Greetings, Deathwatch fans!

This week's designer diary focuses on the superlative wargear of the Adeptus Astartes; the Deathwatch Armoury . Enjoy!

Interesting. Pretty much what was expected. Though it would have been nice to get an actual example of gear with stats.

I can say that as a play tester I was very impressed with the Wargear chapter. I remember thinking that equipment would be a bit boring in this game because "how much gear can Marines have really?". Well, when I first got to read over the rules I was very happy with what was presented.

Also glad that they mentioned that scout armor was an option in rare cases; I wanted to chime in with the previous discussion about it but couldn't.

I will be patiently waiting for this game to hit the shelves of my LGS soon.

As posted elsewhere, I was pretty impressed with the direction that FFG have selected to take in this regard, since it broadly mirrors the discussion over at Dark Reign with regards to the "Shameless Speculation: Deathwatch" thread. Over there it was suggested that one way of making the Marine a more interesting character was to turn their iconic armour and weaponry into something more importantas much as the soul of a Japanese warrior was enshrined in their sword, make it the same for the Marine and their armour and weaponry. And that's what FFG seem to have broadly done, so kudos to them.

It will be interesting to see how it meshes with the "Team Awesome Combat Card" powers, but at the same time I think that it pretty much guarantees that I'm going to be buying the game for inspiration on how they handled it for a conversion to another game system (which is nigh on done anyway, but homages are always fun for when the material is particularly inspirational!).

Kage