In a surprise move, Games Workshop have released a bonus Grotmas balance dataslate and updated Munitorum Field Manual. After a relatively quiet update back in October, this dataslate brings much more significant changes all across the game, with multiple factions getting major revisions. It’s an exciting time for Warhammer 40,000 – in this article we’ll look at the impact of the combined dataslate and MFM changes to the Space Marines. You can find our coverage of the other factions on the links below:
Thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of these updates.
Edit: We did not receive review copies of the errata/FAQ changes that were published alongside the Balance Dataslate and Munitorum Field Manual. We will update these articles as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience.
Space Marine Codex
Codex Space Marines get by far the biggest changes in this dataslate, with a change to their army rule and updates to a range of their datasheets. It’s a common observation that vanilla Space Marines have been struggling to have a distinct identity in an era when the divergent Chapters can use all their units and all their rules plus add more of their own stuff to the mix, and the army rule change in particular is a significant attempt to address that.
Points Changes
Let’s start by taking a quick look at the points changes. Some of these might seem confusing at first but please bear with it – they’ll start to make more sense when you read the next section.
First, points drops:
- Inceptor Squads go down 10pts per 3, and that’s it.
Next, points increases:
- Heavy Intercessor Squads up 15/30
- Infernus Squads up 10/20
- Marneus Calgar up 15
- Reivers(!!) up 5/10
- Roboute Guilliman up 60
- Scouts up 5/10
- Sternguard Veterans up 10/20
- Uriel Ventris up 20
Yes, you read those unit names right. It’ll make sense soon. We promise. Let’s just move on to the next bit.
Rules Changes
Okay, here’s the big one: Oath of Moment gains an additional clause. You keep the Hit re-rolls against your Oath target, but also get +1 to Wound – if your army does not have any units from the Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Deathwatch, or Space Wolves in it. This is a massive change, immediately giving you reasons to run Space Marines without adding in some Deathwing Knights. Interestingly, it’s tied to having units with the particular keywords in your army, so you could for example run a Righteous Crusaders army with no Black Templars units in it and still benefit, though you may not want to.
There’s two other global rules changes – firstly, Armour of Contempt (and other similar rules) only works for one round of attacks rather than until the end of the phase. Secondly, the Fire Discipline enhancement in Gladius Task Force loses the critical hits on 5+ in the Devastator Doctrine, and instead allows you to re-roll Advance rolls in the Devastator Doctrine. Multiple datasheets get an update to add -1 AP to their melee attacks, specifically anything with a combat blade or knife – i.e. Phobos Captains, the various Phobos-armoured Lieutenants, Reivers, Scouts, Incursors.
You’re still asking why Heavy Intercessors went up in points, though. Let’s take a look at the datasheet changes. First, the big boys themselves – their heavy bolt rifles are now Damage 2, and their heavy bolter changes to BS3+. That is a significant upgrade in firepower, allowing them to take on much meatier targets. If you want a Captain to go with them, the one in Gravis Armour also gets Damage 3 on his heavy bolt rifle.
Similarly, the Infernus Squad gets two changes; first they gain a point of AP on their pyreblasters (and remember that those ignore cover!), and secondly their Incendiary Terror ability now forces a Battle-shock test at -1, making it more likely that they can actually shock something they targeted.
Intercessor Squads didn’t go up in points, but they did gain a new ability too (and this one is a straight gain, not a replacement). Target Elimination gives each bolt rifle +2 Attacks as long as all models in the unit target the same enemy unit. Not to miss out on the fun, Outriders replace their Turbo-boost ability with the new Thunderous Impact, granting them +1 Strength and +1 Damage on their melee attacks in a turn in which they made a charge.
Predator Annihilators get a boost relative to their Destructor cousins, with their Annihilator ability giving full Damage re-rolls against Monster/Vehicle models instead of just re-rolls of a 1. Meanwhile Repulsor Executioners get a buff to their transport capacity, lifting from 6 models to 7 – presumably this was meant to be done along with the regular Repulsor in the last slate and was forgotten about.
What about Reivers? Their Fearsome Assault ability also now forces the Battle-shock test at -1, while Terror Troops completely changes; instead of the Leadership debuff it now reduces the OC of non-VEHICLE/MONSTER units within 3” by 1.
The Sternguard Focus ability on Sternguard Veterans now changes to full Wound re-rolls against the Oath target instead of just re-rolls of 1.
