I personally hope for anything for Deathshroud. Something like DA's Combined Assault, allow Deathshroud to teleport or deepstrike both within 3" of a character and more than 6" away from enemy models. Obvious "homing beacons" for this would be Morty or a winged DP. Make it 3 CP, bring their cost back up to 60 ppm, I don't care. ANYTHING to make them effective bodyguards and to actually get them into CC. I wanna field my scythebois again

Dg is in a good spot for incredible psychic awakening rules.
Why? Simply because dg is a midle tier faction with tools for everything but lack this suplement of power to reach top tier.

As exemple charge fiabilisation tool.
Huge difference for blightlords, deathshrouds and cc plague hordes.

Expect boost for everything shelved as for tyranids or thousand sons.
Don't expect too much for demons. It's quite difficult to boost them as they will be covered by their own codex and PA supplément. Imagine if they have differents powers inside demon's roster or da's roster. Chaos is oriented toward soup and you will select the best dataslate.

My wishlist:

Alchemical armory.
Give up cp for flavored weapons.
Phosporic rounds
Rad shells
Viral bolts
Flesheating grenade.
Poxwlaking strain


Because until now deathguard is described as the faction most eager to use devious and inhuman weapons.
Even before the betreyal it was their signature and it dosen't reflect in term if gameplay further than "plague weapons" and the plague skull of nonexistance .

I think they are a bit too grotesque wich beter fit nurgle's démon legions.
They are described as sarcastics and practicals but they still are space marines.

Give them gaz artillery stratagem, different poxes, infantry oriented stuff and i will be happy.

We don't need factions inside a chaos faction.
There is smartest way to incite playstyle.

I'd like to see everything you guys have posted, but my personal hope is that they flesh out the various Vectorums. That would give us our 'cults' and let modles like Necrosius and Mamon interact with the rest of the army. Also, DG could stand to have a bit more diversity in play style.

Back on the topic.

What do you think about terrax patern assault drill?

Transport capacity of 12 synergises prety well with cc plague marine units.

E8 for another tought unit.
No sloutch in melee. Gaining Deathguard keyword allow tallyman to boost it's ws4 for huge improvment (4+ vs 4+ reroll)
8 stormbolter's shots for chaft.
Magma cuters for ranged ap (weak ranged ap)

136 pts. I think it's a deal.

Speaking of psychic awakening, if we have charge fiabilisation we'll se a lot of them (when fw is allowed) .
But gambling on 50% charge for 1cp is meh.

Best way to use it actualy:
Embark plasma shooty squad + lord or tally (or both) , keep room for biologus/blightspawn for tactical options.
Send the terrax next to 10man blight lords, unleash hail of plasma/stormbolter and charge with the terrax and hope for blightlords to do the same.
Blightlords strugles against armored units, terrax doesn't.

Connect with blight drones (ws4 = > reroll) , connect with cc plague marine unit shrouded since t1.
It's very difficult to anticipate where will be the real threat, specialy if you have a biologus and 2 blightspawn somewhere.

agony.deluxe wrote:
Send the terrax next to 10man blight lords, unleash hail of plasma/stormbolter and charge with the terrax and hope for blightlords to do the same.

You basically said it yourself. In general, hope isn't exactly something that consistently wins you games. Without something to make 9" charges reliable (re-roll and additional charge distance), deep strike strategies can be fun when they work, but fail terribly when they don't. This is the main reason why deathshrouds see no play.

 Jidmah wrote:

agony.deluxe wrote:
Send the terrax next to 10man blight lords, unleash hail of plasma/stormbolter and charge with the terrax and hope for blightlords to do the same.

You basically said it yourself. In general, hope isn't exactly something that consistently wins you games. Without something to make 9" charges reliable (re-roll and additional charge distance), deep strike strategies can be fun when they work, but fail terribly when they don't. This is the main reason why deathshrouds see no play.

I know but blighlords see some play already and we have nothing to improve charge reliability.
Terrax is well suited to go alongside them.

Like i said about psychic awakening deathguard need very few things to be far more compétitive.

Charge reliability is a good exemple.

Blightlords aren’t a dedicated CC unit.

They are a bully unit. An area control unit. A deep striking anti horde unit. An large foot print that can be untargetable. A very effective use of buffs like -1 to hit or VotLW.

As a bonus they can make a long charge and just win a game off the deep strike with a silly 9inch command reroll charge.

Exactly. Blight Lords are an anti-infantry unit and really don't need the support of the drill to go along with them unless they are in over their head anyways. Meaning, you are doing something wrong or desperate.

In general, if you wanted to really make use of the drill, I'd probably try putting some melee plague marine in there with tallyman and psyker to support them. Or just bolters and a biologous purifier for the grenade combo. Both are a lot of eggs in one basket though and easily countered unless you bring three drills since you have no way of protecting them besides miasma.

This is exactly why it's so convinient to add a t8 melee unit to the maths.

Blighlords strugles against high toughness units with good saves, plasma and terrax are a solution.

