Deathwatch
| The Deathwatch | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Battle Cry | "Suffer not the Alien to live!" / Various battle cries from the Marine's parent chapter. | |
| Founding | Around M32 | |
| Chapter Master | None - Lead by Watch Commanders | |
| Primarch | Varies | |
| Homeworld | Various Watch Fortresses around the galaxy, but officially Talasa Prime | |
| Strength | Exact number varies - Probably around 2-3000 Marines at most | |
| Specialty | Killing Xenos, Kill-team strikes, being every Chapter at once. | |
| Allegiance | Imperium | |
| Colours | Black, with a silver left arm and right pauldron bearing the colors and iconography of the Marine's parent Chapter | |
- "Ooh ooh ooh! DEATH-WATCH! Ooh ooh ooh! DEATH-WATCH!"
- - An unorthodox battle cry, which has gained popularity among the more musically inclined in the Deathwatch.
This article is about the organization. If you were looking for a different Deathwatch, see below.
The Deathwatch is the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos and is composed of the most badass Space Marines from every chapter who are deployed according to their skills and which specific kind of xeno they are the most experienced at facing. If they have a devastator squad composed of ten heavy bolter-equipped Space Marines who are sent to fight the Tyranids, then you can bet that those heavy bolter-equipped marines will be the best shots with a heavy bolter the Inquisition could get their hands on and know everything there is to know about fighting the space bug lizards, loaded with all the best toys for Tyranid killing.
Their armor is painted black save for one pauldron which remains painted in the chapter colors to avoid pissing off the machine spirit. The other pauldron gets replaced entirely with a superfancy silver one. Surprisingly this paint job actually manages to look really badass even if it ends up being totally pointless with the Black Consuls, Black Templars, Raven Guard, and anyone else wearing black. They get their shit done and get it done quickly and the only conceivable reason that they don't have their own codex is that they tend to be deployed in singular squads rather than fighting large scale battles. There are a few fan-made codexes for them as well as an RPG where they star as player characters though.
In short, Space Marine Special Forces.
Breaking news! Apocalypse: War Zone Damnos gives Deathwatch official rules as a Space Marine formation: 1 Captain and 2 Sternguard/Vangaurd Veteran squads gain Preferred Enemy (one Xenos codex of your choice) and Aniphase Bolter Rounds (24" range, S4 AP4, forces Necrons to reroll successful Reanimation Protocols).
Induction and Training
Calling on ancient oaths and debts of honor from hundreds of Space Marine Chapters, the Inquisition (forces)asks each Chapter to volunteer a handful of its best marines to be conscripted into the Deathwatch. This usually occurs when the old Deathwatch-conscripted marine dies in battle, or in rare cases, actually returns after he fulfills his term of service to the Ordo Xenos. Some Chapters view recruitment into the Deathwatch as a great honor, with the warrior both envied and revered by his battle brothers for being chosen. Others, either view the conscription as little more than an inconvenience as it robs them of their best warriors or as a chance to get rid of marines too insubordinate to mix with the battle companies but too well-celebrated to be demoted.
The Black Ships bring the potential inductees to secret Watch Fortresses scattered along the outer rims of the galaxy. As these are full-fledged space marines and not mere neophytes, they usually believe they have some idea what to expect; most assume that they will be brought to a heavily-fortified space station where they will be trained much in the same way they are already trained, but with more specialized weapons (after all, Space Marine training is already quite intense and comprehensive). This notion is immediately proven wrong as the inductees first gaze upon a Watch Fortress. What greets them is a systemless planet floating in the middle of nowhere, encircled by a colossal artificial ring, supposedly built millions of years ago by an ancient alien civilization. It is on this ring, bristling with Imperial gun batteries and missile defense, that the Deathwatch and its private fleet of warships makes their home.
The ring station is so large that the Imperium has built entire orbital cities into their ancient superstructure; including individual quarters for thousands of space marines and inquisitorial serfs, vast customizable training fields, including artificially-recreated planetary environments. The recruits are sworn into the Deathwatch and are forced to undergo hypno-indoctrination to put the Watch above all their old loyalties, and then undergo months of intensive retraining in unconventional tactics. They are divided into 6-man Kill Teams, no two members being from the same chapter. The inductees are also introduced to their new arsenal; each of them is given a Combi-weapon built to accept a range of attachments, for every Deathwatch space marine must have a secondary and tertiary weapon for any eventuality. Their armor is painted black except for their right pauldron (which was transferred from their left), and the Deathwatch's silver pauldron and arm is attached in its place.
As part of the training, each marine is forced to watch endless hours of vid-recordings of space marines losing battles against Xenos. The lesson there is two-fold, one is to understand Xenos strategies and weakness tactics. The other is that though the Deathwatch marines come from a diverse background, apparently nothing creates better unit cohesion and hatred against the xenos than for a space marine to watch helplessly as another space marine fights a desperate last stand, again and again across thousands of battles--At that point it does not matter what chapter you are from, the space marines in the recordings were mercilessly slaughtered and you must now avenge them. The experience is so realistic that all inductees must be physically restrained to the their seats prior to donning the vid gear.
At the end of their training, every Deathwatch space marine has not only been reforged into an unparalleled Xenos genocide machine but just Deathwatch Kill Team members will royally fuck up the shit of their target. Though extremely rare as Deathwatch is more of a small unit spec ops unit meant to infiltrate and eliminate specific objects and targets instead of fight all out battles, the arrive of additional Deathwatch Kill Teams typically spells the end of whatever unlucky xeno son of a bitch is on its receiving end. And if the shit has hit to the fan to the extent that one hundred deathwatch members have to deploy to one battle and organized into an actual company, that probably means that the Imperium is probably going to be sending a lot more than just the space marines.
What's this flub-duggery then?
Well Deathwatch, whilst undoubtedly cool, were designed for gamers who got splinters in their arse for sitting on the fence and not committing to one chapter or another. They were designed to reward indecisiveness, and have been pretty much pushed out of Codex Space Marines in 5th Edition unless you used a proxy unit.
The easiest way to get Deathwatch on the table without screwing around, unfortunately, really only applies to users of Codex: Space Marines and Blood Angels (the other flavors of Marines have too much cool stuff already), and armies that can take an allied detachment of them.
Construct your Deathwatch Squad. When it comes time to use them in an army, count them as Sternguard (Sternguard's special ammo comes from old Deathwatch rules) or Vanguard Veterans. Voila. Deathwatch. No pissing around. The unbound army loadout introduced in 7th edition is especially good for this, as your elite special forces team making deep covert incursions into enemy territory don't need to be inexplicably dragging around a few squads of underequipped codex compliant tac squads or even more underequipped scouts.
If you still feel as if this isn't enough, increase their Ballistics skill, Weapons skill, Initiative and Leadership by 1, give them Preferred Enemy (if you're playing Blood Angels, Captain Tycho has this against Orks automatically), increase their point cost somewhat and ask your opponent if you can use them.
It used to be the case that, if you played Black Templars, one of the champion's vows gave the entire army something similar to Preferred Enemy. That changed with the 6th Ed FA; now it just gives Rage. To both the models and the players.
See Also
- Alienhunters
- Deffwotch
- Deathwatch (RPG), part of Fantasy Flight Games' Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay system. You get to be a Deathwatch marine and kill xenos.
- Heralds of Ruin You get to be Deathwatch and play kill team! We even have tactics for both the Deathwatch and general tactics for the game, for your pleasure!