Detachment Focus: Spearhead-at-Arms

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 Spearhead-At-Arms from the Imperial Knights.

Spearhead-At-Arms is the equivalent Houndpack Lance for Imperial Knights, revolving around boosting Armiger power levels while increasing the potency of Bondsmen abilities for Questoris chassis.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

This Detachment is for those sickos that have enjoyed running Armiger spam with the Index Detachment and want to keep doing so. For those who want to walk the dogs again, this is the Detachment for you. The one challenge with this Detachment is in the change to the Armiger Helverin and Warglaive datasheets where they have seen a toning down from their Index rules.

Detachment Rule: Knightly Teachings

Each time a model from your army uses its Bondsman ability, if no other model has used that Bondsman ability this turn, you can select up to three friendly ARMIGER models (instead of 1) within 12” of the model, or within 15” of that model while your army is Honoured.

In addition to this, Armiger models from your army gain the Battleline keyword.

This rule is very powerful – being able to hand out three times the buffs per Questoris chassis is a massive power spike for some of them, most notably the Knight Defender handing out -1 damage or the Cerastus Knight Lancer. It also allows you to break the rule of 3, which is handy since many Imperial Knight players now own 4-5 of each of the base Armiger hulls.

Enhancements

The standard count of enhancements (4) can be found here, and they revolve around powering up Bondsman abilities even further. Every enhancement has the same condition, which is “While two or more ARMIGER models are under the effects of the bearer’s Bondsman ability…”, which can be both powerful and also limiting as the enhancement does nothing when only a single ARMIGER is under the influence of their Bondsman ability.

• Mentor’s Pride (20 pts): Each time one of those ARMIGER models makes an attack, you can re-roll a Hit roll of 1. Very solid enhancement, synergizes nicely with the re-rolls from the “… with our martial valour risen over all” Quality. Similarly very good on a Knight Preceptor to amp up the damage into their selected quarry.
• Fables of Nightmare (10 pts): Melee weapons equipped by those ARMIGER models have the [PRECISION] ability. Much more situational, but Armiger Warglaives under this influence can be quite scary to some armies that are character-dependent.
• Tales of Heroism (10 pts): Each time one of those ARMIGER models makes a melee attack, you can ignore any or all modifiers to the Hit roll and/or the Wound roll. Similar to Fables of Nightmare, fairly situational but still useful to Warglaives and to some Moirax loadouts.
• Martial Tuition (15 pts): Once per turn you can target one of those ARMIGER models with the Counter-Offensive Stratagem for 0CP. Probably the weakest enhancement here, but being able to interrupt for free can be situationally very powerful.

Overall we’d expect to see Mentor’s Pride in nearly every Spearhead-At-Arms list, with the other three being taken as points fillers.

Stratagems

With the exception of Let Duty Be Your Shield, every stratagem in this Detachment has similar target wording where you can target one armiger or one Imperial Knights Titanic model and one or more Armiger models affected by that model’s Bondsman ability. This allows for some flexibility in how the stratagems can be used, with being able to affect multiple Armigers with one stratagem use.

• Virtue of Courage (1 CP): Start of the Fight Phase you can give those Armigers +1 to hit an enemy unit of your choice. Not great, but combines nicely with Fables of Nightmare on a Knight Paladin.
• Exemplar’s Wisdom (1 CP): In your Shooting Phase you can give +1AP to those armigers against a target that their mentor hit in shooting. The Cerastus Castigator benefits immensely from this as its Bondsman ability gives [SUSTAINED HITS 1] and +1AP to ranged weapons for their mentees.
• Mantle of the Mentor (1 CP): Start of your Shooting Phase you can give those Armigers Fall back and shoot. Very potent as being tagged as an Armiger Helverin is downright miserable.
• Thin Their Ranks (1 CP): Start of your Shoot Phase you can give those Armigers [RAPID FIRE 1] on their ranged weapons. Very solid enhancement, and quite scary on Warglaives as this synergizes nicely with their Melta weapons.
• Let Duty Be Your Shield (1 CP): Reduce incoming AP on a single armiger in the shooting phase. Note that this meets the description of the Balance Dataslate modification to Armour of Contempt and so will only work for a single activation unless it is specifically errata’d. With that limitation in place this stratagem is not as useful but can still help keep a critical unit alive.
• Squires of the Hunt (1 CP): End of your opponent’s Fight Phase, each of those Armigers that are within 9” of one or more Battlefield Edges and not within Engagement Range of any enemy units can be put into Strategic Reserves. Very solid as it allows you to bounce around Armigers, but does prevent them from being buffed by any Bondsman abilities the next turn as they’ll be off the battlefield.