Lord give the reroll aura, the transport capacity give you versatility.

You still can use blighlords as usual , terrax and it's crew are self sufficient.
But now you can contest screen + juicy targets.

How you will use your blightlords become less obvious thus harder to counter/predict.

In a context of pure deathguard list of course.

On the con side the price of terrax + squad + lord is quite high.
330-340.

If there is some tools in pa to reach melee i will try a big cc unit in terrax.

I still fail to see how blightlords play into this. Their job is to simply shred stuff with VotLW and storm bolters, charging is mostly a tool to move faster or wipe out some 1W infantry with the flail.

The drill is a decent model for its price, but DG aren't exactly lacking in the distraction carnifex department, and there is still the ~60% chance to fail the charge even with the CP re-roll.

Something that might work though is putting two squads of tripple plasma plague marines in there. You get 12 plasma shots in rapid fire range that way.

On the other hand With a lord with combiplasma and a simple squad you have 8 shots instead of 12 but rerolling "1" and there is still room for more.

The drill carries 12, so you can have both

I wouldn't be adding another 85 points to a unit that's dead next turn though - plus, I prefer meltas or storm bolters on my lords since I'm never going to overcharge the plasma anyways.

 Jidmah wrote:
The drill carries 12, so you can have both

I wouldn't be adding another 85 points to a unit that's dead next turn though - plus, I prefer meltas or storm bolters on my lords since I'm never going to overcharge the plasma anyways.

Combi meltas on lords are hidden gems. Being able to advance and still fire hitting on 2's gives a nice AT punch in support of the infantry he'll be hanging around

 NurglesR0T wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The drill carries 12, so you can have both

I wouldn't be adding another 85 points to a unit that's dead next turn though - plus, I prefer meltas or storm bolters on my lords since I'm never going to overcharge the plasma anyways.

Combi meltas on lords are hidden gems. Being able to advance and still fire hitting on 2's gives a nice AT punch in support of the infantry he'll be hanging around

I have never considered this! That seems awesome and totally worth trying, I have always just overlooked melts as an option at all due to it being so expensive and in this edition being so much weaker than in the past.

So, I had a really interesting DG game against 2.5k points of Ynnari Harlequins and a reroll/cover craftworld, playing the new maelstrom rules. Our mission's special rule was putting one archived card back into the deck at the end of our turn.

I was running double two poxwalker blobs with typhus to protect a unit of 20 plague marines (bolters/blight launchers), Mortarion, 2x PBC, 2x Drones, a unit of 3 MBH, palguecaster, foul blightspawn, blightbringer, biologous putrefier and an Arch-Contaminator DP as my warlord. Or, in other words, all the DG models

I always struggled with capturing objectives, so I just went all-in and removed all "Capture/Defend objective X" cards from my deck, plus some of ones that are likely to be impossible, like capturing all six mission objectives, kill a psyker and them some, and kept almost everything that had the possibility to award d3 VP.

I must say, it worked like a charm. The eldar player deployed first, but then decided to let me have first turn (make sure you play those new rules correctly, they are quite confusing).
I had kingslayer (warlord is 1d3 extra VP), death begets life(1VP/7models killed), symbol of the fly lord (exactly 3 objectives), kill something your shooting phase and kill something in the fight phase.
I chose to keep death begets life since I thought I could ramp up more VP in T2 and played kill with shooting, symbol and kill with fighting. The last one I played face down, knowing that the harlequins would come for me and hoped to sneak in a VP if I could kill one.
I basically spend T1 advancing my mega-blob forward (Noxius Blightbringer really helped here), keeping Mortarion screened from fusion pistols, with PBC driving up the flank towards the craftworld castle. After putting defensive buffs on everything (cloud of flies on 20 marines), I blew up only one vibro cannon with my MBH, 4/5 rangers and killed some scatter bikes, but didn't get more than 1 unit killed. I also failed to score symbol of the fly lord because I'm an idiot and moved one PBC barely out of 3" of the third objective, so one VP and first blood.
On the eldar's turn he came at me with everything, harlequin bikes put 20 wounds on the MBH, but as they could as one unit, he was denied power from death. he failed to kill Mortarion, leaving him at 6, he failed to kill both drones, one left at 6 and one at 7, and killed roughly 15 pox walkers spread between the two units, neither dropping below 10. The fight back and regenerate some pox walkers by killing harlequin bikes. He scores 4 VP for casting 3 psychic powers and holding an objective.

With Mortarion unexpectedly being alive, I play death begets life and start racking up kills. I move the noxious blightbringer onto an objective to both score the symband bait the harlequins into charging him because he has the "kill 1 or 3 characters" stratagem in play. I use another cloud of flies and the dead walk again to generate the pox walker unit surrounded by bikes. And so the tally begins - plaguecaster and typhus kill some bikes with smites, plague wind and fallout, Drones melt a star weaver each, one PBC deletes a unit of rangers, the other kills two scatter bikes and a black reaper with its mortar, foul blight spawn and assorted krak grenades kill some harlequin bikes, 20 marines use VotlW and kill another troupe, a vibro cannon and take 5 wounds of the last starweaver, Mortarion succeeds a 10" charge and gives Yvrain a close-up look of his Scythe and evaporates 4 scatterbikes with the other half of his attacks, pox walker unit 1 wipes a troupe with the help of a drone, pox walker unit 2, daemon prince and MBH wipe a unit of bikes. Total count: 26 killed models = 3 VP. I roll 3s for the two other objectives, archiving 9 VP for that turn.

