Haloscreed Battle Clade - A New Age for Electro-Priests
It’s no secret my absolute favorite thing in the Adeptus Mechanicus, perhaps even 40k as a game holistically, are the Electro-Priests. These controversial dedicates to the Motive Force are a striking outlier in Admech as a whole, baring their chests for all to see, more skin and node than machine. They are purposefully odd, and it doesn’t help that their favorite detachment, the Data-Psalm Conclave, is painfully mediocre; good news has arrived, however, in the form of the Haloscreed Battle Clade.
As part of Grotmas, every single faction in 40k is getting a new Detachment, and for Admech we received perhaps the best detachment for our faction in 10th, thus far. Providing a tremendous benefit to the faction’s movement, as a generalist counterpart to Rad-Zone, the rising tide of Halo truly has raised all ships. I want to take a brief dip into this new chance at dominance for the Mechanicum, focusing on combos, shortcomings, and even list ideas, all inclusive of what I believe to be the Detachment’s best unit: Corpuscarii Electro-Priests.
While much about Haloscreed (and that’s “Halo-Screed”, not “Halo’s Creed”) is fantastic, the truly exemplary component, I feel, is the stratagems. Compared even to Skitarii Hunter Cohort, the preferred competitive detachment, these are wicked. First and foremost is Targeting Override, which essentially changes how we evaluate weapons in the army, providing Critical Hits on 5+, in either ranged or melee. This suddenly brings into focus things like Dragoons with Taser Lances, or even the Onager Dunecrawler’s Eradication Beamer if paired with a point drop. More than anything though, it suddenly makes the once-overcosted bellyache of the army, the Tech-Priest Manipulus, a true mainstay.
They knew what they were doing when this guy was featured as the main art for the detachment: By providing his unit Lethal Hits, suddenly strength matters a lot less in the right contexts. If only there existed a unit he could natively lead worth a damn with, say, plenty of shots and access to Sustained Hits 2 — Enter Corpuscarii Electro-Priests.
There’s been a strange notion that Admech & Drukhari are somewhat similar when accounting for their transport usage, and this facet of the faction only further blurs that line. With Corpuscarii led by a Manipulus, you can now hop out of a Dunerider, blast anything nearby with a ludicrous amount of Lethal Damage 1, and on their turn, hop back inside to safety via Analytical Divination. If the transport was staged, you can even charge in, getting two potential uses out of Targeting Override, but no worries if you didn’t — Aggressive Impulse allows you to do so even if unstaged. Half of the existing stratagems in this detachment either directly synergize, or outright enable, this scalpel-sharp strategy of Corpuscarii warfare provided you have enough CP.
This is, with no exaggeration, the most CP-hungry detachment GW has yet printed in 10th edition. Every stratagem is good or better, and has uses beyond the obvious. Naturally, you want to be spending CP buffing something led by a Manipulus, be it Breachers or Corupscarii, so the rest of the army ought to be fairly independent in its needs.
Via Tumblr
The obvious answer to that query, for a strong unit which can go without CP while retaining full usefulness, comes in the form of Sicarian Rustalkers. Armed with Devastating Wound blades, and with a potential +2 to Advance & Charge, so long as these warriors bear the Halo of Advance & Charge, they need nothing else. Similarly, the staple Skorpius Disintegrators do enjoy the Halo, for use of things like Stealth, but otherwise operate independent of CP. Thinking about this detachment requires you to place your chosen unit options in ‘buckets’, between the mandatory Battleline, competent Objective Play pieces, CP-hungry units, and CP-independent units. There are also midpoints, such as Dragoons, which are fine without CP but can certainly benefit, given their Sustained Hits 2 lances.
This can bear some resemblance to the Triple Threat cores we see in many tournament lists, where besides the necessary, and the Objective Play, you have 3 bricks of models aimed squarely at killing via the use of your faction/detachment. Whether that’s split between 2:1 Corpuscarii to Rustalkers, 1:1:1 including Dragoons, or even swarms of 3-man Breacher teams, this philosophy helps when considering choices for Haloscreed.
Via Goonhammer
One aspect we’ve not touched on yet are the Enhancements, of which I think one is an autoinclude, and the rest are speculatively…solid. The obvious winner here is Inloaded Lethality, which provides a Dominus or Manipulus with an extra 3 Attacks, and an extra 1 Damage. This is positively massive for a mere 15pts, as suddenly a Manipulus and some dorks can clear a War Dog in melee, and with even more lethal delivery methods, you can chunk out Terminators of all stripes with ease. Of course, Corpuscarii are a lovely delivery method, but Breachers and even Fulgurites can be solid enough. While it is tempting to use a Dominus, as you get the extra AP, a Manipulus being both cheaper and with Lethal Hits is generally more bang for your buck anyway, leaving the poor Dominus out to dry once more.
With that in mind, however, the Dominus does have a role to play, as a fun, agonizing-to-move block with Fulgurites. Coupled with the extra Toughness (if in melee) or Stealth (if at range) of the Halo, Fulgurites can potentially be one of the more infuriating to kill units out there. Being at a 5++/4+++ alongside their Dominus, this represents a unit that’s always -1 to wound, often -1 to hit, and shrugs roughly 2/3 of all damage coming their way, regardless of profile.
Regardless of your mechanism of delivering an Inloaded Lethality Leader to the enemy, it’s going to hurt once he gets there. This is certainly one of the many detachments that Admech has access to which asks a player to take the full 3:3 Skorpius Hull combo, with 3 Duneriders, and 3 Disintegrators with Ferrumite Cannon. Transports are paramount for not only delivering key units to the frontlines, but also for reactively moving back into, helping keep your squishy T3 5++/5+++ units from a grisly fate by way of small arms fire.
How I’ve seen this detachment play out in a few of my test games involves carefully figuring out which enemy unit is most vulnerable to the hail of electricity from my Corpuscarii, then spending the first turn hopefully reserving my CP, and staging a transport or two. Once you have 2-3 CP banked, your unit can then emerge from the landship, and potentially utilize 5+ Crits in both ranged and melee, resulting in a decisive blow against the opponent. You’ll always take Tactical, at that, as burning a secondary turn 1 means you go into turn 2 with an additional CP, and on such a pivotal turn, that can mean everything.
Via Miniset
Between a heavy focus on melee & movement, this detachment has quickly become my absolute favorite in the Admech arsenal. While unfortunately Data-Psalm never really took off, for a variety of reasons, this mimics just enough of it, and improves on the rest. Even when accounting for just our Marshal-led Vanguard, giving them a Halo can suddenly make it feel as though you’re fighting an uphill battle, as Stealth at range or +1T (or even +2” of move, if an objective arises) can be game-winning. Of course, there are more “fun” quirky ways to play this detachment, such as with the Kastelan enhancement, Destroyers, or even massive blocks of 10 Infiltrators eager to receive T5, but critically finding a “best list” has been near impossible. Haloscreed is both well-written enough to prompt serious meta discussion, but also balanced enough that nothing stands out in such a way as to be egregious.
Above is the list I intend to run for the foreseeable future, but the slate could be coming as soon as next Thursday, so we’ll just have to see if anything changes!
So, that wraps up a brief overview about what Haloscreed brings to the electrifying side of Admech! How do you intend to use this detachment? What changes would you want to see in the next slate, if any? I’d love to hear what you’ve been thinking in the comments below!
