How to Play Deathwatch in 10th ed 40k: Making a Winning Army List from the WORST Performing Faction

How to play Deathwatch in Warhammer 40,000 10th edition. The way to play is by using rules exploits of the rules for toughness, movement, charges, wound allocation and weapon option which I will explain in this guide to Deathwatch.
But Deathwatch Space Marines are not doing well in the 40k meta. I will show you how to pick Deathwatch units by comparing their abilities to their standard Codex Space Marine alternatives until we have a good 1000 points Deathwatch army list, a brief idea of a 2000 points Deathwatch army list for 10th edition and a look at my army list that should last into 11th edition of Warhammer 40,000.

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Exploiting Kill Team Cassius and Devastating Wounds

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00:00 The worst performing faction in 40k
00:54 Which detachment you can choose for the Deathwatch
03:09 Why you should play Deathwatch
05:26 Deathwatch Veterans: how to start a Deathwatch army
10:05 How to use the Proteus Kill Team
11:36 Toughness exploits in Kill Teams
12:30 Wound allocation exploits in Kill Teams
13:27 High points value of Kill Teams
13:48 Deathwatch characters and changing toughness
15:42 Best weapon options for a Proteus Kill Team
19:32 How to use Kill Team Cassius
19:52 un – Attached units with characters exploit
21:29 Movement and Charge exploits for Deathwatch Kill Teams
23:06 Should you include a Fortis Kill Team
26:54 Alternative to the Fortis Kill Team
27:36 What to do with the Spectrus Kill Team
30:36 The power of the fat-man Indomitor Kill Team
33:49 How to equip the Deathwatch Terminator Squad
35:33 How to use the Deathwatch Veteran Bike Squad
36:05 Ah, sudden Corvus Blackstar!
37:29 Captain my Captain Artemis
39:16 Watch Master – master of watches, owner of clocks!
40:40 1000 points Deathwatch lore thematic watch company
43:45 My Deathwatch Army list

Relevant tags: #deathwatch #howtoplay40k #howtoplaydeathwatch
#warhammer40kvtuber #latestedition #warhammer40000 #warhammervtuber #10thedition #warhammer40k #40kvtuber #40k #new40k #10theditionreaction #10theditionrumours #smallvtuber #gamesworkshop

[therandomoguy]

as a deathwatch main, seeing content for my beloved boys is awesome.

[McFatson]

I just had a dumb idea for a Deathwatch army. All primaris for size, paint them as Alpha Legion. Still do the thing where one pauldron is painted off a loyalist chapter. The theme is all the Alpha Legion spies currently infiltrating the loyalists decide to take some time off to have a fun night of killing xenos together.

Alternatively, run it as a Blood Raven army and say they just nicked the gear.

[meekotreeko]

the 4++ on marine bodies is a must have, Vets should always have a shield for every 5. the hammers are bonkers good and an autotake, the real pick is for either the frag or missile launcher.

Proteus is only good if you leverage the fact that you can give the Termies buffs they shouldent have, Judicar + Apathecary is impossible to crack if your always throwing yourself into melee. Make sure to have 1 of your 4 termies with a shield and thunder hammer so you can bring him back each turn. I like mine melee oriented so its all hammers for me, but frag also works.

[jwtiley]

The trick to playing a powerful DW army using Blackspear task force is setting up a powerful turn 2 alpha strike against 2 critical targets using Tome of Ectoclades which allows you 2 Oath of Moment targets at the old OoM rules allowing rerolls to hit AND wound. You also need to maximize characters that grant lethal hits to your units. An apothecary biologis attached to an indomitor kill team is a must in my army, then throw in the captain in gravis armor with the tome of ectoclades in the same unit. Also use a lieutenant with the proteus kill team that will also grant lethal hits for your terms with cyclone missile launchers. Finally, when turn 2 comes around, pick furor tactics. Now you are stacking Lethal Hits and Sustained hits on your Indomitor and Proteus kill teams when you get to reroll hits and wounds against 2 targets. The trick is keeping your Captain alive during turn 1 so that he is on the field during your command phase turn 2. This is why I use the gravis captain in an indomitor kill team to help ensure that the captain can stay alive. Further, you can use a Blackstar in hover mode to embark the indomitor kill team on, further protecting the captain from a turn 1 alpha strike, then you can also move your blackstar out 20 inches to ensure your indomitor kill team has great line of sight to your priority targets, or to take and hold an objective. As an added bonus, your captain can take a free Armor of Contempt, just making an already tanky unit just that much more tanky. The lieutenant in the proteus kill team will still allow you to fall back shoot and charge as well.

