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Just wondering where people think Deathwatch are going and what GW plans to do with them. Some of my thoughts:

I've never been much of a Space Marine fan. Sure, they're a cool part of the setting but collecting an army of them never really appealed to me. Like many people I never really liked the fact that they got so much attention and so many different codices. Of course it's understandable since (if the unverified data is true) Space Marines sell more than all other 40K armies and all other GW releases combined. This all changed when I first heard about the Deathwatch, for some reason the idea of a Space Marine "chapter" that is designed to fight xenos along with the Inquisition really captured my imagination.

I've been a fan of the Deathwatch since I first read about using a Kill Team in a White Dwarf during 2nd edition (at least I'm pretty sure it was 2nd edition). When Deathwatch Overkill was released about 20 years later I was ecstatic, not for the board game so much but because it finally looked like they would be getting a codex of their own. When it launched these guys were in a pretty good place. Sure, it was yet another Space Marine codex, though in my view they had enough wargear and special units to make them a standalone force. Recently though I can't help thinking that they're just not justifying their place at the table. With the move more and more towards Primaris and the Deathwatch not getting their own Primaris kits it feels like these guys are just differently painted Space Marines. GW really needs to do something to make Deathwatch more unique (not better as such, just unique) in order to continue to justify their existence on the tabletop.


If recent rumours are to be believed (I believe I heard this from Valrak, maybe somewhere else) it's possible that Deathwatch won't be getting their own codex this edition, they'll be part of the Imperial Agents codex. If this is true I'm not too fussed, as long as they are viable enough to be used on their own, not just tagging along with other Imperial Agents. I prefer to play them as part of an Inquisitorial force anyway, options are always good though. I am also hearing musings that Deathwatch are simply not that popular at the moment, especially at tournaments. This may just be because they're not overly competitive right now, something every faction suffers from at some point. GW may simply want to address their unpopularity by wrapping them up with Imperial Agents.


So that's enough of my ramblings. What do others think of the direction that Deathwatch are going to take?

I worry that DW are sort of incompatible with 10th. The current free larger thing just seems at odds with their extreme customization shtick. Additionally, I feel like the mixed chapter individual personalities thing, while awesome, just doesn't work great in a game of 40k's scale.

So with that in mind, "zooming out" and giving them rules representing how they operate as massed formations rather than as quirky kill teams might be the way to go. Homogenized their gear a bit. Lean into the anti-xenos tactics thing. Give them a Gladius type detachment with rules designed to counter eldar speed, necron RP, etc instead of doctrines. Give them a "priority target" detachment for dealing with a broad category of target. Something like that.

at this point, wrapping them up into Agents would do the army some good. they've had different rules for kill teams every edition, and it feels like GW has never been sure what to do with them. giving them to Agents specifically would let each of the specific kill team types stand out more without every other marine unit next to them

also, why are they not the face of kill team (the game)? they should have a much larger presence there than they already do. that's the perfect setting for this sort of idea— that's where the name comes from, after all!

Frankly, I’m not sure they should have a 40K future. They’re just another example of a poorly thought out ‘army’ that GW squirted out and left largely abandoned and unsupported. There’s enough of that in 40K now. Deathwatch mission profiles just don’t fit a mass skirmish game. Admit it was a mistake, and let Deathwatch roam freely - in Kill Team.

I kind of agree with the other posters. Let them go absolutely hog-wild in Kill Team, but otherwise absorb them into an Imperial Agents book. By all means make them playable as a standalone mini-faction within that book, like how you can with Harlequins* in the Eldar book, but I don't think they have enough unique data sheets to warrant a whole book of their own.

Stick them in an Imperial Agents book, with a special rule that says "units with the Deathwatch keyword can be included in a Space Marine army"** to help pad out the roster if you wanted to use a full "Deathwatch" army and include vehicles and dreads and what have you. Then the "deathwatchiness" is special rules within the deathwatch datasheets rather than army rules. To me it always felt of that you could field a full army of Deathwatch when I thought it was always more of a "sending individual kill teams to get a job done" sort of thing.

Yes this would suck for pure Deathwatch players, but realistically the army would still fully exist in the space marines and imperial agents books, rather than a dedicated deathwatch book. So in my opinion it breaks even.

Deathwatch players, feel free to tell me I'm wrong on anything I've said here, I don't know enough about the Deathwatch book to know if what I've said is fully above board.

* I'm loosely aware that a pure Harlequin list is essentially just troupes, transports and a buttload of characters, and I'm not sure that even gets to 2k points on its own. This is a separate issue, but still indicative that they didn't have enough for their own codex. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

** Obviously this would be worded properly and add whatever caveats are required to make this non-abusable in any way. Like you can't take a Deathwatch character without taking a Kill Team choice or whatever.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
I kind of agree with the other posters. Let them go absolutely hog-wild in Kill Team, but otherwise absorb them into an Imperial Agents book. By all means make them playable as a standalone mini-faction within that book, like how you can with Harlequins* in the Eldar book, but I don't think they have enough unique data sheets to warrant a whole book of their own.

Stick them in an Imperial Agents book, with a special rule that says "units with the Deathwatch keyword can be included in a Space Marine army"** to help pad out the roster if you wanted to use a full "Deathwatch" army and include vehicles and dreads and what have you. Then the "deathwatchiness" is special rules within the deathwatch datasheets rather than army rules. To me it always felt of that you could field a full army of Deathwatch when I thought it was always more of a "sending individual kill teams to get a job done" sort of thing.

Yes this would suck for pure Deathwatch players, but realistically the army would still fully exist in the space marines and imperial agents books, rather than a dedicated deathwatch book. So in my opinion it breaks even.

Deathwatch players, feel free to tell me I'm wrong on anything I've said here, I don't know enough about the Deathwatch book to know if what I've said is fully above board.

* I'm loosely aware that a pure Harlequin list is essentially just troupes, transports and a buttload of characters, and I'm not sure that even gets to 2k points on its own. This is a separate issue, but still indicative that they didn't have enough for their own codex. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

** Obviously this would be worded properly and add whatever caveats are required to make this non-abusable in any way. Like you can't take a Deathwatch character without taking a Kill Team choice or whatever.

