Grotmas Calendar 2024 - New Detachments Edition

[jaxom]

Cold take: Cult Legion books will all have a soup detachment. New 40k only daemon models probably exist as concept art or even prototypes but  corporate decisions will drive the final fate, but kicking it down the line as much as possible. Daemons will be on the back burner without codices for as long as possible.

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

For whatever reason, this Detachment didn't make the final cut for the Codex, hence why we got it here.

 

That said, there's a few rumours going around that the Guard Codex was 9th Ed LoV levels of OP and half the codex has had to be reworked already, so it might be that it just fell below the power curve of the other Detachments.

For some reason I'm not surprised. Guard is easily a Top 5 army right now so they could easily break that by accident. 

[Ahzek451]

My take, neither of the 4 are horrible or game shattering, but I would rank nurgle last, khorne 3rd. Slaanesh 2nd and tzeentch 1st. 

 

Note a couple things, there is no rule that stops you from adding in some units from another god, you obviously just won't benefit from most of the detachment rules for the god it was made for. Like impossible eclipse extends the shadow of chaos which could benefit anyone. 

 

Tzeentch is darn near just perfect. Ita fun. Flavorful, deceitful. And requires some madness, cunning and a keen intellect to look past any surface level thoughts to find the real nuggets in this detachment. The subtle wording too...delirium unmade...the 2nd half of the rule not only does 2 units buy allows you to pull them OUT of combat. The first part of the rule does not. 

[DemonGSides]

Nurgle got the C-Team for writing their rules.  Woof.

[Plaguecaster]

The nurgle one is rather disappointing and absolutely terrible

Seriously battleshock being the only gimmick is just stupid 

 

[HeadlessCross]

2 hours ago, Plaguecaster said:

The nurgle one is rather disappointing and absolutely terrible

Seriously battleshock being the only gimmick is just stupid 

 

It would be a bit stronger if you could select D3 units (randumb for game balance!) or something like that. As is, the Enhancements and Strats are fantastic though. 

[Borbarad]

They really need to improve Battleshock wholesale. Would help multiple armies and even more detachements. 
 

In other news: Auras are back for good. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm not sure "for good" is the right term - they all seem terribly overcosted/underperforming.  In other words, they seem like another case of GW overlearning a lesson and veering too far in the other direction (Lord Discordant, I'm looking at you).

 

Rather, they seem designed around allowing you to put buffing wargear on non-leader characters (such as greater demons) rather than an overall shift towards auras.

Edited December 16 by Dr_Ruminahui

[INKS]

This better not be their solution for a real codex 

[ZeroWolf]

4 hours ago, INKS said:

This better not be their solution for a real codex 

Given how strong the rumours are that the demons are bring folded into the god specific books, I'd say yes.

 

Presuming they're true of course, Emperor's Children will be the final decider on the rumor. In the long run, I can definitely see a shift to AoS style handling. Wether that will be this edition or next remains to be seen.

[Borbarad]

GW seems really reluctant to expand on the daemon range creatively. Given that the warp is vast and daemons come in all shapes and sizes should give GW a free pass to create new variants of daemons without the need of much retcon at all. Yet what we see is core concepts that were around for over 30 years with slight derivations thereof. 

[INKS]

17 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

Given how strong the rumours are that the demons are bring folded into the god specific books, I'd say yes.

 

Presuming they're true of course, Emperor's Children will be the final decider on the rumor. In the long run, I can definitely see a shift to AoS style handling. Wether that will be this edition or next remains to be seen.

