A new Detachment for the Astra Militarum dropped last week: The Grizzled Company Detachment focuses on orders, giving each of your officers the ability to issue an extra order, and also adds two Enhancements which give their bearers new orders. Specifically, those orders are:
- Target Weak Spot – When an ordered unit makes a ranged attack at a unit within 12”, improve the AP of that attack by 1.
- Move to the Shadows – Units affected by this order gain the [STEALTH] ability.
These two new orders offer some interesting possibilities, and more importantly, some interesting decisions: The majority of units in the Astra Militarum army can only be issued a single order, though there are three units which can be affected by two orders at once. Those are:
- Kasrkin
- Militarum Tempestus Command Squads with a Command Rod
- Any unit joined by Ursula Creed
So if you’re issuing these orders, it’ll usually be in place of something else. With that in mind, let’s dive into these new orders and look at when and how it’ll make sense to use them.
On top of that, we will also be considering the main effect of the Detachment: While an ASTRA MILITARUM unit from your army is affected by an Order, each time a model in that unit makes an attack, re-roll a Hit roll of 1. While you can also re-roll a Wound roll of 1 if the target is within range of an objective marker, we’ll primarily be focusing on that first effect since that will always be active on a unit being issued an Order.
Target Weak Spot
Let’s start with the big one: Offensive output buffs. The Astra Militarum already have two key buffs for improving ranged output. Those are:
- Take Aim! which improves the unit’s Ballistic Skill by 1
- First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! which improves the Attacks characteristic of Rapid Fire weapons equipped by models in the unit by 1.
In the chart below we’ve done the math on the comparative value of orders with regard to ten lasguns shooting at a space marine target. The combo of First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! And Target Weak Spot gets you the best results, though it’s worth noting that the improvement is marginal, and based on the fact that you’re getting re-rolls of 1 to hit already, so the increase in AP makes a bigger difference than the gain you get from going from BS 4+ to 3+. It’ll be even more pronounced on Kasrkin and Scions, who already hit on 3+.
That said it’s marginally worse or about the same when you start with AP-1, since going from 3+ saves to 4+ saves is a bigger jump than going from 4+ to 5+. The worse the starting save of the model, the better Take Aim! is, while the better the model’s starting Ballistic Skill, the better Target Weak Spot will be. Note that any time it works, First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! is better than either.
Because Kasrkin and Tempestus Scions have AP-1 and a 3+ BS built-in however, the best combo with them ends up being FRFSRF and Target Weak Spot.
With these your biggest bottleneck is going to be that you’re wounding on 5s, which keeps you from doing the kinds of ungodly damage you’d want to do with 30 AP-2 shots that hit on 3s re-rolling 1s. If you can bundle this with either the ability to re-roll 1s to wound or [LETHAL HITS] from the Purging Fire Stratagem, those are a big help – If you’re under FRFSRF and Target Weak Spot, then you’ll average an extra wound per volley if you’re re-rolling 1s to wound, and an extra 2.5 unsaved wounds if you’ve got [LETHAL HITS] active. Scions re-roll wound rolls of 1 natively (and all wound rolls against targets on an objective marker), so they’re already going to give you better output, but they need an attached Command Squad in order to benefit from two orders at once.
You can also improve the Strength of these weapons using the Mordian Miniute Stratagem, which improves the Strength of a unit’s ranged weapons by 1 while they’re being affected by the First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! order. Doing this bumps you up to an average of 5 unsaved wounds on a unit of Kasrkin using just FRFSRF, and you’ll get 6.3 with Take Aim! and 6.7 with Target Weak Spot on top.
Of course, the real value of the Target Weak Spot Order is on units who can’t already benefit from one or both of First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire! and Take Aim! The big recipient there? Flamers. The Hellhound is a great target for this Order, as having AP-3 on its Inferno Cannon makes it a real terror, and you’ve got another heavy flamer you can add on top of that. You could also make the case for Scout Sentinels with heavy flamers and Krieg heavy weapons squads, which can be given three 2-damage heavy flamers. You can also give a Chimera a heavy flamer and give your Kasrkin unit two flamers to shoot out of its Firing Deck, making it an infantry-melting machine as well.
A Krieg Heavy Weapons squad hauling around three Heavy Flamers will average 10.5 hits per volley, and on average will turn that into 7 dead marines after they take their 5+ saves. A Chimera sporting one heavy flamer and two flamers will average 3.3 unsaved wounds to marines with its flamers, and a Hellhound’s Inferno Cannon will average 5.4 unsaved wounds every time it fires at marines. Again, these are without re-rolls to wound.
You can also order your tanks to use the Target Weak Spot Order, and in most cases that will be replacing the Take Aim! Order. Unless your plan is to order a Hellhound, this is generally a bad idea – Because your tank weapons tend to have AP built in already, you’ll get more value out of Take Aim! against most targets. The lone exception here is against targets with a 2+ save and no invulnerable save or a 2+ in cover, where suddenly the gains you can get from going to AP-2 or AP-3 are more substantial than the benefit of being +1 to hit. But even in those cases, Take Aim! will get you most of the way there, and they’re pretty close against regular marine targets.
Move to the Shadows
On the defensive side of things, we have Move to the Shadows, which grants a unit the [STEALTH] ability. This will be competing with the Take Cover! Order, which improves the Save characteristic of models in a unit by 1 (but cannot improve their save beyond a 3+). This would be a no-brainer option for VEHICLE targets (where everything has a 3+ save or better already), but the Enhancement can only go on an INFANTRY Officer, and there’s no way for said character to issue orders to SQUADRON units. Outside of vehicles, the Guard army mostly have 4+ and 5+ saves to work with, so let’s look at how these fare against different weapon profiles for a model with a 4+ save, like the aforementioned Kasrkin or Tempestus Scions.
Take Cover! performs marginally better here against AP0 weapons and has a natural break-even point against AP-1 shooting. But as the AP of the shot rises, the value you get out of Take Cover! decreases. This leads to two interesting caveats: The first is that for models with a 5+ save, Move to the Shadows is better most of the time, with the lone exception being when you’re facing AP0 weapons and you’re able to combine Take Cover! with the benefit of cover to functionally have a 3+ save. The other caveat is that having the benefit of cover generally shifts this in the direction of Take Cover! by one – so if you’re a unit with a 4+ save in cover, you are better off with Take Cover! against AP-1 shooting, and will have a break even point against AP-2 shooting.
The other thing to consider of course is that Take Cover! improves your save against melee attacks, while [STEALTH] will do nothing for you when someone is hacking your limbs off with a chainaxe.
Combining these on a unit can create some wild durability buffs – you can issue both orders to the aforementioned Kasrkin/Tempestus Scions and throw in the benefit of Cover and the Additional Armour Stratagem to shrug off AP-2 shooting like it’s no big deal.
Final Thoughts
The new orders provide some interesting choices which lead to some interesting math. The good news here is that there isn’t really an optimal choice all the time – whether you want to use Target Weak Spot or Move to the Shadows will depend heavily on what you’re bringing and what you’re up against. But within those matchups you can have a good idea of where the breakpoints are and where you’ll get marginally more value out of choosing one over the other. That said, the differences aren’t that big, so don’t feel like you’ve messed up if you don’t pick the optimal Order.
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