I'm not saying to spam PMs necessarily, but the army needs mobility/ability to spread out and heavy investment into terminators would seem to restrict that?
I was thinking a unit of poxwalkers for a first turn action, they might survive to pick up another in a second and a couple of PM squads to hopefully pick up another couple later in the game.

Abaddon303 wrote:
I'm not saying to spam PMs necessarily, but the army needs mobility/ability to spread out and heavy investment into terminators would seem to restrict that?
I was thinking a unit of poxwalkers for a first turn action, they might survive to pick up another in a second and a couple of PM squads to hopefully pick up another couple later in the game.

If you mean in game actions, Poxwalkers can't do them aside from the Secondary objective DG has (which is 100% overhyped and not S+++ like some folks on Goonhammer say).
The ability to spread out is 100% not viable with Plague Marines anyway: their damage output is abysmal for the points and you need a mandatory Blight Launcher + Flail of Corruption to kill anything more than mere guardsmen.

On the other hand Blightlords are better in the melee department and Deathshroud are AB-SO-LU-TE-LY fantastic for 50 ppm (bonus when you give them 6++ and +1 to hit)

Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

 Jidmah wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:
- Daemons are entrirely gone, as is summoning. Good riddance.

Until Codex: Chaos Daemons changes, summoning is still possible as it was before. But I agree that this is most likely heralding its end.

How does that work? Would you need a Daemon detachment? Seems odd to be able to use rules from a book you haven't used to create your army.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

The pox have to be 1 to 1 with core bubonic astartes core infantry. As is you'd need 2 more PM or termy units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or perhaps you're thinking of running the shroud as multiple?

Is it true that possessed fill two seats in a rhino now? Fluff-wise, that doesn't make much sense as they aren't that larger than regular Marines, certainly not to the extent of something like a terminator.

That seemed to make more sense to me when it appeared they were going to 3 wounds and playtester channels were using 40mm minis for them. Now I have no idea what's happening with them.

JDarion wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

1. You cannot disembark from dreadclaws the turn they arrive, and none of the FW models have any contagion range.
2. Contagion range in turn 1 is 1" plus 3" from the LoC plus 6" from the power
3. If the power fails, all that stuff will be dead with no effect.

1) Somehow I missed that the FW Droppod assault rule was different than the standard. Thank you. Seems ... not intended but that kills the idea.
2) Are we sure Helm doesn’t effect the contagion aura (so 1+3+3+6 max 12)?

Contagions are specifically not auras. You can't boost them with the helm, but stuff like AdMech or Nightlords can't EMP or scream your contagion away.

 lare2 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

The pox have to be 1 to 1 with core bubonic astartes core infantry. As is you'd need 2 more PM or termy units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or perhaps you're thinking of running the shroud as multiple?

He's got 15 in the list, that's 3 units even if 2 are maxed out

 Eldarain wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:
- Daemons are entrirely gone, as is summoning. Good riddance.

Until Codex: Chaos Daemons changes, summoning is still possible as it was before. But I agree that this is most likely heralding its end.

How does that work? Would you need a Daemon detachment? Seems odd to be able to use rules from a book you haven't used to create your army.

Summoning just requires you to have a CHAOS CHARACTER. Oddly enough, it's an ability of unit you summon, not of the summoner.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Is it true that possessed fill two seats in a rhino now? Fluff-wise, that doesn't make much sense as they aren't that larger than regular Marines, certainly not to the extent of something like a terminator.

Possessed cannot enter rhinos at all, and take two spaces in a landraider.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

That's just seven units though, and poxwalkers are easy to wipe. You might end up losing the game despite not losing anything because you can be in too few places.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:
- Daemons are entrirely gone, as is summoning. Good riddance.

Until Codex: Chaos Daemons changes, summoning is still possible as it was before. But I agree that this is most likely heralding its end.

How does that work? Would you need a Daemon detachment? Seems odd to be able to use rules from a book you haven't used to create your army.

Summoning just requires you to have a CHAOS CHARACTER. Oddly enough, it's an ability of unit you summon, not of the summoner.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Is it true that possessed fill two seats in a rhino now? Fluff-wise, that doesn't make much sense as they aren't that larger than regular Marines, certainly not to the extent of something like a terminator.

Possessed cannot enter rhinos at all, and take two spaces in a landraider.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

That's just seven units though, and poxwalkers are easy to wipe. You might end up losing the game despite not losing anything because you can be in too few places.

You don't need to be IN ALL PLACES ALL THE TIME, just holding out 3-4 wins you games since you're the best army in the game right now in terms of staying power

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:
- Daemons are entrirely gone, as is summoning. Good riddance.

Until Codex: Chaos Daemons changes, summoning is still possible as it was before. But I agree that this is most likely heralding its end.

How does that work? Would you need a Daemon detachment? Seems odd to be able to use rules from a book you haven't used to create your army.

Summoning just requires you to have a CHAOS CHARACTER. Oddly enough, it's an ability of unit you summon, not of the summoner.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Is it true that possessed fill two seats in a rhino now? Fluff-wise, that doesn't make much sense as they aren't that larger than regular Marines, certainly not to the extent of something like a terminator.

Possessed cannot enter rhinos at all, and take two spaces in a landraider.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

That's just seven units though, and poxwalkers are easy to wipe. You might end up losing the game despite not losing anything because you can be in too few places.

You don't need to be IN ALL PLACES ALL THE TIME, just holding out 3-4 wins you games since you're the best army in the game right now in terms of staying power

(Cries to himself in Custodes)

KurtAngle2 wrote:
You don't need to be IN ALL PLACES ALL THE TIME, just holding out 3-4 wins you games since you're the best army in the game right now in terms of staying power

The opponent should be fully capable of killing at least one of death shroud units and the pox walkers, that leaves you with just 3 units and 12 points worth of assassination, with no way to interrupt any secondaries or primaries your opponent is scoring. Since Mortarion will likely not be sitting on an objective, you are holding 2-3.
In a mission with 6 objectives, an opponent could easily deny you more than 5VP and possibly score 15 for themselves by sacrificing an obsec unit per turn. You also would be open for deep strikes everywhere.
How do you expect to get stuff like deathwing terminators off objectives? What about someone tarpitting Mortarion with a C'Tan or Thrakka?

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm challenging the idea. With the old codex, when my unit count dropped too low, I found it impossible to win games against armies properly built for 9th, and I don't think anything in your suggested list changes that.

Abaddon303 wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
Morty in soup doesn’t sound too bad, but I think mono deathguard has legs.

The key IMO is to run morty of course, terminators (I think deathshroud are slightly better than blightlords, but both are extremely good), tallyman, surgean, and poxwalkers. Skip plague marines, terminators let you take poxwalkers and they are a much better troop option than plague marines. You might also want some fire support options as well. That’s the list IMO.

Suprised you think Poxwalkers are a much better troop choice? It's hard to eyeball the numbers because there's so many spinning plates when trying to compare Poxies and PMs resilience, but point for point I'm pretty sure PMs would stand up better to most common anti-infantry shooting.

I can see an argument for a MSU of Poxwalkers because it costs half the points of a MSU of PMs if you want something to sit out of LOS maybe holding an objective but they'll still die to a stiff breeze. Could use a single unit to do your contagion action first turn before they die or something. Maybe a big unit could survive long enough to spread it around a bit but they're so slow you'd need to advance between objectives and then do the action next turn.

But if you need any kind of staying power, actions, offensive contribution then Poxwalkers are surely outshone by PMs? Unless I'm missing something?

Of course in 9th, you could just take a patrol and almost skip the troops completely but I think PMs are looking like a very solid choice at the moment...



Automatically Appended Next Post:
If my maths is correct, looks like 20 bolter hits will kill 1 Plague Marine or 8 Poxwalkers. That's almost double the resilience per point.

From a mathhammer standpoint, you are correct sir. Plague marines are better against bolters and many other types of weapons than poxwalkers. That said I still vastly prefer poxwalkers over plague marines for one big reason.

Troops by in large in 9th are a tax for detachments and obsec bearers, not units that you want to actually do something with. You don’t want your troops taking fire, you want them to sit them on backfield objectives, or to simply steal a midfield objective mid game after hiding behind obscuring terrain.

Based on this the math I care about is how much does it cost to fill out a battalion with both troop options at a min price. For plague marines it’s a 315 points, for poxwalkers 150.

In your example you are comparing poxwalkers to plague marines vs bolter fire. But both units are worse against bolters than terminators are. So if I’m spending 150 on poxwalkers vs 315 for plague marines, really the comparison becomes poxwalkers and terminators vs plague marines. And really this is faulty comparison as well, because if I’m letting bolter shots into my troops be a meaningful part of the game, I’ve already screwed up.

Finally, as a minor point I’d like to say mathematically bolters are the ideal weapon to favor plague marines. Anything with S3 wounds both units the same. Any AP on a weapon only hurts the plague marines, and any weapon with D3 or greater is going to be good against marines but not poxwalkers (nobody wants to shoot either with D2 weapons). So therefore S4 weapons with no AP and S5 weapons with no AP favor marines the most over poxwalkers.

Really the problem with plague marines is this they fill no good role. All of our spicy options (terminators, possessed, Mortarion, etc) both bring more durability point for point and more offensive output. This unlike good troop units like necron warriors, which are still durable in comparison to the rest necron codex and harlequin Troups, who bring good damage output. So that just leaves them as obsec bodies, which poxwalkers do as well for half the points.

Eldarain wrote:That seemed to make more sense to me when it appeared they were going to 3 wounds and playtester channels were using 40mm minis for them. Now I have no idea what's happening with them.

It's a shame they weren't bumped to three wounds. Do they at least get this edition's version of Disgusting Resilience (they didn't last edition).

Jidmah wrote:
Possessed cannot enter rhinos at all, and take two spaces in a landraider.

Wow, that's bs. They don't have obsec, and need to get into combat quickly to be of any use. Also, I'm still wondering why the greater possessed weren't added. Is there some fluff reason why the Death Guard can't merge with Nurgle heralds?

 ArcaneHorror wrote:

Eldarain wrote:That seemed to make more sense to me when it appeared they were going to 3 wounds and playtester channels were using 40mm minis for them. Now I have no idea what's happening with them.

It's a shame they weren't bumped to three wounds. Do they at least get this edition's version of Disgusting Resilience (they didn't last edition).

Jidmah wrote:
Possessed cannot enter rhinos at all, and take two spaces in a landraider.

Wow, that's bs. They don't have obsec, and need to get into combat quickly to be of any use. Also, I'm still wondering why the greater possessed weren't added. Is there some fluff reason why the Death Guard can't merge with Nurgle heralds?

While I can understand being upset that Warhammer community lied to us about 3w possessed, as someone who hate the model, I’m glad they aren’t at 3W. 24 points 3w possessed would have been broken beyond belief and to be honest I’m surprised that people are surprised this was too good to be true. It’s still a good unit even at 2w due to 7 inch move and the 5++. Rhinos are bad IMO. They’re too fragile for their points in this army, as shown in the tabletop tactics battle report where the were the first to die (despite a 3 man deathshroud team taking the bulk of the early turn shooting).

That said I agree that no greater possessed is dumb.

Yeah, I love Rhinos, but they are essential only if the troops inside them are kind of fragile. Deathguard honestly doesn't need to be in Rhinos because our infantry can weather a lot of shooting. That 85 to 90 points on a Rhino could be easily spent to get yet another plague marine squad by topping a bit more points. I would rather have 6 squads of plague marines moving up the board rather 3 squads of PM in 3 Rhinos.

I don't think being 1 inch movement slower is that big a deal when comparing our marines to other infantry.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Yeah, I love Rhinos, but they are essential only if the troops inside them are kind of fragile. Deathguard honestly doesn't need to be in Rhinos because our infantry can weather a lot of shooting. That 85 to 90 points on a Rhino could be easily spent to get yet another plague marine squad by topping a bit more points. I would rather have 6 squads of plague marines moving up the board rather 3 squads of PM in 3 Rhinos.

I don't think being 1 inch movement slower is that big a deal when comparing our marines to other infantry.

Rhinos bubble your plagues out, and couple of them are just flat broken.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Selfcontrol wrote:
- Daemons are entrirely gone, as is summoning. Good riddance.

Until Codex: Chaos Daemons changes, summoning is still possible as it was before. But I agree that this is most likely heralding its end.

How does that work? Would you need a Daemon detachment? Seems odd to be able to use rules from a book you haven't used to create your army.