Finally, a range of named characters get buffs. Darnath Lysander, Iron Father Feirros, Kayvaan Shrike, Kor’sarro Khan, Pedro Kantor, and Vulkan He’stan get an ability called Inspiring Commander which gives all non-character models of a particular kind across your army an increased Objective Control characteristic for the whole game so long as they are not Battle-shocked. For example, Lysander does this for Terminator squads of both types, while Vulkan buffs Infernus Squads and Pedro buffs Sternguard. Of these, the standout is Shrike – not only is he probably the best of these Datasheets in his own right, he now gives Jump Pack Intercessors +1OC, which is fantastic on a unit that’s often on roving utility duty.
Last but not least, Roboute Guilliman’s Author of the Codex ability allows you to pick two of his abilities rather than one.
It’s not all buffs for the Space Marines, as Inceptor Squads change their Meteoric Descent rule to be more than 6” away rather than 3” and get a wording change to only allow it to function in the controlling player’s Movement phase (so doesn’t work when using Rapid Ingress), but the vast majority of changes in this slate are positive.
Impact
Status: Major Winner
Thoughts
Games Workshop had hinted at making Codex: Space Marines more enjoyable to play and they seem to have made some progress on that with this update. Some fairly substantial datasheet changes to rarely-taken units (Sternguard Veterans, Outriders, and Intercessors). One of the head-scratcher changes here is that Gladius’s Fire Discipline enhancement got significantly worse but remained at 40 points. This feels like an oversight rather than intentional as replacing Critical Hits on 5+ with re-roll advances is a straight downgrade and probably won’t see much play at this steep cost.
The more significant change here is to the Oath of Moment army rule; +1 to wound against the Oath target is massive for many datasheets – especially for those that got substantial reworks in this dataslate. Sternguard Veterans with +1 to wound and full wound rerolls now kill a Doomsday Ark from full with Oath.
The above buff would be amazing in a vacuum, but Guilliman also unlocked the ability to choose two from the Author of the Codex instead of just one. The simple choice here is to just windmill slam Master of Battle and Supreme Strategist giving you a once-per-turn stratagem discount within 12” of him and a second Oath of Moment target once the first one has been killed. Not having to choose between these makes his battlefield presence felt all the more. While he went up 60 points in the MFM, he feels much more like an auto-take in most Ultramarine armies. Unfortunately this also pushes Codex-compliant Marines back towards Ultramarines over any other choice, particularly with the supporting cast of Marneus Calgar and Uriel Ventris equally overshadowing the other Codex-compliant armies, so the problem has just shifted from “you always take Deathwing Knights and play pretend Dark Angels” to “you always take the Ultramarines characters and play pretend Ultras.” Still, it’s a step in the right direction.
Black Templars
Points Changes
- Black Templars Repulsor -10pts
- Black Templars Repulsor Executioner -5pts
Rules Changes
- Repulsor Executioner goes to Transport Capacity 7
- Combat Knives on Neophytes in regular Crusader Squads go to AP-1
Impact
Status: Mild Loser
Thoughts
Wings: On paper a mixed bag for Templars – the premium for the extra multi-melta on the Repulsors drops to 10pts in both cases, and that’s nice. In practice, they take the same Armour of Contempt hit that most Marines do, and don’t get as much to mitigate it as some other Chapters, as most of the core Marine improvements don’t do much for them. The plausible big exception is new Outriders – now that these are just good on rate, taking them to threaten No Escape at high reach is pretty exciting, and the option of a 6+ Feel No Pain on 4W models is very good (or hell, it doesn’t seem totally implausible to try a big brick with a Chaplain on Bike and Tannhauser’s Bones). If that turns out to be really good it could salvage them up to neutral – but mild loser still seems the probable outcome.
Blood Angels
Points Changes
- Mephiston +10pts
- Sanguinary Guard -5/10pts
- Rage-fuelled Warrior +15pts
Rules Changes
None
Impact
Status: Mild Winner
Thoughts
Blood Angels get some tinkering around the edges on points, but the Sanguinary Guard and Mephiston changes are mostly a wash – strong builds tend to have a big unit of Guard and Mephiston, so your net change may be zero points, and some builds have more Guard, which is a win. The change to Rage-Fuelled Warrior hurts a bit more, no more Captain-who-can-punch-god on the cheap, but that was definitely nice to have rather than fundamental.
