Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus: Death Guard

[Karhedron]

Is there any chance DG will get Disgustingly Resilient (in some form) as a Detachment rule?

[Tokugawa]

22 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Is there any chance DG will get Disgustingly Resilient (in some form) as a Detachment rule?

No. If such detachment rules exist, then other detachment options are all nonsense and no one want to use them.

[Runefyre]

If they switched to the HH wound chart +1T would be much better, with T6 pushing S4 (so most basic infantry weapons) to wound on 6s. At least then blightlords would be pretty much impervious to basic infantry, requiring actual heavy weapons to reasonably take them down. As it stands I'm really underwhelmed by this preview. One of my main opponents is Death Guard and they honestly felt super fluffy to play against both in 8th and 9th. Hopefully there's more we aren't seeing that will improve the experience for DG players...

[Squark]

10 hours ago, burningsky25 said:

I think what we've seen consistently is: No one will have an easy answer for heavy armor. Every single faction focus makes this point more and more clear.  We are 100% used to any weapon that even thinks of being an anti-tank weapon wounding anything you can imagine on a 4+ or better.  3+ being nearly universal, 2+ not uncommon.  

 

This Is Not The Case With 10th Edition

 

There, that's the conclusion I've come to.  Really, nothing else makes sense.  What's crazy is how consistently the expected wound rolls have been nerfed.  Melta - 5+, PF, TH - 5+, Missile launchers - 4+ at best.  Lascannons - anywhere from 3-5+.  Down the list you can go.  They have frequently shown the absolutely biggest guns any faction has, and yes, they wound on 3+.  That's usually a single weapon you'll never have more than 3 of in an entire list that's limited to only one chassis.  

 

Anyways.   I was pretty worried about BA - no high strength melee? How do you kill vehicles? Same with SoB - melta dependant faction.  Other factions are in a similar boat, they might not have anything higher than strength 12.  But, I think we'll get a lot more accustomed to chip damage being a meaningful thing.  Personally I'm looking forward to it.  It really seems like the biggest revolution here will be, actually, exactly what they've advertised: simpler, and more to this point, less lethal.  I'm looking forward to it.  

The problem is that armies of 100% heavy armor exist, so not having an answer to them is a death sentence.

 

 

So, I know we only have a few pieces of the puzzle, but let's do some quick and dirty theory crafting. The heaviest AT guns we know Deathguard have are the lascannons mounted on the Land Raiders and Predators that have been rusting away for the past few editions (Which, based on their loyalist counterparts, we know are S10 Oops, the godhammer lascannon is S12. I'm not sure the predator annihilator's main gun will be so fortunate, but we can be generous and say it is heavy 2 S12 while its sponsons are heavy 1 S10). Do we think those can deal with, say 3 Questoris class knights (Toughness 11 or 12) or a mix of Questoris and Dominis knights? How many of these vehicles do we need?

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by Squark

[Bradeh]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Is there any chance DG will get Disgustingly Resilient (in some form) as a Detachment rule?

 

With the Army Rule being the main flavour of the faction and the individual unit abilities being varied having army wide DR/FNP as a detachment rule would just go against what they are trying to achieve. It would have to be an Army rule. 

 

12 minutes ago, Squark said:

The problem is that armies of 100% heavy armor exist, so not having an answer to them is a death sentence.

 

 

So, I know we only have a few pieces of the puzzle, but let's do some quick and dirty theory crafting. The heaviest AT guns we know Deathguard have are the lascannons mounted on the Land Raiders and Predators that have been rusting away for the past few editions (Which, based on their loyalist counterparts, we know are S10 Oops, the godhammer lascannon is S12. I'm not sure the predator annihilator's main gun will be so fortunate, but we can be generous and say it is heavy 2 S12 while its sponsons are heavy 1 S10). Do we think those can deal with, say 3 Questoris class knights (Toughness 11 or 12) or a mix of Questoris and Dominis knights? How many of these vehicles do we need?

