Space Marines Get a New Codex, Strikeforce, & Dreadnought

By Travis Pasch | February 22nd, 2023 | Categories: 40k News & Articles, Games Workshop Previews, Space Marines, Tabletop Gaming News & Rumors

New Space Marines Desolators, Lieutenant, Strikeforce, and Brutalis Dreadnought were revealed at the LVO 2023 preview- check it out!

This is what Warhammer TV and Warhammer Community had to say about them, along with our commentary on it!

Be sure to take a look at all the latest on the new releases and reveals as we dive into the previous rumors in an attempt to divine more about the upcoming Space Marine releases…

LVO 2023 GW Preview

If you’re stateside, tune in on Thursday the 26th of January at 10pm PST. In the UK, that’s 6am GMT on Friday the 27th of January. That’s early, but it’ll be worth it! If you’re at the event itself, doors for your preview open at 8:30pm. Congratulations, you get to see it all first!

A 1 am preview on a Friday morning here in the states, what a time to be alive!

Space Marines Primaris Desolation Squad:

While these new Desolation Space Marines aren’t a super surprise, it’s still nice to see the actual miniatures revealed! We’ve seen rules rumors, a rumor engine, and a shrouded pic of these for a long time now…

The Primaris didn’t have a traditional long-range support unit, but now you have these guys! They kick out an enormous amount of fire and should be a decent pickup. If you want to see all the rules rumors, you can check those out here!

They did say the sergeant will have a few options, but we’re not so sure about the rest of the squad.

New Space Marines Desolation Squad Rules: (February 20th 2023)

As we said, we’ve seen a lot of rumors about them, so we’ll take a look at the rumors and compare them. These confirmed rules come from this Warhammer Community post.

Traditional missile launchers – such as those available to the Astra Militarum – trade raw power for flexibility, swapping out frag and krak payloads mid-battle. The armourers of the Indomitus Crusade will brook no such compromise, so these new rocket weapons are specialised to fire one of two warheads, chosen when building your army.

The models have received some flak (get it) online, but they are Primaris with giant rockets!

More reliable, more powerful, and with an effective range that exceeds even a sniper rifle, the superfrag rocket launcher is the ultimate rebuttal to hordes of unwashed heretics and slavering aliens. There’s nothing quite like reducing the enemy’s battleline to a smouldering crater with one pull of a trigger.

With a minimum of 4 shots and AP1, this should be decent for taking out squads of weaker troops. Especially considering you would have a minimum of 20 shots from a squad of 5, they can really do some damage.

On the other hand, when your foe rumbles toward you with a spearhead of hulking behemoths, a volley from a superkrak rocket launcher will punch cleanly through any armoured shell – be it metal or chitin.

Well, you can also go the other way and just get five shots from the squad that will dish out an insane number of wounds at long range. But it doesn’t stop here, as each weapon also has an underslung option.

Whichever means of destruction you choose, Desolation Marines are all packing a little something extra under the barrel. The belt-fed castellan launcher saturates the sky with guided bomblets that rain down on the enemy wherever they hide. It’s perfect for flushing out cowardly targets – and it fires separately from your main rockets, allowing you to pick and choose your victims.

What’s more, the Desolation Sergeant can pair it with a vengor launcher for maximum indirect fire, wiping out whole squads before they ever come into view. And all while guiding the squad’s aim through his signum targeting system – now that’s multi-tasking!

First, the Vengor Launcher at Heavy D6, S6, and D2, is very versatile and can take out two wound models decently. Then, the Castellan Launcher also doesn’t need LoS, and every weapon has one. So, if you pick the heavy option, you will still have the ability to shoot a bunch of shots at smaller targets.

Space Marines Desolator Squad Rumors

These Primaris Desolators rumors come from Auspex Tactics and are sourced from Valrak and Tactical Tortoise by way of supposed playtest rules.

Well, from the looks of it, these are pretty close! The names aren’t exact, and they seemed to have gotten the AP wrong on the Castellan Launcher (or GW might have upped the power after more testing).

So, if you want to see all the rules from these leaks, click here to check those out, as they should be pretty close!

Space Marines Primaris Brutalis Dreadnought

They said this will be a successor to the Furioso Dreadnought, but every chapter can take them.

You can either go with the two meltas, or heavy bolters.

Either way, this should be a serious menace in combat with those claws! If you want to see the rules rumors for this, you can check them out here!

New Space Marines Brutalis Dreadnought Rules & Loadout Options Revealed!

As we said, we’ve seen a lot of rumors about them, so we’ll look at the rumors and compare them. These confirmed rules come from this Warhammer Community post.

Those who endure such exertions still find their minds drifting away from their former selves, though in the eyes of the Chapter it is a small price to pay for their martial might. They fight with a pair of terrifying talons, which can rip tanks and infantry asunder.

The Strike profile of the Brutalis talon is utterly monstrous, packing enough Damage to tear the legs off a Chaos Knight. It’ll happily turn lesser infantry into canid chow, but a Sweep is more efficient – doubling the number of attacks is far more important against measly one-wound mortals.

This makes it very versatile in combat, with the ability to either smash through high-wound targets (and get wound re-rolls) or you can sweep and double your attacks and still have -3AP.

But what if you prefer a fist over a talon? Well, the Brutalis fists hit with the force of a thunderbolt and come with built-in twin bolt rifles for added anti-infantry firepower.

Aircraft too cowardly to come into punching range? The twin-linked Icarus ironhail heavy stubber will teach them not to seek safety in the skies.

Add chassis-mounted heavy bolters into the mix and you can build a Brutalis Dreadnought with respectable amounts of anti-infantry firepower. If turning vehicles to mush is more your groove, a pair of multi-meltas strapped to the front will cook whatever you don’t crush.

While they don’t give the profile, we expect the fist to be somewhat similar to a normal dread fist. Then, you can basically put guns everywhere on this mini. It can have chassis guns, fist guns, and a pintle-mounted gun, so basically, just guns everywhere!

Brutalis Dreadnought Rumors

The old rumors said the points would be similar to a Redemptor, so 190-200 points are basically perfect. Then, we got the statline, which is faster than the Redemptor and has another attack (and can be doubled with the sweep attack).

The Twin Icarus Ironhail Heavy Stubbers will get a ton of shots on the way in, and it would make sense for them to have the Heavy Bolters or Melta front mounted. Lastly, the melee weapons were pretty close to the confirmed rules, just a little bit buffed in the confirmed rules.

If you want to see all the rules from these leaks, click here to check those out, as they should be pretty close!

New Space Marine Primaris Lieutenant

We were nervous at first, but GW came through and revealed another Space Marines Lieutenant kit! They said this has a ton of options and will have many weapon load-outs.

New Space Marines Strike ForceAgastus Box Set & Codex

The Space Marines will also be grabbing this box with all the new minis and what they call a new booklet which we assume is a small paperback codex. They didn’t say much about the booklet itself, but we assume they will have all the new rules in there, similar to the Shadowspear box back in 2019.

If we had to guess, we’ll see the full rules for these models either as a freed download or shoehorned into a new Space Marines 2.0 book for 10th Edition or sooner.

Check out the latest Warhammer 40k rumors for the rest of the 9th and even 10th Edition, new releases, and more!

Click Gallery below for full-size images.

View Gallery: 52 Images

Here’s the most up-to-date list of new Games Workshop bits from preview models that we should watch out for. Click on the gallery above to see dozens of Rumor Engines with new models still to be revealed!

All the Latest Warhammer Rules & Model Rumors

What do you think about the new Space Marines Brutalis Dreadnought, Agastus Strike force, and Desolation Squad reveals at the 2023 LVO preview?

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