Project: Deathwatch

This summer Fantasy Flight releases the third installment in their 40k RPG series, and they've saved the best for last; Space Marines. Not just Space Marines, but the militant arm of the Ordo Xenos, the Deathwatch. This is actually a smart choice because if a player has a certain hankering to play a specific chapter, like Ultramarines or Space Wolves (or Space Sharks!) they can, since Deathwatch teams are comprised of various chapter troopers.


This fellow is a test trooper I did about a week or so ago. I just dug around in my bits box, apparently from the primer on him, he was fated to be an Ultramarine at one point. Well, he just got re-purposed. Sure, he's an assault sergeant, but that's all right, I put on a standard MkVII backpack, and a stock bolter. The fact he had a power fist was just icing on the cake. Since he was a sgt., he also had a funky targeter on his helmet, which goes to help characterize the DW. Finally was his bolter, which I affixed a scope. Since I'm fresh out of real scopes, I just cut away a tubular piece of sprue and used that as a makeshift scope.


I made this one a member of the Dark Angels, since I already have a big horde of DA, I figured I could always use him as a hero or leader in their ranks. I'm slowly running out of my Rogue Trader era decals, but I figured this guy was characterful enough to deserve one. I'm also about out of the DA veteran sgt. decals, like what you see on his leg here.


My progress so far...

I'm going a slightly different route with these guys too. First of all, I'm making a single squad of ten troopers, I'll do the breakdown below. Add in my dark Angel test fig, I guess that's eleven. The other thing is that I'm not making these primarily, if at all, for 40k itself. They'll be for the RPG of course, which I've also volunteered to run for the guys, since Andy been gracious enough to run Dark Heresy. I also intend to use them in small-scale skirmish battles, but with third party rulesets such as 5150, Flying Lead, and the like.

The other big thing is that I'm going to try to assemble these guys, literally, piece by piece, bit by bit, and I'm going to try to get all of those bits by trading and what-not. Have you heard of the Santa Cruz Warhammer Barter Bucket? Yes, it's the evolution of my old bucket. Anyway, the folks over there host a bits trading community, and I've been relying on trading my parts for Deathwatch ones, or in many cases, just people's generosity.


Believe it or not, these are the ten troopers laid out in all of their pieces. As you can see, I am missing many bits in order to make even a complete model. I'm focusing on the trickier parts first, but there will come a time when I need simple stuff, ahem, like legs.

Here's the team build/breakdown:

• Veteran Sergeant, storm bolter
  
• Librarian, force weapon and bolt pistol
  
• Apothecary, chainsword and bolter
  
• Techmarine, funky harness thingie
  
• Devastator, plasma cannon
  
• x2 Assault Marines, jump packs, power weapon, bolt pistol
  
• x3 Tactical Marines, bolters
  

The tricky bits...

Being RPG figs, I don't know who's going to want to play what, but I do know each member of the ten-man team needs to be wholly individual, even if it's two tactical marines equipped the same, standing right next to each other. That's where these dang heads come into play. Do you know how many different, helmet-less Space Marines heads are out there? Not many if you want to keep variety. Thanks to the new Space Wolf sprues, you can get a bunch of different heads there, but they're all along the same feral vein. I've got a Space Wolf head or two, but I've tried to collect a whole bunch of different heads too. What you see above is quite a selection I've received/traded for so far. Things are definitely taking shape with my Deathwatch, so look for more to come. I also want to thank some peeps so far for the parts so far. I've received a lot of emails, the bucket works great!, so there's more people to thank in the future, it's just that I've already received the bits in the post from the following folks:

Extremis Diabolous

GW Pertinent

Sons of Twilight