Detachment Focus: Ironstorm Spearhead

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 Ironstorm Spearhead 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 Ironstorm Spearhead draws from the lore of the Iron Hands, so you know what the deal is – their stuff has better damage output but also better defences, and buffs vehicles that are already good. Having your Primarch die was apparently the best thing that could happen to a First Founding Chapter.

Detachment Overview

If any detachment in the Codex drew immediate attention, it was this one. Iron Hands rules have been strong almost every time they’ve existed, and their 8th edition codex supplement was one of the most broken things released into that edition and was still one of the preferred ways to play Space Marines competitively even in the dying days of 9th when the printed rules text bore only a passing resemblance to the post-balance errata that brought them into something resembling normality. Suffice to say, the Ironstorm Spearhead didn’t disappoint, offering a generically strong detachment rule and some powerful buffs from its Enhancements and Stratagems. That said, it hasn’t been as meta-warping as might have been feared – it’s good and it’s putting up strong finishes, but there’s three other detachments in this book also doing that, and Space Marines have been more successful with their Codex than their Index but are still not overhauling the very best armies for meta success.

Detachment Rule: Armoured Wrath

Despite the name, the detachment rule doesn’t have anything to do with vehicles. Instead, each unit in your army gets a once-per-phase re-roll of a Hit, Wound, or Damage roll. It’s not the most exciting rule, but it’s straightforwardly strong, making your units more efficient at what they do and letting you pick what matters most – do you need another hit here, or can you hold on in case you fail a wound roll or need to spike some damage?

Stratagems

Like all other Space Marine detachments, the Ironstorm Spearhead has access to Armour of Contempt. The other five Stratagems are:

• Unbowed Conviction – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Used in the Command phase, on one of your units that is below its Starting Strength. Until the end of the turn, that unit ignores any or all modifiers to its characteristics or any roll/test made for it, except modifiers to saving throws. The most obvious use case here is to get a damaged vehicle back to full effectiveness, but this can also be useful for pretty much any unit – and there’s some possibility for clever play into armies like Death Guard here, which want to hit you with lots of modifiers, which you can completely ignore for a single CP if they have wounded your unit at all.
• Mercy is Weakness – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Used in your Shooting phase or the Fight phase. Pick a unit; any attacks that unit makes against an enemy unit below its Starting Strength get SUSTAINED HITS 1 and if your unit is a vehicle, you get 5+ Critical Hits instead of 6+. The superstar stratagem from among this pack, because it can give a vehicle absolutely hellish output into any slightly damaged target, especially if combined with the Target Augury Web enhancement (see below) to allow you to stack Sustained Hits and Lethal Hits together. Don’t miss the potential to combine this one with an Impulsor, which shoots its own guns as well as whatever’s riding in it and can therefore put out a huge number of shots benefiting from the stratagem.
• Vengeful Animus – Epic Deed, 1CP: Use in any phase, just after one of your vehicles with the Deadly Demise ability is destroyed. Your vehicle auto-explodes. A tremendous fuck-you Stratagem, particularly if you’ve just rammed a Land Raider or Repulsor deep into their lines and they’ve killed it while it’s in range of a lot of their units.
• Ancient Fury – Epic Deed, 1CP: Use in your Command phase on one Walker in your army. That model gets +1 Move, Toughness, Leadership, and Objective Control, and +1 to hit. Can be useful for sneaky objective flipping since it happens before control is determined, and is great for overcoming hit modifiers and the like, as well as turning a Redemptor’s toughness up to 11 – which will push a reasonable number of anti-tank weapons onto 5+ to Wound from 4+.
• Power of the Machine Spirit – Epic Deed, 1CP: Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase, just after one of your vehicles was reduced to Below Half-Strength as a result of a unit’s attacks. Your unit can shoot as if it was the Shooting phase, but only at the enemy unit that just attacked it, and only if it’s eligible to do so (no wall-hacking to shoot back at Indirect). A potentially funny stratagem given the right timing and target, though take care that you can only trigger it when you are reduced to Below Half-strength – if your unit is already Below Half-strength, you can’t use this if it takes further damage (though of course you can get it off multiple times if you heal your vehicle back above half and then it is reduced to Below Half-strength a second time).

