leth

I use as many bits as I have in my bitz box to make them look spicy. Sadly that means my primaris are kinda bland in comparison but I am okay with the new boys losing out on some bling

Eradicators with heavy melta rifles would probably do the trick.

The trigger for aquila is "selecting your battlefield role". When using the strategem you are "selecting a battlefield role" So IMO when you use the strategem to pick a new battlefield role you also pick a new second one for your aquila specialism. Which I think is perfectly reasonable since it would suck to effectively have it be wasted if your seconday aquila is the same as your current one. It also requires having a watchmaster in your army and 2CP so its not inherently broken.

Just use the same shoulderpads with a different paint scheme “BAMN” now they are iron hands successors, bronze hands!

New actions seem to be perfect for the AOR, just need to have optimized priority aura.

It finally feels like death watch are the focus of deathwatch. It doesnt feel like an army that is just mathematical efficiency and then spamming that. Its you as the player - turn by turn finding mathematical efficiency for that turn in real time. I just love the super adaptability that allows me to run my special forces troops, and actually make them effective as special forces, rather than just over priced models that just die without accomplishing anything. I walk away from an AOR game going "My boys did what they are supposed to do, I made a bad decision"

We dont have clear guidance on it, however the kill team rules imply that rules benefits are only lost if the rule requires the entire unit to have it. So for example you put one infiltrator in a eliminator kill team then the entire unit gives the 12 inch deny radius. My thoughts are that if the warlord trait ability impacts something that can only have an effect when applied to the entire unit: then it applies to the unit. However if the effect works when applied only to that specific model? Then I have it work as if only that model has it. Stealthy:Makes the warlord un-targettable. Targetting is done on a unit by unit basis, not model basis so I would have it apply to the entire unit. Imperiums Sword: The +Str and Atk only applies to the sgt since that mentions the model versus the unit. However the reroll charges applies to the unit since there are no rules for individual models charging or having different charge movements compared to the rest of the unit. For your listed black templars warlord trait I personally would have it so you only measure from the SGT model since it can be measured from a specific model, but then the entire unit is moved if they heroically intervene since heroic intervention includes "Units" language rather than mentioning characters. Either way it needs to be FAQed just so that it will be consistently applied regardless since there are multiple reasonable interpretations.

Follow up thoughts. For my next variation of the same list I am gonna try making a few changes to help with secondaries. Captain on Bike with 5 point weapon and Aegis Eternal Chaplain - change to +2 charges and 5+ against Mortals Watchmaster - Warlord, Tome of Ecto, 5+CP regen, Be able to shoot while performing actions Drop the company champion and rhino Take a 5 man intercessor squad with 20 point venator tax. Move warlord trait from Imperiums sword to Stealthy on the phobos SGT. Having a spectrum kill team be untargettable in the eliminators half really makes it easier to position them in places where they can fire instead of needing to hide. Frees the medic to go with the 5 person infiltrator squad and actually make them a bit more obnoxious to remove. These changes open up a LOT of secondary options as well as provide an extra few primaris bodies. What I really like about this army is that it forces your opponent to make bad decisions. Looking at my army it relies heavily on having two rounds of tactical doctrine available. But honestly? If something can still have a lot of things after two turns of tactical doctrine? Then I screwed up my priority. Shots - STR - AP - DMG Indomitor Kill Team - 12 5/0/1, 2 5/-2/3, 6 5/-1/1, 24 4/0/1, 4d6 4/0/1 - 58 shots Fortis Kill Team - 15 4/0/1, 20 4/-1/1 - 35 shots Fortis Kill Team 2 - 15 4/0/1 Spectrus Kill Team - 20 4/0/1 4 5/-1/1 - 25 shots So thats a solid 120+ shots that are almost all an additional -1 AP in tactical(which is the most important AP unless they have some special rule, so T sons are a worry) that have lots of opportunities to reroll to hit and re-roll to wound(or just flat out ignore needing to wound). I feel like this is a solid strength since there is little doubt about what I am going to do. If I dont think it will be a good turn of shooting or I dont need the AP this turn, Assault Doctrine. If I dont have a unit that will charge, Devastator Doctrine. Otherwise Tactical. By having my entire army be assault/rapid fire weapons I am able to maximize the returns/target priority for those two turns. In Melee its 4x 8 -3 4 11x 8 -2 3 19 4 -1 1 Attacks right now which should do work against most targets. However this is REALLY reliant on either getting the re-rolls to hit off from the chaplain, or being in Space Wolves for the +1 to hit. I might work in some Lightning Claws if I can free up 6 points. Its just really tight getting that 5th kill team in.