 

 

As long as you play the objectives and win. I've never personally liked armies like that anyway. Combined arms style armies are always more fun personally for both players. 

Edited May 18, 2023 by Bradeh

[KingYertle]

And 24 hours later Imperial Knights gain FNP as a Detachment Rule.

 

What a slap in the face to us loyal DG Players

[Squark]

23 minutes ago, Bradeh said:

 

As long as you play the objectives and win. I've never personally liked armies like that anyway. Combined arms style armies are always more fun personally for both players. 

I mean, I still grumble to myself that the game would be improved if Knights went back to Apocalypse where they belong because they skew the game so much, but they exist and represent two entire armies now. Not planning for them is planning for failure.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Squark

[Dr. Clock]

1 hour ago, Squark said:

Do we think those can deal with, say 3 Questoris class knights (Toughness 11 or 12) or a mix of Questoris and Dominis knights? How many of these vehicles do we need?

Any army without 2 or 3 tank hunters, a decent sprinkling of melta and skirmish options could have a bad time, yes. Nobody should really be tabling Knights anyway - or anyone, for that matter IMO! I think we're just generally too used to the game being essentially over in 2 turns to appreciate how a reduction in lethality makes the game better for everyone. I want the bottom of the game to matter!

 

Intriguingly though, pushing out chaffe to spread the -1T to big Knights kicks any S12 to wounding them on 3s, suddenly making DG godhammers better than everyone else's as long as they leverage their special rule at the same time. So you need approximately 15 godhammer shots to kill Canis Rex in ideal conditions, whereas other marines will need 18, but maybe fewer if it's the target of their own army rule. Admittedly that's the majority of the game from just a single landraider, but if you do grab S12 weapons where you can, it won't be that hard to kill a big knight per turn if you're clever about it. So Land Raider, Predator, Laser Vindicator (why not?), and quad-las Contemptor if you wanna go Highlander and still invest 25-30% of points into tank hunting vehicles because your meta has lots of Knights. We all know that competitively one of the tank hunter units will be decided as 'best' for each list, and you'll see 2 in lots of friendly game, and 3 competitively. If I had to guess it'll be quad-las dreadnoughts or something because they'll leave more room for other stuff and they've got enough range that they can be slow and a bit less 'tanky'. Guess all those choom dreads are getting new arms.

 

If you still can't beat 'em, join 'em and toss in a brace of wardogs of your own. Or maybe Mortarion?

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

[Large and Moving Torb]

5 hours ago, Squark said:

<snip>

The heaviest AT guns we know Deathguard have are the lascannons mounted on the Land Raiders and Predators that have been rusting away for the past few editions....

</snip>

 

 

Hey, don't for get about this guy:

 

Spoiler

 

Seriously though, I 100% agree that Death Guard have nowhere near the anti-tank firepower that other factions seem to have in the new edition. Given "making vehicles stronk!" is one of the mottoes of the new edition, that means tough sledding for Nurgle's favored heretics. Hopefully, there is something else to help out when the new data sheets drop.

 

That said, I'm also hoping the Crawler gets the proper toughness buff it needs to compete.

[Special Officer Doofy]

23 hours ago, Khornestar said:

I was watching Auspex Tactics and his video on the DG preview today. He was rather negative about most of the preview, and one of his complaints was the -1T aura and how it often wouldn’t make a difference for units with high toughness, i.e. it wouldn’t reduce the wound to roll threshold sometimes.

 

Does it have to reduce the threshold every time for it the rule to be worthwhile? Universal +1 to wound seems like that would be way too strong.

 

It's not that it has to reduce the threshold everytime, it's just how lackluster it is completely. First of all it's an aura that you have to get in melee or right up against the opponent to take effect, and DG are the slowest army in the game. So not only does it suck when it doesn't change the threshold, but it often won't even effect most opponent's units. Plus increasing toughness cap from 8 to 12+ and having things have more toughness reduces it's effectiveness all together.

