Deathwing Supplement: The wish list.

[Freman Bloodglaive]

Terminators are overpriced in 6th edition. That's true of Codex Terminators. It's even more true of Deathwing.

 

They don't put out enough damage relative to their cost to compete, and they die pretty easily in the volume of fire that 6th edition encourages. As scoring units they're too expensive to sit on an objective, and in a game where you need as many scoring units as possible their high cost discourages taking anything other than Deathwing terminators in a Deathwing army.

 

A Deathwing supplement that didn't address that fact would be just as difficult to play as the current Dark Angels Codex.

 

More shooting power? Make the Standard of Devastation work on storm bolters as well, or create a Deathwing specific banner with the same effect. Doubling the firepower of a Deathwing squad would compensate a little.

 

More survivability? Not sure how. Feel no pain from the standard helps a little, but not enough and requires bunching around the standard. Obviously if SoD was applied to storm bolters then you'd run into a conflict between taking one or the other banner, which isn't what is wanted.

[d@n]

I think it would be cool if you could take terminator squads, with 4 heavy weapons, in heavy support. Also duel plasma cannon centurions would be nice to convert

[Isiah]

Problem is termies were/ are basically built for close combat - especially in ship-to-ship and other closely confined space actions. Becoming heavy-weaponed 'devastator' termy squads isn't their thing - that's a job for proper Devs squads, Dreads (preferably Mortis) or tanks.

 

Now back in the 3rd Edition DA codex you could take Deathwing Terminator squads in the HS slots (if it were a pure DW army) and in fact there were advantages to that as they deployed last - useful if that squad had two cyclone models and the squad had Tank Hunters.

 

Now I'd be up for a HS slot termy squad for sure but not with four heavy weapons - but Tank Hunter would be welcome for them :yes:

 

Happy new year

 

Cheers

I

[Master Avoghai]

Terminators are overpriced in 6th edition. That's true of Codex Terminators. It's even more true of Deathwing.

 

They don't put out enough damage relative to their cost to compete, and they die pretty easily in the volume of fire that 6th edition encourages. As scoring units they're too expensive to sit on an objective, and in a game where you need as many scoring units as possible their high cost discourages taking anything other than Deathwing terminators in a Deathwing army.

 

A Deathwing supplement that didn't address that fact would be just as difficult to play as the current Dark Angels Codex.

 

More shooting power? Make the Standard of Devastation work on storm bolters as well, or create a Deathwing specific banner with the same effect. Doubling the firepower of a Deathwing squad would compensate a little.

 

More survivability? Not sure how. Feel no pain from the standard helps a little, but not enough and requires bunching around the standard. Obviously if SoD was applied to storm bolters then you'd run into a conflict between taking one or the other banner, which isn't what is wanted.

Out of the fact that, for me, DW supplement would be useless (not enough to put inside... It would look as the escalation book : full of nothing just to justify one new secondary objective and one warlord traits table...), I would like to reply on the point of termi effectiveness.

 

IMO, termis suffer from 2 things : the d6 system and the profile politic of GW.

 

The profile politic

I still fail to understand WHY 95% of the profiles turns around WS 3-4 and I 3-4... I mean : we could say that an IG is WS3 a SM is 4 a SM vet is 5 a SM officer is 6, a chapter master 7... It still leaves WS 8, 9 and 10 for things like greater daemons, have tyrants etc...

That way termis would be better because with a better WS and I than normal marines, they would be better in CC (and it would give a point to field LC or even sgt with sword).

 

Limitating the profile to only 3 and 4 prevent to give the nuance between different type of warriors in the same army and therefore makes difficult to make the points cost balanced : if you make termis ~ 40pts, the vets could seem more interesting for the same line of profile : cheap, with more weapons options.

On the other side, if you make the termis 30-35pts they become waaaay more interesting than vets...

 

The d6 system :

GW has chosen a limited system of d6. This is good because this system is intuitive as everybody know this kind of dice and it makes the chart to hit and to wound easy to learn.

But this also limitates the nuance of a fight and the different levels of a warrior.

 

If you have a warrior of WS 7 facing opponents with WS 4,5 or 6 he would hit them on 3+... Hence it negates the difference between the different warriors

Let's say now you use d10. The WS7 warrior would hit a WS7 on 5+(50-50) WS6 on a 4+, WS5 on. 3+, WS4 on 2+... And same thing for the strike back.

