Thoughts on where we stand post Nephilum drop

[Lord Commander Vulkus Dorn]

What are your thoughts on where we stand with the latest errata and war zone season?

[Lemondish]

I would say that the new Nephilim secondary objectives are a mixed bag. Suffer Not the Alien seems relatively viable in a meta dominated by Tyranids, Eldar, and T'au, so that could see some frequent play...if you're up against a force you can reliably score it against...and if the meta doesn't shift too far from those armies being in the limelight. 

The Long Vigil seems okay, but I haven't yet considered how I'd build around it in the first place. I will need more reps to really comment on this with experience. Unfortunately, Cull Order feels really situational at best, but likely to be downright awful most of the time. Cripple Stronghold seems really fun and could be potentially good, but I imagine it's mission/map dependent and I'm not entirely convinced it's going to be reliably competitively viable. I still like how it plays, though - so it'll probably be one I continue to select well past its shelf life. 

As for the baseline Marine ones, Oath was nerfed from the must-pick category but is still good. Shock Tactics seemed to be buffed enough to be a better pick than it was previously, but it might be somewhat opponent dependent so smart selection is key. Selecting this one when you're up against somebody with crazy movement tricks probably won't do you any favours. All in all the strength in secondary selection probably comes from mixing the best of the generic Marine ones with an opponent relevant Deathwatch option.

I'd say the biggest wins from the points side of things are Eliminators with Lasfusils in Spectrus Kill Teams. If you were taking them already, now they're cheaper - if you weren't before, now they might be worth considering. They're an interesting unit, which normally wouldn't see much use. But Deathwatch brings a number of benefits for them that no other force has. 

All the armour got cheaper, but thinking about this from a competitive standpoint...if it isn't a Redemptor, do we really care? Not to mention you can't use any of the Vehicles if you're running the Army of Renown, which outside Redemptor spam is probably the only other viable choice.  Outside of that we do see a reduction in the Kill Team specialisms, which will help if you're running the Army of Renown (you probably should be). 

I honestly do not expect to see much change for Deathwatch until we see what the next Marine Codex looks like. Even then, it'll take new Deathwatch specific Kill Team units and models to really make the army unique again. I would love to see an actual Primaris Veteran Kill Team unit with options that include some of the new Primaris combi-weapons from the BT release and a refocus around SIA, with a way to include Bladeguard and any new Primaris infanty into much more customizable Kill Teams. 

[Lemondish]

First weekend of full Nephilim tournaments and we have a Deathwatch GT win! Las fusil Eliminators make a showing here and the list used seems pretty freaking awesome for scoring Stronghold. Pretty exciting stuff.