Dice hate my opponent during his next turn. He falls for the bait, but tries to get Typhus, plaguecaster and floul blightspawn as well to score d3 VP instead of just one. Typhus just ignores 6 meltas fired at him with his 4++, blightbringer dies to some more meltas.
Mortarion dies, explodes, and I roll his MW like a god, putting a grand total or 32 mortal wounds on the craftworld castle, killing the black reapers, a warlock, a scatter bike and putting 2-3 mortal wounds on four vibro cannons, two warwalkers, an autarch and a farseer. He takes down one PBC to 3 wounds and kills the last MBH and a drone.
Afterwards he tries to charge the plague marine blob, but I greet him with a plague grenade volley (because I can), killing two harlequin bike in overwatch and the other two in the combat phase. Troupe charges all the characters, foul blightspawn melts one. Typhus uses counter-attack and kills one more bike, the eldar player still tries to kill 3 characters, but struggles to do so as the blightspawns' aura forces him to take turns with me. He splits attacks a bit too much, blightspawn survives on one wound, Typhus on 3, plaguecaster on 3. He scores 5 VP for killing a character, casting 3 powers and killing a unit with FLY. It's 11:9 right now and I'm all out of CP.

Turn 3 I play dominance (3 or more objectives), kill 1/3/6+ enemy units and one for having 3 units in my opponent's deployment zone.
I fall back from combat with the plaguecaster who then almost dies to a double-six perils, but stays alive thanks to DR, he kills the troupe master and another harlequin. Plague marines clear out the remaining transport and yet another vibro cannon, dameon prince, Typhus, characters and pox walkers clear out the harlequin bikes and decimate almost all harlequins, only a unit of two and a unit of one remain. The unwounded PBC kills another vibro cannon and charges into the castle and tags two vibro cannons and two warwalkers, locking them down. The remaining drone melts his last unit of rangers. Having kille 4 units, controlling 3 objectives and having the PBCs and the drone in his deployment zone I score 3d3 = 8 VP

His turn is rather short, as there is little left on the table that's not locked in combat. The two harlequins finally mange to down Typhus, but are eaten by poxwalkers in return. The one harlequin misses his melta pistol and then kills the blightspawn in combat. Autarch and farseer take PBC to 1 wound, everyone else falls back. He scores one VP, so the game is 19:11

Turn 4 I play kingslayer, as his autarch is exposed, death march (1 VP for being in the enemy's deployment zone) and killing a unit with a plague weapon. I killed his last scatter bike, one more vibro cannon, one warwalker and his autarch falls to the plague marine horder boltering him to death. I score all objectives, slay the warlord and roll another 3 for the d3 for a total of 25 VP.

At this point he only has a farseer with 1 wound left, a warwalker with 3 wounds and two vibro cannons with 2 wound each. He fails to kill the PBC sitting on an objective he could score, then tries to charge a PBC with his warwalker but gets destroyed by overwatch. He then suicides the two vibro-cannons into it as well, effectively ending the game.

I kill the farseer and score 3 more VP plus linebreaker in my turn and we agree to not roll for turn 6.

So just not caring about any specific objectives worked out really well for me, in CA 2017 I often had to table opponents with lots of mobile units to win maelstrom, so might as well get VP for doing it.

Aw man, the Greater Good book doesn't feature Death Guard at all It's IG vs. GSC vs. Tau.

What? Really? That's gak....

Interesting write up Jidmah, enjoyable to read. It makes me wonder if I'm playing my DG wrong as I tend to focus on clamping down the midfield and slowly win by accruing VP. This has had decent success so far but I do tend to end the game with most of my force evaporated. Do you think a more aggressive DG can work even without Morty? I'm asking because I don't have the model and don't want to field him either in 2000 point games.

Truth be told, the army would have been better without him, and I knew that when building the list. I just like the big guy.
Outside of drawing a bit of fire and going off in a spectacular explosion, he made sure one ynnari psyker was really, really, really dead.

Probably would have added 5x plasma blightlords, a las/autocannon predator and the Tallyman instead of him. Blightlords are pretty boss in maelstrom anyways, as they are great at denying objectives to your opponents.

New Psychic Awakening news is a bit of a kick in the teeth. Hey ho, all good things come to those who wait.

 lare2 wrote:
New Psychic Awakening news is a bit of a kick in the teeth. Hey ho, all good things come to those who wait.

