The Deathwatch are, ultimately, an unnecessary army. I understand the appeal of them, much of their lore is well written, and they do have an essential place in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Yet, as an army, they seem at odds with their usual role. The entire point of the chapter cobbled together from various other chapters was to establish small strike teams. Elite units which could best serve to covertly attack, kill or capture xenos targets deemed as essential threats. The sort which needed to be actively opposed, with an even greater emphasis on their annihilation than even those found in other forces. As such, to try and build a full army out of them seems at odds with this starting point.
That little intro was to make it clear where this review is coming from in terms of its lore. If it seems far more critical than the few who bother to examine the stories behind armies in their reviews (actually examine not just an "It's all good, now onto the rules!" handwave), this is why. The review isn't going to bring up Fantasy Flight Games for comparison, save for one moment, nor will it slam it for opposing some more generalized depictions. However, it is fighting an uphill battle to justify itself and some of these do need to be addressed. With that done, let's delve into the positives and negatives here.
The Good
One of the big uphill battles this Edition has faced has come in the form of time. Not only have the writers been forced to repeatedly deal with a tangled web of end-of-the-world situations, but to keep things moving as well. So, just as it sorts out one major faction-destroying problem, it needs to add in a hook to bring you back. This is without even getting into things like more general bits and pieces like establishing how the army itself reacts to a setting which is in flux. However, Codex: Deathwatch might be the book where they have started to truly get a hand on all three at once.
Guilliman is the most obvious one, as he seems to have taken a special interest in them and understands their importance to the Imperium, perhaps offsetting the influence of the Inquisition. The other is the Primaris marines themselves, as a large number have been given specifically to the Deathwatch. This means that the faction needs to contend with not only the issue of Mk. II astartes, but also that they have those of no distinct origin. Those who carry no past with them, no chapter cultures nor millennia-long traditions, and who only belong to the Deathwatch. Even the blackshields never offered this quality, as they had their own hidden agendas and histories. As such, it opens more than a few interesting points for future stories.
The importance of this fact is that it closes one door, and then opens several more. This sort of thing is essential to an ongoing setting with a timeline moving forward. Without it, you end up with a slapdash ongoing structure and stories which come out of nowhere. It's not definitive, not specifically binding it to a single ongoing story, but it pushes to have things evolve over time. It's a metaphorical rock thrown into a pool. It's now up to the fans and writers to see what ripples it creates in the setting.
So, what about the hook then? Well, this is going to be a major spoiler, but it's something many people will want to take notice of: Kryptman's Gamble has failed. Octarius War, that thing which pitted the orks and tyranids into a seemingly unending war against one another? It's started to break out of the cordon and groups have gone on the rampage:
"Time Runs Out...
Vermillion-level alerts reach the Doombreak, Eye of Octos and Furor Shield watch fortresses as the unthinkable happens. Triggered by empyric shock waves from the opening of the Great Rift, swarms of enormous Tyranids and hordes of hulking Skarboyz break away from the Octarin war to attack neighboring systems. The Watch Masters of all three fortresses request urgent reinforcements from the wider Imperium, before surging into battle."
Now that is a way to get the reader invested. It emerges right at the very end of the timeline listed and isn't the whole "THE UNIVERSE WILL DIE IF THIS FAILS!!!!" thing books used to favour. However, it is a harrowing thing to consider and it means that the Imperium is going to face some of the worst xenos threats possible in the next few years.
These are small things like following up on the remnants of the massive Leviathan tendril which threatened Baal in the Blood Angels codex, to narrative threads which have run throughout several books. In one particular case, several brought up the growing interest the Dark Eldar have with the Imperium's genetically enhanced warriors. The Custodes were among these, but it was noted that a number of Primaris marines had gone missing. The book opts to follow up on this, citing one specific haemonculus who has taken a great interest in them, and that a Deathwatch team has been dispatched to stop them. It's a good battle and it creates a greater connection between books without being intrusive.
These moments are a few specific engagements which arise between wholly original ones, or even mini-narratives within the book itself. As such, it's enough to improve on a few ideas previous Editions dabbled with, while ensuring that most things remain coherent as the story keeps moving forward. Better yet though, it's never definitively expressed if what the reader sees is truly the finale. In just that last example, it's never said that these were all of the captive Primaris marines, just those taken in a certain skirmish. As such, it still leaves room for others to build on the subject or return to it if they consider it to be an interesting point.
