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The New Deathwatch Battle Their Way Into Warhammer 40,000 With Death Masque
August 6, 2016 by brennon
Games Workshop have now added the new Deathwatch Pre-Orders to their website allowing you to pick up this new force for use in Warhammer 40,000. Let's kick off with the main focus of all this with the new boxed game containing Eldar and Deathwatch Space Marines called Death Masque...
This boxed set pits the sides against each other in a bitter war where Captain Artemis is taking on Eldrad, one of the greatest Eldar to ever live.
"Eldrad Ulthran, the most skilled of the Eldar’s prophets and one of the most powerful psykers in the galaxy, whose existence has spanned ten millennia, has put into motion a series of incredible events. Descending upon the planet of Port Demesnus, his intention is to seize its crystal moon, Coheria, for a forbidden ritual capable of awakening a slumbering god…
Watch Captain Artemis – born into violence, recruited into the Mortifactors, his talents in the art of detecting and slaying the merest hint of xenos taint saw him plucked from his Chapter and sworn to lead Kill Teams of the Deathwatch. The first to respond to the distress signals from Port Demesnus, and the first to realise Eldrad Ulthran’s motives, he has diverted his strike force to Coheria.
The battle for this moon, and the events that transpire, will send shocking reverberations throughout the galaxy."
As well as these two hero models you'll get two elite fighting forces which will be made up of fancy Deathwatch Space Marines...
...their epic looking Dreadnought, straight from the pages of the Fantasy Flight Games RPG book.
...and of course some howling and whooping Harlequins for the Eldar. When Space Marines are involved you need to send your best killers.
Other models included within the set are the likes of Vanguard Veterans with jump packs for the Deathwatch as well as a Deathjester, Voidweaver and Skyweaver for the Eldar side.
You will also get your hands on missions for these factions to fight through, formations that allow you to use each force and additionally your own softback rulebook to get you started.
Books & Trinkets!
As well as this there is the all important Codex: Deathwatch coming your way.
Inside you will find all of the rules you need to get playing with this elite force of killers. As well as that Data Cards are available to buy giving you access to the things you need to run awesome missions tailored to their fighting style.
Last but not least they also have these rather funky looking Deathwatch Dice which I think would be a good buy for anyone, not just a Deathwatch player. Very nice indeed.
As with most of these boxes we would assume that you can pick this up for a limited time before it leaves shelves. Then, the models from the box will get themselves a release in separate boxes for you to pick up later down the line.
Are the Deathwatch calling to you?
"This boxed set pits the sides against each other in a bitter war where Captain Artemis is taking on Eldrad, one of the greatest Eldar to ever live..."
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For anyone in the UK thinking of ordering this I’d recommend a pre-order from here http://www.triplehelixwargames.co.uk
they are offer a discount on everything of 25% – the only thing they do not seem to stock is the limited edition codex which I assume is a GW exclusive.
Still £71.25 for all that’s in the box seems a decent deal to me.
Which minis in the Death Masque box are new? I’m sure I’ve seen those ropey, floaty Harlequins before.
The Deathwatch stuff I think is the new selection
Deathwatch are existing kits with a new Deathwatch upgrade sprue – only truly new mini out of them is Artemis, who’s almost entirely based off his old Inquisitor 54mm sculpt.
Not entirely true. The marines with the jump packs are made using a new upgrade sprue, but the 5 veterans are an entirely new kit with a lot of options included.
I’d like to pick up this box set but the thought of trying to paint harlequins makes my eyes bleed.
Dark Elder might have been a better opponent :-O
With Genestealers vs Arbites for the previous box?
@redben haha yup you’re not wrong, from what I can tell looking at the pics, there are:
2 new characters (1 Eldar 1 DW),
1 new sprue of 5 Death watch veterans,
1 new upgrade sprue for the Death Watch (I guess covers 5 minis),
Old minis are the 10 Harlequins, 2 Harley Jet Bikes, 1 Harley Voidweaver, 1 Death Jester, 5 Vanguard Vets (to upgrade with the new sprue) and 1 Dreadnought.
Oh and some transfers for the Harlequins – I am not sure if this is a new or it’s one that may/may not have come from the recent (2015?) Harlequin release.
looking at the pictures that have been floating around, and on the forums there is a secondary release coming next week which will have another separate character figure and a flyer. Possibly some other things I can’t tell.
