I know, right?

So, each stat has a minimum, usually 35 or above, and then several D10s, the exact amount depending on the stat, are rolled. For reference, the minimum strength and toughness are 49, and the max is 85, as they start at 45 and you roll 4D10 to add to it. From there, they have all manner of terrible traits and talents, a couple being a This or This, Rogue Trader style selection (Assassin Strike or Hatred (All) is one instance).

C'Tan Shards ignore cover when attacking - period, their natural attack has 10 pen and raises the overload on a field they hit by 10, they have a natural forcefield (45 with no overload), are immune to any and all environmental effects (Black holes and super novas are among the examples) and get 2 or 3 abilities off of a table you roll on. The abilities are crazy things like causing an extra mission complication and forcing characters to make Perception tests or count as blind and deafened, or things like the area around them counting as a high gravity environment, or darkness that no tool can see through.

High-rolled C'Tan Shards could definitely stand their ground against Greater Demons. They're pretty cool. There is a lot to them, and you can make one Shard a COMPLETELY different combat experience from another. FFG did a great job with them.

For anyone still wondering, the Necron weapons are roughly the same as those presented in BC's Tome of Fate. If anything, the DW versions are weaker. The warscythe, for example, deals 11 points fewer damage in DW and is unwieldy, while BC's version is merely unbalanced. The Necrons themselves, however, are by-and-large a tad beefier in DW.

On a related note, FFG seems to have adopted the optional errata'ed weapon rules for their newer works. From what I remember, the relics in both First Founding and Honour the Chapter seem to work from the errata's baseline. NPC stat lines, interestingly, do not seem to follow this trend.

How is the fluff for the Necrons writen? Are they easy to get into the setting or does it feel like a side-thing to the Crusade's main business with Chaos, the Tyranids and the Tau?

Basically, they have a good reason lined up for why the Necron haven't just popped up and started wrecking things wholesale. They are restricting their operations for hardship-related reasons well explained in the book, but the Deathwatch has encountered them previous to 817.m41. The encounters are still highly mysterious and limited, and the Imperium has no idea just how big the threat is (i.e. Galaxy-wide). They leave plenty of room for creativity on the part of a GM.

In short, it allows the previous timeline to remain intact while allowing you to bring in some crazy Necron stuff. I like it.

thank you for that, ddunklemeister!!    You are one of the good ones, sir!  that certainly helps.

I'm too lazy to try to track it down, but I seem to recall seeing a picture of some Astartes fighting a big Lovecraftian monter in an illustration on one of the previews for EotA. Is that an actual thing in the book, or just a funky illo?

D'oh! I meant Outer Reach, not EotA… Basically, are there stats for weird Adversaries other than Necrons?

There stats for a Farseer, a Corsair King (and his crazy space-gator pet), a Haemonculus, and a Harlequin, but they are special characters. Other than that, it's all Necron.

Captain Ventris said:

That's a bit disappoining to hear actually. I was hoping that there would be some non-Necron weird Xenos and stuff in there but I guess I was wrong.

I didn't even know those were in the book. I certainly don't remember them being in the version I read (though we did test that book a long time ago).

BYE

 I hope we get to see the Umbra in a book sometime soon.

Sorry, I said 'Harlequin', but failed to specify that the character is a Shadowseer in particular.

About a year ago I finished a long-time Dark Heresy campaign of mine where the plot was basically that the Acolytes would find out about the existence of Necrons and the threat they pose to the Imperium. In the end they had to pick a side on whether to try to go public with the information (and risk being killed by other Inquisitors because of it) or to stay silent and try to fight it from shadows… They decided to stay in shadows, trying to find more information while not provoking the Necrons into waking up.

You can imagine my surprise when I picked up a copy of The Outer Reach last night and, reading through it, realized that this is EXACTLY what the Dead Cabal is doing in it… They have decided to keep their mouths shut about Necrons, not wake up the slumbering giant and trying to fight it from the shadows with research and exploration. Now the really brilliant thing is that this ties nicely up with all the earlier fluff from codices, Black Library and such… Even in the very first Necron Codex the first encounters with necrons were long, long time ago somewhere around M36, in Black Library books Inquisition and Adeptus Mechanicus knew things long before Necrons attacked openly but Imperium never made their existence public until they had to.

Brilliant book, all in all.

bogi_khaosa said:

The average is close, but not as close as it seems at first. Since boltguns are tearing, the average value of their d10s is about 7.2. So, unless I'm misunderstanding the rules, an original boltgun does 19.4 damage on average, while an Errata-pattern boltgun does 16.2 and has half the chance of righteous fury. I think most errata weapons also have lower rates of fire.

I haven't played enough to say how much of a difference this makes, but I'd be curious to know if both versions were used in playtesting for supplements like The Outer Reach.

The "errata" (or more correctly, "optional") weapon rules are the one big issue with Deathwatch in my mind. The change in stats were perfect for balance, that certainly isn't a problem. However, FFG has been a little… inconcistent, in their approach since they released the errata (or at least slightly unclear). While most new weapons based on existing Space Marine weapons have been clearly based on the errata, it is less clear which was used as a basis for non-Space Marine weapons, and in some of the supplements the original "official" stats are used. Combined with this is the fact that many enemies published since the errata seem to be built with surviving the original stats in mind (massive wound totals in order to try and stave off "instant death by RF-tastic Heavy Bolter).

Oh, and as far as the thread title: No it's not. Not here at least.

I really wish FFG wouldn't release their products at such wildly varying times in different markets. Britain got the Primaris Primer about 6 weeks before the US did (the point at which FFG announced it as "released"), but then some of the other books have taken several weeks to get here after "release", and some of the LCG card packs seem to have taken about 3 months to get here.