Detachment Review: Wrath of the Rock

Hello battle brethren! As we're struggling with our near-rock bottom win rate, we've been hoping for some help from Games Workshop. Other than giving Lion Dad some pretty significant tweaks, what we got was a new detachment - Wrath of the Rock. It's not what I'd have done, but it's not nothing. So, let's take a look at this detachment and see what we think about it.

Detachment Rule: Dutiful Tenacity

After the Lion's Blade's detachment rule with all its terms and conditions, this one is nice, simple, and pretty far reaching. All attacks targeting Infantry or Mounted units with a Strength higher than the target unit's Toughness subtract 1 from the Wound roll. That's pretty nice. Easy to remember, easy to understand, easy to explain to opponents, and a net increase in durability, particularly for units like Deathwing Knights, who generally aren't being targeted by chaff-chewing weapons. 

Enhancements

Tempered in Battle (10 points): 6" aura of reroll Battle-shock and Leadership tests. Not bad for the points. I wouldn't build around it, but I might use that last 10 points on it.

Ancient Weapons (25 points): buffs the bearer's melee weapons. +2 to Strength, -1 to AP, +1 to Damage. That's pretty boss, but 25 points is a hefty price tag. 

Deathwing Assault (15 points) The bearer's unit can be put on the table via Deep Strike in your Movement phase Turns 1-3, regardless of mission rules. Really, this is 15 point to Deep Strike Turn 1, as I've yet to see a mission rule denying Deep Strike later than that. That said, the way I interpret the wording of the rule, it doesn't allow Rapid Ingress Turn 1, as it specifies being set up in your Movement phase.  I'd have rather it be worded like Hunter's Instincts from the Stormlance, where the ingressing unit treats the turn as 1 higher, but we got what we got. 

Lord of the Ravenwing (10 points): Allows the Ravenwing character's attached unit to reroll Advance and Charge rolls. Heck yes I'd pay 10 points for this!

Stratagems

Inescapable Justice (2 CP)
Can be played immediately after your Oath of Moment character is destroyed.
Is played on an Adeptus Astartes Character unit on the table
Allows you to select a unit within 12" of that character to be a new Oath of Moment target till the start of your next Command Phase

My immediate thought was "Holy crap!" We've all seen how powerful double Oath is in the Ultramarines-Guilliman lists. Having it as s strat seems really spicy. That said, there are some opportunity costs to this strat. The first is the obvious one - 2 CP to play it. That's not a small expenditure. The second may be more significant though - it has to be played through a Character unit that's within 12" of the unit you'd like to be your second Oath target. That's a pretty limiting condition - not so much so that it's useless, but enough that it's going to take work to use well.

Lion's Will (1 CP)
Played in the Command Phase
Play on an Astartes unit in Engagement Range of enemy unit(s)
Adds +1 OC to models in the unit, and Greenwing Infantry units gain +1 to Hit whenever they make an attack till the start of your next Command Phase.

This comes right after Inescapable Justice on the strats page, so it seems a little underwhelming by comparison, but after giving it some thought, I think it's got more play than it seems at first. For starters, the When line doesn't say "Your Command phase", it just says "Command Phase". So, you could have, say, a unit of Deathwing Knights smash something, consolidate into a unit on an opponent's objective, and then add to their OC to flip the objective before they score it. Also, I noticed that the line about +1 to Attack rolls doesn't specify melee attacks, just "makes an attack". If you've got some way to have a unit Fall Back and shoot, they get +1 to those attacks. Unfortunately, outside of attaching Lieutenants to units, I don't see how to pull that off in this detachment, but it's something to bear in mind. There are still Pistol attacks after all.

Armour of Contempt (1 CP)

We all know what it does, and we all know it's solid. It seems like it's more significant in this detachment because the detachment rule is already shaving off a good chunk of an opponent's offensive output.

Tactical Mastery (1 CP)
Played in the Movement phase
Play on an Astartes unit
Allows the target unit to shoot and charge after it makes an Advance move. A Ravenwing unit can also shoot and charge after it makes a Fall Back move.

I like how this strat is designed. It has an effect that can benefit any unit in an army, but it's got an extra benefit for a specific wing of the army. I wish the Unforgiven Task Force had Enhancements and Strat written like this instead of written to give additional benefits to Battle-shocked units.

Also, this is pretty good. Being able to have units do things after an Advance or Fall Back move is one of the keys to a good detachment, and while this isn't as good as having it in the detachment rule, it's there for when you need a particular unit to make a play. I'd say it also combos well with the Lord of the Ravenwing enhancement.

Relics of the Dark Age (1 CP)
Play in your Shooting Phase
Targets an Astartes Infantry or Mounted unit
Ranged weapons in the unit gain +2 Strength till the end of the phase

This is another strat that made be go "Hot dang!" when I first read it. I'm sure anyone who played 9th ed really misses the Weapons of the Dark Age strat. I think this is as close to having it come back as we can reasonably expect. When I read it, I immediately thought of Ravenwing Knights. That said, I've seen some comments online about using it on Desloators or Eradicators. Personally, I'm dubious about Desolaters, but Eradicators is another story. Taking their Melta weapons from Strength 9 to Strength 11 will boost them from wounding the vast majority of Monsters and Vehicles on 5+ rolls to 3+ rolls. With their built-in Everything rerolls against those targets, I think you can reasonably put a unit of 6 of them in Strat Reserve, have them pop out, and position them such that they can target 2 units and likely slag them both, all without even needing them to be Oathed.

I mean, I'm still going to use it on Ravenwing Knights, but that is definitely a play worth building for.

