Review: Deathwatch First Founding

First Founding is a product for Fantasy Flight Games’ Deathwatch line of Warhammer 40,000 RPGs. This product can be found online for $20 and I received it for free as part of a Featured Reviewer program. Like all Deathwatch supplements it focuses on the Space Marines. First Founding was perhaps designed to allay a common complaint among Warhammer 40k fans, that Deathwatch did not include enough of the classic Space Marine chapters for prospective players to use when building their characters. First Founding includes Chapter advancement tables and powers for the First Founding chapters not covered in the original Deathwatch: the Iron Hands, Salamanders, Raven Guard and White Scars. It also includes new stuff for the previously introduced chapters, the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and Imperial Fists.

Fantasy Flight Games has always done a really good job with the Warhammer 40k setting, in my book. They’ve made it a really accessible universe to game in even if you have never heard of Games Workshop before, just because they digest its vast, sordid history so neatly and so well in their books. First Founding is no different. It includes reams of fluff to help you understand each Chapter of the Space Marines and how they are different. Not only that, it includes quite a bit of fluff about the ancient conflict which is the backbone of the entire setting, the Horus Heresy, as well as the Traitor Legions that initiated it.

Of course, the book is not just fluff and ancient histories. Each Chapter confers a Demeanor, skill bonuses, a unique Solo Mode ability and sometimes equipment (such as a bionic hand for the Iron Hands). The write-ups of the newly-added Chapters (Iron Hands, Salamanders, Raven Guard, White Scars) include Pasts that you can roll from a small table, a small name table, chapter advances, and psyker powers were applicable. For the old ones (Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and Imperial Fists) the book includes new Solo Mode abilities and Advanced Specialties, which are abilities (sometimes) and an advancement table you can earn at certain levels of XP, in place of your normal advancement. For example, you could play a Furioso Dreadnought as a Blood Angel, or become part of the Ultramarines Honor Guard.

Each Traitor Legion has 2 pages or so detailing some of their past, and their current activities within the Jericho Reach of Deathwatch. They aren’t playable in Deathwatch, so there’s no stats for them. Perhaps in the future something more will be done about them for Dark Crusade, but I’m fairly satisfied with how Chaos Space Marines are handled there, so I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. That game already has a few good ways to handle the flavor and powers of different chaos worship. But you’ll probably see it in the future nonetheless as it’s a very obvious product addition for the Black Crusade line.

First Founding has an armory section introducing a new weapon ability, Proven X (any weapon die of less than X becomes X, so Proven 3 turns rolls of 1 or 2 into rolls of 3) and the concept of Chapter weapons, which can be taken as Signature Items by Space Marines of that Chapter (unless the GM is kind enough to let a player just get one from a chapter armory). Each Chapter weapon has marginally better stats and qualities than an ordinary weapon of its type, and often a unique special ability. There’s some new “armor” which adds no AP, but its association with the chapter lends it new abilities, such as the Salamander’s Mantle which protects from flames. There’s also miscellaneous new gear like the banner of the Deathwatch. While sparse and sometimes numerically unimpressive at face value, a lot of these weapons have interesting abilities. A Space Marine is already incredibly powerful, so the new weapons being more than just bigger numbers is pretty welcome.

The book introduces a new system of Followers for the Deathwatch Space Marines. Followers are divided into two overall groups – those who work behind the scenes to give some kind of benefit to the Space Marines, like Chapter serfs, who may have different skills and be able to handle certain situations that the Space Marines are too ‘roided up to take care of, and those who just fight alongside the Space Marines. Followers cost XP to gain, like Advancements. The Fenrisian Wolf, for example, costs a whopping 1500 XP, but given its fairly sicknasty stats (and just the awesomeness of running around with a giant wolf) it can still be worth getting. Especially if a bunch of your advancement table is just greater iterations of Tracking. Along with the system and its various trappings, there’s a lot of advice for GMs on how to implement Followers to everyone’s advantage.

Finally, the book has a nice section for GMs on incorporating the Chapters, and using Chapter-related campaign plots, such as playing out a rivalry between two Chapters, and tailoring missions to specific Chapter specialties. At the back of the book is a new Adventure, Traitor’s Dawn, which I have not been able to fully read, but seems interesting from the summary as it involves the possibility of space marine vs space marine combat as great clashes occur between Chapters.

If you are a huge space marine fan, and you know all the main chapters, and you were disappointed at their exclusion (where are my Salamanders?!) in the original Deathwatch book, it’s worth looking here. Many of the Chapters included in Deathwatch (all excepting the FFG-original chapter Storm Wardens) get new stuff to look at in this book, so if you have an existing campaign with Ultramarines or Blood Angels looking for new options, this book can scratch that itch as well. I’m not so sure about the Followers system, and if you don’t care as much about the Horus Heresy and the First Founding and the Traitor Legions, and all this other foundational 40k story stuff, you might find a lot of text you don’t want to read. Still, I think this is a great book that any big Deathwatch player and 40k RPG fan will want to get his or her hands on.