Seeing as I have a ton of Space Marine bits I thought about making figures for my groups eventual Deathwatch game. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about the weaponry we'd be able to use from the Astardes Armory?

Aside from the standard Bolter, it could also speed things up for the character creation process and thus get us into the game quicker.

l33tninj4 said:

Well you can safely assume that the DW kill-teams have access to the whole SM armory when it comes to personal weapons. In a White Dwarf a few years ago there were two kill-teams in a standard IG vs. Necrons battle report, they had some pretty strange equipment combos like two power claws wielded by a normal marine, plus a lot of upgrades like targeters and special ammo. I also saw an article from the Index Astartes about the Deathwatch and one of the marines there used a heavy bolter with suspensors and an ammo drum.

Deathwatch Teams equip themselves and operate in ways that are somewhat similar to modern Special Forces groups the world over, in fact I wouldn't be suprised if that was one of the orignal sources of inspiration for the Deathwatch rules in tabletop 40K. Individual squad members get their pick from a wide variety of weapons and kit to suit their skillset and personal preferences.

I assume there will be a system for getting better gear similar to the Wealth and Influence systems used in Rogue Trader and DH: Ascention, but there are plenty of items we can realistically expect to be included. Besides the obvious starting gear (Astartes Power Armor, Chain and Bolt Weapons all round), I'd expect each squad member will also have a limited number of choices/picks/purchases/etc from the entire Space Marine Armory at character creation (although it's unlikely Terminator Armor and Terminator-Only equipment will be included in the core book, and that top-end items like fields, rare artifacts and advanced heavy weapons will be unavailable at creation), including support gear like Auspexes and Teleport Homers.

As for weapons and defensive gear, there's no reason to believe that any weapon from Codex: Space Marines will be omitted from the Deathwatch book, though I expect some of the chapter specific kit will be witheld for use in supplements, you can expect all the standard Bolt, Plasma, Melta and Flamer weapons (In all their Basic, Heavy and Pistol forms) to be there as well as Grenades, Combi-Weapons, Iron Halos and Rosarius, Combat and Storm Shields, Astartes-grade Augmetics and melee weapons such as Mono, Chain and Power Swords, Relic Blades, Thunder Hammers and Lightning Claws.

Another thing you can count on is Special Bolt Ammo, one of the defining characteristics of the Deathwatch is that they have special Bolt rounds for pretty much every kind of Xenos and every kind of situation. Aside from the various types of ammo used by the Deathwatch and Sternguard on the 40K tabletop, we might be lucky to find Ulysses Homing Beacon Rounds and perhaps even Ultramarines Odyseus Psy-Active Tracking rounds.

In short, I'm pretty sure you can just go nuts.

I have several "left-over" bits that I'm gonna use for my character, even though he might not be equipped like that in the beginning. I'll glue a specialist's torso (incl. right arm holding a plasma gun), a Terminator sergants left arm (wielding a power sword) and Terminator legs together. Once painter and styled, the miniature should be quite a sight...

As for the rules, I guess that beginning characters will start off with standard gear plus some picks from special lists, depending on the original chapter and specialization/class of the SM...

Depending on the situation i'm sure you could also allow for the deathwatch team members to be equipped with xenos equipment from time to time as well.

I would say ( and the best way to look at is as someone said above) is a special forces team. The "best" kit, but not forcing it on anyone. Look at it this way. In a Kill Team with a space wolf grey hunter, a raven guard assault marine, an ultramarine veteran, and a black templar champion No one would be geared anywhere near close to each other. The grey hunter would lean towards melee weapons, the raven guard would go for assault weapons and so forth. whatever you could see the marine familiar with. Then take into account that the Inquisition (Emperor bless them) would make sure they were loaded above and beyond their (and their enemy's) wildest dreams. This means that their weapons will be a step up but still familiar to the marines. That in consideration, I would say take the space marine armory and crank it up a notch and that should give you what your looking for.

You are all forgetting about two "sidekicks": the Librarians (and I think a primarys psycker would explode of pure jealousy after knowing what can a librarian get his hands into...), and the Techmarines. I bet new dendrites are incoming... And I'm curious about how are they going to handle the cybernetization of a marine.

"The Flesh is Weak." Iron Hands seam to do ok.

Argus Van Het said:

Regarding the possibility of new mechadendrites could it be possible that deathwatch techmarines might have access to that massive servo harness that is available as wargear for masters of the forge in the space marines codex?

Also I'm pretty sure that space marine chaplains can also be recruited as well.

There's been no mention of Chaplains as yet, and this isn't suprising. For starters there's no mention of them ever serving with the Deathwatch in the lore and there has never been rules for taking a Chaplain with a Deathwatch squad in Warhammer 40,000, which makes sense on account of the wildly varied traditions and ceremonies practised by different Chapters. A Kill Team with four members plus a Chaplain from a fifth, different Chapter wouldn't be properly versed and equipped to provide appropriate chapter-specific guidance and take pre-battle oaths from any of them. Essentially his expertise would be wasted. Thirdly, all Chaplains have a Rosarius and are expected to weild their Crozius Arcarnum, the Rosarius isn't the kind of thing a PC should start with and the Crozius, while kinda cool, is the only Melee Weapon a Chaplain uses.

As for Techmarines and cybernetics, Techmarines don't actually have that much in the way of augmetics usually, as their enhanced Astartes Physiology is already on par with or superior to most forms of bionic enhancement, most of their advanced Techpreist gear comes in the form of enhancements to their Power Armor like Servo Arms, integrated Auspex, Signums and that sort of thing, though I expect gear that grants the recipient completely new abilities, like MIU's for example, are standard fare for a Techmarine.

