Some thoughts on the "new" Deathwing

So I went to the Hampton Gaming Club on the weekend and brought out my never completely finished and much neglected Deathwing Army. They had not seen a table top in close to 6 years and with the new FAQ I thought it would be fun to mess around with them.

Thoughts: Well if you like to roll 1’s for armour saves they are not the army for you! I played two games. One against guard and one against star cannon heavy eldar. In those games I have to say that my dice were fairly awful and I think I still played all right. The first game was called a draw because of time and game two was a win to me but only by the skin of my teeth. (I had two termies, a landspeeder and a drop pod left on the board). Land speeder you may ask? Hey, it was exactly the right points I needed to fill the hole.

I ran a mostly foot list with an assault cannon speeder and a drop pod with venerable dread. The foot part of my list was 5 squads lead by Billal and a Chappie in Terminator armour. My squads had one lightning claw each. Two had 1 thunder hammer/ storm shield each and of the five: three had cyclone missile launchers and two had assault cannons.

The new FAQ’s definitely give Deathwing some much needed bite. The change in cyclone missile launchers to firing two krak or frag rockets a turn (as well as storm bolters) would have radically changed how the army worked. Add the regular space marine storm shield rules and DW suddenly get mighty aggressive mighty fast. While I was only running two storm shields out of 5 squads their value immediately became apparent when I faced star cannon spam in my 2nd game. Having 1 3+ inv save a turn is really good. Don’t know if I would go with more than 1 or two in a generalist squad as it would really bite into the ranged effectiveness of a squad that should generally avoid HTH combat.

Cyclone Missles Launchers having two shots was key in many points in the games I played. I was able to kill swathes of guardsmen with frag grenades or nuke transports from afar with krak rockets (and then frag the occupants the next turn as they walked up). Loosing the targeter arm on the cyclone thus adding two more storm bolter shots was really nice as I will probably be loosing a few shots to new thunder hammer arms instead of storm bolter arms.

I am glad that I did have two assault cannons in the list as they were invaluable at ripping into big gribblies and light vehicles. I haven’t used rending in ages and all in all I do not mind how it works in 5th.

There are lots of ideas on how to kit out Billal. Personally, I ran the man with lightning claws and despite poor rolling, he still generally got the job done.

All in all I like the “new” deathwing. It really brings sticks to the old saying “Always outnumbered. Never Outgunned.” Just make sure you bring lady luck (or that you can roll average because rolling badly will punish worse than anything). I do like the idea of lots of elite terminators running rampant all over the place. The more I think about it… hmmm… Maybe I will finish them up some time for an event soon. The question is; do I run a land raider in this era of melta gun madness?

Til Next Time…