In the history The Deathwatch often sent multiple kill team squads out in a larger kill team out for a mission. They're not really all that different from the Grey Knights in the fluff - a minor twoish unit adviser unit here and there, a multi squad force when they're the main character or the opposition has plot armor. Plus Deathwatch are not in the same boat as Harlequinns because Deathwatch have a number of things in the main SM Codex, and their bespoke "Kill Team" squads. Most of the things Deathwatch cannot take from the SM Codex are the things that were pushed to Legends.

I think putting DW into Agents is a bad idea- you want all the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition to be dealt with the same way. So if they do it to DW, where does that leave GK and Sisters?

I haven't looked into 10th ed DW very much, though I really liked them in 9th. That was when we could still combat squad, meaning bikes and jetpacks in KT's didn't have to be bikes-but-not-bikes or jetpacks-but-not-jetpacks. Some folks didn't like that because they saw it as gamey, and maybe it was. But it also made sense, because it didn't depict a force that wasted the potential of certain specialized operatives because they were in a unit with more generalist operatives.

I think that Watch Fortresses are interesting, and I think DW having a book, be it a dex or supplement, best faccilitates the inclusion of Watch Fortresses as part of the lore, or campaign play, or terrain.

I think that if GW is going to have an Agents dex, it needs all of its Inquisitors to be viable, so inserting Inquisitiors into the dexes of their CHambers Militant doesn't really work. I'd rather see a rule that is designed to emphasize the synergy between Inquisitors and their Chambers. There are a lot of ways to do that; I know my preference, but it's an unlikely one that's best played out around my own narrative tables with like-minded players. GW would probably do something simpler- such as "If an Inquisitor joins a detachment of his or her Chamber Militant, Imperial Agents in that detachment benefit from the detachment rules for the army as if they had the faction keyword."

That, to me, is a STEP toward making Agents viable; without such a rule, your points are always better spent on a unit that has the right keywords.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
I kind of agree with the other posters. Let them go absolutely hog-wild in Kill Team, but otherwise absorb them into an Imperial Agents book.

The trouble with deathwatch (all the way back to the old 3rd edition 'ordo' rules, but far more so now) is that they share next to no rules with the inquisition and everything with the marines.

The only reason to put them in an Imperial Agents book would be to pad out an otherwise paper-thin Imperial Agents faction with non-Imperial Agents units...

PenitentJake wrote:
I think putting DW into Agents is a bad idea- you want all the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition to be dealt with the same way. So if they do it to DW, where does that leave GK and Sisters?

As independent armies?

I haven't looked into 10th ed DW very much, though I really liked them in 9th. That was when we could still combat squad, meaning bikes and jetpacks in KT's didn't have to be bikes-but-not-bikes or jetpacks-but-not-jetpacks. Some folks didn't like that because they saw it as gamey, and maybe it was. But it also made sense, because it didn't depict a force that wasted the potential of certain specialized operatives because they were in a unit with more generalist operatives.

It wastes the potential of an actual army. It would be lazy as hell for them to be left as is, considering that there's literally a rule that would allow for Lone Operatives now. Recall that the initial "Kill-Teams" from 7E were Formations rather than a messy blob of a pseudo-Crusader Squad with no restrictions.

Part of what made Kill Team Cassius such a cool looking thing is that it played to the idea of it being a bunch of big damn heroes. The White Scar biker and Raven Guard Vanguard Veteran were the eyes and ears of the Kill Team while the Salamanders Terminator and Blood Angel Assault Marine and the Imperial Fist Devastator were the strategic support while the Ultramarine, Iron Hand, Dark Angel, and Space Wolf were the "line troops" all led by a Blood Ravens Librarian and Ultramarines Chaplain.

You could field them as a single formation or as a series of individual units. Now? Now that's just a blob of random crap.

I think that Watch Fortresses are interesting, and I think DW having a book, be it a dex or supplement, best facilitates the inclusion of Watch Fortresses as part of the lore, or campaign play, or terrain.

Watch Fortresses are certainly an interesting concept, but they face a similar fluff issue as the way that Custodes are going:
There's only so many of them and their sphere of responsibility is far, far, far too large for them to be showing up en masse to even a small portion of what they're supposed to be covering.

I think that if GW is going to have an Agents dex, it needs all of its Inquisitors to be viable, so inserting Inquisitiors into the dexes of their Chambers Militant doesn't really work. I'd rather see a rule that is designed to emphasize the synergy between Inquisitors and their Chambers. There are a lot of ways to do that; I know my preference, but it's an unlikely one that's best played out around my own narrative tables with like-minded players. GW would probably do something simpler- such as "If an Inquisitor joins a detachment of his or her Chamber Militant, Imperial Agents in that detachment benefit from the detachment rules for the army as if they had the faction keyword."

That, to me, is a STEP toward making Agents viable; without such a rule, your points are always better spent on a unit that has the right keywords.

On the contrary, axing Inquisitors from the "Agents" listing and placing them into their Chambers Militant is a better idea. Inquisitors have always been a problem unit and placing them into a singular location with something themed to them would allow for an interesting thing:
Moving some of the Agents entries into the codices as well. Arbites get moved over to the Sisters of Battle faction, Navy Breachers(who aren't Inquisitorially tied) get moved to Guard, and Rogue Traders to Deathwatch.

That leaves Assassins as the only true "Agents of the Imperium", moving closer to the way that Knights are set up.

As an added bonus, it actually allows for some more interesting wargear to make its way to the "generic" Inquisitors of the specialized branches. Daemonhosts and daemon weapons could be tied to radical Malleus Inquisitors, Death Cultists to Hereticus, and Xenos mercenaries for the Xenos Inquisitors would all be fun, fluffy adds.

I haven't looked into 10th ed DW very much, though I really liked them in 9th. That was when we could still combat squad, meaning bikes and jetpacks in KT's didn't have to be bikes-but-not-bikes or jetpacks-but-not-jetpacks. Some folks didn't like that because they saw it as gamey, and maybe it was. But it also made sense, because it didn't depict a force that wasted the potential of certain specialized operatives because they were in a unit with more generalist operatives.

