STARTING A DEATHWATCH ARMY IN 11TH EDITION: ONE VOW, EVERY CHAPTER
The Deathwatch hunt aliens for a living, and 11th edition is a fine moment to muster a black-armoured kill team of your own. This is the Imperium's long vigil made into an army: veterans seconded from every Space Marine chapter, repainted in black and silver but keeping one shoulder pad in their home colours. That single detail makes the Deathwatch the most personal painting project in the game — every marine in your force can carry a different chapter's heraldry, and a single squad becomes a tour of the entire setting. If you love variety but hate committing to one chapter, this is your loophole made canon.
The first box
Begin with the Deathwatch Veterans kit — it is the heart of the range and the reason to collect the faction. The sprues are gloriously overloaded: xenophase blades, heavy thunder hammers, shotguns, frag cannons, and enough shoulder pads to represent half the Adeptus Astartes. One box builds a kill team that no two collectors will ever assemble the same way. Paint the black armour first (a fine edge highlight is all it needs), save the silver arm for second, and treat each home-chapter pad as its own tiny reward at the end.
Recommended: Deathwatch Veterans
The second muster
The Deathwatch range is compact, which is honestly a virtue for buying discipline. Add a Watch Master to lead — a genuinely imposing character sculpt with his clavis and guardian spear — and a second Veterans box to deepen your options, or draw on the wider Space Marine range, which the Deathwatch traditionally borrows from freely. Terminators or Vanguard-style veterans in black slot straight into the vigil's aesthetic. Where the current range has rotated, don't guess: the current starter set and the faction's current catalogue will tell you exactly what the Watch fields today.
Choosing your centrepiece
The Corvus Blackstar is the one and only answer. The Deathwatch's dedicated gunship is sleek, sinister and unmistakably theirs — a matte-black drop-ship that looks like it's breaking atmosphere even on a shelf. It's also a kind painting project for a large kit: big smooth panels, silver trim, a few glowing sensor accents. Finish it and every army photo you take afterwards has a spine.
The vigil in a new edition
Points and datasheets were refreshed for 11th edition, and how the Deathwatch is organised on the tabletop has shifted more than most factions over the years — so check current datasheets and current points before building a roster. The models endure; the paperwork changes.
Purchases to defer
- A third Veterans box before the first two have their chapter pads painted — the vigil rewards patience.
- Borrowed Space Marine vehicles bought on impulse; the Blackstar deserves to land first.
- Chasing every relic bolter loadout — build what looks heroic, learn the army, then optimise.
- Any second gunship. One is a centrepiece; two is a storage problem.
Records of the Long Vigil
Every kill team's deeds are recorded in the vaults of the watch fortresses, and your collection deserves the same rigour. Log each kit as it arrives and mark it honestly: boxed, built, or finished. With an army this compact, the finished column can actually catch the owned column — a feeling most collectors never experience — and there's real satisfaction in seeing a whole faction fully painted. When you want the complete roll of what the Watch can field, past and present, the full unit catalogue is on the Deathwatch faction page under Data. Take the vow, then honour it one marine at a time.