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So, I've played my DW all infantry (1 corvus) army now about 10 times, and it's 4/6. The losses were me getting wiped off the map by horde armies like Chaos and GSC. What bothers me is I have no ready clear method to dealing with heavy support units. Thankfully, my squads of SS/TH guys are dropping single targets, but then I am losing to chaff units. I freely admit I am not the best player, and have a lot to learn.

I want to gut my list of some infantry and include some heavy support, but not cheese like a knight or some other LOW. I was thinking a trio of LRs, or a trio of laz preds. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Are Naughts worth taking to soak up attacks?

A trio of land raiders? Like, 1000+ points of them? Seems overkill IMO.

In my experience with deathwatch you either want to go pure infantry with a small detachment of souped allies for CP, or you want to go pretty heavy on the armor and not present any targets for antichaff weaponry until your deep strikers come down. Because we have storm shields in every infantry unit (or should) we make stuff like lascannons and plasma actually super inefficient provided that's all we're presenting to the enemy's guns.

Unless 1/2 of your opponent's shooting weapons are going against highly inefficient targets, you take too many casualties and get wiped.

I'd set it up with primarily dreadnoughts if I was going armor heavy. Deredero, quadgun contemptors, lascannon/ML vendreads, and levidreads would be my go-tos. I wouldn't include any land raiders or preds.

2-3 VenDreads with TL/ML wouldn't hurt and allow you to focus your infantry to better handle Hordes.

The main downside is that if 2-3 Dreads are your only vehicles, that gives the opponent clear targets for their anti-tank weapons, rather than having them be wasted on 1W StormVets.

I'm actually a bit surprised you are having trouble with Horde armies. That seems to be DW specialty. Maybe you need more SBs?

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What about some hellblasters? Units of intercessors with 4 hellblasters and maybe a plasma inceptor can put out a lot of pain, especially deep striking in.

I will freely admit that I am missing a LOT of re-roll potential, because I am new to these guys, and every shot has at least 3 factors to consider, ammo, tactics, range, movement during last phase, then all the normal shooting math. By the end of my 36 shots of mathhammer I have forgotten the rerolling 1s to wound, or checked my distance to the watch master granting re-rolls to hit, etc.

I really need a breakdown of notes to keep myself focused on the checks.

And as for hordes, it was all chargy-in my face groups. Once they closed the gap an me me in the fight phase, I was usually down 3-4 models out of a squad, which makes it hard to recover. Honestly with warp time, a lot of my units were charged and wiped out by turn 2.

I know my errors are multiplicative, and tend to exacerbate the flaws in my army. That being said every loss is a lesson, unfortunately I am taking the masterclass of 40k armies.

Have you considered Grey Knights? (i m a noob dont listen to me)
They can get you a nice stormraven gunship for anti tank. They also bring lots of anti psyker abilities to protect your expensive deathwatch units (like dtw)
Lastly you can get a deathwatch librarian to cast veil of time and/or might of heroes on a Grey knight character and turn him into the hulk to smash someone's face (or gk infantry since it affects adeptus astartes infantry).

If you want to stick with infantry and Space Marines a Spearhead Detachment of Raven Guard/Salamanders Devastators with Lascannons and Missile Launchers could work nicely. If you're set on vehicles an Adeptus Mechanicus Spearhead of Onager Dunecrawlers with Neutron Lasers is good. You could expand those detachments to a Battalion for SM Scouts to use their deployment ability or for Skitarii to screen your Veterans.

In terms of ways to add heavier armor options to the list, Dreadnoughts definitely beat out proper vehicles in DW simply because they benefit from a lot of the strats and abilities that vehicles do now.

Relic Leviathans are my go-to for deathwatch.


2 DW battalions, 2 watchmaster, 2 jump captains, 6 vet squads all SS/SB, 2 hellblaster squads, 2 relic levi's.

Easy peasy list to remember, simple and effective. Tons of wounding on 2's.

So my current revised experiment after the last weekend battle:

1x BN

Watch master
Primaris Captain
Primaris Libby

1x squad of Vets (4x Frag cannons, 1SGT SS/SB)
2x Squads Intercessors (1x aggressor, 2x inceptors, 4x intercessors, 1 SGT)

2x Redemptors
1x Venerable DN

1x Corvus
1x Repulsor


Lotta wounds, lotta shots, lotta anti-tank mixed with some anti-chaff.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So my current revised experiment after the last weekend battle:

1x BN

Watch master
Primaris Captain
Primaris Libby

1x squad of Vets (4x Frag cannons, 1SGT SS/SB)
2x Squads Intercessors (1x aggressor, 2x inceptors, 4x intercessors, 1 SGT)

2x Redemptors
1x Venerable DN

1x Corvus
1x Repulsor


Lotta wounds, lotta shots, lotta anti-tank mixed with some anti-chaff.

