Warhammer 40K: Armoured Infantry and a Love Letter to Skew

Warhammer 40k is, in reality, three games. Of course, this is true of any wargaming hobby, as we’ll discuss, but at this point in the game’s lifespan, Warhammer is by a wide margin the best showcase of this trichotomy. Game one is that of the hobby itself—the building, painting, the lore that you ascribe to your wonderfully realized army. Game two is of course the game itself, the actually playing of Warhammer, of rolling dice and agonizing over movement. The third game however, is where I feel Warhammer’s always excelled, even as its true modularity has diminished: The listbuilding. The theory. You can of course put together a reasonable 2k point list for casual games out of what you own, but lurking in the back of every army there’s always a ‘weird’ way to play, what often gets termed as ‘skew’. 30 Terminators? Enough to top a GT, huge shoutouts to Forrest at Tacoma. How about all Kroot? Suddenly made viable with their release wave in 10th, for the first time since Resin Knarlocs were available in the early aughts. There’s something endearing and alluring about taking weird lists like these, which force you into new play patterns and considerations, and today I want to talk about why. Moreover, now that the dust has settled on my first slew of events with Admech, I want to touch on the army I’m excited to start as my true 11th edition project: Armoured Infantry Guard.

Via Warhammer Community

The start of modern skew began with the removal of the previous mechanism of creating balanced armies: Forge Organization, a.k.a. ForceOrg. This delineated the roles of each given unit, capping your capacity to run things like big tanks, weird elite tech pieces, and leaders. It started to increase in flexibility throughout 6th & 7th, but truly went the way of the dodo in 8th edition and onward, now being a distant memory. Back in the day, you were forced to take some number of Battleline, and that alone was a balancing mechanism; armies could be taxed on the units they needed to play, and this prevented things like modern Ironstorm Marines from taking nothing below T7 that might touch the midboard. Instead of ForceOrg, we now instead have unit caps, and returning in 11th, ‘steppers’—the Games Workshop term for costs which scale with the number of units taken. This is fantastic as a way to stop truly heinous lists like max Defilers, the likes of which we saw at the tail end of 10th, but also limits the sheer quantity of specific play pieces that might have a keyword, or unifying theme. Putting all this together, and we have the meeting point between batched units due to rule of 3, and Detachments to provide those odd options with bespoke rules. We have the capacity to skew.

Via Reddit

Take for example today’s main focus: Armoured Infantry (shortened to ArmInf). This arrived at the end of 10th, in its final expansion, when we were already looking at new rules for 11th; it tells us a lot about Detachment design, and how specific Games Workshop can now get with buffs, even at the 2 DP level. ArmInf starts by providing a shorthand of ‘Armoured Skirmishers’, highlighting my personal favorite aspect of the Astra Militarum, the light vehicles. Any Squadron Vehicle that is not Artillery, and not 13W+ counts for this, meaning all your normal transports, Sentinels, and light tanks apply. The standouts here are units like Hippogriffs, Hellhounds, & Armored Sentinels, which previously didn’t have a specific home beyond normal Vehicle buffs. Sure, transports are also included in this—namely the Chimera & Taurox—but they already had Mechanized Assault as an option. If you’re like me, and your two favorite things in Guard are Sentinels & Hippogriffs, suddenly there’s a good reason to quite literally max out on them. Not every list will, but I’ve chosen to do so in early testing, mostly to see what the limits are.

Via @car_ramrod_183

In total, my starting list has a cool 7 Sentinel chassis, between Armored & Scout, and 6 Hippogriffs, numbers which exceed the amount of these units most people own, let alone put on the table. That facet of skew is another point worth talking about, because for mild contrarians like myself, the novelty among peers is part of the fun! Of course, this can lead to things like ‘being the foremost expert on max Electro-Priest lists’ as may have happened in 10th, but for people keen to cook something spicy skew provides all the best ingredients. When you combine a low playrate, weird list that usually requires absurd purchases, and rules which usually aren’t the best but have some specific niche within the army, you get the best form of skew. For ArmInf, that is down to movement, especially out-of-phase. No other Guard Detachment can move quite like this one, throwing Hippogriffs screaming up the board, with the capacity to then move an extra D6 with Burst of Speed then make an additional D6 move after shooting…with potential to make a reactive D6 move via the unique order On my Signal!. And the guns have Melta, and Assault. If you got a bit dizzy, trying to plan out maximum threat ranges, that’s kind of the point, because castling up against ArmInf is purposefully impossible without insane screening.

11th has only made it easier for skew lists to have real legs, because of the advent of Detachment Points. I will say, there’s a caveat there, because in 10th any given Detachment was expected to stand on its own…this didn’t often happen, and led to things like half-baked skew (with Assimilation Swarm in nids being a great example, batching the Pyrovore, Rippers, & Haruspex). That being said, now Assimilation Swarm has been able to top multiple GTs, and even win one…because it’s only 2/3rds of your options. Now there’s no expectation for the vast majority of Detachments to be a complete package, but rather assisting in a specific version of your list, whether for Guard that’s Scions, Ogryn/Ratlings, stealth stuff, etc. The era of things like Gladius being the overwhelming victor for Marines is over—3 DP generalist Detachments are less than the sum of parts made up by many 2+1 DP options. So where does that leave skew?

Via Reddit

On the one hand, skew has gotten far better, with weird niche playstyles proliferating prodigiously, and the potency of generalist options going the way of the dodo. Dark Angels are maxing bikes, Space Wolves their Terminators, etc. On the other hand, skew being better not only makes it less of a challenge to listbuild, but also a fair bit more flexible. You don’t just have to rely on the 1-2 tricks afforded by a lukewarm Detachment, and I managed 10th at the GHO playing Explorator in Admech, which saw ~30 games logged in the final season of 10th compared to Haloscreed’s ~2,500. 11th is purpose-built to be weird, be flavorful, and push armies to be more thematically cohesive (and mechanically off-kilter).

As for me, that means I’m more excited than ever to absolutely swarm the tabletop with T8 might, and flex more reactive moves in a single turn than is available in my main army’s whole codex. I’ll be talking more about my journey once modelling begins, but suffice to say I’ve got plenty planned!

Via Reddit

If you’re getting into Warhammer as a new player, skew has one more big draw: It limits the capacity for decision paralysis. If you wanted to get into a range like Marines, a full third of all models in 40k, where on Terra would you start? Starter boxes and Combat Patrols are great, but if you went into things knowing you wanted to play the tank ace Detachment, suddenly you’re picking up one or two boxes, over and over. They become safe, reliable purchases because your list rewards playing more than normal; in avoiding a well-rounded model roster, you reduce the need to ‘collect it all’ out of the gate. That’s very important for armies with deep ranges, as many of the most popular have. 

What is your favorite skew list of all time? Have you gotten into an army via the path of skew? Do you have any tips for me, as a burgeoning Guard player? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!