While the standalone Deathwatch army is now a fixture of tabletop Warhammer 40k, for most of its existence it was an elite task force that other armies could field as a single unit of allies. The problem with using the Deathwatch in this classic lore-accurate way in 10th edition was that the rules for doing it, found in the Imperial Agents codex, sucked. That’s about to change, for Space Marine armies at least, thanks to a newly revealed detachment that lets a small cohort of Deathwatch marines join any Space Marine army.
Revealed on Wednesday, the Deathwatch Support detachment allows any Space Marine chapter to field up to 500 points of Deathwatch. It’s going to cost 1DP, and it’s a companion to the updated 3DP Black Spear Task Force.
Both will have the same detachment rule, a streamlined version of the Black Spear Task Force’s original Mission Tactics. Just as in 10th edition, this gives you a menu of bonuses for your attacks, but these are now married to the new Combat Doctrines army rule.
- Furor Tactics: While the devastator doctrine is active for a unit, its attacks gain Sustained Hits 1;
- Malleus Tactics: While the the tactical doctrine is active for a unit, it gets Lethal Hits instead;
- Purgatus Tactics: While the assault doctrine is active for a unit, if it targets an enemy unit within 9″, all those attacks have Precision.
According to the WarCom article announcing the updated detachments, the revised version of the Black Spear Task Force “gently upgrades a few of their stratagems”, but is otherwise largely the same. Very good news for anyone who got into the Deathwatch with an Emil Söderholm style teleportation list.
At least one potent feature from the Black Spear Task Force is making its way into the Deathwatch Support detachment – the Beacon Angelis enhancement. This grants the bearer’s unit Deepstrike, and allows them to make a Rapid Ingress deployment for 0CP. You’ll need to lead the unit with a character to unlock this, which is a surprisingly deep cut call back to the original 3rd edition Deathwatch Veterans unit: that was led by a Captain instead of a Veteran Sergeant. The more things change, the more they stay the same!
Are you planning to enhance a Marines list with some Deathwatch Veterans? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
