DJSunhammer said:

Color me interested.

DJSunhammer said:

Anybody got any custom rules for turning the Honor Guard into the Sanguinary Guard? I am terribad at customizing stuff.

Also I'm surprised by all the complaints about the look of the Stormraven. I personally am in love with it. It's squat, completely utilitarian in design, and bristling with firepower......just the way a military vehicle should look. Now if only GW or Forge World would come out with some Blood Angels heraldry that I could put on mine.

Also a question regarding the Angelus-pattern bolter. Is it just a regular bolt weapon or is it put in the Relics section?

Finally could someone give us some info on the new Trappings that come out in the book (if you don't feel like putting the full list out I'm sure everyone will agree that just the Blood Angels would be sufficient)?

Carnage1138 said:

Skill requirement changed to Furious Assault, Flesh Render, and Talented [pilot[personal]]

Wargear changes: Master crafted Power weapon or Glaive Encarmine, Angelus Bolter, and Winged Jump Pack.

An Angelus Bolter uses a modified bolter profile. It is not a relic. It requires Respected and 25 req. It has higher pen and clip size than a normal bolter, but has shorter range.

There are no new Blood Angels chapter trappings.

Oh.......wow.

Thank you DJSunhammer. You just killed any further questions.

it does use it's own special ammo so I'm guessing that means you can't use other ammo in it.

Carnage1138 said:

You may want to change it up a bit depending on what you think is most important for them . DJ gave them their signature weapons and jump pack but not the artificer armor that all of them wear. The standard honor guard gets artificer armor and a master crafted weapon upgrade... if you want to keep things relatively equal power-wise, you can't give them all of the gear. Basically, pick and choose what from artificer armor, glaive encarmine, winged jump pack, and angelus bolter best fit your campaign to replace the master crafted weapon and artificer armor of the honor guard. Personally, I'd say the armor and jump pack are the most "signature" gear of the Sanguinary guard and would grant those two but would be fine with any combo of them. The death mask isn't standard equipment for them but instead an upgrade so I wouldn't grant that one personally as a starting bonus for the class.

I'm starting to wonder....who is proof reading these books...it is starting to get ridiculous.

In the Wargear section they have the revised stats for bolters, the npc's use the old ones....bit of a silly mistake...

Carnage1138 said:

I'd leave it as is. Relic armour and a wargear upgrade as wargear is just fine. Maybe change the ultramarine-only talent entry requirements for blood angel only talents, and you're done. No need to change skills et al.

The Angelus Pattern bolter is classed as a relic.

No book on me, but I don't think the BAs get any additional trappings.

DJSunhammer said:

Whoa! Yeah... it kinda is.

I know it's easy to skip the small print on the way to all the snacky blag, but at the start of the chapter and in a box-out there too it states that ALL the wargear mentioned in the chapter is rare, unique, or near unique, and that even Erioch is unlikely to have it on hand. It further encourages the GM to enforce that players must buy the gear out of Wargear, rather than just 'borrow' stuff like honour blades and death masks via Requisition.

Likewise, at the start of the Advanced Specialities chapter, there's considerable column-inches put towards enforcing the idea that all of the specialities are very rare and unlikely to be seconded to Deathwatch.

For me, those were the two pages that 'made' the book for me. Without those wise words, it was all looking like a big pile of uncontrolled power-creep.

Yep, most of that gear is sitting at a 20 req cost so you should only purchase it with the Signature Wargear or Signature Wargear (Master) talents and you should be from that particular chapter.

A new campaign we started with 6K starting XP bought my Ultramarine Tac the Honor (Honour for you Europeans) Blades.

DJSunhammer said:

Now that I've finally picked my copy up at my FLGS, I can answer this. First Founding pg. 111: "A Follower's Loyalty is equal to the Battle-Brother's Fellowship. Whenever the character’s Fellowship changes, for whatever reason, the Follower’s Loyalty will also change." I might houserule that to prevent stuff like Fellowship loss due to grenade-in-face critical damage from affecting the Loyalty stat, but it's pretty self-explanatory. I assume it follows the rules as Black Crusade's Loyalty in Followers; if the Follower's boss tells them to do something they wouldn't normally do, they test against Loyalty. If the test succeeds, they have to follow orders.