What pushes the Blood Angels into Mild Winner territory is that they are definitely interested in new Outriders, and cheaper Inceptors are a nice option for them. Outriders are upsettingly deadly for an 80pts unit in Liberator, and help broaden your shooting options that don’t need support. Weaker Armour of Contempt on Sanguinary Guard isn’t great, but unlike some other 2+ save stuff they have additional defences in melee to protect them.
Dark Angels
Dark Angels have been sitting at a fairly balanced level since the last few updates hit their overperforming Gladius build fairly hard, with modest tournament results mostly supported by the continued strength of the updated Deathwing Knight datasheet. The new Lion’s Blade Task Force seemed quite fun at first glance, but gets even better with these updates.
Points Changes
Only one change here – Lion El’Jonson goes up 30 points, and for a very good reason; he is now 315 points.
Rules Changes
Let’s start off with why the Lion went up 30 points – he got his damage 2 sweeps back! So now Fidelis is either 8A at S12 AP-4 D4 Lethal Hits or 16A at S6 AP-3 D2 Sustained Hits 1 – a substantial upgrade and easily worth the points increase. This doubles his melee output into any large group of enemies, which when combined with his innate Fights First and his more recent buff to be able to go through Ruin walls makes him a potent counter-charge unit.
The next change is small but substantial – Ravenwing Black Knight combat weapons have had DEVASTATING WOUNDS added to them. As they gain ANTI-VEHICLE 4+ and ANTI-MONSTER 4+ on a turn in which they made a charge move, this pushes their output into tanky targets quite nicely. One thing missing here is that they didn’t also change the Ravenwing Command Squad’s weapons of the same name – this is assumed to be an oversight.
The final datasheet update to Dark Angels is to Sammael – since several detachments now give him the ability, he’s had a rider added to Grand Master of the Ravenwing, giving his unit +1 to Advance and Charge rolls if his unit is already eligible to shoot and declare a charge in a turn in which it Advanced.
This combos nicely into the last two rules update for Dark Angels – which are both to Company of Hunters. The Masters of Manoeuvre detachment rule has added a clause that allows ADEPTUS ASTARTES MOUNTED units to shoot and declare a charge in a turn in which they Fell Back. They also similarly updated the Master of Manoeuvre enhancement to give re-roll advance and charge rolls for the bearer’s unit. Note that this appears to be an error as this enhancement currently gives the unit the ability to come in from Strategic Reserves one turn earlier. This was clearly meant to replace Mounted Strategist, which gave a RAVENWING unit the ability to declare a charge in a turn in which it advanced or fell back.
Impact
Status: Death on the Win(d)
Thoughts
All in all these are amazing quality of life changes to Dark Angels. A straight upgrade to the Lion restoring his stature as the best (loyalist) melee Primarch and some nice changes to less-taken units. The change to Outriders as laid out in the main Space Marine section also provides a really fun unit to run around with Sammael or the Ravenwing Command Squad, making their melee damage 3 which is quite nice.
Similarly the changes to Company of Hunters make for a much more fun detachment to play that rewards the player for bringing Ravenwing units as opposed to just treating it as a Firestorm side-grade.
The one challenge here is the new update to Codex-compliant Space Marines heavily incentivizes not taking any codex-non-compliant units. We shall see where the balance settles once a few weeks of this new set of rules have come through.
Space Wolves
Points Changes
- Wolf Scouts +5/10pts
- Wulfen +5/10pts
Rules Changes
- Wolf Scouts get AP-1 on their knives.
Impact
Status: Loser
Thoughts
Wolves combine a mild hike on one of their best units with having probably the least synergy with any of the improved core Marine stuff out of any of the non-Codex Chapters. Inceptors are somewhat decent here as well, but on aggregate you’re definitely less excited about Wolves now than you were before. The only possible upside is that their unique stuff has quite a lot of AP-1 melee, which is now better into other Marines, but that doesn’t feel like enough of a get here.
Deathwatch
Rules Changes
You get an Index again!
Impact
Status: Big Winners
Thoughts
Go read all about it in our review. We’re very excited about the new Deathwatch index, which drops a lot of these datasheet updates on them and then some.
Final Thoughts
This is a wild update for Space Marines, going well beyond what we expected the faction might see. The change to Oath feels like a necessary update, or at the very least, the right kind of update the faction needed to stop the special Chapters from just being better versions of marines. We’ve been seeing players complain for a while now that Space Marine win rates are pretty bad, to which we’ve had to exhaustedly point out that space marines didn’t really exist in competitive play. The good news is that those days should hopefully be over, with some solid options for every chapter. The big question now is just how good the Ultramarines will be compared to other chapters.
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