Of all the heavy duty changes in GW’s latest wide-ranging Warhammer 40k Balance Dataslate rules update – and there are many – the most dramatic is a huge power upgrade for regular Space Marines.
Announced via GW’s Warhammer Community site on Wednesday, the December 2024 Balance Dataslate contains ten full pages of updates, covering both the core rules and almost all the Warhammer 40k factions.
But GW saved the biggest early Christmas gift for armies built around the core Space Marines codex (i.e. those without any units from the Black Templars, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, or Deathwatch Space Marine chapters).
In exchange for some small points increases, the dataslate gives some powerful, flavorsome tweaks to specific units (including a couple of seldom-seen specialists like Reivers and Infernus squads). But the real star of the show is that, so long as you only bring regular Space Marine units and not chapter-specific ones above, your core Oath of Moment rule just got a lot better. Here’s a breakdown of the biggest changes.
1. Oath of Moment is almost twice as good
As long as your army has no Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Deathwatch, or Space Wolves units in it, your whole army now not only gets to re-roll ones to hit your nominated Oath target – but add one to the wound roll as well.
This is a bit of a blunt instrument, but there’s no doubting it’ll give a much needed boost to a whole range of units across the Space Marine roster, and in a simple way. Astartes are supposed to be pretty good at just about everything, and this new Oath is going to make them feel that way.
2. Heavy intercessors pack more punch
The Gravis-armored versions of your core Intercessor infantry were mega-powerful when first released, but have fallen out of favor since – no longer. Their Heavy Bolt Rifles are now Damage 2, and their Heavy Bolter goes from BS 4+ to BS 3+ (presumably the stabilized armor makes the big gun more accurate).
This damage boost finally gives you a reason to take the big lads over regular intercessors as back-line objective holders, as S5, AP-1, D2 slugs make them much better at one-shotting enemy Space Marines and tough infantry targets from 30″ away.
Regular intercessors also get a bump, though: they gain the Target Elimination ability, giving each model an extra 2 shots on their Bolt Rifle as long as the whole squad targets the same unit. Big, squishy, Toughness-3 horde units, beware.
3. Reivers are finally scary
Oh, Reivers – so cool, and yet so very rarely good. The sneaky knife-and-pistol Phobos marines were always supposed to be about incapacitating targets with swift shock attacks, but their Terror Troops rule has been underwhelming for that task, merely reducing nearby units’ Leadership by one.
Now, Terror Troops applies minus one to the Objective Control of all enemy units within three inches – so, even if your target unit passes its forced -1 Battle-shock test after your Reivers charge in, you still have a strong chance of uncapping the objective they were holding.
Reivers finally have a purpose – and it’s going to be fun to see them at work again.
4. Sternguard Veterans are a powerhouse
As up-armed, elite shooting squads, these vets’ Sternguard Focus ability already let them re-roll all ones to wound against your Oath target – but, now that Oath of Moment gives that reroll to everyone, GW has beefed the Sternies’ version up to full re-rolls of all wound rolls.
This is a vast increase to their damage potential, particularly because the Sternguard-specific versions of the Bolt Rifle, Bolt Pistol, Combi Weapon, and Heavy Bolter all have extra shots and the Devastating Wounds 40k ability. That’s a lot of potential Mortal Wounds to take out tough targets.
5. Infernus squads are fire (sort of)
Nobody ever argued the pyreblaster-wielding Infernus Squads (first introduced in 2023’s Leviathan Warhammer 40k starter set) weren’t dead cool – but they’ve seen limited use due to other, longer-range shooting being an easier way to clear out enemy infantry blobs.
In addition to their cover-ignoring pyreblasters now getting -1 AP, Infernus marines’ Incendiary Terror ability now forces every infantry units hit with their flames to take a Battle-shock test at -1, rather than a regular unmodified test. Maybe that’ll warm them up a bit.
6. Roboute Guilliman is back, baby
Anyone who was playing 40k in early 8th edition remembers what a terrifying auto-take Roboute Guilliman used to be, providing a veritable ocean of re-rolls and creating an incredibly powerful castle formation seen on every table for months.
The glow-up he gets in this dataslate isn’t on that scale, but it is brilliant – Guilliman can now choose two of his Author of the Codex abilities to be active each turn, not just one. Every turn, you’ll now be able to pick a second Oath target after killing the first, and either shore up a wavering unit’s OC and Leadership, or use a 1CP stratagem on a nearby unit for free.
It makes him a superlative commander for a generic Space Marines army (even more than he was already) and we’ll be seeing him a lot more.
Gladius Task Force takes a nerf
Finally, a nerf – but one some players will be happy to see. The Gladius Task Force 40k detachment loses a powerful ability, as its Fire Discipline Enhancement, while still 40 points, now only gives the bearer’s unit a re-roll to Advance rolls in the Devastator Doctrine, rather than Critical Hits on 5+ as before.
It’s not a huge change in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a clear, net nerf that takes a bit of the steam out of the currently most popular Space Marines detachment, meaning we might see others played more often.
Other changes
Those are the most significant changes for Space Marines, but not the only ones. A core rules change means that 40k stratagems reducing the AP of incoming attacks now only last for that one attack activation, not the entire phase as before. This makes the Marines’ classic Armor of Contempt strat less effective in many cases.
Predator Annihilators’ re-rolls got better, and Inceptors’ Meteoric Descent rule isn’t as useful anymore thanks to a game-wide change to amend all rules allowing Deep Strike at 3″ away from enemies up to 6 inches. A list of units that didn’t have -1 AP on their combat knives now have it.
And a cluster of named characters for various chapters get a new ability, Inspiring Commander, that gives a specific type of unit +1OC army wide.
Taken as a whole, this salvo of huge buffs for the vanilla Space Marines rules should be a long awaited renaissance for a lot of armies that have languished for a while, as Black Templars and Dark Angels gloried in their sexy new models and powerful rules.
As for the impact of the other core rules changes in the December 2024 Balance Datasheet, we’ll have to wait and see – but it’s always good to have a shake-up. While we wait for the next one, you can check which armies are getting a rulebook next with our guide to Warhammer 40k codex release dates, or try some of our picks of the best Warhammer 40k games on PC and console.
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Source: Wargamer
