Armoured Warfare Comes to Armageddon: New Space Marine Tank Detachments

The battlefields of Armageddon are about to get a whole lot louder. While the Astra Militarum and Orks have been revving their engines for the upcoming Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick expansion, the Adeptus Astartes aren't about to be left behind. Two devastating new Detachments are bringing vehicular carnage to the Emperor's finest, and trust me—these aren't your average tank crews.

Headhunter Task Force: Precision Through Power

When you take a Space Marine tank crew—already among the galaxy's elite—and elevate them to the rank of Tank Ace, you're looking at something truly special. The Headhunter Task Force brings these masters of armoured warfare together into a cohesive, devastatingly effective force.

The centerpiece of this Detachment is the Target Sighted rule, which gives your Tank Aces an interesting tactical choice every turn. Need to reposition quickly? Skip the Advance roll and add a flat 6" to your Movement—no randomness, just pure speed. Prefer to dig in and unleash hell? Stay put and re-roll your Damage rolls in the Shooting phase. It's the kind of flexibility that turns good tank commanders into legends.

But here's where it gets really interesting: up to three of your Tank Aces can gain the CHARACTER keyword during army selection. That means they can receive Enhancements, and one can even be your Warlord. Yes, you read that right—you can run an entire army led by tanks. No infantry commanders necessary. Just pure, unadulterated armoured might.

Enhancements That Keep You Rolling

The Enhancement options are exactly what you'd want for a mechanized force. Redoubtable Machine Spirit gives your chosen vehicle a 5+ invulnerable save and regenerates a wound at the end of each Command phase—perfect for that ancient Land Raider that's seen a millennium of war and refuses to die.

Gunnery Honours is a reliability boost that lets you re-roll one Hit, one Wound, and one Damage roll once per phase. Got a high-damage, low-rate-of-fire weapon? This Enhancement transforms it into something you can actually count on turn after turn.

The Stratagem suite backs this up beautifully. Kill Shot gives you re-rollable Wound rolls of 1 against Monsters and Vehicles—or full Wound re-rolls if the target is already damaged. Meanwhile, Target Weak Point improves your AP by 1 when shooting at the same target types. You can't use both in the same phase, so choose wisely based on whether you're fighting tough targets or already-wounded ones.

Army Building for the Headhunter

This Detachment practically screams for the biggest, baddest tanks in the Codex. Triple Repulsor Executioner? Absolutely. A squadron of Impulsors racing forward to dump Intercessors onto objectives? Even better. The key is embracing the vehicular identity fully—this isn't a Detachment for half-measures.

Armoured Speartip: Transports as Weapons

If the Headhunter Task Force is about firepower, the Armoured Speartip is about momentum. This Detachment turns your toughest transports into Heavy Transports (any Adeptus Astartes Transport with 14+ Wounds), and then weaponizes the act of deployment itself.

Rapid Deployment is elegantly simple: when your units disembark from a Transport that moved this turn, they immediately make a Normal move of D6"—or D3+3" if it's a Heavy Transport. That's an average of 5" of extra movement from your Land Raider or Repulsor, letting your units hit the ground running and claim objectives or engage enemies before they can react.

Holding Ground While Pushing Forward

One of the classic problems with aggressive, mobile armies is objective security—you're always racing forward, leaving your backfield exposed. The Liberator Enhancement solves this brilliantly. If your Character's unit (or the Heavy Transport they're riding in) is within range of an objective at the end of your Command phase, that objective stays under your control until your opponent can out-score you.

Think about it: you can roll a Land Raider onto an objective on turn one, then drive off to hunt bigger prey while the objective stays Imperial-held. Your opponent can't just waltz over and take it with a lone Grot—they need to actually commit forces to contest it.

Stratagems That Maximize Mobility

The six Stratagems in this Detachment all revolve around the transport role. Machine Wrath is particularly cinematic—when a Heavy Transport is destroyed, it can make one final move before rolling Deadly Demise and forcing units to disembark. Imagine your burning Land Raider charging into the enemy lines one last time before erupting in a blaze of glory.

Purgation Doctrine rewards aggressive disembarkation with +1 to Hit for any unit that dismounted this turn—and if they came from a Heavy Transport, they also get +1 to Wound. It's the kind of overwhelming firepower that lets Tactical Marines or Intercessors punch well above their weight class.

Download the Rules and Get Ready

Both Detachments are available for download right now, giving you plenty of time to plan your armoured assault before Armageddon: The Return of Yarrick drops. Whether you prefer the surgical precision of the Headhunter Task Force or the relentless momentum of the Armoured Speartip, Space Marine tank commanders have never had it so good.

Tomorrow brings more reveals from the expansion, including a brand new game mode called Armoured Gauntlet. If you thought these Detachments looked fun, just wait until you see what kind of vehicular warfare Games Workshop has cooked up.

The hive cities of Armageddon are calling. Time to roll out.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there are only tanks. And lots of them.