Really is - so that will put DG at some point after Engine War so no earlier than May unless we somehow get thrown into the mix for Saga of the Beast which I doubt

Yea GW has broken my will to continue playing. I haven’t played in months. I’m tired of feeling out gunned and over marched playing every other army. No updates in years really sucks. I thought DG would be a model line and codex they would keep supporting.

They could be supported like AdMech, getting a spattering of new releases after a couple of years in play. They could be treated like GK that have got one new unit since 5th ed. Hard to say.

broxus wrote:
Yea GW has broken my will to continue playing. I haven’t played in months. I’m tired of feeling out gunned and over marched playing every other army. No updates in years really sucks. I thought DG would be a model line and codex they would keep supporting.

They are going to get PA rules, just not now. Which is a pity because GW teased us with a story about the Tau encountering the Death Guard during their 4th Sphere Expansion leading many to believe that the The Greater Good book would be about what happened out there. Alas, no such luck. We'll have to wait for may probably. Hmm, which factions haven't been covered yet either? DG vs. Sisters maybe? That would leave Deathwatch for a scrap with the Necrons, and I believe that's every major faction covered.

edit: Except Custodes. I have a feeling the Golden Banana's will be thrown into a DG vs. Sisters book. Inquisition and Officio Assassinorum are probably too small to be featured.

I'm fairly confident sisters are done. They were in the video for the first book and they marketed the limited edition fiasco as their PA release.

I doubt that our PA release will have anything of substance anyway if the TS update is anything to go by.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
I doubt that our PA release will have anything of substance anyway if the TS update is anything to go by.

Agreed just wait 3 years to get that garbage update like the TS. I am sure every death guard player will be happy. Currently, I think DG are over performing and we don’t really need any new rules . I mean the top performing DG lists at LVO did rank 172nd, 279th, and 363rd. I don’t know why anyone is surprised people who play DG have lost interest in the game.

Are you guys using the Blighthaulers a lot?
And if yes - mostly for their damage or to add durability to your footsloggers?

Slowly expanding my Death Guard army and thought about adding some to get my 3 squads Plague Marines with 2 blight launchers each some mobile cover.
Not sure if they are worth the investment because i feel like if i take them i should go for 3 to get that +1.

Another option would be drones but i am still not a 100% convinced about the damage output.
Yeah that flamer is kinda cool but i don´t really see those ~4 wounds if i get anywhere doing a lot for me.

Or simply max out crawlers instead?

Rest of the army is a Leviathan, a Contemptor, a crawler, 10 Blightlords and some characters.

In one of my lists I run 3 MBH backed up by a lord and 5 PM with 3 plasma, which are made super duper every turn. The damage output of this little cluster is nuts and has toppled some crazy stuff in its time. I tend to find that people ignore them as well, not really knowing what they can do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In that same list, I play them on one wing and on the other, 3 FBD with an archcontaminator Daemon prince. Again, absolutely savage.

 lare2 wrote:
In one of my lists I run 3 MBH backed up by a lord and 5 PM with 3 plasma, which are made super duper every turn. The damage output of this little cluster is nuts and has toppled some crazy stuff in its time. I tend to find that people ignore them as well, not really knowing what they can do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In that same list, I play them on one wing and on the other, 3 FBD with an archcontaminator Daemon prince. Again, absolutely savage.

Agreed - that sounds brutal.

I've had lots of gaks and giggles using triple drones with fleshmowers - them coupled near a AC DP always brings joy to my decaying heart +

 Grotrebel wrote:
Are you guys using the Blighthaulers a lot?
And if yes - mostly for their damage or to add durability to your footsloggers?

Slowly expanding my Death Guard army and thought about adding some to get my 3 squads Plague Marines with 2 blight launchers each some mobile cover.
Not sure if they are worth the investment because i feel like if i take them i should go for 3 to get that +1.

Another option would be drones but i am still not a 100% convinced about the damage output.
Yeah that flamer is kinda cool but i don´t really see those ~4 wounds if i get anywhere doing a lot for me.

Or simply max out crawlers instead?

Rest of the army is a Leviathan, a Contemptor, a crawler, 10 Blightlords and some characters.

Haulers are ok, but don't expect a lot out of them. They can surprise you from time to time, but really are outshone by our PBCs and Drones.

As for Drones, try them out with Fleshmowers and screen a Daemon Prince with Arch-Contaminator behind them. They will seriously push some damage with all their high strength, multi-damage, attacks.

Lastly, running 3 PBCs is always a good decision.

How are Drones with a mix of fleshmowers and plaguespitters? I have three of the easy build ones and am contemplating doing some converting, but not wanting to do too much. Got two assembled already -- is it worth scratch building a mower for the 3rd? Perhaps with magnets? Or do I need to go all in an convert the other two to mowers too, before I start painting?

Somewhere in this thread, someone did the math for flesh mowers - if you bring a daemon prince (arch contaminator not required), they will out-damage pretty much anything, even the prince himself. They are a bit slower and have less range though since they can't advance, and if you are stuck in combat, you can't leave.
Spitter are better for all-round purposes, mowers for flat damage output.