 

DG just can't get a break. They are the slowest, which was offset by being the most durable (on a per point bases) with average to below average offense. They rolled into 9th edition coming off of a 33% win rate in 8th (some sites that tracked win rates only had them above a mono inquisition army, which I have never even seen) to a middling below 50% for just about all of 9th.

 

They lost movement now in 10th and lose durability without really gaining lethality. So they lose out in every metric. I understand lethality is to be toned down in 10th, which is healthy for the game. But it is harder to swallow when we also lost our durability and more movement. Flail lost ap, sword/axe lost ap/strength (how ever you want to look at it), blight launcher lost ap. And that's just the Blightlord sheet. Going from 8th into 9th the flail (PM and terminators), deathshroud terminators and mower bloat drones already all lost strength on their weapons. That was the biggest bull:cuss: part about the -1T aura. They nerfed all of our best melee's strength to get the terrible aura in the first place. Was not exactly a buff (plus Morty already had the aura on his datasheet).

 

So I apologize on behalf of the negativity of us DG players, but judging by other forum's DG players too and YouTube videos (just look at the comments on the video you mentioned), there's not a whole lot to be happy about. Sure there are pros like lethal hits being a replacement for plague weapons or the mortar gaining a few shots. But they are heavily out weighed by the cons of losing DR, losing movement, losing AP, keeping the not great -1T aura instead of DR, not having much anti tank and so on.

 

Mortarion will probably lose alot of his staying power (just look at Be'lakor, he lost his -1 to be wounded and his -1D from ranged), and with the most popular faction's ability is pick one unit and get full rerolls and destroy it (oath of the moment), I'm not seeing him as exactly a solution to anything (and I'm not complaining about OotM, it is cool but it is a hard counter to an army that includes 1 500 pointish wrecking ball).

 

There's not a whole lot left to see besides point costs, a few strats and some individual abilities on datasheets. But from the Blightlord terminators we know deathshroud, LoV and LoC are losing movement and their statlines. From the plaguecaster we know all of our power armor statlines. We know the faction ability. We know the detachment ability. We know the core rule changes.

 

So again, sorry for the negativity, but there's not a whole lot to be happy about. Best case scenario is when the index comes out we find out we get some points drops for being nerfed on most fronts. I mean "yay" I guess? The best part of all of this was Monday I texted my brother "Sorry for your loss" after that admech reveal (his main army), just to have him text me back Wednesday "Could be worse, I could be a death guard player". Ouch 

[tzeentch9]

Death guard only lose disgustingly resiliant, but since damage and lethality is down everywhere, there’s not much gone. On the other hand they gain a massive boost in their damage output, with all the lethal hits, making pretty much all their weapons anti tank etc to some extent

[Tokugawa]

3 minutes ago, tzeentch9 said:

Death guard only lose disgustingly resiliant, but since damage and lethality is down everywhere, there’s not much gone. On the other hand they gain a massive boost in their damage output, with all the lethal hits, making pretty much all their weapons anti tank etc to some extent

Without the damage reduction mechanics, DG are just CSM.

 

And CSM could also drop some wounds to acquire lethal on every unit.

[Oxydo]

10 hours ago, Squark said:

The problem is that armies of 100% heavy armor exist, so not having an answer to them is a death sentence.

 

 

So, I know we only have a few pieces of the puzzle, but let's do some quick and dirty theory crafting. The heaviest AT guns we know Deathguard have are the lascannons mounted on the Land Raiders and Predators that have been rusting away for the past few editions (Which, based on their loyalist counterparts, we know are S10 Oops, the godhammer lascannon is S12. I'm not sure the predator annihilator's main gun will be so fortunate, but we can be generous and say it is heavy 2 S12 while its sponsons are heavy 1 S10). Do we think those can deal with, say 3 Questoris class knights (Toughness 11 or 12) or a mix of Questoris and Dominis knights? How many of these vehicles do we need?