I think you'll be fine in any casual meta. If I was to have any criticism of the list, it's that you've presented a variety of viable targets to an opponent upfront by including the one footslogging squad of intercessors, and that I don't think the librarian necessarily adds anything here because you do not have a mobile, aggressive character like a smash captain, your HQs are going to be primarily buffing and only secondarily contributing to combats.

I also think you're a little bit lighter on anti-armor. The frag cannon is actually not the most efficient antitank weapon in the world because for its cost its actual damage is fairly low (2 as opposed to the usual D6 out of an antitank weapon, and for 30-odd points). If I'm putting frags in a corvus, first and foremost I am hunting for that big money 2d6 blast attack against some heavy infantry or character target.

I don't think youn eed to make any changes if you see success with this army in your meta, and if you are seeing about a 50% winrate, by all means, change nothing. But if you do happen to have trouble, I'd look at the following:

1) Can I replace my second footslogging intercessor squad with a deep striking squad of veterans with either combi-plas (if I lack anti tank) or storm bolters (if I struggle vs hordes)? This way I present no power armor targets in my initial deployment.

2) Can I replace my librarian and primaris captain with a more flexible HQ? If you want to stick with primaris, I'd say the new shadowspear librarian would be a better buy, then use the points you save for another dreadnought or something.

Past that point, I think you're really starting to fine tune and get down into more competitive territory, but those are the two big "easy bumps" to up the power level in the list building stage that I see.

I'm a guard player who has been watching one of my peeps at the flgs play the talos netlist and tearing people up. Based on how they're played I started looking for a detachment I could plug into my IG list to counter them. I had the DW codex but only perused it once after I bought it. After looking through all of my codexes for an answer I saw the DW vets and noticed they could take stormbolters - that coupled with hellfire rounds should rip through light to medium infantry. I was going to take 3 units of 8 vets and a jump pack watch captain(?) for around 600 points. For a couple of CP they could drop in and mow down all kinds of stuff besides talos. An 8 man unit with stormbolters could do 32 S4 shots hitting on 3's rerolling 1's and wounding on 2's. I can't think of anything better to take out hoards to be honest. DW really does have a lot of tools for dealing with stuff - I'm impressed....

So that is a question I had - Hellfire Rounds

Do you cause wounds on a 2+ and the opponent gets no save roll, or do you just get a 2+ wound roll, then your ooponent gets a zero AP save?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So that is a question I had - Hellfire Rounds

Do you cause wounds on a 2+ and the opponent gets no save roll, or do you just get a 2+ wound roll, then your ooponent gets a zero AP save?

They are 0AP.

They do not cause mortal wounds on a 2+ Lol.

the_scotsman wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So that is a question I had - Hellfire Rounds

Do you cause wounds on a 2+ and the opponent gets no save roll, or do you just get a 2+ wound roll, then your ooponent gets a zero AP save?

They are 0AP.

They do not cause mortal wounds on a 2+ Lol.

Right, so then where is the appeal of taking them over Vengence/Kraken Bolts? As I see it, affecting the save is far more likely to result in damage than a successful wound roll. Unless you are going up against something like a conscript.

Everything I read says go Hellfire, but Vengence/Kraken seems much better....?

Because wounding on a 2+ against a model that is otherwise wounded on a 4+ or 5+ (or even 6+, lookin at you Nids) is generally better than shifting a save by 1 increment.

Ok, so like against Terminators/Obliterators and the like?

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Ok, so like against Terminators/Obliterators and the like?

Moreso bikes or monsters that rely on toughness not armor to survive. The math gets convoluted for 2+ models.

I don't have the math, but against T4 and up, 3+ or worse save models, the 2+ to wound should statistically cause more unsaved wounds.
Turning a 3+ roll into a 4+ roll via AP-1 doesn't do as much as causing TWO 3+ rolls.

The net "profit" only gets more dramatic on T5+ units or anything with a 4+ or worse save. Or if using Intercessors that already come with AP-1 weapons.

The only time Vengeance/Kraken rounds are ideal is when your target is T3 or has a 2+ save. Or, when combined with one of the +1 to Wound Strats.
This is a known internal balance issue that most would agree Hellfire rounds ought to be 3+ to wound instead.

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 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So that is a question I had - Hellfire Rounds

Do you cause wounds on a 2+ and the opponent gets no save roll, or do you just get a 2+ wound roll, then your ooponent gets a zero AP save?

They are 0AP.

They do not cause mortal wounds on a 2+ Lol.

Right, so then where is the appeal of taking them over Vengence/Kraken Bolts? As I see it, affecting the save is far more likely to result in damage than a successful wound roll. Unless you are going up against something like a conscript.

