Have death company ever worn terminator armour

[robot530]

So rumor has it chapter approved 3rd edition sets a precedent for DC TDA. Interesting.

 

Even though we do not have a named unit in the codex, we can create a unit to simulate DC TDA on the tabletop (minus rage). They just happen to have the same buffs as normal terminators with a priest and chaplain. Paint them black and you have an infamous unit.

 

The same can be done if you want to arm a captain and his honorguard with LC. Add chaplain; paint liberally with black. I believe there is another topic that is asking how to field a DC captain at this very moment.

 

I like Ward's over the top fluff. He has added some incredible stuff to the mythos. But I don't think we should all be forced to restrict ourselves to a overly conservative adherence to the, technically, small amount of information we have courtesy of what is written. There is room for us to create or own legendary battle and units that are only spoken of in hushed tones.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Exactly. You can build a unit of terminators with the aggressive nature of Death Company sans the drawbacks. There is no shame whatsoever in joining the Death Company, in fact it is something I consider sacred for our chapter. Our Primarch gave his life willingly so that Chaos could not win. That is epic in and of itself.

[SnorriSnorrison]

Well, black painted terminators are really unlikely for Blood Angels...and probably for the successor chapters as well.

However, it is possible for veterans to fall to the black rage during battle, with their suit of terminator armour on - but it wouldn't be painted black.

 

Imagine the situation: While engaging a unit of enemies, one veteran goes crazy and loses control over his mind(which is quite unlikely as our veterans' minds are highly trained in restraining the black rage) and leaves his brothers alone to slaughter his way through the enemies' ranks.

 

At first, the members saying that it is near impossible to remove him from his armour are right - it would be very hard.

 

But who is going to paint that dude's armour black? It would take the same effort to paint his armour than it would take to remove it from him. No one, not the servitors nor the chaplains will be able to keep him calm, save for a stasis field maybe.

And if he's in that stasis field, the chapter armourers will insist on that the suit will be taken from him as the tactical dreadnought armour is far to rare and sacred for a lunatic wasting/destroying/losing it on the battlefield.

 

 

That's how I see it. There's just no way that it would be possible, based on the fluff we have at hand. Only because a venerable Captain/Chaplain falls to the Rage, it doesn't mean that he's equipped with a relic that's even more venerable than him! I can't see it.

 

Tycho was the most popular Captain, and extremely succesful on top of that. He was all what a Captain of the Blood Angels should be. And he was "only" given his suit of artificer armour.

 

The DC dreads are a completely different thing.

After a hero of the Chapter is entombed in the Dreadnought, it is possible for him to succumb to the rage, after which his armour plates are painted black.

If he succumbed before his severe injuries, he would have never been encased in one of those relics(again, relics!) but decapitated straight on.

 

 

 

So, my conlusion:

"Fallen" terminators in red armour = yes

"Fallen" terminators in black armour = no

 

 

Of course, as others pointed out, one can actually create a "DC" squad of terminators on the tabletop quite easily.

 

 

 

Snorri

[Wakim]

My only problem with your reasoning is this.

 

"Tactical Dreadnaught is too rare to risk on a DC but Dreadnaught mech isn't."

 

You're saying they wouldn't paint his Terminator armor black, but they would paint a dreadnaught black and leave it to a madman to lose/ruin in a battle.

 

Since dreadnaughts are even more rare/sacred then terminator armor your argument makes little to no sense as it is auto-contradictory.

 

Tactial/Assault/Veteran/Devastator marine falls to black rage during battle -> kill him or paint him black and keep him sedated/stasis next battle.

 

Veteran in terminator armor -> kill him or STRIP HIM OF HIS ARMOR.

 

Dreadnaught falls to black rage during battle -> kill him or paint him black and keep him sedated/statis for the next battle.

 

Because by your view we can afford losing more dreads than termies.

[Cpt. Blood Donator]

So rumor has it chapter approved 3rd edition sets a precedent for DC TDA. Interesting.

 

Even though we do not have a named unit in the codex, we can create a unit to simulate DC TDA on the tabletop (minus rage). They just happen to have the same buffs as normal terminators with a priest and chaplain. Paint them black and you have an infamous unit.