Thanks Jidmah. Sounds like a good mix for Arch-Contaminator Prince would indeed be 2 spitters and 1 mower, then. Keep people a bit wary of charging too...

 Ian Sturrock wrote:
How are Drones with a mix of fleshmowers and plaguespitters? I have three of the easy build ones and am contemplating doing some converting, but not wanting to do too much. Got two assembled already -- is it worth scratch building a mower for the 3rd? Perhaps with magnets? Or do I need to go all in an convert the other two to mowers too, before I start painting?

I too bought the ez build drones, and they are pretty easy to convert. I just drilled under the spitters and used a plastic cylinder (got mine from receipt tape from work), drilled that out, and voila, it fits and doesnt ruin the model if you want to use the spitters.

Mine is still very much a WIP though, still got to make the cylinder look like a spiky, steamroller of death and gore.

Edit - Yes I used some 2mm rare earth magnets to hold it in place

Good call Dudley -- I may try something similar!

Apparently there are new stratagems in the current conquest magazine.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/deathguard40k/comments/f6oain/new_dg_stratagems_from_conquest_magazine/

Hmm. Foetid Mire could be fun with bloat-drones. Powerful counter to Possessed bombs. Dissolver Spores is interesting. Best used on something big; a horde of fearless MEQs, a lord of war.

Still needs to score a hit, and it affects a single model’s two shot weapon, so very susceptible to hit modifier lists. Nurgle soup might want to keep Prescience in mind.

Hmm. -1 to saving throws. Does... does that apply to invulns?

It appears to apply to every save that unit has to take after it is hit by a blight launcher until next turn.

It does.

Oh I see what you mean! A single model that shoots a Blight Launcher, meaning you need to pick one dude to shoot his two shots when you spend the CP. Two shots at BS 3 with a lord reroll is probably fine for most meat and potatoes armies but like you said, hit modifiers... does give us a big boost in anti tank and anti Knight in my opinion, areas where pure DG struggles.

I don’t think it’s that useful an anti Knight asset. All DG guns that Knights fear already make them rely on their shields. Only really benefit is it makes it a bit less of a crapshoot to sandpaper away a critical last wound with bolters.

Pretty decent as part of a chaos army. Autocannons and reaper chaincannons will definitely appreciate it.

In a civil war, it affects LEGION lords of war less than it does knights, as they can more easily stack hit modifiers.

It reduces both the armor and the invulnerable save though - that's great for pretty much every weapon we have.

Underwhelming.

Dissolver spores could help chip off those last few wounds of a big target, but chances are I will be out of CP at that point anyway. If it also increased strength or range or affected a unit (so two blight-launchers) I could see myself using it.

Foetid mire would be good if it didn't have that awful within 6" of any Death Guard model, that is already making countless traits and strats way worse than they need to be.

No one noticed this bit of weird wording in the Dissolver Spores stratagem? "If it hits, the weapon deals damage as normal". RAW those Blight Launcher shots deal the equivalent of Mortal Wounds because you skip the wound and save rolls. 100% not RAI but it's yet another sloppily written bit that will have to be FAQ-ed

Anyway, I think the Foetid Mire strat can be quite useful to prevent enemy CC units from reaching your shooty dudes when used on something like a nearby Bloatdrone or DP. Also quite useful to prevent enemy units from kiting Terminators and choppy Plague Marines.

Edit: Spores is also nice to give Blightlords some extra punch when the come in. Deepstrike, us the Blight Launcher and afterwards all their Combibolters are at a virtual AP-1.

Dissolver spore :
deathguard levi/deredeo butcher array + miasm sorcerer + stock lord, +2x msu blightlauncher squad as standard in chaos soup list.

alpha legion's msu squad in cover is roughtly as resiliant as plague marines in cover.

no one noticed but foetid mire can be very tricky.

if you are standing on top of a ruin 6" away (horizontaly) from an enemy unit you can use the strat but you are not easy to catch.
let's say we have a flying unit with 2 autohit weapons ignoring vertical movement and msu squads blight/plasma bitching 100% of the game in cover, so maybe this stratagem will be more usefull than you may think.

If it wasn’t for needing to hit with a specific Blight Launcher, it would become our second best offensive strategem behind VotLW. Costing 2cp is appropriate for being able to lower all saves by 1. I’m excited to try it out.

Pandabeer wrote:
No one noticed this bit of weird wording in the Dissolver Spores stratagem? "If it hits, the weapon deals damage as normal". RAW those Blight Launcher shots deal the equivalent of Mortal Wounds because you skip the wound and save rolls. 100% not RAI but it's yet another sloppily written bit that will have to be FAQ-ed

I'd argue that "as normal" would involve rolling wounds and saves.
In any case, if you get too anal with RAW, your opponent might just tell you that conquest is not a valid rule source. Good luck if it ever gets FAQ'ed.

Anyway, I think the Foetid Mire strat can be quite useful to prevent enemy CC units from reaching your shooty dudes when used on something like a nearby Bloatdrone or DP. Also quite useful to prevent enemy units from kiting Terminators and choppy Plague Marines.

