Index astartes: Deathwatch

[Charlo]

 

Seems to me, the reduction in units that use SIA is to stop the power creep of weapons.

 

If so, it's really dumb and nonsensical (from fluff standpoint) solution. Just limit the SIA so it can be used only with natural number of shots gun has, no rapid fire. There, done. Limits firepower without making more expensive guns (and whole primaris half of the army) useless. It makes far more sense if you think about it too, you'd want to use SIA for precise shots with rifle, not for spraying it from your submachine gun style bolter (which is still somehow legal unlike the former).

 

"Just make it work like nothing else in the game!"

[leth]

People really latch on to weird things as the whole identity of an army. I think SIA was the old identity, but it was a one trick pony that was severely limiting in which things you would take. Did this maximize SIA usage or not? 
 

Now we are not limited to that, but it is a bullet in our chamber. We have so many more special rules and abilities that are very much in line with our identity that I am perfectly fine with that trade off. 
 

[Qui-Gon]

You know what? I honestly don't mind that we've lost SIA in the volume we did.

 

Think about it:

We gained:

All the Phobos units

All the Gravis units
All the Tacticus units
The Corvus became amazing!
All the vehicles, old and new
All the terminators
All the dreadnoughts
Centurion suits
All the characters, bar none
Went from 6 relics to like 30, many of which are good
Gained a psychic discipline that's actually not trash
Gained an updated Librarius AND Obscuration as bonus
Gained two codexes worth of stratagems
Gained THE most flexible space marine army on the tabletop in terms of what rules we use, when, how, where and whatever we damn well please.
Gained new Kill team constructions.
Gained access to the most warlord traits for any faction in the game, many of which are good and I'm at a loss what to take
Gained good secondary objectives
Gained access to the Masters of the Chapter

What did we lose?
SIA on primaris intercessors, storm bolters, and twin boltguns.

Tome of Ectoclades is balls now.

I'll take what we gained any day in exchange for a gimmick which was unfair to many armies in the game. Now that we are on par pts wise, and we still gained more than we lost, and we STILL get access to SIA for a core unit and with a stratagem, we truly have no complaints.

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who decries what we gained and prefers that deathwatch remain the army that we were as compared to what we gained needs to shut up and get out. We do not need the negativity. We gained so much, and lost so little.

 

I've been a skeptic this entire time. I've held myself back from getting hopeful. I am happy with where we are going to be, and not sad at all that we lost something on a handful of units to gain so much more.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Qui-Gon

[Valdr Fell-fist]

Have we seen our list of relics, brother?

 

Must say, I’m very pleased with Brotherhood of Veterans. Gain a different Chapter Tactic at the flip of a switch? Very cool.

[leth]

Where are people seeing the list of relics and stratagems? 

[Boyadventurer]

That's a bit of a hash stance there Qui-Gon. I came to Deathwatch at their launch from a Sternguard-heavy IF army specifically because I liked the whole "swiss-army knife" approach SIA brought (back when Sternguard had it themselves). Between that and having benefits to mixing kill teams, that was the whole identity of Deathwatch.

 

Losing most of one and all of the other is pretty jarring still. With that and then the influx of new units, It feels like we're being watered down from something fairly unique (like GK), to just another non-codex chapter. I definitely wanted a bit more versatility in what we could take, but getting access to almost the whole codex really isn't a huge selling point for me. At that point, why am I playing DW over another chapter then if its almost all the same stuff? Well I would have said "because I like the lore and I think the versatility of SIA and the Kill Teams is fun" but, well...

 

That said, there's definitely some garbage negativity going around about it and I'm not about that at all. I'm reserving my judgement til the book is out and even then I know stuff is changing and that's just the way it is and I'll eventually get used to it. But let us still be able to shed a tear for the days when SIA was plenty and Kill Teams meant something. The DW fanbase dealt with a lot of crap stuff in our short life, so it's hard to get over the things that carried us through all that.

[Boyadventurer]

Where are people seeing the list of relics and stratagems? 

Strats have been added to the Imgur link from before: https://imgur.com/a/rgFKOCS

 

Not sure about the relics, but in the "give a srg a relic" strat, it mentions Banebolts as well as "artificier bolt cache", which sounds intriguing.

[Lemondish]

It appears the album was updated to include a ton of Stratagems as well, which I've transcribed within the spoiler tags below. In summary...

