Death Guard Rumors

[DemonGSides]

27 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

Too many plaguemarine leader character choices made some of them almost never be used due to weaker rules. Moving several to other functions like poxwalkers leader is good design. Would anyone of them become a lone operative?

 

If they let the plague surgeon go lone up and just heal whoever he wanted that would be mental but also seems unlikely.

 

Tallyman with lone op would be great for me, I've run him alone a couple of times. Stick him in a building and hope the enemy doesn't have any indirect.   Add lone op would be awesome if he was solo. 

 

The other PM characters all feel pretty keyed into being in a group. blightbringer did cooler things in 9th than he does now so any change is welcome for such a cool model. 

[Tokugawa]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

If they let the plague surgeon go lone up and just heal whoever he wanted that would be mental but also seems unlikely.

 

Tallyman with lone op would be great for me, I've run him alone a couple of times. Stick him in a building and hope the enemy doesn't have any indirect.   Add lone op would be awesome if he was solo. 

 

The other PM characters all feel pretty keyed into being in a group. blightbringer did cooler things in 9th than he does now so any change is welcome for such a cool model. 

Making plague surgeon able to revive terminators is very unlikely. Maybe possible with increased cost and limitations like one per army. 

 

Isn't this model originally designed as a named epic hero? Who this "Rotbone" guy is?

[LSM]

11 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

Isn't this model originally designed as a named epic hero? Who this "Rotbone" guy is?

 

The Tallyman model was also given a name (Scribbus Wretch).

 

I assume GW was trying something (monopose, fixed loadouts, named models) and then... they decided "better not".

[Nephaston]

Nauseous Rotbone is the personal physician of Mortarion, and one of the few guys who is permitted to call morty on his crap. Scribbus Wretch is just some guy, Felthius and his cohort participated in the plague wars, and vex machinator, which was the name on the lord discordant box, participated in the war on vigilus.

 

Boils down to "characters" made to spruce up the unit with some added fluff, while also not having them be different from a default example of their unit. Kinda like how the phobos captain, is also "Captain Acheran" or the terminator captain from the Leviathan box is "Severus Agemman". Which is fine, not every character with a name is actually special enough to justify it's own sculpt.

[DemonGSides]

That's an 8th edition thing, having specific names for what is ultimately a generic datasheet.  It's just a fun bit of flavor.  Tolmeron and Zakariah were that way too.

[Gorgoff]

The name Scribbus Wretch and Nauseous Rotbone are on par with Biggus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks.

Edited Tuesday at 07:10 AM by Gorgoff

[Antarius]

4 hours ago, Gorgoff said:

The name Scribbus Wretch and Nauseous Rotbone are on par with Biggus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks.

Yeah. I kinda think the time right around the launch of 8th was the low point for GW naming conventions. Both character and unit names at the time seemed to go by the "Adjectivey Verbus" formula.

[Lord Marshal]

Datasheet for the Lord of Poxes.

 

[HeadlessCross]

19 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

Datasheet for the Lord of Poxes.

 

It's a good rule, but it'll be dependent on cost if I use him or not. 

 

Also looks like the T6 rumors were true. 

[DemonGSides]

18" lone up for a unit of guys moving 8-9" a turn to get into melee range isn't half bad. Keeps big stuff from lifting them at a distance once they engage and kill off something.

 

I wonder if they'll change the Plague Marine ability. It's very underwhelming. 

[Evil Eye]

6 hours ago, Gorgoff said:

The name Scribbus Wretch and Nauseous Rotbone are on par with Biggus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks.

Someone get DreadAnon to Death Guard-ify that scene. I need to see Mowtawion forcing his Deathshwoud to laugh.

 

"He has a plague surgeon, you know!"

[DuskRaider]

On 4/21/2025 at 12:15 AM, HeadlessCross said:

How you figure? -1D was a stronger rule vs most weapons. 

It just doesn’t feel the same to me. Maybe they’ll be good this edition, I don’t know. I just miss the feel they used to have, 8th and earlier. 

On 4/21/2025 at 12:15 AM, HeadlessCross said:

 

Edited Tuesday at 01:32 PM by DuskRaider

[LSM]

[Devastating Wounds] and [Lethal Hits] work against each other a tad. 

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, LSM said:

[Devastating Wounds] and [Lethal Hits] work against each other a tad. 

They don't actually. Sternguard for example actually do more damage mathematically when they have a Lieutenant attached.

[Mogger351]

3 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

They don't actually. Sternguard for example actually do more damage mathematically when they have a Lieutenant attached.

They can do, if you want to bypass invulns etc then a lethal hit is removing the opportunity to do so.

[HeadlessCross]

25 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

They can do, if you want to bypass invulns etc then a lethal hit is removing the opportunity to do so.

It's straight up mathematically better to have the Lethal Hits as well vs just Dev Wounds, rather than just having Dev Wounds. Like, I don't know how else to say that better. 

[Nephaston]

27 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

It's straight up mathematically better to have the Lethal Hits as well vs just Dev Wounds, rather than just having Dev Wounds. Like, I don't know how else to say that better. 

True, but an ideal sequence would be to hit without crit, and then crit on the wound roll to avoid armour saves. Any lethal hit is one less opportunity to be devastating.

 

Either way, outside of literal perfect rolling both is amost always better than either on their own.

[HeadlessCross]

19 minutes ago, Nephaston said:

True, but an ideal sequence would be to hit without crit, and then crit on the wound roll to avoid armour saves. Any lethal hit is one less opportunity to be devastating.