Outside of a few key battles, the timeline also favours the use of the Deathwatch as a spec ops group over a full army. Their deployments often involve infiltration efforts, rescue missions and specific attacks to turn the tide of battle. For example, during a battle where the T'au attack a fortress world, the Deathwatch deploys two teams to inflict environmental damage on the surroundings. This causes the loss of several Stormsurges, turning the battle in the Imperium's favour, and the Deathwatch withdraw. It shows them being used as a precision instrument and the writing tries to offer them more than just "they show up, then kill everyone" as a story basis.
However, what I have noted is that the use of the timeline itself seems to have changed somewhat. Now, this is more of a personal theory, and there is a chance that I have missed something. With that said, the depiction of events in the timeline now follows a different style to some past outings. Previously, it often seemed to exist to give extra glory moments for the characters, victories for the armies, or to show off just what that army could do. There were exceptions, but this seemed to the core of it. Here, however, there's less of a focus placed on the battle itself and the units involved than the story behind it. How the armies got there, their objectives, the narrative arc they follow etc. Because of this, I am almost tempted to think that they serve as fodder for authors and fans alike. There are a multitude which could easily be adapted into short stories or full novels due to how they are described, with easily defined protagonists and goals.
The other sections of the book outside of this are, admittedly, somewhat mixed but there are good points among it. While we'll get into the negatives in a minute, the positives here are very notables and easy to pinpoint. The layout and depiction of the Blackstar is a big one here, which offers a semi-blueprint view of the gunship while also offering some more technically focused details in its blurb. Each one largely outlining its exact use in battles and essential contributions in engaging with missions. The same can be said of a few others, like the structure to a watch station's command hierachy and the brief listings of chapters. They help to give an impression of professionalism within the group, and their role less as crusaders than more typical wetworks troops of a sort. While it does mention the multitude of chapters which makes up their number, it only does it enough to make sure it's a key part. Not, as it could have easily been, defining various figures only by what heraldry they bare.
Finally, the codex does its best to address the point that many items are new to them now. The primaris marines and their wonderful toys are the big ones, of course, and the Repulsor tank highlights this. It cites its strengths, but also how Deathwatch captains are having to adapt to its use and innovate on certain older tactics. They're minor touches, but nice ones which helps to reflect on how the book is expanding on its points.
Unfortunately, there are a few very big problems which are still evident within its works.
The Bad
The big negative point which is immediately clear here is how many older flaws have been carried over into this new version. It retains the same basic structure and design of the past codex, listing unit by unit and leader by leader. In of itself, it's not too bad of a design choice, and it can work with such a segmented army as this. However, the actual prose and descriptions doesn't do them much justice. It's not badly written so much as lacking a lot of the bite needed to further cement the army's style, and to better reflect on the Deathwatch's unique status. Too much of it reflects on the crusader/Templar style of the space marines, and more than a few descriptions swing back to that style of writing. It robs the army of an opportunity to stand out on its own among the marines, and it's often frustratingly so.
A major highlight which better confirms the issue of treating them as a large army over a dedicated specialised force is evident on pages 16 and 17. These display the heraldry of the various watch fortresses, and the banners which signify victories, specialisations and accomplishments. The problem is that it's too close to what a chapter would have for companies, and not what you would expect the Imperium's anti-alien Inquisitorial force. If you don't see just why this is oddly out of place, then try to imagine MI5 having this sort of thing.
The style of writing on here is also notably bereft of internal details. With the Custodes we were given countless details on traditions, inner workings, and the structure of their organisation. There's nothing which even approaches that on here, and the overall depiction, as a result, is lacking in more than a few core details to really give the book some meat. The basics are present, but it keeps mentioning a multitude of key bits of information over utilising them to further give the reader something to truly work with when it comes to fleshing out their own versions. It's always a very basic outsider view more than anything else, giving enough to make it clear just why the Deathwatch are needed but perhaps not enough to ensure a potential player will remain invested in them.
In the points where the codex does start to offer a few more detailed elements, they're so bite-sized it's difficult to get invested in them. Mentions of a dreadnought which has lost its identity are conceptually interesting, but it only lists the essential components behind what could be an interesting story. It never combines them into something which could make it truly engaging. Others, meanwhile, tend to be always depicted in the midst of combat and focus on the violence over everything else. As such, it again doesn't offer much character to the book because of this and its short length.
