Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus: Death Guard

[mel_danes]

Thing is Death Guard can't be fixed with points drops. I don't want a horde of bad troops, I want the relentless durable troops we used to have. I've got no problem paying the cost, I just want the payoff.

 

They have to address the pure failure of our faction abilities.

Anything else is lip service.

[Plaguecaster]

Yeah it's just an absolute joke, can already tell it's going to be a disappointment as unless they redo alot of our unit's rules and abilities cant really see how they'll make most of it any good. Plague marines are a joke with no survivability dying like chumps and removing heaps anytime anything shoots at them with no damage reduction or feel no pain save like the majority or other armies. Likely well just get small points drop and they'll pat themselves on the back for a good job at fixing DG

[WrathOfTheLion]

12 hours ago, mel_danes said:

They have to address the pure failure of our faction abilities.

Anything else is lip service.

Pretty much, yeah. Eldar they've done the most to alter the faction ability, but it wasn't a drastic change, so I don't think we can gauge how far they will or won't go right now. They'll need to more significantly change factions like Death Guard and Ad Mech.

[Bloody Legionnaire]

On 7/20/2023 at 7:38 AM, WrathOfTheLion said:

The second was the reason I expected, but that obviously falls flat once it's handed to other factions.

 

I suspect what happened is some factions (Death Guard, AdMech) were amongst the first penned, and that they changed philosophies partway through.

 

Once again throwing out some of the most sensible stuff, buddy! 

 

You may have been one of the first to make this exact point. I can't remember, but there was enough moaning and groaning going on after the rules came out that I think this point; that DG and other factions were first done, and then philosophies changing after was missed by many, and it really makes sense. 

I still think detachments will have a major impact on how the army plays and maybe thats even something the rules writers had in mind. It would be nice to see changes come before the codex, but I'm not sure why the loudest criers in the room can't accept the changes we'll get with detachments. 

[gaurdian31]

2 hours ago, Bloody Legionnaire said:

 

Once again throwing out some of the most sensible stuff, buddy! 

 

You may have been one of the first to make this exact point. I can't remember, but there was enough moaning and groaning going on after the rules came out that I think this point; that DG and other factions were first done, and then philosophies changing after was missed by many, and it really makes sense. 

I still think detachments will have a major impact on how the army plays and maybe thats even something the rules writers had in mind. It would be nice to see changes come before the codex, but I'm not sure why the loudest criers in the room can't accept the changes we'll get with detachments. 

I think it is because people would like to play their army now and not wait for the codex to come out with these changes. 

[Pathstrider]

1 hour ago, gaurdian31 said:

I think it is because people would like to play their army now and not wait for the codex to come out with these changes. 

Or have the reasonable expectation that GW should be able not to screw it up so bad in the first place.

 

The more index information that came out the more obvious it was the GW just rushed it all out.

[Plaguecaster]

 

 

It's OK guys GW has fixed us now  our pistols actually have the Pistol ability 

 

 

Only somewhat decent thing is now helbrute's ability is now within contagion range of itself so can be used with boilblight now  but otherwise another complete disappointment 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, this set of of changes was an errata rather than a balance fix, so I don't think anyone should have expected it to fix anything more than minor issues with the system.  That said, I can understand that it is disappointing that GW has yet to do anything meaningful in ameliorating the mess it made of the Death Guard rules, balance wise.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui
grammatical fixes

[Bloody Legionnaire]

7 hours ago, gaurdian31 said:

I think it is because people would like to play their army now and not wait for the codex to come out with these changes. 

There is nothing that stops anyone from playing with their army now...

Now, if you're saying DG would like to be "competitive" right now, that is a different story.. And while I fully understand this is my opinion and there will be some who don't like it, but,  maybe the very beginning of an edition where most armies are in index isn't the greatest time to make everything about the niche that is competitive 40k. 

[Plaguecaster]

2 minutes ago, Bloody Legionnaire said:

There is nothing that stops anyone from playing with their army now...

