Planning to get into Deathwatch because the holiday sale is making it very affordable. I'll be getting the core rulebook, one or two adventures, and either First Founding or Honour the Chapter. Can anyone give me a general breakdown what options are in those two books?

I also considered The Emperor's Chosen because it looks like it contains both player options and an adventure, but it seems like it's not going to be useful until we hit a fairly high level. If it's relevant, our GM will be new to Warhammer 40,000 so I'm getting adventures partly so he can just conduct the train while he gets a feel for how each faction operates.

FF and HtC pretty much boil down to this:

FF: deals with the 9 chapters created from the first founding legions, adding white scrars, Iron hands, Salamanders and ravenguard to the roster of playable chapters. It also has some background info about the traitor legions and new wargear.

HtC: deals with a lot of the second founding chapters such as the crimson fists, charcharodons, fleash tearers, blood ravens (might come in handy if anybody not familiar with the minis game atleast has heard of dawn of war) also has legion of the damned. HtC offers more chapters than FF.

How about looking into these two?

Mark of the xenos, Its basically the deathwatch bestiary.

Rites of battle: It has rules for creating your own chapter in adition to some more successor chapters.

If your Gm is new to 40k, give him some time to read up and get a feel for the setting. If you have any 40k novels or 40k codexes he can look at to get the flavor of the universe that could be nice.

I would get Rites of Battle but it isn't on sale, and I want to buy them all from FFG this time around because of the sale. RoB is definitely interesting, though. My room-mate is determined to play an Angry Marine.

You might be on to something with Mark of the Xenos. Our GM does enjoy creating campaigns, so once he's familiar with the setting that will be very helpful. I also considered Ark of Lost Souls because it apparently has rules for designing space hulks.

Precisely. I told him some of their antics and he fell in love. Flesh Tearers sounds like a working substitute, though. TV Tropes mentioned them being pretty nuts in melee.

Our Kill-Team is going to be weird. One guy is adamant that he will be a Librarian, one might drop out if he can't be an Angry Assault Marine (though he's willing to play whatever as long as we let him act like an Angry Marine), and I'm contemplating just throwing sanity to the wind and playing the Fastest Marine so I can sprint around at 279 miles per hour. I'm only doing that because apparently grabbing Daemon Hunter and playing a Grey Knight won't work as well as I want it to. Our squad won't be very rounded out unless the last guy agrees to play a Tactical, but I'm betting on a Dark Angel Devastator. Diplomacy will consist heavily of waving chainswords around and making demands. As the Emperor intended.

Make sure your fastest marine has a powerfist. The impact hits it will do. Ooooh the damage!

Bah! "Well rounded" is for Ultramarines! Run fast and carry a big hammer!

Lemme know how the game goes, this could get intresting!

Bonus points for you if you include an npc called Inquisitor Welch!

Update. Flesh Tearers Assault Marine, Carcharodon Librarian, Dark Angels Librarian. Thinking of inviting a guy I know to play, and my money's on either Blood Ravens or Storm Wardens Librarian. He likes to be a controlly "combat utility" kind of role. So the entire Warp knows where we are but they might think twice before they try to do something about it.

Sigh, so many librarians. Where's the love for apothecaries? Or maybe a Techmarine? those guys come in handy too. My character functions as the Tech-gal and pilot for the team.

Of course, not that I can decide for your team. If you're not playing what you want, you'll have less fun. So, here's hoping you enjoy your game as much as I do mine.

I did contemplate the Techmarine, but I've heard that Apothecaries are underpowered and that they don't get any good options comparable to things like Tempest Blade (advanced specialty is the term I think I want here).

In the likely event that my overconfidence gets me killed, I`ll probably try a different class. I`m also considering a switch to a Black Templars Assault Marine, because that one squad mode ability offers a lot of bonus attacks.

Apothecaries Are underpowered, but then that's not their point; like any healer class the point of the apothecary is about keeping your friends alive, not painting the town red (with the blood of your foes I actually started the thread right underneath this one on advanced specialties for apothecaries. It's a fairly short discussion, but if you don't have time to read it, the top two choices for them are basically agreed to be either Champion (for healers who want to hack'n'slash) and Dead Station Vigilant (for healers who want to be know-it-alls and be good shooters).

Love the Templars, they're the second-angriest Chapter I've ever seen. Still, hope you don't die too soon. good luck.

Flesh tearers, and space sharks (carcharodon) AND black templars- Yeah some poor xenos is gonna get dogpiled and ripped to shreds!

It gets worse for the enemies of the Imperium. We're probably going to add another player, who will inevitably play a Librarian. He's always been good at abusing utility abilities. If he does then I will definitely be going for either an Assault or Techmarine, depending on how I roll on my characteristics.

yeah your group seems REAL libby heavy, not nesscarily a bad thing. I find tech marines and apocathearies tend to be the less exciting things for a lotta people but the things I found as a GM and player both when we needed one we felt their absence more keenly then anything else. ANYONE can smack stuff with a chain sword, or shoot it with a bolter after all.

I actually made the switch to Techmarine, after discovering that I can slap things with that huge mechanical arm. I mostly just use my gun (or the missile launcher I got with Signature Wargear) but the Pimp Hand of the Omnissiah was just too appealing to pass up.