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I ran something similar in ITC, it worked okay, but the regular killteam's stormbolter/stormshield is just too good. aggressors don't get SIA, but the T5 is pretty darn tough for infantry unit though. These days though, with knights and high str multi wound weapon flying across the board T5 is kinda alright IMO. The only issue with that make up of fortis kill team is the lack of invul save, and you are sure to attract a lot of firepower when it is on the board.

These are my thoughts too, competetiv, i guess storm bolters with shields are still to go =/

 fr3ddy wrote:
I ran something similar in ITC, it worked okay, but the regular killteam's stormbolter/stormshield is just too good. aggressors don't get SIA, but the T5 is pretty darn tough for infantry unit though. These days though, with knights and high str multi wound weapon flying across the board T5 is kinda alright IMO. The only issue with that make up of fortis kill team is the lack of invul save, and you are sure to attract a lot of firepower when it is on the board.

There's a breakpoint where SIA-less bolter fire, in enough numbers, is still better against a majority of the targets you'd use storm bolters against and Aggressors actually make that breakpoint.

We're talking 15 SIA shots, 24 + 4D6 bolter shots, and 6 heavy bolter shots if moving.

Against 40 Storm Bolter SIA, let's take a look assuming no other buffs, no rerolls, against the listed targets...

Kraken Fortis Kraken Storm Vets 19.04 dead GEQ 14.82 dead GEQ 8.06 dead MEQ 6.66 dead MEQ 4.03 dead PEQ 3.33 dead PEQ 5.15 damage to a T7 3+ vehicle 4.44 damage to a T7 3+ vehicle Veangeance Fortis Vengeance Storm Vets 20.15 dead GEQ 17.79 dead GEQ 8.89 dead MEQ 8.89 dead MEQ 4.44 dead PEQ 4.44 dead PEQ 5.70 damage to a T7 3+ vehicle 5.93 damage to a T7 3+ vehicle Hellfire Fortis Hellfire Storm Vets 19.04 dead GEQ 14.82 dead GEQ 8.33 dead MEQ 7.41 dead MEQ 4.17 dead PEQ 3.70 dead PEQ But should the Fortis team have remained stationary, add the following kill count to it's potential... 22.52 more dead GEQ 8.44 more dead MEQ 4.22 more dead PEQ 7.70 more damage to a T7 3+ vehicle

The number of wounds is what makes this unit more resilient than 1W 3++ models, if you run the numbers except against like 3 damage weapons. It used to be inferior in defensive capability against most things except attrition fire, but with the addition of 5 extra wounds on the unit it really cuts down the effectiveness of anti Primaris 2 damage weaponry by requiring twice as many unsaved wounds to take down a single model than it did before.

That extra wound does go a long way to durability being better, but honestly that's just icing on the cake what with the Assault 3 profile we should be more concerned with.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That extra wound does go a long way to durability being better, but honestly that's just icing on the cake what with the Assault 3 profile we should be more concerned with.

At 24'' standard before any SIA, which is a greater effective range to play in for maximum firepower, which gives you more opportunities to actually sit in cover or on an objective.

And that's before you realize that a unit like this is also now a major melee threat. 19 Str 4 Ap - 1 damage attacks but hiding an additional 16 power fist attacks.

But that's going all in on one unit, but at sub 300 points it's not entirely "all my points". It's mobile, it's dangerous in shooting and melee, and it is difficult to remove without focus.

2 such units makes target priority a nightmare for your opponent.

3 would be half your list but an amazing mobile fire base.

Lemondish wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That extra wound does go a long way to durability being better, but honestly that's just icing on the cake what with the Assault 3 profile we should be more concerned with.

At 24'' standard before any SIA, which is a greater effective range to play in for maximum firepower, which gives you more opportunities to actually sit in cover or on an objective.

And that's before you realize that a unit like this is also now a major melee threat. 19 Str 4 Ap - 1 damage attacks but hiding an additional 16 power fist attacks.

But that's going all in on one unit, but at sub 300 points it's not entirely "all my points". It's mobile, it's dangerous in shooting and melee, and it is difficult to remove without focus.

2 such units makes target priority a nightmare for your opponent.