It's also quite good in combination with drones falling back from combat to flame something - that way you can hinder units without charging them.

Which issue of Conquest is it in, BTW?

 Jidmah wrote:

Pandabeer wrote:
No one noticed this bit of weird wording in the Dissolver Spores stratagem? "If it hits, the weapon deals damage as normal". RAW those Blight Launcher shots deal the equivalent of Mortal Wounds because you skip the wound and save rolls. 100% not RAI but it's yet another sloppily written bit that will have to be FAQ-ed

I'd argue that "as normal" would involve rolling wounds and saves.
In any case, if you get too anal with RAW, your opponent might just tell you that conquest is not a valid rule source. Good luck if it ever gets FAQ'ed.

Anyway, I think the Foetid Mire strat can be quite useful to prevent enemy CC units from reaching your shooty dudes when used on something like a nearby Bloatdrone or DP. Also quite useful to prevent enemy units from kiting Terminators and choppy Plague Marines.

It's also quite good in combination with drones falling back from combat to flame something - that way you can hinder units without charging them.

"Dealing damage as normal" to me means that it deals it's normal, unmodified damage, it doesn't have anything to do with rolling to wound or saves. So yeah, "If it hits the weapon deals damage as normal" to me means you skip wound and save rolls. But no, I'm not the kind of guy that's asinine enough to use the stratagem like that because RAI is obviously to make normal wound and save rolls. I play by common sense and decency, not by being a WAAC TFG.

Nope, we have plenty of weapons that work like that and they all clearly tell us to deal mortal wounds instead of normal damage.

In addition, unless specified, you do not have permission to end the attack sequence unless the stratagem says otherwise (see flakk missile).

So dealing damage without wound and save roll is not normal at all, therefore you cannot legitimately claim that it works like mortal wounds.

 Jidmah wrote:
Nope, we have plenty of weapons that work like that and they all clearly tell us to deal mortal wounds instead of normal damage.

In addition, unless specified, you do not have permission to end the attack sequence unless the stratagem says otherwise (see flakk missile).

So dealing damage without wound and save roll is not normal at all, therefore you cannot legitimately claim that it works like mortal wounds.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then.

Feel free to take it to YMDC if you think the rule is unclear. This is not the place for that.

Hey guys, just a random one while we're waiting for some PA news. I don't know if this has been mentioned, but has is truck anyone that the Plague Surgeon model is weirdly out of scale with the rest of the new DG range? I just painted mine up, and stuck him together, and just noticed that he's a head taller than all of the other models. He's basically as tall as a terminator.

 Jidmah wrote:
Somewhere in this thread, someone did the math for flesh mowers - if you bring a daemon prince (arch contaminator not required), they will out-damage pretty much anything, even the prince himself. They are a bit slower and have less range though since they can't advance, and if you are stuck in combat, you can't leave.
Spitter are better for all-round purposes, mowers for flat damage output.

Hey i might be missing something here, why do you say you can't advance and you're stuck in combat? is there a special rule with the mowers I'm not seeing? Thanks,

Abaddon303 wrote:
Hey i might be missing something here, why do you say you can't advance and you're stuck in combat? is there a special rule with the mowers I'm not seeing? Thanks,

If you advance you're not allowed to charge, same if you leave combat.
So there are no rules restricting you from doing that, but you won't be able to utilize the mowers for that respective turn.

 BleachHawk wrote:

Abaddon303 wrote:
Hey i might be missing something here, why do you say you can't advance and you're stuck in combat? is there a special rule with the mowers I'm not seeing? Thanks,

If you advance you're not allowed to charge, same if you leave combat.
So there are no rules restricting you from doing that, but you won't be able to utilize the mowers for that respective turn.

It's a shame that DG don't have access to the Soulforged Pack specialist detachment, because if they did, bloat drones and other DG daemon engines absolutely could advance and charge in the same turn.

So are those new strategems legal for matched play right now?
Any ruling by GW in those Conquest magazines or anywhere else that i missed?

Might just be a "preview" for our PA book as well.

Those are stratagems for that specific mission.

Been a while since I've tried competitive 40k so went last weekend with a mono-DG list. Man, we're in a bad way. Had a great day but lost all 3 and to be honest, I didn't come close to winning a game. Some of the abilities out there now for other armies are just nuts. I'm reluctant to soup but the way things are it's either that or die very quickly. Roll on PA. We need something good to mix it up.

Yeah DG have always had kind of a weak codex. Our units are okay and our psychic powers are pretty decent, but we need some actual good stratagems.

DG are confirmed to be in the next PA: War of the Spider.
Additional rules for each of the seven plague companies - my Pallid Hand are going to be very happy!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/03/28/the-first-ever-warhammer-preview-onlinegw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-1/

 Drakeslayer wrote:
DG are confirmed to be in the next PA: War of the Spider.
Additional rules for each of the seven plague companies - my Pallid Hand are going to be very happy!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/03/28/the-first-ever-warhammer-preview-onlinegw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-1/

Well if it's anything like how the different Thousand Sons sects were handled, prepared to be EXTREMELY disappointed.

