Detachment Focus: Solar Spearhead

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.

The Adeptus Custodes have experienced quite the tumultuous edition so far. They came out of the gate with a fairly strong performance in a meta dominated by Aeldari, won the first US Open of the edition in Tacoma, and continued to be quite strong up until the first major balance dataslate. Their codex release was met with mixed feelings, most negative from the playerbase, but they have continued to put up considerably good results in the competitive sphere with two strong detachments over the last several months. This new detachment, the Solar Spearhead, brings a whole new way to play the army by asking the question “but what if I wanted more dreadnoughts?” and answering it forcefully.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of this detachment for review purposes.

Detachment Overview

This detachment flips the script for Adeptus Custodes, by making their already fearsome vehicles into battlefield juggernauts, featuring escalating buffs, lots of re-rolls, and movement tricks that make out-maneuvering them nearly impossible. Whether you’re in it for the thematic march of dreadnoughts or just want to crush your enemies under a tide of invincible war machines, this detachment delivers both style and substance – with a bit of cheeky overkill thrown in for good measure. 

Falcon: I for one could not be happier. The lore around Custodes dreadnoughts is some of the most 40k shit out there. Unlike Space Marines that only get interred when they are no longer able to fight at all, when they are effectively piles of mush and strawberry jam, the Adeptus Custodes will openly volunteer to be interred in these ancient devices whenever they have a vacancy as the devices are so rare and the Custodian Guard so resilient. That the core codex did not give our vehicles and walkers much love was an absolute travesty and I am so excited to play this detachment very poorly.

TheChirurgeon: I’m not normally a fan of writing rules for Forge World units but Custodes are the only army in the game for which it makes sense, as half of their units are resin. I just wish they’d do more to make jetbikes playable, though. The Dreadnoughts are cool but I’d have rather seen something for bikes.

The Video Version

If you’re looking for a video version of this article, you can find it here:

Detachment Rule: Auric Armour

As with many other Grotmas detachments, this detachment rules comes in two parts:

• First, we have an escalating set of buffs to VEHICLE units in Custodes armies:
  • When they’re not battle-shocked and at Starting Strength, all VEHICLE units gain 2 OC.
  • When they’re below Starting Strength, they can re-roll hit rolls of 1.
  • When they are below Half-strength, they can re-roll hit rolls of 1 and wound rolls of 1.
• Lastly, we have a WALKER-specific buff that gives them all a permanent +2 to their movement characteristic and adds 1 to all Advance and Charge rolls.

This is “what if Crusher but with Custodes dreadnoughts” and it is terrifyingly fun. It is harder to shift objectives from them when they’re at full strength, and they hit harder the lower their wound pool becomes. Custodes tend not to have very many re-rolls for their vehicles so this detachment is going to definitely have quite the large impact on the meta. Maybe we’ll even see a full dreadnought list, because of the keyword rules – up to two Custodes WALKER models can be given the Character keyword during the Muster Armies step, which means they can be given enhancements and be your warlord. Get ready for a proper march of the ancients!

Enhancements

These enhancements focus on buffing Vehicle and Mounted units, in line with the rest of the Detachment. Two are very strong picks, while the others are fairly situational.

• Adamantine Talisman [25 pts]– Improve the Attacks, Strength, and Damage characteristics of the bearer’s melee weapons by 1. Slam this enhancement in every list – whether it’s on a Blade Champion, a Galatus Dreadnought, or a double-fist Telemon Dreadnought it’s gonna slap someone real hard especially when combined with the stratagem suite this detachment has access to, delivery has never been easier.
• Augury Uplink [25 pts] – The bearer has a 5+ Feel No Pain. Nice and simple enhancement, 25 pts makes it a tad expensive for an Infantry character, but it could be very fun on a Shield-captain on Dawneagle Jetbike or on any of the various Dreadnoughts (especially another Telemon). Falcon: Especially the Telemon or Galatus. Moving these two behemoths to a 2+/4++/5+++ is a recipe for frustration for your opponents and makes up a little for the rest of the detachment’s lack of defense against devastating wounds.
• Honoured Fallen [15 pts] – Vehicle model only, gives a 6” aura of re-roll hit rolls of 1 to all Custodes Infantry and Mounted units. Solid, but I think that the first two enhancements take priority over this and you can only make 2 dreadnought characters. Falcon: There is probably a solid argument here for this enhancement if they ever made Custodes bikes worth taking. They are so expensive right now for what they bring to the table that every miss is a dagger to the heart.
• Veterans of the Kataphraktoi [10 pts] – Infantry or Mounted model only, gives a Movement phase ability to give a Vehicle or Mounted unit the ability to Fall Back and still be eligible to shoot. Much more situationally useful, but still very nice as it prevents your Caladius Grav-tanks from being bad-touched and allows Dreadnoughts to still shoot at full profile if they get tar-pitted.

The auto-take options here are Adamantine Talisman and Augury Uplink, with a situational third in Veteran of the Kataphraktoi if you have 10 points to spare at the end of list building (quite common in Custodes builds).

Stratagems

As with every other detachment, there are six brand spanking new stratagems for the faction here, and these as expected are predominantly focused on buffing up your Vehicle units, especially Walkers. Every time you see Walker, just replace it with Dreadnought in your head. Falcon: And just like the titular Texas Ranger, these don’t mess around.