The targets you wound ONLY want Dev on vs Lethal and Dev is basically none. Keep in mine both rules are basically going around one part of the damage step. Unless your target has a 2++ or 3++, and even then you'd still likely want Lethal too vs the latter. 

[DemonGSides]

1 hour ago, Nephaston said:

True, but an ideal sequence would be to hit without crit, and then crit on the wound roll to avoid armour saves. Any lethal hit is one less opportunity to be devastating.

 

Either way, outside of literal perfect rolling both is amost always better than either on their own.

 

It's also a lot more true when you've got lots of wound re-rolls, which DG does not. 

 

We can't assume 6's for every roll, so it's always better to go statistics instead of max damage. It's a Non-bo in the sense you "lose" out on possible dev wounds, but it always comes out better to have both once math is taken into account. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:32 PM by DemonGSides

[Plaguecaster]

T6 won't really change much apart from a few weapons since majority of armies all have plenty of access to high str or lethal wounds with re rolls  making that  extra T rather pointless 

We now have a character that makes plague marines can't be shot unless within 18 but just adds to same problem of requiring multiple characters just to make plague marines good which makes them even more expensive almost miss the days of only having 1 or 2 characters/ has instead of needed over half a dozen 

Just hope they can actually buff plague marines and the like so not so dependant on characters

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:09 PM by Plaguecaster

[HeadlessCross]

4 minutes ago, Plaguecaster said:

T6 won't really change much apart from a few weapons since majority of armies all have plenty of access to high str or lethal wounds with re rolls  making that  extra T rather pointless 

We now have a character that makes plague marines can't be shot unless within 18 but just adds to same problem of requiring multiple characters just to make plague marines good which makes them even more expensive almost miss the days of only having 1 or 2 characters/ has instead of needed over half a dozen 

Just hope they can actually buff plague marines and the like so not so dependant on characters

 

Not entirely true. Even when taking Lethal Hits into account, it still knocks any lethality from S5, S6, and S10 down. The former two you'd actually want to point at Plague Marines. 

 

Now T7 will definitely matter less for the Terminators, but it's definitely a bigger change for the PA dudes. 

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

It's also a lot more true when you've got lots of wound re-rolls, which DG does not. 

 

We can't assume 6's for every roll, so it's always better to go statistics instead of max damage. It's a Non-bo in the sense you "lose" out on possible dev wounds, but it always comes out better to have both once math is taken into account. 

It's why I ALWAYS bring up Sternguard and Lieutenants in these conversations. 

[DemonGSides]

6 minutes ago, Plaguecaster said:

T6 won't really change much apart from a few weapons since majority of armies all have plenty of access to high str or lethal wounds with re rolls  making that  extra T rather pointless 

We now have a character that makes plague marines can't be shot unless within 18 but just adds to same problem of requiring multiple characters just to make plague marines good which makes them even more expensive almost miss the days of only having 1 or 2 characters/ has instead of needed over half a dozen 

Just hope they can actually buff plague marines and the like so not so dependant on characters

 

T6 is a much bigger breakpoint than the previous t5. It's not as good as FNP but it's definitely going to result in more beefier feeling battleline compared to literally anyone besides custodes. 

 

Plague Marines are already pretty strong, just with a boring ability. Making them tougher is going to be good for their survivability, and if they got a slight rebalancing on their shooting they'll be really strong.

 

 

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

It's also a lot more true when you've got lots of wound re-rolls, which DG does not. 

 

We can't assume 6's for every roll, so it's always better to go statistics instead of max damage. It's a Non-bo in the sense you "lose" out on possible dev wounds, but it always comes out better to have both once math is taken into account. 

I'm doing the maths in unit crunch and oddly against T4 models with a decent invuln (modelled against a marine captain) you're better off without the lethal hits, against a terminator captain the lethal hits with/without gave almost identical results over multiple datasets.

 

Unless someone can break it down for me to the contrary there are definitely some situations where it's worse.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

By my math, against T4 and a 3+ save and no invulnerable, each die that triggers a lethal hit has a 67% of inflicting wounds, while each die that hits but doesn't critical has a 61% chance ultimately pushing through wounds through both the regular wounds process or the 1/6 chance of triggering DEVESTATING.  So, at least against anything T 4 that has only a 5+ save (or worse) after AP, lethal hits are better.

 

For T 4 and a 4++ invulnerable (or T 4 and a 2+ save, if such still exists), a lethal hit has a 50% chance of pushing through a wound, as does a non-lethal hit.  So they are tied.

 

For T 4 and a 3++ invulnerable, the scales tip against LETHAL, with the lethal hits having 33% chance of pushing through unsaved wounds, and the non-lethal hits having a 39%.  That said, you up the T to 5 and the scale swings back to even, with each having a 33%.

 

So yes,  for the Lord of Poxes there is one narrow category where LETHAL is actually a detriment when you also have DEVESTATING WOUNDS, but in the vast majority of cases its a benefit or, at worse, a draw.  Unless, of course, he can get rerolls to wounds or a way of expanding his critical wounds range, either of which would skew things against LETHAL, though I haven't done the math to determine how much.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:47 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Tokugawa]

6 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

They don't actually. Sternguard for example actually do more damage mathematically when they have a Lieutenant attached.

The cost of the character itself need to be considered. 10 Sternguards + 1 Lieutanant have better output against oath target than 10 Sternguards, but do they have better output than 13 or 14.5 Sternguards?