Summoning just requires you to have a CHAOS CHARACTER. Oddly enough, it's an ability of unit you summon, not of the summoner.

Right, but the scenario of playing an army entirely composed of Death Guard but then using a Summoning mechanic from a Codex you aren't using that interacts with a rule on datasheets not in your book doesn't seem right to me.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Seriously, I was just watching the breakdown on Auspex Tactics, and DG are now Ugly Custodes on Space Crack. They hit harder, are tougher to kill, cost less, and have waaaaaaay over the top support in the realm of abilities, spells, strats, and relics. I can't wait to see what they do to Custodes....

Mortarion (490 pts) + a Battalion of Lord (between 85 and 120 pts) + Sorcerer (110-120 pts), 3x10 Poxwalkers (150 pts), 15 Deathshroud (750 pts), Tallyman (70 pts) and Plague Surgeon (75 pts) and you've got 200-250 pts to include few other units as well...scary list that should cost much more in terms of points but hey DG is evidently undercosted

Lets wait to see if there would be anyone scream: Deathguard is way too broken OP


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
You don't need to be IN ALL PLACES ALL THE TIME, just holding out 3-4 wins you games since you're the best army in the game right now in terms of staying power

The opponent should be fully capable of killing at least one of death shroud units and the pox walkers, that leaves you with just 3 units and 12 points worth of assassination, with no way to interrupt any secondaries or primaries your opponent is scoring. Since Mortarion will likely not be sitting on an objective, you are holding 2-3.
In a mission with 6 objectives, an opponent could easily deny you more than 5VP and possibly score 15 for themselves by sacrificing an obsec unit per turn. You also would be open for deep strikes everywhere.
How do you expect to get stuff like deathwing terminators off objectives? What about someone tarpitting Mortarion with a C'Tan or Thrakka?

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm challenging the idea. With the old codex, when my unit count dropped too low, I found it impossible to win games against armies properly built for 9th, and I don't think anything in your suggested list changes that.

Ctan and Gazy cannot tarpit Morty, Morty cast psychic powers, dealing 3 MW, shoot his pistol, deal another wound, melee WILL deal 3 more wounds. So there is 7 wounds down already. If that Ctan is not Nightbringer that can deny inv save and FnP, the Ctan cannot bring Morty down in reply then in next round Morty kills the Ctan.
For his T8 16W 4++ 5+++ , -1 dmg and can be -1 to hit and heal lost wounds, Str16 6A or Str8 18A, possessing 3 very good WTs, He is very overpower if priced at 490pts. It should be around 600pts to be priced fair.

stratigo wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Yeah, I love Rhinos, but they are essential only if the troops inside them are kind of fragile. Deathguard honestly doesn't need to be in Rhinos because our infantry can weather a lot of shooting. That 85 to 90 points on a Rhino could be easily spent to get yet another plague marine squad by topping a bit more points. I would rather have 6 squads of plague marines moving up the board rather 3 squads of PM in 3 Rhinos.

I don't think being 1 inch movement slower is that big a deal when comparing our marines to other infantry.

Rhinos bubble your plagues out, and couple of them are just flat broken.

This whole “you need a fast, expendable unit for contagion spreading” notion is cute, but not tactically sound. Outside of plagueburst crawlers and blighthaulers, we have no major range threats, so the -1 T is of limited use for range. Even if was very valuable your rhino isn’t getting close to the enemy that much faster than anything else. Why run a rhino at my enemy when I can use something like morty or a plague drone with flesh-mower instead?

So what are rhino’s good for then. As the poster above said they don’t add protection for our troops (boyz before toys). That leaves mobility, but as as also stated by the above poster we don’t need that to reach the middle of the board. So basically we are left with the idea that maybe our opponent will be bad and not realize that they don’t need to destroy a rhino on objective in order to steal it from us. That way we can get the objective after they blow it up right!?

Neophyte2012 wrote:
Ctan and Gazy cannot tarpit Morty, Morty cast psychic powers, dealing 3 MW, shoot his pistol, deal another wound, melee WILL deal 3 more wounds. So there is 7 wounds down already. If that Ctan is not Nightbringer that can deny inv save and FnP, the Ctan cannot bring Morty down in reply then in next round Morty kills the Ctan.

Both have saves against the pistol and neither smite nor plague wind is super-reliable at dealing 3-4 MW. You could easily be stuck fighting one or the other for two turns.

For his T8 16W 4++ 5+++ , -1 dmg and can be -1 to hit and heal lost wounds, Str16 6A or Str8 18A, possessing 3 very good WTs, He is very overpower if priced at 490pts. It should be around 600pts to be priced fair.

He cannot heal wounds though?

He was trash at 490 before and the only big thing that changed about him are +1T and -1 damage so he actually has a chance of surviving first turn now and a slightly larger aura range. Outside of that he just got more versatile stuff instead of his mortal wound aura which could-autowin games by pulsing through an entire army once. For both and old Mortarion, you were fethed if he got too close, and he does jack in turn 1.

For 600 points, at the very least he should have a shooting attack capable of wiping out a 5 man squad of primaris turn 1.

So just some list ideas for discussion.

For melee deathguard, I think units like deathshroud, chaos spawn and possessed are good. These hit hard in close combat. I think melee deathguard will change in form. We will have to see.

Seems like daemon engine deathguard is less of a thing now. But it might still be a viable list. Run Three PBCs, 3 fleshmowers, and 3 deathguard hellbrutes. Thats 9 hard to kill vehicles. Could be a thing. Cam throw in some Blight Haulers to increase the vehicle count even more.

Or try the list where you stuff as many terminators as you can into your army. Lord of contagion, Termi sorceror, 3 units of deathshroud, 2 units of Blightlords... and bam, you now have chaos version of a custodes list lol.

Someone somewhere is going to try out a list with 60 or more plague marines just to swarm the board with obsec,hard to kill bodies and see how that works out. Btw, 60 plague marines are moving 5 inches and rapid firing 24 inches on their bolters for 120 shots!

Salt donkey wrote:

Abaddon303 wrote:

Salt donkey wrote:
Morty in soup doesn’t sound too bad, but I think mono deathguard has legs.

The key IMO is to run morty of course, terminators (I think deathshroud are slightly better than blightlords, but both are extremely good), tallyman, surgean, and poxwalkers. Skip plague marines, terminators let you take poxwalkers and they are a much better troop option than plague marines. You might also want some fire support options as well. That’s the list IMO.

Suprised you think Poxwalkers are a much better troop choice? It's hard to eyeball the numbers because there's so many spinning plates when trying to compare Poxies and PMs resilience, but point for point I'm pretty sure PMs would stand up better to most common anti-infantry shooting.

I can see an argument for a MSU of Poxwalkers because it costs half the points of a MSU of PMs if you want something to sit out of LOS maybe holding an objective but they'll still die to a stiff breeze. Could use a single unit to do your contagion action first turn before they die or something. Maybe a big unit could survive long enough to spread it around a bit but they're so slow you'd need to advance between objectives and then do the action next turn.

But if you need any kind of staying power, actions, offensive contribution then Poxwalkers are surely outshone by PMs? Unless I'm missing something?

Of course in 9th, you could just take a patrol and almost skip the troops completely but I think PMs are looking like a very solid choice at the moment...



Automatically Appended Next Post:
If my maths is correct, looks like 20 bolter hits will kill 1 Plague Marine or 8 Poxwalkers. That's almost double the resilience per point.

From a mathhammer standpoint, you are correct sir. Plague marines are better against bolters and many other types of weapons than poxwalkers. That said I still vastly prefer poxwalkers over plague marines for one big reason.

Troops by in large in 9th are a tax for detachments and obsec bearers, not units that you want to actually do something with. You don’t want your troops taking fire, you want them to sit them on backfield objectives, or to simply steal a midfield objective mid game after hiding behind obscuring terrain.

Based on this the math I care about is how much does it cost to fill out a battalion with both troop options at a min price. For plague marines it’s a 315 points, for poxwalkers 150.

In your example you are comparing poxwalkers to plague marines vs bolter fire. But both units are worse against bolters than terminators are. So if I’m spending 150 on poxwalkers vs 315 for plague marines, really the comparison becomes poxwalkers and terminators vs plague marines. And really this is faulty comparison as well, because if I’m letting bolter shots into my troops be a meaningful part of the game, I’ve already screwed up.

Finally, as a minor point I’d like to say mathematically bolters are the ideal weapon to favor plague marines. Anything with S3 wounds both units the same. Any AP on a weapon only hurts the plague marines, and any weapon with D3 or greater is going to be good against marines but not poxwalkers (nobody wants to shoot either with D2 weapons). So therefore S4 weapons with no AP and S5 weapons with no AP favor marines the most over poxwalkers.

Really the problem with plague marines is this they fill no good role. All of our spicy options (terminators, possessed, Mortarion, etc) both bring more durability point for point and more offensive output. This unlike good troop units like necron warriors, which are still durable in comparison to the rest necron codex and harlequin Troups, who bring good damage output. So that just leaves them as obsec bodies, which poxwalkers do as well for half the points.

You make some good points but I'm not sure I agree that troops are a tax in 9th. Certainly not as much as they were in 8th. The new HQ restrictions in the DG codex means you might as well take a patrol or two if you're so adverse to taking troops.

I don't think PMs are expected to sit on rear objectives either. They're possibly some of the best troops in the game to be able to advance on an objective shoot, charge and turn it over and then be resilient enough to hold on to it.

As for what weapons hurt PMs and Poxies, things like bolters are generally what will be fired at them. Many armies' anti infantry weaponry is around the profile of a bolter and if all you have is Poxwalkers they are gonna take the full brunt of all of that and dissolve pretty quickly. Them you're left with a couple of blobs of terminators.

I'm also not sure that point for point terminators put out more damage. They're certainly resilient but the new weapon restrictions means in a squad of seven you'll have a single blight launcher and single plasma etc. They also have no multi damage melee units apart from the single flail.

Plague Marines are absolute beasts in combat with several options for multi damage weaponry and 3 attacks each of geared for combat. That's point for point 6 attacks compared to a Blightlords 3.

I dunno, honestly it's gonna take a bit of time to fully digest the codex I think it's a little early to be dismissing Plague Marines.

BL are in a weird spot damage wise, they still work as a midboard bully but I think you're right and plague marine melee squads are much scarier.

I haven't seen the full rules, but a biologus for the mortals on unmodified 6s and tallyman for +1 to hit (those are both correct right?) Is frightening if you can get there. Does the champion get 4 attacks with 2 melee weapons or is he still on 3?
Getting there is still a bit ask, but a squad of 10 with 2 of each and the overflow strat or new more expensive VotLW is going to be terrifying.

How are people leaning towards equipping PM squads at first glance?

shabadoit wrote:
BL are in a weird spot damage wise, they still work as a midboard bully but I think you're right and plague marine melee squads are much scarier.

I haven't seen the full rules, but a biologus for the mortals on unmodified 6s and tallyman for +1 to hit (those are both correct right?) Is frightening if you can get there. Does the champion get 4 attacks with 2 melee weapons or is he still on 3?
Getting there is still a bit ask, but a squad of 10 with 2 of each and the overflow strat or new more expensive VotLW is going to be terrifying.

Both correct.
Not sure about the champion. He has 3 attacks base now, but the Vectors of Death rule says Plague Marines get +1 A with 2 cc Plague weapons, but technically he is a Plague Champion. (Still with the PM keyword though) Plus as far as i can see his only option for a second weapon is a power fist, which is no Plague weapon.


I will play close combat Plague Marines for sure. Just ordered 2 more boxes for 1 cc squad and maybe some Plasma to mix into all my Blight Launchers.
The amount of buffs you can stack is amazing:

+1 to hit (Tallyman buff)
+1 to wound (Shooting strategem)
+1 attack with plague knifes (Strategem)
MW on natural 6s in cc (putrifier ability)
AP -4 on Plague Weapons on natural 6s (CC strategem)
extra AP on natural 6+ shooting & cc (Inexorable Contagion)
auto-wound on natural 6s (The Wretched Contagion or the new Sigil of decay option for PM)
Excess damage spills over (CC strategem)
you can get reroll 1s to wound for non plague weapons on 1 enemy unit
make bolt weapons plague weapons & +6" on plague weapons (strategems)


So what might be the optimal loadout for cc Plague Marines?
You could take 8-9 and let them ride in a Rhino with 1-2 support characters - in that case with 1 double knife, 1 axe, 1 mace & axe, 1 flail, 1 cleaver, 1 champion with Plague Bringer relic for 199 / 220 points.
Otherwise 10 PM with 2 double knifes, 2 mace & axe, 2 flails, 2 cleavers, 1 Plague Bringer for 266 sounds solid to me.