I just went to a friendly tournament and man.....man our army is strong. Big shout out to my opponents who let some things slide since it was my first time playing 9th(outside of two online games). First round I played Deathguard, Round 2 and 3 were against knights. So my thoughts are in that context. For Reference my army list was: Watchmaster Phobos Captain - CP regen and cant be targetted unless closest Primaris Chaplain on Bike with Reroll hits and +2 to charge - Teleport relic and chapter command 5x intercessor 5xoutrider - Troops 6x infiltrators, 4x elimintors with sniper rifle - Elite 5x hellstorm heavy intercessors, one with hellstorm bolter, 4x boltstorm aggressors, 1x bolter inceptor - Aquila 4x Stormshield/Chainsword, 2x thunderhammer storm shield terminators, Bike, van vet, Black shield hammer/CCW, Imperium Sword HTH SGT - Aquila Primaris Apoth - Warlord trait and chapter command - Vox Company Champion with Aegis dominus Rhino - Had like 90 points left and rather have this than another character. Overall I found that the army did what it was supposed to do: Put up a wall of -1 bullets thile also having a solid melee threat. I never had problems with controlling objectives, but I did feel strongly constrained in secondaries not have the spare units to perform actions. Anything that went wrong was because I made a mistake and was not using my models efficiently, messed up rules, or just positioned poorly(This one was big). I also picked bad secondaries(didnt read the fine print) and so was forced to take bad decisions to try and get points. Outside of the proteus kill team, one of the units is going to always be a big threat and that unit is gonna have Transhuman on it. They cant ignore it so its just reduced effectiveness shooting. Once or twice I waited until they fired their small arms at the unit to plink off a model or two so thata now transhuman only costed 1 when the big scary units fired. Its a very reactionary decision. I have almost no range above Str 4 -1 and I found that full knight armies werent actually that scary. Had no real issues killing them. My aggressor unit was able to get a castellan to 4 wounds with the tactical doctrine up. Melee was able to solo a knight as well solo. I forgot some rules, failed to cast re-roll hits, and forgot some attacks, and still got it to 1 wound. The combination of Chapter tactics AND mission tactics is huge for getting efficiency from this army. I often found that I was picking one for shooting and one for assault. It is going to take a lot of practice to get it right, and to know what to pick. You basically have to plan your entire turn out at the start of the battle round(when picking mission/chapter tactics). Raven Guard: I often made the mistake of using raven guard early, when in reality I feel like it is best as a turn 4/5 ability when the ability to hide a unit is higher while output is less overall. With the way I ran my army(only spectrus being combat squadded) that a lot of tactics didnt do much for me outside of the melee ones. If you are running 5 man units then a lot of different configs will benefit a lot. Space Wolves in my mind is a more defensive strategem whan an offensive one. It is there to prevent objectives from being sniped or contested. When the entire squad can heroically intervene then you only need a few models actually on the objective to bring in the calvary if someone tries to get it. Blood Angels just feels broken powerful for my melee proteus kill team. Combined with the chaplain I was able to basically land anywhere within 26 of the chaplains current point......That is a lot of board threat range. The squad can strike pretty much anywhere I want turn 1 if I start the chaplain near the middle. It also makes Imperiums sword WLT even more bonkers when you are wounding knights on 2s with no save for 15-20 damage reliably. Flesh Tearers is basically the same, only better if you arent worried about making the charge so we get a solid 2 rounds of offensive melee chapter tactics. White Scars: Just universally a good choice having the outriders being able to charge almost anyone turn 1(easy to chain them out with trinagles at each end). Advancing aggressors no longer need the full re-rolls and can make do with reroll 1s while geting into range for first turn extremis use. With watch master re-rolls and tactical doctrine the unit easily put 53 wounds at -1 on a unit of blight guards(watchmaster re-roll). Same for getting those outriders into assault turn one. Black Templars is amazing into an army that does a lot of Mortal wounds, while also being a melee improvement. Army Changes - Just a few minor tweeks to the kill teams. Make the vanguard a claw/shield instead of a double claw, make one of the chainswords a claw(was about 10 points under with the list above). Another thing I found was that the vox was kinda a trap on the Apothecary. By having that lee-way I often ended up out of protection range. I also need to be within 3 to revive anyway(and the aggressor unit was the only one that I really revived) and outside of turn 1 I was often handicapping myself to keep in range. I didnt find myself using the combat revival more than 2 times per game and would rather cost the 1 CP in return for the ability to shoot while performing actions. Phobos captain got me 20-30 points each game, but will have to see if I can protect him from faster moving opponents with FLY. If I cant keep him safe then I will probably swap the HQ slot for a librarian or shield captain(although I dont wanna). I have considered dropping the warlord trait on the apothecary to get the ability to shoot while performing actions. On the fence about swapping from Hellstorm Bolter for Executioner bolter. Most likely will since the way the unit is buffed, having the DMG 3 shots will do more than a damage 2(down to 1 often) shots. I might just drop from a chief to a regular, Move the Vox to the Chaplain, and have him double up on Aura Warlord traits. I could also make the Stealth captain a Shield captain(which frees up 55 points) For example Watchmaster - Warlord - CP regen, Optimised Aura(1CP) Primaris Master of Sanctity on Bike - Teleport Relic - Wise Orator(1CP) - Powers are Litany of Hate, Faith, Hate Phobos Captain - Stealthy WL Trait(1CP) Company Champion - Aegis Eternal(1CP) Deathwatch Veteran SGT - Imperiums Sword(1CP) So I start the game at 7, gives me a guaranteed 12, with the potential for 4 extra from the Warlord trait. Second Idea is swap the Phobos captain for a shield Captain and do the following Watchmaster - Warlord - CP regen, Optimised Aura(1CP) Shield Captain - Dominus Aegis Primaris Master of Sanctity on Bike - Teleport Relic(1CP) - Wise Orator(1CP) - Powers are Litany of Hate, Faith, Hate Deathwatch Veteran SGT - Imperiums Sword(1CP) Dropping the Rhino, company champion, and apothecary upgrade takes me to about 150ish points to work with could be a small kill team of something. Really would have to point it out.

