Deathwatch Leaders

I’ve finally given these guys a touch up, and minus their final protective varnish coat I’m happy to call this army finished (finally!). These are my deathwatch space marines – played using the Space Marine codex, the army consists of:

• Pedro Kantor
• Librarian
• 25 Sternguard (2×10 with meltagun, heavy flamer, powerfist, 1×5 with 2 heavy bolters)
• 2×5 Scouts with sniper rifles and missile launcher (obligatory troops choices, as Inquisitorial troops)
• 5 Scout bikers (as more Inquisitorial troops)

I’ve included a gallery of the entire army (generally front/side shots of everything), but here’s some comments as well:

10 out of 25 Deathwatch Marines

Each marine as a different chapter pad, since Deathwatch marines are only on loan from their parent space marine chapters. There’s a couple of well-known ones (Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Raven Guard in the above picture), the rest are generally made up ones. Kantor is from the Crimson Fists, of course, and the Librarian is from the Salamanders.

Vrooom!

All the scouts-as-inquisitorial-troops are based on the Space Marine Scout bodies, to make them easily identifiable as scouts during the game. I’ve replaced their heads with Imperial Guard Cadian helmets though, to make them more human-like (I really don’t like the chiseled-jaw scout heads anyway). The bikers were included since I really like these models.

Heavy Bolter Sternguard?!?

These guys are probably my favourites out of all the sternguard, since they’re the most “Deathwatch-y” – heavy bolters and funky boltgun ammo are what make Deathwatch, Deathwatch. It’s not the most cost-effective choice in the game (why would you trade boltguns with special ammo for heavy bolters for +5 points?), but they’re fluffy so they stay in.

If I were to expand this army to more than 1500pts, I’d move the heavy bolters to an all heavy bolter devastator squad and put more propper sternguard in, but I don’t play >1500pt games right now and I also don’t have any more space in the transport case these guys have. So, no plans for expansion any time soon.

A final note – yes, I’ve had these guys done for ages, except for the final washes I just recently gave them to dull down the metals and give them some shading. The drop pod picture in the gallery below is from all the way back in September last year…