See, even in previous editions, this sort of mechanic felt more like a bandaid than a feature. Like, the faction at it's heart is meant to be these quirky kill teams made up of operatives who fight in very different ways hitting the enemy from different angles. Which is cool and makes a lot of sense when your cast of protagonists is like, 5 guys. But when you translate that over to a 2,000 point battle where you have like 50 marines running around instead of 5, having one half of your squad refraining from using its gear so they don't outpace the other half just doesn't make sense. The combat squad thing was pretty clearly just a way to let your jump packs/bikes feel like they weren't being leashed to your squad.

But like, "realistically" (yeah, yeah, realism in 40k is silly), you probably wouldn't put a bike guy and a jump pack guy in the same squad as a couple guys on foot for the kind of battle represented by a 2k game. If the DW knew they were going into a larger battle, you'd expect them to just... put their bikers into squads of bikers, put their long-ranged guns into squads of long-ranged guns, put their jump packs in squads of jump packs, etc. And by the time you've done all that, you end up with something that looks a lot like a conventional marine army.

So like, the central, most iconic part of the DW (kill teams) is just kind of incompatible with larger games of 40k. If you want to represent the army deploying for a massed battle, I think you need to start by acknowledging that a big force of DW behaves differently than a surgical squad of DW. And at that point, DW kind of become generic marines with some quirky wargear choices.

It wastes the potential of an actual army. It would be lazy as hell for them to be left as is, considering that there's literally a rule that would allow for Lone Operatives now.

What would we make that look like in practical terms though? I could see DW having some models behaving as lone operatives as their gimmick, but once you have 10+ lone operatives scattered around the table, it starts to feel weird. Like, are you actually an easily-overlooked individual who's hard to pick out at a distance, or are you just a squad that's ignoring unit coherency and immune to ranged attacks?

It also kind of feels like a unit significant enough to be a lone operative should be more powerful than a normal marine too. And when I think of better-than-normal marines scattered around the battlefield as single-man units, it makes me wonder if we're just reinventing movie marines. Not that I'm 100% opposed to that...

On the contrary, axing Inquisitors from the "Agents" listing and placing them into their Chambers Militant is a better idea.
...
As an added bonus, it actually allows for some more interesting wargear to make its way to the "generic" Inquisitors of the specialized branches. Daemonhosts and daemon weapons could be tied to radical Malleus Inquisitors, Death Cultists to Hereticus, and Xenos mercenaries for the Xenos Inquisitors would all be fun, fluffy adds.

Inclined to agree. Not sure I'm a fan of your other Agents suggestions there, but having inquisitors just... be part of the factions they're most associated with seems like a simple, intuitive move that also makes it easy to give them cool wargear that has a niche. You could maybe have a generic-brand inquisitor that can be added to other armies for those who like that sort of thing, but the way they're presented could be different. That is, an inquisitor in an IG army is probably the best melee combatant in the room, might be taking advantage of the disposable nature of guardsmen to do some Karamazov-style friendly fire, etc. Whereas an inquisitor attached to the Death Watch is probably fulfilling more of a support/leadership/weird tech role rather than being a particularly dangerous beatstick. Inquisitors serve different roles in different contexts.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Spoiler:

See, even in previous editions, this sort of mechanic felt more like a bandaid than a feature. Like, the faction at it's heart is meant to be these quirky kill teams made up of operatives who fight in very different ways hitting the enemy from different angles. Which is cool and makes a lot of sense when your cast of protagonists is like, 5 guys. But when you translate that over to a 2,000 point battle where you have like 50 marines running around instead of 5, having one half of your squad refraining from using its gear so they don't outpace the other half just doesn't make sense. The combat squad thing was pretty clearly just a way to let your jump packs/bikes feel like they weren't being leashed to your squad.

But like, "realistically" (yeah, yeah, realism in 40k is silly), you probably wouldn't put a bike guy and a jump pack guy in the same squad as a couple guys on foot for the kind of battle represented by a 2k game. If the DW knew they were going into a larger battle, you'd expect them to just... put their bikers into squads of bikers, put their long-ranged guns into squads of long-ranged guns, put their jump packs in squads of jump packs, etc. And by the time you've done all that, you end up with something that looks a lot like a conventional marine army.

So like, the central, most iconic part of the DW (kill teams) is just kind of incompatible with larger games of 40k. If you want to represent the army deploying for a massed battle, I think you need to start by acknowledging that a big force of DW behaves differently than a surgical squad of DW. And at that point, DW kind of become generic marines with some quirky wargear choices.

I can see that. I'd say it's a little less of an issue with Indomitor and Spectrus teams, where the regular homogenized load out for Primaris makes mixing Gravis units or mixing Phobos units quite practical, even at scale. What messes it up for Proteus and Fortis teams is bikes and jetpacks.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

On the contrary, axing Inquisitors from the "Agents" listing and placing them into their Chambers Militant is a better idea.
...
As an added bonus, it actually allows for some more interesting wargear to make its way to the "generic" Inquisitors of the specialized branches. Daemonhosts and daemon weapons could be tied to radical Malleus Inquisitors, Death Cultists to Hereticus, and Xenos mercenaries for the Xenos Inquisitors would all be fun, fluffy adds.

Inclined to agree. Not sure I'm a fan of your other Agents suggestions there, but having inquisitors just... be part of the factions they're most associated with seems like a simple, intuitive move that also makes it easy to give them cool wargear that has a niche. You could maybe have a generic-brand inquisitor that can be added to other armies for those who like that sort of thing, but the way they're presented could be different. That is, an inquisitor in an IG army is probably the best melee combatant in the room, might be taking advantage of the disposable nature of guardsmen to do some Karamazov-style friendly fire, etc. Whereas an inquisitor attached to the Death Watch is probably fulfilling more of a support/leadership/weird tech role rather than being a particularly dangerous beatstick. Inquisitors serve different roles in different contexts.

