Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus: Death Guard

[Special Officer Doofy]

3 minutes ago, Squark said:

Touché. I stand by the statement that one character cannot carry a faction's sole heavy armor duties, though.

 

Oh I agree with that 100%. It's only worse now that the largest and most popular faction in the game has a faction bonus of pick one unit and get full rerolls against it. Marines won't have issues deleting chaos primarchs at all.

[spessmarine]

3 hours ago, Squark said:

Montarion being S14, or even, say, S18 (I can't see him being stronger than Angron), is not enough to carry the faction.

Morty stays at S7 sweep and S14 (7*2) strike because we have a funny numbers shtick to keep up.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

Oh I agree with that 100%. It's only worse now that the largest and most popular faction in the game has a faction bonus of pick one unit and get full rerolls against it. Marines won't have issues deleting chaos primarchs at all.

Ah, they also have first codex so the most levers to turn soon.
 

Edited May 23, 2023 by spessmarine

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 minute ago, spessmarine said:

Morty stays at S7 sweep and S14 (7*2) strike because we have a funny numbers shtick to keep up.

 

Stays? You mean gets nerfed to? Morty has been S8 since he came out.

[Squark]

12 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Oh I agree with that 100%. It's only worse now that the largest and most popular faction in the game has a faction bonus of pick one unit and get full rerolls against it. Marines won't have issues deleting chaos primarchs at all.

Yeah, with Oath of Moment, a trio of Predator Annihilators will do a decent job of hunting big game. Chaos Predators will not have the same luxury.

[spessmarine]

6 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Stays? You mean gets nerfed to? Morty has been S8 since he came out.

 

Oops, sorry.

[Captain Idaho]

It's not particularly flavourful and exciting, but you guys reckon a simple +1 wound on units would have made them feel tough again? I get army wide FNP might be an issue but perhaps 3 wound Plague Marines and 5 wound Blightlords would have worked to make them feel just unkillable?

 

Then give FNP to all characters.

[Doobles57]

On 5/18/2023 at 8:29 PM, Large and Moving Torb said:

 

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What a model that was ::sniff::

 

 

Completely see why people are disappointed with the Faction Focus. It's possible the rest of the Index units are handful of strats go some way to making up for it. Surely a FNP Strat has to exist?

The -1T aura will be cover a huge area, but does little to mitigate the lack of anti-vehicle when all vehicles have gone up in T by 50% or so. Dropping something from T14 to T13 isn't anywhere near as big deal as T8 to T7. 

While I'm glad to see the -1 Damage go (as a Custodes player it was a horrible matchup) I don't think replacing it with.....nothing was the answer.

[Emicus]

Surely having Lethal Hits or Devastating Wounds on close to every single wepon goes a long way to mitigate high toughness enemies.

 

It's poisons and plagues, not brute strength

 

The -toughness debuff is just to wreck infantry.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Emicus

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, Emicus said:

Surely having Lethal Hits or Devastating Wounds on close to every single wepon goes a long way to mitigate high toughness enemies.

 

It's poisons and plagues, not brute strength

 

The -toughness debuff is just to wreck infantry.

 

Wrecking infantry has never been a DG issue. They have no anti tank. High toughness usually comes with high armor. A 0ap weapon gets a lethal hit and goes past a 3+ armor save just over 5% of the time. Not alot. -1ap doesn't change it that much. Most of their old high strength attacks (which is like S7 -1T or S8) came from Deathshroud, mower drones and meltas. Meltas are only S9, and we have yet to see any infantry with a weapon over S8. They are going to be hurting, specially in an edition buffing vehicles and giving people a reason to take them.

 

And that last part is not a bad thing, I like vehicles and they should see the tables too. It just don't think DG will have alot of ways of dealing with them, or surviving from them without DR.

[jaxom]

To follow up on what @Special Officer Doofy wrote, any use of anti-infantry weapons with Lethal Hits against tanks is less anti-infantry against actual infantry. A combined arms force could become a nightmare to deal with depending on the circumstances. It's a lot of hypothetical and I'm wondering if there's going to be a unit which gets a special rule representing Ferric Blight to help against vehicles. Deathshroud with anti-infantry, anti-monster, devastating wounds scythes could also help against certain high T and good save units.

[Dr. Clock]

7 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

3 wound Plague Marines and 5 wound Blightlords would have worked to make them feel just unkillable?

 

7 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

Then give FNP to all characters.

