In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into an army’s Detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games. In this Detachment Focus we’re looking at the Dêlve Assault Shift from the Leagues of Votann.
Sometimes you get bored of delving too greedily and too deep, and just want to hit something with a hammer. The Cthonian Beserks of the Votann exemplify this, and the Dêlve Assault Shift is designed to maximise their effectiveness, and this is what we’ll be looking at in this focus.
We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes. We have also been provided with a provisional Munitorum Field Manual for the army to use when writing the review, but please note that these points are subject to change until they are published on Warhammer Community.
Detachment Overview
The Dêlve Assault Shift focuses on the Cthonian forces of the Votann, allowing you to launch a tunnelling assault with your Beserks, and providing a few boosts for their Earthshaker artillery as well. This is, obviously, only two Datasheets, and happily the Detachment does bring some tools compatible with other parts of the Votann roster, but definitely wants Beserks to be your clear focus, as the Detachment Rule only affects them. You end up with a fairly melee-focused army that can do a tonne of damage, but is also very fragile after the reduction in the durability of the Cthonians.
Detachment Rule: Fury From the Dêlve
Cthonian Beserks are Battleline (so you can take up to six units of them) and gain Deep Strike, allowing them to launch their assaults from below.
This is certainly going to be an intimidating army rule to play against, since Beserks hit very hard, you can easily afford to have a handful of squads in reserves (and have a Stratagem to pull a unit back up), forcing screening and cagey play. The Votann army rule also means that that you’ll often have re-roll Charges available, making it more likely that you can hit combat with freshly deployed units, and making a multi-front Deep Strike charge something you’re a bit more willing to consider in extremis. That also incentivises finding ways to keep YP down for the first few turns, as you definitely want to be able to lock in Hostile Acquisition when it matters.
Realistically, it also makes building armies pretty easy to start with – pretty much all lists are going to begin with 4+ units of Beserks, some as MSUs to strike from Reserves, and at least one (probably two) ready to launch from a Land Fortress. Certainly not a bad rule, and a headache to play against.
Enhancements
A broad mix of tools here with wildly varying levels of usefulness, let’s go.
- Delvwerke Navigator (25pts): A weird one to start though – in your Reinforcements step, you can pick a visible Beserk unit and return one destroyed model to it, +1 for each 2YP you spend. If this hits it’s obviously exceptional, but now that Beserks are only one wound, and thus desperately fragile, they feel like they’re mostly going to exist in a binary state of alive or dead, making this a tough sell, especially as the Detachment won’t have that many Characters.
- Multiwave System Jammer (10pts): Once per battle when the bearer is on the table, deploy a Cthonian unit from Reserves as if it was one turn higher, i.e. you can do a turn one Deep Strike. Yes I would like my opponent to have to plan around this for the low low price of 10pts, thank you for asking. Again, the only real tricky bit here is working out who is carrying this.
- Quake Supervisor (20pts): Make a Character Lone Operative within 3” of Artillery, and also give those units +1 to hit against anything the bearer can see. Sounds good until you realise that the most likely bearer of this would be an Arkanyst, but they already get Lone Operative within 3”, and the +1 to hit rarely does anything – the Artillery is Heavy, and will very often have another +1 to hit from the army rule, at which point this only matters into targets with Stealth. Not enough added value to be worth the slot.
- Piledriver (15pts): Each time the bearer fights, you can spend up to 2YP for +1D per. Provides the very funny option of a D4 axe on an Einhyr Champion. Hard to work into lists though, as there’s no Characters that go with Beserks.
Stratagems
Unsurprisingly, there’s plenty of melee boosts here, though not just for Beserks, even if they’re the focus.
- Cyberstimm Infusion (1CP): This one’s just for the Beserks to start, though, giving them either re-roll 1s to Wound or full Wound re-rolls if you spend 2YP. This is obviously good stuff if you need a bit hit, and the mauls now being Anti-Vehicle/Monster 3+ makes the re-roll 1s version OK if you don’t have the YP in a pinch.
- Unstoppable Force (1CP): Give any Votann unit 6” Pile In/Consolidation for a phase. Very, very good when you need it, especially as you’ll generally be taking at least some bigger Beserk units who can really benefit. Also good on melee Steeljacks thanks to their Fall Back punishment, or just for tying stuff up with shooty ones.
- Augmented Assault (1CP): Give a Beserk unit Advance/Charge and spend up to 2YP for +1” movement each. This gives you incredible reach out of a Land Fortress, especially once you factor in re-roll Advance/Charge in the early game, and is another vital tool for putting fear into the hearts of the foe.
- Tectonic Fracture (1CP): Your token tool for Earthshakers that’s eh, OK. After you hit a unit with them, give them -2” Movement till your next Shooting phase, and also -2” to Charges if you spend 2YP. Occasionally handy, sure.
- Weavewerke Buttress (1CP): As long as you have Hostile Acquisition active, give an INFANTRY unit -1 to be Wounded against shooting for a phase. Now that Beserks are T6 this isn’t bad for stopping them dying like chumps to small arms fire, and is also strong on Steeljacks.
- Hidden Accessways (1CP): Pull a Beserks, Hearthkyn or Yaegirs unit (that is not in Engagement Range) into Strategic Reserves at the end of the Opponent’s Fight Phase. Yes please – this would be great even without the strong synergy with the Detachment Rule.
Playing This Detachment
Hit them very hard, obviously. You want to take maximum advantage of the fear that Deep Striking/big Advancing Beserks generate, and use that to claim positions and soften up the foe. Then, you unleash the Beserks, either straight down the line or with a well-timed Rapid Ingress, and get to killing. Or don’t – the nice thing about this Detachment is that it is also extremely good at scoring thanks to all the Deep Strike, so if your opponent doesn’t want to play ball, you have a great fallback plan.
Strengths
- High melee output.
- Massed Deep Strike forces opponents to be very cautious.
- Surprisingly excellent scoring utility between Detachment Rule and Stratagems.
Weaknesses
- Expensive themed units that are quite brittle.
- Very CP hungry.
- Only one real slam dunk enhancement – others are either hard to get into lists, or duds.
A Sample List
Hit it Very Hard - click to expand Characters Battleline Other
The plan here is to set up one big Beserk unit in a Fort, and then either put 2×5 in the other or leave it empty next to the Steeljacks (as you want the extra T1 YP from the Memnyr), reserving the rest. That provides you with big threat projection from the Advance/Charge potential of the large squad, plus the threat of T1 Deep Strike for the opponent to deal with (as the Arkanyst is easy to get out and keep somewhere safe to enable that). While the opponent is cautiously handling that, pepper them with fire from the Kaprici, and get the Steeljacks onto your expansion objective with Uthar nearby. That gives you a rock solid anvil to operate with using Weavewerke Buttress while Beserks range out to murder stuff. You want to especially look for opportunities to send them to pry stuff out from behind walls, as Hidden Accessways can reload them if your opponent can’t reach them. That Strat’s also a good one for Uthar to free Stratagem on his own unit in a pinch if you need them to score. LIke any army relying on low durability big hitters, things can go wrong fast here, but you’ve got double Fortress and the Steeljacks and good scoring depth to mitigate that.
Final Thoughts
If you want to unleash the angriest of all Votann, this is the one for you – it’s the most melee focused of the Detachments, and offers a surprising amount of depth because of its ability to pivot to scoring. Will it dominate the competitive scene? Probably not, just because this is “codex put Sustained on Beams”, which this cannot do, but it does a strong job of supporting an alternate playstyle, and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on if Beserks ever drop in points – they second they get to like, 90 per five, this is extremely lit.
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