Again, a lot of this comes down to preference. As a small point, narrative Crusade campaign guy, I'm always going to want Inquisition detachments that can combine with detachments of their Chamber forces or act independently. Having a 25 PL Inqusition detachment do the investigation missions in a campaign while their Chamber fights more conventional battles against larger forces until the Inquisition uncovers the connection and recruits from the Chamber to deal with the problem is a great little campaign arc.

The other difficulty for me is the way detachments are not now just organizational arrangements, but the place where all the flavour comes from. If you put Inquisitors into a Sisters book, all the sudden Inquisitors are throwing Acts of Faith, because that's the Sisters army rule, plus they're being railroaded into taking a detachment rule that's meant not for an Inquisition based detachment, but a Bloody Rose or Argent Shroud detachment. It gets worse when you think about strats and enhancements- because in 10th, those are determined by detachment too.

So you're either putting an Inquisition specific detachment into each Chamber dex, thereby removing one of the options for that Chamber. If I have to include in Inquisition detachment in the Sisters dex, which Sisters subfaction gets to go without a detachment?

And if I include an enhancement or a strat that an Inquisitor can use in every detachment, then what happens when I decide it doesn't suit the narrative to bring an Inquisitor? Now my army doesn't have as many options to choose from.

And again, I maintain that all Ordos/ Chambers should be treated equally- so if you roll on Chamber's Inquisitor into their dex, then that's how you have to handle the other Chambers too.

I am convinced an Agents dex is the best option; Inquisition in 8th and 9th were fairly well done; they could be fielded as detachments of their own or attached to other armies as Agents units. When fielded in Inquisition detachments, those could be attached to other allied detachments. Each Ordo had specific wargear options, WL Traits and Strats and all of it felt like the Inquisition. Literally the only thing thing they lacked was vehicles in their own lists (rather than being required to attach to other armies as Agents when they wanted a ride) and bespoke Crusade content, which Rogue Traders got via Octarius.

we will see what GW does. I doubt any of it will make me happy.

Deathwatch have a lot of unique tools and wargear that other marines don't. Not to mention they have given them huge selections of wargear. I think we need to keep this as a concept of them.

Roll them into the Agents book if you have to, but there are a few things I would demand:
1. Mixed squads, IE terminators mixing with power armor
2. All their special weapons, including the Infernus Heavy Bolter and Frag cannon, and be able to take multiples of them per squad.
3. All unique vehicles, especially the Corvus Blackstar



One a personal note, I have a DW army with 4 squads each containing 4 frag cannons. If they limit squads to 2 heavy weapons, they best add Frag cannons to some kind of Heavy weapon squad like Devastators.

@PenitentJake:
I think part of figuring out how to handle inquisitors is figuring out what their inclusion adds to the game. Like, how do you want a sororitas army with an inquisitor to differ from one without? Are they losing Acts of Faith in exchange for some sort of "Ordo Training" mechanic because of the shady stuff the inquisitors talks them into doing? Is the inquisitor literally just an additional beatstick option with some different lore? Are the inquisitor and their henchmen the stars, and the sororitas are just there to provide a framework that lets the henchmen show off? Each of those would call for pretty different amounts of support ranging from just adding a couple datasheets to the codex to overhauling how the faction works when an inquisitor is present.

Roll them into the Agents book if you have to, but there are a few things I would demand:
1. Mixed squads, IE terminators mixing with power armor
2. All their special weapons, including the Infernus Heavy Bolter and Frag cannon, and be able to take multiples of them per squad.
3. All unique vehicles, especially the Corvus Blackstar

1. What do you do about the oddball combined units like jump packs/bikes hanging out with footsloggers though? Adding termies to a power armor squad is easy enough (ignoring that it gets rid of the termies' deepstrike), having a jump pack in a squad that prevents you from using it is awkward.

2 and 3. Reasonable asks, but do you feel like the DW justifies being its own rulebook if they're basically just the marine codex with Corvus Blackstar datasheet added and slightly unusual special weapons? If the answer is yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm just not sure I agree.

Like, imagine having a separate book for Iyanden that basically just adds the hemlock wraitihfighter datasheet and unlocks a new weapon for wraithguard/blades. That would feel kind of unnecessary, right?

I'm glad I made this thread, interesting discussion has come out of it. I'm not sure how many of us commenting are avid Deathwatch players, good to get different views nonetheless.

I'm still not sure whether the Deathwatch being swallowed up by the Imperial Agents codex is a good thing or not. It's probably not great for those who want to field a 2,000 point army worth of Deathwatch, though it does open up more fluffy ways to use them. As I said in my first post (and others have mentioned since) I still want the ability to be able to field a full army. Since they have been a full fledged army until now it's not right for GW to relegate the Deathwatch to 1 or 2 Kill Teams in a bigger force (of Imperial Guard, or Space Marines, or whatever). While this fits their fluff much better since when were GW too fussed about the fluff? In the grand scheme of things 1,000 Ultramarines, or 1,000 Imperial Fists, or whatever, are insignificant in the 40K setting. This doesn't stop them from playing a big part and being fielded en masse though.

I don't think the fact that Sisters and Grey Knights have their own codex is a solid argument for Deathwatch to have one. It would be nice if GW treated all Chambers Militant fairly, or equally (or whatever word we choose to use), the reality doesn't always work like this though. GW might simply decide that Deathwatch aren't going to be different enough from other Space Marines to have their own codex in the future. This shouldn't take away from what Grey Knights or Adepta Sororitas are, armies that do have enough unique units to justify a codex.

I've been playing Deathwatch since they launched in 7th and a fan since the FFG RPG before that. To be perfectly honest, Deathwatch has never really worked, particularly in the Cassius style that GW keeps hoping for. Mixed weapons have never happened and even mixed units has only occasionally worked. Generally when the faction has been competitive its been via some quirk that lets us spam an undercosted weapon slightly more than base marines.

In some ways, I think the 10th KT setup gets things right. The 5/2/2/1 setup and zero purpose for 5 mans creates the varied setups. I'd even say capping Proteus to 2 Terminators would be an improvement.

The problem is GW is pricing these units like they're made up of the units they're built from. A Heavy Intercessor with a Multi-Melta is NOT an Eradicator. None of the Phobos members remotely equal their counterparts. Almost every one of these could drop 50 points in a heartbeat, though they could also use a little more flair in some cases (Phobos and Fortis) and personally this is where I'd like to see SIA added to the base troops in each unit.