So if you combine the d10 system with the use of a larger range profile, you can really make a difference between the warriors of the same armies.(ie : termis vs vets vs standard marines)

 

 

The later point will never change, as D6 is iconic in GW's games. The other one... Well, it would require a total makeover of 40k like for the v2-v3 transition... But we still can hope for that in the future, particularly with the development of iBook and ePub that allow direct fixing.

 

 

But for now, we must accept termis being not as good as they should be, they're not bad, but with this meta game, when you change something, it can pass from underpowered to overpowered (or the contrary) really fast. Just look how the few addition of rules makes Tau overpowered (or in a more unit-specific note : eldar wave serpents).

[Isiah]

Bloodglaive, Avoghai: that being said - how does it help a DW supplement? Are you saying it isn't worth developing?

 

Cheers

I

[Master Avoghai]

That's exactly that

 

Fluffwise, I can't imagine more things that what we already know... A few campaigns and what? Don't want to pay for a supplement full of vacuum.

Ruleswise, either it will give us costly new options unusable or a farsight-like army list... I don't want both.

 

Give us a successor chapter supplement that describes the different of modus operandi between e chapter and different chapter masters or masters of the 1st and 2nd companies.

 

But don't expect any supplement to resolve the problems you have by playing a full termi army. The problem of termis are deeper in the metagame.

[Isiah]

What about additional named Deathwing characters? A sergeant for instance? A dreadnought? A dedicated Cypher-hunting cadre or formation?

 

Don't let current perceived game meta suck the joy out of 40K :)

 

Cheers

I

[shabbadoo]

it is not worth developing.  Variant Chapters are what is worth developing, not a single company.  Somebody will no doubt feel the urge to mention Raukugan, but that really an Iron Hands release which thematically features a particular Company that is representative of the extremity of what the Iron Hands are about; they still being, at the core, a Codex Chapter.  and that book is about a standard formation of that Chapter.   There is not a single thing that is "standard" about running a Deathwing army.  We do it just because it is fun, but one won't need to be taking off their shoes to count the number of times that the Deathwing have actually taken to the field in army force strength.  And, if you have to start creating all sorts of new wonky rules and new units and murdering the background, just to get it to be feasible (i.e. trying waaay too hard), it is probably not that great of an idea to begin with.

 

Basically, save the supplements for more appropriate things.  For The Unforgiven, doing a supplement for one of the Successor Chapters, the Consecrators in particular, would be a better use of time and effort.

[SvenONE]

A named deathwing dreadnought as an HQ would be pretty awesome.

 

I also agree on the DW chaplain being a little bland.  But that said, a DW Chaplain with a mace of redemption is pretty sweet, albeit kinda pricey which is an issue on its own (slightly cheaper than Belial who obviously brings more to the table).  The frustrating thing about the DA chaplains is that they've given Zealot for fluff reasons, but the fearless aspect of Zealot is pointless due to Inner Circle.  It's writing like that that makes me facepalm and assume GW is phoning it in with our codex.

 

Why our regular chaplain can't take TDA baffles me as well, we're forced to pay an extra 20 points for the int-chap just to get him into that TDA.  C:SM can then bring a teeth of Terra, Burning Blade, or Shield Eternal, for a slightly cheaper variant of ours.  Granted vanilla misses out on the I5, BS5 (yipee?) and +1W +1A, which are pluses for us, I just wish I had a cheaper option, saving 20 points on that chaplain means I can give 4 terminators SS/TH, those saved points add up.  I just don't get GW's logic sometimes.

[Freman Bloodglaive]

Would it help if I said that GW don't understand their logic?

[Interrogator Stobz]

Termies suffer from the same problem as Dreads and have done for many Editions; that they are in several codexes and can't be easily fixed state/AV-wise because of that.

I would love to see all termies WS5, T5, storm bolters to shoot at assault 3, combi weapons to be more available and DS to not suck so much. I'd also love to see Dreads with their Adamantium armour (it has been downgraded fluffwise to thick ceramite in our new dex :devil: I'm really beginning to dislike Mr V more and more) rocking AV13 to make them fit their old descriptions better.

