A Review of the Space Marine Strike Force Ultra Dataslate

Dataslates first hit Warhammer 40K during last year’s Digital Advent Calendar, leading up to Christmas. Like any of the pre-Christmas digital dataslates – say the Tau Fire Support Cadre – the Strike Force Ultra dataslate was written to match the box of miniatures of the same name.

The Strike Force Ultra, as it comes in the box, is already a solid army in itself – 1485 pts. minimum without any upgrades.

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#1 – Strike Force Ultra – History & Legendary Battles

The dataslate comes to about 35 to 40 pages, depending on your eReader and size of the font. The first third of the dataslate covers the background, meaning the history of the Strike Force Ultra formation and a selection of famous deployments.

Though the most renowned Strike Force Ultra in the 41st century is said to be the Ultramarines  version, led by Captain Agemmon from the box-cover, plenty of examples and famous battles from other Chapters, including the Imperial Fist and Raven Guard, are included.

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#2 – Strike Force Ultra – Dataslate & Formations

The second third of the dataslate includes the actual formations and unit entries.

There are actually two different Formations – the Hammerfall Assault Force and the Skyspear Assault Wing – both combined form the actual Strike Force Ultra.

• Hammerfall Assault Force – 5 Tactical Terminators (must deep strike) and 5 Assault Terminators, as well as a Terminator Captain (or Lysander) in a Land Raider Redeemer or Crusader.

• Skyspear Assault Wing – 5 Tactical Terminators (must deep strike) and 5 Assault Terminators, as well as a Venerable Dread in a Storm Raven Gunship.

The benefits from these two are identical: The deep-striking Terminators can both run & shoot after deep-striking. The Assault Terminators gain Hammer of Wrath on the turn they disembark (GW loves Hammer of Wrath these days…. Orks are rumoured to get it too).

If you take both, it’s a proper Strike Force Ultra, which can start rolling for reserves 1st turn.

All in all, it is no Tau Fire Support Cadre, but the formation’s bonuses do cover the needs of an all-Terminator army quite nicely.

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#3 – Strike Force Ultra – Rules & Glossary

The real surprise – for me – was the extensive rules and glossary.

If I am not mistaken, there are actually all the unit entries in this dataslate to play the Strike Force Ultra without the Space Marines Codex!

All equipment options for Terminators, the Land Raider, Storm Raven and Venerable Dread are in it, with point costs and rules. Moreover, all the Space Marine Chapter Tactics are included, and all the equipment options for the Terminator Captain, including the Space Marine relics.

Admittedly, they cut the fluff on most of these, and only included rules and point costs, but it is enough to play!

The only thing not included are the rules for Captain Lysander, even though the formation allows you to swap the generic Terminator Captain for Lysander, if you want.

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#4 – Strike Force Ultra – Sample List

The entire formation can be a 1500 pts. army, with virtually no options, or it can be a 1750 pts. army, especially with Lysander and a lot of bling.

Most likely, people will add the odd unbound unit here and there, say an extra Stormtalon or a Scout Squad, to round it out. Anyhow, a „pure“ Strike Force Ultra Lysander could look like this.

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#5 – Strike Force Ultra – Final thoughts?

I must say, I was positively surprised by the Strike Force Ultra Dataslate.

• The theme works. The “elite of the elite of the elite”-concept might not be terribly creative, but Strike Force Ultra still feels plausible. It makes sense for Space Marine Chapters to (rarely) gather the best of the very best to throw against a particularly tough foe, and for these missions to become the stuff of legend.

• All the rules are included, so you could buy the Strike Force Ultra box and the dataslate and play, without the Space Marines Codex.

• I also like the two “sub-formations”, which allows players flexibility to use “smaller” parts of the whole force with other parts of their armies.

• The option to used Captain Lysander,  the one named “1st Captain”, to run his own Strike Force Ultra was a nice addition.

Of course, the best solution still would have been to have a printed booklet (black-and-white, staple-bound is fine) of this dataslate in the actual Strike Force Ultra box of miniatures.

Still, the dataslate helps a lot in making the Strike Force Ultra miniatures collection an “army-in-a-box” that can be used to start playing 40K without a big hassle.

The entire Strike Force Ultra is actually a surprisingly good entry-point for the game, even if it isn’t advertised as such.

Z.