Well, I got my hands on the book, and I figured I'd give a brief overview of the contents for the benefit of any interested parties.

The book is divided into four chapters, three of which detail a salient of the Achilus Crusade, while the fourth is a new adventure.

All three of the salient chapters share some common content: an overview of the crusade in that salient (there is admittedly a fair amount of retreading over information published previously), new planetary datasheets, information on watch stations active in each salient, adventure seeds, themes for running games in that particular setting, write-ups for prominent Deathwatch NPCs in the area (two in each chapter; stat blocks are given along with ideas for using them in your game), new demeanours, oaths and solo/squad abilities geared towards the salient in question, new Crusade Assets and Complications.

I will now examine each chapter more specifically.

Chapter 1: The Nightmare Salient

The Acheros Salient comprises the first chapter of the book. New planets introduced are Pyrathas and the Wicked Sisters. New personal demeanour examples are things like, bitter, devout, and vengeful.

This chapter also contains some rules for refining the Mass Combat rules provided in Mark of the Xenos, as well as providing several example turning points to use. The chapter concludes with a Hadex Anomaly Complications table (actually three tables: Temporal, Spatial, and Daemonic) that GMs can use to illustrate the Anomaly's bizarre influences on the Salient.

Chapter 2: The Greater Good

The book now moves on to cover the Canis Salient. Planets covered are Wrath, Argoth, Pelegius, and D'Shas'Ka. New demanours focus on the nature of warfare against the Tau (manipulative, studious, flexible). This chapter contains mission concepts (more detailed than mission seeds) for GMs to consider.

Chapter 3: The Great Devourer

First, on a completely unrelated note, the first illustration for this chapter is Caiphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium. I love that.

Anyway, Hethgard, Castobel, Phonos, Credos, and Jove's Descent are the planets covered by this chapter. Players can select from demeanours such as appalled, eager, and reserved. Much like the previous chapter, new mission concepts are included for the GMs benefit.

The biggest difference between this chapter and the others is that it contains new enemy profiles! Virtually every Tyranid previously unstatted is included, including everything from biovores to Heirophant bio-titans (which is about as horrifying as you might expect). It also introduces another Hive Fleet Dagon "special character," "What Lies Beneath."

Chapter 4: Fall Into Darkness

I won't say too much about this chapter, lest I spoil the adventure for prospective players. It seems fairly solid; I may post information in the GM subforum.

Overall, I was impressed by the book. While there is certainly a fair amount of reprinted information (the Crusade's history, notable crusade personages), there is far more new material. GMs now have more planets to base their missions around, new mision ideas, and new assets and complications to help or hinder their players. I enjoyed the effort spent to highlight the themes and differences of each salient.

Were I to criticize any one thing, it would be the relative lack of new enemies for the Acheros and Canis Salients. That being said, there is already an entire book dedicated to enemy profiles, so this is probably just me being greedy.

I would recommend this book.

Excellent. Thank you for the review.

Alex

Nice review. Don't know if you've read it but what would you say that the main difference is between "The Jericho Reach" and the "The Archilles Crusade" books?

A good question!

For one, The Jericho Reach is almost 100 pages larger (237, as compared to The Achilus Assault's 142).

1) The Achilus Assault goes more in-depth regarding the crusade itself. How it's organized, regiments and Chapters of renown, major battles. The Jericho Reach , on the other hand, is more of a summary of all things setting-related.

2) The Achilus Assault contains brief descriptions of a number of worlds, while The Jericho Reach focuses on a smaller number of planets and examines them a little more thoroughly (datafaxes, areas of interest; some adventure seeds).

3) The Achilus Assault details the Stigmartus extensively. The Jericho Reach details Hive Fleet Dagon more comprehensively.

4) The Jericho Reach has more crunch. New oaths, new solo/squad mode abilities for PCs, new demeanours, new assets, etc. The book also provides more extensive material about how to capture the "theme" of each salient in your games.

The introduction of The Jericho Reach seems to imply that it serves as a companion book to The Achilus Assault , and I would agree. There is a fair amount of cross-over information, and the books are similar enough that I expect that people may miss-remember which book they got their crusade-related info from. In a lot of ways it feels like The Achilus Assault 2: This Time It's Got Crunch . The more cynical side of me says that it appears as though FFG wrote a ton of material about the setting, and then used it to sell two books. The less-negative aspect of my personality is just happy to have more DW goodness.

Were I to only buy one, I'd probably pick The Jericho Reach . It does a good job of summarizing the previous book, and has more goodies to boot. That being said, I do not regret buying either of them.

Ever since I first read The Jericho Reach I’ve been of the opinion that it’s the most important book in the Deathwatch product line (outside of the Core Rulebook). Rites of Battle has lots of fun extra crunch and The Achilus Assault did a good job of fleshing out the Jericho reach’s history, but The Jericho Reach is what brings everything together. As the book focuses on the Deathwatch (rather than mostly the Achilus Crusade itself), we get to see more of what our characters will be doing.

