Detachment Focus: Gladius Task Force (Updated October 3, 2025)

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Gladius Task Force Detachment in Codex: Space Marines.

The core Codex: Space Marines includes seven detachments, one of which represents the First Company and the other six of which are thematically linked to one of the First Founding Chapters which doesn’t have a supplement. The Gladius Task Force draws from the lore of the Ultramarines, promoting tactical flexibility and adherence to the doctrines of the Codex Astartes. As the detachment featured in Index: Space Marines at the start of the edition, it’s the detachment you are most likely to have played with or against, and it hasn’t changed much in the transition to the Codex.

Changelog

• 2025-10-03 (Current): Updated with new rules and lists
• 2024-01-18: Initial publication

Detachment Overview

As mentioned above, the Gladius Task Force is the Ultramarines-themed detachment and so it was always going to be the choice for the index. The lore basis is not the only reason for its selection in that position, though – it’s also a very broad approach to playing Space Marines, giving you a little bit of everything to utilise the Marines’ vast arsenal of options and lots of flexibility and choices to make on the table. I’ve heard it described as a good beginner detachment, since its detachment rule and Stratagems give you lots of options to get out of trouble, and I think that is true – but that undersells its depth which allows a stronger player to get the best out of it, which is reflected in tournament results where it continues to show up regularly as the detachment of choice for competitive play.

The Gladius Task Force is currently considered one of the strongest Detachments in the game, and it’s more or less the bar which every new Space Marines detachment is judged as a result. It’s hard to beat the sheer power and versatility of the rules you have access to here.

Detachment Rule: Combat Doctrines

At the start of your Command phase, pick one of the Combat Doctrines listed below. Until the start of your next Command phase, that Combat Doctrine is active and its effects apply to all Space Marine units in your army. You can only pick each one once per game.

• Devastator Doctrine: Your units can shoot after Advancing
• Tactical Doctrine: Your units can shoot and declare a charge after Falling Back
• Assault Doctrine: Your units can charge after Advancing

These are three incredibly good abilities, and each has its uses and timing. Devastator tends to be good early when you need to get into position on objectives without giving up shooting, and likewise Assault Doctrine is huge for making early charges from further away or helping an otherwise slow unit like Aggressors or Centurions close the gap in a crucial moment. Tactical is always useful as well for thwarting an opponent’s plans, and you’ll find these have additional benefits when it comes to the detachment Stratagems.

In short, this Detachment basically lets you do anything you need, when you need it, staying mobile the whole time. Mobility is life in 40k, and this Detachment ensures you’re never giving it up in exchange for damage output.

Note that you don’t have to pick a Doctrine is because there’s only three of them – the classic Devastator, Tactical, and Assault – and you can only use each one once per battle, so if you don’t need a specific Doctrine right now, you shouldn’t blow one just because. There are ways around this, as we’ll see in the Stratagems and Enhancements sections, but they’re much more limited in scope.

Stratagems

There’s a ton of power in the Stratagems in this Detachment, and three of these key off your currently active Doctrine.

• Armour of Contempt (1 CP, Battle Tactic): Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase or the Fight phase, after they pick one of your units as a target. Until those attacks have all been resolved, reduce the AP of those incoming attacks by 1. Not as good as it used to be but still plenty useful – especially in the Fight phase, where you’re unlikely to be taking hits from multiple units.
• Only in Death Does Duty End (2 CP, Epic Deed): Use in the Fight phase, just after an enemy unit selects its targets. Models in one of your units targeted by that enemy unit can fight on death. This one’s expensive, but like other 2 CP fight on death abilities it guarantees you’ll fight rather than just being a 50/50 shot. That’s huge, and amazing when you’re going into more melee-heavy armies like World Eaters, Blood Angels, or Black Templars which love to try and trade up. In most cases this will be a better play than Armour of Contempt if you can afford it.
• Honour the Chapter (1 CP, Battle Tactic): Used in the Fight phase. Until the end of the phase, the melee weapons on one unit in your army gain the LANCE ability, and if they are under the effects of the Assault Doctrine they also improve their AP by 1 as well. This is great for punching up, particularly with something like Bladeguard Veterans, where S5, AP-2 weapons really want both buffs to punch up effectively into tougher targets like light vehicles and more elite infantry. It’s also very good on Assault Intercessors.
• Adaptive Strategy (1 CP, Strategic Ploy): Use in your Command phase; you can choose one unit from your army to have the Devastator, Tactical, or Assault Doctrine active until the start of your next Command phase, instead of any other Combat Doctrine that is active for your army. This also allows you to re-use doctrines for a single unit at a time. The obvious use cases are to keep a single unit in Assault or Devastator doctrine to combine with Honour the Chapter or Storm of Fire respectively, but it can also be handy for if you have just one unit that you could really use advance and charge or fall back and shoot or whatever other effect on this turn without wanting to potentially waste the whole doctrine on it. 1 CP is a steal for this and it’s a great use of your Captain’s reduced cost ability.
• Storm of Fire – (1 CP, Battle Tactic): Use in your Shooting phase. One unit in your army gets IGNORE COVER on its ranged weapons, and if you’re in Devastator Doctrine they also improve their AP by 1 as well. Stacking this with the Fire Discipline enhancement (see below) is how you get one of the most powerful combos in the detachment, and you can use a Captain to guarantee you get the full effect every turn even if you only have the single start of turn CP to work with.
• Squad Tactics – (1 CP, Strategic Ploy): Use in your opponent’s Movement phase, just after an enemy unit ends a Normal, Advance, or Fall Back move within 9″ of an INFANTRY or MOUNTED unit in your army. Unless it’s in Engagement Range, your unit can make a Normal Move of up to D6″, or 6″ if it is under the effects of the Tactical Doctrine. This is one of those stratagems that is deceptively powerful – use it to extend an opponent’s charge range or get out of it altogether, or to move a unit out of range or line of sight of a shooting unit they’ve just lined up, or even more aggressively as a way to push onto an objective they thought they had just secured with something weak. The D6″ makes this a bit riskier than other versions unless you’re in Tactical Doctrine, but there’s always likely to be a time in your games when being able to make an out of phase move will have an impact.