As for what should be done with the DW? I think Imperial Agents could work. Making the Kill Teams datasheets similar to Assassins that can be brought into other forces is a fine solution and you can easily add a special detachment that focuses on them in the book as a bonus. I think there's a ton of potential in "cool allies" in the Imperium be it Assassins, Knights or DW kill teams.

As for my army? Eh? DW is pretty well suited for the current detachment system. It's way better than being locked into GW's afterthought design that never gets updated unless it's to be nerfed so hard they don't have to think about it.

 LunarSol wrote:
As for what should be done with the DW? I think Imperial Agents could work. Making the Kill Teams datasheets similar to Assassins that can be brought into other forces is a fine solution and you can easily add a special detachment that focuses on them in the book as a bonus. I think there's a ton of potential in "cool allies" in the Imperium be it Assassins, Knights or DW kill teams.

big fan of this idea. the gameplay niche of "assassins, but more expensive" could definitely be fun to have

I love their background. Essentially, Space Marine Black Ops with Extra Bells And Whistles. In many ways, their traditional wide choice of wargear is how I kinda feel all Marines should be. Small groups of supremely well equipped psycho killers which are all but unstoppable.

But their implementation feels a bit off. What would I prefer? I honestly don’t know. It’s too late to demote them to Just Allies. But I also feel they should lean more into the Inquisitorial side of things.

A large part of the problem is that Deathwatch have undergone the same homogenisation which all variant Marines inevitably go through, where they get the same toys as standard Marines, flattening out their uniqueness, and then have extra stuff bodged on.
Only Deathwatch have speedrun the process.

Kill Teams being a hodgepodge of random guys always looked stupid and never really worked rules-wise.

There are two things to consider with the Chambers Militant, the background and the rules. Treating all three Chambers as equal, or even implying that they are, in either part is a mistake IMO.

Lore


Rules

 Gert wrote:
There are two things to consider with the Chambers Militant, the background and the rules. Treating all three Chambers as equal, or even implying that they are, in either part is a mistake IMO.

Lore

Spoiler:

We need to look at how each Chamber Militant operates within the 40k universe.
The Deathwatch and Grey Knights are Astartes Chapter + in size and most of their operations are carried out on a small scale purely out of necessity.
The Adepta Sororitas is a galaxy-spanning organisation with the backing of the Ecclesiarchy as its military arm. They maintain hundreds, if not thousands of convents and priories while also maintaining a presence at many Imperial Shrines and the various Schola Progenium. They can also be one of the High Lords, something neither the Deathwatch nor Grey Knights can do outside of having the Inquisitorial Representative.
The Sororitas also maintain a very large fleet of their own and when they deploy for missions, it is as large forces, not single units.

Rules

Spoiler:

In terms of units, there is a lot of guff that has been added to artificially pad out Grey Knights and to a degree Deathwatch. If both were taken to their roots as smaller strike forces then the rosters could be brought down to contain enough units to satisfy an army take by itself while being small enough to be put together with an Inquisition/Agents-style Codex.
There is no need for a Landraider and a Grey Knights Landraider, or a Stormeagle and Grey Knights Stormeagle when the rules are the same.
There also isn't a need for Veteran Bikers or Veterans when a Proteus Killteam can give that anyway. Give Deathwatch four types of Killteam, the trinity of Space Marine Characters (Captain, Chaplain, Librarian), and the Corvus.
Both should have the option of including either a Killteam or a Grey Knight unit in an army the same way as Assassins or Inquisitors.
Not including Ministorum units (i.e. Priests), Sisters have 28 units, which is almost as many unique units as Grey Knights and Deathwatch combined. Sisters aren't just a Chamber, they are much too large for that.

Some very good points here. Sisters are a stand-alone force in the fluff and the rules reflect this, bearing in mind how many different units they can bring to the tabletop. Grey Knights and Deathwatch can’t say the same thing.

While the idea of demoting Grey Knights and Deathwatch to supporting units for the Inquisition (and leaving Sisters as they are) makes a lot of sense I doubt GW will go as far as to do this, as there’ll be a lot of angry players who have invested heavily in these armies over the years.

Then again I don’t believe there are any rumours of when the Grey Knight codex will be released, so GW might have a surprise coming for us all.

On the note of downgrading DW and GK to imperial agents that you splash into other armies... I really feel like this is how custodes should have been handled. Like, they're absurdly few in number, and they're best buddies with the Emperor. Having a single one of these guys or one character and a single squad show up to energize/inspire your forces feels like a natural fit for them. It also dovetails well with the whole "send some custodes to force marines to start using primaris" thing that we had going on for a while. Plus, by only ever having a few custodes present at a time, you can more easily amp up their abilities without breaking the game, and they retain some of their mystique by virtue of not dying in droves (as tends to happen when they're the only-and-softest target in your all-custodes army.)

Similarly, as much as I love my harlequins, I've come around to thinking they really work better as something you splash into other armies. Instead of treating troupers as rank and file who die in droves every game and taking away rising crescendo, you could allow a single squad of troupers backed up by some characters who all have evocative, potent abilities.

I miss the old Daemonhunters Codex. Grey Knights with a Guard battalion seemed to make more sense than any subsequent Codex.

I have both GK and DW armies and have not been satisfied with their rules for several editions. Each is inherently hard to balance and the difficulty shows in the rules we eventually receive.

I'd be okay with an Imperial Agents codex as a solution, provided the following also happens:

- We don't lose units from any current Codexes. I would be fine with 100+ datasheets in the book.

- The units are a little more lore-accurate. Paladins should be much tougher than Terminators. Kill Teams should be absolutely deadly.