 

The same can be done if you want to arm a captain and his honorguard with LC. Add priest and chaplain; paint liberally with black. I believe there is another topic that is asking how to field a DC captain at this very moment.

 

I like Ward's over the top fluff. He has added some incredible stuff to the mythos. But I don't think we should all be forced to restrict ourselves to a overly conservative adherence to the, technically, small amount of information we have courtesy of what is written. There is room for us to create or own legendary battle and units that are only spoken of in hushed tones.

 

Right, I can't seem to find the book, but it was in chapter approved 2002 annual, or whatever it was called. Anyone has it?

[SnorriSnorrison]

My only problem with your reasoning is this.

 

"Tactical Dreadnaught is too rare to risk on a DC but Dreadnaught mech isn't."

 

You're saying they wouldn't paint his Terminator armor black, but they would paint a dreadnaught black and leave it to a badman to lose/ruin in a battle.

 

Since dreadnaughts are even more rare/sacred then terminator armor your argument makes little to no sense as it is auto-contradictory.

 

No, it is not.

 

Dreads are rare and sacred, but the hero entombed succumbs after the whole process that makes him basically "the mind" of the dread's armour.

He can not be freed by any means, this would mean certain death as his whole existence is bound to the machine that acts as a new body.

The "pilot" is no longer a man, he is more a machine that has the memories and feelings of a human being.

 

After he falls to the Rage, the armour is painted black, not on the eve of battle or during battle itself.

 

 

Snorri

[SamaNagol]

Painting a marine's armour black is done before they deploy for battle in a ritual ceremony.

 

This is why you would not see Black armoured Terminators USUALLY.

 

But as long as you can come up with something which holds up the suspension of disbelief then go for it.

 

I modelled *almost* an entire company of Fleshtearers as my Death Company list and used a Counts As Lemartes as the Captain of said Company.

 

But canonically, there is no plausible was Terminators would be painted black.

[Sanguinarian]

Captain: +++Is the final stage ready?+++

Techmarine: +++Yes, my lord+++

Captain: +++Chaplain, is everything ready?+++

Chaplain over vox: +++Yes, my lord+++

 

Captain to Terminator Squad: +++Lord Sanguinius, Scouts report Horus and his Daemonspawn are inside an abandoned human carwash. Coordinates have been sent+++

Captain to Techmarine: +++Wait for all of them to enter before you push the button!!!+++

Techmarine: +++Yes, my lord+++

 

Mere seconds later, 5 angry behemoths come crashing over the piles of rubble strewn around the fallen city. They each pause to center themselves upon the coordinates their Captain sent them moments ago. Not knowing what lay in store for them/him, each Veteran clad in his Company's finest Tactical Dreadnought Armour, effortlessly and fearlessly bound toward the entranceway building up rage with every step at the possibility of exacting retribution on the occupants within. Each believing within himself that he is The Primarch Reincarnate and only sees himself multiplied five-fold to decimate the enemy within. He, and they, burst through the long lengths of industrialized plastic hanging from the entrance expecting to surprise a building inhabited with Chaos spectres and Greater Daemons only to find none.

 

Once the last behemoth's entirety crossed over the threshold, a soft whirring initiated and the floor began to move slowly forward toward a pair of 10-foot tall spinning brushes. A stream of multicolored foam laced with ceremonial oils, ungents, incenses and soap sprayed each of the 5 manshapes. Each warrior in turn scanned the entirety of the building to verify no enemies were within its walls.

 

They each realized that upon this moving platform Imperial vehicles were once washed, rinsed and waxed, and since each of them was burdened with carrying their fair share of the battlefield upon himself, and since there were no enemies about, why not restore his armour to its rightful magmanamous glory.

 

Little did they know, their Chapter's Techmarine had replaced the final wax stage with Astartes Black Spray-N-Go Armour-All . So, when the door at the end of the bay raised to release its customers, ***voila*** out came 5 of the most perfectly painted Death Company Terminators that the Imperium has ever seen.

