets Aggression (1CP) – Used in your Shooting phase to give an Imperial Knights unit from your army, or one Knights Character and one friendly Mechanicus unit within 6″ the [ASSAULT] ability on their ranged weapons for the phase. This can be a great little trick for getting your thermal lances or cannons into melta range.

• Thronegheist Fury (1CP) – Used in your opponent’s Movement phase. Allows you to fire overwatch with one weapon on a Titanic knight. This is an amazing stratagem and allows the Valiant to reenter the conversation for lists since it allows it to use its flamer effectively. If I have only one criticism it’s that this should just be how Overwatch works for all Titanic models in the game.
  Curie: I’d rather not be Overwatched by a Wraithknight ever again.
  TheChirurgeon: Note that this only works in your opponent’s Movement phase, so can’t be used to fire Overwatch at a charging unit.
  

Enhancements

• Omnissian Champion (30 pts) – Gives a Knight of your choice 4 extra wounds. While this is a pretty simple durability buff, there’s a lot of value in 4 more wounds on something like an Atrapos or a Valiant. The more durable the platform, the more mileage you’ll get out of this one, and this combos well with the Detachment’s healing ability.

• Knight of the Opus Machina (20 pts) – While this knight is within 6” of an Adeptus Mechanicus unit it can re-roll hit rolls of 1. This is incredibly strong when you consider you still have access to the single hit and wound re-roll from the army ability, making your knights terrifyingly consistent.

• Magos Questoris (35 pts) – Gives a Dominus Lone Operative while it’s within 3” of a knight and heals one knight an extra 2 wounds every one of your command phases. This is pretty pricey, but so strong it’s worth putting in pretty much any list running this Detachment. Even if you never use the healing ability – and getting back D3+2 wounds is very good – suddenly having an extra Lone Operative character can free you up to have another action unit or just play less conservatively with your positioning.

• Vocifer Magnificat (15 pts) – Increases the leadership of nearby Adeptus Mechanicus models within 6″ by 1 and worsens the leadership of enemy models within 6″ by 1. Skip this one, unless you’re super jealous of Chaos Knights’ ability to have a bad Army rule.

Playing This Detachment

Making the most of this Detachment means keeping your knights and their Admech buddies close enough to reap the shared benefits. This will largely push you into a conservative play style, forcing you to castle around the slower units in order to ensure you’re receiving all of your buffs. You’ll have to work to keep your little cyborg buddies safe in order to keep your healing going, a tall order for a bunch of t3, one-wound bodies. You’ll likely be looking at a shooting focus to keep everything together, periodically hucking out warglaives to tie things up and score some points.

The big value here is that your Adeptus Mechanics allies have more to offer than the Imperial Agents which normally act as your cheap objective holders and screening units, both in terms of ranged output and the benefits they provide. Having access to a large number of cheap bodies makes taking multiple big knights much easier, allowing you to cover more of the table and giving you better action economy.

Strengths

• Strong Healing: With the Dominus enhancement you can heal about five and on average four wounds on a knight every turn and your knights that survive long engagements will be able to claw themselves back while staying out of the fight. 

• More Battleline: While Knights generally aren’t hurting for quality battleline, this detachment gives you access to some more options on the cheap with a real OC presence.

• Easy Access to Sticky Objectives: With Rangers on the table you have access to multiple sources of sticky objectives, allowing you to keep your elite models moving and active throughout the game.

Weaknesses

• Most Knights Will Die Before They Can Heal: There are very few armies in the game that can’t trivially kill a Knight in one round if it’s exposed to a unit with buffs. This means there’ll be games where your Detachment ability doesn’t really pop off.
• Loss of Some Key Stratagems: Since Imperial Knights are without a codex, this Detachment is in main competition to the Index one. The absence of Rotate Ion Shields, Squire’s Duty, and Valiant Last Stand without any real equivalents is felt dearly.
• Reliance on Skitarii: Skitarii are great and all but at the end of the day they’re paper thin models that can be removed somewhat trivially. On top of that they aren’t cheap at ~75% of the cost of an Armiger. 

A Sample List

List building for this detachment is a bit odd. You definitely want 2-3 Dominuses to make sure you get your healing going. One of which should have the Magos Questoris enhancement for a free lone op and better healing. Outside that, its mostly just support for those unpgraded Dominuses (Rangers for stickying objectives) and your normal knight staples. Warglaives have more of an edge over Helverins in this detachment since you don’t have access to Squire’s Duty.

Big Robot + Small Robot - click to expand

This list tries to get as much juice out of the detachment rules as possible. You get two units of Rangers with 5+ Feel No Pain and the Lone Operative Dominus to help keep your knights going and do objectives. On the knight side, you get the ever present Canis Rex and a Valiant. The reason for the valiant is he can reroll even more with his harpoon to make it that much more reliable and even more interestingly he can overwatch with his flamer now.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve already got some Mechanicus models lying around, this seems like a fun way to try out your Imperial Knights. Your opponents will come gunning for that Magos Questoris Dominus to cut off your main source of healing, and will be all the more likely to focus your Knights down if they want to stop your army’s advance. Keep your units together, let your big dudes protect the little dudes, and blast your way to victory. We think the Noble Lance detachment from the Index is likely the more powerful and versatile of the two, but this variant could still see some more casual play.

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