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Cleanse The Xenos With Deathwatch: Overkill
February 27, 2016 by brennon
Games Workshop have, as the leaks all suggested, now bought Deathwatch: Overkill for Warhammer 40,000 to the tabletop with pre-orders opening today. With that in mind lets take a look inside and if you're interested there is a gameplay video above where they give the rules a go...
So what do actually get inside the set?
Contents
Overkill sees the Deathwatch dealing with an infestation of Genestealers...
"Something deeply strange is going on at Ghosar Quintus. The mining planetoid’s population has developed odd habits and unsettling iconography. A suspicious transmission from Inquisitor Chaergryn, sent to investigate, has given the Imperium cause for alarm - ordinarily a man of absolute conviction, outside influences appear to have changed his mind.
Kill Team Excis, tasked with investigating the Inquisitor’s behaviour, has gone silent, and references to a ‘four-armed Emperor’ have been detected."
"Cassius has sworn to cleanse Ghosar Quintus of whatever mysterious alien threat has swallowed Kill Team Excis, and stop this challenge to the Emperor of Mankind before it can even begin. Whether he will be successful is unknown, but one thing is certain – Kill Team Cassius will descend upon Ghosar Quintus like a great mailed fist, and the battle will be spectacular…"
This looks like a really good set of miniatures and the boards look great too. I think rules-wise this might be quite fun as well from what I've watched of the video above. I really do like the look of the models they've put together in this set too with each of the characters looking packed with awesomeness.
The different characters all have something of their chapter about them which I like. While I haven't included him here I really like the Space Wolf model. You can go and check out the rest of the team on their webstore link.
The Genestealer Cult also looks great and you have some fantastic miniatures to work with in this set including the Primus above. One of the aspects of this set that people really liked in the leaks was that there were different generations of Genestealer at your disposal.
Will you be getting this?
"One of the aspects of this set that people really liked in the leaks was that there were different generations of Genestealer at your disposal..."
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Just when I think I’ve left games workshop they pull me back in!!
This looks like a great standalone product, just look at those genestealers!!!
I don’t want to tempt fate but is it possible they are actually listening to their customer base!?!
“Just when I think I’ve left games workshop they pull me back in!!”
Was going to write exactly the same thing 🙂
No. Umm. How much does this cost? A left arm and a testicle, or just the arm? I forget …
Seriously though. What are you going to do with the bike? All the weapon load outs are kinda … meh. GW is clearly designing stuff to not be that useful. Oh sure it is pretty but not that useful on the marine side. It is all pre-posed, designed to be hard to convert/bit out (just like the last few boxed sets they’ve done). The value here is the cool basically one of a kind genestealer stuff … but is it worth the pretty outrageous prices they are charging for this. Oh ya you can justify the price as a “great value” by comparing it to their laughably over priced range, but when you compare it to what you can get in say a stand alone board game, this is not a good value for most people who don’t have a huge GW sunk cost already.
I’d recommend a new customer buy imperial assault or something like that and skip this. If you are a sunk cost GW person, ya this is a great deal, other than that … *yawn* …
I don’t know man, I’m a modeller at heart and if you can seriously look at that genestealer cult and say things like ‘meh and ‘yawn’ then you have got lost in the meta of this game.
Plus this article does not show the full extent of what you get. The gene stealers alone are;
A Genestealer Primus, a Genestealer Magus and two Familiars;
– 2 Purestrain Genestealers, 4 Aberrants and 28 Genestealer Hybrids (12 Acolyte Hybrids of the 1st and 2nd generation and 16 Neophyte Hybrids of the 3rd and 4th generation);
– a massive Genestealer Patriarch;
Not all depicted by the picture above.
They are the best (and first if I’m not mistaken) gene stealers to come out in years and I personally love them!!
imperial assault = £1.74 per mini (at £60, £80 rrp it’s £2.35)
overkill = £2 per mini (at £100, you might get it for £80 from an independent which would be £1.60)
how is this an example of a value minis board game. plus IS is way less convertible.
Got bored watching the play through and gave up watching, doesn’t seem much to it really. For anybody watching past the first 10 mins, does anything happen apart from moving and rolling a dice to hit?
Well spacehulk is just moving and rolling to hit, and is one of the best board games out there.
That had claustophobic atmosphere though, this just seems like one big room balttering away. I like the Calth game as it has buffs etc to make it more than just dice rolling, was hoping this would have some added mechanics.