[FictionDiction]

That ending was so inspiring! The music and your speech got me hyped haha

[Shatteredzero]

I'm so glad I found your channel.
I'm just starting out in Warhammer 40k. My brother got me into it.
Yes, I am that type of person who liked too many chapters and opted for Deathwatch. Thank you for giving a purchasing order and much needed information on how to build the army.

[iUsseh]

Thanks for this mate, im new to 40k and determined to make DW work for me. I was happy to see i was kind of on the right track.

[icklemoo]

i hope they rework the primaris kill teams, as they are so cool in concept but need better combination qty .. like in 9th

[Jimmy-pfkr]

Awesome stuff! It does piss me off with all the time I've put into making my Deathwatch models/squads unique (you know.. ALL unique depending on my list), then GW in their infinite wisdom just says NO!! Oh well... I'll still be a sucker when new toys come out 😂

[Muckwarrior]

Thanks for this video. None of the other Youtubers are covering Deathwatch. I have about 6k points of them and now they just fill in as proxies for other chapter's squads. You know, when my Black Templars need a squad of Infiltrators...

[kendozero]

Regarding Proteus KT toughness with a t4 leader. There is an argument for keeping the T5 per the leader special rules to use the toughness of the unit instead of their own toughness.

[lukelloyd]

Very strong content, but I suggest looking into Agents of the Imperium, like Kyria Draxus...who can be very fun, and thematically appropriate.

At 2k points you really have a pair of options to remain thematic: play BlackSpear TF with pretty much only Codex Marines

Or carry on with something like Gladius/Ironstorm, with DW units IMHO

[Rexir]

I find the battleline vets being very nice to toss into a rhino at a full squad of 10. A captain/lieutenant combo with a squad full of bolters/shields & infernus heavy bolters or swords/shields & hammers and go to town. Don't want to compromise? Throw a librarian in and bring bolters/swords with your hard-hitters

[TheWolfwoodArmy]

Honestly speaking I’ve been planning on death watch being my secondary marine army (to give my dark angels a break) I just love the lore of them, busy fighting all the horrors of the Xenos and being so good at it the imperium doesn’t know about most of them.

[NathanLazyBear]

This is awesome, I'm excited to go through this and update my stuff. I am interested in building into the dedicated detachment and then just running them as their regular squads.

[redrumssam]

I enjoy the series of "Vampire tries to use the worst faction at the current time"

[wusago]

Nice video and I like your inspiring speach.
Started a deathwatch army last year and preparing it for tournaments.
My 2 cents regarding some units:

I like the spectrus kill team for the ability to place it into strategic reserve - only if you play the BSTF, for all other detachment I prefer scouts, but it’s nice to have.

Also, like another dude has mentioned, Indomitor + Biologis with Beacon + Captain with Thief of secrets is a whole lot of fun and maybe catch some people off guard with the melee power from that Captain alone.

[radwolf]

So the last time I actually *played* 40K, there was a cardboard template for a foot shaped crater to see who got stepped on. But as a mental exercise, I like to check in during each edition to see what can be done with the rules to make a narratively fluffy army list to fit my homebrew chapter. In 9E, the Vanguard Spearhead Army of Renown was my ruleset of choice, for the ability to take Infiltrator Squads in bulk (allowing me to maximize the number of Helix Adepts I could field). So when 10E dropped, using Deathwatch units was my best choice for even getting close to what I had in 9E: Take 3 Spectrus Kill Teams and 3 Infiltrator Squads. Along with all the other Apothecaries on my 3k point list (and that one model from the Rogue Trader Entourage with the Healing Serum) almost 13% of the army is a medicae model of some kind. Kind of an absurd goal to have, but I'm pretty satisfied I could put together a list that fit the theme of my homebrew so well. And it's also satisfying that combi-weapons have been genericised and Long-Vigil Ranged weapons adding in another layer of abstraction, it gives me an excuse to get creative with my kitbashing, because as long as it can still fire bolts, there's nothing in the rules that says a Long-Vigil ranged weapon cant be a Combi-Volkite. The stat-line is a close enough approximation to the actual volkite weapons in 10E if you squint a little bit, allowing me to check off another lore box from my homebrew.

[Ruggedtoaster]

Honestly I’m just getting back into the hobby and right now I’ve just bought my first deathwatch box because the bits are amazing. I’m not planning on building a whole army of them (yet) but the number of useful pieces for kit bashing and adding some more variety to my successor chapter space marine force with a squad or two of specialists for narrative or crusade play is pretty cool.

[Zokker]

Great video and Informations to know about DW 10th edition.
I started DW as my first Army in the 9th. But I stopped playing Space Marines because of the need for two rule books (space marine codex and chapter rules), so I switched to the Sororitas.
Staying in the Inquisition for fluff. But maybe after this video. I will figure it out how to build a DW list in 10th edition. Thank you 🫡