Also, they still have leaders carrying Guardian Spears. That might sound a little petty, but one of the codex's problems stemmed from how it often favoured simpler and more direct variations of Fantasy Flight's lore. The big one it could not escape is the differences in how the Deathwatch was founded. One was a controlled response to the Imperium's xenocidal nature, and the other formed out of desperation during a conflict with the Ork WAAAGHs!. The issue is that the other group of writers seemed to have a better handle on the Deathwatch's role as a larger organisation, and the specifics of how it operated, while this is more of a general take on things. Even if you're not directly comparing the two, there's no denying that the RPG books had a better handle on the fine details of the chapter's operation.
The Artwork
This might well be some of the best stuff we have seen in a long time. The original Codex: Deathwatch featured some fantastic artwork and despite a few odd choices in places, there was no denying the work was spectacular for its larger pieces. This one takes that to the next level, offering a much more consistent aesthetic while also granting far more visuals of the enemies the Deathwatch fight. The massive combat sequence facing off against Craftworld Eldar in the opening pages is proof of this, and the newer Primaris pieces are often depicted in the style of an action film poster. It lacks the sketchier style of John Blanche's works to build on the gothic thematics, but it still works out extraordinarly well on the whole.
The Verdict
Codex: Deathwatch seems like an experiment in terms of its lore. It relies heavily on re-using the older skeleton of the previous armybook for much of its information or sticks closely to what was there before. When it does try to push beyond this or innovate on certain elements, it's highlighted only in areas cited above, and the majority of the works doesn't update itself fully to make use of this new era. As such, I can fully praise and welcome the alterations offered and a few of the very innovative ideas, but I do think more could have been done with the rest of the codex. When it's good its very good, and when it's bad it comes across as irritatingly miswritten for another army.
Do you think the Deathwatch are ultimately pointless? This is one of the complaints I saw in regards to the Beast Arises series with a few saying that this is an area that the Raven Guard should have been front and center on.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes this a double challenge for the AU I work on. We too have a couple of legions who are more than willing to utilize those kinds of special forces tactics that would suggest a Deathwatch would be redundant (even if we did figure out a good triggering event).
It's not so much the idea that they are pointless as it is there's little point in having a full army. They were built with squad tactics in mind and to work in covert operations or the like. So, I could see them being created as a group which perhaps deployed one or two units with a larger army, but not a full company. That said, yeah, i've no arguments that there were a few chapters who should have been far more involved in that event and the Raven Guard are the big one. If anyone would work well when it came to dealing with an overwhelming enemy and fighting back, it was definitely them.
DeleteYeah deathwatch would feel better in a rulebook for the entire inquisition rather than a stand alone book. The further you move towards them being an army. The more homogenous they appear when put side by side against codex space marine chapters.
ReplyDeleteSo this is going to be more a rules bit, but I feel it's an interesting idea and deals with the main idea that the Deathwatch don't really fit with having their own codex.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking for a long while on how it might be possible to do the Deathwatch without forcing the player to play them as an army, since as you say it's at odds for their usual structure, and I think the solution isn't as complicated as some people might think. A Deathwatch codex like this can still exist and still be used without supplementing another army, and it can still be used against a full on enemy army while the Deathwatch are only a few squads in size (if that), all they need to do is account for the environment itself.
Hear me out on this because I have the feeling it might be a tougher sell. The idea is that there only needs to be one or two Deathwatch squads, outfitted as you like, but with a lot more that you can buy with points or activate with stratagems than we normally see. This includes the environment itself.
Here's how I'm kind of envisioning it: before the fighting starts you can pay small to a large amount of Command Points to select where you're fighting which has a number of conditions you can impose on the enemy's army, from negative to hit penalties due to terrible vision to being able to fight inside a cave and using Command Points to detonate charges above that would cause Mortal Wounds when they fall on the units.
Essentially this would allow the Deathwatch to have an inherent counter to whichever force they're fighting while still remaining relatively small scale themselves, and you could take it a few steps further to allow them to buy additional terrain pieces (and no I don't mean stuff like buildings all factions can buy) to mess around with the enemy's battle line. You could also have them trap these in various ways (paying additional points for the trap of course) or even pay to set up traps around mysterious objectives. So long as you're creative you can make all sorts of unique combinations, especially if you allow the Deathwatch to interact with the environment (for example buy a forest, when an enemy steps inside of it then you use a flamer to set the forest on fire). Even if the enemy avoids all the terrain you've bought then that just means you're controlling the flow of battle.