That squad will kill about 10-12 Intercessors / 6-7 Gravis Primaris / 20 Boys / 14 Necron Warriors without any buffs.
If you toss in Haze of Corruption and / or other buffs like +1 to hit thats 30+ Orksboys or 20+ Necron Warriors down.


Not sure about squads of 5. Mixing BL & Plasma will give the most Dakka with 2 Plasma & 1 BL for 135 points.
Or 3 Bolters 1 BL & 1 flail as a flexible midfield squad that can do some cc damage and shooting for 125 points.
In the end i guess it will depend on remaining points. 20 points left? Then those two models get a Flail and a BL.
Otherwise 1 or two squads of 5 Bolter marines sound still good to do actions or camp at your backfield objectives. You will get 20 Poxwalkers for the points though, if you don`t care too much about actions.

I'm actually thinking I might start with taking all rounder squads and see what sticks to be honest
Squads of 7:
Plasma champ
Plasma
Blight launcher
Flail
Axe/mace
2 bolters as ablative

I might even try the cleaver in one unit. I have one but I've never run it. With three attacks mitigating the -1 now and the strat to spread damage it could be really nasty!

 Marshal Loss wrote:
How are people leaning towards equipping PM squads at first glance?

I think I might be trying one squad of 10 with 3x plasma 2x blight launcher and tallyman support (+2-3 CP from the chant alone should make him worthwhile) and two squads of 5 with a blightlauncher and maybe 1-2 plasma guns, depending on points left. Or maybe just bolters and possibly a sigil for cheap all-round units.

For melee hit squads, I'm not sure when you should stop adding options. From priority it's probably flails>knives>axes>PF>cleavers>icon and I would skip the mace/axe combo completely, as they are 13 points per model but worse than any other option.
A biologus putrifier seems like great support for those squads, and spending 65 on him is definitely superior to spending the same points on melee wargear as he stacks well with both the the knife and the grenades-to-pistols stratagem.

The mace is only 5 points now, meaning mace/axe is 8. I think it's worth a look at that price, although I might just be over excited about the damage spill over strat and the possibility of one shotting gravis.

You need to compare melee loadout plague marines to possessed as well. Because once you start adding so much stuff to plague marines, I think the cost becomes comparable to running a unit of possessed. And possessed move fast, and have a 5++. Just throwing this into the mix here. Of course, possessed lose out by not being obsec, but I think the idea is to be killy rather than to sit on an objective in this case.

Just realised that our daemon engines no longer cause damage to Nurgle when they explode. Thank f$^k for that. I always hated that in 8th.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
You need to compare melee loadout plague marines to possessed as well. Because once you start adding so much stuff to plague marines, I think the cost becomes comparable to running a unit of possessed. And possessed move fast, and have a 5++. Just throwing this into the mix here. Of course, possessed lose out by not being obsec, but I think the idea is to be killy rather than to sit on an objective in this case.

10 Posessed are 240 points now, for that you get 10 Plague Marines with 3 special weapons + the option to gear up more.
Also they just have D1 weapons which makes them worse against multi wound units per point.
But they are fast and good against specific targets, so they might find a place in some lists.
At least they are core and get most of the buffs Plague Marines can get as well.
Who knows, maybe GW will give them 3 wounds after all.

So am I right in thinking that if I take a Nurgle daemons detachment the only thing I'll miss out on is Nurgle's Gift?

 lare2 wrote:
So am I right in thinking that if I take a Nurgle daemons detachment the only thing I'll miss out on is Nurgle's Gift?

Correct, your warlord trait(s) will spread contagion as usual. You just should have a daemons warlord, or you'll lose out on some more stuff like relics.

 lare2 wrote:
So am I right in thinking that if I take a Nurgle daemons detachment the only thing I'll miss out on is Nurgle's Gift?

You can't use the Death Guard secondaries as well.
So, overall there might be some cheese for soup lists, like stacking renamed strategems before it get's FAQ'd.

Possessed versus Plague Marines is interesting. I think marines being more flexible leans me that way. The possessed stat line (strength 5, minus 2, 1 damage) feels a bit less interesting, especially with minus 1 toughness all around. I'm probably wrong though heh

But possessed can probably run up the board faster, just something to consider. And 5++ means they are more durable to AP3 or more. They got more attacks too. So I do think its an interesting comparison. I gotta caution that given how shooty some lists can get, pure melee is probably not the best option. Especially since DG are relatively slow. We still need some shooting in our lists.

 Jidmah wrote:

 lare2 wrote:
So am I right in thinking that if I take a Nurgle daemons detachment the only thing I'll miss out on is Nurgle's Gift?

Correct, your warlord trait(s) will spread contagion as usual. You just should have a daemons warlord, or you'll lose out on some more stuff like relics.

Hmmm, so basically weighing up -1t or taking nurgles... I'll have to try soup and mono if lockdown ever ends.

I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

 mokoshkana wrote:
I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

It's a special rule for plague marines only called "Vectors of Disease". They had this before, but it was limited to dual knives, knife/axe and mace/axe. It now simply got extended to all weapon combinations, probably because both the fist and the plague cleaver were nigh useless because of the low number of attacks the marines had. -1 to hit on 10 point upgrades and 2 attacks doesn't work well.

It's there - Vectors of Death. Right at the bottom of the page. I fully intend a faq to address this however, as I don't think it's RAI.

 Jidmah wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

It's a special rule for plague marines only called "Vectors of Disease". They had this before, but it was limited to dual knives, knife/axe and mace/axe. It now simply got extended to all weapon combinations, probably because both the fist and the plague cleaver were nigh useless because of the low number of attacks the marines had. -1 to hit on 10 point upgrades and 2 attacks doesn't work well.

 lare2 wrote:
It's there - Vectors of Death. Right at the bottom of the page. I fully intend a faq to address this however, as I don't think it's RAI.

Thanks!

Welll RAW is quite straight, two plague weapons = +1 attack. PM loadout knife + boltgun = swap boltgun for flail/cleaver.

Back to my initial post.. How are you planning on running your plague marines? I now have a ton of excess dual knife plague marines.. I've used to run them as 7man squads with dual special plasma for shooty squads and dual flail and power fist for melee.

Bubotic axe, mace route seems.. way too many profiles in one squad.. so maybe is just wise to skip the whole idea for fully melee kit, a boltgun guy gives 2 knife attacks anyway..

Maybe 7man cleaver, flail, dual knife, 3 boltgun and power fist.
Or skip the fluff for 10man unit and double those, but still 3 boltguns?

2nd OR does anyone see point for mixing between shooty and melee? I'll run atleast two rhino's in my army.

Anyone's own thought process on how to approach this problem is more than welcome.

I'm actually not gonna stress it too much with my plague marine loadouts. I think GW have done much better at internally balancing the options in the codex this time round so I'm going to fully embrace GWs intentions for us to take whatever the models come with!

I think the need to specialise units is a little less with the new codex, I think I'll be footslogging marines much more due to the limitations of rhinos. I think I'd rather take another 3 or 4 marines than a rhino.

Blightlaunchers and Plasma don't completely not compliment each other, both with 24" range and the nature of 9th means your units need to move more anyway. Even a PM unit geared for shooting still has a pretty respectable amount of melee and hopefully the resilience to stand up against most stuff out charges but can't finish off.

So I'll be going units of 7, blight launcher and one or two plasma, probably a flail in every squad then a mix of bolters, axes, even cleavers to round out the unit. Be nice to dust off don't of the models I haven't used since I painted them too!

For PM's I used to run 5s with either 3 plasma or 2 blight. I'll now be running 5 PM's but with only 1 blight in each. Can't see me risking plasma anymore, especially with the limitations on Lords. I'm basically seeing the new restrictions as a nerf to my PM damage capability... obviously not an overall nerf, however. Besides, there's not a massive difference between 1 and 2 blight.

BLT's however... I used to run a unit of 5 with 3x melta, 1 flail and 1 blight, and another with 3x plasma, 1 flail and 1 blight. They've been hit hard.

Concerning the PMs loadout, my plan is very simple: I'll equip them with bolters + PF on the champion.

Hear me out. In my opinion, all other options are very attractive, but the basic loadout is very cost-effective.

With a biologus nearby, all PMs with knives do MWs on 6. And with trench fighters, all add +1 attack. If needed, you can stack on it many more strats, as knives are plague weapons. Arch contaminator will go a long way here.

But what it's really interesting is the new blight bombardment strat. For 1 CP, even a 5 man PMs squad can make 18 plague attacks. If the biologus is nearby, they are 18, s4, re-roll 1, 2 dmg attacks. For 1 CP, on 5 basic PMs.

And you can always combo that with overwhelming generosity, for 2 CP you have 18, 12'', plague attacks, -1 AP, 2 dmg. Again, with minimal setup.

For the same reason, I'll go with a simple PFs on the champion. It does add 1 attack for the PMs special rule, it adds a nice punch, and it is in addition, so you don't have to sacrifice the knife or the bolter.

Keeping the bolter is also worthwhile. The sigil is a nice automatic buff, and there are many other synergies if needed.

Of course, this is all theory for now, but rather than starting with all the options and then cut them progressively, I think that there is a strong argument to be made to just do the opposite: start with the vanilla unit and then add options if you think you are lacking them.

most competitive builds are geared with mass of BL instead mass of PM, they use 1 or 2 small squads+poxwalkers like obj grabber. There is nothing that PM do better than BL, just obj sec. Anyway personally i like PM and i play usually 2x10 men, with bolters and 2 flails, or i mix, one full melee with flails and maces and another full ranged.

@sataneatseitan

The extra attack for plague marines is only if you have 2 melee plague weapons (which the fist is not) and it specifically states the marine gains an attack characteristic of 3 (which he already has anyway)

Sprugly

@sprungly

Upon re-reading the rule I think you are right about the additional champ attack with PF

What do people think about plague marines compared to blightlords?

One is obsec but more "fragile" while the other is super tough but not obsec. Theoratically, we can go cheap by using blightlords or deathshrouds plus pox walkers instead of mostly plague marines plus some deathshrouds/blightlords.

So like for example. Say you have 6 basic squads of 5 plague marines. So, now you have 630 points of obsec split into 6 units. This is pretty resilient still because that's 60 wounds of T5 with DR.

Or you could instead have like 3 units of poxwalkers (150 points) and then 3 units of blightlords, oh but this would cause this to be far more than 630 points...

A unit of blightlords or deathshroud is far more expensive than a unit of plague marines. Not saying they aren't great. But we could go main PM and still have points for some deathguard Termis. While trying to go heavy on deathguard terminators will really start to eat up a ton of points.

Ok, So I calculated. A closer comparision would be

3 squads of 5 poxwalkers plus 3 squads of blightlords = 750 points (with 30 points for extras)

6 squads of PM plus 1 squad of deathshroud = 780 points

Would this be a fairer comparision? because closer to equal amount of points.


What do you all think about Plague marines vs blightlords ?

Why not both? Terminators to deep strike and attack the opposition’s objectives, while Plague Marines protect the home side of the board. Vehicles seem to have taken a hit, so it might be best to stick with infantry?

 mokoshkana wrote:
Why not both? Terminators to deep strike and attack the opposition’s objectives, while Plague Marines protect the home side of the board. Vehicles seem to have taken a hit, so it might be best to stick with infantry?

Well, taken to the extreme, you just know someone will come up with a list with just PM and characters while someone else will come up with a list with just DG terminators and characters lol.

 blackmage wrote:
most competitive builds are geared with mass of BL instead mass of PM, they use 1 or 2 small squads+poxwalkers like obj grabber. There is nothing that PM do better than BL, just obj sec. Anyway personally i like PM and i play usually 2x10 men, with bolters and 2 flails, or i mix, one full melee with flails and maces and another full ranged.

I want to try out these combinations:
1. Ten man ranged unit with two launchers, three plasma guns and Sigil of Decay joined by Tallyman with Tollkeeper.

2. Ten man unit with two flails and two cleavers and Icon of Despair backed with Putrifier. I don't know if the full melee unit is good idea. They can't fit into a rhino with the putrifier and I feel they miss out the action footslogging. I could just take 10 chaos spawn for the same cost. But I sure love the idea of using Haze of pestilence and slicing three primaris marines with one cleaver attack.