Now, if you're saying DG would like to be "competitive" right now, that is a different story.. And while I fully understand this is my opinion and there will be some who don't like it, but,  maybe the very beginning of an edition where most armies are in index isn't the greatest time to make everything about the niche that is competitive 40k. 

Forget competitive it's a struggle to even be fun to play anymore depending on which faction you play 

[WrathOfTheLion]

4 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

Well, this set of of changes was an errata rather than a balance fix, so I don't think anyone should have expected it to fix anything more than minor issues with the system.  That said, I can understand that it is disappointing that GW has yet to do anything meaningful in ameliorating the mess it made of the Death Guard rules, balance wise.

Exactly this. The change was a clarification to the datasheets, not a balance pass. There should be one in September I think, which is the one where we get to determine whether they fail at a fundamental level, or whether they have some degree of success altering the faction.

 

That said, September is still a ways off...

Edited July 27, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[Plaguecaster]

Yeah but in the most recent meta watch with that video interview at the most recent tournaments they admitted they knew DG and other ones were terrible and would attempt to do some sort of fix before the balance update so forgive me for assuming they actually would do so when changing the rest of stuff and be disappointed they haven't done anything to change them apart from fixing their stupid typos they should of fixed weeks ago 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Plaguecaster

[WrathOfTheLion]

8 hours ago, Plaguecaster said:

Yeah but in the most recent meta watch with that video interview at the most recent tournaments they admitted they knew DG and other ones were terrible and would attempt to do some sort of fix before the balance update so forgive me for assuming they actually would do so when changing the rest of stuff and be disappointed they haven't done anything to change them apart from fixing their stupid typos they should of fixed weeks ago 

You're good, there's just so many changes going around, it can be hard to keep track of which change is meant to fix what thing.

 

The one we care about is in September, which is unfortunately more than a month out.

[Rain]

Realistically, I wouldn’t expect anything meaningful until the codex. Most likely they will be shuffling around the deck chairs on the Titanic until then. +3 inches to contagion range, wow. Look out Wraithknights.

[jaxom]

Has anyone watched the Death Guard vs tank-only Astra Militarum battle report? I'm not a subscriber, and would like to know how it played out.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/02/astra-militarum-vs-death-guard-in-a-2000-point-10th-edition-showdown/

[Azekai]

On 8/2/2023 at 11:14 AM, jaxom said:

Has anyone watched the Death Guard vs tank-only Astra Militarum battle report? I'm not a subscriber, and would like to know how it played out.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/02/astra-militarum-vs-death-guard-in-a-2000-point-10th-edition-showdown/

Considering how tragically miserable the DG are at dealing with armor, I am going to hazard a guess and say ‘badly.’

[Warsmith Annüss]

I'm probably going to watch it tonight. Mostly because I want to hear the excuses to justify the index and lack of resilience. 

[WrathOfTheLion]

The thing is they need to address resilience, since the existing rule is a combo of a progressively expanding close aura, along with decreased movement speed. You need something to get you there for the -1 T aura to be of any consequence to the game, let alone whether that rule is so good. At the infantry-level, it's still decent, usually being close to a +1 to wound, but for vehicles that only matters if the weapon is near the toughness enough to cause it to equal or exceed.

Edited August 5, 2023 by WrathOfTheLion

[lansalt]

On 8/2/2023 at 6:14 PM, jaxom said:

Has anyone watched the Death Guard vs tank-only Astra Militarum battle report? I'm not a subscriber, and would like to know how it played out.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/02/astra-militarum-vs-death-guard-in-a-2000-point-10th-edition-showdown/

 

DG "wins" by getting more victory points, but all their units (including Mortarion) are wiped out before the end, so...

[jaxom]

That matches a lot of what I’ve heard. Play the objectives and pray… unless you’re using Morty and PBCs with LoV.

[Warsmith Annüss]

Mortarion was, really, the only unit that did any work. DG won because of sticky objectives while facing a stationary tank line. 