An overall solid set of Stratagems – expect opponents to use Reign of Confusion and similar abilities against Mercy is Weakness as soon as they know it exists and is a Battle Tactic.

Converted Imperial Fists Gladiator Reaper. Credit: Jack Hunter

Enhancements

The enhancements available to the Ironstorm Spearhead are:

• Target Augury Web (Aura) – TECHMARINE model only; vehicles within 6″ get LETHAL HITS on all their weapons. Insanely good and you are going to take a Techmarine with this in every single Ironstorm list you ever build. Yes, it’s all their weapons, not just ranged, so Redemptors love this in all phases.
• The Flesh is Weak – The bearer has the Feel No Pain 4+ ability. The worst detachment in this list, and you still might see it because it’s very cheap.
• Adept of the Ominissiah – TECHMARINE model only. Once per battle round, when a vehicle within 6″ fails a save, you can change the Damage characteristic of that attack to 0. Again, a super good enhancement, with the only real limitation being that once per battle round means that if a vehicle gets into melee with something with high-quality attacks it might have to actually take damage the second time around. Repulsor Executioners hate this, though note that it’s a “set to 0” and so something with MELTA will still get the extra damage from the melta rule, because of the order in which modifiers are applied.
• Master of Machine War (Aura) – Vehicles within 6″ can shoot after either falling back or advancing. You pick Target Augury Web and Adept of the Omnissiah over this first, but if you have another character and the points to spare you definitely run this too, because it makes your vehicles much more flexible.

There’s two enhancements here that are auto-takes and one that is nearly that, and then a fourth one that was presumably added to fill the list out for completeness’ sake (and still shows up in lists fairly often because it’s cheap, and why not if you can’t afford or don’t want Master of Machine War?). This may be the strongest set of four enhancements in the entire game.

Playing This Detachment

Am I going to shock you if I say that Dreadnoughts are good in this detachment? I didn’t think so.

All the rules here encourage you towards a vehicle-heavy build, and Dreadnoughts are good anyway, so a couple of Redemptors and Ballistus Dreadnoughts is a strong starting point for any Ironstorm list. Redemptors in particular love every part of this package – they’re a multi-phase unit so they get extra mileage out of the re-rolls, Mercy is Weakness, and the LETHAL HITS aura from Target Augury Web. Gladiators also do really well here – a Lancer gets near-Fire Prism levels of re-rolls on its big gun in this detachment, while the Reaper loves Mercy is Weakness (not so much for its main gun, which already gets SUSTAINED HITS 2 into infantry, but for all the other effects that apply to its other guns and the extra chances to get Critical Hits).

Stormravens have seen a general meta resurgence recently, and in Ironstorm they do very well as they also love Mercy is Weakness and the free re-roll on their bigger guns. Whirlwinds, too, get a lot out of this – really if it’s on a vehicle chassis, you’re going to enjoy it in this detachment.

What your opponent is going to see across the table is a big castle of vehicles all fitting into the two overlapping auras. The Dreadnought parts of that castle will then advance, forming a wall of metal that grinds them down relentlessly. The biggest risk for the Ironstorm player is a) the Techmarines being killed, either by a push to get inside their Lone Operative range or by effects which aren’t attacks and therefore aren’t affected by it (such as Doombolt), and b) the battle pile getting slowly split up as it tries to reach out to more objectives, and falling out of the overlapping effects which make the detachment great.

Garret Olson’s Iron Hands – Majestic Beasties 2023 (November 2023) – 1st Place

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

Pretty much exactly what you’re expecting to see when you open a list and find “Ironstorm Spearhead” at the top – triple Redemptor Dreadnoughts, double Ballistus, the requisite Techmarines with their enhancements, and a supporting cast of Inceptors, Infiltrators, and Incursors for mission play. It’s not especially clever, but it doesn’t need to be – the list is tough, hits hard, and asks simple questions about damage output (both for and against) that many opponents will struggle to answer.

Final Thoughts

If you want to win with Space Marines, then the Ironstorm Spearhead is a top pick for doing so – it encourages you to use many of the faction’s best and coolest units and have them work even better.

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