• Almost all the unique 8th edition Kill Team bonus abilities that used to come baseline for those units when certain models were added are now 1CP stratagems. 
• Primaris can gain SIA for a phase with a 2CP stratagem, but it changes all bolt weapon profiles to Heavy 1. This excludes the Eliminator's sniper rifle. 
• Teleportarium is limited in uses based on your game size, with the ability to use it twice at the Strike Force level. 
• Some Strats from 8th (like Death to the Alien, Adaptive Tactics, and the anti-Xenos ones) remain, but were often changed. Adaptive Tactics for instance does not seem to get cheaper if a Watch Master is your Warlord, but Death to the Alien got a massive buff. More of the returning ones gained buffs than not. 
• Many of the Strats we've come to associate with Marine Supplements are included here, like double Warlord traits and Sergeants becoming eligible to select a small subset of relics.  
• Doctrine bonus Strats to wounding are gone, likely in favour of the Specialisms referenced in other parts of the leak. 

Prognosticating Volley and Overkill are as mentioned in the WC article.

Death to the Alien, for 1 CP in the Fight phase, to add 1 to the Attacks characteristics of models in a Deathwatch unit that is within engagement range of a Xenos unit. A massive boost in power compared to 8th edition.

Synaptic Severance, for 1 CP in your Shooting phase or Fight phase, when making an attack against a Tyranid Synapse unit, an unmodified hit roll of 6 automatically wounds the target. No longer sniper focused to ignore the limited group of Synapse Characters that would have benefited from LoS, so it now helps against pretty much any Synapse unit. Big buff.

Adaptive Tactics, for 2 CP in the Command phase, to have a Watch Master change the Battlefield Role for Xenos Hunters once per game. Unlike in 8th, it does not get cheaper if a Watch Masters is your Warlord.

Atonement Through Honour, for 1 CP in the opponent's Charge phase, to have a unit with a Black Shield perform a Heroic Intervention this phase as if it were a Character. This is the old Kill Team bonus that Black Shields provided, but now in Stratagem form.

Sanction of the Black Vault, for 1 CP before the battle, to give a Sergeant model a selection of Relics of the Watch Fortress (which include things we know, like Artificer Armour, MC weapon, Digital weapons, and Banebolts of Eryxia), and one we don't know about (Artificer Bolt Cache).

A Vigil Unmatched, for 1 CP before the battle, to give an additional trait to a non-named Deathwatch Warlord.

Stem the Green Tide, for 2 CP in the charge phase after an enemy Ork unit has declared a charge, the Deathwatch unit in question can fire Overwatch and if any models are destroyed as a result of Overwatch, subtract 2 from charge rolls made for the Ork unit.

Priority Doctrine Adoption, for 1 CP in the Command phase, to provide an alternative Combat Doctrine bonus to a unit rather than the one currently active. Can only use if every unit from the army is Deathwatch (excluding AoI and Unaligned units).

Targeting Scramblers, for 1 CP in your opponent's Shooting phase after a T'au unit has resolved its shooting attacks against a DW unit, remove all marketlight counters.

Brotherhood of Veterans, for 2 CP in your Command phase, to bestow a Deathwatch unit in your army with a Chapter Tactic or Successor Tactic instead of Xenos Hunters for a turn.

Disruptive Launch, for 1 CP in your Movement phase, when a Deathwatch Jump Pack unit, Indomitor Kill Team unit with an Inceptor, or Proteus Kill Team unit with a Vanguard Vet with jump pack falls back, you can still shoot. Old Kill Team bonus in Stratagem form.

Teleportarium, for 1 CP during deployment, select an Infantry, Dreadnought, or Biker unit to gain the Teleport Strike ability. In a STrike Force game you can use this twice, or thrice in an Onslaught battle, but otherwise you're limited to once per game.

Relentless Assault for 1CP in your Movement phase when a Deathwatch Biker unit, or a Kill Team unit that contains a Veteran Biker or Outrider falls back - this unit can still charge. Old Kill Team bonus in Stratagem form.

Shroud Field, for 2 CP at the start of the first battle round, select one Corvus Blackstar - until the end of the battle round, that unit cannot be selected as a target for ranged attacks unless it is the closest eligible target to the firing model. (THIS IS INSANE)

Clavis for 1CP at the start of the Fight phase, select an enemy vehicle within 1" of a Watch Master to deal D3 mortal wounds and force the unit to fight only after all eligible units from your army have fought.

Special-Issue Loadout for 2 CP in your shooting phase, select a Deathwatch unit and until the end of the phase, bolt weapons (excluding bolt sniper rifles) without the Special-issue Ammunition ability gain that ability and their weapon type characteristic changes to Heavy 1.

 

 

Where are people seeing the list of relics and stratagems?

Strats have been added to the Imgur link from before: https://imgur.com/a/rgFKOCS

 

Not sure about the relics, but in the "give a srg a relic" strat, it mentions Banebolts as well as "artificier bolt cache", which sounds intriguing.

 

 

We previously had Banebolts in 8th, which added 1 to the Damage characteristic of a weapon that could fire SIA (when it fired SIA), but with SIA being much more limited now I have no idea what it would do...

