Games Workshop has made the Warhammer 40k Combat Patrol datasheets for every faction available to download via the Warhammer Community website. GW bills Combat Patrol as a simplified, balanced, quickplay game mode for Warhammer 40k in which players just need the contents of one box set, and this release allows players to test those claims.
GW states that “to make sure that every box has a fighting chance against every other Combat Patrol… special datasheets are used for each faction”.
These are very similar to the Index rules recently released for each Warhammer 40k faction, but simplified, with just three 40k Stratagems, two enhancements, a simplified army rule, and no 40k Detachments.
There are some marked disparities between the points value of models contained in different Combat Patrol box sets: the Adeptus Custodes box weighs in at 695 points while the Astra Militarum fill a mere 365 points.
That looks like an insurmountable difference in power, but the Combat Patrols really are running on a different set of rules to their main faction. The ‘Send In the Next Wave’ Stratagem allows the Astra Militarum to return a destroyed Cadian Shock Trooper unit to the board for 1CP, effectively an extra 65 points every time you use it.
The ‘Laurels of Victory’ enhancement grants the Astra Militarum an additional CP every turn as long as the bearer is on the battlefield, and means every Order the bearer issues (such as the Take Aim! order for +1 BS) is relayed to every unit in the army. That’s orders of magnitude more powerful than anything in the Astra Militarum Index.
Combat Patrol also enforces fixed unit composition. The Custodes Vertus Praetor kit could be built with two Praetors and a Shield-Captain on Dawn-Eagle jetbike, but that’s not allowed in Combat Patrol.
The jetbikes are also required to mount Vertus Hurricane Bolters rather than Salvo Launchers, denying the Custodes high powered ranged weapons.
GW has already released all the rules needed to play Warhammer 40k 10th edition ahead of its release date this Saturday. Editor Alex has been stoked by the Tyranid models in the Leviathan box set (provided by Games Workshop) and went to town on them with Contrast paints, while I’ve continued chipping away at the Imperial Fists I started for my Leviathan review.