The Corvus Blackstar Swoops In For Warhammer 40,000 & The Deathwatch
August 20, 2016 by brennon
The world of Warhammer 40,000 gets even more reinforcements for the Deathwatch as Games Workshop show off new units and more for the army. We kick things off with the swooping form of the Corvus Blackstar...
So what's the background of this flyer?
"Far, far more advanced than the other Imperial craft which it resembles, the Corvus Blackstar is truly worthy of ferrying a Deathwatch Kill Team to their brutal mission. Optimised for alien hunting, surprisingly agile, its heavy weapons scream death from the skies as it descends toward its mission-critical targets.
Halo-launchers fan out and blur the Corvus Blackstar’s outline as the twin hatches slam open, pouring out its cargo of specialist Deathwatch from within to charge directly into the fray."
So there you have it. It sounds like a rather dangerous piece of technology. It looks a little bit like a flying brick but I guess with the Space Marines nothing was ever going to look slick.
Deathwatch Forces Grow
Additionally there are plenty of other unit kits being put together like the Deathwatch Terminators...
As with most of the kits that you're seeing here from Games Workshop these are existing units that have had upgrade sprues added to them so you get that Deathwatch spin to proceedings.
We also have these rather awesome looking Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans.
One of the things that is an immediate draw for the Deathwatch, at least from a painting perspective, is that you have a very simple scheme to work with which can then be augmented and tweaked with additional detail due to the Inter-Chapter of them as a fighting force.
You'd have plenty of interesting things to do once you'd got bored of painting Ultramarine insignia.
Lastly for the units, although you can dive into all sorts on their webstore we have the Kill Team themselves.
Once again these are a great looking squad and I like that they're actually embracing some of the weapons of their enemies against the oncoming horde. Necron-style blade anyone?
Deathwatch Leaders
Of course with all of these new troops you're going to need someone to lead them into the fighting. You could start things off with the Deathwatch Librarian in Terminator Armour...
Maybe you want to stay away from the lure of psychic power. It can be a double-edged sword after all. See what you make of the Watch Master here too.
We wrap things up on the character front with the Deathwatch Chaplain. I really like what they've been doing for the other characters but this one just doesn't seem to cut the mustard.
I like the shoulder armour and the overall look - Chaplains are very cool - but the helmet just doesn't look right. Something about the design of it seems a little comical.
Either way I reckon you've got some good miniatures to start building a Deathwatch army now.
Will you be giving this army a go?
"...you have a very simple scheme to work with which can then be augmented and tweaked with additional detail due to the Inter-Chapter of them as a fighting force"
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Shame they barely modded the blood angel terminator librarian and chaplain to be death watch, the flyer looks ok, if somewhat kitbashed rather than designed to look like that, think they got a bit lazy with the copy and paste on the old cad program to be honest.
Of this weeks releases its only the kill team & watch master i really like the look of
Also if i were to get one of the flyers, i would be hard pressed to not name it the “belli infinity”, as it would be to much fun pissing of GW managers with that one on an armies on parade board 😛
You could put the name on one of huge aerodynamic, flat, forward-facing panels 🙂
Aerodynamics is heresy it bludgeons its way through the sky by the emperors will alone!
I’m 50% impressed with the Death Watch so far, in that they have realised a few nice minis and the boxed set with the Eldar was pretty decent value as GW goes. As I have said before the re-boxings with the additional sprue is in my opinion little more than GW trying to shift old stock in a new package. Lazy.
Except in this case it’s Space Marines which I don’t think GW struggles to sell. I also don’t think it’s lazy, I think it’s generating interest. Packaging up the existing marine kits into Deathwatch Marines by just adding a bits sprue gives them a much more marketable product to sell than the sprues alone and one that is more accessible – you get all the components you need in one box. It has also (IMO) made them cheaper than they would have otherwise been because the markup on the Deathwatch Marines is only a couple of quid, they’d have charged… Read more »
Pretty much all of the Deathwatch releases are existing releases with an additional deathwatch bits sprue. I think the flier and the Watchmaster are the only originals, everything else is an existing kit + deathwatch parts
Maybe the Kill Team as well.
they are the old models with an upgrade sprue so….