3 would be half your list but an amazing mobile fire base.

So I was thinking more along the lines of...
5 Intercessors, Assault, Sarge w/ Power Fist
5 Aggressors
You combat squad so the Sarge is with 4 Aggressors and the other squad is 4 Assault Bolt Rifles + an Aggressor.

Hesselhof wrote:


Do you play this killteam on tourneys?

Haven't had the chance yet, but I do play it in my local league, which is generally at a local-tournament level kind of skill and listbuilding. I'll be taking a version of it to the London GT next month.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Combat squadding, I'd go for 3/2, so at least one of the squads has a) T5 and b) a few ablative wounds. But really, the beauty of that unit is 10 primaris @T5 that can't be shut down by CC, can shoot effectively at any model with in 6"+1d6"+18", and can punch holes in heavies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS Great posts Lemondish, thanks! Confirms how that team has felt when running them, with actual data & breakpoints.

I'm curious to try out some new configurations with this. I've run 4 agg + 1 incep for a while and really liked it as a one off, but the question now is whether its worth taking another unit or how well it performs giving up the T5. The full boat can be pretty scary though. I've shot down tanks without any AP just due to the sheer volume of shots getting to reroll hit and wound and the +to wound strat.

Traditionally, I've really liked our kill teams because the Intercessors are cheap effective wounds to put in front of the powerful, but frail specialists. Funny now that the increased effectiveness of the bolters and third wound turns this around vs D2 weapons.

With the new bolter variants, I generally don't see why I would even bother taking my DW over just regular intercessors of variant stripes. Now with Auto-bolters being bullet hoses, Stalker Bolters being character blasters, and bolt rifles being AP happy, why would I choose DW?

I am getting sick of every new SM rule completely invalidating the most recent purchase. I am tempted to buy a bunch of Eldar bikes and see if GW nerfs them, and proves my theory.

It's really far more prevalent in the flagship factions. Eldar by their specialist nature survive the ups and downs better as long as your collection is varied.

Stormcast in AoS are insane. I'd be so annoyed if I played them. Some brutal power creep over there straight up invalidating what came before.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I am tempted to buy a bunch of Eldar bikes and see if GW nerfs them, and proves my theory.

You're an edition too late for that. Windriders already got nerfed by no being Troops anymore

-

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
With the new bolter variants, I generally don't see why I would even bother taking my DW over just regular intercessors of variant stripes. Now with Auto-bolters being bullet hoses, Stalker Bolters being character blasters, and bolt rifles being AP happy, why would I choose DW?

Mixed squads, walls of stormshields, SIA, the capacity to deep strike our army wherever we damn well please for CP, and hilarious combos with new C:SM strategems with only a minor soup investment.

Yeah, vanilla marines can do some things we cant right now. Its infuriating. But DW aint going anywhere.

I'm always on the path of cost vs effectiveness vs numbers of squads.

I like to try and make the squads effective and cheap enough I can run a few of them, I'd be very concerned to run the fortis squads too expensive.

Just using the numbers of models I have, I have 2 Interblaster fortis teams.

1 with 5 rifles and 2 hellblasters the other with 5 rifles and 3 hellblasters.

2 AutoAgro squads, both with at least 5 auto rifles and one aggressor each, but I'm thinking of tasking in inceptors and another aggressor if I have the points\ and inclination. The sgts as well will have power fists so they are definite multi role assault if needed squads.

I have also 3 vet squads with all the bells and whistles, though I do run heavy on frag cannons so they tend to hit harder than they defend each has a terminator, a biker and at least 2 storm bolter storm shield armed vets.

I may be making more storm shield and storm bolter vets as time and bits allow of course some of the options are more for mix and match and I don't run the full squads in every outting but I really love the modeling and variety for the squad set ups so having fun with all that.


Kicking around the idea of working on some small stalker squads of intercessors to deploy back and be generally annoying and maybe draw some hate from deployment in cover. Especially considering with the kraken rounds you can have them reach all the way out to 42 inch which gives them an awful long range punch, or 30 inch 3 ap, or 36 poisoned 2+ ap 1, Could prove a good objective sitting unit with that magic 2 damage to be annoying even to vehicles who don't have toughness 8.

