Deathwatch Comparison with Astartes (White Scars)

[Prot]

So this is an exercise more for me than anything else.

 

As you've probably seen from the pictures in my hobby thread, I have a decent collection of Deathwatch. This is my second go around with them, and I feel I'm not terribly far away from having over 2K painted. 

 

I only want one Marine army though, and I rarely, ever, play soup in any of my armies.

 

With the frustration we had for so long with Deathwatch, I had swapped over to my Ultramarines for a long time, rarely pulling out the Deathwatch. However, I got an offer through my Instagram that I could not resist for my Ultramarines, and I decided I could not paint a 4th Ultramarine army and went with something very different feeling: White Scars.

 

So now that we have that out of the way, I came to a lot of difficult (for me) mind bending debate on if I should really bother throwing in the towel on the White Scars just because our rules have been revisited. However I believe it's possible that the new rules make the Deathwatch a real, valid, long term solution to my "marine" army.

 

I started trying to come up with Pro's and Con's and this is where perhaps some of you can help me out.

 

Pro's/cons:

 

- White Scars:

 + Better psychic phase: Great powers. Prevent overwatch, a sort of "mind war" power. Increase assault. Slow the opponent. Great stuff.

 + Better Chaplain/Litanies. The White Scars Master of Sanctity is casting 2 litanies including the White Scars use of their own re-roll all to wound in Close Combat.

+ Super Doctrine: Assault. +1 damage to every attack. Even Incursors get better, and Reivers are usable! A Hammer toting Intercessor in T3 is doing 4 flat damage. 

+ Special Character. Khan is a very valuable costing unit, and adding 1 to wounds in CC when you assault near him is like having a sort of... ghetto Vets of the Long War. 

+ Access to all Primaris/Old Marine units. That kind of goes without saying, but even a vanilla Grav Dev squad in a pod, or Grav Centurions, or Assault Centurions are great add ons. 

+ Access to firepower: I typically run 2 Thunderfire Cannons. Such a great unit. 

+ Access to vehicles: There isn't anything huge about this, but I do enjoy Impulsors a lot. I always use an Invictor Warsuit.

+ Great Strats. Allow a unit to infiltrate/Encirclement, Increase assault rolls, etc, etc.

 

- Negatives. 

- Definitely made for one phase of the game. It can feel arduous trying to grind through all those shooty armies, every game.

- Inflexible by design. I could do 4-5 Impulsors, but wow that would get boring fast. I can get away with multiple scouts, and a dual Battalion is easy, but the core of the list has to stay stuck on combat.

-  Some really bad match ups. The army actually struggles against other fast moving, very strong CC armies.

 

 

Deathwatch

+ Use of the new Strats might be common, but I think just having access to stuff like "Transhuman Physiology" is huge.

+ Of course SIA. Especially Poison makes some match ups incredibly favourable.

+ Strats: Sweeping Marker Lights? Sure. Shooting at a Dark Eldar boat? Sure. Some great stuff.

+ Primaris builds. As someone who does like Primaris, it's hard to beat their flexibility. I don't have this figured out yet, but it looks good on paper.

+ Classic Vets: Stormbolters/Shields. Maybe not as cheap as scouts but extremely flexible and valuable as a baseline troop.

+ Great HQ choice in Watchmaster (cheap, great aura.)

+ Multi Deep strike option.

 

Negatives:

- Slightly heavy points costs inherent in lists.

- Lack of Primaris content. (not sure this makes sense or is a long term thing.)

- No specific Psychics.

- Deathwatch Specific Unit (Corvus) is still in a poor spot. No valid transport for Primaris other than the Repulsor.

- Lack of shooting options: Devs, Thunderfires, Centurions, etc.

 

I guess most of the above is the obvious. What I'm trying to figure out is if it's really a big enough difference to basically put the White Scars on hold.  

 

Usually I'm playing in a fairly competitive meta so I don't have a lot of wiggle room for 'funsy' units. On the other hand, because it is competitive there's mostly high end Xenos here for me to play.

 

What would you guys say? Or comments on the above?

