Detachment Focus: Mercenary Oathband

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific Detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Huron's Marauders Detachment for the Leagues of Votann.

The Leagues of Votann codex arrived to little fanfare last fall, but did a wonderful job of expanding the range of units available to pilots. From here, we now see their first post-codex Detachment (Hearthband was released prior to the codex but received a welcome rewrite shortly after the codex released) in Mercenary Oathband, a flexible Detachment that brings fresh life to the army.

Thanks to Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of these rules. We were also provided with a preview of the Munitorum Field Manual update, but any points referenced are subject to change until published on Warhammer Community and/or the Warhammer 40k App.

Detachment Overview

Mercenary Oathband throws out the careful planning around Yield Points (YP), Hostile Acquisition, and Fortify Takeover and instead gives you complete control over the army rule while also allowing you to bank large amounts of YP and then dump them into stratagems and enhancements on the “go” turn. The stratagems and enhancements play well with most of the current Votann range, and the mainstay units you’ve come to expect (Einhyr Hearthguard, Cthonian Beserks, Brokhyr Thunderkyn) will find equally common use in this new way to play the army.

Detachment Rule: Ruthless Reinvestment

Hernkyn Yaegirs Kill Team. Credit: John from Can You Roll A Crit?

Your Leagues of Votann units do not have the Hostile Acquisition or Fortify Takeover abilities except as described in this rule. At the start of the battle, your Leagues of Votann units have the Hostile Acquisition ability. At the end of your Command phase, you can spend 3YP. If you do, Leagues of Votann units from your army lose the Hostile Acquisition ability and gain the Fortify Takeover ability, or vice versa.

This Detachment ability is very curious - nearly every other Votann Detachment requires careful planning by the pilot to either stay in Hostile Acquisition by keeping YP below 7 or rushing to Fortify Takeover by hitting the 7YP breakpoint as quickly as possible. This Detachment throws this out and gives direct control over the army rule to the pilot. With fairly minimal effort, the Kin can be in Fortify Takeover going 1st in the first battle round, something not achievable beforehand.

CURIE RULES NOTE: While reviewing this Detachment, some GH folks mentioned that there may be some confusion about how this Detachment rule interacts with the army rule. There was some concern that it could be interpreted that you would not be in either Fortify Takeover or Hostile Acquisition as in the army rule both of these drop off at the start of your Command Phase, while the trigger for switching is at the end of your Command Phase in Mercenary Oathband. However, this is not the case as the Mercenary Oathband rule explicitly says to ignore this and you only have Hostile Acquisition or Fortify Takeover from the Detachment rule - you just reference the Army Rule to determine what each does and use the Detachment rule to determine which mode your army is in. Carry on and seek out resources for the kin!

Enhancements

As (almost) always, Mercenary Oathband has four enhancements that revolve around generating and exploiting Yield Points (YP) to control the battlefield.

• Mercenary Prospector (20 points) – Kahl model only. Each time an enemy is destroyed by the bearer’s unit, gain 2YP. Very interesting enhancement as Kahl’s already gain 1YP each time their unit destroys an enemy unit (this ability is limited to once per phase, while Mercenary Prospector has no such restriction).
• Metaphysical Brokerage (20 points) – Memnyr Strategist model only. At the end of your turn, if the bearer is on the battlefield and you gained fewer than 3YP this turn, you gain an amount of YP equal to the difference. Quite the disappointing enhancement as you already gain 1YP for holding your home objective and 1YP for the Memnyr Strategist being on said objective. If you kill anything with a Kahl or happen to control an objective in No Man’s Land, this enhancement does nothing.
• Etacarn SB9 Targeting Implant (15 points) – Leagues of Votann model only. Each time the bearer’s unit makes an attack, re-roll a hit roll of 1. Each time the bearer’s unit is selected to shoot or fight, you can spend 3YP. If you do, until the end of the phase, each time a model in the bearer’s unit makes an attack, that attack has the SUSTAINED HITS 1 ability. Absolutely amazing enhancement - this turns Thunderkyn up to 11, and is a solid buff to Hearthguard (though they already have hit re-rolls of 1 in shooting).
• Asset Manipulator (25 points) – Leagues of Votann model only. At the start of the Command phase, you can spend 3YP. If you do, until the end of the turn, while an enemy unit is within 3” of the bearer, subtract 1 from the Objective Control characteristic of models in that enemy unit. Solid enhancement, but the YP tax to make it do anything at all doesn’t feel great. No minimum rider on the OC manipulation makes this quite the interesting enhancement, as OC is one of the few characteristics that can be reduced to 0 unless otherwise stated by the ability.