 

Captain to Techmarine: +++Good job, Knight! I think you just found a way to not get your servitors killed inducting our First Company brothers into the Death Company!+++

 

Captain to Strike Cruiser: +++Send them the real coordinates+++

 

Captain over Company-wide vox net: +++Knights of Blood, stay out of our brothers' auspex range. Smoke 'em if you got 'em and enjoy the show! This will be the end of this bloody campaign and we'll finally be able to get the hell off this rock once and for all! For the Emperor!!!!+++

 

4th Company of Knights: +++FOR SANGUINIUS!!!+++

[Rob_Loken]

Very good sir. I'll admit it I laughed out loud. : )

[Leonaides]

Erm... Out of interest - how many of the people supporting DC terminators think of falling to the rage as an 'on/off' thing. And how many who dont think there woud be DC termies think its a far more gradual process?

 

Remember, it took Tycho a long time to finally fall to it (he was practically circling the drain so to speak for 50 years). BA chaplains are all extremely well trained in spotting the very first signs of a marine succumbing, and dealing with marines who are less than coherent. And that doesnt even begin to account for the marines who volunteer for the DC even though they are still lucid but can feel it clawing at their mind and want to die with their mind their own...

 

I still think that Veterans would not be issued termie armour while they were falling, and that BA's are capable of spotting the signs early enough to deal with the issue.

[robot530]

I think falling to the Black Rage is specific to each Marine it affects. Mephiston fell to it in battle outside the walls of Hades Hive. He was then inducted into the DC. Lemartes fell in preperation at Hadriath XI. There is little information on how they were percieved up until those moments. Although Meph seemed to be a nice guy for a creepy librarian.

 

Tycho was a special case. He was a very public figure in the Chapter before his fall, looked upon as being the future Chapter Master. We can see that it was known that he was slipping into the rage for sometime, but because of his status within the Chapter there seemed to be a reluctance to induct him. It was like the Chapter was holding it's collective breath, hoping he would get it sorted in his head. Dante goes so far as to assign him to permanent battle duty, where perhaps a different Marine with less charisma then Tycho would have simply been inducted.

[Leonaides]

He was a very public figure in the Chapter before his fall, looked upon as being the future Chapter Master.

Say WHUT????????? Nope he wasnt... And he was probablly one of the most recent captains, since he was only elevated to his captaincy in the second war for armageddon...

 

Maybe you could go and refresh your memory of the Moripatris, and the Chaplains taking care to examine every marine before battle. They know what signs to look for - they see it often enough, and most/if not all DC will display enough/if not all of the signs that theri control is slipping. Even Tycho didnt fully fall to the Rage until hie was about to lead the Folorn Hope at Tempestora.

[Brother Chris]

It is a mystery why this thread has got so angry. The OP just looked around for reasons for a DC in terminator armour. In 10,000 years of the chapter's history it seems indefensible to say that the latest slim codex proves that such a thing could never have happened under any circumstances. A Chapter master with a particular penchant for TDA as the current one has for jump-packs, an all TDA assault in a very hostile environment (Space, hot planet, cold planet, acid rain planet). In our very limited field of a few centuries we have a chaplain who remains lucid, a librarian who came out the other side and a captain who inducted himself and kept his artificer armour and nice weapons, and finely crafted face mask. A codex ago the same OP might have asked if DC were issued power weapons, some of which are equally rare technology. My answer would have been there probably would have been occasions and you could simulate it by painting your Veteran assault troops black and attaching a chaplain so they wouldn't act berserkly.

 

Anyway, I don't think of the DC as frothing at the mouth madmen. Those sort are kept locked up in that spooky tower or those catacombs. What they are are monomaniacs, obsessed with fighting and dying for the emperor. They presumably obey orders to some extent, they can handle complex weaponry, distinguish friend from foe. I don't think it wildly unlikely that a chaplain should tell a brother he has been blessed with the Black Rage, it is time to paint his armour and go into combat. I imagine servitors or neophytes can paint a suit of armour pretty quickly. They can do the DC dread very fast and, if the new model is to be believed, to etch on and attach some pretty specific insignia while they are about it. As the off quoted fluff says, the marine was in the dreadnought before the rage siezed him, but somehow ends up with a DC skull mask, etched saltire and so forth.