- They can be allied with any other Imperial faction but you're not forced to take them in their own detachment. I don't want to have forced HQ selections becoming a tax to use them. It would be particularly hard to fit them into a 25% ratio with the rest of the army.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
On the note of downgrading DW and GK to imperial agents that you splash into other armies... I really feel like this is how custodes should have been handled. Like, they're absurdly few in number, and they're best buddies with the Emperor. Having a single one of these guys or one character and a single squad show up to energize/inspire your forces feels like a natural fit for them. It also dovetails well with the whole "send some custodes to force marines to start using primaris" thing that we had going on for a while. Plus, by only ever having a few custodes present at a time, you can more easily amp up their abilities without breaking the game, and they retain some of their mystique by virtue of not dying in droves (as tends to happen when they're the only-and-softest target in your all-custodes army.)

Similarly, as much as I love my harlequins, I've come around to thinking they really work better as something you splash into other armies. Instead of treating troupers as rank and file who die in droves every game and taking away rising crescendo, you could allow a single squad of troupers backed up by some characters who all have evocative, potent abilities.

Tangent taken to heart.
Thread on this.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I really feel like this is how custodes should have been handled. .

There are significantly more Custodes than there are Marines in any single Chapter.
Hell, the Custodes' losses at the battle of the Lion's Gate alone would have wiped out a Chapter twofold.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

1. What do you do about the oddball combined units like jump packs/bikes hanging out with footsloggers though? Adding termies to a power armor squad is easy enough (ignoring that it gets rid of the termies' deepstrike), having a jump pack in a squad that prevents you from using it is awkward.

2 and 3. Reasonable asks, but do you feel like the DW justifies being its own rulebook if they're basically just the marine codex with Corvus Blackstar datasheet added and slightly unusual special weapons? If the answer is yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm just not sure I agree.

Like, imagine having a separate book for Iyanden that basically just adds the hemlock wraitihfighter datasheet and unlocks a new weapon for wraithguard/blades. That would feel kind of unnecessary, right?

1. Give them rules? Like scouts that just because they take a shotgun can move and perform actions. Maybe a unit with jump pack moves easier through cover, a biker carries more sensors etc so they have a longer engage range or can do objective from further away

2. GW could just, make primaris version of DW veterans, black shields, DW heroes etc and before that they could just not invalidate peoples armies. A lot of the problems stemp from the fact that GW decided that every marine player is going to have to buy 2 books. If the DW, or any other marine faction book, had a separate line up stuff could be pointed different, certain units could not be part of DW (eg. scouts or bunkers) others could exist or be added.

And GW already gave eldar more cross faction mix rules, then any marine or non marine faction in the game. Even factions that should be much easier to run alongside each other like csm and demons, or GSC and nids, Ad mecha and Knights can't pull out stuff eldar can just do for free.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@PenitentJake:
I think part of figuring out how to handle inquisitors is figuring out what their inclusion adds to the game. Like, how do you want a sororitas army with an inquisitor to differ from one without? Are they losing Acts of Faith in exchange for some sort of "Ordo Training" mechanic because of the shady stuff the inquisitors talks them into doing? Is the inquisitor literally just an additional beatstick option with some different lore? Are the inquisitor and their henchmen the stars, and the sororitas are just there to provide a framework that lets the henchmen show off? Each of those would call for pretty different amounts of support ranging from just adding a couple datasheets to the codex to overhauling how the faction works when an inquisitor is present.

Often, the fluffiest way to deal with the addition of Inquisition is through Agendas. Now I don't play matched, so I can't comment on how well you could use secondaries- I don't know if there are bespoke secondaries in dexes like there used to be, but Agendas are still there. And when the Inquisition comes along, they always have a purpose.

So you create an Agenda for the Chamber: Protect the Inquisitor- XP if the Inquisitor survives.
Then you create Agendas for the Inquisition based on Ordo + Radical vs. Puritan.
Any army that includes an Inquisitor may take an Inquisition/ Chamber Agendas.

And you allow Inquisition to field as an allied detachment rather than attached Agents at the players discretion.

So I'd take a Burn the Heretic Agenda for my Hereticus and Protect the Inquisitor for my Sisters. My Inquisition detachment would have its own Enhancements, Strats and detachment rule, as would my Sisters detachment.

El Torro wrote:
It would be nice if GW treated all Chambers Militant fairly, or equally (or whatever word we choose to use), the reality doesn't always work like this though.

Sure, but the reality is also that for two editions (I think 3, but I didn't play 7th), they have had ttheir own books (whether dex or supplement), meaning that it can work, meaning there's no reason it couldn't in 10th.

 Gert wrote:
There are two things to consider with the Chambers Militant, the background and the rules. Treating all three Chambers as equal, or even implying that they are, in either part is a mistake IMO.

Lore

Spoiler:

We need to look at how each Chamber Militant operates within the 40k universe.
The Deathwatch and Grey Knights are Astartes Chapter + in size and most of their operations are carried out on a small scale purely out of necessity.
The Adepta Sororitas is a galaxy-spanning organisation with the backing of the Ecclesiarchy as its military arm. They maintain hundreds, if not thousands of convents and priories while also maintaining a presence at many Imperial Shrines and the various Schola Progenium. They can also be one of the High Lords, something neither the Deathwatch nor Grey Knights can do outside of having the Inquisitorial Representative.
The Sororitas also maintain a very large fleet of their own and when they deploy for missions, it is as large forces, not single units.

Rules

Spoiler:

In terms of units, there is a lot of guff that has been added to artificially pad out Grey Knights and to a degree Deathwatch. If both were taken to their roots as smaller strike forces then the rosters could be brought down to contain enough units to satisfy an army take by itself while being small enough to be put together with an Inquisition/Agents-style Codex.
There is no need for a Landraider and a Grey Knights Landraider, or a Stormeagle and Grey Knights Stormeagle when the rules are the same.
There also isn't a need for Veteran Bikers or Veterans when a Proteus Killteam can give that anyway. Give Deathwatch four types of Killteam, the trinity of Space Marine Characters (Captain, Chaplain, Librarian), and the Corvus.
Both should have the option of including either a Killteam or a Grey Knight unit in an army the same way as Assassins or Inquisitors.
Not including Ministorum units (i.e. Priests), Sisters have 28 units, which is almost as many unique units as Grey Knights and Deathwatch combined. Sisters aren't just a Chamber, they are much too large for that.

