Duke Danse Macabre

in honesty there are loads, I would advise just going on Etsy or Google searching 40k conversion parts, there’s that many companies like anvil etc it’s hard to list there there’s those like pop goes the monkey and then allot more on Etsy like renown wargaming. just to be clear these companies make parts that work with 40k but are not reprints or recasts, I only use GW and FW parts myself due to wanting to be able to take models to any event but I do pay for name plates from a site called deadly print studios which do great weapons effects if that’s the kind of thing you like. Currently I’m trying to build another Corvus but with a sound board and mini digger built into it so it can vent smoke from its wing turbines when hovering.

Sadly deathwatch are incredibly inconsistent between editions regarding unit weapons, load outs, what models can join what squads and everything in between. I would highly recommend sticking to basic units, intercessors, terminators, veterans with standard load out until they have their own supplement for this edition or your likely to get stung by DW not having access or only being able to take the unit in a certain format which requires models you don’t have. Ignore any multi unit kill team rules when considering what to buy, ignore, bikes, vanguard vets, old mk tanks like rhinos, Razorbacks other than landraider and the corvus flyer, only put stock int he basic hq choices and don’t bank on ancients or command squads, also only look at redemptor dreads. Some of these units may be fine but they are under threat and the knife always cuts deeper into the Deathwatch with each edition.

Great work and some great work on those heads/ faces. Really hard to pull off. good work on the salamander as well, I’m currently trying to paint a bare head for one and hard to pull off Vulcan black well. like the little scratch highlights, little heavy on the cloak, your also having the same issue I used to with text when writing, personally I find army painter psycho brushes really help with this. love the work you have done highlighting the weapons, really next level effort adding the highlights to the edges. great work on the basing as well, far too many people skip this step. one thing I’ve noticed is on your silver left arms you’ve not painted the armoured joint tubing and it makes it look a little flat and it would add allot with that little detail. sorry if I’m telling you how to suck eggs, I just like receiving useful feedback myself and try to do the same. great work though mate, keep it up.

I just hope we get some clarification soon because it’s really limiting any purchases or hobby plans currently. I just want to know what’s happening with kill teams and mixed squads. live got all mine painted with squad markings but really throws a spanner in the works of the entire force if they no longer work that way and will mean days of repainting at minimum. just wish they would pull the bandaid off at this point, just so we know if armies are still valid, I’ve got 18 10 man kill teams and 12 10 man specialist squads, eg vanguard vets, inceptors, terminators etc. Roughly 50% is painted but if my shotguns and storm bolter/ storm shield squads are now elite vanguard or have been squatted it is a massive issue.

Great to see someone putting allot of thought and planning into their fortress layout. I’m largely the same and though time consuming is very satisfying. The old force layout for deathwatch needs to be taken with many pinches of salt. problem is that though DW companies are half strength Demi companies in nature due to being elite and multiple watch fortress across the imperium each with their own master is that the force didn’t account for Primaris and as they can’t mix squad need to be kept separate for easy organisation purposes. I eventually settled on 8 companies, 4 of each with each company having 50 marines including 30 troop, Captain, champion, banner and 2 Lieutenant plus 5 keepers which are either company command squad or Bladeguard in Primaris companies for 60 total. I understand the view DW are meant to have all the toys and access to all types of vehicle pretty much with few exceptions like the nephilim jet fighter, etc. That said I think you may of gotten a little shopping happy with your armour. You don’t need more transports than your force needs to carry all their troops, what I find helps is splitting up the companies to who has what and working out what they need before tallying, yes you will have plenty of main line battle tanks but you don’t need 25 rhinos, 10 Razorbacks and 25 landraiders. That’s 550 marines transported without any air support. Also terminator suits are still rare and should be kept in lower numbers, most chapters can’t field a company so 100+ is more than enough. With bikes give thought to if your marines are going to be able to just jump on a bike from their vet squad or into a centurion suit, if not you have more than 1000 marines and as DW are meant to be below chapter strength to make up for their multiple Demi chapters may be a little much. Same with pilots, most tanks need 2 or 3, with speeders and flyers you have about 300+ marines as crew, that’s not including the keepers who typically command the star ships, act as guards and are responsible for retrieval of their battle brothers after a fight. I know you give the breakdown later on for companies but it’s not entirely clear which are crewing what and what’s firstborn etc. It may be worth trying to put them into their individual builds as their will be some differentiation. One thing I have noticed as well is your power armour being very old mark. now this is fine for lore reasons and if you just love it but I wanted to point out that DW use more advance power armour which is MK8 errant armour, some chose to wear their old armour of course but that’s the norm. Its really cool seeing you take into account the local Ordo Xenos Inquisitor as well, maybe even a kill marine in his retinue. ;) I wanted to suggest if interested a rogue trader as well, many DW kill marines travel by passage on traders ships and other avenues so could be cool. I mention Keepers allot but because DW are not true chapters they don’t have a full reclusim or librarus and many other things so those duties typically fall to the keepers. There’s a youtuber called grimdarknarriator who does a great series on DW I suggest checking out. Apothcaries are huge to DW as if they fail to recover fallen brother geneseed for return the chapters tend to withhold applicants. I understand 2 Lieutenants feels like overkill for a small company, I excused this as not every one of mine has their out librarian or chaplain. The difference with watchmasters and keepers are keepers remove their clavis before battle, due to this and the keepers doings all the super secret odd jobs they sit well as honour guard command and Bladeguard squads. Im almost finished my first full company, kept getting distracted by painting other bits and pieces of the force but I’ll update my Plog soon, if you want I’ll post the company break down and fortress structure ive used, don’t want to post without asking as it’s a huge bit of text.

