Detachment Focus: Siege Regiment

In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into the game’s detachments, looking at their rules, how they play, and how they affect list building. In this article we’re looking at the Hammer of the Emperor Detachment from Codex: Astra Militarum.

For the Guard player who craves the sound of trench whistles before bravely sending wave after wave of their own men into the teeth of the enemy supported by on and off board artillery, the Siege Regiment is here to help. This Detachment represents a force designed to go over the top, charging out of the trenches to charge across no man’s land and take the fight to the enemy, breaking the siege.

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

Detachment Overview

Instead of what you might expect from a detachment focused on trench warfare with stationary unit bonuses and indirect shooting, the Siege Regiment detachment instead focuses on the moment the whistle blows, artillery opens up, and infantry pour out of their trenches to assault the enemy lines and seize ground at the tip of a bayonet.  To that end, the detachment supports getting your Infantry units moved up the board quickly and up close with stratagems that allow you to your boost your units’ movement and then unleashing close range devastation once they’re in position while the detachment rule Artillery Support offers flexibility in either keeping the enemy pinned, exposed, or your own units hidden under smoke. 

While units like the Rogal Dorn Tank Commander can certainly see some play here with strats like Flare Burst upping their close range output significantly, the stars are still your Infantry and particularly Platoon units, with 5 of your available stratagems locked to Infantry units only.  This does mean your Vehicles are going to feel noticeably weaker than some of the other detachments, but in exchange your Infantry and Cavalry units become more flexible.  Crazy that the Siege Regiment would work well with all those new Death Korp units, must be a coincidence.  To that end an army using this detachment will likely best be served by building around several large Infantry unit blocks, some cavalry bricks, and a few tanks to give you long range reach and anti tank punch.

Detachment Rule: Artillery Support

Against all odds, the writers at Games Workshop have found a way to make a detachment rule simulating off-board artillery that didn’t make our reviewers immediately throw the book away in disgust. Each round, you’ll call in one of three kinds of artillery support:

• Creeping Barrage will help slow down your enemy in the early game as they try to avoid incoming ordnance. It affects every enemy unit that’s more than 12” away from your entire army. Roll a die for each of those units, and on a 5+ they move 2” slower and get a -2 penalty to Advance and Charge rolls. This won’t help you much in later rounds against fast-moving melee threats, but being able to slow them down in the first turn could be huge.
• Incendiary Bombardment is useful when you need to flush out ranged threats hiding in cover on the other side of the table. Choose a number of enemy units depending on the battle size–2 for Incursion, 3 for Strike Force, or 4 for Onslaught–and they lose the benefit of cover for the rest of the round. As with Creeping Barrage, you can only choose units more than 12” away from your entire army, but it can still come in handy in later rounds if you’re trying to get rid of a ranged threat or take out a scoring unit that’s hiding in cover.
• Smoke Shells helps keep your own units alive, and can be helpful in any round. It hands out the Stealth ability to a number of friendly units depending on the battle size: 2 for Incursion, 3 for Strike Force, or 4 for Onslaught.

Each of the 3 options is useful in the right situation, and being able to choose between them as needed only makes them more useful.

Enhancements

There are 3 enhancements (assuming Eager Advance is fixed) on offer here that could all see use in a variety of lists, but I’ll go to bat for Legacy Sidearm here. Imagine if you will your Death Korps infantry led by a command squad. You’re stuck in the thick of melee and your Shooting phase rolls around, what is a stuck commander to do?  You could Callously Sacrifice your brave heroes, or you could try shooting your way out and mix things up a little. With Furious Fusillade this lone hero puts out 4 Plasma Pistol shots from his big iron and heroically saves the day and the assault can continue. Believe in the Legacy.

