H.B.M.C. said:

As I said, in my eyes it doesn't make the book bad, I'm just not all that interested in the official stats for well-known creatures. It's nice to have as reference but not a must-have in my eyes. I'm more looking forward to content in Achilles Assault, good plots, plot hooks, sample NPCs, interesting worlds and same hints at what is going on with the Crusade. Promises to be more interesting and more involving. We'll see.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Which is fair enough - there are others on this forum who simply won't be happy unless there's a comprehensive tome of every pre-existing adversary ever defined in the 40k universe.

Personally, I don't tend to need stats for well-known adversaries, as I can make those up all by myself with minimal difficulty (and I tend to do just that - the last 'from-the-book' enemy I used in any 40kRP game was the Eldar Pirate Prince from Edge of the Abyss, and as I wrote him in the first place, I don't think that counts), and I value unique not-from-the-wargame adversaries more because all my players are veteran 40k players and it's sometimes nice to catch them off-guard. That said, I bought Mark of the Xenos as reference material for when I'm writing future 40kRP books, rather than from the perspective of a player or GM seeking out rules for enemies to throw at my players.

I maybe an exception, but I for one liked that the book was filled with all those iconic enemy that had been missing from previous 40k rpg books.

But than again, my favorite enemy to put against my players is Chaos... so having a bunch of random no-name Xeno would have been a bit meh for me.

Perhaps something that would have been valuable would have been some sort of random xeno generator, as is found in many sci-fi rpgs. Some 5 to 10 tables for generating home environment, stats, talents, attitudes, etc. that the GM can then flesh out into proper antagonists. If they felt that stuffing the book full of minor races wouldn't fly, this may have been a fair stop-gap.

I suppose my main gripe is the lack of consistency this forces upon our rpg community as a whole: the barghesi that my players face are gonna be totally different from those your players face; a minor quibble, I suppose, but there it is.

Zappiel said:

Oddly enough, there is a Xenos Generator in the back of the Dark Heresy GM Kit. I often tweak it a bit but I've found it to be useful for creating miscellaneous alien threats.

Awww, cool!

But I don't run that game, darnit! So, you find it useful...it can be used against space marines, then (with tweaking)? I doubt i'd convince the DH gm to lemme peruse his kit...but I s'pose it's worth a try...thanx for the heads-up!

Zappiel said:

It depends on how you build the creature. If you pick and choose off the tables, you can make something that can stand up to a Space Marine almost as well as your typical DW Xenos (especially if you use the new creatures as Hordes). If you roll randomly, then that's where more tweaking will come into play. I once tried to create a dragon so I built a Sand Wyrm for fun that had Fear 5 and was almost as good offensively as a DW Carnifex. If anything, the biggest change you'll want to make if you use the generator is to bump up the new xenos' Wounds and possibly damage since the generator was originally designed for Dark Heresy.

Zappiel said:

Creatures made with this generator will naturally fall into Troops category of DW adversaries, but running through the generator creates beings thematic enough that upgrading them to enemies truly worthy of the Deathwatch should be a breeze.

On that note, DH corebook has a Daemonhost random generator, and the new Daemon Hunter book has an extremely comprehensive Daemon generator, which can create anything from lesser to greater unique Daemons. Both are great tools for the Deathwatch.

Zappiel said:

I usually tweak most enemies anyway. Some of my players like to read stat blocks, and memorize them. Then they have a hard time trying not to use that knowledge. By tweaking and adjusting it keeps them on their toes and the fights a little more challenging.

ItsUncertainWho said:

In DW at least, some level of metagaming is fine and expected, as Marines are specifically trained in fighting specific opponents.

thanx Morangias, Brand, and Itsuncertainwho!

sounds like an effective critter generator...and i like the demon maker, too...so, DH mainbook, demonhunter book, and gm kit...not too much to hafta buy

(why, oh why, couldn't they have put a critter generator into MoX or our DW gm kit!?!?!?!??)

Thanx again for the great info, battlebrothers!

Since you don't plan to play DH anyway, the daemonhost generator in the corebook is the least useful of the three, objectively speaking.

I'd make Daemon Hunter the #1 priority. Not only do you get the comprehensive Daemon generator, but also the rules for Grey Knights, which you can totally use with the DW corebook should you desire a different flavor of a Space Marines game.

I would have prefered something closer to 50% established races, 50% new creatures; but I agree that there is no pleasing everyone, and many players would complain about any approach that FFG used...

Thanx again, Morangias! I will check it out.

and, Adeptus-B, I think I concur with your stated desires...even though, as you say, people would likely still complain...

I think it's a good book but I'd have preferred that the typical "heretic" been dropped in favour of having a few Necron enemies included.

The_Big_Show said:

Necrons are in Black Crusade, rather than Deathwatch.

MotX is a great frame work for GM, we surely want to see more xenos, but as a tool kit it's good.

If you have Deamon Hunter with it you can make a great ennemy factory.

Stats are what they are and I think that it's the GM work to build what he really desire. And with those two books you have a good start to begin with.

