Battlefield Roles, Command Points, Detachments, Points and Keywords -

Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

Hello and welcome to this special little page all about Battlefield Roles, Command Points, Detachments, Points and Keywords. Its aim is to help you along the way in the Astra Militarum Getting Started series. There is an Astra Militarum Glossary to accompany this series.

Building a List

Before getting your mind ticking over the ways you can play with an Astra Militarum force I wanted to introduce some key concepts when creating your army list. These are;

Points
Keywords
Detachments
Command Points

With Open Play and Narrative Play, you’ll probably be using Power Levels, you don’t need to worry about this part, to begin with.

But with Matched Play you use points and your forces need to fit into valid detachments. If that sounds like a lot to get your head around, bear with me.

These ways to play 40K are covered in part 3 of the getting started series.

Points

Points are used to give each unit, their weapons and equipment value. The aim is to make each fighting force equal in their performance to try and ensure the battle is fair. Tougher and harder hitting units cost more points and their weapons also cost more points. Weak units with little firepower cost fewer points.

A Leman Russ costs significantly more points than 10 Guardsmen.

Keywords

Each unit has some Keywords. These keywords are split into two sections; Keywords and Faction Keywords.

These govern certain parts of Warhammer 40K. And they’ll make a lot more sense once you get your head into a Codex.

But for example, Imperium is a faction keyword and so is Astra Militarum. While Infantry and Vehicle are general keywords.

This makes more sense when you have a rule for example which can be used with Astra Militarum Infantry. This means the rule can be used on Astra Militarum units which also have the Infantry keyword.

Keywords are also used when creating detachments. For example, every unit in a detachment must share at least one Faction Keyword.

Battlefield Roles

Each unit in Warhammer 40,000 has a Battlefield Role. These are:

HQs – characters and single units often used for boosting other units – Lord Commissar
Troops – the staple of a lot of forces, cheap and numerous – Guardsmen
Elites – specialised units, often tough or with great firepower – Bullgryns
Flyers – flying units – Valkyrie
Fast Attacks – quick-moving units – Sentinel
Heavy Supports – durable units that pack a punch – Leman Russ
Dedicated Transports – vehicles used for transporting other units – Chimera
Lord of Wars – Knight or Baneblade

Detachments

Your force will be split into detachments for Matched Play. Think of a detachment as a group of units for the purpose of building a list. Once on the battlefield, the detachment has little meaning. The Basic Rulebook contains info on each detachment.

I’ll mention a few of these Detachments later in this article but with a bit more context so they make more sense.

You can play with no Detachments, this is called an Unbound Army, but you’ll get zero Command Points. On the flip side if you bring Detachments this is called a Battle Forged Army. No one plays Unbound that I know of!

Command Points (CP)

Depending on the size of the battle you are following, you get a different number of Command Points to start the game with.

Combat Patrol – 0 to 500 points – 3 Command Points
Incursion – 501 to 1,000 points – 6 Command Points
Strike Force – 1,001 to 2,000 points – 12 Command Points
Onslaught – 2,001+ points – 18 Command Points

Taking a Patrol, Battalion or a Brigade Detachments costs Command Points, but if your Warlord is in that Detachment the CP are refunded – so it costs you no CP. Taking an extra Detachment after the first (which contains your Warlord) costs you extra Command Points which are not refunded.

Command Points are used during a game on special abilities, these are called Stratagems.

Summary

So bringing all this together;

Units cost points
A unit has a Battlefield Role
Units make up detachments
A detachment must share Faction Keywords – you can’t place a Chaos Space Marine into the same Detachment as a Commissar as they share no Faction Keywords – one is Chao and the other is Imperium
A detachment has a minimum and maximum number of units for each Battlefield Role – e.g. a Battalion Detachment requires at a minimum 2 HQ and 3 Troop choices
The size of your game determines how many Command Points you start with
Taking additional detachments costs Command Points
Keywords are also used for abilities and some rules – e.g. Imperium Infantry within 9″ can re-roll hit rolls of 1

That is a lot to get your head around within a Codex or Rulebook!

Warhammer 40K Blog

Battlefield Roles, Command Points, Detachments, Points and Keywords