RE: Lore- Certainly true that there are more Sisters than other Ordos and that they are dual purpose as both a Chamber AND the fighting force of the Ecclsiarchy. But, other issues are present in this description. For example, GK have one base of operations (Fortress on Saturn) while DW Fortresses are spread out. This means GK would have a centralized fleet, while Watch Fortresses might have a ship or two each- and probably not big Capital Ship nasties either. Also, the Mission, the smallest organizational unit of Sisters is quite small- often a couple of units and a Palatine, so the notion that Sisters ALWAYS fight in large forces doesn't hold water. Similarly, when there is an Alien invasion or a Daemonic Incursion, DW and GK DO mobilize in large numbers because they are the best defence against their chosen quarry.

RE: Rules- The issue with removing SM units from the GK or DW lists is that like Agents themselves, IF they want to field as their own detachment, they can't because vehicles aren't a part of THEIR list. Inquisitors can ride any Imperial vehicle in the game, but they can't take a vehicle in an Inquisition detachment... Which is BEYOND stupid. You suggest that the same should happen to GK and DW to what, save pages? No thanks. Similarly, while you CAN put Bikes or Vets in a DW KT, they don't get to behave like bikes or jump packs when you do, so entries for bikes and vets are still valid and important.

 techsoldaten wrote:

I'd be okay with an Imperial Agents codex as a solution, provided the following also happens:

- We don't lose units from any current Codexes. I would be fine with 100+ datasheets in the book.

But surely, you MUST realize that IF Chambers get moved to Agents, they will lose units, right?

100+ units in a book designed to act as bonus units for the already best supported factions in the game is wacky.

Grey Knights could be reduced to:
Hero
Terminators
Power Armour guys
Land Raider
Dreadnought
without losing too many options, and would [could] become thematically stronger as a result.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
100+ units in a book designed to act as bonus units for the already best supported factions in the game is wacky.

Grey Knights could be reduced to:
Hero
Terminators
Power Armour guys
Land Raider
Dreadnought
without losing too many options, and would [could] become thematically stronger as a result.

Hard disagree. At the very least, they need:

Chapter Master
Captain
Lieutenant
Librarian

And the first three of those must be GK specific, because none of those three are typically psychic, but in GK, all three would be.

You said dreadnought, but I think you might have meant dreadknight... Once again, GK should have both, because they do in the fluff.
They should also have at least one flyer.

The larger issue, of course, is that no one who has been playing a GK army since they've had their own dexes should lose any units at all, regardless of whether or not YOU decree that it is somehow better for the game.

Furthermore, it is an ASSUMPTION at this point that the Agents dex will be designed to support other factions- it may restore Agent specific detachments to the game. I can't assume that it will, but you can't assume that it won't- at this point, anything is possible. Heck, at this point, we can't even say for sure that we're getting an Agents dex at all.

Lord Damocles wrote:
There are significantly more Custodes than there are Marines in any single Chapter.
Hell, the Custodes' losses at the battle of the Lion's Gate alone would have wiped out a Chapter twofold.

Are custodes not super hard to replace or something? It seems weird for custodes to have better stats and gear and be more numerous than (a given chapter of) marines. Not saying you're mistaken; it just violates the usual pattern of the more powerful thing also being more rare. Why isn't the imperium just pumping out custodes instead of marines?

Karol wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

1. What do you do about the oddball combined units like jump packs/bikes hanging out with footsloggers though? Adding termies to a power armor squad is easy enough (ignoring that it gets rid of the termies' deepstrike), having a jump pack in a squad that prevents you from using it is awkward.

2 and 3. Reasonable asks, but do you feel like the DW justifies being its own rulebook if they're basically just the marine codex with Corvus Blackstar datasheet added and slightly unusual special weapons? If the answer is yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm just not sure I agree.

Like, imagine having a separate book for Iyanden that basically just adds the hemlock wraitihfighter datasheet and unlocks a new weapon for wraithguard/blades. That would feel kind of unnecessary, right?

1. Give them rules? Like scouts that just because they take a shotgun can move and perform actions. Maybe a unit with jump pack moves easier through cover, a biker carries more sensors etc so they have a longer engage range or can do objective from further away

That's how they worked back in 7th, right? I could see it working, but I'm not sure I like it. Treating a jump pack not as a jump pack but as some sort of method of group conveyance requires some pretty serious abstraction to sort of make sense of; and I'm usually the first one to say abstraction is fine. Even if you gave bikes and jump packs and termies and gravis armor and phobos armor and inceptor gravis armor all have their own special rule, you risk having a pretty large stack of special rules on each unit to justify their presence in 40k (even if you don't mix primaris and firstborn together in the same kill team).

I wouldn't lose any sleep if they went that direction, but it still feels awkward, right? Very square peg round hole.

2. GW could just, make primaris version of DW veterans, black shields, DW heroes etc and before that they could just not invalidate peoples armies. A lot of the problems stemp from the fact that GW decided that every marine player is going to have to buy 2 books. If the DW, or any other marine faction book, had a separate line up stuff could be pointed different, certain units could not be part of DW (eg. scouts or bunkers) others could exist or be added.

If the Death Watch has the resources to field dreadnaughts, meltaguns, special issue ammunition, and a bunch of special/possible-xenos toys on top of it all... that they should probably be able to field the generic marine stuff too.

"Sorry. We can't possibly get our hands on a bunker for your mission. All we have are these piles of custom-made special ammo, xenotech spears, and experimental weapons designed specifically for one mission 2 centuries ago."

Even scouts being disallowed is a little weird given that a Space Wolf scout isn't a newbie the way a UM scout is.

And GW already gave eldar more cross faction mix rules, then any marine or non marine faction in the game. Even factions that should be much easier to run alongside each other like csm and demons, or GSC and nids, Ad mecha and Knights can't pull out stuff eldar can just do for free.

Karol, when you veer off-topic to yell about eldar, it makes everything else you say seem less compelling.

PenitentJake wrote:
Often, the fluffiest way to deal with the addition of Inquisition is through Agendas. Now I don't play matched, so I can't comment on how well you could use secondaries- I don't know if there are bespoke secondaries in dexes like there used to be, but Agendas are still there. And when the Inquisition comes along, they always have a purpose.