If people are thinking of full melee PM squads would units of possessed not be an option instead? Only a few more points and whilst it doesn't have the special CC weapons, it's general CC output is still very good. As well as having a 5++. Also faster so can do without the rhino.
Obviously it's swings and roundabouts, losing obsec and taking up a valuable elite slot.

Also, has anyone done the math? In a shootout, how would 3 entropy cannon PBCs fare vs 3 Redemptor dreadnaughts with support?

Assume the PBCs don't have any extra character support but we can use strategems.

IMO the stratagem alone is reason to always bring 1 PBC.

Not too sure of the comparisons to redemptors but pretty certain I'll be bringing 3 entropy with me for most games.

Aiming for a footslogger list, this is what I've come up with so far:
Plan is to just use Bubonic Astartes units.

Lord of Virulence & Plaguecaster
Putrifier, Tollkeeper Tallyman, Fugaris Plague Surgeon
3 Deathshroud
10 Blightlords (2 Flails, 2 Blightlauncher)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 BL)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 Axe , 2 double knife, Relic Blade Champ
3 x 5 Plague Marines
Malignifier

Thoughts?
I got myself the Death Guard Heroes and 2 more Boxes PM, so now I need to figure out how to equipp them until they arrive.
Already have 20 PM with 6 BL so far.
I think 4-6 Flails, 2-4 Plasma, 2 double knife, 2 axe, 2 axe / mace, 1 Plasma champ and 1 fist champ- the rest will be bolters.

Alternative for the Malignifier would be to add more PM and gear them up.

 Grotrebel wrote:
Aiming for a footslogger list, this is what I've come up with so far:
Plan is to just use Bubonic Astartes units.

Lord of Virulence & Plaguecaster
Putrifier, Tollkeeper Tallyman, Fugaris Plague Surgeon
3 Deathshroud
10 Blightlords (2 Flails, 2 Blightlauncher)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 BL)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 Axe , 2 double knife, Relic Blade Champ
3 x 5 Plague Marines
Malignifier

Thoughts?
I got myself the Death Guard Heroes and 2 more Boxes PM, so now I need to figure out how to equipp them until they arrive.
Already have 20 PM with 6 BL so far.
I think 4-6 Flails, 2-4 Plasma, 2 double knife, 2 axe, 2 axe / mace, 1 Plasma champ and 1 fist champ- the rest will be bolters.

Alternative for the Malignifier would be to add more PM and gear them up.

Looks fine. As long as we avoid stuff like LR and Predators, I am hard pressed to find any other DG unit bad.

I mean, even chaos spawn are good. Fast and hard to kill with DR. 115 points gets you 20 wounds with T6 with the strategem. That's extremely hard to kill for 115 points. I am thinking of using a squad of 5 as a rapid response force.

Anyone see the new Death Guard Chaos Lord data sheet? Can we take a thunder hammer now?

 Malik_Raynor wrote:
Anyone see the new Death Guard Chaos Lord data sheet? Can we take a thunder hammer now?

Nope we can't.

I'm having couple test games in the up coming weekend against melee focused Blood Angels and I've tried to sketch something without Mortarion which seems make no friends option.

I've troubled between the two:

The latter seems valid too, but the problem is the movement of the elite characters now that they can't fit in the transport unless I give them one of them and footslog the shooty PM squad.

If you're not desperate for the speed, looking to use rhinos to protect plague marines doesn't seem worth it anymore. For the price you can have an extra 4 PMs, 8 wounds T5 disgustingly resilient and can be protected by the plague surgeon

A noxius blightbringer might even be better for speed than a rhino.

Been thinking about a kind of rapid response unit for DG. Toying with a unit of 5 spawn. But not sure, do you think anything else might be suitable?

A unit of 5 spawn is durable and hard to beat in cost. Just 115 points only. Closest other unit equivalent I can think of is a bloat drone.

The greater drone is 125pts and has a 14" move and an 18" assault Spewer. Can't get much more rapid response than that.

Durability:
20w T5 5+ Vs 9w T7 3+ 5++ and DR
Think probably the drone is tougher?

Spawn will do more damage tho

So, now that poxmongers company got nerfed somewhat. What do you all think about a daemon engine themed army list?

So, PBCs, hellbrutes, bloat drones or Blighthaulers. Everything has -1 damage. So its a pretty resilient vehicle army. And with points left for troops and characters too.

I know DG aren't the most "shooty" army. But 3 entropy cannon PBC, 3 blightlauncher bloat drones and 3 Hellbrutes with twin lascannons pack a pretty solid long range punch, with the survivability to boot too.

With some points left for 2 characters and some troop units.

personal opinion...i would go for PBC and FBD only. The strenght of DG is, termies, characters and Mortarion (until nerfed).

I agree with blackmage.

What about FBD? The fleshmowner is great, but what are your thoughts on the other two variants?

There isn't that much difference between a FBD and a MBH. Both are fast, both have DR. similar wounds and Touhgness. Weapons loadout may vary, thats all.

Why the hate on MBH and love for FBD ?

And why nobody talking about Hellbrutes? They are also -1 to damage. So, resilience wise, they are similar to MBH and FBD too.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
So, now that poxmongers company got nerfed somewhat. What do you all think about a daemon engine themed army list?

So, PBCs, hellbrutes, bloat drones or Blighthaulers. Everything has -1 damage. So its a pretty resilient vehicle army. And with points left for troops and characters too.

I know DG aren't the most "shooty" army. But 3 entropy cannon PBC, 3 blightlauncher bloat drones and 3 Hellbrutes with twin lascannons pack a pretty solid long range punch, with the survivability to boot too.

With some points left for 2 characters and some troop units.

I've written many a list since the leaks. The following is what I'm currently working on, which is pretty daemon engines heavy... still a WiP.

Mortarion
LoC
Poxwalkers 2x10
BLT x5, 1 flail, 1 blight
Deathshroud x3
FBD x2, spitters
PBC x3, entropy

1855 at the minute. Deepstriking termies, PBC causing mayhem from the back, FBD up the wings, wandering zombies, and Morty coming at you.

Haven't seen the leaks yet, but before everything sells out, can someone tell me which character models seem like must-haves? My wife has a Morty and 3x Dark Imperium sets she has been painting, but we don't really own any of the HQ/Elite heroes.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
There isn't that much difference between a FBD and a MBH. Both are fast, both have DR. similar wounds and Touhgness. Weapons loadout may vary, thats all.

Why the hate on MBH and love for FBD ?

And why nobody talking about Hellbrutes? They are also -1 to damage. So, resilience wise, they are similar to MBH and FBD too.

I think it's nice that we have a plethora of sub-150pt vehicle options for support and is a good advert for how well GW seem to have balanced the codex internally at least. I really like Helbrutes, I got a lot of joy out of them when they added the ability to give them DR in Psychic Awakening and they got even better with a multimelta when they got a boost.

It's disappointing to see the Helbrute lose 2" movement in the new codex. That change actually makes me more interested in my Contemptor again, largely because I'm stoke on the conversion i did on mine lol.

Helbrute with Fist, MM and combibolter 125pts
Contemptor with Fist, MM and combibolter 150pts and a CP
For the increased cost you get +2" move, +1 strength, +1 wounds and a 5+ invulnerable. I think that's more than worth it personally.

I'm not sure on the MBH anymore. I think the increase to 140pts was too much and i don't think they compare particularly favourably against the two options above. They are quicker. But if you want quick you're probably better going for drones. If you want firepower I think a twin las & missile Helbrute will be less vulnerable to melta and being tarpitted at 135pts.

As for drones, again they are very well balanced and I'm really struggling to choose between these guys, they all have their positives and negatives.

The mower is just nasty but with a 10" move it probably won't make combat until turn two and has no shooting. I'm liking the GBD as it seems so versatile and the 14" move means it can get in amongst it early on to spread contagion or advance to wherever you need it to weaken the enemy and still put out a bit of autohitting flames. The heavy blight launcher just seems like the perfect gun in this meta and will shred MEQ if they are reduced to T3.

GREATER BLIGHT DRONE 125pts
14" move
Heavy4 36" S6 -1 1D
Auto1D6 18" S6 -1 1D
Melee - 4x S6 -2 1D


PLAGUESPITTER DRONE 130pts
10" move
Auto2D6 12" S6 -1 1D
Melee - 4x S6 -2 1D


FLESHMOWER DRONE 135pts
10" move
No shooting
Melee - 12x S7 -2 2D


BLIGHT LAUNCHER DRONE 140pts
10" move
Assault6 36" S6 -3 2D
Melee - 4x S6 -2 1D



Automatically Appended Next Post:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Haven't seen the leaks yet, but before everything sells out, can someone tell me which character models seem like must-haves? My wife has a Morty and 3x Dark Imperium sets she has been painting, but we don't really own any of the HQ/Elite heroes.

I think plague surgeon and tallyman look very strong.

fleshmower or spitters, blight launcher for me dont worth.
I will try soon 2 FBD with mower+6 deathsrouds and 5 blightlords, 60 pox LoC and 1 PBC with entropy cannons (accelerated entropy), blightspawn with relic and surgeon with helm

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Haven't seen the leaks yet, but before everything sells out, can someone tell me which character models seem like must-haves? My wife has a Morty and 3x Dark Imperium sets she has been painting, but we don't really own any of the HQ/Elite heroes.

Plague Surgeon and Tallyman are a safe bet, unless you plan to go vehicle heavy in which case you can of course skip the Surgeon.
I expect those to to make an appearence in basicly all (competetive) lists that include Plague Marines and / or Blightlords.

Biologus Putrifier is also essential if you plan to use cc squads of PM or want lots of Termis getting close + he buffs your granades. My personal 3rd choice after the 2 above.
He kinda replaces the Blades of Putrefication psychic power (which is gone) with his ability. But it`s not that OP as before, don`t expect more than a handfull of MW with this.

The blightbringer might be an option for lots of footsloggers with his +1" move aura, otherwise you don`t really need him. He is the cheapest of the bunch with 60 points though.

Blightspawn still kinda has his flamer with a few throwbacks, personally i wouldn`t bother unless you plan to counter 1 strong cc unit with him constantly but thats highly situational at best in my opinion.

As for the HQ`s, since you can have just 1 lord or prince per detachment you might wanna get a Plaguecaster if you don`t have one allready so you can field two detachments or an battalion.

Blightspawn still kinda has his flamer with a few throwbacks, personally i wouldn`t bother unless you plan to counter 1 strong cc unit with him constantly but thats highly situational at best in my opinion.

with the 6" range relic you put your opponent in troubles, he cant easily charge your termies/Pm and you have the upper hand in every melee you get in, dont undersimate him. Is not the flamer itself. There is not much that you can throw at Dg termies, you need heavy melee unit so of course counter one of them usually is enough, not only, it stop every ability that make you attack first not just charging units.
Surgeon+helm in lists with lot of termies/pm is an auto include, that 6+++ on 3w models help a lot

I was thinking about a list, what are your opinions?

OUTRIDER DETACHMENT
Poxmongers

HQ

Lord of Virulence/Lord of Contagion
Arch contaminator
Ironclot furnace

ELITE

Tallyman
Tollkeeper

Noxious Blightbringer

Biologous Putrifier

10 Possesed

TROOPS

10 Cultists

10 Plague Marines
Champion with Plaguebringer
2 Blight Launchers
Sigil of decay

5 Plague Marines
Flail
Blight launcher
Combat Fist

FAST ATTACK

5 Chaos Spawn
Grandfatherly influence

2 Myphitic Blight Haulers

Foetid Bloat Drone
Fleshmower

Foetid Bloat Drone
Blight launcher

HEAVY SUPPORT

Defiler
Scourge

Plague Burst Crawler
Entropy canon

The plan would be to power up the possesed with the putrifier, the arch contaminator and the aura of the lord while moving faster with the blightbringer. The characters would between the possesed and the 10 man plague marine squads, so they can protect them and also benefit from the auras (the PM would benefit from the tallyman, the better grenades from the putrifier and with a command point from the lord of virulence). I wanted to keep the haulers at 2 so they cost less to shield every turn with the stratagem (with also the ironclot furnace and using cloud of flies could be a nice shield for possesed).

I though about playing a bit with combat attrition, staking debuffs between the contagion of poxmongers, the blightbringers and the sword of the PM champion, who also would be near the contagion range of the warlord). As the general is a terminator, I could also use the stratagem.

