Detachment Review: The Inner Circle Task Force

 

Hello, battle brothers! To round out my review of the supplement detachments, here is an article about the Inner Circle Task Force! 

The Inner Circle Task Force is meant to represent the hammer of the Dark Angels legion chapter, the Deathwing, and I wish I could tell you it's a better detachment than the Space Marine 1rst Company Task Force, but unfortunately statistics do not bear that out. According to the Meta Dashboard on Stat-check.com, since its introduction the ICTF has a 32% win rate, whereas over the same period the vanilla 1rst Company Task Force has a 43% win rate

What went so wrong with the ICTF? I suppose it starts with the detachment rule, Vowed Target. Granting +1 to Wound is a powerful ability (it's what makes the Storm Speeder Thunderstrike sexy), but the terms and conditions on Vowed Target are very limiting. Only Deathwing Infantry can gain the benefit, and they only get it on enemy units on a particular objective chosen in the Command Phase. Okay, sure, it helps a player take an objective, but in order to win a game, you have to figure on holding at least 3 objectives a turn for at least 3 turns. The backfield objective is usually a gimme, and you'll probably hold the Vowed objective, but there are typically 3 midfield objectives, and a smart opponent will probably just not contest the Vowed objective and concentrate on holding the other 2. Deathwing Infantry are slow, so jumping from objective to objective is going to be challenging, all the more so if an opponent screens well.

Let's move on to the Enhancements. All of the Enhancements have the caveat "Deathwing models only", which doesn't come as much surprise, but it does limit who can take them. You won't be buying a Gravis Captain and slapping one of these onto him. 

First up is Champion of the Deathwing, and it's okay. It grants the bearer's unit Lethal Hits, and within range of the Vowed objective critical hits score on 5+. Since we don't have the Strikemaster anymore (boo), Champion of the Deathwing would let another character function like a Lieutenant in the Fight phase, which is some nice utility for the price. Unfortunately, it's only in the Fight phase. Terminators' shooting needs the help from getting Lethal Hits more than their melee does. I wish it dispensed with the bonus on the Vowed Objective and just straight up granted Lethal Hits in both phases. That'd probably be worth 20-30 points.

Eye of the Unseen is marginal. It grants you a chance to gain back CP every time you play a stratagem on the bearer's unit. On paper, that sounds pretty good, but it comes with the opportunity cost of taking up the space another Enhancement might occupy. More to the point, if you're trying to make the ICTF work, you're probably using Azrael attached to a squad of Hellblasters or Sternguard, and as you can only get 1 bonus CP per game round, Eye of the Unseen becomes redundant with Azrael on the table.

Singular Will, on the other hand, is great. It grants the bearer's unit an additional 3" to Pile in and Consolidate movements. Deathwing are slow and are going to struggle to get around the table. This helps at least 1 unit move a lot faster, getting better positioning when assaulting and being more likely to reach another unit or an objective afterwards. If you're playing the ICTF, this is a must-have.

Deathwing Assault, I'm not sold on. You're basically paying 30 points for the privilege of deep striking a Deathwing unit 1rst turn, and while that sounds attractive (particularly combined with the Relic Teleportarium strat), in my experience bringing a unit out of reserve too early is usually a mistake. You often wind up having to pick a bad spot for them to come in, and don't derive much more benefit from deep striking them than you would have done by having them walk across the table. Plus, if you go first, you're likely to struggle to find a good place to put a unit with the footprint size of even a 5 man Deathwing Terminator unit, much less one with an attached character or a 10-man unit, even with Relic Teleportarium. I don't think it's worth 30 points. I'm not even sure it would be worth 10 points.

As an aside: it makes me sad that the Pennant of Remembrance isn't in this detachment instead of the Unforgiven Task Force. It could have given the 6+ FNP, improve to a 4+ on the Vowed objective. The missed opportunity is staggering. Can you imagine how tanky that would have made even a 5-man Deathwing Terminator Squad? I'd be tempted to attach an Ancient with it to a Deathwing Knights Squad and have that hold an objective. Why can't Deathwing have nice things?

Let's move on to the stratagems. I'm going to gloss over Armour of Contempt because we all know it's good. That brings us to Martial Mastery, which is okay. It's a Fight phase buff, granting a Deathwing Infantry unit rerolls of wound rolls of 1/full rerolls on the Vowed objective. Again, though, where Deathwing could really use the help is in the Shooting Phase. Having this only be targetable on Deathwing Infantry, you'd think it could have been usable in the Shooting phase as well. 

Duty Unto Death is what you'd expect - a fights-on-death strat. It's cheap at 1 CP because models that die fight on death on a 4+, with a +1 to the roll on the Vowed objective. I'd have rather it cost 2 CP and was automatic like the Gladius' Only In Death Does Duty End, but then we couldn't have had that bonus effect on the Vowed objective. Ugh.

Relic Teleportarium you'd really have to build around to use more than once per game, but even only that once per game it's apt to be worthwhile, and it might be good enough to be worth the build around. For its 1 CP price, it grants a deep striking Deathwing unit the ability to come onto the table with only 3" of clearance from enemy units instead of the typical 9". I'm picturing using it to drop Deathwing Knights into an opponent's backfield. If you wait until Turn 2 or 3 for your opponent to disperse out of his deployment zone, and then drop them in on top of his backfield objective holder (which are usually pretty weedy units), then you're definitely going to give your opponent problems. It might even be worth putting 2 units of DWKs in reserve and dropping them in on subsequent turns. Even knowing you can do it can make opponents play more conservatively, which is apt to make it easier for you take and hold midfield objectives. 