Sad they went this direction. Our small codex will likely get even more limiting. I hope they don’t make the relics, stratagems, and warlord traits company specific. Hopefully it just gives you an army wide buff.

broxus wrote:
Sad they went this direction. Our small codex will likely get even more limiting. I hope they don’t make the relics, stratagems, and warlord traits company specific. Hopefully it just gives you an army wide buff.

It'll probably be just that if the Thousand Sons release is anything to go by.

Any new updates about Death Guard?

Not yet.

I have heard they are going to retire the army in the next version and put it back in the chaos space marine codex.

Unlikely for an army with such broad model support.

Is typhus with a horde of poxwalkers still a viable competitive choice? Why/why not?

I flip flop on this all the time because sometimes, yeah, it’s great to have 60 t4 fearless bodies and it really wins you the game. Other (most) times those bodies give your opponent something to pump all of their robust anti infantry shooting into like aggressors, hurricane bolsters, massed bolter fired and the like into and totally wipe them up no sweat.

As a strategy as it’s own, no, it’s not good.

If you need some board coverage and are playing DG and can’t really get a
Battalion another way, I would use 60 pox walkers, typhus and a lord. The lord would probably babysit 3 PBCs for rerolls and the poxwalkers would just try to cover lots of area, hold objectives and screen important things. 60 PWs typhus and a lord come in 200 points cheaper than 2 poxbringers, 60 plague bearers and 3 nurglings, which I think while being better than the DG battalion, I don’t think it’s 200 points better.

I’ve been toying with Chaos Knights supported by DG in a similar way the old imperial Castellan list worked. Getting lots of board control with a cost effective battlion, some support from Morty and a Tyrant running the Valiant load out. Screen out with lots of pox walkers, send in Morty while the valiant controls the center and wins.

Looks like Death Guard updates are being revealed this week.

Finally...

Rejoice!!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/09/new-death-guard-rulesgw-homepage-post-2/

Our time has finally come!!!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/09/new-death-guard-rulesgw-homepage-post-2/

So it looks like we're getting a similar treatment to Thousand Sons as many of us predicted. However, there do seem to be some Death Guard generic strats and relics teased here. Seems at least some of the emphasis is going to be on making Plague Marines worth taking again.

What do folks think of what's been teased so far? That fall back strat for daemon engines has me looking at spitter PBCs again. Also Overwhelming Generosity might just make plague spewers worth taking on blightlords - seeing as they're primarily used for anti-infantry firepower, being able to deep-strike and flame away is nice.

ninja'd by avedominusnox!

 Drakeslayer wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/09/new-death-guard-rulesgw-homepage-post-2/

So it looks like we're getting a similar treatment to Thousand Sons as many of us predicted. However, there do seem to be some Death Guard generic strats and relics teased here. Seems at least some of the emphasis is going to be on making Plague Marines worth taking again.

What do folks think of what's been teased so far? That fall back strat for daemon engines has me looking at spitter PBCs again. Also Overwhelming Generosity might just make plague spewers worth taking on blightlords - seeing as they're primarily used for anti-infantry firepower, being able to deep-strike and flame away is nice.

ninja'd by avedominusnox!

Did it on the road driving home!!! Credits to you mate! I am happy that we have new toys!!!

This preview has some nice tricks, but none of them make me as excited for my DG more than today’s 9e previews on vehicles.

Vehicles no longer take penalties for firing heavy weapons after moving, and when in combat they can fire at units they’re engaged with (albeit w/ -1 to hit with heavy weapons). Hello Plagueburst Crawlers with spitters! Or artillery crawlers with entropy cannons if you have sufficient screens.

I'm liking what I've seen so far. Love the idea of deepstrking Typhus with 40 pox.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Big unit of stabby marines with a Blightbringer running across the board behind them, covered in Cloud of Flies.

 lare2 wrote:
I'm liking what I've seen so far. Love the idea of deepstrking Typhus with 40 pox.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Big unit of stabby marines with a Blightbringer running across the board behind them, covered in Cloud of Flies.

My thoughts exactly. I need more Pox.

Cover supposed to be a bigger deal in 9th. So 3+/5++/5+++ Plague marines hidden behind a Cloud of Flies.

40 Pox and Typhus wreaking havoc elsewhere.

Yes please.

Can we use the range stratagem on grenades? Yes please...

Not sure about the 5++ tbh, our deamon engines already get them, and how many times are my marines shot at by mass plasma? Maybe it's because I never used the Blightbringer before but eh, I can't see it being super useful. But the other stuff does look decent enough and with the ability for our PBC's to keep flaming away revealed today I'm pretty happy overall.
Big yay/nay however for me will depend on the plague companies being locked per detachment or not though. If so that will be a massive pain come 9th as well as proving that "PA was designed with 9th in mind" being a massive load of bull.

 avedominusnox wrote:
Can we use the range stratagem on grenades? Yes please...