What do you think? I´m not deciding between the Lord of Contagion and the Lord of Virulence (if I picked the LoV I would drop the Blight launcher of a drone to pick the pathogen). Also undecided about the artifcts, probably it would be best to put a fugaris helmet on some character (maybe the warlord arch contaminator) and move the ironclot furnace. The thing is that maybe tollkeeper is a bit situational with only a squad of PM.

Seems pretty solid, all things considered. Not sure the Blight launcher FBD is worth it though

Are Deathshroud Terminators still worth it, not just in terms of their rules but their necessity as well? With Slay the Warlord not being auto-include anymore, I'm rethinking whether or not I want to buy a box of them.

I realized that the outrider detachments doesn´t refund you the command points for having the warlord in, so I´m thinking in including another character at the cost of a foetid bloat drone so I can have a brigade. I suposse that I would change the one carrying the blight launcher for a Malignant plaguecaster and a unit of poxwalkers.

This way I would give the Ironcloth furnace to the Plaguecaster so I can put the Fugaris helmet on the Lord of Virulence (and remove the tollkeeper, I think that is more important to ensure the auras).

I would begin the game with 8 command points. I´m not totally sure about the Plaguebringer (it gives some cc punch to the squad, but is also possible that the squad is not going to engage at all) and I´m considering if I should spend the point in giving a warlord trait to the plaguecaster (or save it).

I'm starting to think running bloat drones with flesh mowers are the way to go. They probably won't get a turn 1 charge, but not matter what they charge they have a good chance of wrecking it. Infantry will be either toughness 3 or 2(depending on what it is) thanks to contagion range. Average vehicles will be toughness 6 or less and with 12 S7 attacks at -2ap and 2 damage they should deal with anything decenently well. If your opponent is bunched too close together, his contagion range could still debuff units not in combat. My only reason I still debate the heavy blight launcher is because our shooting is a little weak.

 l0k1 wrote:
I'm starting to think running bloat drones with flesh mowers are the way to go. They probably won't get a turn 1 charge, but not matter what they charge they have a good chance of wrecking it. Infantry will be either toughness 3 or 2(depending on what it is) thanks to contagion range. Average vehicles will be toughness 6 or less and with 12 S7 attacks at -2ap and 2 damage they should deal with anything decenently well. If your opponent is bunched too close together, his contagion range could still debuff units not in combat. My only reason I still debate the heavy blight launcher is because our shooting is a little weak.

But heavy blight launchers are str6. not exactly anti tank type shooting. I like FBD with flesh mowers or their original loadout. Both are good. Only the heavy blight launcher seems iffy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jymmy wrote:
I realized that the outrider detachments doesn´t refund you the command points for having the warlord in, so I´m thinking in including another character at the cost of a foetid bloat drone so I can have a brigade. I suposse that I would change the one carrying the blight launcher for a Malignant plaguecaster and a unit of poxwalkers.

This way I would give the Ironcloth furnace to the Plaguecaster so I can put the Fugaris helmet on the Lord of Virulence (and remove the tollkeeper, I think that is more important to ensure the auras).

I would begin the game with 8 command points. I´m not totally sure about the Plaguebringer (it gives some cc punch to the squad, but is also possible that the squad is not going to engage at all) and I´m considering if I should spend the point in giving a warlord trait to the plaguecaster (or save it).

Hmmm, somehow, I think DG stuff are too expensive to be able to squeeze into a brigade detachment unless you twist yourself into a pretzel. You can get most stuff you want just using a batallion. What do you have so many of that you need the slots of a Brigade ?

Yeah the blight launcher isn't good for anti tank. I was thinking of just missing the additional ranged fire power in an army that's lacking in the longer range. I'm thinking of trying 2 bloat drones with flesh mowers and 2 blight haulers. I think haulers are too expensive to run in 3s. 3 drones with flesh mowers would get into combat and probably mulch the unit and then be susceptible to shooting in the next turn.

I don't think the blight launcher drone is meant to be anti-tank but it's really nice for killing primaris? Should kill at least 2 or 3 per turn from 36" range. Very nice for clearing the last couple of troops off an objective.
It's the equivalent firepower of 4x heavy bolters.

I think people are underrating blighthaulers by in large. This seems to be case of people comparing them too much to what they where and not enough of what they are in within the codex. At 100 points they where ridiculous broken, stop using that as a baseline for comparison.

So at 140 points I can see why some people are hesitant to take them. For 170 points you can get a plagueburst crawler, and on paper picking a crawler over a hauler makes sense. However, i think there Is one main thing people are underrating when looking at the hauler. You can take them
In squads of 3. Why is that important?

First their stratagem gets a lot better when your only demon engines are a squad of 2-3 blighthaulers. Ironically enough, the biggest weakness of demon engines now is they are more fragile than our infantry and morty. Having a way to curb things like high volume shots such as gauss reapers, emporer children sonic blasters, multi-meltas, etc is a very valuable tool nowadays. And while you do have to use this at the start of the shooting phase, I’m usually ok spending 1-2 CP to stop my opponent from shooting my blighthaulers.

Second and most important is that ironclot furnace is very good on a squad of 3. This build probably can’t take any other demon engines, but giving them a 4++ puts them at a similar durability as a plagueburst crawler, especially when you stack their stratagem on top of this. Being poxmongers does have it’s disadvantages, but this could be enough to make them worth it.

Third is misma of pestilence is quite good on them as well. At this point most lists are deciding to simply ignore morty instead of focusing him down (as trying to kill him usually just means the deathguard player will win) so why not put the -1 somewhere else. Stacked with all the other defensive buffs I mentioned, means that a blighthauler squad will become quite durable.

Salt donkey wrote:
I think people are underrating blighthaulers by in large. This seems to be case of people comparing them too much to what they where and not enough of what they are in within the codex. At 100 points they where ridiculous broken, stop using that as a baseline for comparison.

So at 140 points I can see why some people are hesitant to take them. For 170 points you can get a plagueburst crawler, and on paper picking a crawler over a hauler makes sense. However, i think there Is one main thing people are underrating when looking at the hauler. You can take them
In squads of 3. Why is that important?

First their stratagem gets a lot better when your only demon engines are a squad of 2-3 blighthaulers. Ironically enough, the biggest weakness of demon engines now is they are more fragile than our infantry and morty. Having a way to curb things like high volume shots such as gauss reapers, emporer children sonic blasters, multi-meltas, etc is a very valuable tool nowadays. And while you do have to use this at the start of the shooting phase, I’m usually ok spending 1-2 CP to stop my opponent from shooting my blighthaulers.

Second and most important is that ironclot furnace is very good on a squad of 3. This build probably can’t take any other demon engines, but giving them a 4++ puts them at a similar durability as a plagueburst crawler, especially when you stack their stratagem on top of this. Being poxmongers does have it’s disadvantages, but this could be enough to make them worth it.

Third is misma of pestilence is quite good on them as well. At this point most lists are deciding to simply ignore morty instead of focusing him down (as trying to kill him usually just means the deathguard player will win) so why not put the -1 somewhere else. Stacked with all the other defensive buffs I mentioned, means that a blighthauler squad will become quite durable.

I think you can still run one or two PBCs with these. Because you can hide the PBCs behind obscuring terrain and keep up a bombardment with their mortars. That strategem is too good on a PBC not to use. Unless your opponent has like that much shooting that does not need line of sight, its unlikely they can take out two PBCs that are hiding behind obscuring terrain. I am liking the MBH because of the strategem that minus one to enemy shots too. Its an additional layer of protection on an already hard to kill vehicle.

PBCs hiding behind terrain, with the MBHs out in the open means it will attract the heavy shooting. Then you pop the strategem and they either waste a lot of shots shooting at the MBH, and will likely then leave themselves open to the PBC in your next turn. And the MBH doesn't degrade. So even at 1hp, they are still fine. I don't know how important poxmonger company is anymore. Because the strategems for PBC and MBH doesnt require poxmonger. I think its fine to go other company. The key thing is, having this present significant shooting that your opponent can't really ignore. This means that less shooting will go into your infantry.

I mean, even with the famed resilience, if you pour enough shooting into DG infantry, they will still die. But if you present so many threats, it creates a lot of problems for the opponent.

I could see using PBC’s with blighthaulers, since PBC’s can still shoot from far away. That said I don’t feel the plagueburst strat is as good as looks on paper, so I’m more of fan of using them while their entropy can still shoot. The problem with the strat
is D6 shots. Most units that D3 vs D2 being relevant against won’t have more than 5 models, so you could find that yourself getting 1-2 shots off. Heck even 3-4 shots run into the risk of you failing the hit/ wound rolls and/or them
Making saves), therefore completely wasting the damage. Honestly I’m most excited about the random mortal wounds this strat can do in order to punish excessive grouping, but even those only go off on a 4+.

Personally I think we see either haulers or crawlers in most top tier builds, simply because there is too many other good things in the codex and both these units cost a great deal of points. It might be crawlers because they require less support than haulers, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to discount haulers offhand just because they got nerfed more than people expected.

There are so many 3 wound things around now, efficiently shooting at them without LoS seems like it's worth every CP.

I think we should factor in that a balanced list can handle all sorts of lists. So, I do want some anti armour shooting in my list. Like what if we run into an dreadnaught list, or an all vehicle list like 3 CSM predators, Rhinos and stuff.

If we run a skewed list that only has infantry, we may find it difficult to kill vehicles, especially if they don't approach until they want to. Not being able to pop a Rhino with 10 berserkers is going to hurt when those 10 berserkers pile out and hit your terminators.

And what if say you run into a single Castellan list. Do we really want that Castellan to stand there at long range and shoot at us all 5 turns ? Or those triple predators doing kill shot every turn for 5 turn. Our infantry is resilient but their shooting is mainly anti infantry shooting. A skewed list of 2000 points of characters and infantry can't even kill a tank at range (at least I don't think 2000 points of mostly bolter shooting and a few blight launchers will do much to tanks).

At the very least, if we don't bring any heavy shooting at all, it might be very easy for opponent to take the secondary "while we stand we fight" if his vehicles are his most expensive models. Then he just needs to keep them at range and shoot us and thats an easy 15 points for him.

Or what if we run into a knight list. I know knights aren't good right now. But a DG list without PBCs literally won't be able to do much against a knight. Not unless you run Motarion and get the charge in. Mortarion is great, but if he gets shot at and mobbed by 2 or 3 knights, I think the odds are with the knights. lol And in the first place, maybe not everyone has Mortarion in their DG list either.

Also, on the subject of Mortarion, because DG looks to be getting more popular. I was thinking how to handle Mortarion. I realised that charging two units PM or two units of poxwalkers into Mortarion means that he would kill one and a half unit, and then be stuck killing off the remaining second unit on his turn. So, on his turn, he either chooses to fall back, in which case he cannot charge, or shoot. Or he stays where he is and kills half a unit. Seems like a good way to stall Mortarion for a turn. Statistically, Mortarion will not be able to kill two units of 10 poxwalkers in a turn because he needs to split his attacks into 12 and 9 attacks on the two units. Same for two units of PM.

The thing about Mortarion is he wants to charge good targets. Killing two units of poxwalkers in exchange for not being able to move is not a good trade. Especially if that means he will get shot at. Mortarion's first turn is almost always to fly straight up the board, but he likely won't get to charge anything on turn 1. Unless the opponent has units in the midboard. So, our turn, we can move up two "chaff" units, charge him, and then hold him in place for a turn. He then has no good options on the next turn. Second turn, we shoot him again and then throw everything melee we have at him (terminators, our characters,, the works) and see if he dies. Can an army kill Mortarion with 2 turns of shooting plus smites plus melee? I don't know, it depends on your army composition. But if it can, then we would have traded two turns of shooting, and 2 chaff units for 1 Mortarion. Points wise, it looks like a reasonable trade. But what of the rest of the DG army? Well, because Mortarion costs 490 points, I don't think there will be that much shooting in the rest of the Mortarion army. So its all about positioning. Will we lose out on some midboard positioning while we deal with Mortarion? Maybe, maybe not. Because we don't need to converge our entire army on him, we just need to shoot him with our entire army, stall him with 2 chaff units, and then charge our best Melee units into him on turn 2. (Assuming turn 2 shooting doesn't kill him).

I don't think we can tarpit Mortarion for the entire game. That would likely cost more then 500 points to do. btw, is gifts of Nurgle contagion an aura that Mortarion can turn off? If it isn't, then we at least get to reduce him to T7 before we shoot him. The thing is, we cannot under commit to killing him. As long as he isn't dead, he is a massive threat. If we can reduce him to T7, even bolter shots are good on him because he only has a 3+ save, and DR does nothing for 1 damage.

