Seeing as I have a ton of Space Marine bits I thought about making figures for my groups eventual Deathwatch game. I was wondering if anyone knew anything about the weaponry we'd be able to use from the Astardes Armory?

Aside from the standard Bolter, it could also speed things up for the character creation process and thus get us into the game quicker.

l33tninj4 said:

Well you can safely assume that the DW kill-teams have access to the whole SM armory when it comes to personal weapons. In a White Dwarf a few years ago there were two kill-teams in a standard IG vs. Necrons battle report, they had some pretty strange equipment combos like two power claws wielded by a normal marine, plus a lot of upgrades like targeters and special ammo. I also saw an article from the Index Astartes about the Deathwatch and one of the marines there used a heavy bolter with suspensors and an ammo drum.

Deathwatch Teams equip themselves and operate in ways that are somewhat similar to modern Special Forces groups the world over, in fact I wouldn't be suprised if that was one of the orignal sources of inspiration for the Deathwatch rules in tabletop 40K. Individual squad members get their pick from a wide variety of weapons and kit to suit their skillset and personal preferences.

I assume there will be a system for getting better gear similar to the Wealth and Influence systems used in Rogue Trader and DH: Ascention, but there are plenty of items we can realistically expect to be included. Besides the obvious starting gear (Astartes Power Armor, Chain and Bolt Weapons all round), I'd expect each squad member will also have a limited number of choices/picks/purchases/etc from the entire Space Marine Armory at character creation (although it's unlikely Terminator Armor and Terminator-Only equipment will be included in the core book, and that top-end items like fields, rare artifacts and advanced heavy weapons will be unavailable at creation), including support gear like Auspexes and Teleport Homers.

As for weapons and defensive gear, there's no reason to believe that any weapon from Codex: Space Marines will be omitted from the Deathwatch book, though I expect some of the chapter specific kit will be witheld for use in supplements, you can expect all the standard Bolt, Plasma, Melta and Flamer weapons (In all their Basic, Heavy and Pistol forms) to be there as well as Grenades, Combi-Weapons, Iron Halos and Rosarius, Combat and Storm Shields, Astartes-grade Augmetics and melee weapons such as Mono, Chain and Power Swords, Relic Blades, Thunder Hammers and Lightning Claws.

Another thing you can count on is Special Bolt Ammo, one of the defining characteristics of the Deathwatch is that they have special Bolt rounds for pretty much every kind of Xenos and every kind of situation. Aside from the various types of ammo used by the Deathwatch and Sternguard on the 40K tabletop, we might be lucky to find Ulysses Homing Beacon Rounds and perhaps even Ultramarines Odyseus Psy-Active Tracking rounds.

In short, I'm pretty sure you can just go nuts.

I have several "left-over" bits that I'm gonna use for my character, even though he might not be equipped like that in the beginning. I'll glue a specialist's torso (incl. right arm holding a plasma gun), a Terminator sergants left arm (wielding a power sword) and Terminator legs together. Once painter and styled, the miniature should be quite a sight... :)

As for the rules, I guess that beginning characters will start off with standard gear plus some picks from special lists, depending on the original chapter and specialization/class of the SM...

Depending on the situation i'm sure you could also allow for the deathwatch team members to be equipped with xenos equipment from time to time as well.

 I would say ( and the best way to look at is as someone said above) is a special forces team. The "best" kit, but not forcing it on anyone. Look at it this way. In a Kill Team with a space wolf grey hunter, a raven guard assault marine, an ultramarine veteran, and a black templar champion No one would be geared anywhere near close to each other. The grey hunter would lean towards melee weapons, the raven guard would go for assault weapons and so forth. whatever you could see the marine familiar with. Then take into account that the Inquisition (Emperor bless them) would make sure they were loaded above and beyond their (and their enemy's) wildest dreams. This means that their weapons will be a step up but still familiar to the marines. That in consideration, I would say take the space marine armory and crank it up a notch and that should give you what your looking for.

You are all forgetting about two "sidekicks": the Librarians (and I think a primarys psycker would explode of pure jealousy after knowing what can a librarian get his hands into...), and the Techmarines. I bet new dendrites are incoming... And I'm curious about how are they going to handle the cybernetization of a marine.

"The Flesh is Weak." Iron Hands seam to do ok.

Argus Van Het said:

Regarding the possibility of new mechadendrites could it be possible that deathwatch techmarines might have access to that massive servo harness that is available as wargear for masters of the forge in the space marines codex?

Also I'm pretty sure that space marine chaplains can also be recruited as well.

There's been no mention of Chaplains as yet, and this isn't suprising. For starters there's no mention of them ever serving with the Deathwatch in the lore and there has never been rules for taking a Chaplain with a Deathwatch squad in Warhammer 40,000, which makes sense on account of the wildly varied traditions and ceremonies practised by different Chapters. A Kill Team with four members plus a Chaplain from a fifth, different Chapter wouldn't be properly versed and equipped to provide appropriate chapter-specific guidance and take pre-battle oaths from any of them. Essentially his expertise would be wasted. Thirdly, all Chaplains have a Rosarius and are expected to weild their Crozius Arcarnum, the Rosarius isn't the kind of thing a PC should start with and the Crozius, while kinda cool, is the only Melee Weapon a Chaplain uses.

As for Techmarines and cybernetics, Techmarines don't actually have that much in the way of augmetics usually, as their enhanced Astartes Physiology is already on par with or superior to most forms of bionic enhancement, most of their advanced Techpreist gear comes in the form of enhancements to their Power Armor like Servo Arms, integrated Auspex, Signums and that sort of thing, though I expect gear that grants the recipient completely new abilities, like MIU's for example, are standard fare for a Techmarine.

Actually there has been a mention of chaplains serving in the Deathwatch because a black templar chaplain was part of the kill team in the Deathwatch novel Warrior Brood. I'm pretty sure there was also a mention of a dreadnought serving in the Deathwatch in one of the short stories from the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology

2 chaplains are mentioned

Chaplain Broec of the Black Templars (Deceased, killed by Tyranid Hive Tyrant on Herodian IV)2
Chaplain Luthar of the Revilers

 I reckon you'll get standard gear depending on your character's role based on the SM codex. After that you'll probably get a specialist weapons that you can then upgrade to be more chapter specific (frost blades for SW etc) and maybe some weapons with Inquisition upgrades, depending on experience and the mission.

also gives some nice modelling opportunities too, for example ive been working on some "true scale" marines, based off the ones by lamenter here:

www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php

i think using the larger sized marines will give the players a better sense of scale, as they do stand taller than guardsmen etc (as they should do anyway), and when painted up look suitably intimidating !

 I think every marine will have the following:

Astartes Combat Knife
Astartes Bolt Pistol
Astartes Boltgun
2 Frag Grenades
AA Power Armour

blackwell said:

NEVER mention the writing of that hack C.S Goto.

NEVER.