[Mr4Minutes]

I think you’ve got a good start by looking at the units and strats that each army can use. But it may help to start looking at the army mechanics and play styles of the two to really see which you’d rather use going forward.

 

Here’s some of my pros/cons of DeathWatch

 

Pro

Kill team wound manipulation.

I think this is a core function of the army. Things like ablative wounds for hellblasters, aggressors/inceptors bringing t5, termies and vets with storm shields are examples.

 

Mobility (at least initially)

The DS strat and beacon relic allow DeathWatch to get where they need to be on the table. Or redeploy when necessary.

 

Firepower

In general I think we have the strongest anti-anything not vehicles or titans shooting in the game.

 

Cons

HQs

I think our HQs are pretty middle of the road. I stick to ones that can innately DS.

 

Elite

Full kill teams are point heavy and will limit how many you can bring. Limited unit choice means DeathWatch is going to lack screens and struggle with trades.

 

Anti Armor

The lack of real anti armor can hurt in match ups against large numbers of high toughness vehicles. Especially if they’ve got invulns.

 

 

I think DeathWatch are a cagey army that needs to focus on objectives and surviving the long game.

 

DeathWatch have limited units to screen and trade with, so positioning is important. While they may have tough units, they can’t survive dedicated firepower or hard counters. (Intergressors are great until a fully buffed rock saw unit gets into them)

 

This leads me to play DeathWatch as a board control army. Maximize your shooting range while minimizing return fire. Don’t DS right at 9” but at your maximum firing range. They really are more of a scalpel then a sword

[Prot]

That’s a great analysis and different from my unit vs unit kind of approach. 
 

Its interesting that we take for granted the old basic marine squad ability to simply have heavy and special weapons imbedded. But yes it’s a good thing to have with primairis. 
 

I agree part of the positives is to exercise board control. I just have to wonder if Deathwatch do it well enough to warrant calling them competitive.  
 

I will say the lack of the Primaris choices bugs me. Even something as simple as the Impulsor. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Prot

[Qui-Gon]

A couple of my observations:

 

1:

White scars need to slog through 2 turns to hit their peak performance on the third, since their chapter tactic and Doctrine focus take a while to really synergize.

 

Deathwatch are functionally at their peak from turn 1, due in part to the absolute absurdity of SIA stalker rifles, advance and fire intergressor units (that have an effective minimum band of 24-29" for the aggressors and a 25-41" band for the auto bolt rifles), legitimate drop pod units now with storm bolter vets with shields capable of positioning where you want, beacon angelis deployment, be it via pod or jump pack advancing character.

 

2:

Most Deathwatch units only require a single character or dreadnought nearby to provide efficiency on their firepower, assuming you're able to optimize Mission Tactics. This provides a small modicum of countering the higher cost, since we don't need Lieutenants to ensure our wound rolls stick.

 

The opportunity cost of a trio of scouts is counterbalanced by wanting the re-roll 1s to wound aura from Tactical Precision.

[Paulinus]

I guess it boils down to how you play competitively. Is it ITC?

 

Then look at it from that perspective with secondaries. What does your Deathwatch list do well with ITC secondaries in mind.

 

You have to take one seek and destroy and one board control and one of your choice or old school.

 

I’m looking to make old school one of my go to missions. I know it’s a bit of a trap for most lists but I think DW is well placed to do well. And might take a few opponents off guard.

 

Getting a first strike kill is easy enough.

Slay the Warlord. A deep striking stalker intercessors with an agressor, using precision target strat and decapitation strike.

Kill something on the last turn

Behind enemy lines.

 

Good chance to get those with deathwatch built a certain way.

 

My two main primaris units are:

 

an intergressor squad with 4 dakka aggressors, an inceptor and 5 autobolt intercessors.

 

A 9 man stalker bolt rifle squad with one agressor.

[Prot]

Well I play 40k and ITC. Totally depends on the tournament and time of the year. I personally 

prefer the newer Maelstrom and Deathwatch are decent at that. 
 

It is true that White Scars are biding their time until Turn 3 however they do have the benefit of a myriad of options from the Astartes codex. And when it comes to vehicle heavy armies, the Hammers are downright viscous and in turn 3 a squad of plain Intercessors with 2 damage knives are really potent. 
 