Dont count out basic Veterans with Stalker Boltguns in the long range fire support role. Two shots instead of the Primaris Stalker's 1, but only one damage each and at base AP -1, but they can hunker down with stormshields and/or slide in missile launchers if you need an anti-armor punch.

They dont get the glory that SS/SB teams do, but they do *work*.

Currently, so long as points allow, the SS is the unsung hero that helps keep the DW at least in some parity with marines as they take leaps up on the power scale.

I think vanilla marines will be wanting to run as DW when we end up with our new book when ever that will be.

Once we get the phobos bros as well you really can make up pretty interesting squads and set up some cool stuff with the DW kill teams both old marines and primaris and I think that kind of synergy is what will keep us on power scale, options.

Edit: For me, all the varying squad set ups make the primaris interesting and provoke some thought in set ups for them with the Deathwatch at least. We just need to run our squads smarter, if we had more interesting strats that would help as well but to me the DW feel functionally solid from an equipment, cost and set up sense. They just don't have all the fun flash and sparkle of cool strats or super neat artifacts and warlord traits. Once that flash settles though, I think we may end up still being solid because while a SS and SB isn't very exciting, you don't need excitement to win games just solid tactics and point effective equipment, which we currently have.

Sterling191 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
With the new bolter variants, I generally don't see why I would even bother taking my DW over just regular intercessors of variant stripes. Now with Auto-bolters being bullet hoses, Stalker Bolters being character blasters, and bolt rifles being AP happy, why would I choose DW?

Mixed squads, walls of stormshields, SIA, the capacity to deep strike our army wherever we damn well please for CP, and hilarious combos with new C:SM strategems with only a minor soup investment.

Yeah, vanilla marines can do some things we cant right now. Its infuriating. But DW aint going anywhere.

I keep seeing a combo with vanilla strats and dw being mentioned in this thread. I don’t have the new marine dex yet. What am I missing?

There's stratagems to make bolt rifles rapid fire 2, or autobolt rifles autohit, or one that halves the damage of any dreadnought takes. That's just off the top of my head.

They all key off the adeptus astartes keyword.

Ooo cool, I like the sounds of those.

Vortenger wrote:
There's stratagems to make bolt rifles rapid fire 2, or autobolt rifles autohit, or one that halves the damage of any dreadnought takes. That's just off the top of my head.

They all key off the adeptus astartes keyword.

Unfortunately the bolter specific ones dont. They key off INTERCESSOR SQUAD, which Deathwatch dont have. We have INTERCESSORS. Same for Space Wolves, but not Blood Angels or Dark Angels.

Yes its dumb.

Big ones we can get are Gene Wrought Might (any hit roll of a 6+ from a primaris infantry unit automatically hits and wounds), Transhuman Physiology (any wound roll targeting an Infantry unit fails on a natural 1, 2 or 3 regardless of its strength), Honor The Chapter (yes its different from Honor Your Brothers, yes we can now fight three times with a DW unit if you want to burn 6 CP), and the Dreadnought one.

That's what I get for posting while AFB.

Vortenger wrote:
That's what I get for posting while AFB.

It's all good. I guarantee you its absentmindedness on GWs part rather than any kind of grand design. I only know because I thought those strats would in fact work and wanted to confirm it, only to discover the opposite. I would love 15 hellfire shots from ABR intercessors in overwatch automatically hitting. But we still get some pretty solid synergy (seriously, TP is *nutbars* on a stormshield squad).

Ok, mini batrep on tonights first test game post-update.

My list:

Deathwatch Battalion


Marine Battalion


Enemy List (Approximate):



Enemy Deployment (big image):


We played Maelstrom, the mission where you get to choose your opponents objectives (they pick two, you choose one for them to keep, they reshuffle the other back into their deck). I get first turn, opponent chose pointy Dawn of War deployment map. I forward deploy with the Scouts and Eliminators to initially control ~60% of the board. Opponent counterdeploys to keep the bulk of his army away from my fire base, and does not seize. The big Fortis team and the 8-man Vet team go into deepstrike alongside Stabby Cappy (i'm hereafter refering to the melee builds as "Stabby" and "Smashy" solely because it amuses me to do so).

