What Codex Deathwatch should look like

So the new overkill board game and all the Death Watch and Genestealer Cult Minis has a lot of people talking about possible 40k rules and releases. There is some debate over what a Death Watch army should be, or even if they need a codex.

I wrote a while back HOW you can actually play DW right now using Codex SM (CHECK IT OUT! Seriously a great way to do it), but still, it isn't an exact fit. Do they need a full codex? Tough. Before I sat down to write this I would have said "A supplement is fine" but then I really did fill out a Force Org. Maybe a smaller codex, like Imperial Knights...

SO lets do a break down (all links are to Lexicanum)

HQ-

Epistolary- The must have choice. The fluffiest of all the HQ Choices for the Army. Give access to some pretty wicked psychic relics and he will feel like he is a super Librarian, as it should be.

Watch Captain- Should have the Stat-line of a Chapter Master and any relics not specifically for buffing a psyker should make him a Monstrous Creature killing BEAST.

Chaplain- Standard Fair to round out the HQ choice. Maybe he gives "Preferred Enemy" versus all Xenos races?

Elites-

Keeper Squad- These guys are your Veterans amongst Veterans. They have all taken the Oath of the Long Vigil and will be with the Deathwatch until DEATH. These guys should be a CC oriented squad in the army, pretty much working like and feeling like a Vanguard Veteran Squad. Maybe they come with Preferred Enemy: Xenos without having to include a chaplain or warlord trait. Maybe the true grit type rule below.

1st Company Veterans- These are the Terminators. They should work more akin to Wolf Guard or Death Wing terminators, allowing you to mix and match Shooty and Assault. Possibly give them special ammo like Sternguard/Kill Teams. Maybe Tartaros Armour?

Tech Marine- Upgradable to a Forgemaster perhaps, for a boosted stat-line. Accees to some crazy weapons, like a conversion beamer. No Servitors though.

Champion- Like the 30k champions or Space Wolves Lone Wolves, except give this guy Ind Character so he can also join squads. Maybe better to think of him as a mix of a Lone Wolf and an Emperor's Champion. Just a CC beast, who can go on his own or in a squad (eternal warrior mayhaps?) with some sort of spiffy strike at I AP2 sword. Fearless for sure.

Troops-

Kill Teams- Essentially Sternguard Veterans. Special Issue ammo. Access to some pretty spiffy special weapon upgrades. Sergeant Upgradable to a ML 1 Librarian. Apothecary optional for squad as well, to get some FNP goodness.

Fast Attack-

Assault Team- A kill team with CC weapons and Jump Packs. I would say jump packs are NOT removable in this case.

Bike Squad- A kill team on bikes. Until OVERWATCH dropped, I wouldn't have even included this, but apparently they use them still. Maybe make a homing beacon standard on them.

Kill Marine- A single marine with Infiltrate, Scout and Stealth or Shrouded, and ability to buy a Teleport Homer or Locator beacon. Not an Independent Character. Fearless and the "True Grit" rule I listed below.

Drop Pods, Rhinos, Razorbacks- Standard fare. Maybe be able to get overcharged engines?

Heavy Support

Dreadnoughts- Since the DW rely on quick strikes, this is one of the heaviest things in their arsenal, thus the spot of Heavy Support vice Elites. Give it the Venerable rule automatically, and maybe some cool wargear, such as the Blood Angels Frag Cannon and Conversion Beamers.

Centurions- Since this is something all Space Marines are trained in as part of their vehicle training, it makes sense that the Death Watch would know how to use it. And they could easily have need of it, employing the heavy armour in lieu of vehicles.Maybe allow them to mix assault and devastator cents. Give their hurricane bolters special issue ammo.

Land Raiders- One of the few vehicles they would use, for storming only the most fortified of Xenos strongholds or to match the power of bio-titans.

Storm Raven Gunships- The instertion methods of choice probably. Small, fast and heavily armed.  Perfect for a single kill team. Maybe make it available as a dedicated transport? The fact it can carry a dread too is a big boon in this case.

Some additional concepts that would fit...

LOW
Chapter Master Special Character- Something new. I think it would be a really cool opportunity to choose as offbeat Chapter, like Exorcists, Howling Griffons or Star Phantoms, or something as to yet undefined in the fluff that much.

Formations-
Other than the named Kill Teams from Overwatch...

