Death Watch Question

[Epistolary Exander]

Ive been wondering if a chapter could volunteer entire squad or combat squad to for a tour of service into the Death Watch & if the Deatheatch would not field the seconded squad in entirety during its service to the Death Watch?

 

My reason for asking is question is because Ive been wondering how my DIY chapter the Martyrs Vermilion could to secund marines to the Death Watch, without the Martyrs radical beliefs getting in the in the way & causing friction with other serving members of the Death Watch. So I figured that the Chapter could send a 5 or a 10 man squad to serve the Death Watch, for the purpose of the Martyrs gaining extra experience fighting non chaos/ renegade forces.

[Leonaides]

If a marine is selected for the honour of serving in the Deathwatch, I suspect the chapter will choose one who has the temperament to deal with obeying orders that may be contrary to his preferences, and deal with working with marines he will normally refuse to. So thats your radical beliefs sorted.

 

Secondign an entire squad - possible. that squad serving together? Doubtful. the Deathwatch's priamry function is to provide suitable units for the Inquisition, not to train marines for thier chapters. What benefit is there to the Deathwatch of simply fielding a single squad of martyrs, when a mixed squad of marines will have a more varied experience and capability to deal with a wider array of encounters. deathwatch have to deal with the unexpected more often than not - so a wider capabililty base is best.

[Shinzaren]

You don't second marines to the Deathwatch by your choice. They ask you, and they generally take them 1-2 at a time, not en masse. The big thing however, is that it is an honor to be asked. You don't get to ask haha :P

[Arkangilos]

You don't second marines to the Deathwatch by your choice. They ask you, and they generally take them 1-2 at a time, not en masse. The big thing however, is that it is an honor to be asked. You don't get to ask haha

 

You could probably submit requests or messages stating you have abled members though. That doesn't mean they will except, but you could always say to the orginazation, "Should your mission require it, I have three possible outstanding 'volunteers' that stand ready." Then the Inquisition might look into that when they need one and say, "Hey, these guys aren't so bad. I will take number 2, thank you."

[Captain Juan Juarez]

You don't second marines to the Deathwatch by your choice. They ask you, and they generally take them 1-2 at a time, not en masse. The big thing however, is that it is an honor to be asked. You don't get to ask haha :confused:

 

As I recall there was one occurence of something apporaching "en masse" in reference to the Ultramarines.

[soddinnutter]

You don't second marines to the Deathwatch by your choice. They ask you, and they generally take them 1-2 at a time, not en masse. The big thing however, is that it is an honor to be asked. You don't get to ask haha :D

 

As I recall there was one occurence of something apporaching "en masse" in reference to the Ultramarines.

 

But everyone knows that the Ultramarines are "special". The nature of special depends upon who you ask.

 

If you are to ask Matt 'Spiritual Liege' Ward and associates then it means most Astratesy of the Astartes.

 

If you ask anyone else then it means special as in "Please excuse Simple Sam, he's a bit special".

[Epistolary Exander]

You don't second marines to the Deathwatch by your choice. They ask you, and they generally take them 1-2 at a time, not en masse. The big thing however, is that it is an honor to be asked. You don't get to ask haha <_<

 

Cheers, that clears a few things up :down:

 

But everyone knows that the Ultramarines are "special". The nature of special depends upon who you ask.

 

If you are to ask Matt 'Spiritual Liege' Ward and associates then it means most Astratesy of the Astartes.

 

If you ask anyone else then it means special as in "Please excuse Simple Sam, he's a bit special".

 

I doubt the Ultras are that special, because if they really were the Imperium wouldnt bother founding chapters that would have their own identities, they would make sure each marine chapter except the early founding chapters are carbon copies of the Ultramarines. It certainly would make sense, if thats how you want your Astartes, then you make sure thats how your Astartes are. Certainly the Ultras wouldnt mind helping that happen if the Imperium ever wanted to do that. As that hasnt happened, the Ultras cant be that good.