The overall Stratagem suite is very toolboxy – you shouldn’t ever look at the board and think there’s nothing any of your Stratagems can do to help you out. Only in Death Does Duty End is an odd one out, being both very specific in its use and also expensive, but it’s not the worst option to have available to you in the instances where it matters.

Enhancements

There are some solid Enhancements here, but which ones you’ll want will depend heavily on how you’ve built your army.

• Artificer Armour is a straightforward upgrade for any character, giving them a 2+ save and a 5+ Feel No Pain – a significant defensive upgrade, but not necessarily something you need all that often given your characters either already have a 4+ invulnerable save or a 5+ Feel No Pain, in the case of the Combi-weapon Lieutenant.
• The Honour Vehement buffs your model’s melee ability, adding 1 to the Attacks and Strength characteristics of their melee weapons, or 2 if they are under the effects of the Assault Doctrine. You aren’t necessarily building punchy melee characters in codex Marines, but this can have a ton of value if you’re running Gladius with Black Templars, Space Wolves, or Blood Angels. You know who really loves this Enhancement? The Emperor’s Champion. He’ll take every extra attack he can get.
• Adept of the Codex is only for a CAPTAIN model, but it represents one of the ways to play with Doctrines – effectively what it allows you to do is to always select the Tactical Doctrine to be active for the bearer’s unit, even if you’ve already used it this game (though importantly you pick this instead of picking a Doctrine to be active generally – so you can’t e.g. pick Assault for everyone else and then Tactical for your Captain’s unit, it’s one or the other, which makes it a much weaker effect and probably not worth its cost). Basically, you’ll be using this on a round where you aren’t using a doctrine for your army already, and those situations will be limited.
• Fire Discipline is again for any character; while leading a unit the bearer gives SUSTAINED HITS 1 to ranged weapons in their unit. In addition, while the unit is under the effects of the Devastator Doctrine, they can re-roll Advance rolls. This isn’t as bonkers as it used to be but it’s still a powerful enhancement in general, and combines really well with Storm of Fire to further bolster a unit’s output in Devastator Doctrine. It’s not the must-take it used to be, but it still has value if you want to go that route.

Fire Discipline used to be a must-take here, combining with the Apothecary Biologis to give you Lethal/Sustained 5+. That’s not the case anymore, though lethal/sustained 6+ is still pretty damn good. Honour Vehement sees more play these days owing to the Black Templars release, but the others are just kind of whatever.

Playing This Detachment

In general, your playstyle is a flexible one. You can do a bit of everything and have a fighting chance with it, and Tactical Doctrine means that you have a get out of jail card if your units get tagged by a melee army. You’ll want to be strategic about how you use your Doctrines early – avoid popping them before you need them, or using an entire Doctrine if the Stratagem version will do and you can pop that free. A common sequence will be Devastator to move onto objectives/staging and shoot > Assault to advance and charge > Tactical to fall back and re-engage, but game situations will often change that.