DW Insertion Force- Storm Raven, Dread, Kill Team. Benefits: Turn 1 Arrival, can't be intercepted at a min.

DW Relic Guardians- Chaplain, Champion, Keeper Squads- Ob Sec like in the new Daemon Formation, where they can hold an objective even if them move off of it. Maybe some cool charge bonus when charging units on/holding objectives.

Some special upgrades
Black Shield- An option for a character. Gives them Crusader and Relentless maybe, as they have something to atone for?
Long Vigil- I am torn between saying this should just be like upgrading to a Vet Sarge and something more impressive. Maybe it is a table you roll on to see what skill they have acquired on their extended watch.
Suspensors- Makes a model with a Heavy Weapon Relentless.
Stummers- Grants a unit Stealth or Shrouded and Move Through Cover
True Grit- bring this back. Basically, allows them to assault after firing rapid fire.

As for a Detachment or Decurion style detachment, I am not. Best I can come up with is as I type this, so here we go

Death Watch Strike Force

Command- Captain, Librarian, Chaplain

Core- 3 x Kill teams

Auxilary- DW Armoured Det- Techmarine and 1-3 of LR, Dread
Auxilary- Boarding Force- 1-3 Terminators, 0-1 Centurions
Auxilary- Assault Force- 2 x Assault, 1 x Bike, 0-2 Storm Ravens

Can't think of more off the top of my head. Any ideas, post in the comments!

"WHY NO INQUISITORS?" You ask. Well simple. You don't need to include them in seventh. With multiple detachments making up a battleforged army, and codex inquisition having a SINGLE Inquisitor being its own detachment, you can just easily do that. There is no need to clutter DW with yet another set of Inquisitor rules.

Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought

A completed Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought. Nothing too special, though I did add the banner from an Ironclad Dreadnought kit. The iconography on it signifies the rank of Epistolary (as I assume only an Epistolary would warrant a dreadnought). I named him "Zoroaster". Stole the name from a TV show (comment if you know which one!). He will be going to Adepticon for use in a certain game. Not sure how much battle he will see outside of that. Let us hope dreads improve in the future.

Humour: 30k Presidential Campaign Posters Part 2

In light of Super Tuesday, I thought I'd make a few more and share them.

If you missed part 1, click here! (Incl the Emperor, Malcador, Horus, Angron, Russ and more)

Just made 4 more Presidential posters, so you can back the candidate that truly represents you this season

Humour: 30k Campaign Posters

Tired of all the politics this election season? Don't know who to vote for? No candidate really represents you? Well maybe you can find your chosen leader here!

Future of the game of 40k

Recently on the Spikey Bits Hobbies group on facebook (Join! Bring Hobby Back!) I ran a poll to determine the "Future" of the Warhammer 40,000 landscape as it stands as a game. Oh, and if you are creeped out by the banner, I ran some AoS images through Google's Deep Dream to get it...

"IF (THE BIGGEST IF EVER) 40k switched to an AoS (Age of Sigmar) style system, more skirmish based with no points, no force org and downloadable core rules/ datasheets which of the following would you do? (Choose all that apply)"

This was left story/fluff neutral, which may not be "Fair" but it is too hard to incorporate into the poll. A lot of people quit fantasy not because of the rules of AoS, but the fact that the Old World went the way of Alderaan. So if I entered fluff into this poll, alot of people may think the same thing, but it could also be that a shift in the 40k world could, however unlikely, lead to something cooler and even more liked by the fanbase. Do to this uncertainty, rules were the pure focus of my question.

As well, this poll is not scientific at all. I had no control over the demographics for one, so this may be a relatively skewed data set (and probably is since it is comprised solely of spikey bitsers. Bitzerkers?). This poll on Dakka or BoLS would likely be VERY different. Futhermore, I have no data on what people ALREADY play and what they would just continue. Would people pick up infinity, or are people already playing it? Would people who don't play 7th now START 40k again with a change to AoS? These are simply things I couldn't collect in a FB poll. Maybe a well developed surveymonkey poll would give us this information, but that is beyond my scope for now.