Leonine Aggression
Play at the end of opponent's Charge Phase
Target one Astartes unit within 3" of enemy unit(s), or a Deathwing unit within 6" of such units
Allows the target unit to declare a charge into the qualifying unit(s), but sans Charge bonus for the turn

When I first read this strat, I thought, "Oh, that's nice, a second Heroic Intervention", but no, I didn't read it adequately. This is more like the best strat from the Lion's Blade detachment, only modified so it's not limited to Deathwing units. Again, it's got the terms and conditions that can benefit any unit, but grant extra benefit to the thematically-appropriate Wing. Also, you get to wait till the end of your opponent's Charge phase before committing, and you don't have to charge an enemy unit that made a charge - proximity is the only activating condition. So, no sucker is going to flip an objective on you by sauntering a squishy Battleline unit onto an objective you have a unit of Deathwing Knights on.

Also, this strat is cheaper than the Lion's Blade's Inescapable Wrath, costing only 1 CP to Inescapable Wrath's 2. That makes it much easier to play.

My Thoughts

For starters, I'm a little concerned that Games Workshop looked at our underwater win rates and responded with some upgrades for Lion Dad and a new detachment. I'd have rather seen more buffs to our bespoke units - specifically Ravenwing Knights. I'd really like Ravenwing Knights to be 4 wounds, because at 3 wounds they just die to easily to too many attacks. Also, GW has not exactly filled me with confidence with their previous efforts at Dark Angels detachments. I think the only one that places with much consistency is the Company of Hunters, and that's still pretty infrequent compared to the Gladius and Stormlance.

That said, this appears to be a much better thought out effort than the Lion's Blade, whose detachment rule had too many terms and conditions, and really is only going to work if you gotcha-move an opponent with it. This detachment's rule is much more universal and is going to benefit the majority of units we're likely to put on the table - and certainly the majority of our bespoke units. Opponents tend to pick up our units with the weapons that wound ours on 3's and 2's. Reducing that to 4's and 3's is a significant durability buff.

The suite of stratagems seems pretty good too. They definitely lean towards offense, with Inescapable Justice and Relics of the Dark Age being straight-up offensive boosts, and Leonine Aggression granting out-of-sequence Charging, but with the detachment rule being a solid defensive buff, the strats can lean into offense. It's rounded out with Tactical Mastery granting some freedom of action, and Lion's Will a handy tactical option. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb by predicting this is going to be the best bespoke detachment we've received thus far. 

Is this detachment going to perform as well or better for us as the Gladius or Stormlance? That I'm a little more reluctant to predict. If I had to guess, I'd say no for the Gladius, maybe for the Stormlance. The Gladius's doctrines and strats support a well-rounded army quite well, and that's probably our best build. Our undisputed best unit, Deathwing Knights, are a slow assault unit that's hard as nails and hits like truck, and the Stormlance gives them the most freedom of action of any detachment we have access to. That said, maybe the additional defense of the Wrath detachment will counterbalance the additional action freedom of the Stormlance. And, I suspect it will be a more forgiving detachment. The Stormlance seems to get its fair share of high-scoring lists but low win rates. Wrath lists may score higher in overall win rates.

My Initial List

I may swap some things out before I have a Wrath list actually hit the table, but at this point, this is what I'm thinking of trying for the first time out of the gate.

Rocky Wrath Flavour 1.0

Azrael - Warlord
Sammael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Lord of the Ravenwing
Heavy Intercessor Squad: 5 chonky bolter boys
Intercessor Squad: 5 bolter boys
Ballistus Dreadnought
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome plasma biker boys
Ravenwing Darkshroud
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Sternguard Veteran Squad: 10 awesome bolter boys

The idea I'm working with is to set up a go turn for the Ravenwing Knights Turn 2 by having the Ballistus and the Heavy Intercessors Advance out onto midfield objectives Turn 1, with both units in the protective bubble of the Darkshroud, and ideally the Darkshroud itself behind terrain where it can't be shot. Opponents will be obliged to try and get those initial units off the objectives, which should enable my two Ravenwing Knight units to pounce, ideally obliterating two key opposing units with a combination of Relics of the Dark Age and Inescapable Justice. I'm counting on being able to use Tactical Mastery as well to enable the Black Knights led by the Ravenwing Command Squad to Advance, shoot, and charge, so I'll have to save up CP to set up that turn. As a follow up wave, I've got the Deathwing Knights coming in to bust heads and be a pain to shift. Azrael and the Sternguard are there to deal with problems that the other units might struggle with. The Intercessors are my backfield objective minders, and I've got the two squads of Scouts for uppy-downy scoring. The Darkshroud can help with that too, as it just has to exist in a space for me to derive the benefit from it. There's no reason it can't both do that and do actions for me as needed.

I really wanted to include a Captain somehow, for discounted stratagems (particularly discounted IJ), but I just couldn't make that happen. It seemed like he'd be too slow attached to Deathwing Knights to pull off a good IJ any earlier than the 3rd turn attached to DWKs. I considered a Jump Captain attached to JPIs, or even a Jump Captain solo, but I felt the need for a first wave that would oblige opponents to commit some fairly serious units to shifting, so I had to cut him.

I also really wanted to include a Storm Speeder Thunderstrike, but it wound up cut for points as well. It's not durable enough to be a good first wave unit, and it's own firepower is too underwhelming to make me happy about putting it on the table.
Deathwing Knights.

That, honored battle brethren, is my first take on the Wrath of the Rock detachment. When I get a chance to play it, I'll give you an update on how it worked for me. Until then, do some theory-crafting and give it a try for yourselves. May you earn glorious victory with it. For the Lion!