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With the release of deathmasque, I decided to start a Deathwatch force even before seeing the codex considering the low $$$ and the cool veteran minis. After finally getting my hands on it, I've got to admit that I'm really disappointed. Mission Tactics is pretty underwhelming but the real issue is needing to combine bikes/jetpacks with veterans if you want to use them in the Black Spear Strike Force formation (their decurion). What's the point of having jetpacks or bikes if they can't use their full speed ??? I know that they confer some of their special rules to the veterans (heroic intervention for the jetpacks and split fire for the bike) but not only does it sounds gimmicky, imo, the visual aspect is awful too. Has anyone tried them out ? And if so, what's is your verdict ?

Yeah, they bring buffs and utility to the unit.

They can still use their full speed, but need to keep unit coherency. Bike at the back, move the rest of the unit 6" and bring the bike in front of the unit with that 12" move if you need it. Same for the Vanguard.

Even outside of the buffs they grant to their unit, the Vanguard primary work to add some melee specialists to the Veteran units with substantially cheaper access to power weapons.

Mr. CyberPunk wrote:
the real issue is needing to combine bikes/jetpacks with veterans is you want to use in the Black Spear Strike Force formation

You don't have to combine them. You can take units of Veterans as the core choice(s).

You just won't have access to any Vanguard, Bikes, or Terminators then...
Not that it matters greatly - you could take them outside of a Black Spear (Unbound *gasp*) and they don't lose much since Terminators and Vanguard have Deep Strike anyway, and whole units of Deathwatch Bikers are a bit rubbish.

Uhhh but you can still do a normal CAD with 1 HQ and 2 Troops with the deathwatch codex right?