Codex: Imperial Agents + Coteaz Reveal + Chamber Militant Battleforces

[librisrouge]

This is all such a shame. I want nothing more than to just play an inquisition army and GW seems determined to make that impossible. The Inquisition got me into 40k, back in Codex: Daemonhunters days, and it has been mostly downhill since then. This codex is one I've been waiting for for a long time and what I'm seeing genuinely makes me wonder if I should sell off 40k to support Old World or maybe start a 30k force. I've not enjoyed 10th edition's style of play and now I'm seeing my favorite faction diminished.

 

I suppose I need to wait (gads, about a week and a half!) until I can get a book in my hand to decide.

[Indy Techwisp]

Couple more confirmations:

 

Deathwatch lost Adeptus Astartes and the Corvus Blackstar isn't a Dedicated Transport, however the Long Vigil weapons have been turned back into actual weapon profiles for the different guns and melee weapons, so now you can make a pretty insane squad of them.

Also they're still Battleline.

 

And Navy Breachers got Battleline.

[irlLordy]

No support for scions/stormtroopers seems so strange. They're one of the classic Inquisition style troops. I wonder if that might point to a seperate release at some stage, or refresh of scions? They're still on 25s while other elite humans seem to be moving more to 28s. Good to see the rhino in at least, my vehicle sized arbites transfers can find a home at last.

Someone mentioned Warhammer Quest earlier, I wouldn't be surprised to see more Inquisition wierdos make their way back through that, jokaeros would fit perfectly there as a support character. 

[Indy Techwisp]

2 minutes ago, irlLordy said:

No support for scions/stormtroopers seems so strange. They're one of the classic Inquisition style troops. I wonder if that might point to a seperate release at some stage, or refresh of scions? They're still on 25s while other elite humans seem to be moving more to 28s. Good to see the rhino in at least, my vehicle sized arbites transfers can find a home at last.

Someone mentioned Warhammer Quest earlier, I wouldn't be surprised to see more Inquisition wierdos make their way back through that, jokaeros would fit perfectly there as a support character. 

 

Scions probably aren't in the Inquisitorial Agents codex because they're not technically part of the Inquisition.

They're the hyper-elite Guard-like force who anyone of significant clout cab borrow for a while.

It makes more sense for them to just be an alternate Guard army in the same way that Sisters and Grey Knights aren't fully in the book.

 

(I'm predicting that the Guard Codex will have a Scions specific Detachment in it which will "help".)

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Couple more confirmations:

 

Deathwatch lost Adeptus Astartes and the Corvus Blackstar isn't a Dedicated Transport, however the Long Vigil weapons have been turned back into actual weapon profiles for the different guns and melee weapons, so now you can make a pretty insane squad of them.

Also they're still Battleline.

 

And Navy Breachers got Battleline.

Sooooooo Deathwatch actually have an interesting profile again? Hmmmmm. I'm skeptical. 

[MoriyaSchism]

Any word on the Battleforces being available for purchase from third party retailers?

[Indy Techwisp]

13 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

Sooooooo Deathwatch actually have an interesting profile again? Hmmmmm. I'm skeptical. 

 

It was shown off on Mordian Guard's stream where he basically went over the entire codex.

[HeadlessCross]

20 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

It was shown off on Mordian Guard's stream where he basically went over the entire codex.

Thanks, just googled it. 

 

Also what a hot mess of a datasheet. Not only do the Bolters still not have any bite, it's still the insane writing of only building the box contents. It's even worse than the Plague Marine one. 

[Cenobite Terminator]

Auspex Tactics just posted some leaked rules.

 

 

[Doghouse]

Are Deathwatch Primaris Kill teams not a thing anymore?

[Indy Techwisp]

17 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

Are Deathwatch Primaris Kill teams not a thing anymore?

 

No, as per one of the preview articles, Killteam Cassius and the Primaris Killteams have been sent to Legends.

[Doghouse]

Yikes, well that kills any initial interest I have in the army. 

 

 

 

 

[HeadlessCross]

2 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

Yikes, well that kills any initial interest I have in the army. 

 

 

 

 

Wait until you see the Kill Team datasheet itself. It's so convoluted you won't even have interest in adding even a single unit in your army. 

 

And thank GOODNESS they wrote No Duplicates Allowed on all the units' options, because an Arbites squad getting access to TWO Grenade Launchers in a squad would've been absolutely broken, and was clearly done for that reason.  

[Indy Techwisp]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

Wait until you see the Kill Team datasheet itself. It's so convoluted you won't even have interest in adding even a single unit in your army. 