I have just looked at the sprues on the GW website and can make out everything but the upgrade sprue, which is a little odd, I assume they have just forgotten it?
The softback rulebook that’s been mentioned, is that the 40k core rules?
Yes matey
Perfect. I’m splitting the box with a mate that’s getting back into the hobby so he can take that. Unusual for it to be included in a boardgame, this must play using the full rules.
I’m guessing @irredeemable this more or less follows the pattern of some previous battle boxes they did: tyranids vs Blood Angels and Space Wolves vs Orks. Those boxes came with the rule book and used existing kits with the addition of new leader models for each side.
It looks good to me!
Both boxes that I ignored at the time and really regretted later. I prefer this version as it forgoes the tagged on “boardgame” but I wonder does that mean this is a limited run like they were?
@irredeemable probably the last campaign box before 8th drops, given the “prophecy of the hidden path” teaser GW put up on face book it looks like the plot of this is: given the slumbering god line, and the teaser Ynnead is returning, so along with primarchs returning is the 40k plot advancing??? Interesting if it does as the teaser seems to indicate slanesh being wiped out, which would tie into AoS as well, and for good or bad could be the start of 40k endtimes….
Holy cow, if that’s not a good 32mm representation of the old Inquisitor Artemis though!
He HAS had a complete head swap, it appears, but it has been a few years – probably had to have his skull rebuilt a few times.
@dogma2097 yes you’re not wrong, that was a really good fig, they still pop up on eBay now and then and i’ve seen them go for around the £15-20 mark, which isn’t bad considering the size (the expensive bit is the Marine Helmet which was sold separately, I’ve seen these for as much as £30 each).
It’s one of those figs that gets regularly converted into Daemon Princes I think – frankly I always liked the idea of building a diorama of a city scene with it as a statue in a square or some such
I always thought it would be the basis of a good truescale primarch.
Aye, that is Artemis with his stringy hair cut-off 🙂 Awesome to see in small scale…
Those Deathwatch marines are rather good.
Didn’t Eldrad die or turn to crystal or something during the last Black crusade? Has GW changed the law so he’s alive in the current timeline?
I’m not sure the Thirteenth Black Crusade has happened yet in the current timeline. I think they rewound a bit after that. Not 100% sure though.
What!?! You can’t mulligan the 13th Black Crusade.
I fought in that crusade, and we brought everything except Cadia to its knees.
Oh, and I guess Ahriman totally screwed up in his search for the Black Library, but hey, what can you do?
That one marine has a Heavy Bolter and a Flamer. He wins the argument for mine is invalid.
DAMN I wanted to not be hurting in the wallet for once…
@spacewolflord, heavybolter/flamer combo – overkill a-go-go
Also I’m going to assume that the Flesh Tearer in the middle is wielding a Necron Power Sword?
Forgive me in advance to the people that like Space Marines. I am so tired of space marines being in every paired beginner box. It’s so frequent that if I just kept the the content of every beginner box set over the past 15 years I would have an entire army.
Also changing the marines to a different chapter or such is like changing the dressing for a salad. Yes it will taste different but it’s still a salad at the end of the day.
Can’t the Imperial Guard fill the role of the good guys for a change?
Imperial guard would be great, if only GW actually made any good Astra Militarum (TM) miniatures. Right now if you want high quality AM minis, you have to go Forgeworld imho. Somewhere on my list entitled “Things I wish GW would make”, is a full range of plastic Vostroyan Firstborn, also known as, “what I wish Imperial Guard looked like”.
Now that _would_ be amazing! (As long as the sculpts were a lot better than the current Imperial Guard plastics.) I absolutely love the Vostroyans.
@angelicdespot I would say resculpt all the old 2nd ed sculpts to plastic versions, even bring back ratlings, the sheer diversity of what used to be guard made it fun for me to collect aside from veriety of tanks, instead of a sea of pretty much the same infantry, couldnt bring my self to build a new army with whats currently on offer apart from the tanks
@nakchak – I would love to see more of the 2nd Ed and even 1st Ed. Imperial Guard stuff coming back. A lot of the original metals were such characterful models.
