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I’m assuming deathwatch do some sneaky squirrel stuff, so my question is can they effectively sneak up on aliens and bad guys and hide?

I know Reviers have special armor but what about that plain old deathwatch bet squad sent in?

usmcmidn wrote:
I’m assuming deathwatch do some sneaky squirrel stuff, so my question is can they effectively sneak up on aliens and bad guys and hide?

I know Reviers have special armor but what about that plain old deathwatch bet squad sent in?

Covert Ops =/= "Sneaking"

"It is not essential that the enemy be taken unaware, only that he becomes aware too late to react effectively." - Something I read somewhere.

It's not snooping around quietly in the bush with Space Marines. It's intercepting an enemy by being in the right place ahead of time and conducting an ambush. A sudden, unexpected strike from Reivers out of a cargo container. A swift and sudden decisive action using a single drop pod on just the precise location to take out a Genestealer cult's convoy of cargo trucks loaded with Purestrains and moving into the next hive city. Strike and Fade. It doesn't matter how quiet something is when he's coming at you like you owe him 10 years of back child support money and he's got a hammer the size of a coffee table.

As far as 'how good'? It all depends. If it's about getting up right behind the enemy like Solid Snake and snapping/slitting their necks or giving an Ork a wedgie... probably awful. As far as suddenly and unexpectedly being right there, and before the Xeno can lift its weapon it's catching bolts, plasma, blades, mauls, and hammers all about the cranial region? That I'm sure they can do quite well.

Power Armor can have its basic functions muffled for specific stealth applications. But according to the old RPG stats there wasn't any associated penalty to stealth checks. There was also at least 1 Black Library novel which involved a Kill Team sneaking aboard an Ork space hulk undetected, using Stalker pattern boltguns firing Stalker shells(subsonic non-explosive shells for quiet use). They infiltrate in and assassinate a Weird Boy to steal his brain for some secret project and then extract without being detected.

Stealth is also less about eliminating noise and more about simply avoiding detection. Now being big doesn't help, but having super human reflexes, senses, and fancy systems definitely compensates for that. If you can detect the ideal path to a target you can sneak in even if you seem big and obvious.

Sneaking isn't something where any amount of sound will blow your cover. Twigs snap in the forest all the time. Footsteps and rustling are a common sound in a military base. So would thumping and banging.

My interpretation of a marine sneak attack was that they could march for a week at a good pace, without sleeping, eating the local flora and fauna, and just show up somwhere where nobody expected giant superhuman combat gods to show up, essentially. And then teleporting even more if them directly into the fight, instigating a near instantaneous escalation of totally unexpected force.

The Alpha Legion is specifically noted as using advanced tech that may or may not be available to other astartes to be stealthy. This can range from sound dampening devices (which I believe are a purchasable upgrade in the Deathwatch RPG) to armour that can instantly change its paint scheme, to more mundane forms of paint scheme camouflage, to full on hologram emitters that allowed them to disguise themselves as regular humans walking down the street.

Alpha Legion are known for having special goodies no one else did, but the Death Watch could reasonably have some or all of those perks at their disposal.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Alpha Legion are known for having special goodies no one else did, but the Death Watch could reasonably have some or all of those perks at their disposal.

Well, the idea of 'Kill-Teams' were actually created by the Alpha Legion... it's not too much of a stretch.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Alpha Legion are known for having special goodies no one else did, but the Death Watch could reasonably have some or all of those perks at their disposal.

Well, the idea of 'Kill-Teams' were actually created by the Alpha Legion... it's not too much of a stretch.

although the modern kill team owes itself more to tactics devised for the war of the beast.

Let's put it this way... There is a Raven Guard Marine behind you right now.

Raven Guard are also described as having access to specially silenced power armour.

Scars has Iron Hands tech that can be integrated into a suit of power armour and enables the wearer to be invisible to auspex scans. That seems a lot more useful than being merely quiet.

Power armour is normally fairly noisy even when the wearer stands still, but as has been mentioned, a lot of environments in the 40K setting (starships, manufactoria, military bases) have enough ambient noise that you wouldn't necessarily notice the additional sounds.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:
I’m assuming deathwatch do some sneaky squirrel stuff, so my question is can they effectively sneak up on aliens and bad guys and hide?

I know Reviers have special armor but what about that plain old deathwatch bet squad sent in?

Covert Ops =/= "Sneaking"

Absolutely this.

It's not about being able to hide. They aren't solid snake, hiding in lockers and silently taking people down. It's about larger scale operations. About moving your troops to places the enemy isn't expecting them, and striking too quickly for them to react effectively.

And if Marines do need to sneak like that, well, that's what Scout armour is for.

I think the Badab War books have a description of the Raptors taking part in a large scale sneak attack. Again, no Solid Snake stuff but showing up where they weren't expected.

Not well. There's a bunch of penalties to sneaking in the Deathwatch roleplaying game [-20% IIRC]. It is, however, not entirely impossible.

A camo cloak and stummer will counteract the penalty, and if you're Raven Guard you can ignore the penalty entirely.

That said, Space Marines are not particularly sneaky.

 darkcloak wrote:
Let's put it this way... There is a Raven Guard Marine behind you right now.

And the moment you turned around to look? Two more are now in front of you.

I can't imagine Space Marines actually sneaking. What they woudl rather do is locate the target, wait in orbit or in a hidden settlement the best moment to strike and wildly try to tear the enemy into pieces. The "sneaky" stuff takes place way before as a preparation task, but the space marines themselves, for all outflanking or surroundings they might go for, don't sneak up: th ewhole point of their bright coloured and oversized armours is actually to be seen and recognised so the enemy should hopefully already fear even before the battle actually starts. The're in the same spirit as, say the winged hussars for example and many 16-19 centuries troops.