 

We know that regular Lascannons are S12 Ap-3 d6+1D from the IG preview.

[Squark]

32 minutes ago, Oxydo said:

We know that regular Lascannons are S12 Ap-3 d6+1D from the IG preview.

Huh. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I just imagined seeing that man portable lascannons are S10. So my point might be off a tad

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, tzeentch9 said:

Death guard only lose disgustingly resiliant, but since damage and lethality is down everywhere, there’s not much gone. On the other hand they gain a massive boost in their damage output, with all the lethal hits, making pretty much all their weapons anti tank etc to some extent

 

It's not really even an improvement over stacking plague weapons and auras (which will most likely go away for joining units). And auto wounding on a 6+ to hit with 0 ap weapons is not anti tank, that's barely over 5% of attacks even translating to a lethal hit and getting past a 3+ save (which most vehicles have). Not what I would call anti tank. On top of losing DR, they also lost movement, ap (just like everyone else) and some strength. Not to mention DG's best anti tank was all S7 (-1T) melee (so essentially S8), which will remain at S8 most likely (since it was on infantry or fast attack vehicles) and not be able to handle T12 vehicles like they use to handle T8 vehicles.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[tzeentch9]

31 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

It's not really even an improvement over stacking plague weapons and auras (which will most likely go away for joining units). And auto wounding on a 6+ to hit with 0 ap weapons is not anti tank, that's barely over 5% of attacks even translating to a lethal hit and getting past a 3+ save (which most vehicles have). Not what I would call anti tank. On top of losing DR, they also lost movement, ap (just like everyone else) and some strength. Not to mention DG's best anti tank was all S7 (-1T) melee (so essentially S8), which will remain at S8 most likely (since it was on infantry or fast attack vehicles) and not be able to handle T12 vehicles like they use to handle T8 vehicles.

Death guard have plenty of faster units, the infantry was always slow. Plenty of ways to get round that of course, including transports, deep striking and reserves. It’s not just a few bolters with lethal hits either, it seems to be the majority of their weapons. They will grind down their opponents just like you would expect. The minus one toughness aura has gotten a buff too, going larger quicker. All in all, from what has been shown in the small preview, death guard are stronger than before 

[spessmarine]

On 5/17/2023 at 5:05 PM, Khornestar said:

I was watching Auspex Tactics and his video on the DG preview today. He was rather negative about most of the preview, and one of his complaints was the -1T aura and how it often wouldn’t make a difference for units with high toughness, i.e. it wouldn’t reduce the wound to roll threshold sometimes.

 

Does it have to reduce the threshold every time for it the rule to be worthwhile? Universal +1 to wound seems like that would be way too strong.

 

Hm, I think the anti-toughness aura is meant to bully infantry more than knights. So it stands to reason you can't just smell bad next to a land raider and expect results.
The DG codex isn't on the roadmap so no clue anytime soon if they'll bring back the regular fare in the codex detachments. Like a FNP detachment or something like that.

[KingYertle]

1 hour ago, tzeentch9 said:

Death guard only lose disgustingly resiliant, but since damage and lethality is down everywhere, there’s not much gone. On the other hand they gain a massive boost in their damage output, with all the lethal hits, making pretty much all their weapons anti tank etc to some extent

 

A gain in lethality is debatable.  Blightlords gained +1Attack and Autowounding 6s to hit, but the Axe dropped to Str5.  Therefore we go from 3 attacks wounding T4 (T3 after Aura) on 2s rerolling 1s to 4 attacks wounding T4 on 3s with no rerolls.  If I did the match correctly this is statistically even.  Then add in the change in AP and the Blightlords are less lethal in Melee.  As the new ruleset is dependent upon rolling 6s to hit, it may be statistically similar but I fear it will play out very inconsistently on the tabletop.

