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My group sat down and did a small field test of Deathwatch this weekend. I have the full story up on Pensacola Warhammer. The quick and dirty of it is that it didn't go so well. Everybody came away with the feeling that something was wrong. I created a simple search and rescue mission in a small section of city. Between me and some of the people playing we had miniatures and a board to play everything out. I went with a 1 inch equals 1 meter scale. I tried my hand at creating an ambush situation. When combat came around that's where things devolved quickly. A Mag. 30 Hormaguant horde and a Shrike where in the buildings across the street and were on top of the kill team before they could do anything. We botched the rules for damaging a horde particularly with a Librarian, so the horde killed a player character and was challenging the others before it was destroyed. The Shrike alone almost killed the rest of the team.

I ran the scenario again last night but did a 1 centimeter to 1 meter scale. I also factored in the rules for harming a horde with bolters and a psychic flame attack. The encounter was much easier: almost too easy. A single player character only suffered 6 wounds and 1 point of Insanity.

My questions to the community:
1. How do you handle/simulate ambushes on a kill team squad?
2.If you play with miniatures, what scale do you use?
3. Our Librarian is a level 3. If she uses a pushed Avenger on a horde, does it count as 6 hits on the horde along with 1d5+8 hits that a flame weapon does to a horde?

I would love to here suggestions.

We usually use 1"/1 Square = 2 metres. Sometimes 1/4 if we want to use a big area. And yes, we use miniatures.

Ambushes we handle like any other encounter, except whatever side got ambushed usually starts Surprised (as per the regular rules for Surprise).

Psychic Powers do Damage = Psy-Rating (+10 if its an area effect weapon). That's it. No more, no less. So an Avenger attack would be 1d10+Psy Rating.

And make sure you get the errata from the FFG website. It seriously fixes the damage of Bolt weapons, meaning combat is still easy, but not a complete cakewalk.