Actually there has been a mention of chaplains serving in the Deathwatch because a black templar chaplain was part of the kill team in the Deathwatch novel Warrior Brood . I'm pretty sure there was also a mention of a dreadnought serving in the Deathwatch in one of the short stories from the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology

2 chaplains are mentioned

Chaplain Broec of the Black Templars (Deceased, killed by Tyranid Hive Tyrant on Herodian IV)2
Chaplain Luthar of the Revilers

I reckon you'll get standard gear depending on your character's role based on the SM codex. After that you'll probably get a specialist weapons that you can then upgrade to be more chapter specific (frost blades for SW etc) and maybe some weapons with Inquisition upgrades, depending on experience and the mission.

also gives some nice modelling opportunities too, for example ive been working on some "true scale" marines, based off the ones by lamenter here:

www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php

i think using the larger sized marines will give the players a better sense of scale, as they do stand taller than guardsmen etc (as they should do anyway), and when painted up look suitably intimidating !

I think every marine will have the following:

Astartes Combat Knife
Astartes Bolt Pistol
Astartes Boltgun
2 Frag Grenades
AA Power Armour

blackwell said:

NEVER mention the writing of that hack C.S Goto.

NEVER.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Then I suppose what i'm going going to say next is utter heresy since l've read a couple of his books and found that I like them?

Goto was one of the writers that kinda never bothered to really read the setting before writing for it, resulting in a tonne of stuff that makes no sense, like Space Marines wielding laspistols and multilasers, and various other stuff that doesn't fit in at all with the setting at large.

He's generally seen as the worst Black Library writer ever, so much so that people just ignore his books from canon.

MILLANDSON said:

Because it's a well known fact of the 40k universe that a Space Marine coming in contact with a laspistol or multilaser will create a reaction similar to matter coming into contact with antimatter.

I personally don't have a problem with Marines selecting any weapon load out, though admittedly the choice of a laspistol is somewhat more problematic. Maybe it's because I don't play the wargame any more, but I've never really felt that being constrained by the wargame listings was worthy of the type of castigation that the fans send his way. Or, at least, any more so than many of the other BL authors.

YMMV, though.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Except that Deathwatch Marines using laspistols as a standard loadout (which, when they have bolt-pistols, is just silly) and multilasers (which, due to the systems required, aren't man portable, hence them only being on vehicles) are both incorrect. Sure, all BL authors have been wrong, but Goto takes the cake, according to "most" of the 40k fans, at least on this site, as the person who got it so wrong that all his stuff should be ignored, as there's more "wrong" in it than "right".

I didn't say that it was a "standard loadout," just that I could envisage Marines using many more weapon load-outs than in the rather limited wargame rules. Noting, however, that I did question the facility of the laspistol. (Admittedly, las-weaponry seems perfectly fine for the advanced Eldar, but there we go...)

As to multilasers? I just remember them back on anti-grav defence platforms back in the Eldar WD127 days. I just allow for the potential that they could have been included with Marines because they're "Mareenz" and are "awesome." The fact that this is not backed up in the wargame is another matter entirely. The fact that I could believe it probably says much about the overall standard of the novels than in the craziness of one particular author.

As to Goto? If you were to shoot every BL author that made mistakes with the materials, then you would probably need to rehire a lot of authors. What is artistic license to one reader is a mistake to another, a minor mistake to others, a hack job to others yet. Perspective and all that.

(For full disclosure, I didn't particularly enjoy the Goto novels nor do I think that he did the Eldar any justice. Then again, I think that about a lot of the BL novels so take that how you will.)

Kage

Kage2020 said:

I think it's more about the approach to the technology as anything else - the Imperium commonly treats personal (non-heavy) las-weaponry as being something that can be cheaply produced in vast quantities and is logistically efficient (being cheap to resupply, easy to maintain, naturally reliable and sufficiently effective)...

I don't see the Eldar taking the same viewpoint, and broadly speaking (in terms of background, at least), Eldar las-weapons are better than those of the Imperium.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I would need to see some proof of that.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Codex Eldar (2006), page 22:

"Eldar laser weapons use psychically grown crystals to filter and refine laser bursts to their optimum potency. Many Eldar consider the laser weapon to be the most elegant of all, exulting in the fact that their technological mastery extends even to light itself."

Codex Eldar (2006), page 35:

"The ritual weapons of [swooping Hawks is] the lasblaster - a far more efficient energy weapon than the clumsy lasgun of the Imperium"

Those are the two quotes I've been able to find at short notice, but they prove my point: the Imperium views laser weaponry as being something cheap and easy to manufacture... the Eldar regard it with more care and reverence, and the examples of such weapons that the Eldar utilise are broadly superior to those of the Imperium.

The only reason to have a laspistol, if you have the resources that Marines have, is to blend in with some less-fortunate crowd. Bolt pistols are expensive, and their ammunition is ridiculously expensive (some of our DH characters are starting to get bolt weapon skills, but nobody wants 'em, cos they don't want to pay for the ammo). That stuff stands out. In combat the flashlights are nearly useless.

As to Marines' equipment, I don't see how they wouldn't have access to about everything the Chapters can provide, and then some, with the usual restrictions from some things just being too rare (obviously, Xeno tech is right out). If you have this sort of a spec-ops thing going, you don't send them out there with just faith as their shield...