I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the journey I’ve recently been through to turn what started off 12 years ago as a 4th Edition Deathwatch themed
SM army to now a proper 8th Edition Codex
DW army. In true before and after fashion, here’s the final product. I have no idea the total point value, maybe, 2500ish points of battle ready Deathwatch. There’re still a few models that need edge highlighting, but we’re tabletop ready.
The year was 2008. The Iphone 3G was set to be released. Oil had just hit $100 a barrel for the first time in history. And Google was in the middle of beta testing a browser product called, “Chrome.” More importantly,
GW had finally released a drop pod model, ending the reign of terror the build-your own drop pod meta had poured upon
40k for 20 years. (Has the plumbing industry ever recovered from the drop in PVC end cap sales?) Almost just as importantly,
GW actually sold bits and sprues on their website. Allowing for the customization of armies in the most cost effective way possible.
Enter into this scenario a trio of
40k fanboys who decided it would be awesome to build a uniquely themed army to bring to the 2008 Adepticon Team Tournament. After much consulting, we thought the coolest and most unique looking army we could make would be a Deathwatch themed
SM army. We loved the potential for kitbashing, and the lore was compelling. The three of us lived in different states, so we developed our lists with the newly released 4th edition
SM Codex and got to ordering. The initial builds consisted of space marines sprues, the original
DW upgrade sprues, and Iron Hands, Imperial Fists, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Flesh Tearers, Spacewolves, and Choas Marines bits.
Here’s a sample of what I started with:
Eventually turned this pile into this: (Sorry for the potato quality. I didn’t have a nice camera or studio.
Here's what we brought to Adepticon:
Now, at this point you might be asking yourself, what’s up with the Salamander army? Well, two of us stuck to the plan and built
DW. One of us deviated and built Salamanders. It looked awesome and Salamanders can kill Xenos too. What could we do? That’s Phil for you... Adepticon was so much fun. We had a blast, but it was also a bit of a last hoorah for us. We each moved away, got married, had kids, and stopped playing Warhammer. After Adepticon, I took an 11 year break from the game.
Then 2019 happened.
I busted out the models and decided I wanted to play Warhammer again. I looked into this 8th edition thing and liked what I saw.
I absolutely love the changes to the rules; the addition of wounds to vehicles, more multi-wound models in the infantry lines, anything can wound anything, falling out of combat, no more armor angles, and no more scattering. I'm a fan of how frequently the codexes and rules are updated. These are,
imo, amazing enhancements. I’m also incredibly grateful for the ITC and what that organization has done for the competitive side of this game.
Most importantly though, my
DW themed space marine army actually had its own codex!! So, I bought my Codex Deathwatch and went about converting my army to 32mm bases. I should also mention that I'm a HUGE Eisenhorn fan. I think I was originally turned onto
DW from the Librarian character in the books. So that model got added. I also Ebayed a Demonhost and bought a Watchmaster and put together a 1,000 point army for a local tournament:
And it got ROFL stomped.
Though fun and thematic, it’s not the ideal way to play
DW. I did some soul searching and realized that if I still wanted to use my army, it was time for conversions. There seemed to be two options I could use. First, was to add storm bolters and storm shields. Next was to replace boltguns with stalker pattern boltguns. I went to work.
I had a lot of storm shields laying around from vanguard kits. I also bought some
DW kits, and had a couple of Dark Angels storm shields. I ebayed extra stalker pattern boltguns.
I also decided that I could do better bases. It was time to convert this army into something somewhat competitive and beautiful. It's surprising what great bases add to models.
I went for it
For the stalker pattern boltguns, I just plucked off the old bolters and put on the new weapons. This was the easiest of the conversions.
The storm bolter and storm shield marines were a bit harder. I ended up doing a lot of surgery on my guys to cut up and glue on arms, weapons, and shields. It was hard finding enough reasonably priced storm bolters. I got lucky buying some Terminator bits off of ebay, but also lost money trying to order from an online bits seller. That sucks, but sometimes that’s the price of trying to buy used stuff off the internet. I did end up using some 3rd party storm bolters.
One conversion I also did was to chop up my fiver thunder hammer / storm shield terminators to a) convert them to storm bolter / power weapon models and to b) repurpose their storm shields and thunder hammers. I really didn’t want to lose the paint job on the original models.
Other interesting things I did included adding a terminator captain, two smash captains, and gave all my characters storm bolters. 12 years ago, I converted a metal Pedro Kantor model to
DW with a dremel. He was good to go. I also added an inquisitor.
You can see the terminator kit storm shield to the top left of the inquisitor in this picture.
Part of making my army competitive was to add some anti-tank. I have a bin of bits from 12 years ago. And in that I had 12 of the easy to build dreadnoughts from the Assault on Black Reach set. They came with multi-melta and power claw arms. No problem, that’s what ebay’s for.
I ebayed some lascannon arms pretty easily, but I couldn’t find the Dreadnought Missile Launchers. So I went into conversion mode.
I wish I had taken better pictures of the process, but I didn’t. The multi-melta arm is right handed, but the Missile Launcher goes on the left. I cut off the end of the multi-melta. I then glued on the missile pod end of the typhoon missile launchers that came with Dark Angels terminator upgrade sprue I had. I then green stuffed the transition between the two pieces. I turned it upside down and bam, Missile Launcher arm. The edge highlighting helps sell it and is drawn in places to show edges that aren’t really there. I’m not going to win any awards for it, but it turned out pretty well. Actually, the multi-melta came with some purity seals on the back, which are now upside down. I just kept them black like tar. Eventually I’ll file them off.
Here’s a cool marble effect i got on another dreadnought. I painted corax white, then added a layer of apothecary white. Finally, I added a layer of gryph charger gray and left it really streaky. I need to clean up the edge. The camera doesn’t lie…
I still have a 12 year old land raider redeemer. It’s ready to go! No changes to loadout or bases necessary!!
I also have two 12 year old rhinos and a drop pod. Still good to go, although, I’m going to clean up the eagle on the front. It got knocked off center running over orks.
And...I have two 12 year old
DW themed vindicators...that aren’t in the codex. They look pretty. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. But they look good! If I write a nice letter to
GW, do you think I can get an entry in chapter approved?
That’s really about it. I took 2,000 points to a tournament last weekend and I’m pleased with how they did. I won one and lost two, but the games I lost I could have played better. I don’t feel like I lost because of the list the way I did with the 1,000 point list last year. I have a few models left to convert. I'll update here when I finish them.
Feeling Heretical.
IDK, may exterminatus later.