It has alot going for it. Just played it at my GW store. There is alot of tactics and replay value built into it.
But if you can’t manage to focus for more then 10 minutes on a video, then maybe the game is not for you.
Watching others playing a game and being the person that plays the game are very different entities. You’re implied statement that @hithero has an attention deficiency is not unnoticed and mean spirited. He has every right to question the quality of the game based on what GW presents in a video as that is GW’s advert of the game.
@nosebiter, you’re a better person than this. Degrading others is not your style.
You are consistently rude and passive aggressive on BoW, please stop
When the comment is related to GW people tend to be unpolite quickly. I am not a moderator, but as a user I beg you to be respectful of the opinions of other persons. That guy only said that he was getting bored with the video because he hoped more mechanics that the ones he saw. It doesn’t have to be nothing with the ability to focus on a video for ten minutes: It is really bad advertising if you have to wait more than this quantity of minutes to get to the interesting part. It is not neither my game, and of course i can see more than ten minutes of interesting material in video.
This actually looks a lot more fun that Space Hulk, but then I’m one of the few people who thinks Space Hulk is massively is over-rated (give me Space Crusade any day).
Stick with it, hithero. It gets more interesting. It also looks superior to the Aliens V Predator game we got a few months ago. There’s actually some sport to it, for a start!
you got a few months ago *facepalm
worst KS decision yet (and I’m counting one I never expect to see anything from, atleast they streight up £”€£ed everyone, and not just on a case by case basis)
@nosebiter play more games, you would benefit form a wider perspective. You also missed most of the intricacies of spacehulk that it seems are lacking from this game – your stripping out time limited turns, command points, facing, line of sight and overwatch.
I was waiting for the rubber Genestealer to burst through the polystyrene wall 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ERmUzs1O5E
Its a very basic system, not sure how balanced it is, and it almost seems AoS lite in terms of rules. It is move and attack, or attack twice if your Deathwatch. Gambits are there for events, but seem of limited impact – but hard to judge on a single play through. I don’t foresee it being one I’d play
same.
This is such an amazing looking boxed set. Once again GW flex their miniature making muscles, and blow almost everyone else out of the water.
Hopefully their “miniature making muscles” can somehow stop the decade of flat profits (actually down this year again) … but ya they can still make pretty miniatures. It is unfortunate that they have nuke’d their once great community and can’t seem to get rules right to save their lives.
I dearly hope that the pretty minis start to translate into a resurgence in their community and that maybe they will start making rulesets and games that people actually want to play (not just the sunk cost GW fanboys alone) … I’d love to get back into GW stuff but there just isn’t a ruleset out there that is reasonable for me. I don’t see how any new player could really reasonably get into the GW hobby anymore. It is well over $1000.00 to get a playable army for 40K still and the fantasy stuff is just … erm … it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d love to see them come out with a true skirmish game that wasn’t a trick to pull you into their huge core system, spend $400 a month to stay in the game, … stuff … just a little skirmish game that allows casual players to buy some models here and there and play some 30-60 minute games occasionally. There is such a huge market for that … but … wishful thinking on my part I think GW going skirmish for real is a total pipe dream.
I’d love a GW skirmish game, too. I got excited over Inquisitor, but then they made it what, 54mm? Which meant new minis, new terrain… would’ve been great if they’d just made it 32mm thus allowing everyone already playing 40k to give it a shot. Would also have saved them a lot of money on moulding, etc.
@meekrebel Inquisitor translate well to 28mm just half the ranges. Give it a go, its why I want the cult
To be honest, you don’t even really need to halve the ranges. The longer weapon ranges and movement values work perfectly well with 28mm figures, and even make it feel a little more realistic. Personally I’d like a little more structure around the ruleset, it’s pretty open as it is right now. I always thought a nice cross between Necromunda and Inquisitor (retaining the character progression) would make a fantastic game and would allow players to use their favorite alien races in their skirmish games (and allow for some fantastic conversions).
Still, there’s nothing quite like a good Necromunda campaign.
Lets just hope that their new “Specialist Games” studio will make Necromunda as one of their first projects (after Blood Bowl as we’ve already seen minis for that).
I still play Necro using the Community Edition rule set but would love for GW/FW to release some new minis for it.
I think you need to look around, miniatures are great but not blowing everyone else out of the water. I wouldn’t be getting it if not for arranging a split on the minis.