Dang. I'm actually kind of tempted to give this a try.

Actually, another point to consider is that Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs are among the Codex: Space Marines units that get the Deathwing keyword when in a Dark Angels army. The eligibility for Relic Teleportarium does not actually specify teleporting, only Deep Strike, which Vanguard have, so jump pack Vanguard are eligible targets for the strat. A unit of 5 of them only costs 105 points. Of course, they aren't near as tanky as Deathwing Knights are, but you could have 2 units of them for the same price as 1 unit of DWKs.

Moving on. Wrath of the Lion. Impact hit mortal wounds against a unit charged by another unit. Wounds on a 4+, with +1 to the roll on the Vowed target. Capped at 3 mortal wounds. I'm underwhelmed. Might be okay if it was a Battle Tactic and you could play it free through a Captain, but it's an Epic Deed strat instead. 

Finally, there's Unmatched Fortitude, a Battle Tactic strat you use in your opponent's shooting phase to debuff their shooting at the Deathwing Infantry unit you target this strat on, Effectively, it inflicts a -1 penalty on the to-Wound rolls for any guns that are Strength 6 or higher shot against the unit you played it on. That seems pretty good, and it does kind of hearken back to the 9th ed perma-Transhuman rule. It being a Battle Tactic also opens up the possibility of getting it for free through a Captain. 

With all of the Inner Circle Task Force's rules keying off the Deathwing keyword, I think it's important to discuss what gets the Deathwing keyword. In addition to the obvious units, any Land Raiders (any variant), Repulsor (any variant), or Dreadnought gain the Deathwing keyword, as do as do Bladeguard (including the Ancient), Sternguard, and Vanguard Veterans. In addition to that, all of the Dark Angels named characters can confer the Deathwing keyword on any unit they join, and any generic Space Marine characters gain the Deathwing keyword as long as they are attached to a Deathwing unit. That does grant more options than just the Terminators, Dreadnoughts, and Land Raiders of Deathwing armies of old. However, a lot of units that are top tier in other detachments can't derive any benefit from the detachment rule or most of the Enhancements and Stratagems. For that matter, the only strats that can be played on the Deathwing vehicles are Armour of Contempt and Duty Unto Death, and you really wouldn't spend a CP to get a 4+ roll to have a Dreadnought fight on death unless you were either swimming in CP or it was a make-or-break moment for the game.

So, why does the Inner Circle Task Force perform so poorly for its players? I think there are a number of reasons. For starters, the detachment rule only functions against units on objectives. An opponent that knows this can simply keep key units off the objectives and send less important ones to hold them. This obliges the Dark Angels player to either take the objectives (thus being set up to get ganked on their opponent's turn), or go after the key units, but in doing so both leave the objectives in their opponents' control and not get any benefit from their detachment rule. 

On top of that, the list heavily incentivizes using Terminators. Terminators are best in assault, but they're slow. Mobility wins games, but Terminators aren't going anywhere very fast. Deep striking only helps so much - you'd better be pretty happy with where your Terminators are once you put them on the table. I think mobility may explain why the ICTF has a worse win rate than the First Company Task Force. The vanilla Marines detachment has the Orbital Teleportarium strat, which lets you pick up Terminator units at the end of you're opponent's Fight phase and then redeploy them via deep strike the following turn, granting Terminators a degree of mobility the ICTF doesn't give.

Also, the detachment makes you want to play big chonky units of Terminators, and Terminators are expensive. Just a few units of them can eat up a big percentage of your points, leaving you hard pressed to take all the support and utility units you might want. I imagine that can lead to it being tough for ICTF players to score secondary objectives, as they might not have the utility units to commit to them, and a savvy opponent may make it a point to deprive you of them early. Then you have to choose between scoring primary points or secondary points, which is not a good position to be in.

In addition, none of the enhancements or stratagems (with the exception of Armour of Contempt) benefit non-Deathwing units. That leaves out a number of the best vanilla Space Marine units, and for some of them (such as Aggressors and Eradicators), there's no way to confer the Deathwing keyword onto them. It would have been nice if one of the enhancements conferred the Deathwing keyword onto a character that doesn't inherently have it. That way, we could have given Deathwing to a Gravis or Jump Pack character and had a little more means to include meaningful firepower in the list.

Finally, Terminator shooting is weak, and none of the enhancements or stratagems do anything to buff it. If a squad of Terminators could get Lethal hits on their storm bolters, that might help make their shooting a little more meaningful. Azrael and a squad of Hellblasters helps, but clearly not enough, and the Hellblasters themselves don't benefit much from being in the detachment either.

Thus, tragically, the Inner Circle Task Force is a poor detachment. It's got a couple spicy mechanics, but they are not enough to make up for the overall weakness of the detachment's design. It's really frustrating to see how badly Games Workshop designed the detachment when we can compare it to the Ork Bully Boy detachment, which is looking very strong and fun for Ork players. It shows that Games Workshop CAN design a fun and strong elite detachment. They just didn't do it for us. We deserved better, and the Deathwing deserved better.