Turn 1:



Turn 2:



Takeaways:
This was an ideal matchup for me. Biological enemies with very little shooting. I dont think its a fair assessment of the unit compositions I was testing, but some data with known flaws is better than no data at all.

Scout and Eliminator forward deployment was absolute gold. I had board control from the get go, which is not something Im used to with Deathwatch. Concentrated Scout bolter fire payed good dividends in opening up seams for other units to exploit. If/When we get Phobos teams with similar abilities, its going to be a fantastic asset.

Eliminator firepower was critical in softening up the enemy and denying key targets. By sniping out a single gaunt with an executioner round I denied my opponent ~4 VPs. That was *massive*. They also downed the Malanthrope shrouding the bulk of the enemy army, letting the SIA do its job.

Stabby did alright, but I was hoping to get more out of him. That had far more to do with how hyper-lethal my second shooting phase was though. He simply didnt have that much left to deal with (though he did unquestioningly put the enemy Neurothrope on its back with zero room for debate).

The Fortis drop was terrifying. That squad cleared half the table by itself.

Stalker Intercessor teams didnt get much chance to acquit themselves, but blasting two wound chunks out of big monsters did add up. They're gonna need more testing before I can weigh them against ABR teams. I suspect they will have a role to play in the new arsenal, but time will tell.

All told, a good first result, but a lot more testing is going to be needed. Have a game against a full blown Speed Freaks Ork army lined up for next week, and going to try to catch a game against a Silver Tide Necron player too if I can.

Obligatory glory shot of the 8-man team after their drop to pour fire into some Genestealers (warning, big format):

Very cool stuff, glad to hear the results. Congrats on the glory !

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So, out of curiosity, where are we supposed to get "primaris sgt" melee weapons? The oldboi stuff looks silly small on a primaris body. Like the villian from scary movie with the baby hands.

Has anyone seen Primaris Powerfists? I mean I could vis-mod them from a box of inceptor fists, but that looks even worse, and is not cost efficient.

I used the one from the BaC (mk. IV) box


I’ve used relic blades from the VV box and ravenwing accessory sprue, as well as terminator arm/swords you give my sarges swords.


All the Ultras are conversions from the DI box, Deathwatch from the full kit.

Grey knights. Long swords with big I's on them sized for primaris.

Opinion: a regular power sword is fine. The gladius was standard issue when Alexander conquered a small empire somewhere. A DW power sword on primaris looks the part.

Vortenger wrote:
Grey knights. Long swords with big I's on them sized for primaris.

Opinion: a regular power sword is fine. The gladius was standard issue when Alexander conquered a small empire somewhere. A DW power sword on primaris looks the part.

I did that for a primaris captain, the Deathwatch sword looks great on him, really cool gladius feel. Feels more proper somehow, for close encounters. Though honestly the mini marine weapons don't look bad on the primaris for my eyes, the guns look off because of how upsized primaris guns are but the CCW feel about right to me.

Considering Contemptor Dreads with twin las

Is it cheaper to just buy them on FW or only buy the weapons on FW and the plastic kit from GW (or ebay)

ImPhaeronWeasel wrote:
Considering Contemptor Dreads with twin las

Is it cheaper to just buy them on FW or only buy the weapons on FW and the plastic kit from GW (or ebay)

Get the plastic kit. Then find a friend (or favorite bits provider) who plays AdMech and get the twin-las bits from the Ironstrider/Dragoon kit. Convert to your heart's desire.

Muuuuuuuch cheaper than dealing with FW.

Sterling191 wrote:

Vortenger wrote:
That's what I get for posting while AFB.

It's all good. I guarantee you its absentmindedness on GWs part rather than any kind of grand design. I only know because I thought those strats would in fact work and wanted to confirm it, only to discover the opposite. I would love 15 hellfire shots from ABR intercessors in overwatch automatically hitting. But we still get some pretty solid synergy (seriously, TP is *nutbars* on a stormshield squad).

I think the auto hitting Stratagem only works in the shooting phase :(

So what are people thinking, a Dark Angels Libby and some scouts in a patrol for -1hit Aversion, and unlocking TH Physiognomy?