I doubt I’m the first to say this, but it needs that limo.
http://wargameexclusive.com/shop/imperial-inquisition/female-imperial-inquisitor-with-armored-interceptor-car-28mm/
Ha I thought people would say that so I put this link up in the video I did on it.
INQUISITION BATMOBOILE! Wow!
Well once again GW manages to convince me to hand over the readies. At £100 it seems good value, with retailer discount of 20-25% it’s a bit of a no brainer. I watched the play through and actually as a game think it’s one I’ll be playing – those sculpts look damn fine too.
First thing GW has pursuaded me to open my wallet for in several years, nice.
For those of us in the UK, you can get it for £75 on Dark Sphere. Really love seeing the genestealer cult back again and the deathwatch look great too. Hope both get codex books and multipart kits later on.
£75 you say…might do it then.
I just checked shipping and the cheapest option is £9.80 which totally kills it for me, sadly.
Same thing puts me off the independent retailers. Postage to Ireland usually murders any discount I was trying to get in the first place.
Fantastic models, their skills with plastic has really pushed the boundaries it has to be said. Not as detailed as metal or resin models but they’re really pushing towards that goal.
£100 so £2 per model I guess. I think, as a board game, that price is absurd. But, I suppose £2 per model is fair enough for gamers.
Loving that the hybrids are back……but left GW too long ago to go back, doesn’t mean that I can’t integrate the Genestealers, and the Plague from warpath into one of the same race.
I really do feel that this is the sweet spot that GW really shines in. The heavy handed treatment that GW gets from the gaming community at large tends to be when they don’t release top quality models or rules. When they get it right I find that even the harshest critics will give them the just dues that they deserve for the right reasons.
IMHO this is the best release from GW in some time. I hope they keep this up and even bring back the cult into 40k.
was hoping it was designed for more players, but for those of you who played this already is it workable to have say 2 players control the marines?
That should not be a problem at all.
The playthrough I did at my local GW had four of us controlling individual Marines vs one Cult player and it works fine, arguably more fun than 1v1 🙂
That said it wasn’t so much fun after getting my Blood Angel killed ha
I am actually impressed by those miniatures that come in that box.
i’m getting it for the minis… the game seemed really CRAPPY judging from the walktrhough video….
In two minds with the new Deathwatch Overkill board game from GW. The minis and tiles are really nice. But from watching the video of the game, the gameplay is really lacking. For the price of the game I would want something with deeper tactics, more like what you get in the Rackham game Hybrid. Instead it is very much you roll a lot of dice, then I do, repeat. The turn sequence and action options look very limited. Guess I’ll be getting the Genestealer Cult for use in Necromunda separately.
Watching the demo I thought the same thing. I think it needs more los blocking rules. The space marines barely needed to move. I’m sure there will be scenarios in the book to change it up and it hasn’t stopped me from pre-ordering it :).
Really do like the look of this.
Ok so I was helping the store paint the minis today and I have to say the miniatures are beautiful, but not for the faint of heart. The amount of detail on each and how they are done up are well… difficult, these models are meant to be, as far as I can see painted during assembly. At least for all of the marines.
I looked at the game and puzzled over it for a moment @doctorether I think is right. It seems… limited.
However, I think surprisingly the biggest hit here is the genestealer cult minis they look fantastic, the patriarch is amazing, so detailed so much room to work with him his just amazing. The genestealers themselves seem to be the biggest let down.
I would say that this is their fluffiest release in a long time. Officio Assassinorum seemed to be a way to get things into a box which people would buy, but this does seem far more legit. I am unsure if I can justify buying it yet with it’s $280 price tag where I live though.
Just got two of those 🙂 I really like this more board game attitude GW has at the moment.
In two minds with this meaning i would of liked the SM sculpts alot more a year ago but my tastes move on a little i think, Still i do like the Genestealer cult minis and suppose could use one or two of the others for my Scythes if i ever get round to starting that project up again….dont know really as £100 could get me a Spartan.
On a slight tangent, I was just reading through the White Dwarf Deathwatch Killteam formation rules, tying to work out how to make best use of it in a game, and it occurred to me that since Deathwatch count as an Army of the Imperium faction (and so are battle brothers with other Army of the Imperium factions), they can use their allies’ vehicles that have a transport capacity. Interestingly, once you count up all the models in Killteam Cassius, and take into account the Bulky and Very Bulky rules, it all comes to a total of sixteen… which just so happens to be the transport capacity of a Landraider Crusader (it is almost as if someone planned it that way).