• Eager Advance – Your INFANTRY OFFICER unit gives a unit they’re leading the Scouts 6” ability. Unfortunately, this does nothing as written–Scouts requires every model in the unit to have the ability for it to work–but once they fix this, getting a Scout move on a unit of your choice will be a nice trick. 
• Flash Grenades – Put this on an INFANTRY OFFICER to make it so enemies can’t overwatch their unit. 
• Legacy Sidearm – The dreaded 9th Edition Pistol Relic returns: this enhancement adds 2 to the Attacks characteristic of an INFANTRY OFFICER’s pistols. While a 3-shot plasma pistol could be cute, it’s probably not worth it.
• Stalwart’s Honours – As long as your OFFICER is leading a unit, it gets to double up on orders, gaining the benefit of Take Cover! in addition to the order it’s issued.

Stratagems

There ome powerful options on deck here, with particular notice given to Over the Top for giving your Infantry a big movement boost practically armywide and Callous Sacrifice for both its dramatic flair and utility.  Damage buffs in the Form of Flare Burst and Furious Fusillade encourage you to have a selection of character led units and to get in close with your regular infantry.

• Trench Fighters (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your Fight phase after you’re picked as a target. Models in the targeted INFANTRY squad fight on death on a 4+, or a 3+ if it’s a REGIMENT unit. This is fine. Your Regiment units aren’t the best fighters, so this will depend heavily on whether they’re being hit by something they can damage back.
• Over the Top (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP) – Used at the start of your Command Phase on an INFANTRY OFFICER unit in your army. Until the rest of the phase that model can issue Move! Move! Move! to as many eligible INFANTRY REGIMENT units as you want, regardless of range. Expensive, but hilarious.
• Flare Burst (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase. One ASTRA MILITARUM CHARACTER unit from your army can re-roll all hits against a visible enemy unit within 12”. The restriction to CHARACTER units likely doesn’t hurt as much as you might think, since you can slap this on a Castellan or Tempestus Command Squad to give a unit of Kasrkin or Scions full hit re-rolls and Sustained Hits 1. Or just slap it on a tank commander and go to town. You know, whatever you’re into.
• Callous Sacrifice (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase. Choose a PLATOON unit from your army that’s in engagement range of one or more enemies, then ignore your unit for purposes of who you can shoot at. Then, every time an enemy unit within engagement range of your unit loses a wound that phase, your unit loses a model on a 4+. A Guard classic returns. Great for turning the tables on an opponent who thinks they can hide by getting into combat with your units.
• Furious Fusillade (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase. Pick a PLATOON unit, then give its ranged weapons an extra attack each as long as they’re targeting an enemy within half range. This can combine with First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire to put out some pretty insane shot counts, though being limited to PLATOON models does curb it somewhat. A unit of 20 Death Korps sporting four plasma guns using FRFSRF inside of 12″ will put out 16 shots just with those, plus another four plasma pistol shots and four grenades. Worth it? Probably not, but it’s certainly not the worst harebrained scheme we’ve ever come up with.
• Minefield (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used at the start of your opponent’s Charge phase. Pick a Platoon unit in your army and for the rest of the phase, each time one of their units makes a charge that ends within Engagement range of your unit, roll a D6 for every model in that unit. For every 5+, that enemy unit takes a mortal wound, to a max of 6 mortal wounds. This one needs a clarification – as written, it’s ambiguous which unit “that unit” refers to – we think it’s the charging unit, which would make this better against horde units, but it could also mean your unit, in which case it’s better when you have a bigger unit. It’s unclear, but we lean toward their unit based on the idea that more bodies = more mines triggered.

Playing This Detachment

Take ground fast, then grind the enemy to dust. Take advantage of Over the Top to swiftly move your Infantry units onto objectives while units like Death Riders or Rough Riders roam ahead to screen, tie up, and kill enemy scoring pieces. With Trench Fighters these cavalry units become even more of a nuisance to remove and can make a unit of Bullgryn incredibly annoying to shift. For damage you’ve got your usual selection of tanks and elite infantry units, although Flare Burst means you’ll likely want to lean more on things like Tank Commanders or fully kitted out Tempestus Scions with Command Squads to Deep Strike in and hose something. Furious Fusillade pushes you to get your Infantry bricks close, although you likely don’t want to depend on this for actual damage.  But combined with First Rank Fire/Second Rank Fire, a fully loaded Death Korp of Krieg platoon puts out a considerable quantity of plasma gun and lasgun shots. Fun if you pine for Pile of Dice™. 