EDIT: Aaaand it would help if I could look to the next column at all. Use of Loyalty is also explained on pg. 111, right after the Chapter Serf example statblock.

Do the Dark Angels get any cool stuff gear/trapping wise?

I'm glad you asked. D'Angels are my favorite chapter, so I'm always happy to talk about them. They don't get any new ranged weapons, but they do lay hands on a new power sword, a banner that makes any Battle-Brother who can see it immune to Fear and Fatigue, and a Weapon Charm that keeps weapons from jamming on anything but a 00.

Dulahan said:

Cos it always looks better in black. Deathwatch Black.

Gaire said:

The DA charm also grants accurate to the weapon which is a pretty awesome benefit for a single shots.

For Sanguinary Guard, I'd change the Honour Guard's free equipment they get to something like:

Winged Jump Pack

Artificer Armour (May pick both histories)

I wouldn't give them a free weapon, as some Sanguinary Guard have neither Angelus Boltguns nor Glaives Encarmine. I would strongly encourage their players to take these weapons, though.

I was considering changing it to a 'pick two' system. Make all five pieces of the signature Sanguinary Guard wargear available, but the Blood Angel can only pick two. So the bolter, the glaive, the artificer armor, the jump pack, and the mask are all there, but they get two. The other three have to be signature'd.

Gaire said:

I'd recommend giving them the artificer armor and then a choice of one of the others. The armor's req cost is almost double that of the other choices at 60 IIRC. Having a masterwork weapon would cost 20-40 generally and that is the other choice the Ultramarines get... the rest of the gear is about the same value roughly.

Sanguinary Priest said:

True, hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

Whats the fluff on the Raven Guard like?

bluntpencil2001 said:

Why's that? Unless you allow every player to cherry pick histories, it's incongruous don't you think?

Raven Guard fluff looks good. I enjoyed reading it, though there is only a couple of pages. The Chapter advances obviously help you build ninja marines who can sneak about remarkably well. There's an interesting Chapter trapping that gives 'free XP' to the party, which will make RG popular with parties, though the trapping does effectively take all the others off the board.

Oh yeah... silent shotguns too.

Pallomides said:

They are now much more surly and taciturn than in older descriptions, being much less likeable as persons. They also now like to keep their presence a secret even from their own side (even other Space Marines), which is roughly as idiotic as it sounds, making force coordination on the battlefield all but impossible and screwing up everything. They are thus intensely disliked by many imperial commanders.

Interesting elements of the Raven Guard like the fierce independence their companies tend to show and the cool character quirk where it doesn't matter what rank you are or how long you have served, you are afforded equal respect by a Raven Guard when you speak your mind, are completly ignored.

It describes their tendency to be highly analytic in their approach to warfare, but instead of representing this by giving a bonus to int, they get a bonus to perception with no explanation what part of their character this fits. Their chapter advances also completly ignore anything that isn't about *stealthy*.

Their tendency to use basically only the MKVI armor (the one with the beakie helmet) is also ignored and not supported by the rules.

Basically, the writeup sucks and the most of the coolest elements of the chapter have been swapped with "loool, we so stealthyyy and grimdark, we no talk to u!!!".

I think that the above post takes it a little far. I thought the fluff was pretty cool and it didn't bother me much. I would've liked a bit more fluff about what it means to be a Raven Guard and how they roll, but that's kind of it. That a Chapter that specialize in infiltration, sabotages and stuff like that gets most of its candy in the form of stealth based things seems pretty logical to me.

Gurkhal said:

If one ignores everything else the Raven Guard is about, then yes, it becomes logical.

It's basically a tatutology, "if we remove everything about the Raven Guard that isn't about Stealth, then the Raven Guard have nothing that isn't about stealth".

(Excepept for that bonus xp ability. Which, I admit, is pretty awesome)

To be fair, the chapter skill lists can't be huge compared to others. For a short list, it does cover the Raven Guard as well as any of the Chapter lists cover their Chapter. The only thing I might have added was talented: pilot (jump pack), but then the list might have been a bit too long and generous.

The 'secretive to the point of actually screwing over everyone else' thing was a bit much, perhaps.