Killing big tyrannids

By peterstepon, in Deathwatch

Posted at

Radwraith said:

I have to disagree here. I have no problem with the player emphasizing the "know no fear!" part of the SM ethos. But as has been posted earlier; There are critters out there that WILL stomp your fearless hero into red goo if they do not excersize some tactical preparedness! At higher levels your character joins the ranks of Kayvaan Shrike, Ragnar Blackmane and Marneus Calgar (Although a chapter master would undoubtedly be level 8!)! These types of characters have historically engaged in legendary feats of martial prowess! Why should your character be any different? That being said, The Caveat is still "Stupid hurts!" If you play your character as brash but tactically sound I would reward your efforts. If you insist on charging the Carnifex with your combat knife, plan on a heroic sacrifice!llorando.gif

I have no problem with Marines being badass. They can certainly engage in feats of epic awesomeness and there's no reason for them to be afraid. But a game where the PCs never need to think about what they are doing? Where they never need to worry about being killed in combat? That's some boring crap right there. I cannot emphasise enough how much I would hate such a game.

Posted at

An example from the game we played yesterday:

We come across a Dark Mechanicus outpost. It is filled with enemies (including the local leader of the enemy forces). There are four of us - Storm Warden Assault Marine, Ultramarine Assault Marine, Blood Angel Tactical Marine and Iron Hands Apothecary.

We are 100m away from them. We have a Razorback.

The Ultramarine Assault Marine, flying the cool Deathwatch banner that you can get, clambers on top of the Razorback, and the driver (the Storm Warden) kicks it into high gear. We race towards the outpost, and at top-speed I (the BA Tac Marine), bail out the side, executing a perfect roll to land in cover and bring my Combi-Melta to bear against the enemy commander. As this is happening the Razorback rams commander's bodyguards, sending one of them flying into the commander. At the same time the Ultramarine jumps from the roof of the Razorback, using its momentum to turn him into some sort of ballistic weapon. He slams into the enemy commander and knocks him down. Before he does this though, he fires off his grapnel, secured tightly to the Razorback's turret.

The Razorback begins to flip, but anchored against a nearby building thanks to the grapnel cable, it flips in a way that can be controlled (multiple DOS on the driving test!). It flips just enough to land on the other side of the enemy commander and the Ultramarine Assault Marine, keeping them from harm. The Apothecary jumps out the back, catching the grapnel cable as it snaps from the strain, this takes him swinging on an arc that gets him clear of the crash (the Razorback was not in a good way after this). By this time I've finished lining up my shot on the enemy commander, and bring him down to 1 wound with my Combi-Melta. The Ultramarine Assault Marine finishes him off. The rest of his forces run for the hills.

All of this has taken less than 10 seconds real time. It was crazy. It was awesome. And the GM let us get away with it because it was so crazy and awesome that he just wanted to see what happened (but he still made us make all the Tests - Driving Tests, strength tests to hold onto the cable, Acrobatics Tests for me when jumping from the speeding Razorback, and so on).


Deathwatch has lots of room for the "Big **** Heroes" aspect of the various 40K RPG lines. Doesn't make all the Marines bro-fisting high school jocks though.


BYE

Posted at

Well....there you go! Pretty bloody epic 10 seconds right there....and i suspect, as playtesters, y'all play fairly 'by the rules'....so, Aluminium (sic) : does your game not work out like HB's? 'cause HB's got some cool sheit goin' on...that sounds about epic enuf, i'd hazard (me, i thinks i'd be burnin' the pc's fate points a bit, but i'm a bunt)...

if yer GM ain't lettin' you away with stuff like HB's does, then start running the game yerself, and show yer friends just exactly what YOU mean by epic.happy.gif

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So, the announcement of Only War, has, by a roundabout fashion, sent me on another aviation kick, which means Spitfires and everything that entails. As such I am reading Fighter Boys (Saving Britain 1940) by Patrick Bishop. It is a books about the brave pilots of RAF fighter command who won the Battle of Britain.

One section reads thus:-

>>>>>The same unsporting tendencies were to strike Richard Hillary when he went with an Oxford boat crew to compete in Germany in July 1938 in the 'General Goering Prize Fours' at Bad Elms. The team's attitude in the race appeared languid, an approach which annoyed their hosts.

'Shortly before the race we walked down to the changing rooms to get ready. All five German crews were laying flat on their backs on matresses, great brown stupid-looking giants, taking deep breaths. It was all very impressive. I was getting out of my shirt when one of them came up and spoke to me, or rather harangued me, for I had no chance to say anything. He had been watching us, he said, and could only come to the conclusion that we were thoroughly representative of a decadent race. No German crew would dream of appearing so lackadasical if rowing in England: they would train and they would win. Losing this race might not appear very important to us, but I could rest assured that the German people would not fail to notice and learn from our defeat.'

The Oxford crew won, by two fifths of a second, and took home the cup, a shell-case mounted with a German eagle. 'It was certainly an unpopular win,' Hillary wrote afterwards. 'Had we shown any enthusiasm or given any impression that we had trained they would have tolerated it, but as it was they showed merely a sullen resentment.'
Hilary subsequently saw the race as a metaphor for the coming conflict, a 'surprisingly accurate pointer to the course of the war. We were quite untrained, lacked any form of organisation and were really quite hopelessly casual'. This was a particularly British piece of mythologising that was some distance from the truth. Hillary was fiercely competitive on the river, and the pilots of Fighter Command would turn out to be just as aggressive as their Luftwaffe counterparts. As to training, they had prepared for the war as hard as anybody. The problem was that much of the effort had been misdirected.
It was a question of image. The Fighter Boys, like the rowers, wanted to win, and took their superiority for granted. They would rather, though, that victory was attained without too much obvious exertion. The picture was of amused, easy-going Britons triumphing over robotic Germans. It was the view they had taken of themselves and it was the way they wished to be seen. This, very soon, would come to pass.<<<<<
And it is ever thus. It does not do, in Britain, to be seen to be trying too hard. It is, frankly a terrible way to go about things if you buy in to the image too much and start relying on your natural superiority to see you to victory. But the desire to succeed and succeed apparently effortlessly remains.