Stratagems

Leagues of Votann Kahl. Credit: Caelyn Ellis

The stratagems in this Detachment provide a suite of output buffs as well as mobility tricks that will help the Kin extract the optimum amount of resources from any battlefield.

• Auxiliary Contract (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Your shooting or the fight phase - give one Infantry or Mounted unit Precision on their weapons. This is a very powerful stratagem as there’s no other criteria - it’s the same cost as Epic Challenge, but affects the entire unit rather than a single character model. Hearthguard with Precision in shooting or Cthonian Beserks doing the same in melee is a very entertaining thing to threaten your opponent with (hide yo technos)!
• Optimal Expenditure (Wargear, 1 CP) – In the fight phase, you can give an Infantry unit re-roll hit and wound rolls of 1. If you spend 3YP, you instead re-roll hit rolls of 1 and re-roll the wound roll. Cthonian Beserk lovers rejoice - here’s your chance to smooth out the variability in your melee activations!
• Grand Artifice (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Grants the eligibility to shoot and charge in a turn in which a unit fell back. Classic, seems nearly every Votann Detachment has some flavour of this stratagem with this wording being the most powerful.
• Privateer Arsenal (Wargear, 1 CP) – In your shooting phase, give an Infantry unit re-roll hit rolls of 1 and wound rolls of 1. If you spend 3YP, you can re-roll the hit roll and re-roll wound rolls of 1 instead. Calling it now, this stratagem and Optimal Expenditure are going to lead to endless confusion as they give the opposite benefit when you spend YP. Other than this, a very solid stratagem. Coupled with the Etacarn SB9 Targeting Implant it powers up both Hearthguard and Thunderkyn equally.
• New Horizons (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – At the end of your opponent’s fight phase, you can embark into a transport with an Infantry unit that is wholly within 6” of a transport and not in engagement range. Fantastic stratagem, allows for highly mobile play with heavy hitting units that are reliant on transports for mobility (think Thunderkyn here), allowing you to unload then shoot, threaten an overwatch, and hop back in to do the same across the board the next turn.
• Mobile Exploitation (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – At the end of your opponent’s fight phase, you can remove one Hernkyn unit not within engagement range from the battlefield and place it into strategic reserves. Alternatively you can spend 2YP and instead remove two Hernkyn units from the battlefield and place them in strategic reserves. Solid stratagem, adding mobility to Hernkyn Yaegirs as well as Kapricus Defenders.

Playing This Detachment

Leagues of Votann Hernkyn Pioneer. Credit: Caelyn Ellis

This Detachment is going to focus around saving up your yield points, carefully spending them as you need to to switch between Hostile Acquisition and Fortify Takeover, but banking them for the turn you want to go all out with your stratagems. Easy access to rerolls helps give you a reliable gameplan (especially combined with Etacarn SB9 Targeting Implant) and juices units like Hearthguard and Berserks significantly. Considering this Detachment works with all the likely includes in most Votann lists, lists will be similar while feeling quite different in how you play them.

A Sample List

This list mostly plays the hits. The gravkyn are very scary with easy access to wound rerolls and the Hearthguard brick with the Khal gets nutty once the Etacarn SB9 Targeting Implant and rerolls enter the equation. There’s also an interesting play here where you take a full Carrier and put it in reserves using Mobile Exploitation on turn one and save it for late game when you need more bodies on the field. 

Final Thoughts

Ultimately this Detachment is about one thing: flexibility. Between the full control it gives you over your army ability and the easy access to rerolls, it takes what already works in Votann and gives you more agency in making sure your guys are doing what they need to. Even beyond the rerolls, there’s really strong stratagem support here, with each one being useful in some capacity, and opportunities for some really unique plays while also feeling familiar. We expect Votann players will be slamming this on the table soon and we look forward to seeing what folks do with it.

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