The extra Demeanours were something I was very happy to see, as while anyone can make up a demeanour I was excited to see them tying them into the Salients. Same goes for the Solo/Squad Modes and the oaths (we had a lot of fun playing with those rules). The mission suggestions, assets and complication tables are all excellent, and strike a good balance between fluff, crunch, and telling the GM what to do (ie. they’re not set out adventures, but detailed adventure seeds and suggestions).

And then there’s of course the Tyranid section. I bought a Malanthrope after reading those... and built my Trygons. And ended up getting a pair of Hierodules as well. Looking forward to using them. “What Lies Beneath” is a beast of a creature. Very dangerous when paired with a Trygon and a Mawloc backing it up (that said, the Bio-Cannon can’t hurt vehicles which is just dopey, and the Hierophant still suffers from the horrific scaling problem that all Tyranids have, as his Claws are Pen 3 despite being a huge bio-titan).

Really anyone who plays Deathwatch should get this book. It brings so much more to the game that I think it should be considered mandatory.|

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

I am a bit skepitcal that it's more important than Rites. Remember gaming without vehicles? No honours, only MK VII, no advanced specialties, no easy custom chapters. That said, I am intrigued.

Alex

I'm very excited about this book. I had wondered whether it would amount to some doubling up of the Achillus Assault, but it doesn't sound like it is...besides, I loved that book, it was my favourite of 2011.

It's interesting how the Deathwatch line appears to be quite polarised, with very crunch heavy books (Rites, First Founding) balanced out with fluff heavy books like Achillus Assault. The other lines go for a more balanced approach. Hostile Aquisitions for RT seemed to me to be a 50/50 mix of the two.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing: just that the crunch/fluff balance across the whole line is very important. I rather like the Deathwatch approach of crunch book/fluff book. I would love to see a book like Achillus Assault for Dark Heresy, for example; a book which gives an overview of Sector politics, personalities etc etc.

ak-73 said:

I do. And all of those things are certainly fun (well... not so much vehicles... vehicles in the 40K RPG are far, far, far too resilient, and certain creatures that should smash them, like Carnifex, simply cannot) but none of it was necessary. Can you play the game without different armour marks? Sure. Without honours/distinctions? Most of us still do. Advanced specialities? Well, yeah, we got on fine without those. Custom chapters? Again, fun, but not strictly necessary.

The knowledge of what the Deathwatch are doing in the Reach and how they relate/have developed strategies for fighting within the Reach... yeah. that's important. Now, if you don't play within the Reach and have your own setting, then The Jericho Reach is of no use to you outside of the Tyranid profiles. If you do play within the game's setting, then I would never go without this book.

BYE

ak-73 said:

H.B.M.C. said:

This depends on the point of view. As I've mentioned once there are a lot of GMs out there who've made up there own Jericho Reach (after all up to the Achillus Assault there was no other way) and now most of their epic tales have crumbled to dust. Of course it's an entirely different story for one who got into DW shortly, these lucky ones have a rich universe to explore but what is the message behind this? Wait to buy and play until all important books are out?

I'm a supporter of crunchy books, but the optimum are books who manage the balance between both worlds, so you get enough information to spin your adventures and at the same time the game mechanics to compete with the more complex stories. The required time to develop a universe this way is more than enough until a new "chapter" is coming out. As much as I hate DH Ascension for it's "broken" rules I think it is a good example of excellent balance between crunch and fluff. These are the kinds of books I read time and time again. If it wasn't for the new Solo- and Squad-Modes and the new Nids I would never read The Jericho Reach again which would put it on the same level as a novel - a very expensive novel!

ddunkelmeister said:

The planet descriptions for these two chapters were my work, and were both challenging and really enjoyable to write. I'm particularly pleased with the concepts for Pelegius, D'Shas'Ka, Phonos and Credos, and have been tempted to try and write a Crusade-era Short Story about the Blood Angels on Jove's Descent.

H.B.M.C. said:

That implies you haven't been playing DW prior to the book. Which means: you can very well play DW without it, just as you can play without vehicles. Also vehicles are modelled roundabout right, the game just misses a mechanic that transfers 2d6+S from 40K to DW. I model it by halving armour values.

Alex

Kain McDogal said:

Which is why I recommended when DW came out to clearly mark some things in the reach as whitespace. Nobody listened and this is what you get: collision between official and homebrewn fluff.

Alex

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I particularly enjoyed Jove's Descent!

Kain McDogal said:

I read Achilus Assauly once. Paid full price, got it, read it. I have referred to the Stat blocks. I regret nothing. If I never read it again, I still regret nothing, because I loved reading it. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I'm a happy sucker.

H.B.M.C. said:

No drama there; it's a valid problem that FFG has failed to address. To be fair most gaming company fail to do so because it's more comfortable to not tie one's own hands. It goes against GMs who like to homebrew but would like to keep it all consistent with the official setting/story.