Man, the cult of the new + pandemic supply issues really can be wild. My wife and I had loooong planned for our 2021 projects to respectively be new Death Guard and Necron armies... we waited till this month to buy the last items we wanted thanks to holiday gifts, etc... and it is wild how supply constrained GW seems to be. I have never had a harder time spending money, ironically, as official outlets are sold out of soooo many things, and scalpers are insane.

Are we safe owning one of each HQ/Elite character option, because people online are asking $75 for a Plague Surgeon.

Edit: Someone also asked above, but according to Goonhammer, Contagions are expressly not Aura effects, thus Morty doesn't turn them off.

I can't imagine why you'd need more than one of each generally. I think the army is generally gonna be quite compact so duplicate buffs won't be so important

I see most DG players saying a Surgeon w/Fulgaris is essentially an auto-take. In practice is that 6" bubble really enough? I feel like DG model placement has some serious finesse to be practiced.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I see most DG players saying a Surgeon w/Fulgaris is essentially an auto-take. In practice is that 6" bubble really enough? I feel like DG model placement has some serious finesse to be practiced.

It's possible to significantly increase the size of that bubble, e.g. using On Droning Wings. I think 1 is generally going to be enough

Eldenfirefly wrote:
I think we should factor in that a balanced list can handle all sorts of lists. So, I do want some anti armour shooting in my list. Like what if we run into an dreadnaught list, or an all vehicle list like 3 CSM predators, Rhinos and stuff.

If we run a skewed list that only has infantry, we may find it difficult to kill vehicles, especially if they don't approach until they want to. Not being able to pop a Rhino with 10 berserkers is going to hurt when those 10 berserkers pile out and hit your terminators.

And what if say you run into a single Castellan list. Do we really want that Castellan to stand there at long range and shoot at us all 5 turns ? Or those triple predators doing kill shot every turn for 5 turn. Our infantry is resilient but their shooting is mainly anti infantry shooting. A skewed list of 2000 points of characters and infantry can't even kill a tank at range (at least I don't think 2000 points of mostly bolter shooting and a few blight launchers will do much to tanks).

At the very least, if we don't bring any heavy shooting at all, it might be very easy for opponent to take the secondary "while we stand we fight" if his vehicles are his most expensive models. Then he just needs to keep them at range and shoot us and thats an easy 15 points for him.

Or what if we run into a knight list. I know knights aren't good right now. But a DG list without PBCs literally won't be able to do much against a knight. Not unless you run Motarion and get the charge in. Mortarion is great, but if he gets shot at and mobbed by 2 or 3 knights, I think the odds are with the knights. lol And in the first place, maybe not everyone has Mortarion in their DG list either.

Also, on the subject of Mortarion, because DG looks to be getting more popular. I was thinking how to handle Mortarion. I realised that charging two units PM or two units of poxwalkers into Mortarion means that he would kill one and a half unit, and then be stuck killing off the remaining second unit on his turn. So, on his turn, he either chooses to fall back, in which case he cannot charge, or shoot. Or he stays where he is and kills half a unit. Seems like a good way to stall Mortarion for a turn. Statistically, Mortarion will not be able to kill two units of 10 poxwalkers in a turn because he needs to split his attacks into 12 and 9 attacks on the two units. Same for two units of PM.

The thing about Mortarion is he wants to charge good targets. Killing two units of poxwalkers in exchange for not being able to move is not a good trade. Especially if that means he will get shot at. Mortarion's first turn is almost always to fly straight up the board, but he likely won't get to charge anything on turn 1. Unless the opponent has units in the midboard. So, our turn, we can move up two "chaff" units, charge him, and then hold him in place for a turn. He then has no good options on the next turn. Second turn, we shoot him again and then throw everything melee we have at him (terminators, our characters,, the works) and see if he dies. Can an army kill Mortarion with 2 turns of shooting plus smites plus melee? I don't know, it depends on your army composition. But if it can, then we would have traded two turns of shooting, and 2 chaff units for 1 Mortarion. Points wise, it looks like a reasonable trade. But what of the rest of the DG army? Well, because Mortarion costs 490 points, I don't think there will be that much shooting in the rest of the Mortarion army. So its all about positioning. Will we lose out on some midboard positioning while we deal with Mortarion? Maybe, maybe not. Because we don't need to converge our entire army on him, we just need to shoot him with our entire army, stall him with 2 chaff units, and then charge our best Melee units into him on turn 2. (Assuming turn 2 shooting doesn't kill him).

I don't think we can tarpit Mortarion for the entire game. That would likely cost more then 500 points to do. btw, is gifts of Nurgle contagion an aura that Mortarion can turn off? If it isn't, then we at least get to reduce him to T7 before we shoot him. The thing is, we cannot under commit to killing him. As long as he isn't dead, he is a massive threat. If we can reduce him to T7, even bolter shots are good on him because he only has a 3+ save, and DR does nothing for 1 damage.

guess you dont consider that your opponent have opposable thumb...

At least his post added more to this thread than all of yours combined.

I share his view, but I haven't had the chance to play games to compare lists with Mortarion to those without. It should be fairly easy to access whether Mortarion is doing all the meta-warping people have been claiming he would do, or if he is just a huge brick of points that can be outplayed by good players with good armies.

Bare in mind, if trying to tarpit mortarion with 2x10 poxwalkers or 2x5 PMs, if there's only a couple left he can still smite his way out or kill them with his pistol and then charge again

Abaddon303 wrote:
Bare in mind, if trying to tarpit mortarion with 2x10 poxwalkers or 2x5 PMs, if there's only a couple left he can still smite his way out or kill them with his pistol and then charge again

I did consider this, So, you might have to stand 12 inches away. (or 13 inches to be be absolutely safe). Its unlikely he can make a 12 inch charge. He will only be 12 to 18 inches up the board on turn 1. So, it should be ok to stay 12 inches away on turn 1 with your important units, but ready to move in and charge on turn 2.

Given how much the internet has hyped Mortarion up, there is a good chance you will face Mortarion. Unfortunately, I just happen not to have him. lol. So I am thinking of how my DG list would have to handle him if I faced him.

The idea of mortarion getting bogged down by an opponents poxwalkers is silly to say the least. Pox walkers are incredibly slow compared to morty, there should never be a chance for 2 cheap/weak squads like that to bog morty down. How would they even maneuver themselves to get into position to charge him?

I am not saying the "feed him more" idea can't work. It can. But I wouldn't use poxwalkers as the example there. If your opponent is dim witted enough to just take mortarion and move him up the table to sit there and let you charge him then your opponent must either want that to happen and has a plan or just has no idea what they are doing.

Well, two cheap squads of chaos spawn should work too. I am just using pox walkers as an example because they are the cheapest chaff I can think of.

A good Morty player wouldn't do that, but others who are new to Morty and drunk on his "unkillabie" might do it. In any case, would Morty really purposely position himself more than 13 inches away from just mere poxwalkers ? Discussion how to handle Morty is a serious consideration, because I can bet you you will be seeing a lot more of him on the table if he is as "unkillable" as those battle reports are making him out to be.

I haven't yet seen a single battle report where Morty died yet. I don't know if its because they didn't bring out the truly deadly shooty lists, or if he is simply that unkillable. Or they are using the wrong tactics. Maybe they just decided to try and avoid him the whole game. (which doesn't work because how do you ignore something so killy that flies 12 inches).

I haven't yet seen a single battle report where Morty died yet. I don't know if its because they didn't bring out the truly deadly shooty lists

THAT
We are testing, and very competitive lists (white scars, salamanders) can handle Mortarion, of course if you know how properly play.

 blackmage wrote:

I haven't yet seen a single battle report where Morty died yet. I don't know if its because they didn't bring out the truly deadly shooty lists

THAT
We are testing, and very competitive lists (white scars, salamanders) can handle Mortarion, of course if you know how properly play.

Unless, say, the DG player knows how to play too.

Armies have to skew quite hard to kill mortarion. No currently played Space marine army can do it, no one packs that much anti tank, it's wild overkill for everything but mortarion, and you are opening too many weaknesses into your army for all matchups except mortarion

Yoyo, i have some fun armies. But im considering junping into competitive.
How good would you rate the new dg? Im stuck between them and admech. Even i dont see many admech on high positions.
Also playing with aich a gorgeous modelo as morty is.. just lake me exciting.

Well, triple exorcist, triple retributor sisters list do a good job handling us. Especially with Brazier of Fires (d6 mortal wounds to chaos on a 2+). Bit of skew list but effective against us.

I’m not over the moon on poxmonger blighthaulers. They are fine, but my opponent ignoring the blighthaulers wasn’t bad, but I think I like the ROI for other companies better.

A bit early to rate it properly, but it's top 25% I'd say.
Kinda hard to say without proper playtesting or relevant tournament data.

Also it's one of the first armies to receive a codex, so who knows what the next months / releases will bring.
In any case Death Guard is an army that profits from 9th mission design and my guess is even with other books dropping we will still hold up well.

Also looks like apart,from sisters of battle. Necrons can counter us no?. That nightbringer can eat mortarion easy

zantio wrote:
Also looks like apart,from sisters of battle. Necrons can counter us no?. That nightbringer can eat mortarion easy

Only with fire support. He still has a decent chance to just not deal enough damage to kill him. You can also just shoot the nightbringer dead.

 Jidmah wrote:

zantio wrote:
Also looks like apart,from sisters of battle. Necrons can counter us no?. That nightbringer can eat mortarion easy

Only with fire support. He still has a decent chance to just not deal enough damage to kill him. You can also just shoot the nightbringer dead.

This. Let's break it down like this, Mortarion is an easier win model at this point. He isn't an auto win, but he hard counters min squads of Elites and hordes while also being incredibly tough. This happens to counter 85% of the meta. Necrons can definitely counter death guard, and a nightbringer would be an easy counter to morty in a vacuum but I dont see this vacuum actually existing in a game. Death guard will definitely have psycic powers, so that's one way to do wounds to the night bringer. Night bringer can be shot, there is another 3w. And in cc dg have lots of units that could hurt the night bringer before it ever gets close to morty. And even if the ctan got to charge mortarion with full health it probably isn't going to survive that fight. He will make mortarion bleed which could be enough, but I doubt it. I think we will have to worry about other things from necron hitting mortarion. Wraiths, scarabs, doomsday arks, tesla, all these in mass could do some dmg and cause mortarion to take serious dmg unexpectedly. If not, then wraiths can tie him up with their 4++ save buying them time and scarabs do explode for mortal wounds.

To me, Mortarian takes Miasma of Pestilence and Curse of the Leper every game, while his third known power can be match-up dependent. With smile and the combined power -1T with Curse, he should be able to do an average of about five mortal wounds each psychic phase against MEQ. So in the poxwalker plan mentioned above, you'd need 6 left alive to effectively guarantee he stays locked in for two rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, wouldn't Tzeench/GK be able to hammer Mortarian with psychic abilities? MW definitely seems like the easiest way to bring him down.

 mokoshkana wrote:
To me, Mortarian takes Miasma of Pestilence and Curse of the Leper every game, while his third known power can be match-up dependent. With smile and the combined power -1T with Curse, he should be able to do an average of about five mortal wounds each psychic phase against MEQ. So in the poxwalker plan mentioned above, you'd need 6 left alive to effectively guarantee he stays locked in for two rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, wouldn't Tzeench/GK be able to hammer Mortarian with psychic abilities? MW definitely seems like the easiest way to bring him down.

Charge him with two poxwalker units. He has 21 attacks split into 12 and 9. Even if he hits and wounds all 21, and you fail all 21, he kills one squad and brings the other squad down to 1 model. In his turn, his psychic will kill 1 model, so he is now free to charge, but he couldn't move. So, if you stayed 12 inches away from him, he has to make a 12 inch charge after smiting your last poxwalker to death. He likely won't make that charge. To make sure, you could stay 13.1 inches away from him. If there is no one within his charge range, he automatically has to stay where he is even after his smite frees him from combat.

Eldenfirefly wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
To me, Mortarian takes Miasma of Pestilence and Curse of the Leper every game, while his third known power can be match-up dependent. With smile and the combined power -1T with Curse, he should be able to do an average of about five mortal wounds each psychic phase against MEQ. So in the poxwalker plan mentioned above, you'd need 6 left alive to effectively guarantee he stays locked in for two rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, wouldn't Tzeench/GK be able to hammer Mortarian with psychic abilities? MW definitely seems like the easiest way to bring him down.