I thought the Chaplain was the best thing there, the rest of it looks pretty standard to me other than a couple of weapons.
Chaplin does come with another head option, well it did before it joined the watch atleast
Yes, I never liked that chaplain either. If I was going to collect a Deathwatch force, I’d use the far superior Dark Angels chaplain. But that’s the beauty of Deathwatch as a concept, you can literally make an army using all of your favourite space marine minis just by swapping a few pads. Some of it might take a bit of cutting ( that’s why they’ve used the Blood Angels terminator librarian. The generic one doesn’t have a separate left shoulder pad which can be easily swapped) however, it’s not that hard a job to hack off a shoulder pad.… Read more »
No Stormcloud Attack rules 🙁
That flyer looks a lot like drop ship from Aliens.
It’s superficially similar. The Aliens dropship had ‘wings’ which folded into the body completely in flight and a body which tapered to a single tail. Perhaps a case of function dictating form?
more like ctrl + c, ctrl + v on all the space marine fliers distinctive parts added to a hexagon
I like the flyer. In fact I really like the flyer!
I’m sort of thinking the same.
Reminds me a bit of thunderbird 2 which is good because thunderbird 2 is my favourite. 🙂
When I saw ‘Corvus’ and the flyer together my heart sank. For a moment I thought Corvus Belli had radically lowered their standards.
Or even worse, that they went to the dark side 😛
What model is the watch master based on? Presumably it is a conversion of an existing figure and not a new sculpt?
The watch master is a new sculpt. Reading this news item doesn’t give you much of a clue to be honest though. The Watch Master is a brand new mono-pose character. The Kill Team Veterans are a new kit and is the same kit contained in Death Masque. The Corvus Blackstar flyer is also new. Everything else is a repackage of existing kits with added upgrade sprues. Enough sprues to upgrade the whole kit, which will, in many cases give you lots of spare parts left over. The terminators for example, gives you 3 upgrade sprues so that you have… Read more »
Thanks @erastus – I never had a problem with GW selling upgraded kits, I just wanted them to make the upgrade sprue available separately, but buying a box and having loads of spare parts does have a certain appeal!
I like the Kill Team Vets kit a lot – from what I’ve seen in the photos (i.e. haven’t looked too closely), and like the Watch Master too. I don’t like the flier, but I don’t like many of the 40K fliers so that’s not a surprise…
I do wonder if 40k has become it’s own worst enemy by its popularity. Introduction of vibrant sculpts such as some of those recently done for AoS has got to be impossible for 40k without a range spanning change. These recent releases along with many others have fallen foul of having to carry the common theme and style of models already within an army. The genestealers hybrids and other variants in the recently released box set were lovely sculpts and just go to show what the 40k range could become. There are other minis and forces similar to them out… Read more »
@noyjatat – can you give an example of what you’d like to see done to one (or more) of the existing ranges? I think you may have a point, but would be interested to see what you’d like to see done differently.
I think that a good way of doing it would be to almost get rid of the heroic scaling of the human and human kind minis, sharpen the details so to speak and make the proportions more human. A lot of the other races scaling has the allowance to be what it needs to be Orks, Eldar and Tyranids all have their own feel and look to name but a few. I think the Eldar already feel like they are a non heroic scaled range and have nice flowing lines to accentuate their background, Orks are hamfisted as fits with… Read more »
Love the master, n Chaplin, & the flyer looks great I think
GW used the Deathwatch repacking to modify the prices of various items, which I find quite interesting: the Chaplain was £18, but the Deathwatch version comes with an additional sprue and new larger base thrown in, and is only £15!
I’m seeing a lot of comments in other places from people who are genuinely surprised how cheap this release is compared with recent pricing.
Possibly GW seeing that AoS pricing is working well and slowly dropping the price across the board as they release new stuff? We live in hope.
Strip off all the iconography and flatten it out a bit and I’d say that’s a cool flyer.
I actually really liked the design of the flyer 😀 It reminds me of the 80’s Blade Runner, Aliens and every other retro space age design 😀