Deathwatch Kill-Team: Name Those Battle Brothers!

The first five Deathwatch troopers are done of my big batch. I have no idea how I chose these five, because they're not a squad by themselves, they're actually from all three kill-teams I had devised in the original planning. These guys were a blast to paint up, but the pics didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, the Black Templar for instance looks way too shiny when in person he's really not. I was going for a semi-gloss look to the armor however.

From the title of the post you might be wondering how we're going to name these guys. I stole this idea form the Sons of Taurus blog (which is really cool and should be checked out for sure) and I thought I'd try it here. SoT invited readers to name members of his Traitor Guard army, I got to name the Rough Rider tramplemaster "Gyro", which was cool.

Well, let's do the same kind of thing here, but there's a slight catch. You have to have had, or currently have, an army of the Battle Brother's particular chapter to name him. For instance, if you've got a Black Templar army, ahem BJ, you'd have first shot at naming the above Black Templar. If this is too restrictive, we'll just open it up to whoever wants to name a guy, but chapter holders get first dibs. Just leave a comment below, say who you are, what chapter you represent on the tabletop, and what the Battle Brother's new name is going to be. It can be whatever you want as like as it sounds, you know, stalwart defending soldier of the vast dominion of man, kind of name, no "Sgt. McFluffy McFlufferson" or whatever.


Apothecary: Ultramarine


Tactical Marine: Ultramarine


Tactical Marine: Salamander


Tactical Marine: Blood Angel Brother Malach


Tactical Marine: Black Templar


The shoulder pads are what make a Deathwatch team so fun, and even though everyone has the same color armor, you still get lots of variety here. As you can see, I'm sticking to chapters whose decals I have access to, I'm not feeling up to free-handing this stuff. This does mean I'll miss out some of the more flavorful chapter icons, like Space Sharks!


Not only did I try to individualize them by shoulder pads, but I also tried to paint each Battle Brother's gear in different and unique ways. Left to right up top; the Blood Angel has a short sword in a red scabbard, the Ultramarine has leather pouches and a holster, but the Salamander has green pouches, an assortment of grenades, and a Kroot pistol which I'm passing off as some kind of dueling laspistol trophy from some past campaign.


I only had a single apothecary backpack, nothing else, so I had to get creative for the rest of the medic's (left) accoutrements. An ammo missile pack, painted up to match the pack, came out looking not half bad and can certainly pass off as syringes and the like.

For the Black Templar (right) I went with white gear to match his shoulder pad. I really like the way these turned out too, it's a great contrast to the black armor, yet is so simple to pull off. The combat knife is from second edition, and the backpack is from the Games Day Emperor's Champion model that came out a while back.


Here's a shot of all seven Deathwatch members so far. As you can see, in addition to individualized gear, I also mixed of the colors of the boltguns for each trooper as well to further each trooper's distinction. This pic includes the most recent five I just painted up, Brother Elyas for the upcoming RPG, and my original test model. It's doubtful these guys will actually see action in an 'official' game of 40k. I intend to use them as PC avatars in upcoming games of Deathwatch, as well as "impossible odds" type special forces scenarios using the 5150 rules or the like. I still have my copy of Inquisitor as well, maybe dust those off a bit as well. By the way, go to the Specialist Games section of GW, and those Inquisitor rules are free!