 

And thank GOODNESS they wrote No Duplicates Allowed on all the units' options, because an Arbites squad getting access to TWO Grenade Launchers in a squad would've been absolutely broken, and was clearly done for that reason.  

 

They can have 2 thunder hammers per 5 Marines and 2 Shields per 5 Marines.

Then 1 Marine can have Blackguard Blades and the Sarge can have a Xenophase Blade.

 

All in all it makes for a very strong Melee brick.

 

And while yes, there's less guns avaliable, it's still Leagues better than all the profiles just being replaced with "Long Vigil Weapon" which I will remind you was something we were all complaining about when we saw it in the Index.

[HeadlessCross]

59 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

They can have 2 thunder hammers per 5 Marines and 2 Shields per 5 Marines.

Then 1 Marine can have Blackguard Blades and the Sarge can have a Xenophase Blade.

 

All in all it makes for a very strong Melee brick.

 

And while yes, there's less guns avaliable, it's still Leagues better than all the profiles just being replaced with "Long Vigil Weapon" which I will remind you was something we were all complaining about when we saw it in the Index.

Something just tells me that getting one Stalker Bolter and two shotguns is less valuable than just trying to fish for Devastating Wounds, unless you think Marines lack tools to kill other Marines for some reason? Also, not being able to double up on the Inferal Heavy Bolters or Frag Cannons is much worse than a random 1 Shot AP-1 D2 or 2 AP-0 D2.

 

Nah the Datasheet is just trash. With no Marine special rules why would you attempt a melee brick?

[Emperor Ming]

Well, that's all far worse than I expected

 

My Inquisition hiatus will continue for another edition

[Shinespider]

The cuts to Deathwatch are pretty vicious. The optimistic view is that there's a big refresh in the works and this is just the bare-minimum support to hold things over until it happens. The pessimistic view is that they're headed for the dustbin. Honestly, I was always pretty conflicted about the Deathwatch model push. Prior to it, Deathwatch had always been framed as the kind of spec-ops marines, focusing on the expert use of their better guns and tactics. Then the bespoke box set came out and they were... shields, hammers and swords. Ground that the Grey Knights already had covered and did better.  The frag cannon and flamerbolter are decent, but big heavy weapons aren't the vibe either imo.

 

If they do go all-in on Primaris Deathwatch, I hope they lean more towards cool guns and less towards big hammers.  

Edited August 9 by Shinespider

[LightningClawLeonard]

This whole thing just seems really weird to me. Rather than being a polarizing, some love, some hate sort of deal, it just seems like no one is enthused about this.
 

So they make a new codex (well the first one for the faction in 20+ years), and in the marketing lead-up they hype it as some super cool mystery redacted codex. Then the super cool mystery redacted codex is revealed as being an army without a lot of models or support, and their cool new innovation is that they cut a bunch of models and support, and barely released any new stuff? The only hook is that now the faction can be fielded as “its own army” but the ”its own army” part is really just the same limited handful of units with one or two datasheets from another army’s codex? There’s nothing substantial to draw in people looking for a new army, or anything to please current enthusiasts. What did they think was gonna happen? Was this just some weird convoluted way to repackage a few Kill Teams and backdoor kill off Deathwatch?

[ThePenitentOne]

 

 

If they do go all-in on Primaris Deathwatch, I hope they lean more towards cool guns and less towards big hammers.  

 

The Primaris KTs are likely Identical to what we had in the indexes:

 

Fortis: 5 Intercessors + 0-4 Assault Intercessors, 0-4 Helblasters, 0-2 Outriders

Indomitor: 5 Heavy Intercessors + 0-2 Aggressors, 0-2 Eradicators, 0-2 Inceptors * 

Spectrus: 5 Reivers + 02 Eliminators, 0-2 Jump Intercessors, 0-4 Reivers, 0-4 Incursors

 

* I hate this composition the most, because there's no way to build a 10 man unit without at least one Inceptor, and they are my least favourite models of all time. Not only do I think they look bad, I think they are conceptually ridiculous. When I was able to use the 9th unit composition to build 5 Heavies, 2 Aggressors with flame and 3 Agressors with bolt, it was my fave unit. Now I have to field it with 9 models- you'd have to pay me to take an Inceptor model- I hate them so much I wouldn't use them if they were being given away. 

 

All of this will be available in Legends once the book hits the shelves, so in a sense, GW have gone all in on Primaris... It's just Legends. If 11th is actually a 10.5 rather than a full reboot, and they do release Primaris Teams as part of a new dex, the unit composition might be different, but for 10th, that's what we're likely to get.