 

Lighten up and stretch you imaginations, brothers!

[Sanguinarian]

He was a very public figure in the Chapter before his fall, looked upon as being the future Chapter Master.

Say WHUT????????? Nope he wasnt... And he was probablly one of the most recent captains, since he was only elevated to his captaincy in the second war for armageddon...

 

Maybe you could go and refresh your memory of the Moripatris, and the Chaplains taking care to examine every marine before battle. They know what signs to look for - they see it often enough, and most/if not all DC will display enough/if not all of the signs that theri control is slipping. Even Tycho didnt fully fall to the Rage until hie was about to lead the Folorn Hope at Tempestora.

 

WOW. First line on page 41 of my Codex says "Brother-Captain Erasmus Tycho was once the greatest strike force leader the Blood Angels have ever known, rumoured to be Dante's protege and chosen successor."

 

Why all the puffy chests as to when and why we can or can't paint our toys black and call them Death Company Terminators? We've already established the fact that by adding a Priest and a Chaplain they gain all the benefits and none of the drawbacks. What's the big deal, Leo? It's a game. These are toys. It's science FICTION!!! -_-

[robot530]

Just to keep my response on topic in regard to DC TDA, I don't see a problem with 5 exceptional Marines over the course of some 10,000 years falling while wearing TDA. These Marines could have been seen as a dark asset to the Chapter, and now viewed as just as mystically as Astorath, Sanguinor, Corbullo, Mephison and all the other strangely occuring things happening in our Chapter. I also think they would be looked at as a powerful tactical emergency unit. I don't think they would be used as a sacraficial unit like regular DC. They would be locked in stasis in the most dark and secret chambers deep in the depths of the Monastery Fortress. They would already be considered lost to the Chapter as men, and would be considered relics in their own right. Once their mission complete, they would be returned to stasis again.

[robot530]

How many years is it? 10,000 is still a long time. Ha!

[Sanguinarian]

Just to keep my response on topic in regard to DC TDA, I don't see a problem with 5 exceptional Marines over the course of some 10,000 years falling while wearing TDA. These Marines could have been seen as a dark asset to the Chapter, and now viewed as just as mystically as Astorath, Sanguinor, Corbullo, Mephison and all the other strangely occuring things happening in our Chapter. I also think they would be looked at as a powerful tactical emergency unit. I don't think they would be used as a sacraficial unit like regular DC. They would be locked in stasis in the most dark and secret chambers deep in the depths of the Monastery Fortress. They would already be considered lost to the Chapter as men, and would be considered relics in their own right. Once their mission complete, they would be returned to stasis again.

 

Most Excellent! The beauty of science FICTION is that you can add to it. The beauty of NOT having any fluff to speak of is that I can ADD almost anything I want to it. So, with that said, stay tuned for my DC TDA Deathstar!!! -_-

[robot530]

I believe 10,000 years is correct. I haven't figured out how to edit yet.

 

I swear that button wasn't there a minute ago. Spring afternoon and warm ale. Cheers!

[Sanguinarian]

I believe 10,000 years is correct. I haven't figured out how to edit yet.

 

Click Edit -->>Full or Quick Edit --->> fix or change what you want --->> Complete Edit. >>>TA DA<<< :woot:

[Brother Tyler]

Two important points have been made and need to be reiterated:

1. A separation must be made between the rules and the background material. While the rules should reflect the background material, the rules only represent the "typical" range of things that can happen. Within the background material there are always exceptional circumstances and those might not be allowed under the standard rules.
   
2. In the thousands of years since Sanguinius' death and the curse afflicting his gene-sons, it's quite possible that some of those that have been inducted into the Death Company have worn tactical dreadnought armour.
   

