Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Detachments are Back!
Goatboy here with a review of War Zone Charadon. First of all – the answer to a big question – YES, extra weird 40K detachments are back!
These are not like the Specialist detachments as before and instead, feel like a truly themed style list build. Are they good? Yeah, they are not completely terrible. Read on to find out some more.
The big thing we see in these detachments is that they are really pushing the themed list idea. I remember how Privateer Press would build theme lists around characters for WarMachine? These feel very similar. You are locked into very particular styles of army building but you do gain some interesting benefits. Are they interesting enough to work? I think so – but will have to see as the world opens up more and events get chugging along.
The 3 themed armies are a Ad-Mech beep boop force, an army of all Freeblade Knights, and Typhus’s gang of gross bois. I think the best one out of the 3 is Typhus’s gang as while losing access to vehicles and Morty you do not lose access to some of the best things from that book – namely Terminators and friends. The second one I like is the Freeblade Knights as while it isn’t the most powerful it does lend itself to some amazing hobby options in building a bunch of distinct Character knights chattering on about glory, castles, and what not.
Terminus Est Assault Force
We’ll start with the Death Guard update – it gives you a lot of new things. The only odd thing missing is there is no new Contagion and instead you just get one Warlord Trait – which auto-locks on Typhus if he is in the army. You also have to be the Harbingers Plague Company (well duh Goatboy it’s Typhus’s gang) so it is very locked into how you play. You also get some new Psychic powers that seem decent, some cool relics, and a pile of Stratagems that help make your army work. Oh – you can also deep strike most of your army with a new Strategic Reserves option. Seems pretty good for an army full of Poxwalkers that wants to get them into place and holding people down.
In fact – this is the most exciting thing about this list is the ability to drop your infantry buds into place. Possessed looked interesting but taking up 2 slots in a Rhino and only being a 10 man-sized squad means these guys were left hanging. Now being able to deep strike them in feels like there is some true value here. Mix in a few of those, some Deathshroud terminators, and a ton of Pox Walkers and you start to get an army. Oh – and you got some sweet PoxWalker strats to look at too from a +3 move/advance option you can do every turn for all of them, a tide of traitors to bring them back, and being able to shoot guys tied down by gross guys.
Overall this is a pretty neat detachment and one of the ones I will definitely look at as I get ready to start playing some events in Texas. The army style fits with how I like to play some Death Guard and should be fun to bring to the tabletop. I wanted to try Possessed and this might let me bring in a unit of 10 or so. It just means I need to make some too – which always gets my hobby juices flowing.
Freeblade Lance
The next one – the Freeblade detachment seems neat. Hey get all your Knights to be a Freeblade – you lose out on the household but get to pick 2 bonuses with only 1 burden. You can double up when you give out all the burdens/bonuses so take some Armigers with 3 FW knights and go to town. This is one way to get an army full of Objective Secured big knights with some cheeky bonuses. It feels like a good “try” hard army and again it just screams out as a sweet Hobby project.
You get some new Strats to help you out that seem ok. I like the ability to take two relics on one of your Hero knights. It feels like this Detachment is neat and could have used a slight bit more work – either a few more Strats, relics, or Warlord traits as one Relic/Warlord trait is just not enough. I think they could have Hero’d this up a bit more – but it does feel like it is an army that could be super fun, get you to more wins than loses, and does give you the ability to get more Objective secured options to help fight the issue Knights have currently. My big bit of Sadness is where is my Chaos Knight version of this?
Mechanicus Defense Cohort
Finally, we got the Beepboops option that is severely limiting but does give you a brick of an army to deal with. This detachment means you can’t take any Skitarri and you lose out on your Forgeworld dogma. You do get a very hard army to shift – with so many defensive stacks and bonuses that those that get there will most likely still be there. It is just slow and very limiting.
The big powerful thing is the Warlord trait that lets you give all your Beep Boop friends (Extremis Sentinals) objective secured. You can still have a Forgeworld Keyword – so while you don’t get their trait you could use some of their Stratagems to teleport in or do some other fun stuff. Mix this all together and you get some Robots that could come down, still an objective, and be a huge pain in the butt to deal with.
Like I said there is some interesting things for this Detachment it just feels like there isn’t enough to pay for the restrictive costs of losing Bubble wrap. Or some of the cool Skitarri vehicles for that matter. Still, it is an interesting way to build a much more Mechanicus heavy force that utilizes some of those starter boxes that came with some many robots that people might have.
Trio of Mini-Supplements
After those detachments you get 3 Supplements – Supplement Metalica, Supplement House Raven, and Supplement Cult of Strife. These are all pretty decent little updates but I have to wonder why we have a Dark Eldar one when we just got the new Codex a bit ago. Still – this book while short on how many rules pages we get – is full of extra rules. Of the 3 I think the Cult of Strife has some place especially with how the Dark Eldar book is shaping up. That book is straight-up a glass cannon of boom and pushing your Wyches into an even rougher batch of death is something. It is just hard to get it to fit when you are trying to do a Realspace Raid force and a few other things. Still – it is cool to have em.
Each of the supplements gives you more Strats, relics and warlord options for your armies. I don’t think Metalica will take over from Cawl’s friends so this one will be left along. The House Raven has to fight with Krast as the most deadly option and then Strife will be tried to be used most of the time. The thing I like is that while short and sweet – it does give us more options. The cool thing though – is that Metalica and the House Raven seem to combo up to make for a very interesting AdMech/Knight army.
The Verdict?
Overall is this a good book to buy? If you play any of these armies I would think you would want to buy this book or get its rules somehow. It is frustrating in some sense in that we got new books for a few of these and now have to get an extra option to fully activate our rules. But these rules are good and feel like a better compliment to the game when compared to the old Specialist detachments and supplements. We do get 3 supplements and the overall setup feels like this type of 2 pages of rules can easily be put in a White Dwarf – or some kind of combined set of rules when they do their yearly update.
Will I play one of these? The Death Guard Typhus and Friends detachment is right up my alley based on what I have painted. In fact – it is something I will think about in the coming weeks as I look to what I have painted and how I can get this all to work. Look for my Dark Eldar quick review later on too. That book is good – and a big improvement to that army and how 9th will end up shaking out as the other books get released.
ALL ABOARD…the Terminus Est