 

The Bolt Cache is new and intriguing.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Lemondish

[Qui-Gon]

That's a bit of a hash stance there Qui-Gon. I came to Deathwatch at their launch from a Sternguard-heavy IF army specifically because I liked the whole "swiss-army knife" approach SIA brought (back when Sternguard had it themselves). Between that and having benefits to mixing kill teams, that was the whole identity of Deathwatch.

 

Losing most of one and all of the other is pretty jarring still. With that and then the influx of new units, It feels like we're being watered down from something fairly unique (like GK), to just another non-codex chapter. I definitely wanted a bit more versatility in what we could take, but getting access to almost the whole codex really isn't a huge selling point for me. At that point, why am I playing DW over another chapter then if its almost all the same stuff? Well I would have said "because I like the lore and I think the versatility of SIA and the Kill Teams is fun" but, well...

 

That said, there's definitely some garbage negativity going around about it and I'm not about that at all. I'm reserving my judgement til the book is out and even then I know stuff is changing and that's just the way it is and I'll eventually get used to it. But let us still be able to shed a tear for the days when SIA was plenty and Kill Teams meant something. The DW fanbase dealt with a lot of crap stuff in our short life, so it's hard to get over the things that carried us through all that.

 

Do not get me wrong, acknowledging the changes to what we lost is not an issue. Its those people who say things along the lines of "Deathwatch is dead" or "without SIA deathwatch has no flavor" or other things along those lines.  The only thing I have not now seen out of the new codex is the crusade rules. That's Relics, Warlord traits, Strats, units, psychic powers, weapon profiles, secondaries, kill teams, specialisms, points, and I can say with full certainty, we are the most flexible, swiss army knife army. In. The. Game.

 

Between full control over Doctrines when we use them, the ability to change a unit's chapter tactic, the ability to take any warlord trait from the core codex, to any character, to any kill team, to a slew of other small things, it all adds up to be better than the sum of the individual parts.

 

That is the thing I loved most about Deathwatch, that they are able to be more than they are. Yes, in previous editions it relied HEAVILY on SIA, but we no longer need to do so. We were restricted based on unit choices and that influenced the need to have to take SIA or other broken units. Now that we aren't so reliant on the ammo because we have more unit selection, and the options we do have are amazing, trust me dude. SIA is a flavor you can keep with Veteran units and STILL be good. But not the exploitive 8E storm bolter spam.

 

@Lemondish: Stem the Green Tide allows the charged units to shoot overwatch, not JUST a single unit. It is you basically gain limited For the Greater Good where everything shoots for 2 CP.

 

 

Have we seen our list of relics, brother?

 

Must say, I’m very pleased with Brotherhood of Veterans. Gain a different Chapter Tactic at the flip of a switch? Very cool.

 

I have. Its glorious. The only bad one is Tome.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Qui-Gon

[Lemondish]

Well said, Qui-Gon. It may be jarring to look at all the changes and be disheartened to see unit and army wide abilities that used to come baseline turn into Stratagems. I understand it may initially feel like you've lost something, but we must recognize that these tools are not gone from your toolbox - they just changed a bit. They simply now require you to make a meaningful choice to use them. 

And that's before we recognize just how huge all the other buffs were, specifically the Veteran wound bump, the weapon profile changes (especially power weapons), and access to pretty nearly the entire damn Marine armoury. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Lemondish

[Boyadventurer]

I feel you on the negativity like that, we both know what we're talking about here

 

edit: also to add, a lot of the hype around using KT to skirt the unit sizes of stuff like Eradicators or Outriders made them feel kinda cheap. Like "this is all it's good for now?" (That was pre the specializations leak of course).

 

I didn't see the strats til after my post too. It's nice that we got most of the old kill team abilities still (and the SIA back on anything -- and I like that it makes it Heavy 1, hand loading the shell, makes sense).

 

I'm not particularly against any of the changes, but it's a lot of change at once. Also, a few months ago I went and converted my intercessors to have the extra ammo clips from the regular boltguns though, so GW on that one, lol.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Boyadventurer

[leth]

I mean, the kill team combat squad and stormbolter goes brrr was all we had competitively before. The targeting changes in 9th is the primary thing that killed mixed unit diversity. I doubt many people are going to take 5 man eliminator teams, they are overkill at that point. If someone is taking vets it is going to be mixed p, especially with the corvus changes. 

I expect people to try spamming things, but I don’t expect it to last. The buffs are often once per turn Or unit and so it will be hard to buff up all the units you want to in the diverse ways, or leaves you with lots of weak areas. 

 

I just want to add that I really appreciate everyone on Bolter being very civil and polite, even when talking about their disappointments. Most places have been a real downer when I feel like it should be a happy exciting time! We are no longer the garbage space marine book! 

Edited October 30, 2020 by leth

[Charlo]

Characters on a bike or with storm bolter gets good use out of a Bolt cache.