While the points cost would be extreme, load the entirety of Squad Cassius into a Crusader (painted in Deathwatch colours, naturally), drive up to a xenos scum unit you really, really want dead, have them all pile out and open up at point blank range before assaulting the target.
You get 4 template weapon attacks – Branatar (with rerolls to wound on his Heavy Flamer), Grytt (not forgetting Grytt’s epic Frag Cannon and its two rending template shots) and Delassio – along with a plasma bolt from Gydrael and the special issue ammo shots (whichever flavour is most appropriate to the target unit, all of which are Precision Shots as well – thank you Donatus) of the rest of the squad. That is plenty of firepower, especially against a horde unit, even before you take into account the Crusader’s own guns.
After all of that, the squad can still assault (assuming there is anything left standing to assault), getting three attacks apiece when it does so (all with Furious Charge courtesy of Delassio) with the Crosius, Power Weapons, Lightning Claws and Mastercrafted Powerfist scattered about the unit enabling it to deal hefty damage up close as well. And should they need to disengage, they even have Hit and Run from Suberai… which they can then use to shoot up the target a bit more before maybe charging back in for extra attacks and Furious Charge all over again.
And all the while the unit can reroll to wound rolls and armour penetration rolls of a one thanks to its formation special rule. That should put quite the crimp in almost any alien menace’s day.
I almost forgot – Suberai has Split Fire as well, so if you have two enemy units in close proximity to one another, such as a gun line, you can have the rest of the squad obliterate one enemy unit with shooting while Suberai fires at another, and then assault the squad that Suberai fired at to make of mess of them in hand to hand fighting. If you need to, you can also have the Crusader fire at the second enemy squad if you think they need a little softening up before the assault, or it can engage a third enemy squad with its considerable anti-infantry firepower. The Killteam and its transport between them can chew up the better part of a battleline in a single turn if you play your cards right…
the figures look great.
After watching a half hour of the game I can’t seem to see the fun in playing the genestealer cult at all. You always seem to go last, everything dies from the slightest gust of wind and the idea that you have numbers on your side is moot when they get killed before they can do anything. Oh, and the little amount of attacks that they do dish out miss frequently and when they do hit do nothing.
The only things I seen the cult pass was jumping over a crack to reach another tile.
EDIT:
I’m going to say I watched the entire video now and it seems the GS cult is more tactic heavy than the Deathwatch. In order to do anything useful for the cult you need to use tactic cards. The game had some small shining moments, but over all the marines look like they play like an autopilot setting in that you only need to know your save and weapons. In most cases you pass your save, hit your target and kill it.
The cult really needed to think of how to use it’s resources as it was way too easy for them to go pop! Even the elite models for the cult seemed like pushovers. It was a sad game to watch overall.
You know it’s sad when one side is laughing all the time from the kills and the other side is laughing out of frustration and loss of hope. You can see this as time goes by.
that sounds very different from Space Hulk: Genestealer – I remember playing terminators and being terrified by pop-up hybrids with heavy-weapons 🙁
On the upside @manpug, from what I can see from reading the White Dwarf articles, in most missions the Genestealer Cult player can recycle the majority of their models if they get killed (the idea being that only the Patriarch is truly irreplaceable to the Cult, whereas its rank and file membership is almost numberless) and thus keep the pressure up on the Deathwatch. This makes sense of why the Deathwatch have two attack phases – it stops them simply being swamped and overwhelmed in short order.
In the first mission in the game, for example, the Cult player can recycle their models. To win, the Deathwatch player has four Marines and must kill 25 Cult models, whereas the Cult has to kill two Deathwatch Marines to win, which should lead to a fairly close game so long as the Cult player thinks a little about their actions.
That type of mission feels like it would have an increasing sense of desperation to it for the Deathwatch player; initially, they cleave through the aliens easily enough, but as the mission progresses endless waves of Cult monsters get mown down and pile up in the corridors, but more just keep coming, climbing over their own dead in a tide too numerous to hold at bay entirely. Sooner or later, the Deathwatch start to get separated, surrounded and torn apart one by one…
The odd part is why the demonstration video didn’t use that type of mission, which seems more representative of the usual game play of Overkill.
If what you say is true and it was the mission parameters that set the game limits much more different than other more balanced missions then I might have had a total different opinion on the game.
I think you’re right, this may have been a bad choice for a demo video of the game. What I got from this video was the Deathwatch are nigh unstoppable and the cult really do need God’s intervention for them to kill even one of the marines.