Everything I read says go Hellfire, but Vengence/Kraken seems much better....?

Well, kraken I think is the one that lowers your RF range by a significant amount, so much so you can't use the ammo when you come down from DS. Since so much deathwatch stuff gets deployed from DS that's a big reason you don't want to always use that one.

For the others it depends on how many die shifts you're gaining by using each ammo.

AP-1 gives you 1 die shift as long as the target has an armor save.

AP-2 gives you 2 die shifts so long as the target has at least a 5+ armor save, and an invuln at least 2 worse than their armor.

Wound on a 2+ gives you as many die shifts as you would get going from your S4 roll to your wound on a 2 roll.

Vs a space marine, AP-2 ammo and wound on a 2 ammo both give 2 shifts. so you often see wound on a 2 used because it works at full range. vs a guardsman, AP-2 ammo is the best if you can get in range to use it since both AP-1 and wound on 2 give 1 shift. Vs an ork wound on 2 is the best.

You almost never use the cover one because it only ever gives 1 shift. most of the time you can get 2 shifts out of at least 1 ammo type.

 Galef wrote:

The only time Vengeance/Kraken rounds are ideal is when your target is T3 or has a 2+ save. Or, when combined with one of the +1 to Wound Strats.
This is a known internal balance issue that most would agree Hellfire rounds ought to be 3+ to wound instead.

Kraken's primary function is to extend range. The bonus AP is largely icing on that cake. That extra 6" can do a lot, especially if you're shifting from non-double tap to double tap range. Vengeance is what you use to go vee hunting at short range.

The only SIA round that doesnt see play is Dragonfire. The rest have their roles.

Sterling191 wrote:

 Galef wrote:

The only time Vengeance/Kraken rounds are ideal is when your target is T3 or has a 2+ save. Or, when combined with one of the +1 to Wound Strats.
This is a known internal balance issue that most would agree Hellfire rounds ought to be 3+ to wound instead.

Kraken's primary function is to extend range. The bonus AP is largely icing on that cake. That extra 6" can do a lot, especially if you're shifting from non-double tap to double tap range. Vengeance is what you use to go vee hunting at short range.

The only SIA round that doesnt see play is Dragonfire. The rest have their roles.

Very true. I was just pointing out that from a damage output perspective, wounding on 2+ AP-0 will often yield more results than wounding on 4/5+ AP-1/2
Kraken is very useful for extra range/rapidfire

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Well, if you are using intercessors, they have Bolt Rifles with 30' range, so effectively 36" with Kraken. That makes Rapid fire range 18". If you go Vengence they basically become reg Bolters with -1ap,m they are STILL in RF range like normal.
Now, Add in Furor tactics, where they get +1 to wound rolls against troops, and I don't know. Against T4 with Vengence rounds you are shooting 2 shots wounding on 3s, with -3 AP. That is a damn sight better than 2 shots wounding on 2s with -1AP.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Well, if you are using intercessors, they have Bolt Rifles with 30' range, so effectively 36" with Kraken. That makes Rapid fire range 18". If you go Vengence there is no change, they are STILL in RF range like normal.
Now, Add in Furor tactics, where they get +1 to wound rolls against troops, and I don't know. Against T4 with Vengence rounds you are shooting 2 shots wounding on 3s, with -3 AP. That is a damn sight better than 2 shots wounding on 2s with 0AP.

Vengeance carries a 6" range penalty, you're going to need the CPs for Doctrine support against Knights, and 4 SB shots will outperform 2 Bolt rifle shots at any range band.

And all of that is *before* we get into the issue of what can and cant carry a storm shield.

Sterling191 wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Well, if you are using intercessors, they have Bolt Rifles with 30' range, so effectively 36" with Kraken. That makes Rapid fire range 18". If you go Vengence there is no change, they are STILL in RF range like normal.
Now, Add in Furor tactics, where they get +1 to wound rolls against troops, and I don't know. Against T4 with Vengence rounds you are shooting 2 shots wounding on 3s, with -3 AP. That is a damn sight better than 2 shots wounding on 2s with 0AP.

Vengeance carries a 6" range penalty, you're going to need the CPs for Doctrine support against Knights, and 4 SB shots will outperform 2 Bolt rifle shots at any range band.

And all of that is *before* we get into the issue of what can and cant carry a storm shield.

..Except that they're not 2 shots wounding on 2s AP-, they keep the -1 ap from their regular shots.

And of course if you spend 2CP they're going to do better damage...come on...

"Pistol/knife is definitely the best loadout for reivers! Why would I want 2 bolt shots when I could have 1 bolt shot in shooting then 6 attacks each in melee when I use Honor the Chapter?"