 

[Special Officer Doofy]

20 minutes ago, tzeentch9 said:

Death guard have plenty of faster units, the infantry was always slow. Plenty of ways to get round that of course, including transports, deep striking and reserves. It’s not just a few bolters with lethal hits either, it seems to be the majority of their weapons. They will grind down their opponents just like you would expect. The minus one toughness aura has gotten a buff too, going larger quicker. All in all, from what has been shown in the small preview, death guard are stronger than before 

 

Every army has "Fast Attack" units, but even then compare our 10" move fast attacks to other armies like marines (the most common army) that have 16" move flying speeders and 14" move bikes that auto advance 6". DG has 3 FA, two with 10" move and one with 7" move. That's it. Our infantry is all 4"-5" movement, slowest in the game. I can't believe you even want to argue the movement haha.

 

And deepstriking to what? Make a 9" charge, which is only a 28%? Just to have it fail and have that unit move, I don't know, let's just say more than 4" so the Terminators can never charge them again?

 

I guess the plus side of nerfing the whole faction by removing DR is our transports no longer are the most fragile units in the list since nothing has DR.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[Tokugawa]

DG blight drone is practically a helicopter. It is m10 and slower than every motorcycle unit in the game, and slower than many foot-running units too.

[KingYertle]

Once the full index is available it is plausible that Rhino Rush or Daemon Engine Spam are competitively viable lists.  My disappointment in the new direction is how that runs counter to the previous DG Lore.  Just read the WarCom recommended Tribology.  They are full of battle scenes were Plague Marines are described as soaking up repeated bolter fire without faltering, and the Death Guard aura of disease straight out kills unmodified mortals.   A simple T5 with no Disgustingly Resilient doesn't feel true to the Lore of what made Death Guard Unique.    Death Guard as a Faction should be slowly advancing, ridiculously hard to kill Infantry.   Space Orcs in Power Armor doesn't feel sufficient.  I hope to be proven wrong once all rules are released, but right now it is difficult to be Excited for the Index.

 

 

[Nephaston]

The loss of DR and Inexorable stings, but I'll wait until the full rules to pass judgement.

I could easily see Blight Haulers provide billowing clouds of cover, or stealth, or obstruction, while Poxwalkers play "catch the incoming fire", or perhaps a Lord of Virulence finally remembered he's supposed to help daemon engines and gives their plague guns something like "applies contagion to a unit hit".

 

The possibilities are near limitless, even within the middling frame provided by the faction ability and detachment.

Let's hope GW realizes that as well.

[DemonGSides]

Yeah that's one of my mantra's for all of these things.  All temporary, hopefully less temporary but still just temporary.

[spessmarine]

3 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

Our infantry is all 4"-5" movement, slowest in the game. I can't believe you even want to argue the movement haha.

 

And deepstriking to what? Make a 9" charge, which is only a 28%? Just to have it fail and have that unit move, I don't know, let's just say more than 4" so the Terminators can never charge them again?

 

Oh yeah, you poor suckers are in for it the first time you play against the Tyranid edition starter stuff. Single unit of Barbgants is all it takes to show you a good time.

[tzeentch9]

10 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Every army has "Fast Attack" units, but even then compare our 10" move fast attacks to other armies like marines (the most common army) that have 16" move flying speeders and 14" move bikes that auto advance 6". DG has 3 FA, two with 10" move and one with 7" move. That's it. Our infantry is all 4"-5" movement, slowest in the game. I can't believe you even want to argue the movement haha.

 

And deepstriking to what? Make a 9" charge, which is only a 28%? Just to have it fail and have that unit move, I don't know, let's just say more than 4" so the Terminators can never charge them again?

 

I guess the plus side of nerfing the whole faction by removing DR is our transports no longer are the most fragile units in the list since nothing has DR.

The infantry is a whole inch slower. Big whoop. The speed of spawn, blight haulers, the flying things, winged daemon princes are unknown, but can be expected to be pretty nippy as usual.