Hope the other missions make for a much more balanced game or nobody will want to play as the bad guys.
i’m going to put new hybrid-style heads on my spare chaos cultists
I was looking forward to this release in a big way. They I saw the price. $280 AUD.
Even with retailer discounts I will give this one a pass. It looks great even just for the miniatures. Just not $280AUD worth of great.
Quick conversion. $280 AUD worked out as £143 GBP.
The models are stunning and I wish I could justify the expense.
No thanks.
I’ll upvote to counter the down vote you got just cause you said no 😉 Looks like people are not allowed to no to GW products anymore…
Upvoting, downvoting, spite-voting – why can’t we all just get along…!? 😉
Nevah!!!
HERETIC!!1
One would think from some of the comments here that many people might actually consider not buying this if the game part is not all that great.
Does anyone actually expect this to stand up to a “proper” board game for playability (and replayability)? Is not the minis the be all-end all of this product?
The forthcoming 40K rules for the Genestealer Cult have been leaked, and they seem to be pretty brutal all told, especially the Formation – it is 600 points but you get what you pay for, given that the entire cult model contents of the boxed game can infiltrate, get Shrouded on their first turn, and can attempt to charge on their first turn, Even better, the Patriarch and Purestrain Genestealers can infiltrate anywhere more than 1″ from the opposing forces, even in line of sight, making that charge essentially a sure thing. The Patriarch’s Claws are also pretty vicious, being AP 3 with Rending and Shred, and the Genestealer Familiar gives 2 bonus strength 4, AP – attacks with Rending at the owning model’s WS and Initiative. Just the Patriarch, the two Purestrain, and the little Familiar can put a world of hurt on a unit, doubly so if you roll up Invisibility.
I am starting to think that the design team over at GW may be watching Alien too much…
Here’s the link to War of Sigmar:-
https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/510
One thing GW are unfortunately still doing very wrong. Putting out ridiculously overpowered 40k formations to sell more minis.
It is killing 40k for a lot of existing players (those who haven’t already given it up for other reasons). I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy playing 40k but with all of these formations all you need is one power gamer in a group to ruin the game for everyone else.
Or the group can refuse to play that one powergamer.
#Solved
I don’t know if I would call this a grotesquely overpowered formation. Everyone having infiltrate, stealth and shrouded on the first turn is undeniably effective, but getting multiple units into cover for infiltrating up to 12″ away from your opponents might be challenging for all but the Aberrants (and the Purestrains and Patriarch whose special ability makes it a non-issue). Out of cover that goes up to 18″ away, making a first turn charge unlikely.
While the Purestrains and the Patriarch could well make a real mess of their initial target unit, at the end of the day they are three models with five wounds between them – they aren’t impossible to counter (though if the Patriarch rolls up invisibility things could admittedly get rather sticky, but that is far from certain), and should the Patriarch die that has negative effects upon the remainder of the Cult, making risking him in such an aggressive fashion something of a risk/reward trade off.
Add in the fact that this formation consists mostly of pretty squishy models without much in the way of armour, toughness, or fire support (though those mining laser are pretty nice, essentially functioning as sawn off lascannons), and countering it shouldn’t be all that difficult for an experienced war gamer
Overall, I would say that this formation is effective but not overpowering on the tabletop, and seems to fit in very well indeed with the fluff of the faction, which seems to be the principle intent of the games developers in creating it. While lacking the virtuosity of camouflage and inflicting unexpected claw-in-the-face related health issues possessed by Lictors, Genestealers were still always supposed to be stealthy creatures and ambush predators in the game lore, described as the ‘harbingers of clawed death’ in the fluff and often depicted as stalking their prey and getting really rather close before striking. Now the rules more closely reflect the way the unit has always been described in the background, which is a trend we have been seeing more and more recently with units in GW games. While I rather like that trend, I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone.
I haven’t seen the models and maybe it’s the painting but these models seem exceptionally outstanding in terms of depth and detail – for plastics. GW have really – it seems – closed the gap between plastic and metal/resin here when it comes to quality of art.
Like GW’s prices or not, but when you pay their prices some of the money goes into the improving their tech and “forges”.
Looking good! Not an instant buy for me as I don’t belong to the nostalgic crowd I think this game is aimed at but the minis are really, really nice and I wouldn’t mind picking it up over the Summer sometime.
https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/Deathwatch/40k-rules-deathwatch-en.pdf
full rules for 40k both sides, and it’s a free download.