[40K] Hammer of Math: Grotmas 2025 Detachment Odds and Ends

Merry Grotmas! This year's event saw the release of six new Detachments for Warhmmer 40k, each with their own interesting quirks and abilities. In this article we'll be looking at each of the new Detachments and talking about the statistics and math behind some of their key rules.

Astra Militarum - Grizzled Company

We'll start here because some of the work has already been done! I wrote in detail about the Grizzled Company Detachment - specifically, the new Orders you can issue with Officers - last week. You can find that article here.

There is one other quirk we can look at, however: How good is the Detachment ability compared to the [LETHAL HITS] bonus you get from the Combined Arms Detachment?

Great Question! This one is a bit tricky to do, since it depends in part on whether you're getting the re-rolls to Wound, and what your hit and wound rolls would be. So let's cover the major bases here. I've assumed ten shots from a hypothetical gun in the charts below.

Essentially, Lethal Hits is always better, though the difference in value shrinks the better your hit and wound rolls become. With a 2+ to hit and a 2+ to wound, you're basically getting the same value out of re-rolling hit rolls of 1 as you are [LETHAL HITS]. On the other hand, the worse your Ballistic Skill and wound rolls, the more value you're going to get out of [LETHAL HITS], and the obvious implication here is that [LETHAL HITS] is just much better when you're firing Overwatch.

That said, the value here skews more toward vehicles and other high-strength threats, where re-rolling 1s to hit and wound will do as much for you as [LETHAL HITS]. The question then is whether the additional orders and benefits you can get from the Detachment outweigh the added value of [LETHAL HITS] and Reinforcements! from Combined Arms. And of course, you have to take into account that the [LETHAL HITS] ability in Combined Arms is dependent on your target - your REGIMENT units won't receive it when they're firing at the big heavy targets they'd need it against most, and your SQUADRON units only receive the benefit against VEHICLE and MONSTER targets.

Chaos Space Marines - Nightmare Hunt

The big thing to talk about with this Detachment is Leadership tests. Battle-shock (and Leadership) tests are taken on 2D6, which means they aren't uniformly distributed - there are more ways to roll a 7 on 2D6 than a 12, so rolling a 7 is much more likely to happen. Instead, they're Normally distributed. Here are the odds for each major Leadership test result on a 2D6:

So you can see that just putting Space Marines on a -1 and hoping for the best - Rolling less than a 7+ - isn't the best strategy, as they'll still pass more than half of the time. Your real sweet spots are either forcing a 9+ or making them take multiple tests - the odds of passing two 7+ tests with the same unit is only 34%, and the chance of passing two 8+ tests is only 18%. As a result, Battle-shock armies tend to rely on two things to make their dreams happen: Giving -2 Leadership to units and forcing them to take multiple tests per turn.

Blood Angels - Rage-Cursed Onslaught

The big question here is "how does re-rolling 1s to Wound and +1/+2 Attacks on the Charge compare to Liberator Assault Group's +2S and +1 Attack?"

This is another one where the value of +2 Strength vs. +1 to Wound will depend on what your target's Toughness is and the wound roll you're rocking. Re-rolling 1s to wound will get better as your wound roll improves, and there are just plenty of situations where +2 Strength won't matter; Going from S8 to S10 against a T4 target or T12 target, for example.

In most cases, the ideal scenario is that +2 Strength translates into +1 to Wound, so let's just assume that here and take five marines with Chainswords, making 25 attacks on the charge which hit on 3s. In the case of the Rage-Cursed +1 Attack scenario below, they'll be making 30.

Obviously when you're starting on a 2+ to wound you aren't getting any value out of Liberator Assault Group's +2 Strength bonus regardles and so Rage-Cursed Onslaught wins. However even going from a 3+ to a 2+ to wound makes the Liberator bonus better than what you get from Rage-Cursed Onslaught without being Battle-shocked, though the improvement is marginal until you hit the 5+ to wound side of things. This is where +1 to wound can be even better than the additional attack, though marginally so at the 5+ to wound point.

That said, you won't always be turning +2 Strength into +1 to wound; it'll depend on your weapon strength and target's toughness, and +1 Attack is as good or better in most situations, making Rage-Cursed Onslaught a winner head-to-head if you don't mind being Battle-shocked. Otherwise they're pretty comparable. Of course, the big value you get out of Rage-Cursed Onslaught is the ability to fight on death via a Stratagem, making the army more viable against other melee armies.

Aeldari - Serpent's Brood

The new Harlequins Detachment gives a large number of units the [SUSTAINED HITS 1] special rule, which in statistical terms is the same as giving them +1 to hit. That said, there are some interesting quirks here - Lhykis' ability to set up Critical Hits on a 5+ is keyworded to AELDARI units, so she can trigger this ability, in which case you're getting the functional equivalent of +2 to hit, with some caveats that it's technically better since +2 to hit on a unit with a 3+ to hit or better is wasted.

Space Wolves - Saga of the Great Wolf

Saga of the Great Wolf gives you a huge toolbox of abilities. One of the key ones is the Ferocious Strike Hunting Pack, which lets you give your army either [LETHAL HITS] or [SUSTAINED HITS 1] in melee for a round. We've been over this before, but the break point for LETHAL vs. SUSTAINED is at 4+ to wound - your expected values are the same for either choice when you're wounding on a 4+, with a higher potential upside from Sustained hits. At 5+ to wound or worse, take [LETHAL HITS]. At 3+ to wound or better, take [SUSTAINED HITS].

Emperor's Children - Court of the Phoenician

The big draw here is +1 Strength and +1 AP, which help an army that can sometimes struggle into tougher opponents. It's generally better than the buffs you get in Peerless Bladesmen or Coterie, though those give you fewer hoops to jump through and Coterie's combined buffs offer more value.

Given the points increase to the Winged Daemon Prince, players are now more likely to consider the standard Daemon Prince, who gives friendly units within 6" who charged that turn +1 to their AP on melee attacks, letting him potentially hit AP-4 on the charge, and with 7 attacks at S10 if you give him the Spiritsliver Enhancement. This is just kind of generically good if you aren't going into a target with an invulnerable save.

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