While Indirect has taken repeated hits through the editions, Incendiary Shells stripping cover means your artillery becomes much more effective in softening targets up or outright killing with enough investment in your firebase. Perhaps a couple of those new Artillery Teams and some Field Ordnance Batteries.  

Strengths

• Quick Infantry – Your infantry are going to be hauling across the table with Over the Top and since it essentially only takes up one order that means you can spend more orders elsewhere.
• Flexible Detachment Rule – Depending on the match up you can try your luck on Creeping to slow down melee armies, Incendiary when it’s time to attack or to keep your indirect effective, then Smoke when you need to keep your key units alive.
• High Close Range Damage – Even a humble Death Korp infantry squad can pump out a hellacious quantity of shots combining Furious Fusillade and First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire.  Full hit rerolls for a character unit means units like Tempestus Scions with a leader or your Tank Commanders can pump out incredible damage up close with Incendiary Shells to strip cover then move up and use Flare Burst.

Weaknesses

• The Detachment rule only works at a distance – Armies that can close the distance quickly are going to really mess with your ability to choose who you can target, going second against some quick armies might mean you struggle to use it at all and it has a weird anti synergy with the detachment stratagems pushing you to get close.
• Stratagems are mostly locked to Infantry and Platoon units – With the exception of Flare Burst and Incendiary Shells there are no ways to buff the output of your vehicles, so they can sometimes feel a little more anemic than Guard players might be used to. 
• Close-range focused, but with no Fall Back and Shoot stratagems – The detachment encourages you to get close, but once you’re in, you’re locked in. Strats like Callous Sacrifice mitigate the downsides of this somewhat, but it is still worth noting.

A Sample List

When building a list for Siege Regiment, you’ll want to include a couple options to take advantage of Flare Burst and have enough targets for Over the Top to really let you swarm the board.  In addition, you’ll need some heavy firepower to anchor your troops while they run around holding points and gumming up the enemy.

Kursula Reed and the Death Korps - Click to Expand

This list has a couple of key combos.  Ursula sits in the back with some Cadians to sticky your home, order your Artillery Team and Field Ordnance Battery to Take Aim, and then with her 3rd order available you can reduce Over the Top to a more affordable 1 cp and order the rest of your Regiment units to Move Move Move turn 1.  The Death Riders fill multiple roles depending on the match-up as either roadblocks for melee threats that didn’t get slowed by Creeping Barrage or aggressive scoring unit killers.  Krieg Combat engineers and the Scout Sentinel get you some scouting options and offer some cheeky out-of-LOS mortal wounds to dunk on something on top of your artillery from the engineers and the Sentinel can throw out reroll 1s to help ensure a target dies.  The Tank Commander and big Scion Squad with leader offer you two strong targets for Flare Burst and Flash Grenades means you can drop the Scions aggressively without fearing reprisal from Overwatch. Then as your main body is 3 fully kitted out Death Korp squads and 2 small unled units to either hold ground or charge into the enemy and gum up their lines. 

Final Thoughts

The Siege Regiment deserves applause for avoiding the common pitfall of designing rules around trench and siege warfare by putting the focus on the Infantry doing the advancing and scraping for ground and leaving the artillery in a supporting role. The rules on offer here really sell the brutal attrition that the Guard and particularly the Death Korp of Krieg are known for and offer some very powerful effects like with Over the Top that also feel extremely thematic.  While somewhat restrictive in terms of what units really benefit from this detachment, it still feels like there’s a lot of potential to draw out.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.