But there are two shows of any of that happening in a suppliment let alone the BGB and all the PA dexes. GW seem to have realised some of these problems and are giving us and other dexes upgrade patches like the furioso for the BA, ammo upgrades for GK and our own DW Knights with their better stats, but these should really be the norm not the upgrade imho. Another weak attempt to fix technique is adding things like Dreadknights etc but that is GW shopping for our cash more than attempting to sell more dreads and termies.

I would buy a DW suppliment the day it was released but not because it added anything that we really need, I would buy it because 'My name is Lance and I am a Junkie'. Hopefully that is the first step ;)

[Bryan Blaire]

I think the reason we don't get a regular Chaplain in TDA is that TDA = Deathwing, and the Chaplains associated with the Deathwing and higher in the Unforgiven are the Interrogator-Chaplains, because as Deathwing or higher, they would know the Secret.

 

That was something shown well in the old Chapter Org chart in the 4th Ed Codex, which showed a Chaplain for every company except the Deathwing, which was included in the square that enclosed the Inner Circle, which showed the Interrogator-Chaplains. It says in pg 14 "Each Company apart from the Deathwing also includes a Chaplain..."

[Master Avoghai]

What about additional named Deathwing characters? A sergeant for instance? A dreadnought? A dedicated Cypher-hunting cadre or formation?

Don't let current perceived game meta suck the joy out of 40K :)

Cheers

I

I talk about the meta because freeman bloodglaive talked about how a supplement could make our termis BETTER.

Same thing weeks ago : the OP asked for making our DW better with a supplement (and you'll notice that, at that time already, I've made the same answer ;) )

 

So it is not about adding more datas and fun, it's about making termi better gameswise. And you can't have a discussion about making termis better if you don't talk about the meta. I mean, since v3, meta has changed (move, CC resolution, armour save system...), and since v3, termis struggle to find their place in the game... Coincidence? Don't think so :)

 

I can totally see the fun having a new sgt or a dread HQ... But this could completely be done with a dataslate (since it seems to be GW's new mojo). But talking about a supplement... Do you think that GW have enough data to put inside concerning our 1st company that is not already present in our codex our in BL's books?

I've just finished to read Escalation and it's a crappy supplement : it's just the reproduction of the super heavy pages of Apocalypse with a new warlord traits table and 2 new secondary objective... I hardly see how a DW supplement could be different...

 

On the opposite, I've found Clan Raukaan full of informations. The reason is simple : few already existed about the IH anyway. This chapter (as well as IF, RG and to a lesser extent sallies) have been left aside by GW for many years hence room exist to write nice fluff and invent new things. The thing is the same for the successors, there are lots of area to explore... The first one giving the Lions sable official scheme :-P

[Master Sheol]

There is too much "successors frenzy" about a Unforgiven supplement round here...

Let's face it... Usually successors are FW material to work with their IA series... Raptors, Minotaurs, Red Scorpions are good examples... They talked about a DA successor too.. The Angels of Absolution that are known to have less TDAs than normal Unforgiven chapters and use their DW in PA too...

Recently FW did a good work with the chapter traits PDF so i would rely on FW to put more focus on DA successors chapters...

I dont think that GW will do Supplements for DA... Just because i think that we will not see supplements anymore...

In january they will publish 2 dataslates for Tyranid vanguards and Tyranid wars Veterans for the UM... Dataslates are gonna replace supplements IMHO...

So what about DW or RW??? maybe dataslates but i think that the only dataslate about DA will remain the one about Cypher that is not playable by DA even if his BG is DA related... And according to GW Cypher is a BIG thing for DA so they won't do nothing more for the Unforgiven soon...

I pray for a better errata/FAQ than for a supplement but i have HUGE doubts we will see something for DA before Q2 2015 when FW will pubblish the HH book about BA on signus prime that will contain (as FW stated) DA list too...

 

My 2 cents...

[johnyocum]

I'd like to see a DW supplement that also covers the 1st Company of all the Unforgiven successors, including possibly alternate 1st Company Grand Masters and such.

 

Maybe an option to take a DW squad as a 'devastator' squad, giving them the option to take Flakk missles for a CML if they're in such a squad, but otherwise just the same shooty options we already have.