Honour the Chapter, Assault Doctrine, and Tactical Doctrine essentially combine to make this a strong melee Detachment as well, particularly if you want strong melee options but don’t want to go entirely in that direction or over-commit. That’s where you see armies like Blood Angels, Space Wolves, or Black Templars sporting heavy melee threats supported by Vindicators or Repulsor Executioners, where they can combine those buffs with strong shooting output that can use fall back and shoot or Storm of Fire to get the most out of their shooting. Of course, you don’t have to go full melee chapter for that – Guilliman, Calgar, and the Victrix Guard also love being in this detachment. Aggressors in particular benefit from all three doctrines in a way that few other units will.

The ability to advance and shoot/charge with your army has knock-on effects in that you are typically going to be punished less for holding units in strategic reserves. While slower units arriving from a table edge might otherwise struggle to close gaps to their targets or objectives the turn after arriving, you’ll typically have the extra movement you need to get into position without losing damage output. That’s a big deal which can help make short-ranged shooting units like Vindicators more useful if you need to protect them early. You also have built-in protection against melee armies with fight on death, armour of contempt, and tactical doctrine, so when you’re in those matchups, think about how you’re going to combine those to survive the initial melee shock, then punish them accordingly. This is another area where having lots of extra CP generation/reduction tools can be a big help.

Strengths

• Flexibility. You can do pretty much everything. You can advance and Charge, fall back and charge, advance and shoot, and you’ve got a variety of buffs here.
• Speed. When you need to scoot, you can do it, and this Detachment more or less gives you two turns of Advancing without having to worry about the downsides.
• Unit Flexibility. Unlike some other marine Detachments, this one doesn’t lock you into a specific chapter or units. It’s great for pretty much everyone.

Weaknesses

• Reserves. While you have a lot of ways to move around the table, you don’t have any way to go back into reserves, leaving this one at a disadvantage compared to some other detachments.
• Jack-of-all-Trades. This Detachment does a lot of things well, but at the expense of focusing on one thing more. If you want more shooting and vehicles, Ironstorm is a better bet, and if you want to go heavier melee, you’ve got other, better options. Vanguard also does movement and mission play better.
• Enhancements. The Enhancements here are just so-so after the nerf to Fire Discipline. You could take or leave them.

Sample Lists

There has pretty much never been a time when Gladius hasn’t been competitively relevant, and every new detachment has to compete with it. That’s largely a bad thing but it means that any time you see new marines, you can ask “how would I use that in Gladius?”

David Gaylard’s Black Templars – 2025 London GT

David is one of the world’s best 40k Players and took this list to an 8th place, 7-1 finish at the 2025 LGT, the largest singles event ever run. His only loss was to Alexandre Sacco’s Drukhari in the quarterfinals.

++ David's List - Click to Expand ++

There are a lot of cool things here, starting with that Emperor’s Champion running The Homour Vehement – that gives him 7 attacks base, or 8 when you’re in Assault Doctrine. Black Templars just generally want to have access to Advance and Charge, which is something they otherwise don’t get access to as easily as you’d think. The Castellans here ensure they never miss Oath of Moment, since he gives his unit the ability to re-roll hit rolls, and the whole thing is supported by two Repulsor Executioners who give it some much-needed ranged firepower.

If this one feels straightforward well, it’s more complicated than it looks. At least, in the sense that the pieces are relatively simple but what you can do with them is complicated (essentially “anything you want”). That versatility is as much your strength as anything else in that it makes you unpredictable to an opponent – you have speed and reactive moves when you need them, and you can easily cross the midtable in one turn if you have to.

Josh Ferguson’s Ultramarines List

Want a version with Ultras for that classic Gladius feel? We’ve got you covered there, too. Josh ran this list to a 4-0-1, 30th place finish at LGT in late September, giving us another TiWP for the faction post-dataslate.

++ Josh's List - Click to Expand ++

This is a fairly common build with Ultramarines – you’ve got Calgar and Guilliman, with the former acting as a solid mid-table threat with Company Heroes attached to a key unit, and the latter enabling your Oath and CP shenanigans. They don’t quite combine for infinity CP like they used to but they’re still a potent pair on the table, and scary to go up against. Your ranged support here is two Vindicators, tanks that live their best lives shooting Oath targets and for which Storm of Fire is a massive help, pushing them to AP-4 and Ignoring Cover in Devastator Doctrine. Neither Guilliman nor Tigurius can join the Hellbasters but both can join the Sternguard Veterans. There Tigurius gives a bit stronger nod since his -1 to be hit and ability to overwatch free turns the Sternguard into a real board control menace, especially if your Oath target wanders into your sights.

Final Thoughts

There may be more raw power in Ironstorm or Stormlance, but it’s really hard to beat the sheer tactical flexibility of the Gladius Task Force. You can fit any chapter to this play style and find something to like, and it supports a wide variety of armies and styles. In the years since the Codex’s release, it’s become clear why this one has staying power compared to the others. It’s not the easiest marine detachment to play, but it’s still pretty simple and powerful.

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