 

From a game balance perspective, this could be fine if pointed correctly. For me it'd be mostly a problem in terms of fluff, by suggest in essence that DGuard aren't just the toughest Astartes faction, they are the best. At the point of basic DGuard being wholly better than other Legion's Chosen, we might need to take a step back methinks.

 

If we did create such a chonky unit, my guess is that it would also feel weird for them to just have 'mildly toxic bolters' or whatever: they'd feel even more like marines using lasguns, and the solution to that would mean upping their individual attack stats so on a 1:1 basis they end up actually BEING an army of better Chosen. The reason Custodes work is that they actually have strong enough armaments that their excellent defense stats are protecting meaningful attacks. Upping DGuard toughness without upping individual killing potential will reduce the damage potential in the army because you just bought 50% more W instead of better guns.

 

Again, things like this are not necessarily bad design, they're just not feasible given the need to balance Plague Marines against the rest of Chaos and lapdog Astartes, and by extension we quickly run into the problem of 'relative numbers' of models needed to play each faction. Marines moving to 3W means essentially horde armies become that much bigger and you get wildly asymmetrical miniature numbers that, while certainly closer to fluff, mean that horde armies would start at quite a bit more than double the dollar price of any marines rather than 'only' about double lol.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

[Plague _Lord]

While I initially also dislike most of the changes, there are some positives:

• Plague flamers look to be great anti infantry weapons as they should have been for years
• plague bolters are back!
• sticky objectives are pretty good - you don't have to put units on the backfield objectives, which means that you can screen around them, insuring that deepstrikers don't actually have a chance to charge onto the objective on the turn they drop

There are a lot of things we don't know about. Maybe plague marines have FnP?? Maybe MBH have a rule to give them +1 vs vehicles? Maybe entropy cannons will be S14 or better now? I honestly hate all the crying and moaning based on so little knowledge... For all we know even the NURGLE keyword could conferr FNP.

[DemonGSides]

Well, we know that keywords don't confer abilities, they are used to be the modifier for an ability - EG ANTI-NURGLE would hurt Nurgle stuff, but NURGLE doesn't do anything other than designate "THIS IS A NURGLE AFFILIATED UNIT".

 

If the plague marines have a FNP but the terminators don't.... that kinda short changes the terminators, no?  So that's not actually as much of a win as what you're hoping for.

I also hold out Hope that they change Blight Haulers to be anti-tank instead of Anti-infantry, but we just don't know.  And I think more people are upset about what we don't know than what we do know; the changes aren't great, but they are in a vacuum.  If GW didn't have such a formulaic way of doing these faction previews, they could've circumvented some of the feels-bad.

[Squark]

Plague Marines will almost certainly not have feel no pain. Multi-model multi-wound units will almost never have it (certainly not in a way that can be used more than 1/turn like a strategem) unless GW decides to bring Age of Sigmar's damage carryover rules into 40k*, which seems unlikely especially since that clashes with the stated goal of seperating anti-tank from anti-infantry. It's just too time consuming. The Custodes can get it vs. Mortal Wounds  only because mortal wounds DO carryover from one model to the next.

 

*AoS armies get away woth this because damage carries over from model to model, so a if a unit of one wound models fails a save vs. A D6 weapon, 6 models die. AoS leans more into giant clubs ploughing through hordes of infantry or ballista shots turning into goblin kebabs.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Squark

[Arikel]

2 hours ago, Dr. Clock said:

 

 

 

If we did create such a chonky unit, my guess is that it would also feel weird for them to just have 'mildly toxic bolters' or whatever: they'd feel even more like marines using lasguns, and the solution to that would mean upping their individual attack stats so on a 1:1 basis they end up actually BEING an army of better Chosen. The reason Custodes work is that they actually have strong enough armaments that their excellent defense stats are protecting meaningful attacks. Upping DGuard toughness without upping individual killing potential will reduce the damage potential in the army because you just bought 50% more W instead of better guns.

 

 

Personally have to disagree with you here. For all intents and purposes, Death Guard are essentially zombie Astartes; they are slow, they are unrelenting, and they just keep coming no matter how much you throw at them. They don’t necessarily bring any extra killing power beyond the foul miasma of disease and corruption that floats in the air around them. Having an extra wound per model would be a good way to represent that.