• Flawless Construction (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In your opponent’s shooting phase, or the fight phase, after an enemy unit has selected targets, you can make a Vehicle unit -1 to be wounded when the strength of the attack is higher than its toughness. This is very silly – Custodes vehicles are already very durable, with high toughness, 2+ armour saves, and invulnerable saves on every model. Now they can also make it so you’re only wounding them on 4’s or better with all but the most fearsome weapons.
• Emperor’s Vengeance (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In the fight phase, after an enemy unit has selected its targets, this imparts a 4+ fight-on-death to the unit being targeted, adding one to the roll if it is a Walker unit. 4+ fight-on-death on pretty much any Custodes unit, also triggering on a 3+ for Walkers is very funny. Please make it stop. Falcon: The beatings will stop when morale improves. The fact that these beatings may be made with damage 4 weapons just means morale will improve faster.
• Wrathful Advance (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Gives a d3+3” pile-in instead of 3” to a Custodes unit. Simple, solid, and probably not going to be used that often since it only benefits pile-in moves and the other stratagems here will keep you light on CP.
• Unstoppable (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Start of your Movement phase you can give a Vehicle or Mounted unit the ability to phase through models and terrain features. Right when you thought this detachment was going to be held back by how easy it is to move-block a March of the Ancients, they drop this one on us. Okay. Falcon: That we restrained ourselves from making a Kool-Aid man joke here is absolutely medal-worthy. In a world where the most insignificant units can hold back a torrential force of auramite and power simply by standing the right distance away from a wall, you can now be the change you want to make in the world and walk right through it. Oh Yeah!
• Relentless Persecution (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Your Movement phase, just after a Vehicle unit has advanced; that unit can shoot and charge in this turn despite it having advanced. This combos nicely with the +1 to advance and charge rolls inherent in the detachment and can lead to some extremely potent assault turns when combined with Unstoppable. A previously 6” moving dreadnought goes from an 18” threat range to 27” threat range allowing them to drive deep into enemy territory with reckless abandon.
• Punishment Inescapable (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – In your Shooting phase, you can give a Custodes unit IGNORES COVER and ignore any modifiers to their ballistic skill and/or to the hit roll. TheChirurgeon: This is pretty big, given how easy it can be to get cover this edition. Makes the Twin illastus a lot more viable, though it’s equally good on the Arachnus.

There’s really no misses here, with the weakest stratagem probably being Wrathful Advance, followed up by Punishment Inescapable. Both of these stratagems would be quite good in almost any other army, here they feel like an after-thought in the context of the rest of the Stratagems.

Strengths

• Already powerful vehicles become even stronger
• When you get hurt you gain re-rolls – someone failing to kill a dreadnought turns it into a terrifying murder machine
• Absolutely banger of a Stratagem suite

Weaknesses

• Near-zero protection against Devastating Wounds, which has historically been Custodes’ greatest weakness this edition.
• You’re gonna want a lot of CP, and Custodes don’t have access to easy CP generation
• Similar to Starshatter Arsenal, this detachment feels a little too good and will probably be adjusted soon.

Playing This Detachment

If you love Custodes Dreadnoughts (this author loves their aesthetic and how posable they are), and want to push massive golden war machines down the battlefield towards your enemy, this is the Detachment for you. I expect that most armies making use of this Detachment will have at least four dreadnoughts, two Caladius tanks, and then enough agents/sisters of silence to keep scoring alive.

A Sample List

Let’s start off somewhat reasonably with only six dreadnoughts and go from there. Caladius tanks are still great in this detachment, and have proven to be a very reliable firebase for Adeptus Custodes armies all edition, so let’s add two of those. From there we’ll need some scoring, which is what the 4 units of Sisters of Silence and the Callidus achieve.

The list - click to expand

This is a very silly list indeed, but the thought of six dreadnoughts rushing your enemy while two Caladius tanks lay down withering fire at anything that dares to show itself is quite scary. The two telemons form the core, with one having 8 attacks at 13/2/4 in melee and the other one having a 5+ Feel No Pain, which stacks nicely with the 2+/4++ -1 damage defensive profile. Toss in the -1 to wound stratagem in a pinch and that behemoth isn’t going anywhere. 

If you wanted to go full meme on this, you could fit 3 Achillus, 3 Galatus, 3 Telemons, and 2 regular Venerable dreadnoughts in the list with both Adamantine Talisman and Augury Uplink. Drunken dreadnoughts ride again!

A more reasonable take on this could be a couple warden bricks as they remain very good in this detachment with 4-5 additional dreadnoughts and some scoring.

Final Thoughts

The Solar Spearhead detachment brings a fresh and thematic take to Adeptus Custodes, turning their vehicles – especially their dreadnoughts – into even more terrifying engines of destruction. With powerful buffs, potent stratagems, and enhancements that lean into the resilience and lethality of Custodes walkers, this detachment feels tailor-made for those who want to march ancient, golden war machines into battle and dominate the battlefield with unyielding force.

On the competitive front, this detachment could make Custodes vehicles a more prominent feature of the meta, especially as it shores up some of their previous weaknesses. The flexibility in enhancements and stratagems ensures that this isn’t a one-trick pony, but rather a versatile option for players who want to experiment with different playstyles. Get your dreadnoughts ready and may everyone prepare for the inevitable march of gilded doom!

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