Honestly, that's exactly the sort of thing that the book could and should benefit from in many places. I've tried to go over a few ideas in the past with this sort of thing, such as how Sentinels of Terra botched the siege aspect, but this is very interesting. The problem is up to now I was mostly comparing their army style with prior Editions of Kill-Team or others, but utilising the environment in that manner or secondary elements they could call upon would seriously help the book's standing. You could even take it further in some regards, perhaps, such as giving the Deathwatch opportunities to divert portions of the enemy army elsewhere meaning that they arrived late into the game, or calling in air strikes against key targets. Thank you immensely, because this is something I seriously need to think over now.
DeleteAs for the lore itself, I feel you did a good job on the positives but I've got a lot of negatives.
ReplyDeleteTo star off are the Primaris Marines with no history who are now perpetually tied to the Deathwatch. Why? I get that super-Marines are necessary right now, however I'm going to point out there was a very good reason the Deathwatch don't ask other chapters for their initiates. The Primaris Marines are certainly valuable assets but they aren't the solution to every problem, especially if that problem relies on them coming up with a unique solution that they can glean thanks to their past experiences or their chapter's own way of warfare (or if it requires a unique skillset that they haven't been able to develop yet since they're relatively new to the larger war).
This is something the book itself mentions since it directly states they recruit the best of the best from each chapter. If they were thinking of training them and giving them unique skillsets while they were with the Deathwatch then they should've had them fight alongside veterans, as opposed to other Primaris' who also don't have developed skillsets. On top of that I don't like the idea that the Deathwatch now have Primaris Marines tied to them permanently because they're dangerously close to becoming a normal Chapter themselves. Have the Deathwatch stop recruiting from other Chapters and have the Deathwatch elect a head from the existing Watch Masters and now they're the Ordo Xenos version of what Ward did to the Grey Knights.
Speaking of the Ordo Xenos, I continue to be impressed at how GW can't seem to get a memo around to get its writers to agree on fairly major points. First the Deathwatch started as the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, then they're not, then they were again (in their own novel, in the Imperial Agents book and in War of the Beast, though the last one's still a terrible series and even the new codex outright ignores that series in its history section) and now they're not again. They even keep some of the story structure the same as the previous book, as can be seen where they first talk about Inquisitors in the same splash as a Deathwatch Marine using a Necron sword, although it's not hypocritical now. Instead of being the closet radicals they were in the last book now the Deathwatch are full-blown radicals since they're perfectly fine with preserving, studying, using and innovating on alien technology, as well as working with and assisting Inquisitors who do the same. To me that's right up there with the whole 'Grey Knights fighting next to Daemonhosts' thing that happened back when the Grey Knight 5th ed codex came out. They might as well say that the Marine-sized Guardian Spears are actually just something they invented at this point.
Well, the element of the Primaris Marines is something i'm reading over and tempted to write a brief article on given some of the possible reasoning behind it. A lot of it does admittedly tie into the state of the galaxy and the increased problems surrounding the Deathwatch's intended role, and it is something which would need to change over time. That said, I just personally feel it's not inherently bad so long as it is written in the right way.
DeleteAside from that, okay, that last paragraph I actually completely missed those bits. I can only apologise for that and put it at least in part down to the major issues of having to change my workplace for the sixth time that month, and the constant background noise of yelling builders. As such, I was looking more for the points of Ward level insanity over some of the finer details.
They also changed the story with their iconography since the last book, in fact they change it twice in this book and even on the same splash page! Look left and it says their iconography indicates their close ties to the Inquisition. Look right and it says their Iconography shares the same origin as the Inquisition. If they meant that its origin comes from the Inquisition then they just worded it poorly (and I'm just guessing that's what they meant).
ReplyDeleteThere's also something very unusual about the Deathwatch, maybe it was in the previous book and I missed it, but in this book service to the Deathwatch appears to be indefinite. The book makes few references to Marines returning to their original Chapters and that's in the breakdown of their roles where it's undefined. When a Marine joins the Deathwatch the other Marines assume they'll never be able to see their battle-brother again, and the book says that the Marine leaves for 'his new life'. I get if they want to indefinitely extend the Marine's stay with what's going on lately, but the presentation and lack of what the Marine's 'duties' are that need to be fulfilled before he can go home (unless I missed it) really make it look indefinite.
It's also weird how the book states that there's no enforced uniformity among the Deathwatch, which is apparently a thing that was never mentioned to whoever made the rules (as the vast majority of units are rigid and cannot be mixed). The mention of whatever information network the Deathwatch had in the previous book now seems to be absent as well, so how they find out about a lot of the xeno-threats is left up to the imagination.