u/MagicJuggler

This is a thought experiment in regards to an earlier "fix your faction" topic from FB, but is more in regards to how Regiments and Detachments work in TOW. As it stands, well, they aren't the greatest and in fact it's easy to argue that they've gotten worse as the game has evolved and been patched.

Note I am mainly talking from the context of an Empire player here; I'm fairly solid that Tomb Kings can do reasonable stuff with their stuff for example, as being able to resurrect troops addresses one of the key weaknesses of this system.

Regiments and Detachments give you the following:

* Inheriting leadership of the parent unit. This tends to be irrelevant, given things like Inspiring Presence, as well as most detachment units having the same base leadership as their parent unit. The main exception to this would be Renegade Realms, given Sellswords have Warband.

* Detachment actions if the parent unit is charged. Provided you can keep the detachments from being charged, this can actually be rather useful. However, I have found it works a little better if the detachment is shooting and on a hill; you can maintain coherency via a Matching Column. However, the fact that Close Order requires a minimum US of 10 to contribute +1 CR...nerfs this from 1.0.

* Regimental Psychology. Currently, the only way to give Frenzy to any units with Detachment is through the Dark Magic spell Battle Lust, which did NOT get its difficulty modified in the 1.5 magic rework. This leaves Stubborn, ITP, and Hatred. Of these, Hatred can be given by a Witch Hunter (conditional vs the enemy army you face), ITP by a Nuln Engineer (because your big halberd block is babysitting your backfield artillery instead of humping objectives /s), and Stubborn through a magic banner, or using Greatswords. Note that I am not going to look at the merits of using a Necrotect to give Hatred to a Detachment of Skeleton Archers; Hatred Tomb Guard are their own reward!

Which brings back the whole issue of Greatswords and objective play. The rules for objective play requiring a unit of 10+ US core to play means that you want your core units to be as large as possible, while your specials...are mainly specialists. Which, combined with the changes to magic, Close Order, and the fact that detachments are capped at half the size of their parent unit, means that there are far too many hoops to jump through to derive meaningful benefit from regiments and detachments, versus just running the units in isolation of one another...

...and that's a damn shame IMO, given that combined unit tactics were one of the iconic gameplay themes of playing Empire. As much as I love Knightly Orders, I think the rules could either use an overhaul or patching. The question is, what would make more sense. These are my initial takes, in descending order.

A) Modify the rules for Detachment US. There were two approaches I could think of. The first was "a Detachment within 3" of its parent Regiment inherits the Unit Strength of that detachment" (great for Close Order CR bonus, or objective play)", but then that can lead to a scenario where a single swordsman has the same US as the parent block of 20. Another, cleaner take IMO, would be for the detachment (while within 3") to double its US, up to the current US of the parent detachment. That is, if you have a Regiment of 20 Swordsmen and a Detachment of 10, the detachment is now US 20 while within 3" of its parent unit. If the parent unit gets reduced to 19 models, the detachment is now US 19 (parent units strength is less than 10x2).

B) Change the rules so that rather than being within 3" of its parent, a Detachment needs to be within Movement Characteristic. So Empire Detachments would need to be within 4" for example. The real implication of this rule would be that the game system could now theoretically support Cavalry Detachments ("charge my infantry and my knights do a supporting charge").

C) A 9th age approach, where you define a unit as Regimental or Detachment, and ANY detachment can make a supporting action on behalf of any Regiment. I like this idea the least, personally.

D) Some other approach. (adjusting the difficult of Battle Lust, allowing Prayers to propagate to detachments, etc)