Now, they tried re-doing one set of 2nd ed IG in plastic, and we ended up with the current plastic Catachans…
But there’s no doubt that they ‘could’ do better with Praetorians/Mordians, Tallarn or Valhallans.
Or the Tanith guard- they’d be cool.
Oh yes that’s the real name Astra Militarum. I suffer from a mild form of dyslexia (not a joke) and have tried more than once to spell that name only to go back to imperial guard due to spell check works only on real words not made up ones.
Btw @manpug the Imperium are not the good guys in 40k. They’re a decaying civilisation ruled by an uncaring and fanatical theocracy, which daily sacrifices people to keep the barely living desiccated husk of a powerful psychic being, which they worship as a god, just alive enough to power a navigational beacon, so that they can continue to try to eradicate all other life in the galaxy. They’re sci fi’s most interesting bad guys imho.
I’m aware of that and was only paring the entirety of the Imperium to humans, us as the ones we would route for. In truth I find the Tau much more just that Imperium even though they do subjugate other races rather than enlighten and befriend them.
Interstingly @manpug, if you look more closely at the Tau they really aren’t much better than the Imperium – they just have fancier tech. In the background, the Tau talk of the Greater Good and the notion that all civilizations are equal, but it is abundantly clear that the Tau are a heck of a lot more ‘equal’ than everyone else. The Tau do admittedly commence contact with new species by negotiation, but ultimately the Water Caste have a ‘why fight for what you can take with words?’ mindset, with the negotiations being very one sided toward the Tau, and always culminating in an offer of membership of the Tau Empire… of the variety one can’t refuse.
Should an alien civilization try to refuse that offer, the Fire Caste will be used to annex the culture by force. If the aliens prove too capable to be defeated by conventional means, the Tau like to employ a more powerful version of a Neutron bomb type weapon to exterminate the entire populous from orbit while leaving technology and infrastructure intact, and then build a new Sept world on the genocide-grave of the culture they murdered in cold blood.
Violent, colonially minded political and cultural neo-Imperialism – basically the British Empire that was, only even more brutal and featuring Pulse Rifles rather than the bolt action variety – is pretty morally indefensible even when compared, ironically, to the faction actually called the Imperium.
Even within Tau culture itself, theirs is not an enlightened society. Their Caste based culture is heinously oppressive, with relationships across Caste lines being forbidden, with the implication that the punishment is death (due to the whole selective breeding based social engineering thing the Ethereals have going on – itself downright Mengler-esque), and with Ethereals ruling with such total, unquestioned authority that they can simply tell another Tau to kill themselves and they will instantly be obeyed, so it is not as though Tau culture is in any way free, progressive or democratic.
Should a Tau of any Caste prove to lack aptitude for their Caste’s appointed function in childhood, such as a Fire Warrior who is averse to violence or an Earth Caste who has no feel for engineering and scientific pursuits, then they are viewed as a burden upon Tau society and, rather than being given a chance to try to join another Caste or find their own path, they will be killed out of hand as a waste of resources.
When you look closely at the Tau, they are actually depicted as a deeply fascist culture of the ‘Brave New World’ variety – dissent is not merely crushed but is to all intents and purposes an impossibility.
I think the point the writers are going for is that the Tau Empire only looks better than the Imperium on the surface due to its (on balance and not counting genetic technology or psychic and other Warp tech) higher and certainly more consistent technology base, but the truth underneath is that a gilded cage is still a cage, and being murdered in cold blood by a politically motivated army of high tech, colonial ideologues is not really any better than being murdered in cold blood by an army of slightly lower tech species supremacist religious fanatics.
It is worth remembering that in 40K there has long been the design principle that ‘there are no good guys’, and the Tau are no exception to that.
Your so right about the Tau and that’s why I mentioned the subjugation part. I do see what you pointed out. They remind me of Britain before WW2 and more so China today, with it’s harsh rule of one child per mother. Not to forget how they treat Tibet is like how the Tau use reeducation programs to make Kroot and other races comply to the Tau’s wishes.
Honestly, I think the Tau are making the universe a better place. But they are forging an empire, so it is a bit like Alexander the Great or even Julius Caesar- where the rights and standard of living among the conquered goes up significantly.
