First Deatwatch finished...

I was at my local Games Workshop store yesterday a sat there all day building and painting my minis.
I finished my Deathwatch model that's going to the Store Manager meeting for Northern Europe. I hope the Store Managers get White Dwarf to feature the army as I think it will look awesome (and it's probably the only way for me to get a mini featured there).
It was a lot of fun painting him up, and I'm working on an entire army of Deathwatch to fight along side him. So far I've only finished this one model, but I am a few sittings away from finishing up a Watch Master. I have also assembled the Start Collecting box with a 10 man kill team, a Captain and a Dreadnought, and I plan to prime them a little later today. I also hope to assemble some more Deathwatch minis during the day, but I need to get some painting done too to prevent my work area being overflown with primed and half painted minis.

I really liked the way the base of my finished Marine turned out, and I have decided to use that as the standard base for the Deathwatch. I am also considering using this on my Custodes Army as I think it will look good on them too. For other armies I might use the same technique but with other colors, and I think I will start to always put some drybrush on my bases after I have applied technical paint and a wash.

Here are some pics I took at the Games Workshop 40K table of my finished model.

The first real challenge was to get the Deathwatch shoulderguard to look good. There is a lot of letters on there and this creates lots of small areas to get the shade into without pooling too much. I am sure I can still improve on this for future minis, but I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

This is an Ultramarine, but I decided to keep the colors a little muted, so I didn't use pure white on the Ultramarine symbol as I think that would stand out a lot against the dark model. I think I will keep on doing this for future Ultramarines models, and maybe on some other chapters as well.

And here he is from the front. I like his stance, the way he sort of leans forward as he walks, with
the intimidating shotgun in his hands.

The shotgun might be my favorite weapon from the Deathwatch range, and I plan to feature this weapon quite often in my killteams.  There are two on each sprue, so I get some spare to use on the teams I build from regular Space Marine boxes. I will at least make two teams from regular boxes, but I might make more as I have lots of boxes of marines in my storage. I think I have 4 or 5 spare sets of 10 shoulderguards so I might as well use them as I needed the sets to get enough shoulderguards for my terminators. I plan to have 10 terminators, 5 will be from the Space Wolves (from the Storm claw box) and the remaining 5 will be made from a box of Dark Angels Terminator Knights as this box have lots of different weapons. I think I have 3 of these boxes in storage as I wanted to make all the different options that is available in the box (regular Terminators, Command Squad and Knights) and the Terminators will be a mix of the different types. I will make at lest one Knight as I can't field them in my Gatekeepers army and I would like to see how they look.

More Deathwatch

Just as I posted the last post about my beginning Deathwatch army, and how I don't plan to expand it  much, I remembered that I have the Space Wolf part of the Stormclaw boxed set in my storage.
I had originally thought  of selling them, trading them or just give them away to get rid of therm, but after my last post I had sort of an epiphany...
I can join them to my Deathwatch army. That way I avoid my two dislikes with the Wolves of Fenris while still getting the option to use the models.
I have disliked the Wolves because of some of their back story and rules, but now I will use Deathwatch rules and what they did before they joined is of no interest to the Deathwatch...
I also don't need to paint them up as Wolves, and this suits me fine as there are so many purists out there with a meaning of what paints to use to get the correct color on them. Now I will only paint up the one shoulder guard, and the rest will be Deathwatch colors.

If I add the Stormclaw Wolves I get 16 more Deathwatch troopers, increasing the number from 42 to 58. This box have 5 terminators, 10 regular Marines and 1 Captain (being a Space Wolf he is not called Captain though, but Wolf Lord). His name is Krom Dragongaze, and it is said of him that "For every moment of shining heroism in Krom's past, there is an instance of bloody-mindedness or needless barbarism that overshadows it..."
Krom and his Wolf guard lost a battle against Orks on the planet of Alaric Prime, and because of this he's asked his chapter master (the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar) to be allowed to take his remaning warriors and serve with the Deathwatch for a given period of time.

Because of his reputation and the amount of marines, they get to work together instead of being split up to other kill teams. But they sometimes work with others if it is required. They can work as one big group if it is required, or as up to three small kill teams if required.

One of the things that intrigues me a bit is the so called "Black Shields". A Black shield is a Marine that has renounced his chapter and come to join the Deathwatch. The reasons can be many, but if his intentions are pure he will not be sent away. I plan to add several of these warriors, and some of them will come from the Knights of Oblivion. They have renounced their chapter because they want to keep serving the Emperor. The origins of the Knights of Oblivion is not known, some say they are fallen Dark Angels, some that they are a successor chapter gone bad, and some even claim that hey are one of  2 original 20 legions that have been erased from all records. We may never know the truth about this, but they do have a few marines in the Deathwatch fighting the good cause.

I need 5 more Terminator Deathwatch shoulder guards, so I will check what comes in the 10 man box that I have ordered before I get one more upgrade sprue.

The Deathwatch are here...

After reading about the creation of the Deathwatch in "The Beast arises"-series from Black Library the idea of having a "small" force has grown on me.

The last time I was at my Games Workshop store to sit and paint for a day they had this event where you buy one single figure (pick the body parts you want to use from the Deathwatch sprues) and paint him up. There are some rules, as the entire army should have the same bases and so on, but apart from that you are free to do as you like.

I opted for an Ultramarine with a combat shotgun, and gave him a helmet (as I don't think I'm too good with painting skin and hair).  He was quickly assembled and primed, and now I have spent some time painting him up to the best standard I can. 

I put the last color on him yesterday, so tonight I need to do a little clean-up work, wash his combat knife with Nuln Oil, and do his base Astrogranite. Then I will take him with me to the store next time I go there and put on a blue wash and a stone colored (don't remember the name of the paint, Karak Stone maybe) drybrush on the base there.  I will take a picture of him when he is done, and post it here.

I've decided to make a small force and have both as a stand-alone army and as troops to assist my Inquisitors. I would love to field my different Inquisitors with different support troops. I have a very small band of Grey Knights (painted dark blue), I have the Deathwatch and I have the Tempestus Scions. The Tempestus Scions will usually be part of my Astra Militarum army, but they do lend out troops to the Inquisition on request. I have painted up a command squad so far, but I might revisit them to do their pants again if it is in a different color than what I use for my Imperial Guard units. I would like to have as much unity as I can while still showing a distinct difference between the different branches of service and my two different infantry regiments.

The plan for the Deathwatch is to make enough to use as a stand-alone force, but not an entire chapter. I have one Dreadnought, and at the moment he is the only heavy hitter. In the future I might add another, I will see what I have in my boxes of unbuilt or unpainted miniatures and take it from there.

I have one Watch Master to lead my army. He has a trusted captain that leads the troops on missions, that is Captain Artemis, one of the few if not the only named special characters that the Deathwatch range have.

I have two boxes with 10 Deathwach troops in them (one of these are from the Start Collecting box that also included the Dreadnought and Captain Artemis). I also have a box of 10 regular tactical Marines and a box of 10 Primaris Intercessors that I will convert to Deathwatch by using some spare special weapons from the Deathwatch boxes and the shoulder guards from the Deathwatch Upgrade sprues. On these sprues there are also 2 Terminator shoulder guards on each, so I plan to have 5 terminators as well (or maybe 6 if I have a spare one somewhere that I can use). I haven't bought the Terminators yet, as they were out of stock at the Games Workshop store when I was there, so I will get it next time. 

I could probably dig some up from my existing boxes too, but I do love these models, and the fluff for my Gatekeepers explains why I have so many of them. If GW don't have them in the store next time I go, then I will take a box from my storage.