Then they learned nothing from the inquisition codex. Deamons is even more popular and widely played and they want to do away or wrap in their codex. I just don’t get them 

[TheMawr]

Though i must say another recent thing we know might indicate that while rolling into the cult codex might be true, it isnt necessarily  evidence for no daemons codex coming. ( though personally i expect there wont )

 

Its official that the Drukhari units for Ynnari are rolled into the aeldari codex, another thing in common with daemons is the extra detachment(s) online treatment. However i assume no one expects Drukhari to not get a codex. ( well i have enough material to make a FoilMawr YouTube video on the matter, but i dont expect it to be the case ;) ) 

[Lord_Ikka]

12 minutes ago, Borbarad said:

GW seems really reluctant to expand on the daemon range creatively. Given that the warp is vast and daemons come in all shapes and sizes should give GW a free pass to create new variants of daemons without the need of much retcon at all. Yet what we see is core concepts that were around for over 30 years with slight derivations thereof. 

Daemons don't seem to have enough of a player base in 40k for GW to really want to pursue a lot of new units. Most of the new stuff has been created for AoS and has been imported to 40k from there. Which is too bad. I'd actually look into getting daemons if a Vashtorr/Dark Mechanicum cyber-daemons line became a thing. 

[Elazar The Glorified]

I think it's slightly odd that GW didn't address the fate of Daemons with these to be honest. It's hard to believe they're getting a Codex in 10th if these Grotmas detachments are all going to still be valid with new books - it's pretty hard to picture there's a Daemons Codex with 4+ detachments and none of them are mono-God.

 

I suspect that they'll just say nothing until the prep for the launch of 11th starts and then we'll get a similar notice period to what Beasts of Chaos, Savage Orruks etc got in Age of Sigmar with the new edition but with the caveat that they're mostly not going - just being redistributed rather than completely lost

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, INKS said:

Then they learned nothing from the inquisition codex. Deamons is even more popular and widely played and they want to do away or wrap in their codex. I just don’t get them 

This will likely upset some but Daemons have nearly never been well applied rules wise, they're a bit weird as fluff wise it's not common for multi-god intrusions and they're treated as 4 armies that are forced to co-exist with overlapping roles (it's nearly all melee). They've almost always been included or available as allies and it makes infinitely more in-universe sense that the incursions be both mono-god and alongside their mortal followers to summon them.

 

I've lost count of the number of times threads all over the internet over the last decade(s) have complained that their daemons army lacks tools because they opt to use 1/4 of the book. Why not better support that 1/4 of the book by stopping ham-fisting it's inclusion with 3 other .5's of an army, instead by placing them with thematically supportive units from the same patron.

[ZeroWolf]

2 hours ago, TheMawr said:

Though i must say another recent thing we know might indicate that while rolling into the cult codex might be true, it isnt necessarily  evidence for no daemons codex coming. ( though personally i expect there wont )

 

Its official that the Drukhari units for Ynnari are rolled into the aeldari codex, another thing in common with daemons is the extra detachment(s) online treatment. However i assume no one expects Drukhari to not get a codex. ( well i have enough material to make a FoilMawr YouTube video on the matter, but i dont expect it to be the case ;) ) 

I don't know much about Drukhari in general but how many units will be appearing in the Aeldari book? 

 

As an aside, I think we may get a Vashtor/Dark Mech 40k range at some point, but it could be a slow build things like a unit here and there till they're ready. Till then I'd expect such things in the undivided chaos space Marines book. 

 

Additionally, it's pointless saying they would have learned nothing about the Deathwatch/AoI thing when all of this was decided years ago (3 to be exact) so the production pipeline is set. Heck, the Emperor's Children book is probably (or already been) printed now. GW knows what's going on, we don't.

 

Best you can hope for is a course change late next edition

Edited December 17 by ZeroWolf
Addendum

[Mogger351]

2 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

I don't know much about Drukhari in general but how many units will be appearing in the Aeldari book? 

 

As an aside, I think we may get a Vashtor/Dark Mech 40k range at some point, but it could be a slow build things like a unit here and there till they're ready. Till then I'd expect such things in the undivided chaos space Marines book. 

Given the cultist chaos knights book, it might be that they end up in there. They can't keep adding knights to the book forever I guess.