 

In addition, some other traits representing their ability to shrug off damage are warranted, whether it’s some type of FNP, army wide invulnerable, or a way to heal wounds and restore lost models as the pustulent cancers within them regenerate faster than even enhanced Astartes flesh. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the index is like, and the codex after that.

[Plague _Lord]

2 hours ago, Squark said:

Plague Marines will almost certainly not have feel no pain. Multi-model multi-wound units will almost never have it (certainly not in a way that can be used more than 1/turn like a strategem) unless GW decides to bring Age of Sigmar's damage carryover rules into 40k*, which seems unlikely especially since that clashes with the stated goal of seperating anti-tank from anti-infantry. It's just too time consuming. The Custodes can get it vs. Mortal Wounds  only because mortal wounds DO carryover from one model to the next.

 

*AoS armies get away woth this because damage carries over from model to model, so a if a unit of one wound models fails a save vs. A D6 weapon, 6 models die. AoS leans more into giant clubs ploughing through hordes of infantry or ballista shots turning into goblin kebabs.

We allready know World Eaters will get army wide FnP so you are wrong there. GW are also trying to make troops units competitive - for example CSM legionaries have reroll wounds vs units on objectives and I don't think CSM terminators will have the same rule. Does that "short change" terminators? Nah, they have different roles to play. It's kind of obvious they want Blightlords to be a deepstrike and shoot unit, while plague marines should have a totally different role, otherwise it's immpossible to balance.

[DemonGSides]

5 minutes ago, Plague _Lord said:

We allready know World Eaters will get army wide FnP so you are wrong there. GW are also trying to make troops units competitive - for example CSM legionaries have reroll wounds vs units on objectives and I don't think CSM terminators will have the same rule. Does that "short change" terminators? Nah, they have different roles to play. It's kind of obvious they want Blightlords to be a deepstrike and shoot unit, while plague marines should have a totally different role, otherwise it's immpossible to balance.

If Plague marines are more durable than Blightlords, then why would I take blightlords?

I get what you're saying, but expecting our core troop to be stronger than our elite damage dealers seems... wrong.

[DuskRaider]

I suppose that we will have to wait for the codex to come out to see exactly how they will fare, but I don’t see how anyone can look at these rules and find a positive side to them. Death Guard have been continually weaker each codex that is released and all the special free weapons or whatever in the world aren’t going to change that, particularly when other Astartes armies can do what they do only better.
 

An extra wound is not equivalent to FNP. It never will be.

[Special Officer Doofy]

3 hours ago, Plague _Lord said:

Maybe plague marines have FnP??

 

Even if they did, that's one unit instead of it being army wide, still a huge nerf.

 

3 hours ago, Plague _Lord said:

Maybe entropy cannons will be S14 or better now?

 

Maybe, but considering they are currently and always have been less strength than lascannons and lascannons are not even S14 (they are S12), I doubt it.

 

3 hours ago, Plague _Lord said:

For all we know even the NURGLE keyword could conferr FNP.

 

I'd love to try that coolaid you are drinking!

 

But really, all the "crying and moaning" is grounded in reality. There is alot we already know and can infer. We know two datasheets that will also translate to all the other Terminator and regular powerarmor statlines. We know the faction bonus. We know the detachment bonus. We know most of the new core rules and changes. We know we lost plague weapons and gained lethal hits on most of our weapons. The main things we don't know are the individual abilities on the unit sheets and point costs.

 

Even if a unit like the surgeon adds a FnP, big woop. It's one unit versus the whole army, will cost like 70pts to bring the surgeon, won't be able to join terminators, and comes at the tradeoff cost of not taking a possibly better unit to attach to the plague marines.

 

Looking at other forums or watching YouTube videos on the preview and reading the comments, most DG players are unhappy with the changes and alot of people think based on the faction preview they got the worst treatment so far. There is plenty we don't know, but there is also plenty we do know and it doesn't look good.

[Mogger351]

8 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

Even if they did, that's one unit instead of it being army wide, still a huge nerf.

 

 

Maybe, but considering they are currently and always have been less strength than lascannons and lascannons are not even S14 (they are S12), I doubt it.

 

 

I'd love to try that coolaid you are drinking!

 

But really, all the "crying and moaning" is grounded in reality. There is alot we already know and can infer. We know two datasheets that will also translate to all the other Terminator and regular powerarmor statlines. We know the faction bonus. We know the detachment bonus. We know most of the new core rules and changes. We know we lost plague weapons and gained lethal hits on most of our weapons. The main things we don't know are the individual abilities on the unit sheets and point costs.