 

General thoughts on leaks:

 

Well that could have been better. There's a chance some stuff will be errata, and hopefully fixed in a FAQ- specifically the Dedicated Transport and Astartes Keyword omissions. I'm not sure I have faith though. Without those changes, I feel like playing the Xenos Detachment IS the only real way to play Deathwatch, and that excludes a lot of units. Now, I'm not holding my breath, but GW could move EVERYTHING we've lost to Legends, and not just the Primaris Teams. If so, I can still legally use the exact same Index army as an Ordo Xenos army. If so, I can still legally use Daemonhosts and Jokaero; I can still build a Penitent Legion for Karamazov.

 

Now if GW doesn't include all of these things in Legends, of course I'm going to use them anyway; it would just be nicer if I didn't have to "Houserule" it.

 

Note: The one thing that moving the entire Deathwatch Index to Legends wouldn't solve is that you still couldn't get access to Space Marine units that the Index allowed you to access, and I imagine that most people who built a DW army in 8th or 9th have at least one unit from Codex: Space Marines in that army; the entire DW Army I was planning was only 5 units, and even I included a Space Marine Datasheet- it was a Redemptor Dread. 

[Lord_Ikka]

Well, glad I didn't buy those Daemonhosts on eBay last week... Not a Deathwatch player, so I've got no personal stake in them losing their killteams, but sad for those few.DW players who had armies become pretty much useless.

 

As for my personal Inquisition army, I would have liked Inquisition stormtroopers to be a thing, but didn't expect it so I will continue to use my Solar Aux "Scions" as Voidsmen. As I'm getting 2 squads of Breachers next week, super happy that they get Battleline and can now have Inquisitors attached to them.

 

Overall, not really surprised that the Inquisition will not be a great army- it's always been a boutique faction that is usually better served in smaller skirmish games than a full-on army itself. Still I've decided to run it as my main army from now on, so we'll see how bad they really are.

Edited August 10 by Lord_Ikka

[Petitioner's City]

 

Honestly, I was always pretty conflicted about the Deathwatch model push. Prior to it, Deathwatch had always been framed as the kind of spec-ops marines, focusing on the expert use of their better guns and tactics. Then the bespoke box set came out and they were... shields, hammers and swords. Ground that the Grey Knights already had covered and did better.  The frag cannon and flamerbolter are decent, but big heavy weapons aren't the vibe either imo.

 

I don't think so, I think the Death Watch RPG (written by Bligh, French, Hoare, Barnes and Gausman, and the most deep extended study of them before their codex intro, and still since) suggested lots of variety for the order.

Edited August 10 by Petitioner's City

[Wormwoods]

 

I don't think so, I think the Death Watch RPG (written by Bligh, French, Hoare, Barnes and Gausman, and the most deep extended study of them before their codex intro, and still since) suggested lots of variety for the order.

That's the thing, though: that's the ideal form of the Deathwatch. They belong in an RPG, or a skirmish game, because it's a squad of weird, wacky dudes from different chapters working together. GREAT for a game where that individuality can shine, where there's an element of roleplaying. 

 

40K is a wargame. Rolling up to a 3-hour battle with multiple squads that have 7 different guns and 8 different melee weapons, let alone a half-dozen armour types that need to be handled differently sounds like hell. I don't particularly like the way 10th handled some of those problems, flattening stuff like combi-weapons, or the way some units now treat shotguns, pistols, and rifles as 'cult weapons' or similar, where other units get to treat bolters and shotguns as separate tools, but they did it for a reason. The level of individuality, of model-level differences that are the entire point of a Deathwatch Killteam just doesn't scale with a 2,000 point game of Warhammer. 

 

It's why I was pretty happy to see them now, apparently, more likely to show up as a single, weird squad attached to another army, like they did when they first made their way into 40K. Still needs to be good enough to warrant it, of which I have no idea, but in theory that would be ideal for me, lore-wise. 

 

I should try and run a Deathwatch game again. It's been long enough. 

[Dark Shepherd]

Eversors having a 9 inch scout move is pretty good, they could be great for mulching forward deploy/infiltrator squads

[zarkkarn]

After watching mordian leaks Ive still  picked up a copy of the codex. Worst case Ill be fielding an assasin and a squad of deathwatch in my guard or templar armies shame inquisition still cant really be its own viable force though. Like others was really hoping for some inquisitorial stormtroopers. Maybe they will be a killteam release at some point.

Edited August 10 by zarkkarn

[Doghouse]

I've read a few reviews and watched some Youtube videos and it just feels like the got all the Kill Team models and other stuff that didn't have a home and threw them into a single codex rather than trying to make something fun. Feels like the bargain bin of unit selection and such a wasted opportunity to do an army that appeals to casual players allowing greater character and creativity. 

 

Sigh, back to Heresy it is then...