Warhammer 40K: Top 3 Bastion Task Force Marine Battleline Units
Goatboy here and the new 40K Marine Bastion Task Force detachment is spicy Let’s look at the top 3 Battleline options you could use with this detachment to power up your game.
Goatboy here and the new Bastion Strike Force detachment for Space Marines does some interesting things. This is one of the biggest pushes to make Battleline matter in the game right now and while it isn’t helping any of the other armies it just might push Marine players to look at something other than Gladius as their Detachment of choice. Let’s look at the top 3 Battleline options you could use with this detachment to power up some nonsense.
Bastion Task Force Basics
This Bastion Task Force does 3 things for your Battleline unit. The first one is giving all Battleline the ability to advance/fallback/shoot/charge. This is a whole slew of abilities all wrapped up in the Battleline keyword. Then this detachment also gives the ability to advance/fallback/action which is a unique rule for this detachment. This lets you always get a chance to score with your basic Space Marine bad boys. The final ability should help those armies that don’t get access to Oath of Moment (Cough… Black Templar) and it’s called Auspex scan. It lets other Battleline units reroll hit rolls of 1 if the unit they are targeting was shot at by another Battleline unit. Each unit can only Auspex scan one unit so you can’t have a unit shoot 10 targets and scan them all.
This all combines up to make a very fast force that will constantly be moving and shooting you. It almost feels video game like when you see how the Space Marine game loves to show fast moving super heroes punching aliens in the face. All of this is yours to utilize if your unit has the Battleline keyword or the character joining them has a relic that grants that unit the keyword. Right now will just talk about default unit with Battleline because as soon as you combine options with an Enhancement you start to get some seriously nutty little monster units.
3. Black Templars – Crusader Squad
I talked about how this detachment can give pseudo Oath abilities to armies that don’t have it. The Black Templar Crusader squad is something that would love to get all the movement options and abilities to do damage. You could easily see a blob of 20 with reactive moves, Lethal Hits from a character, and other fun combo piece options with other joined leaders. This is a pretty big unit to deal with and would be a problem for a lot of enemies to chew thru.
2. Space Marines – Heavy Intercessor Squad
Will we finally see armies of these guys on the table top? Heavy Intercesors are sitting at Toughness 6, have 3 Wounds, and a decent shooting platform. They might not move as fast but getting advance/shoot/charge will help them do some damage. You throw in a Captain in Gravis Armor to be a nice punching platform for the unit and watch as they move around the table and cause headaches to your enemy. They also take up a ton of real estate as well with their larger bases and bad attitudes.
1. Space Wolves – Blood Claws
This is another blob unit that you can boost up with some characters and other fun options. Space Wolves Blood Claws already have Advance/Charge but gaining the ability to action as well as fallback and do things is pretty amazing for a giant unit. They can get mixed in and start causing movement problems for the enemy, back up to get somewhere else, and charge again to get any bonuses they might want to get. It is a lot to deal with when giant units of angry wolf based nonsense comes into your army angry.
Next time I’ll talk about some interesting units that can get Battleline, as I think that is where the Bastion Task Force detachment really starts to shine. It is an enhancement upgrade called Hero of the Chapter and it is something that might not have been fully thought about by GW. I again wonder if there are just too many Marine options lately without a lot of balance being looked at when building these things.
For the Emperor!