We can still compete even at high levels but we have to think in terms of ablative wound units, rerolling 1’s on key unit choices, use of our deep striking and our first born. Due to vet unit choices they will be allot stronger especially if the free SS rumour holds true. personally I wouldn’t worry too much and would look heavily at our strongest areas and where we have saved the most points once we know more.

The forums seemed to of died allot in recent years, I’m not sure why but now I only check back every month or so and don’t bother updating the Plog as I was the only person talking most the time. that said sorr6 for the slow reply but as said I’m rarely here these days for the above mentioned reasons. Get a couple of centurion kits and Mag them and your laughing. The assault centurion variant is better but 6 Melta rounds, a hail of hurricane Bolters,2+ 4 wound toughness 5 and can comfortably kill a dread in a single round of combat, yes you pay 75 points more for 3 over eradicators and you don’t have core for buffs but you also don’t take minuses and means you don’t need to invest points into baby sitting or buffing them. I have a couple of Razorbacks and I do rate them but they rarely live with anti tank what it is now. they are better with plasma over assault canons as you don’t lack anti infantry fire power but are good at keeping your guys alive long enough for them to do the damage they need. If you get them though I heavily advise against gluing the top hatch on, keep it loose so you can swap out for a rhino top door. Best transports are still Corvus if using the expensive strat but can be really potent and the assault drill with a 10 man squad with infernus heavy Bolters at the ready. A Melta tank that deep strikes, is as tough as a landraider and can fight will combined with a double centurion deepstrike turn 2 is very much a hammer and anvil move with the added bonus of turn 3 getting out and really starting to bring the pain as they are saturated by targets. as a rule of thumb though for first born they do better when combined with a transport, not because they are softer but because they often have more utility, cost more and have a cheaper wide range of transports. one option you could also explore is using the heresy Scorpius tank top on a razorback (cheaper and much less to paint) to pull your enemy towards you and just bunker down till you are ready to drop in and strike where you want, with our psychic lore making units untargetable but stagger characters or other units can often make the enemy move close and pull them out of formation where you can exploit the openings. This is where you have the advantage because with the transports, flyers, deep striking, jump infantry,bikes and teleport homers you can be where you want when you want. Have you gave much more thought to the army you are working towards, I always think aim for 1800 points without characters and after that is just other options. 3 x 10 man kill teams with gear sets me back 895, add 2 corvus and 2 Razorbacks and it’s 1505, just as an example it shouldn’t take long and start planning it will be much easier to star5 getting bits done.

To be honest the first born in DW are the strongest in my optician and offer the most flexibility. you want combat, you have vanguard vets, you want shooting you have have storm Bolters and Frag cannons out the wazoo, you need anti tank and your considering erradicators, take assault centurions, they don’t need to be baby sat, do as much damage but will also charge in and smash face not withstanding their better armour, wounds and small arms for a small difference in points. I have my DW designed and built into 6 companies, I’m a little over the top and it’s a work in progress as painting takes forever but I have 3 companies of firstborn and 3 Primaris so I have the flexibility but when it comes to base Primaris you have better options elsewhere allot of the time. DW do have a golden ability to mix squads to help negate damage on the models we want to keep alive which do make them viable still but for flavour and flexibility firstborn are better kitted and more everything. Just don’t buy into the only army of renown is the way to win. you learn the army well and you will still win, I have a roughly 90% win rate and I use Corvus’s because I like them and that’s agains tau, Eldar, chaos and necrons. Don’t get bogged down too much with the current rules shifting every 5 minutes, pick something you like and really have a drive to do as you will need that to see it to completion and it will be that much more satisfying for it. If your thinking first born think what you want and what the army needs to function and build around those key areas else wise your likely to get bogged down with units that don’t see play and sit on your to do list judging you. model wise if you aim for 10 jump infantry, 20 regular, 10 terminators all with gear without transports your already in the 1300 point range, start there and see where you go.

If you upload it to your image folder you can use the attach image option at the bottom of the text box you type in but in the bottom right hand side switch the option to insert image by url. I don’t like it either and I find it temperamental at best, gave up on my last update after 4 attempts, I may get back around to it but with just maybe 1 or 2 if lucky people feeding back I’ve been considering dropping the whole thing and just posting to fb. Try the Warhammer 40k Deathwatch page, even if the mods are more heavy handed than I like I can’t be bothered to run the page again. Lol

Still trying to figure out how on tablet. To confirm when you say embed you mean that the picture will visibly show in the post and not just provide a redirection link or something which must be opened? I just can’t seem to find a way to do it but it may be the huge browser cache build up I need to clear after changing a few things so it is possible it just not displaying correctly through the browser as safari is very temperamental.

I need to ask is it possible to show pictures imbedded in posts again rather than linking the gallery and jumping back and forth? Just really clunky and takes allot away from plots and written bar reps.

Glad to see everyone back, great work migrating the site guys. We all appreciate the effort and I’m sure looking forward Soto seeing if there are any new cool features. Will admit though in terms of look the old version did look better, in my opinion. one thing I have already noticed is the increase in file size attachments which makes me very excited to show off some projects.

ablative wounds in a Camo cloaked sniper squad which can combat squad and counts as troop. It has it uses, it just depends on how your force synergises for it to be useful. Xenos are in a strong place right now where as all the marine toys have been really good for killing other marines, not a bad thing but with nids doing well, all form of eldar being hot and tau the bane of armour everywhere Xenos are solid right now, see how orks shape up and it could be a good fight. Marines will likely get a points reduction in next update to tide us over till 10th or the next update, whichever is first.

Cheers, really enjoyed doing him, just a shame I can’t go too nuts bits wise unless I can keep the theme. Think I need to invest in some conversion fodder. Lol Just painting Frag cannons now… not fun. :(