An important element to consider is the distinction between falling to the Black Rage and being inducted into the Death Company. It's possible that some veterans have succumbed to the Black Rage and have fought in tactical dreadnought armour after being inducted into the Death Company, and multiple explanations for this occurring are possible and reasonable. It's much more likely a squad (perhaps more) of veterans in tactical dreadnought armour have succumbed to the Black Rage without any time to be inducted into the Death Company - perhaps just prior to a battle, perhaps in the heat of battle, perhaps under other circumstances. In these circumstances the terminators might fight like the Death Company, albeit in tactical dreadnought armour. Both outcomes are possible.

 

And the 3rd edition Chapter Approved rules fully supported such a premise without any limitation on terminators. I'll provide the fluff explanation without the rules:

This was the first question that assailed me [Gav Thorpe]: Is it feasible, within the Blood Angels' background, for an entire army to succumb to the Black Rage? Well of course it is. I can easily picture the scene in my mind...

 

It is during a major campaign, perhaps the Battle for Armageddon, and the Blood Angels Chapter is fully mobilised. On the eve of a large engagement a sizeable force of Blood Angels has assembled in prayer. When their thoughts turn to Sanguinius, they are assailed by visions of their Primarch's death at the hands of Horus. All around them the world lies devastated by their foul enemies and it seems as if the soil itself cries out for vengeance. Countless millions of lives have been lost and their death cries still linger in the air. Infused with hatred, tormented across the millennia by Sanguinius' bloody sacrifice, the Blood Angels feel their anger rising uncontrollably. Who can blame them for succumbing to their savage instinct to kill and destroy the Emperor's enemies? Have they not been raised and trained for just such a purpose? Are they not the protectors of Mankind with a sacred duty to avenge those who have fallen?

 

It starts with a few Space Marines; their rage breaking forth with hysterical shouts, the quivering of powerful muscles, the blinding waking nightmare of the Black Rage. Like stones case into a puddle, these few send a ripple of burning ire through their comrades, and more and more of the Blood Angels feel Sanguinius ancient energy rising through them. The Chaplains themselves fight hard against the urge, but even they cannot hold against the surging tide of anger that sweeps around them. There is no time for rituals now, no time-honoured annointing of armour or prayers to Sanguinius and the Emperor. The whole army is filled with the need to bring terrifying destruction upon their enemies, to fulfill the charnel greed that suffuses their minds and bodies. As one, the army spills forth towards the enemy, baying for blood, chanting the battle-cries of the Blood Angels. Like a terrible storm they fall upon their foes, half-blinded with rage, knowing nothing but the need to spill blood; to tear their enemies apart; to wade knee-deep in the gore of the Emperor's foes.

So Games Workshop has provided a basis for this to happen, giving one example of a situation in which this is possible. In the ten thousand or so years since Sanguinius' sacrifice, numerous similar situations have likely occurred, not just to the Blood Angels but to their various Successors.

[SamaNagol]

If that happened, there wouldnt be anyone left to induct them into the DC and thus no black armour. Theyd just all be raving loons running into battle in whatever they had on already

[jma037]

Brothers of the Wall,

 

Considering that there are Death Company dreadnoughts, and IIRC they are more "rare" then tactical dreadnought suits, would it be possible to have death company wearing terminator armours?

 

Thoughts, comments, land claims?

[Grand-Redemptor Ezkallon]

Putting the death company in rare and valuable terminator suits would be a horrible idea imo, as the chapter only has so many, and they are a pain and a half to replace. The dreadnoughts, can't really be helped, you can't stick them in power armour when they go mad, but I'm quite sure I remember reading that when the blood angels join the death company they are stripped of their rank and such, so they wouldn't be allowed to wear terminator armour anyway.

[BERZERKER!]

I have to agree with the previous poster.

 

If you want to look at it another way, a DC dread can wreak a lot more havok than a squad in TDA. Whilst assault terminators exist, the TDA is designed for a relentless, steady advance. As shown by the fact that they can't sweeping advance, it isn't really suitable for leaping forward into combat in a mindless, bloodthirsty rage, which is what the death company does.

 

Another point is that the armour availablity leads to small squad sizes, and DC members have lost the wherewithall to operate tactically and cohesively as a 5 or 10 man unit, which is why they are put into combat as what is essentially a crazed mob ;) .

[jma037]

True that. I painted one of my assualt terminators in Death Company colours tho.