 

As does the new biker chaplain for a bit more bite.

[Mobius0288]

Um... is a Calidus Assassin going to hurt real bad with all these fantastic stratagems to enjoy? hm...

[leth]

Why callidus is gonna be a staple in my lists. More CP means more strategems.

 

pregame -

 

chief apoth trait,

chief librarian trait,

chief chaplain trait and relic,

double warlord on Watchmaster.

That’s 5 CP right out of the gate. If we get access to master of the codex that will be significant. 

 

i have been considering Cassius since he gets the +1 natively and doesn’t eat a command point. 
 

With our versatile strategems, and the change of focus for 9th, I have a hard time finding anything I want to put in the teleportation other than maybe a dreadnaught. Then again my army is fast around bikes. 

Edited October 30, 2020 by leth

[Qui-Gon]

Chief chaplain gives you two litanies on 2s, rather than Cassius' single litany on a 2.

[PhilB]

Wouldn’t Eradicators be perfect for the teleport strat?

Safe from being one shot turn 1 in reserve, bring them down turn one or two next to your captain aura and hopefully within melta range of your target?

[angrom]

Cant bring them turn ibe from reserve

[leth]

Good call, much better positioning from teleport than board sides. 

 

We can also put our line breaker and scrambler units in the teleportation if we are spending a CP anyway

[Cris R]

You know what? I honestly don't mind that we've lost SIA in the volume we did.

 

Think about it:

 

We gained:

All the Phobos units

All the Gravis units

All the Tacticus units

The Corvus became amazing!

All the vehicles, old and new

All the terminators

All the dreadnoughts

Centurion suits

All the characters, bar none

Went from 6 relics to like 30, many of which are good

Gained a psychic discipline that's actually not trash

Gained an updated Librarius AND Obscuration as bonus

Gained two codexes worth of stratagems

Gained THE most flexible space marine army on the tabletop in terms of what rules we use, when, how, where and whatever we damn well please.

Gained new Kill team constructions.

Gained access to the most warlord traits for any faction in the game, many of which are good and I'm at a loss what to take

Gained good secondary objectives

Gained access to the Masters of the Chapter

 

What did we lose?

SIA on primaris intercessors, storm bolters, and twin boltguns.

Tome of Ectoclades is balls now.

 

I'll take what we gained any day in exchange for a gimmick which was unfair to many armies in the game. Now that we are on par pts wise, and we still gained more than we lost, and we STILL get access to SIA for a core unit and with a stratagem, we truly have no complaints.

 

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who decries what we gained and prefers that deathwatch remain the army that we were as compared to what we gained needs to shut up and get out. We do not need the negativity. We gained so much, and lost so little.

 

I've been a skeptic this entire time. I've held myself back from getting hopeful. I am happy with where we are going to be, and not sad at all that we lost something on a handful of units to gain so much more.

Wait, we get Cataphractii and Tartaros Terminators now? I play a lot of 30k but I’m going to rethink using those spare Cataphractii and Tartaros kits for my 30k armies if I can use them for my Deathwatch army.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Cris R

[Lemondish]

They're technically called Relic Terminator Squads now and have been unified into a single datasheet. Unlike 8th edition, they are no longer unique units with slightly different stats. They have a little bit more flexibility in wargear options than the baseline Terminator datasheet (which is split between Tactical and Assault varieties with little overlap). 

 

That wargear flexibility isn't as useful for Deathwatch since the new supplement has a Deathwatch Terminator Squad which kind of mixes the Tactical and Assault options anyway. 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Lemondish

[Cleon]

My feeling is GW really missed a trick here, I can see why they wanted to pull the innate abilities of kill teams into stratagems (because we've got to put all the flavour into stratagems apparently), but I do like the mechanic of the 0 CP stratagem -  having Kill teams get SIA always on, but non kill teams need to use the stratagems (one 0cp strat per ammo type) would make DW armies need to decide where to use the best ammo for their opponents, but stops spamming the best ammo on every unit so the SIA still feels rare/special.

[Charlo]

My feeling is GW really missed a trick here, I can see why they wanted to pull the innate abilities of kill teams into stratagems (because we've got to put all the flavour into stratagems apparently), but I do like the mechanic of the 0 CP stratagem -  having Kill teams get SIA always on, but non kill teams need to use the stratagems (one 0cp strat per ammo type) would make DW armies need to decide where to use the best ammo for their opponents, but stops spamming the best ammo on every unit so the SIA still feels rare/special.

 

I think ultimately it works better - it frees up the Datasheets and in a world where CP is much more abundant it lets you plan for these things, both as the player and the opponent.

 

SIA, is an odd one but I don't think there needs to be any further changes - it's only really Vets, a token few characters and some relics that grant it now.