Charge him with two poxwalker units. He has 21 attacks split into 12 and 9. Even if he hits and wounds all 21, and you fail all 21, he kills one squad and brings the other squad down to 1 model. In his turn, his psychic will kill 1 model, so he is now free to charge, but he couldn't move. So, if you stayed 12 inches away from him, he has to make a 12 inch charge after smiting your last poxwalker to death. He likely won't make that charge. To make sure, you could stay 13.1 inches away from him. If there is no one within his charge range, he automatically has to stay where he is even after his smite frees him from combat.

I understand the premise, but that seems to require the opposing player to perfectly play into your trap, which probably isn't likely.

He could play cautiously with Mortarion and keep Morty out of move+charge range of your chaff units which are likely in front. But that means your chaff units have a 5+13 inch no fly bubble around them. I doubt anyone would play Mortarion that cautiously.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
He could play cautiously with Mortarion and keep Morty out of move+charge range of your chaff units which are likely in front. But that means your chaff units have a 5+13 inch no fly bubble around them. I doubt anyone would play Mortarion that cautiously.

And the opponent's army is just not shooting your chaff? Mono DG means Mortarian isn't getting across the board into your lines until turn two. Assuming the opposition goes second, he has at least one turn of shooting before you could get your poxwalker charges off, which are both likely to be LONG charges as no competent player would willingly place Mortarian in a position to be tar-pitted. So your strategy relies on the opponent not shooting potential tar-pit units and then making multiple long distance charges. Sorry, but it doesn't seem like a plan that is often going to work.

All this depends on your tactics vs his. If he plays more cagey by not coming too close, then you have to probably screen hopefully in such a way he doesn't have good charge targets except your chaff on turn 2. So, you hope that 2 turns of psychic plus shooting plus charge in with your melee will kill him.

Some list like admech can probably kill Morty in one turn of shooting outright, but I don't think DG are in that category. So, we need more time. And you want to buy that time by sacrificing chaff rather than letting Morty kill high value units. Now you could always bring your own Morty. But that is a 50:50 situation down to player skill and dice rolls. And like I said, not every one has Morty in their DG list.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
He could play cautiously with Mortarion and keep Morty out of move+charge range of your chaff units which are likely in front. But that means your chaff units have a 5+13 inch no fly bubble around them. I doubt anyone would play Mortarion that cautiously.

obviously you never played 1 single game against DG, as if a decent DG list cant wipe out your chaffs, why i ever need to charge poxwalkers? Really you have no idea what you talking about, there are DG list that play 15 blightlords how long you believe your chaffs last with potential 60 bolter shots each turn, drones with mowers, PBC with flamer, should i need to go on?
You are all losing focus on 1 simple fact...DG is NOT Mortarion, without it remain a A codex, is how 9th ed is and how codex is made, if they nerf Morty. Dg will remain a top codex anyway...but this is a thing understandable only if you play against different army lists, not just read comments abd/or internet BR.

Your list isn't just shooting and 2 chaff units. If need be, sacrifice 2 PM squads of 5. Or two spawn units. Or charge in two FBD. I am just trying to give suggestions on how to deal with Morty. What would you suggest if you ran into a Morty list? Bring your own Morty and see who's skill is better? Or if you have no Morty, just concede ? Or are you going to refuse to play a Morty list ?

What's the point of trying so hard to poke holes in my suggestion if you are not going to offer any suggestion of your own? Fine, lets say I accept your answer that trying to tie him up for 1 turn is impossible somehow. Lets hear your suggestion on how to deal with Morty as a DG player then. I am all ears.

Honestly in a mirror match, I think the best thing to try and do is to try and charge my Morty into my opponents. This would be tough, but if I can do enough wounds to reduce Morty to tier 2/3, then I should win the match-up.

Though I suppose a lot of that depends on the variance between the lists.

I asked elsewhere, but was wondering if people might suggest how to build all the Plague Marines we just bought. The number of options is kinda overwhelming.

In total we own two sets of Dark Imperium Marines, the boxes of the actual PM kits, and a set of the Space Marine Heroes 3 Death Guard.

Its 41 total bodies, but obviously many of those offer no choices for wysiwyg gear. I imagine the best bet is to kit up the unbuilt kits for melee, meaning essentially one of every melee option per seven bodies?

So my dread on heavy blightlords+ morty competitive list comes true?

 mokoshkana wrote:
To me, Mortarian takes Miasma of Pestilence and Curse of the Leper every game, while his third known power can be match-up dependent. With smile and the combined power -1T with Curse, he should be able to do an average of about five mortal wounds each psychic phase against MEQ. So in the poxwalker plan mentioned above, you'd need 6 left alive to effectively guarantee he stays locked in for two rounds.


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Also, wouldn't Tzeench/GK be able to hammer Mortarian with psychic abilities? MW definitely seems like the easiest way to bring him down.

With contagions of nurgle, curse of the leper has definitely become a lot more sexy, but I still prefer plague wind because you can freely pick the target and it works better against tarpits.


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Eldenfirefly wrote:
What's the point of trying so hard to poke holes in my suggestion if you are not going to offer any suggestion of your own? Fine, lets say I accept your answer that trying to tie him up for 1 turn is impossible somehow. Lets hear your suggestion on how to deal with Morty as a DG player then. I am all ears.

He never adds anything to these threads, he just attacks people who disagree with him and always states everything he says as absolute facts. Just ignore him.


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NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I asked elsewhere, but was wondering if people might suggest how to build all the Plague Marines we just bought. The number of options is kinda overwhelming.

In total we own two sets of Dark Imperium Marines, the boxes of the actual PM kits, and a set of the Space Marine Heroes 3 Death Guard.

Its 41 total bodies, but obviously many of those offer no choices for wysiwyg gear. I imagine the best bet is to kit up the unbuilt kits for melee, meaning essentially one of every melee option per seven bodies?

If you don't want to magnetize, your best shot would be building the box of 7 into melee weapons, as those can't be gotten anywhere else. The only thing I would skip on is the dual knives/axe+knive guys because you can convert those from the DI marines which are just holding grenades.

I'd also try to track down some ETB/conquest plague marines because they are the cheapest way to get plasma champions and blight launchers.

Thanks! I am sitting here with a spread-sheet and if I absolutely maximize every bit/body, I can end up with enough of everything to either run two full shooty units and one melee one, or two melee ones and one shooty one.

It isn't perfect, but it seems to get me the most usable collection of options, for the moment. I spent a fortune on 40k this week, so I really need to make it work for a while. :-p

The only thing I wouldn't be able to build is the Great Clever guys, but they seem like a weird choice mixed into an anti-infantry unit.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Your list isn't just shooting and 2 chaff units. If need be, sacrifice 2 PM squads of 5. Or two spawn units. Or charge in two FBD. I am just trying to give suggestions on how to deal with Morty. What would you suggest if you ran into a Morty list? Bring your own Morty and see who's skill is better? Or if you have no Morty, just concede ? Or are you going to refuse to play a Morty list ?

What's the point of trying so hard to poke holes in my suggestion if you are not going to offer any suggestion of your own? Fine, lets say I accept your answer that trying to tie him up for 1 turn is impossible somehow. Lets hear your suggestion on how to deal with Morty as a DG player then. I am all ears.

is not poke holes... in 9th you need to focus on mission not on how erase models, DG termies in decent numbers can fend off Morty, he is a model with an high damage output decent mobility he decide where and how charge, so you NEED to play the mission and force him to commit where can do less damage, if you keep focus "chase" him and try to kill him well...usually dont work, 9th ed put enfasis on mission not on kill stuff, we tested against Morty, he is a pain in the.... but if you play the mission you can pull out a victory, is the mental approach that need to change, forget how we play in 8th, stand still and obliterate anything we want, 9th is mobility and obj control, i dont know how explain, just need to play and see i cant tell more. Dont forget if you dont bring Morty itself you can build pretty effective shooty lists, maybe you cant obliterate morty in 1 turn but you can deliver some decent damage. Mortarion is hard to deal with, you need to play around him as much as you can.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Thanks! I am sitting here with a spread-sheet and if I absolutely maximize every bit/body, I can end up with enough of everything to either run two full shooty units and one melee one, or two melee ones and one shooty one.

It isn't perfect, but it seems to get me the most usable collection of options, for the moment. I spent a fortune on 40k this week, so I really need to make it work for a while. :-p

The only thing I wouldn't be able to build is the Great Clever guys, but they seem like a weird choice mixed into an anti-infantry unit.

To me the role of the cleaver is versatility. If allows you go to after T8 (which now becomes T7 thanks to contagions) if the need arises. Two of them allows for 6 attacks hitting on 4+ while wounding on 3+ with rerolls of 1. Also, have some potential for character hunting too if the opportunity presents itself.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Thanks! I am sitting here with a spread-sheet and if I absolutely maximize every bit/body, I can end up with enough of everything to either run two full shooty units and one melee one, or two melee ones and one shooty one.

It isn't perfect, but it seems to get me the most usable collection of options, for the moment. I spent a fortune on 40k this week, so I really need to make it work for a while. :-p

The only thing I wouldn't be able to build is the Great Clever guys, but they seem like a weird choice mixed into an anti-infantry unit.

I'm in the exact same situation, I got 42 PM to build with 4 boxes PM, the heroes 3 series, the reinforcements, easy to build, blister Champ & ikon and DI dudes. My first 20 dudes are 6 Blight Launchers + 14 bolters.

With the boxes there is enough stuff to kitbash everything one-handed, so do the double handed stuff like flails first.

Overall I'd go for 4-6 Blight Launchers, 4-6 flails and a good amount of bolters.
2 Plasma + 1 Plasma Champ for 1 dakka squad and 4-6 cc dudes depending on preference to be able to play at least 1 squad of 10 for both shooting and melee.

I decided to build each melee weapon twice so I can build any possible melee squad.
Sadly there are no flails online in any bitz shop, so take care of those!
I got myself some Chaos marauder flails this week, to build the missing ones. (I have just 4 but want 6)
Suggest you look for something like that as well because my guess is those might sell out soon. You get just one flail with each box + the 1 flail in the heroes box.

Also you wanna play cultists / poxwalkers?
If not I'd try to build the models for 2-3 squads of 5 to camp on home objectives / do actions and still have the right models for additional 2 x 10.
The spare ones are perfect for listbuilding. With most point values being multiples of 5 you can often simply give a squad another special weapon to get exactly 2000 points.

Also you wanna play cultists / poxwalkers?
If not I'd try to build the models for 2-3 squads of 5 to camp on home objectives / do actions and still have the right models for additional 2 x 10.
The spare ones are perfect for listbuilding. With most point values being multiples of 5 you can often simply give a squad another special weapon to get exactly 2000 points.

In a list full of PM i guess 1x20 pox is ok to camp on some backfield obj, hinder ds and so on.

I own, 40x Poxwalkers, and can borrow my Emperor's Childrens 60x Cultists. I'm super set on that front, thankfully.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I own, 40x Poxwalkers, and can borrow my Emperor's Childrens 60x Cultists. I'm super set on that front, thankfully.

Just remember you need 1 unit of buobotic astartes infantry for every poxwalker unit you have in your list. Deathshrouds or blightlords counts too. So, if you want to field 5 units of 20 poxwalkers, you need to have 5 units of deathshrouds / blightlords / plague marines in your list.

So, not to derail the morty train, but having the book and really looking through it something seems interesting to me.

One of our hq's are going to have to be a sorcerer or plaugecaster. The sorcerer is an interesting option, it's in term armor so has a 2+/5++, has disgustingly resistance, can be given a relic to know an additional power (flexibility isn't bad) and once per turn if it successfully casts a spell it heals d3 wounds (on a 5w guy that isn't bad) but here is the kicker... you can give him twin lightning claws. Spend a cp to give him hulking physic or rottin constitution for even more toughness/resilience, you could have yourself a pretty good support chr that's able to face off against anything but the most concentrated amounts of assault. Add a plauge surgeon in because of course your taking one and... yeah.

I mean, a 2+/5++/6+++ 6w, heals 2d3, reduce dmg by 1, 1-3 always fails to wound, t5, 6 attacks rerolling wounds at ap-2... plus able to know 3 spells plus smite? That's some tactical flexibility and cc goodness for only 185 pts for the two guys.

read better the periapt...is d3 ONCE per battle. Lord+temy sorcerer are 195 not 185, for the rest yes termy sorcerer is a good HQ choice overall.

