Deathwatch Post Index - Rules, Lore, Models and the future

As I'm sure most of you would agree receiving rules for our boys in black again was a welcome Christmas present (though I'm sure we'd have all rather not lost the rules in the first place). With that in mind I was curious on everyone's thoughts on how this may affect the faction going forward.

Rules

In a surprising twist it seems like someone at GW actually spent some time updating our rules. As a result we have updated weapon options and an additional kill team! Though we have paid for that with the loss of the Proteus kill team, kill team Cassius and Deathwatch Bikers. Interesting to note is the increased flexibility of primaris kill teams in terms of armament. No longer do you have a combat squad of 5 (intercessors, heavy intercessors and infiltrators respectively) but you only need 3 of these at minimum to form a primaris kill team and the number of each additional type you can take has further increased. However, outriders and suppressors are no longer an option. Ah, we do miss the days of 5 intercessors and 5 outriders in a squad that could then combat squad for a 5 man objective securing squad of outriders. Good times. What is truly awesome is the bump in effectiveness that some weapons get in a kill team. The intercessor bolt rifle for example gets lethal hits, an extra point of strength and an extra -1 AP! Along with a unit rule of +1 vs units less than starting strength and +1 to wound on those below half strength. On the whole it has meant a significant increase of lethality for each kill team, arguably justifying the points cost. They even added desolators as options. There's a lot more I could say on these rules of course (such as the epic terminators) but that's the highlights for me right now. Clearly they are a very effective faction now having just won the LVO!

Lore

Given we lack a codex in this edition (and sadly are likely not to get one) we have only had the tid bits from the datasheets to go on. And the Imperial Agents codex I suppose but there was little lore in there and none of it new in any noticeable way. There is no new information contained in the index however there is also nothing to contradict existing lore. One thing to note is the continuation of each primaris kill team member being named as intercessor with X weapon (heavy intercessors and infiltrators for the others).

Models

As we are all acutely aware we have had no new models in a very long time. Given the inevitable squatting of first born marines it's not surprising that we lost Kill Team Cassius, Proteus Kill Teams and Deathwatch Bikers. As we kept terminators I'm guessing that's GW indicating that you should use the newer build terminators. On the whole though the kill team options are interesting as they fly in the face of GW's "simplified not simple" box locking mentality (I could go on about that policy a LOT but let's not right now). How long this will endure, as each kill team requires multiple boxes of different models or conversions to create remains, to be seen. Of course many of us already have the models to create these kill teams, particularly the terminators, new players drawn to the faction will face a high buy in.

Conclusions

The presence of deathwatch in Space Marine 2 and all imperial factions getting access to Deathwatch Veteran Kill Teams through the imperial agents codex have likely led to a surge in popularity. Presumably this is the reason why we were again given an index. That and the vocal outcry of existing players at the loss of our faction. Unfortunately due to the very long lead times and packed release schedules GW couldn't take advantage of this through new releases even if they wanted to. What I'm wondering is will GW consider giving us a codex again in the future. I'd love to say yes but without further games or shows or something to drive interest I suspect sales of the Deathwatch Veterans, Watch Master and Corvus, one of the only ways of measuring interest, will decline. As new players are the bottom line financially there is less likely to be an incentive to spend time and money on a codex. But should GW decide to do so I predict a few things. GW is slowly doing away with first born marines, it's becoming very clear their days are numbered. With that in mind deathwatch need at least 1 new box to replace them. The obvious choice is a fortis kill team box that either has all the options to build the various options currently available to it or, more likely, a roughly comparable weapon set to that of the existing deathwatch veterans. If I were to hope for more I'd consider the updates that blood angels, black templars and dark angels have had to their ranges and the likely updates to the space wolves. Each of these supplemental factions received 1 or two units and some characters. If we were to apply this to the deathwatch I would expect an additional unit box to the fortis kill team. Question is, what would that entail? They could of course do an indomitor or spectrus kill team equivalent but I suspect more likely they would create something entirely new to give the deathwatch some needed flair. An adaptation of the keepers perhaps. Character wise a primaris watch master would be a no brainer and as our only named character I would expect Artemis to cross the rubicon and be promoted to watch master of Talasa Prime or possibly to some sort of deathwatch galaxy wide master. As far as other characters it'd be anyone's guess. I imagine though that overall if Deathwatch do get new models it will be as part of a kill team release initially. I mean it would be perfect for them right? Rules wise if we do get a codex with new models that would likely include a significant stripping down of any units you could not make out of a box i.e. kill teams. Would that be a price worth paying? I wouldn't expect the lore to change significantly other than a greater reliance on primaris marines. This is all purely speculative of course and certainly wishlisting to an extent but I am curious to hear everyone's thoughts.