Playing This Detachment

The biggest challenge with playing this Detachment is that games can easily be lost in the movement phase if you don’t properly plan out the next turn’s Bondsman abilities. You want to be projecting some power into the midboard while protecting your Questoris chassis’ as best as you can while also keeping them in range for Bondsman. As the stratagems and enhancements amplify these abilities, losing a single Quetoris chassis can be even more devastating to  this Detachment than it normally would be.

Strengths

• Turns Bondsman abilities up to 11. Some of these are amazing and others are fairly middling, but this Detachment reduces the number of Questoris chassis required to keep the Armigers at their full potential.
• Flexible stratagems. This Detachment’s stratagems supports nearly any combination of Armigers and Questoris models – it offers really good flexibility to how the game needs to be played in response to different opponent armies.
• Speed. Any army built around Armiger is a pretty fast army, and will have lots of speed to move around the table and pick its targets.

Weaknesses

• The Helverin Datasheet. The biggest hit to the Helverin was it losing the conditional ANTI-FLY 2+ on its Autocannons, gaining instead the suppression ability against non-monster/vehicle units. This hurts a Detachment built around Armigers.
• Big Knights. This Detachment lacks any kind of bonuses for the Questoris chassis – which are crucial for this Detachment to work and so have to be taken to get the most out of the Detachment.
• Listbuilding constraints. Requiring Bondsman abilities to be up to get the most out of the enhancements and stratagems means that you are fairly constrained in list building – most lists end up being 2-3 Questoris and 6-8 Armiger hulls.

A Sample List

The focus with this Detachment should be on taking no more than one of any Questoris chassis as you cannot use the Detachment rule more than once per Bondsman ability. Force multipliers like the Knight Warden or Cerastus Knight Castigator are quite potent, and the Defender is unmatched in terms of defensive buffs for Armigers (and other Imperial Knight models due to its Selfless Protector datasheet ability). We expect the Defender to be the one mainstay in most Spearhead-at-arms lists due to the combination of this and its Defender’s Duty Bondsman ability.

Spearhead-at-arms - Defender/Warden Variant - click to expand

This list is a fairly straight-forward starting point for Spearhead-at-arms. The classic Imperial Agents package that has been a mainstay continues to be present as its value to Imperial Knights (sticky objective, high mobility, and ability to remove cover) is pretty hard to beat. At 330 points, there are some other options, but points tend to get fairly awkward in this book due to the costs.

The Defender acts as a mid-range threat, doing its best to obscure Helverins behind it while giving out its Bondsman ability to the Warglaives to improve their durability as they attempt to put pressure on the enemy. Warglaives getting close quickly and then making use of Thin Their Ranks to amp up their damage is going to be key to cutting through transports before charging. Helverins buffed by the Knight Warden & the same stratagem can instead carry out a similar role for thicker screens. Rapid Fire, Ignore Cover, and Sustained Hits on that many Autocannon shots can be quite effective here.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely an interesting Detachment, and one that most Imperial Knight players should be able to easily field if they’ve been playing them most of this edition. This is also the only way to field more than six of the baseline Armigers so it’s also the most flexible in terms of gameplay.

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