Warhammer 40K: Huron Blackheart’s New Detachments – How Good Are They?
We just got a brand new 40K unit, Huron and his Masters of the Maelstrom, plus a couple of new detachments. Let’s break these down and see how good they really are on the tabletop.
It’s an excellent day to be a Chaos Space Marine player. We got a brand new unit to mess with Huron and his Masters of the Maelstrom. We are getting a few other units that seem good as well plus we get two brand new detachments to look at. Both of them actually seem pretty good and while one is a pretty slam dunk of a choice the other might have some fun and interesting bits of play as players figure out which is better. Let’s do a breakdown of each one.
Renegade Warband Detachment
The first one I want to talk about and will probably be one of the better choices for CSM players out there is the new Chaos Gladius – wait I mean the Renegade Warband detachment. This is a detachment designed to feel like a Space Marine detachment that is only slight attracted to Spikes, Spoils, and the Chaos Gods. It is built up to match with all those Space Marines that feel Disenfranchised amounts the current Codex Astartes and want to dabble in some darkly emotional haircuts and hating on their dad.
I told you this was a Gladius variant and it really feels like it. The overall rule for the detachment grants all your ranged weapons Assault, you can pick an enemy unit to allow your army (excepted the Damned units) rerolls to hit against the army, and finally you can take a Battleshock test to gain the ability to Fallback/Adv/Shoot/Charge. The wording on it allows you to gain the ability even if you are Battleshocked so while it could hurt you by losing an objective, not having stratagems, or losing some models in a fallback it is still a powerful set of rules.
This is a powerful set of rules you get for this while losing Dark Pacts. That can hurt but being able to reroll to hit with a bunch of fast moving jerks seems like a good trade off. The enhancements also look very useful as well with 3 that seem to be slam-dunks and one being useful if you plan on taking Terminators. The first one lets you pick another unit to gain rerolls to hit against if you kill the first one. This seems like a must take. You get an Eyes of the Hunter which allows you to ignore cover which seems good for specific builds. There is a Terminator upgrade that allows the unit who decides to fallback to gain rerolls to hit for both Melee and shooting. Finally we have one that gives the bearer and his unit +1 to Advance and Charge rolls which rounds out to a sweet +2 if you are going with an aggressive unit.
There are 6 Stratagems and a few on our preview doc are missing CP points. I would expect them to be updated at the time of release and they all feel like a 1CP set up. There is a 1CP gain either Sustained Hits 1 or Lethal Hits one for the shooting/fight phase for a unit called Never Outgunned. It’s always nice to have a pocket Dark Pact. You gain a +1 to wound versus your Vendetta unit called Vengeful Destruction. Undying Hatred is a 4+ fight on death stratagem. You even get a sticky objective stratagem, a surge stratagem, and even a +1 AP stratagem as well. I told you this was the CSM Gladius and it feels like everything is useful in this option.
Hurons Raiders Detachment
The second detachment is a Huron focused detachment called Huron’s Raiders. It is also a good detachment designed to give your MSU style of play a lot of power to quickly move and bully your opponents. This one lets you keep Dark Pacts and it also gives you two extra rules you can choose from during a game turn for your Heretic Astartes Infantry. If Huron happens to see the unit they get to use both rules. The first rule is Huron’s Elite that gives the unit a +1 to hit. The second is Mobile Raiders and grants the unit the ability to fallback/shoot/charge. Both of these are pretty good and allow your models to quickly shift, move, and hit like the Raiders they are.
There are 4 enhancements and all are interesting. The first is Voice of the Tyrant and grants the bearer and his unit both of the Detachments abilities all the time. The next one is Raid Leader that lets units that get out of a transport after it has made a Normal move the ability to charge. Dread Reputation grants an Aura of Battleshock if the bearer is set up on the battlefield. We also have Eager for Bloodshed that grants the bearer the infiltrate Keyword. I really like Eager for Bloodshed and Raid Leader due to just giving you a lot more room to get mixed into the opponent quicker.
The Stratagem suite is also very powerful as well. You have a Hardened Killers strat to boost up your Damned units by giving you 1 of 3 choices to help their shooting or save abilities. You get a the needed Advance and Charge stratagem as well. You get an Auto 6″ advance stratagem which helps you move very quickly. The 1 CP add 1 attack to a unit feels insanely strong with the ability to still use Dark Pacts to have an explosive turn. You get a surge move as well for a unit and finally a stratagem that lets you go back into reserves if you are near a table edge.
The Verdict
I think both of these detachments are really strong for CSM. They give you a ton of options to outplay your opponent and while I think the Renegade Warband detachment is the best one for me it still is hard to ignore how good Huron’s Raiders can be. Is this going to be the time for a return of the mean ole MSU CSM armies coming out? The new Red Raiders unit is very powerful especially with their Lord choice. You are going to have a ton of models close to the enemy quickly which can be such a nightmare for anyone to chew through.
Death to the False Emperor!