Deathwatch can cut down some of the nasties I see in my meta for sure. My struggle has been the newer super potent assault armies, or the fast Vehicle armies. 
 

I don’t think I can ever compete with Deathwatch as an assault army...plus why would you with SIA? That said I have to wonder if the meat of the codex is also it’s weakness. 

[Paulinus]

Is it a marine dominated meta in your area? DW excel at killing that.

 

My area meta isn’t as marine heavy so my Ultras are a better choice I think. But I will be testing my DW to see how they fare.

[Prot]

Eldar Flyer lists, dark Eldar, lots of Tau. Astra. Orks. 
 

We had quite a few Iron Hands in the last few tourneys but I think that’ll change. 

[Mr4Minutes]

I think DeathWatch perform very well in the new maelstrom missions. I usually toss the standard hold objective x and focus on the killing objectives.

 

I have not dug too deep into the new itc missions since the quarantine, but under the old rules I felt DeathWatch excelled at scoring denial. I felt it was easy to build effective lists that didn’t give up more then 3 vps in any secondary. That would be my goal if I was building an itc list.

 

Fast vehicles is tough. I think scoring would come down to limiting your opponents targets and using your movement capabilities to hit your objectives and try and out score them before they kill you.

 

I think some may disagree with this, but I think drop pods and watch masters are a trap. I think watch masters are mediocre. They’ve got limited movement and so need some sort of deployment option to be bought for them, be it a transport or cp. Their reroll is only slightly better then a Captain. And their damage output is meh.

 

I think captains are far more effective for DeathWatch HQs. They can be kitted out to perform multiple tasks and get the ability to DS without using CP.

 

I don’t own a drop pod, but I just don’t see their effectiveness in a competitive game. You can only carry vets, so no kill team buffs. And you can only beacon one squad in turn 1. With proper screening you’re never going to hit your opponents juicers targets. And without the wound manipulation of a kill team there’s no way you’re surviving the counter punch.

 

I’d much rather stack up my kill teams, play a cagey turn 1 and deploy more strategic strength turn 2 and beyond.

 

Sorry if this derailed a bit from your DeathWatch/white scars comparison.

[Qui-Gon]

Speaking from experience having run drop pods a LOT in 7E and routinely since the rules change in 8th, there is a psychological aspect of the drop pod. It can deny a lot of the table. It can get almost anywhere. And then there is the aspect that no one likes having to dedicate any firepower to remove them once they hit the table. Compared to a rhino, a rhino can continue to carry dudes. It can charge things. But once the drop pod hits, the opponent knows that its done its job and that investing any kind of firepower or melee effort to remove it is a net waste. The only time its needed is if you drop the pod on an objective and use this annoying unit to hold it without having to invest a squad to do so.

I've run veteran units from rhinos since the start of the edition, and even before in 7E. I tried the mixed veteran teams, but it felt like such a gimmick and I wasn't getting the results I wanted. I prefer the flexibility and options provided to the units from transports like the rhino or the drop pod. The other models that can be taken are nice, but do one thing: slow the squad down. If you need 5 units in your opponents back field, walking 6" a turn is going to get you nowhere. Spending CP to teleport them in is delaying their usefulness and removing board presence.

[Paulinus]

Good point about the drop pod. Merely having one will force your opponent to deploy accordingly. It’s about exploiting that.

 

If you have a drop pod or two, do you drop first turn? Or hold back to keep your opponent guessing and keep him hesitant to go with his original plan? This can have a big impact.

 

You could drop first turn, beacon something else nearby for a big alpha strike. Then follow up next turn with deepstriking units for a 2 or 3 wave attack on a critical part of an army.

 

I’m adding one to my list. If anything it does save CP to bring down a few units and or characters.

 

One can build a really good disruption unit with that.

 

Turn 1 point denial is also a really good point for ITC. Going 2nd might be the way to go.

 

 

Some pros to white scars is the outflanking ability and sheer awesome innate mobility of charging after advancing. Bikes and j pack troops are just so awesome in WS.