So you create an Agenda for the Chamber: Protect the Inquisitor- XP if the Inquisitor survives.
Then you create Agendas for the Inquisition based on Ordo + Radical vs. Puritan.
Any army that includes an Inquisitor may take an Inquisition/ Chamber Agendas.

And you allow Inquisition to field as an allied detachment rather than attached Agents at the players discretion.

So I'd take a Burn the Heretic Agenda for my Hereticus and Protect the Inquisitor for my Sisters. My Inquisition detachment would have its own Enhancements, Strats and detachment rule, as would my Sisters detachment.

I can definitely see that working for a Crusade or narrative campaign. I'm just not sure how you'd work it into a matched play game (even a casual one) without risking some problems. You don't want to end up with a situation where everyone is including a hereticus inquisitor because he unlocks a screw-over-your-opponent's-psykers strat or something. But if you don't make the inquisitor's presence feel "weighty" enough, then they risk feeling sort of awkwardly bolted on. Almost like taking an ambull in your list. I'm sure there are great ways to do it. I'm just not conjuring them up right now.

Lord Damocles wrote:100+ units in a book designed to act as bonus units for the already best supported factions in the game is wacky.
Grey Knights could be reduced to:
Hero
Terminators
Power Armour guys
Land Raider
Dreadnought
without losing too many options, and would [could] become thematically stronger as a result.

As much as I dislike the marine bloat, GK are probably the loyalist marine variant that feels like it warrants its own codex the most. I mean, you could definitely argue that it was a weird choice to give a book to a single chapter that thematically should almost never fight anything other than chaos in the first place. But of the existing loyalist marine factions, they're the one that would be hardest to shove into the generic marine 'dex. Like, SW and BA could mostly just be generic marines if you just called their "grey hunters" tactical marines and let generic marines have psychic dreadnaughts and so forth. But GK have abnormal gear loadouts on their power armor, and every single squad being psychic is a pretty major departure from generic marines all on its own. You can't just call the power armor GK battle line guys tacticals the way you can with grey hunters.

DK are tricky because their main gimmick (kill teams) seems awkward in a 2k game. But if you take away the Kill Team thing, you're kind of just left with... normal marines with expanded wargear options? It feels like you'd need to lean into some detachment rules to give them their unique flavor. But then if most of their uniqueness is coming from the detachment, it's almost tempting to just make DW a detachment? But then you still have the weird wargear that probably shouldn't become generic wargear. So I guess you just sort of have to make them their own codex full of special gear and different points costs from their generic counterparts. It's a weird position to be in.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
100+ units in a book designed to act as bonus units for the already best supported factions in the game is wacky.

Grey Knights could be reduced to:
Hero
Terminators
Power Armour guys
Land Raider
Dreadnought
without losing too many options, and would [could] become thematically stronger as a result.

Hard disagree. At the very least, they need:

Chapter Master
Captain
Lieutenant
Librarian

And the first three of those must be GK specific, because none of those three are typically psychic, but in GK, all three would be.

There's no reason that options for Grand Master/Brother Captain can't be built into the same unit entry (Codex: Daemonhunters managed it just fine).
Librarians are redundant since all Grey Knight characters are psychic (just give them the option to take additional psychic powers).

You said dreadnought, but I think you might have meant dreadknight... Once again, GK should have both, because they do in the fluff.

The Dreadknight actively detracts from the theme of the Grey Knights being the paladins who stand against the darkness of Chaos through faith, skill at arms, and purity.
No longer do you get the physically inferior, but psychically/spiritually pure/superior hero defeating the greater Daemon through their own power, like the knight facing the dragon - the knight now has giant exo armour and is actually the equal of the dragon in a straight up fistfight...

They should also have at least one flyer.

Why? Because other factions do? What happened to factions having differences and weaknesses?
Most of the Grey Knights flyers are just lazily ported over from generic Marines like the Rhino and Razorback anyway.

Why not give them some artillery and a hoard unit while we're at it?

The larger issue, of course, is that no one who has been playing a GK army since they've had their own dexes should lose any units at all, regardless of whether or not YOU decree that it is somehow better for the game.

I have a full Botherhood-worth of Grey Knights and have collected them since 3rd ed Chapter Approved.

You can't just endlessly bloat factions with more and more new units (give me my Thunder Hammer/Storm shield Terminators and Teleport Attack Squads back, you meanies!)





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Lord Damocles wrote:
There are significantly more Custodes than there are Marines in any single Chapter.
Hell, the Custodes' losses at the battle of the Lion's Gate alone would have wiped out a Chapter twofold.

Are custodes not super hard to replace or something? It seems weird for custodes to have better stats and gear and be more numerous than (a given chapter of) marines. Not saying you're mistaken; it just violates the usual pattern of the more powerful thing also being more rare. Why isn't the imperium just pumping out custodes instead of marines?

Custodes are known as the Ten Thousand for a reason.

As much as I dislike the marine bloat, GK are probably the loyalist marine variant that feels like it warrants its own codex the most. I mean, you could definitely argue that it was a weird choice to give a book to a single chapter that thematically should almost never fight anything other than chaos in the first place. But of the existing loyalist marine factions, they're the one that would be hardest to shove into the generic marine 'dex. Like, SW and BA could mostly just be generic marines if you just called their "grey hunters" tactical marines and let generic marines have psychic dreadnaughts and so forth. But GK have abnormal gear loadouts on their power armor, and every single squad being psychic is a pretty major departure from generic marines all on its own. You can't just call the power armor GK battle line guys tacticals the way you can with grey hunters.

That's exactly how we ended up with the Marine bloat.
Chapter has some unique units -> give them their own full list -> Chapter needs more units to fill out full list -> give them a bunch of generic units to fill gaps which were created by stretching them into a standalone faction to begin with -> progressively add new units to make Chapter less like generic Marines, and then add units from generic Marines so that they don't feel left out.

There's no reason for Tactical Squads to be trying to also represent Strike Squads; but equally there is no reason for Grey Knights to be a standalone faction on par with standard Marines.