 

[KingYertle]

On 8/2/2023 at 12:14 PM, jaxom said:

Has anyone watched the Death Guard vs tank-only Astra Militarum battle report? I'm not a subscriber, and would like to know how it played out.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/02/astra-militarum-vs-death-guard-in-a-2000-point-10th-edition-showdown/

 

The game was clearly played to give a leg up to the DG.   The Imperial Guard Player sat his Line of tanks in his DZ the whole game with the exception of 2 Hellhounds and thus never contested any of the midfield objectives.  At one point the Hellhound fellback from combat with some Plague Marines and it appears as if it could have fallen back and stolen one of the Tainted objectives but instead fell back away from any objectives.  Although it is possible terrain prevented movement onto that objective.  That would have been a big swing in points.  The IG never targeted Mortarion until BR3.  Once Morty made it into the line of tanks he caused havoc.

 

The DG player had some decent anti-tank ranged power with 2 Haulers, 1 PBC and 1 Pred.  The Pred was the HH model and painted in the DG colors it looked really good, the plague marine gunner on top was a nice touch.  I hope that model makes it into the codex.   Unfortunately the Pred died early and the rest of the DG tanks didn't do anything noteworthy.  Morty was clearly the only unit that was effective, killing a Hellhound in R1 and then killing a tank a turn once he made it into the enemy DZ in R3.

 

DG won by racking up uncontested primary and scoring big on Bring it Down thanks to Morty.  By not moving forward, the IG player allowed DG to get quite a few units into his DZ scoring 10 on Behind Enemy Lines.  The IG Player took Engage on All Fonts and then sat still the whole game, scoring only 4 VP.  IG did score 16 on Assassination.

 

The Plague Marines and Terminators all died quickly, although the Blightlords stuck around for a bit thanks to a few poor rolls by the Tanks.  The Plague Marines and Blightlords accomplished nothing noteworthy, but managed to shoot down a Hellhound thanks to a cheeky max damage meltagun shot from the PMs.  The Deathshroud with a LOC deep striked and charged a tank but failed to kill it and then were wiped out the next round.  A unit of poxwalkers did tie up a sentinel which prevented some Engage points.   

 

Final Score: 

 

Death Guard:  P40, BID13, BEL10 = 73

Imperial Guard:  P26, Asn16,  Engage4 = 56

 

Death Guard was essentially tabled in R4 with only Morty and some poxwalkers left.  DG used the Heal Strat every round.  At the end of the Game the IG Player had 3 Sentinels, a Tank Commander, a Rogal Dorn and the Hellhammer.  Morty took out a Hellhound, a Leman Russ, a Rogal Dorn and almost got the Hellhammer which survived on a single wound remaining.  Everything else in the DG army contributed some chip damage and killed 1 hellhound. 

 

The Battlefield was Terrain Heavy.

 

Was amusing to see how hard they tried to make DG look like an amazingly powerful army.  That doesn't leave me feeling optimistic the balance dataslate will address many of our army's issues.

 

EDIT:  A single IG Deep Striking Unit, or simply putting the Sentinels into Strategic Reserve would have allowed them to get behind the DG and Turn Off the Sticky Objectives, and scoring big on Engage, easily giving the win to the IG, IMO.

Edited August 9, 2023 by KingYertle

[jaxom]

Thank you, @KingYertle, for the in-depth breakdown.

[KingYertle]

6 hours ago, EnsignJoker said:

Agree, appreciate that write up. Not surprised they used the game to prop up the death guard. Hopefully the tournament results are enough for the devs to see we need massive adjustments. 
 

Would love to see that predator conversion. 

 

[KingYertle]

In Today's Metawatch Nick tells Stu that there has a been a lot of talk "online" about Death Guard struggling and why does he (Stu) think that is the case.  Stu responds by talking about how Leagues of V and Tau are struggling, and doesn't even mention Death Guard until this gem "There are players doing quite well with Death Guard" !!!

 

Thankfully he followed that by saying those players are likely the exception rather than the rule.  But I think its clear who in the Warhammer Studio is NOT a Death Guard Fan.