The balance between sovereignty (freedom) and safety/wealth is one that we’re still arguing about, and strong arguments can be made on both sides without appealing to evil.
Tau rhetoric is definitely an echo of 20th communist rhetoric. There’s a lot of talk about equality, and how the populations they conquer are really better off, etc. I don’t know that the fluff gives us any perspectives that tell us how it really is (most of the fluff is written like propaganda for one faction or another).
But on the subject of ‘good guys,’ what about the Eldar? I mean, they may be paying for the sins of their race (ie, Slaanesh) but the Eldar of the Craftworlds seem like they have a sort of greater good in mind.
They don’t protect everyone all the time, because they have too few resources. They are not presented as agressors in many of their conflicts, and when they are, it is clear that they are averting even greater disasters- and often things that would hurt other species (not just the Eldar).
They’ve even been shown as caring about the lives of innocents from other intelligent races. Not that there are many of those- I mean, most everyone in the grimdark are hell bent on destroying everyone everywhere, so it isn’t like there are a lot of people that should be spared (they do pity human non-coms, at least in some of the fluff).
@manpug
I have long thought that the Tau were GW’s dig at neo-colonial political attitudes, with shades of the more expansionist, Maoist/Stalinist stripes of Communism – much as the Imperium are their way of mocking theocratic societies, and the Necrons poke fun at monarchies and cultures with a highly striated class structure.
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@odinsgrandson;
I think the whole Tau mindset – even called the Greater Good – is supposed to call to mind the tactics of any number of tyrants who have tried to justify tyranny on the basis that it is a route to cultural, moral, economic and
/or technological revival and restoration. The political phrase ‘for the greater good’ has been called the Tyrant’s rallying cry by political theorists with good reason.
Relating back to manpug’s point, Mao Zedong’s policies of the Cultural; Revolution, that so disastrously killed so many innocent Chinese civilians through political purges and starvation, were all justified by an appeal to the creation of a supposedly better, ‘purer’ lifestyle – a version of the political ‘greater good;’ as conceptualized by Chairman Mao and his supporters since they considered revolutionary potential to be vested in an agrarian peasant class rather than an urban working class. A similar attitude under pinned the thinking that lead to the killing fields of Cambodia, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge sought to return to an idealized vision of an uncorrupted society that they claimed would offer a higher quality of life. Lenin made similar promises, though Stalin preferred to threaten rather than to promise.
And it is not just the political extreme Left that has resonances within the Tau background. Any number of Right wing extremist political movements – from the Nazis through the Contras to Pinochet’s regime – have made similar bids for power based upon a similar claim that their actions pursued some supreme moral cause; a ‘greater good’ that justified in their minds any atrocity in its pursuit.
Heck, if one exchanges the Tau’s territoriality expansionist political bent for a fear of immigration, and their patronizing appeal about the need of everyone else to be ‘civilized’ by a notionally ‘superior’ culture with xenophobic, isolationist rhetoric that argues that a supposedly ‘superior’ culture can only be preserved by keeping ‘lesser’ people out, one could even argue that the Tau background is worryingly politically prescient with regard to contemporary US politics, and the Greater Good is really a pledge to ‘make the Galaxy great again’…
The Eldar are an interesting case @odisngrandson, since their attitude toward humans and other non-Eldar species that they call Monkeigh – pronounced mon-key by the Eldar, perhaps because humans are a type of ape and they are not – is so varied in its depiction, and not just between the Dark Eldar (who are kind of jerks) and their Craftworld cousins. Even within the Craftworld Eldar there are markedly differing attitudes.