 

Even if a unit like the surgeon adds a FnP, big woop. It's one unit versus the whole army, will cost like 70pts to bring the surgeon, won't be able to join terminators, and comes at the tradeoff cost of not taking a possibly better unit to attach to the plague marines.

 

Looking at other forums or watching YouTube videos on the preview and reading the comments, most DG players are unhappy with the changes and alot of people think based on the faction preview they got the worst treatment so far. There is plenty we don't know, but there is also plenty we do know and it doesn't look good.

I think you're muddying the waters between not being what you want/expect and not being any good in a game sense though. You say it doesn't look good, but it feels more of the former at the moment. They can be perfectly balanced and competitive and able to play on a level field with their peers, but it's the expected flavour or rules you're lamenting at this point. 

[jaxom]

Perhaps a dumb question, but are we sure aura of contagion doesn’t stack?

[Rain]

16 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

I'd love to try that coolaid you are drinking!

 

But really, all the "crying and moaning" is grounded in reality. There is alot we already know and can infer. We know two datasheets that will also translate to all the other Terminator and regular powerarmor statlines. We know the faction bonus. We know the detachment bonus. We know most of the new core rules and changes. We know we lost plague weapons and gained lethal hits on most of our weapons. The main things we don't know are the individual abilities on the unit sheets and point costs.

 

It's the eternal cycle of cope with respect to nerfs in games. The cycle comes in 4 steps:

 

(1.) You don't have all of the rules, you're speculating!

 

(2.) Okay, we have the rules, but we haven't seen how it actually works in real games.

 

(3.) Okay, we've played a few games, but we don't know how the meta will develop.

 

(4.) I've always said XYZ would be weak, it was obvious from the start. Number 4 can also take the form of total denial of ever having held positions 1 through 3.

 

This same kind of weaponized ignorance argument shows up in "the real world" as well, with respect to social issues, politics, etc. 

 

[Dr. Clock]

2 hours ago, Arikel said:

Having an extra wound per model would be a good way to represent that.

Sure - yet my point isn't that it would be a bad representation of Death Guard themes, it's that within the context of the game as a 'collaborative contest' between two loosely similar collections of pieces, jacking the W that high will likely do some combination of a) make DGuard 'just better' than all other elite marines, b) balloon the number of t3 Sv5+ models other factions would need compared to DG by up to half, c) make plague marines horrendously inefficient for anything other than existing slowly because you've got the worst gun-to-carrier mismatch in the game.

 

I would happily play a game of 'movie marines' where basically you just proxy Plague Marines as Blightlords so they can be as terrifying as they are in fluff. For people who want to actually use the 21-8 of them they have alongside some other cool units in a 2k list, T5 toxic-marines will hopefully be enough.

 

3 hours ago, Arikel said:

It will be interesting to see what the rest of the index is like, and the codex after that.

Agreed. I will be quite surprised if there isn't a core stratagem and/or character to help DG consistently heal or resurrect, and a surprising amount of Stealth or attack de-buff options for some classic Cloud of Flies shenanigans.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Special Officer Doofy]

35 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

I think you're muddying the waters between not being what you want/expect and not being any good in a game sense though. You say it doesn't look good, but it feels more of the former at the moment. They can be perfectly balanced and competitive and able to play on a level field with their peers, but it's the expected flavour or rules you're lamenting at this point. 

 

They had a 33% mono winrate going into 9th and hovered below 50% all of 9th. I've exclusively played DG for all of 8th and 9th (with some Nurgle daemons splashed in for fun in 9th). I know the armies strengths and weaknesses. We lost durability (going from 5+++ to -1D to nothing). We lost some movement. Our AP and S went down on weapons (which is going on game wide, so not a unique issue to DG). The faction bonus is not great, -1T on a conditional short range aura when we are the slowest army and the game now scales to T14+ is not good.

 

There are way less new pros to go with the worse new cons. Barring point drops on everything and DG being cheaper than regular astartes, they are worse off than they were previously. The core changes to the game and everything going to a higher toughness is going to hurt them. The "not being what I want/expect" is not the reason they are "not being any good in a game sense" even if there is some overlap.

[Sir Clausel]

40 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Perhaps a dumb question, but are we sure aura of contagion doesn’t stack?

Acording to the leaked rules you can only be under the effect of an aura once. You can be under the effect of multiple different auras but the same auras dont stack.