I play RPG since almost 20 years and today I don't need anymore written stats to get what I need but to have some basic and advance template help a lot. Look at the system, look at your PC power and you will find your answer. To ask FFG or any RPG compagny to get you all you want is impossible. Too much player, too numerous view of the 40k universe. But I think that they gave us good tools (execpt for ascension) to work with.

The fact is that I play DH, and GM DH, RT and DW and get almost all the books, so my need when comes the time to find bad guys are fullfilled. But I never play them exactly as written, depends of my needs at the moment of the story.

On the topic of Necrons, people seem to forget (as pointed out in The Emperor protects) the timeline position of Deathwatch (as it is set, and thus how the adversaries are likely intended) is over a century before the Sanctuary 101 incident. This doesn't mean that there are no Necron encounters, but they are not the meat and drink of a Deathwatch experience 'as per the setting'.

I am pretty sure some helpful souls here (or even myself if I get the time) will backwards engineer some Necron stats. As it is we have the Wraith and Tomb Spyder from TEP which show some pretty horrendous examples of Necron uber power. If that's what you;re aiming for in your games, expect not the gears of publishing to cater to it, but instead collaborate and create!

Personally I was happy with Mark of the Xenos and am looking forwards to using some of the story seeds in my upcoming campaign, though that focusses largely on the events in the current pre-written material (all 7 missions), followed by an 'end of season' break, with some 'return to the Chapter' downtime fluff before returning for an all original Season 2. MotX has really helped speed up the mook generation process and actually enhanced my 'boss' characterisation somewhat, especially in the realm of Tyranids, which are an enemy I have little experience evoking in the 40k setting.

We will never all get what we want out of a supplement, I would have liked for there to be a 'regional Xenos' in the minor Xenos entries, much like the Several species of the Expanse and the one race (it's name eludes me) of the Calixis Sector. But the abscence of such doesn't really ruin the book for me at all.

Sokahrthumaniel said:

You're right, not everyone is playing to the timeline, but FFG only write books for their game, and their game has a specific point in time in which it is set, and thus all profiles are created for that setting.

BYE

I myself have advanced the timeline considerably, in part because I began GMing my 40k campaign with a Rogue Trader arc, then the same players went on to do a Dark Heresy and Ascension arc set in the Calixis Sector investigating and interacting with the former RT characters some 20 years later. Their Death Watch campaign is several decades after that, but still relates. The Inquisitor played during their last campaign is now the Inquisitor Chamber of their DW campaign, and in fact the gate to the Reach was discovered by the DH party. This necessitates adjusting the timeline a bit, but is well worth it for the continuity. (Also, nothing makes a super powerful bad guy like a power gamer's former PC.)

So yeah, would be nice to have Necrons, but whatever. you can find stats for them on Heresypedia, Dark Reign, or a number of other places. Further, they are easily made up. I appreciate stat books for saving me time and giving me an additional source of inspiration, but honestly FFG is terrible at generating balanced opponents that scale with party rank anyway, so I find myself adding talents and enemy variants all the time in any case. Just you try to keep track of a chaos space marine's stats with weapons that have been changed by both errata and house rules that has also been given rank appropriate talents, a chaos mark, a psychic power selection, a few mutations, and a daemon weapon without writing it all down.

As to complaints about what is or is not in the book I will happily throw in my vote for FFG "monster manual" books not being a mindless list of stat blocks with brief descriptions. I can make up stats, and I can balance numbers, I don't need FFG to hand me 100 variant alien monsters (not that I wouldn't mind them) but having plot hooks, descriptions, ideas how to play a creature and most importantly how it fits into the Jericho Reach setting is useful to me, and I am pleased to have it.

Sokahrthumaniel said:

I actually gathered all fluff I could find about Imperium - Necron interaction to one file. While doing it I found out that Sanctuary 101 wasn't the First Contact. It was merely the First Publisized Contact. Grey Knights met Necrons for the first time 123 years before Sanctuary 101 incident, Imperial Navy had its "First Contact" 231 years before Sanctuary 101 and Inquisitorial forces had fought with Necrons at least 1917 years before Sanctuary 101. So its extremely logical, and even likely, that Deathwatch has met Necrons several times by that time. I think FFG left them out simply because they didn't feel like including them into Jericho Reach setting.

If you are interested, the full PDF document can be found HERE

A very good find Polaria, though I must emphasise that I am merely explaining the sense behind the exclusion of Necrons from MotX rather than discouraging diligent research such as yours or even just 'I like the Necrons, here's some Necrons' GMing. After all, each game it it's GM's creation and I'd rather encourage creativity because of their absence of a desired enemy from a publication, than merely disdain said publisher for it.

Thank you again for the very interesting reading, if you haven't already, I'd suggest checking out the second adventure in The Emperor protects - I feel that many of the pre-Sanc101 encounters may have a similar Lovecraftian vibe to them, with apocryphal references to the Dwellers Below, the Undying etc.

You forgot the date when the Void Dragon gets locked inside Mars and forced to teach techpriests.

LockLock said:

That happened way before the Imperium, so its out of the scope of Imperial History... Except, if you take "Imperial" history meaning the Roman Empire, of course.