[Inquisitor Kravin]

Whilst I personally am a fan of the Wolves and Blood Angels fluffwise and no Ultra-fanboy I think that the widespread concept of the Codex Chapter and the fact that approximately two thirds of current chapters are descendants of the Ultramarines suggests that the High Lords do like the Ultramarines model and carbon copies of the Ultramarines are actually their preferred option.

 

I think the "en masse" bit with the Ultramarines is perfectly sensible in context. They were central to the first major war to defend against a Tyranid Hive Fleet. Afterwards the Deathwatch needed to learn lessons from the Tyrannic War Veterans and the Ultramarines needed all possible resources to train up replacements for their lost 1st Company. Hence a mutually beneficial programme was launched. This will probably be localised to the regions around Ultramar and the Eastern Fringe and so does not unbalance the the Deathwatch on a galactic scale.

 

When Death Watch kill team rules were published in White Dwarf a few years ago they specifically stated that they could only be used with marine armies from the "vanilla" codex, not variants like Space Wolves and Blood Angels. I believe that this was for game balance purposes as the divergent chapters already had plenty of novelties but fluffwise it was explained as the Death Watch having a preference for Codex Chapter marines as they were easier to integrate into a single squad since their training and operating procedures would largely overlap whereas integrating Space Wolves and Black Templars into the same unit was more challenging.

 

Of course, the Death Watch RPG has subsequently thrown that notion out of the window by including all of the major divergent chapters in its core ruleset. I think that there are two different approaches a chapter may take when selecting candidates to meet DW requests. Most will recognise the honour and send brothers who are sufficiently level headed and flexible to work in multi-chapter kill teams. A chapter with poorer relations with the Inquisition might see the DW as a chance to offload some of their more troublesome battle brothers on the basis that they'll either come back with some discipline beaten into them or not come back at all. Whilst it's probably not the DW's preferred type of recruit I'm sure that they could find some use for a Dirty Dozen style unit of Lukas the Trickster types.

[embalancer]

As far as i understand it some marines are put forward to enter the deathwatch by their captain or chapter master. Or the =][= comes calling to chapters they're fairly chummy with and know they have something they need for a particular mission e.g. A Inquisitor might go to the blood ravens and say I want your biggest Eldar expert.

 

It is unlikely that an entire squad will be called up to work as a unit as the idea of the DW is that an alloy of various chapter strengths can make a pretty devistating team

[Epistolary Exander]

Whilst I personally am a fan of the Wolves and Blood Angels fluffwise and no Ultra-fanboy I think that the widespread concept of the Codex Chapter and the fact that approximately two thirds of current chapters are descendants of the Ultramarines suggests that the High Lords do like the Ultramarines model and carbon copies of the Ultramarines are actually their preferred option.

 

I think the "en masse" bit with the Ultramarines is perfectly sensible in context. They were central to the first major war to defend against a Tyranid Hive Fleet. Afterwards the Deathwatch needed to learn lessons from the Tyrannic War Veterans and the Ultramarines needed all possible resources to train up replacements for their lost 1st Company. Hence a mutually beneficial programme was launched. This will probably be localised to the regions around Ultramar and the Eastern Fringe and so does not unbalance the the Deathwatch on a galactic scale.

 

The thing is though they are not carbon copies of the Ultramarines. The vast majority of chapters have their own character & traditions & slightly different combat preferences which are different from the Ultramarines. Ultramarine successors may venerate the Ultramarines but they are not Ultramarines & they know that they are their own chapter.

 

I doubt the Death Watch would have the opportunity to do have a bias towards using the Ultramarines after the 1st Tyranic War because the Ultras suffered hidious losses in the war, with the most significant proportion of losses being their veteran marines. So the Ultramarines would not be in a position to offer up vast numbers of veteran marines to the Death Watch without imparing their own ability to field experienced squads themselves. Which would if the Ultramarines did do so, would only increase the possibilities of more losses in action & therefore taking the chapter longer to recover from the conflict. Which doesnt seem like something Calgar would choose to have his chapter do.