Some, like Eldrad Ulthuan, are depicted as being prepared to kill humans to save Eldar lives only because the humans can afford to sustain the losses so much more readily since they are so much more numerous, and as you say try to preserve the lives of human non-combatants wherever possible. Eldrad’s character never personally gives any indication that he takes pleasure in this, and indeed seems to undertake the task with a heavy heart. Interestingly, similar characters can be found in the Imperium. Ibrahim Gaunt places great value on the lives of those under his command in a decidedly un-Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum fashion, and doubly so for a Commissar. Likewise, Vulcan is the most humane of the Primarchs and dislikes violence even though he must mete it out. He has great cause to hate the Eldar (specifically Dark Eldar, though the Imperium of the 31st Millennium is not really clear on the difference between the Eldar sub factions) since they persecuted his people on Nocturne before he joined with the Emperor and nascent Imperium ruthlessly, and yet he is depicted experiencing remorse for killing Eldar Farseers and Librarians in a moment of rage, something none of his brother Primarchs would have experienced. Even Marneus Calgar is shown as respecting the warcraft and personal honour of some of his adversaries, such as the Eldar and especially the Tau, who he allowed to evacuate a contested planet infested by the Tyranids before he enacted Exterminatus on it because he had such respect for the Tau’s courage and way of war. So, individual characters can sometimes be depicted as more enlightened that the factions of which they are a part in the 40K universe.
On the other hand, the Beil-Tan place no value on human life, and seem to take active pleasure in treating humans as vermin and exterminating them as such in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to the Dark Eldar. Many Eldar pieces of background make it clear that, with a few notable exceptions like Eldrad who seem the wiser members of their species, most Eldar (Dark, Craftworld, Corsair and Exodite) place little or no value on the life of any non-Eldar being, and indeed don’t even see non-Eldar as meaningfully sentient at all or worthy or even the slightest consideration. They don’t even act to avert the suffering of humans or Orks when they could easily do so – they don’t treat humans as ethically as we aspire to treat animals, even when no Eldar lives are on the line.
In their own way, the bulk of the Eldar are every bit as supremacist and given to petty, vindictive cruelty and destructiveness as the Imperium is. Again – there are no good guys on the level of whole factions in 40K, just some half way decent individuals struggling against a tide of xenophobic hatred and violence.
I get why people are bored of marines, but saying that they’re all the same is like moaning that every faction in WWII is human. If you don’t like them, or even if you’re just sick of seeing them over and over again, then you’re not going to be happy, but the different chapters / legions are different.
You’re not wrong, I’m still longing for the day when GW decide to do a link of Death Korps of Krieg in plastic, if anything non marine would sell well it would be that. Sadly I think they are one of the big sellers at forge world and I cannot ever imagine them cannibalising those sales.
If I was going to start collecting 40k Astra Militarum, then the Death Korps would be my choice @tresliillan . I do prefer Vostroyans though. John Blanche’s concept sketches for the Vostroyans are just gorgeous and they have that lovely archaic feels that all the best 40k has (sadly lacking from many recent releases).
Dammit @tresilliian you could use your username as a dyslexia test. All those i’s and l’s bunched together. My poor dyslexic brain failed at the first attempt 😀
@erastus it’s actually my middle name, and my son’s first name (it’s Cornish) though I added and extra i by mistake when putting in my user name originally LOL
Okay, I think some history is needed here, that I am usually more on the GW side here. Mind you it is not hard, when some many people are on the dislike side, being slightly in their favour makes you a fanatic ha ha. Models as always look amazing, but at this time I think the cost is a little, more than a little unjustified. While your actually running away with a quite decent deal and more the a start on an Harlequin Eldar army. The Deathwatch models are held hostage, by this.
The reason I was fine with this in Deathwatch Overkill and not this, is overkill though I would like the those models to be available separately and genestealer cultists to be readily available… I understand you can’t always get that, with marketing reasons. This is far more naked. The problem is the set is practically begging to be split and sold up rather than the Deathwatch Overkill where is reasonable to expect a person to actually keep both lot of minis for play purposes.
There are a lot of upsides to this, a super cheap Eldar Force running around (cost wise), people well be able to get deathwatch because they are able to sell off the army book, or Eldar force, possibly both.
However, this stinks of the same problems Magic the Gathering has with some of it’s limited releases like Commander box sets. The actual product isn’t what people want or talk about, it is a specific thing and how it will affect the after market…
It is just like watching some bunt, while it shows skill, you know they could have hit a home run if they had of tried.
Repackaged scheit imo. Usually companies discount their older stuff to sell it off, but in this case the older GW models seem to be the better models. Is it just me, or are the newer figures getting more pudgy? When did ‘heroic’ become ‘fat’ ?
