Deathwatch Keepers (feat. Horus Heresy Deathshrouds)

Deathwatch Keepers are amongst the longest serving members of the watch

Hi guys, around Christmas of 2012 I fell in love.....not for the first time....but this time I knew it was for real......Forgeworld's Deathshroud terminators, they're amazing, possibly my favourite space marine sculpts ever.....

But as an owner of Imperial armies I had to have a long think as to how I could incorporate them into any of my existing armies....I just had to!

As part of my Deathwatch project I had been struggling for some time with viable ordo xenos troops choices......(no storm troopers without coteaz, curses).  Then my solution was delivered to me mainly thanks to FFG and the improved fluff they've created about the Deathwatch.

Deathwatch Keepers, guardians of ancient xenos relics, protectors of the Ordos' darkest secrets.....(awesome!!).....they wear armour amongst the oldest to be found in the Deathwatch.....(sweet, justifies the Heresy look!!).......They carry double handed CCWs like eviserators etc.......(well its not a hard stretch to justify a scythe now is it?!!)

So I had my fluff but which rules to use.

Unfortunately those amazing flamer weapons would have to go....as no known terminator in the Imperium can carry 5x diddy flamers.....so they had to go....  I did consider calling it done and claiming the scythes to count as lightning claws allowing them to proxy as assault termies, but I feel that's a bit of a stretch......

The I realised with the addition of a Stormbolter these guys nicely slot in as GK Termies, I had initially thought about them being Paladins, but then I realised I could take Termies as troops fulfilling my troop allocation for my GK Ordo Xenos allies!  This means I'll now be able to take a proper Ordo Xenos inquisitor, an Assassin, GK Termies and a Stormraven to back up my BA Deathwatch or vice versa......if there's enough points I may be able to squeeze a set of Stormtrooper henchmen in too (though clearly @13pts each it'd just be for the fluff).

Suffer not the alien to live.........these guys are troops :)

Getting on with the Job

When my order came through from FW I was in awe of the models and had to take time to honour the machine spirit of the terminator armour before hacking bits off, the models are so nice I really needed to make the conversion count.  

The detail on the deathshrouds is amazing and very delicate,   however this did mean some of the mold flash is next to impossible to remove.  After modifying the Deathguard symbols down to being just a skull and removing the flamers I set about looking for Storm bolter bits.

I had a couple of spare sprues of PAGK lying in wait but really don't like the new GK pig nosed stormbolters, so I went searching through my bits box and found some BA SG Angelus boltguns which looked ideal, when combined with either a boltpistol or another angelus gun they look smart.  To be RHS mounted I needed to switch the ammo packs to the opposite side of the barrel which was easy enough.   In the end I had to resort to using a single PAGK stormbolter to complete the set, but with an Angelus ammo pack its nowhere near as bad.

I also had to consider a balance with table top play, so I gave one guy an incinerator and another a hammer, I had wanted to through in a banner and considered Psycannons too, but they where too challenging on such complex models, perhaps with a TAGK box the bits would be more amenable.

The idea of having instant death weapons is quite funky so I do need to think about it, having said that I'm much more likely to use Hammer hand in CC than to use the force capability, the Hammer can ID most things anyhow. 

I really want to take Justicar Thawn too as he's a level 2 psyker boss that makes the squad fearless, can hammer hand and ID badguys.....may need a specific model for this guy......then a banner too