Any way, the choices and results were:

Play 7th Edition- 155
Play the new AoS style of 40k- 53
Wait for and Play a community developed 8th Edition- 11
Play 30k- 66
Play 6th Edition- 6
Play 3rd/4th/5th Edition- 12
Play RT/2nd Edition- 5
Play Killteams- 22
Play another Sci-Fi/Fantasy game (X-wing, Armada, Warmahordes, Infinity, Specialist Games, etc)- 34
Play Historical Wargames (Black Powder, Bolt Action, FoW, Team Yankee, P&S, etc.)- 10
Stop playing games and just collect models- 14
Quit the hobby all together- 6

Total Responses- 394
Total Respondent- 255
Avg Responses per Respondent ~ 1.55

So let me give you some statistical breakdown (and if there is any stat missing, feel free to comment and I will try and get it for you. I have all the data still)

First and foremost I want to bring attention to the relatively low number of rage quitters. You always see a lot of inflammatory language online that if 40k went the way of AoS, so many people would just be done. Here only 20 people are stopping playing, which is ~8% of respondents, and only 6 of them are quitting all together, for <2% of the respondents.

Next thing I want to draw attention to is the STRENGTH of 7th edition. Coming in with a whopping 155 votes, it made of 39% of the responses and was selected by 60% of the respondents. And even then 30k did better than the AoS version of 40k, getting ~17% of the vote by 25% of the respondents. Meanwhile the AoS version got only 13% with 21% of the respondents selecting it. What makes this even more grim, is that combining Rogue Trader, 2md, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th editions gets up to 14% with 22% of the respondents, so all the old stuff just edges out over the new "hotness" that GW would be pushing. Then to build off the first comments of people quitting and jumping ship, switching to other Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Historicals ALL combined only amounts to 11% of the vote by 17% of the respondents. So all this "haters" may not really be out there.

Now since people were allowed to choose multiple options, it is important to look at how some of these stats doubled up.
First of all, I was interested in how many people would continue to play 7th edition and play the new AoS style of 40k as laid out in the poll question. This totaled up to only 14 people, which is 5% of the total respondents. More importantly it is only 9% of the people who selected 7th edition yet a whopping 26% of the people who selected AoS 40k!

So with these numbers in mind, I broke it down a little more to start trying to draw some conclusions. Sorting out the 3 majors "winners" of the poll, I found that 98 people voted just for 7th, 27 just for AoS 40k and 21 just for 30k. This leads to ~ 38%, 11% and 8% of the respondents respectively, and 63%, 50% and 32% of their playerbases respectively. Furthmore, I took a look at the people who would play 7th and 30k, and got 31 votes, which is 12% of respondents, 20% of the people who answered 7th and 47% of the people who responded to 30k. I also noticed there were a number of people who answered AoS 40k and 30k, but not 7th, and found that to be 10 votes, so almost 4% of respondents, but more significantly 15% of the 30k votes and 19% of the AoS votes. Lastly, the people who said they would play all 3 were numbered only 6, leading to 2% of respondents total, and about 4% of 7th players, 9% of 30k players and 11% of the AoS 40k players.

So what do all these numbers mean? Well due to the scientific inaccuracy of the poll they may mean diddly squat. BUT if you can draw conclusions, this is what I would take away from it
1- Most gamers are VERY satisfied with the rules of 7th Edition, and if they don't like the lack of balance, they seemed to have switched to 30k. This bodes well for the core rules IMO. It means a simplification is not called for and in general the game is very playable and enjoyable. And unlike WHFB, it seems the need for an updated community edition, like the 9th age, isn't needed or wanted. I am sure some one would put out some comprehensive update/leveling factor for certain armies. Like if 40k got sigmarized tomorrow, I Sisters of Battle and Blood Angels each instantly spring to mind as needing some fixing.
2- Sigmarization of a game is VERY polarizing. You are either for it or against it. And more people seem to be against it rather than for it. And those that are for it, over 50% of them would also play something else! Whereas the 7th ed players, only 37% would include something else (and remember, 20% of them play 30k as well, so really only 17% would depart from 7th ed rules).
3- For all the kicking and screaming you may see of jumping ship, it seems most people will just contently play 7th edition or some derivative of it (30k, kill teams) or an older edition (unsurprising that 6th is so low, since it really isn't that different from 7th).

Now, who knows what will happen. Judging by this poll and an inability to have a game-changing financial report, I hope GW does not change to a Sigmarized version of 40k. I wouldn't mind some free rules, but the construct of points and force org really helps define the game, and I don't think it needs to be more skirmish based than it already is. And it seems like most people agree.