As someone who likes to blend GW models, on occasion, into a realistic sci-fi world, this is no longer working. For example, compare the tottering dreadnaughts to the latest Infinity nomads, and you’ll get a true sense for sci-fi design… lazy, creaky design vs. the Corvus Belli standard.
I think they’re going for two very different styles though. Infinity stuff is hyper tech with loads of motion and grace. It paints a very bright forward thinking universe.
The Grimdark on the other hand is a technologically repressed shithole. Imperial tech is all clanking lumbering behemoths that take a very much “blunt force trauma” approach.
Not that I’m denying a difference in standard completely. Corvus Belli are probably top of the class with sci-fi sculpting at the moment.
They do have the skill as I just made my first Treelord and it’s fantastic kit. I think the issue is they have backed themselves into a corner by making the theme of the Imperial be medieval sci-fi as in they live in a darkages with regard to knowledge. It’s reflected so often in the simplicity of the devices they have as well as the addition of useless relics that are for piety sake.
That gothic sci fi theme is exactly what makes the Imperium one of my favourite sci fi creations. I can admire the sculpting of Infinity miniatures but they just don’t interest me at all. If anything, I’d say Infinity looks very dull and too generic sci fi. Just my opinion of course.
Agreed. While Corvus Belli do produce some nice minis, they are far too fiddly to assemble and are very “generic sci-fi”.
Whether you like them or not, most of GW’s minis only really fit in their own universe, and other minis don’t really work in GW’s universe for the most part, which is a big part of the draw to them.
I agree with irrdeemable – this is a question of style and design approach. It is written into the background that the Imperium is a failing, rotten empire built upon the half-remembered – and less understood – remnants of a more advanced human stellar civilization that fell many thousands of years earlier. Their technology is clanking, comparatively crude for an interstellar civilization, and bluntly medieval in approach because that is all that is left; the scraps of something far more advanced.
In a sense, 40K is a post-apocalyptic setting. Indeed, a post-multiple-apocalyptic-events setting when you take into account the Dark Age of Technology and how it ended, the Age of Strife, the Horus Heresy, the Age of Apostasy.
Something like the Infinity setting may once have existed in the 40k universe background, but 40K examines what happens when a glittering high tech culture like that runs face first into the unremitting, cold calculus of an uncaring universe and deep time. Civilizations – even mighty ones – ultimately collapse. The Roman Empire stood for a millennium, and yet it fell, and when it fell it fell hard. The ancient Chinese Empire stood for longer again, but bears scant resemblance to modern day, Communist China, and by comparison to the timescales in 40K those eras are but blinks of the proverbial eye.
This isn’t a product of laziness or incompetency – it is a conscious design choice made to reflect the fictional continuity. Comparing 40K to Infinity is comparing apples to pears, or Star Trek to Star Wars – each is too different to the other to make any comparison worthwhile or particularly informative.
Ordered my copie today at my local flgs, excited About new marines and the new flyer.
Really love those deathwatch sculpts and can’t wait to add them to my deathwatch set.
Not to keen off the eldar (not my taste) but i admire the dynamic poses that
GW can create in plastic these days. Still the best
Both my favourite sub-factions in one box set? Sorely tempted.
If it is both of them, then without a doubt this is made for you. You should get it.
@dracs Ulthran agrees!
Wow this is actually quite a good deal.
The harlequin troupe and the vehicles is cost the same as this set alone.
And for once I actually like both factions (Well craftworld Eldar but still)
Or, to put it another way, when you estimate what those marines are likely to cost as individual releases, you’re probably getting the Eldar for free.
Seems a good box, not fussed by the plastic Harleys but Deathwatch stuff looks as you’d expect.
Eldrad and Artemis are very nice, and reflect the previous versions and the characters nicely.
My question is why does a blonde man have dark stubble, or does this killing machine use nice and easy no 5?
You have to look your best when killing Xenos scum in the name of the Emperor…
And because Artemis is worth it… 😉
The Eldar alone are worth WELL over the Retail Price.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Did I say, amazing?
looks good, are special characters like say Garro factored in to the rules?
@zorg Where are you getting Garro from? He’s a 30k character, nothing to do with this era and the deathwatch
@mage he may still be alive plus he was one of the first marines forming the deathwatch form the suviving death guard from the Eisenstein when they got to earth with the imperial fists.