Alex

I'm with AK and Kain on this one...if Jericho and Achillus had come out with the main book, you'd have had me $....but, my Jericho is over a year old and not too much like the 'official' version - which bothers me, because i want my players to live and fight in the same shared-universe as the rest of you...if only so cool tales can be shared and reminisced amongst our community with a common background reference.

Yes, I am one of those gm's that prefers consistency; and i don't like bein' gouged by a company more concerned with conning money out of me than providing me with a solid, well-crafted product, something of intrinsic value and quality, not churned-out moneygrab sheit. Gimme a quality product and i'll pay top dollar; do it not, and you won't get a penny outta me....

Achillus Assault looks nice, and is a pleasant read, but really doesn't have much that i need...sounds like Jericho's got some of what i want (more crunch, as they say, and more tyranid goodness); but nothin' i can't convert my own self, i guess...sigh...

But all that being said, thanx to you, post-starter (sorry, i've forgotten yer handle ), for the kind review of the new book!

Zappiel said:

H.B.M.C. said:

It's not world-altering - it's universe-altering, if only for the DW RPG!

I guess my (overly dramatic) point Kain is that what you've done with your homebrew doesn't matter because that's not what these books cater to (and nor should they). We don't use the Calixis Sector for our Dark Heresy campaign, so none of the Calixis-stuff is all that important to us. If you've got a version of the Jericho Reach, or the Calixis Sector or whatever, then that's great, but the books cater to the setting of the game, not what you've done with that setting.

What this comes down to is something I say quite a bit here - you cannot criticise something when it fails to do something it never set out to do in the first place. All The Achilus Assault and The Jericho Reach set out to do is to expand the Deathwatch setting and give GMs and players new ideas and new rules to use. If it doesn't quite fit with your homebrew extension of the Jericho Reach (or wherever) then that's not the book's (or FFG's) fault.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

First of all, Zappiel didn't make any references to FFG here. Secondly, and more importantly, as a consumer I can feel entitled as I please. After all it's the game company that wants to trade their products for my money. Thirdly, and this is most important of all: no matter how overly entitled a consumer may or may not be, someone who wants to sell products should not laugh at their prospective customers or their sense of entitlement under any circumstances. It would simply be unprofessional; stating one's own perspective is enough. Lastly a game company (or any company) should avoid even the impression that they may endorse or condone such a response to gamer entitlement coming from any of their employees, freelancers or otherwise.

H.B.M.C. said:

No but I can criticize what they set out to do.

H.B.M.C. said:

Yes, it is - for failing to clearly divide the setting into parts reserved for official development versus home-brewn parts. Bad game world design, dude. Bad design. Anybody with some senses will realize after some thinking that this will pose a potential problem for a substantial number of GM's out there. I'm glad that I didn't homebrew since DW's release.

Alex

I personally cant see how these products can shatter your version of the Jericho Reach. If anyone could please provide anything that is now useless with these books it would be most apreciated.

ak-73 said:

Sorry, but this sounds just whiny.

thank you AK for saving me from spewing hate! YOu can always be relied upon for reasoned, logical, and thoughtful discourse. AS for the rest....and you know who you are...

Sooo, 'gouging money-grubbers' does, indeed, describe the demonstrated actions of FFG, if you've been paying attention to their wh40k product line....let us take the current discussed product, Jericho Reach, as an example...ready? --

It has been stated that this is the most important release of the product line...if this is the case, then 'the most important release' is just setting and specific non-canon background material. How is this of importance to the general gamer with his own self-made setting?

It has been asserted that FFG ain't out to gouge our money...if this is the case, then why, oh why, do they include additional rules for general use in a setting supplement of a very specific nature? Seems they'd want to release setting info in one book, and supplemental rules info in another book, so we may choose what we need, instead of being forced to buy crap we don't need in order to get at what we do. But no! Instead, if you want the additional rules, you ALSO hafta buy their setting book, whether you want their setting or not...this is not choice! This is not value! This is a gouge!!!!

Not all of us get free stuff for playtesting this...stuff......some of us actually hafta pay FFG $ to acquire these books, and they ain't cheap to buy. And we love paying for spelling/grammatical mistakes, and poorly thought-out rules, and rules that just don't work all that well, it seems. But, most importantly, what we love even more than all that is the savage grimdark of the 40th millenium...that's why we're all here, brothers! So treat us with a bit of respect, yes? We will pay for what is good, what works, what is well-thought out and well-done. Don't mix the wheat with the chaff and tell us it's all good! Don't force us to buy the unwanted with the truly useful! Give us real choice, and we'll show you what will make money and what won't. Force us to buy the bad with the good and we'll slowly but surely all drift away to the next new thing....

Oh, and thanx for the Archer comparison, big guy! You're clearly a man of insight and taste!!