Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
I never really found Chaos Space Marines to be that different back in the day. Different specifics bolted onto the same core.
CSM are also a marine army, yeah.

Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
I'm just not a big fan of them, possibly because my first experience of Deathwatch included us being denied the ability to a) plan, b) scout, c) check orbital scans, or d) sneak in through the back door before commencing the blazing guns*. Always like Dark Heresy more, maybe it's because the PCs are going to spend their first few sessions in way over their head ad underequipped, it encourages solutions other than 'set it on fire'.

Mainly 'let's raid the local Imperial Guard base for equipment', but players learn slowly.

* Space Marines are not stupid, and I realised right away that walking into this place through the front door should have resulted in a melta shot to the helmet, at the very least once we reached the supposed underground tunnels. I wanted to gather information from orbit, fly down to the nearest city still recieving ships, do a forced march to the complex, find the tradesman's entrance, find the underground tunnel undetected if possible, then loudly annouce that the Adeptus Astartes are here and go in guns blazing. Instead the Inquisition apparently bundled us into a drop pod without letting us see the building plan and couldn't even get us through the roof, we had to march in the front door while they were setting off the alarm. He had a really bad reaction to the word 'scout', as well as 'melta gun' and 'I paid XP to add it to my Wargear'.
Speaking of being in over their head, one of the things I have found that I really like about Wrath and Glory compared to the FFG40k RPG's is that the party doesn't start as incompetent at everything, and are at least what is expected of a baseline unit of their faction.

A character in the deathwatch or taken as an acolyte is a veteran of their organization, but at character generation in DH & DW, you'd be lucky to be as competent as a basic trooper. The most egregious case is the Sister of Battle class in 2e, who starts as some kind of initiate, not even a base 9 point BSS.

I think it's really nice that the classes are literally the codex troop entries in W&G, so it's very easy to start as at least a competent private and develop from there.