Ok, 1 per battle is still quite good.

Term sorcerer is 110. Plauge surgeon is 75. Thats 185.

It's too bad we can't give him a deadly pathogen on top of that but that may be a bit too much anyways.

sorry misunderstoodm thought you was talking of chaos lord, honestly i wont spend a relic slot for the periapt right now.

I’m diving into the book. Anyone else discouraged by the Lord of Contagions? Their damage output is meh regardless of what I try and do. No relics really help him (most of our stock relics are bad) and he has rhe same damage output as a Deathshroud Champion. I just don’t understand why his weapon isn’t mater-crafted or he doesn’t have 6 attacks. I really want him to be good, but he just isn’t.

What is the maximum damage build you can come up with against a primaries captain? I’m tracking using a man reaper (in reaper mode), deadly pathogen virulent fever, and the Mortarian’s Anvil relic warp insect hive. On average it will do 6.5 damage a turn.

That being said I can actually go higher damage on Deathshroud champion with buffs.

you use LOC with plaguereaper or with ferryman legion and the relic schyte, anyway you use it for his +3" contagion range with ferryman strat you add another +6, you have a model that at 2nd turn have a contagion range of 9" and with that plague company trait is useful...Still models now are not rated for their damage power but for what they bring on table, Dg play the missions (and they do very good) is not an army made to obliterate anything they touch.

I really think the main use for him is to have a hard-hitting guy providing re-rolls to someone. For that I would always pick the plague reaper, without spending any more CP or points on relics or pathogenes. I agree that those are always better spent on deathshroud champions, especially the relic.

I'm really torn on whether to run Typhus or not. He's great because he can cast psychic powers, has the aura reroll, and the only HQ in the codex that can do stuff in the command phase. Having to use his warlord trait though is the disappointing part. Much rather have Mortarion's Anvil or The Ferrymen

 l0k1 wrote:
I'm really torn on whether to run Typhus or not. He's great because he can cast psychic powers, has the aura reroll, and the only HQ in the codex that can do stuff in the command phase. Having to use his warlord trait though is the disappointing part. Much rather have Mortarion's Anvil or The Ferrymen

Yea Typhus is what I want my LoC to be weapon and damage wise. I agree it stinks having to use his warlord trait that doesn’t fit in most lists. He is well priced.

LOC for me is a good HQ choice, if i can i go for a DP anyway.

Regarding the HQ choices. I notice one thing. If we don't take lords, we can take 3 sorcerors/malignant plague castors and become a really castor heavy army. I am not saying the Lord choices are bad at all. And their reroll aura and stuff are going to be missed, but you can build your army around it.

If you want to go castor heavy, you can go Mortarion and a batallion with 3 plague castors. Then rely on deathshrouds to protect the plague castors and other characters. Deathshrouds are killy enough. The thing is, those plague castors are dealing mortal wounds to stuff within 12 inches on any psychic they cast. And Mortarion himself has two spells too.

So, you can create a deathball of plague castors guarded by deathshrouds. The 3 castors are casting 6 psychic per turn and dealing up to 6 mortal wounds on every successful cast within 12 inches. Then throw in that castor relic. Throw in Mortarion's additional two casts. The mortal wounds output is pretty awesome.

It can catch an opponent off guard. Suddenly such a deathguard list becomes a massive mortal wound machine. Got a question on plague castor though. If I use the Fugaris helm on a plague castor, does this mean that any successful cast of psychic will now do mortal wounds on the closest enemy unit within 15 inches instead of 12 ?

Don't have the book on me but I believe the helm only works on aura abilities

If I use the Fugaris helm on a plague castor, does this mean that any successful cast of psychic will now do mortal wounds on the closest enemy unit within 15 inches instead of 12 ?

No it works only on aura abilities

As for HQ choices, the biggest winner to me in my playtesting are the daemon princes.

6 S8 AP-3, D3 attacks are good.... but we can make it better.
Warp Insect Hive relic from mortarions anvil, and now your prince is rerolling all failed hit and wound rolls. Ok now his damage output is gross, but what about survivability?

The warlord trait to add +1 wound and 1-3s to wound always fail is nasty, and combined with his already chonky profile means he can survive wayyy more than your opponent will give credit to.

First test game my prince got jumped by gulliman, and he survived his crazy s14 D5 attacks or whatever, and survived with 2 wounds. Which meant he got to swing back, almost killing him. For a less than 200 point model, thats pretty good.

Furthermore the mortarions anvil aura ability to turn off rerolls means your opponent gets no extra advantages in combat. Nasty.

I have been running double patrol, with a prince leading each detachment. So far I havent really wanted to pay the detachment tax of the meq psychic.

But yea, loving the loaded out prince's utlity.

That WLT where 1-3 fails to wound seems nasty af. And the fact that the daemon engines are 3+ BS now makes them amazing.

People have been complaining about the change to loadout options for plague Marines but the more I think about it the more I don't think it is as big a deal as everyone is saying.

I am running most of my PM squads as just bolters and plague knives anyway with maybe at most one special weapon at most. So yeah, I don't think its that big a deal either.

Played my first codex game today against Imperial fists. A few things I learned:

-Mortarian is tough but against lots of shooting he went down in one turn of shooting. It take him 2 turns to get across the table. Lots of STR 5 bolters chips his health fast (Inceptors).

-The demon prince with sword and the relic rerolling all hits and wounds does some great damage.

-The army is so slow it hurts trying to get across the table. Charges from deepstrike are frustrating with no way to reduce change distances.

-The PBC are great especially with the strategem. Solid anti tank for sure. If you don’t run Mortarian run 3.

-I hate not having DR against damage 1 weapons. It feels so odd.

I lost, but it was close and very bloody.

I'm liking Daemon Prince with supporating plate so 2+ save and the warlord trait to ignore -1 and -2. It feels like he has a 2+ invulnerable until he gets hit with anti tank then his 5+ invulnerable steps in

Abaddon303 wrote:
I'm liking Daemon Prince with supporating plate so 2+ save and the warlord trait to ignore -1 and -2. It feels like he has a 2+ invulnerable until he gets hit with anti tank then his 5+ invulnerable steps in

The biggest issue I would think is that most armies have -3 AP weapons or higher on their melee units. Though not bad against many shooting attacks.

broxus wrote:

Abaddon303 wrote:
I'm liking Daemon Prince with supporating plate so 2+ save and the warlord trait to ignore -1 and -2. It feels like he has a 2+ invulnerable until he gets hit with anti tank then his 5+ invulnerable steps in

The biggest issue I would think is that most armies have -3 AP weapons or higher on their melee units. Though not bad against many shooting attacks.

Normally if my DP is in combat it's on my terms. Shooting I find is much more the time he gets wrecked. Normally after killing stuff and having nowhere to hide.

I do appreciate it's a valid point though as we don't control everything

I am browsing new codex, it sucks that squad of 5 blightlords cannot take 5 meltas.

All just something interesting that is easily missed. The Flash Outbreak Strategem increases the range of EVERY unit as if it was one round later (not just the unit that gains the extra contagion). That actually makes it even better.

After some games what I have to come to realize is that putting Gloaming Bloat on Mortarian is pretty darn important. It is very good. However, the choice for your other detachment warlord really is between Ferric Blight (extra AP) and The Droning. I have found the Ferric Blight trait to always do well for me. Suddenly the reaping scythe profiles are -2 AP and even your Poxwalkers and bolters are wounding at -1 AP. It is a pretty big buff and is equivalent to the SM doctrines for all your weapons. The Droning seems to be very good on paper, but in practice I find it rarely makes a difference. We just don’t have fast enough units to get near them turn 1 when it would really makes the most impact. We generally have to wait until the 2 or 3. I’m not going to say it isn’t good or useful, but is far more situational than the FB trait which is always good. The best part about the Ferrymen vector is the “On Drowning Wings” strategem. It really can make a large impact depending on your list.

What are your thoughts?

A Daemon Prince with the revoltingly resilient warlord trait and supperating plate makes a good "mini Mortarion".

I am thinking that some anti tank is rather important. I saw a battle report by tabletop titans where Adrian ran a list with 15 deathshroud terminators. That list was death to anything within flamer range. But he was facing a really shooty Iron Hands list with a fire raptor and 3 storm talons. The fire raptor literally just went into hover mode in the back lines and shot at the DG army all 5 turns.

In the end, just trying to stand on objectives and being shot at for 5 turns is not going to work. Adrian didn't have anything left by turn 5. We need some way of at least weakening or destroying a super shooty unit.



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broxus wrote:
All just something interesting that is easily missed. The Flash Outbreak Strategem increases the range of EVERY unit as if it was one round later (not just the unit that gains the extra contagion). That actually makes it even better.

After some games what I have to come to realize is that putting Gloaming Bloat on Mortarian is pretty darn important. It is very good. However, the choice for your other detachment warlord really is between Ferric Blight (extra AP) and The Droning. I have found the Ferric Blight trait to always do well for me. Suddenly the reaping scythe profiles are -2 AP and even your Poxwalkers and bolters are wounding at -1 AP. It is a pretty big buff and is equivalent to the SM doctrines for all your weapons. The Droning seems to be very good on paper, but in practice I find it rarely makes a difference. We just don’t have fast enough units to get near them turn 1 when it would really makes the most impact. We generally have to wait until the 2 or 3. I’m not going to say it isn’t good or useful, but is far more situational than the FB trait which is always good. The best part about the Ferrymen vector is the “On Drowning Wings” strategem. It really can make a large impact depending on your list.

What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think the droning looks better on paper than it does in practise.

Since they changed the book to no longer allow 2 blight launchers they destroyed our ability to hang in the mid-board like in 8th edition. The MBH would have been useful, but they pointed it out of usefulness sadly. Hopefully they move it to around 120pts in the next FAQ so they become useable again. PBC are our only option right, they a e very solid and the core of our army. Even with Mortarian I’d never make a list with less than 2.

Long term I just don’t see DG being really competitive in tournaments. Too slow and one dimensional with an over design focus on melee buffs. They will never score enough points to be top tier without some points cuts and maybe a few unit additions. Honestly it just feels like running everything forward for 2-3 turns (to run the 24”) hoping you have to enough combat power to do something when you arrive at their lines.

Speaking of which why is the “toughest” army in the game not have a single defensive strategem other than cloud of flies? Why no transhumance, or counting as being in light cover, ignore-1 AP, etc? So weird.

broxus wrote:
Since they changed the book to no longer allow 2 blight launchers they destroyed our ability to hang in the mid-board like in 8th edition. The MBH would have been useful, but they pointed it out of usefulness sadly. Hopefully they move it to around 120pts in the next FAQ so they become useable again. PBC are our only option right, they a e very solid and the core of our army. Even with Mortarian I’d never make a list with less than 2.

Long term I just don’t see DG being really competitive in tournaments. Too slow and one dimensional with an over design focus on melee buffs. They will never score enough points to be top tier without some points cuts and maybe a few unit additions. Honestly it just feels like running everything forward for 2-3 turns (to run the 24”) hoping you have to enough combat power to do something when you arrive at their lines.

Speaking of which why is the “toughest” army in the game not have a single defensive strategem other than cloud of flies? Why no transhumance, or counting as being in light cover, ignore-1 AP, etc? So weird.

I would suggest (when COVID allows) trying to play some games with it. Whilst we can't predict what other codexes will look like, the current codex is extremely strong. In a game and mission set built on fighting for objectives in the midfield, their ability to hold objectives and push others off them is very strong. Don't underestimate them.

Impressed by the bloat drones. I took a Mower and Heavy Blight Launcher the other night. I went second and first turn moved them up to near my opponents unit of three dawneagles. I cast the psychic to expand the contagion aura on one, the heavy blight killed the first jetbike. Both charged, the mower killed the second and wounded the third and the other drone finished it off.

Certainly took my opponent by suprise and must have made their points back first turn. I lost the mower turn two after he'd seen what it can do but the Blight Launcher wiped a unit of scions and then bowled into a Leman Russ to tie it up turn two.

They reallyoffer some speed and harassment in an army that definitely needs it. The Mower and the HBL options seem to complement each other, I might try two pairs of each next game, I wish you could take them in units like the MBHs...


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Of course as soon as I posted that I realised three's my limit! I might try the FW variant in place of one of the HBL drones.