Just combat squad 4x outrider and 1x intercessor if the terrain calls for it. With the giant bases it is not that hard to get where you want to be. Might not hit at full strength, but pile in and consolidate is free movement/removing casualties. One trick to remember is that when pulling casualties you are not required to maintain coherency, that occurs during the morale check. So for example you can have 5 bikes and 5 intercessors. Keep the SGT in the aura range, chain them out, and then kill 4 intercessors and still keep the benefits of the auras. Then during the coherency step the SGT will die, but that is a "meh" point in the scheme of things. Bikes biggest issue is that there are a lot of D3+3 weapons in the game right now, but if you dont combat squad then you can semi-control how effective it is.

Think about it more, the strike force will need to leverage the wide range of characters available and really plan when thinking about secondaries. End of the day our cheapest units will be things like company champions in regards to action monkeys, and we dont have any non-character action monkeys available. It might necessitate the investment in things like the ability to shoot and still perform actions.

Depends entirely on what role you want them to perform in the unit. Typically for regular veterans its hard to pass up bolter/storm shield as bullet catchers, always gonna want a few of these. CC upgrades should be limited to the SGT and the black shield IMO if any. So on and so forth. So for your ranged infantry mulcher it is going to depend on your strategy, and what doctrine you expect to be in when you mulch. If you plan to be in assault doctrine and drop them in from a pod? Shotguns are gonna be hard to beat for pure board clear potential.

The key thing that it does is allow you to remove a role you have to build for in your army meaning you can focus efficiency elsewhere. For example: one of the biggest weaknesses of deathwatch has, and continues to be, T8 things. We have just not been able to build a cost efficient way to deal with T8. Its part of why the dreadnaught builds are so popular. Now, with extremis, we can just drown those targets in -1/-2 bullets instead of having to over invest in sub-par T8 specialized shooting that is extremely situational. Now we are more efficient against everything else where the T8 shooting is mostly wasted. I plan to build a kill team, give them the lord of war/heavy strategism and be ready to teleport them in when facing specific opponents situationally. Otherwise they are still a boat load of bullets so not losing much.

I think the new Kill team Army of renown will open up a lot of options. Not top table options, but unless you were spamming dreadnaughts it didnt really happen anyway. Having the option to ignore str and toughness when army building also opens up a lot of options. You can ignore certain roles when building your army and focus on being more efficient elsewhere. Basically deathwatch IMO have problems with T8, there is just no good way for us to build against it per point. Now we can semi-ignore it and instead build a unit that can 1shot a knight for 3cp.

Camo Cloaks are on a per model basis so only the model with the camo cloak would benefit. Remember wounds are allocated to the model before saves are taken.