[Lord_Ikka]

5 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

Given the cultist chaos knights book, it might be that they end up in there. They can't keep adding knights to the book forever I guess.

That is an interesting thought- maybe finally give the Knight Houses (of both factions) their lore-accurate supporting foot forces. My hope would be for some sort of cultist-equivalent for the Imps, as even though my personal Knight House is Mechanicus-aligned, I'd rather have some feudal levies than Skitarii. 

 

I do think the Daemons have one of two ways to go-

1. Full codex with the possibility of either four new mono-God detachments or some sort of Alliance of Hate thing where you have two Gods working together

2. Rolled into cult Legion codices, with Belakor either reprinted in all or given the Deathwatch treatment and having an online index. Cult Legion codex then gets 2-3 legion-specific detachments and then a daemon-focused one

[Ming the Merciless]

44 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

I don't know much about Drukhari in general but how many units will be appearing in the Aeldari book? 

 

Previously Haemonculus Coven units could'nt be taken. I would'nt expect to see Court of the Archon, Beastmaster (as they're both currently o.o.p.), Mandrakes, or Drazhar either.

 

[Lord_Ikka]

Hmm. Swing and a miss for the Leagues. If the index detachment didn't have the CP generation, or only had the original 1 enemy unit getting Judgement Tokens at battle start instead of the 4 it has now, the new one might have been interesting. As it is, including the Blast weapon restriction that seems designed to specifically not benefit Thunderkin, this detachment is dead in the water. I don't think its as bad as Nurgle's, but might be the second worst.

[phandaal]

7 minutes ago, Lord_Ikka said:

Hmm. Swing and a miss for the Leagues. If the index detachment didn't have the CP generation, or only had the original 1 enemy unit getting Judgement Tokens at battle start instead of the 4 it has now, the new one might have been interesting. As it is, including the Blast weapon restriction that seems designed to specifically not benefit Thunderkin, this detachment is dead in the water. I don't think its as bad as Nurgle's, but might be the second worst.

 

From a fluff standpoint, this is pretty boring as well. It is basically the same as the Index detachment. Dwarves want something real hard, so they make a special group to get it. Only this time they want it even more harder, so they make an even specialer group to get it.

 

Maybe this means the different 9th edition Leagues (which were actually interesting) are making their way to the Codex as detachments, and that is why they had to come up with something else for this extra detachment.

 

[Wormwoods]

5 minutes ago, phandaal said:

From a fluff standpoint, this is pretty boring as well.

I feel like that's partly due to them still being a pretty new faction, at least the modern Kin. Only so much fluff to pull from unless you're actually adding new stuff to their faction identity, and that's bound to happen in the codex, not a bonus detachment. 

[phandaal]

8 minutes ago, Wormwoods said:

I feel like that's partly due to them still being a pretty new faction, at least the modern Kin. Only so much fluff to pull from unless you're actually adding new stuff to their faction identity, and that's bound to happen in the codex, not a bonus detachment. 

 

Yeah. The first Codex, OP original rules aside, is actually great for just showing all the different ways the Leagues go about things. We have the exemplars, the warlike ones, the nomads, the stubborn isolationists, the wealthy ones, and it all makes sense for the way they set up the lore.

 

We do have one aspect that is specifically called out as a major league but not given rules, which is the Ghulo Industrial Complex. Focused on terraforming, resource extraction, and trade convoys, they were important enough to get their own shout-out in the Codex alongside other major leagues but were not given any special rules.

 

A lot of Votann fans would like to see them expanded upon, because people have been intrigued about them ever since their call-out in the Codex, but as you say maybe those things are reserved for the Codex.

[Lord Marshal]

I was expecting something Hernkyn-themed just because of how new the Yaegir models are, but I guess if these Grotmas Detachments aren't going to be in the codexes that was already reserved for print? 

 

I like Hearthguard a lot, fluff and visually, but this does seem a bit like putting butter onto white bread.