Blight Grenades are plague weapons, so we can. Good catch!

Great catch on the grenades. Blight bombardment/Biologus combo just became a lot less situational.

Looks like it's just a WLT, Relic, and unique Strat per Plague Company, which I guess are technically "New Rules to represent your Vectorum" but it doesent seem like theres any additional bonuses to our Legion Trait.

But at least I finally got a Pox Walker strat that I've been wish listing forever! And Typhus was probably gonna be my last Purchase for the DG collection, so Win for me?

Death Shroud can also extend the range of their gauntlets to a total of 12”. This could be amazing agains hordes.

Eater Plague + Overwhelming Generosity could make the daemon prince with wings and plague spewer a serious threat.

 Castozor wrote:
Not sure about the 5++ tbh, our deamon engines already get them, and how many times are my marines shot at by mass plasma? [...] .

Exactly. In the tradition of this codex, they write an ability that seems powerful at first glance. But then you take a closer look at the restrictions or at the unit itself and you realize it's not that good, it's not optimal, it sometimes even has scornergy.

At least the 5++ will be useful for LandRaider, Predator, Rhino (e.g. vehicles that are not daemon engines and also lack DR for that matter). So we can use the Blightbringer with relic to babysit some of those units making them less awful but wasting all his other abilities.

I wonder if Daemon's Toll could be useful for a rhino rush/Landraider rush

Difference in movement between a Blightbringer and Rhino is 7"
So start all on the line, advance noxious blightbringer first, then advance the rhinos and keep them within 7. Yes there may be an odd inch lost here and there, but they will now have 5++ and probably popped smoke and are over halfway to the enemy.

 BleachHawk wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
Not sure about the 5++ tbh, our deamon engines already get them, and how many times are my marines shot at by mass plasma? [...] .

Exactly. In the tradition of this codex, they write an ability that seems powerful at first glance. But then you take a closer look at the restrictions or at the unit itself and you realize it's not that good, it's not optimal, it sometimes even has scornergy.

At least the 5++ will be useful for LandRaider, Predator, Rhino (e.g. vehicles that are not daemon engines and also lack DR for that matter). So we can use the Blightbringer with relic to babysit some of those units making them less awful but wasting all his other abilities.

I think it's great actually. I actually lose most of my plague marines from high AP shooting, especially when I bring a blob of 20 they are nigh impossible to shift without high AP weapons. It also does work in combat, where high AP is much more common. Melee plague marines might be able to compete with possessed now.
It also works for helbrutes and the other support characters like foul blightspawns or putrifiers, so I'm fairly sure I will bring that relic fairly often.
Last, but not least, it is units within 7", not wholly within like the KFF, so he can actually cover a lot of models at once.

 Jidmah wrote:

 BleachHawk wrote:

 Castozor wrote:
Not sure about the 5++ tbh, our deamon engines already get them, and how many times are my marines shot at by mass plasma? [...] .

Exactly. In the tradition of this codex, they write an ability that seems powerful at first glance. But then you take a closer look at the restrictions or at the unit itself and you realize it's not that good, it's not optimal, it sometimes even has scornergy.

At least the 5++ will be useful for LandRaider, Predator, Rhino (e.g. vehicles that are not daemon engines and also lack DR for that matter). So we can use the Blightbringer with relic to babysit some of those units making them less awful but wasting all his other abilities.

I think it's great actually. I actually lose most of my plague marines from high AP shooting, especially when I bring a blob of 20 they are nigh impossible to shift without high AP weapons. It also does work in combat, where high AP is much more common. Melee plague marines might be able to compete with possessed now.
It also works for helbrutes and the other support characters like foul blightspawns or putrifiers, so I'm fairly sure I will bring that relic fairly often.
Last, but not least, it is units within 7", not wholly within like the KFF, so he can actually cover a lot of models at once.

My main opponents play Ad Mech and Astra Militarum and don't struggle to take down plague marines at all with volume of fire alone. But I see your point, I will definitely try to run a big blob with this. Nevertheless, the relic would be better if it could be given to a Lord instead.

 BleachHawk wrote:
Nevertheless, the relic would be better if it could be given to a Lord instead.

Sure, but at 55 points he isn't that expensive, in a slot that won't be maxed out often. Extra advance dice also work well with pox walkers, blight launchers and Mortarion.

Not that I'm always assuming a mono-codex force, I doubt any of these things are great enough to rival any of the other top chaos soup ingredients.

Well I do run mono-dex, but never the blightbringer. I guess I'll try him a few times with that relic and see how it goes, it's not like our relic slots are already stuffed with great choices anyway.

Having seen how blast weapons work next edition who else thinks flamer type weapons will be blast or have similar rules. Fingers crossed , drones with spitters would become an a++ unit instantly

darthryan wrote:
Having seen how blast weapons work next edition who else thinks flamer type weapons will be blast or have similar rules. Fingers crossed , drones with spitters would become an a++ unit instantly

Personally doubt it, I think the auto-hit niche is distinct from the throw-into-a-crowd niche and likely to remain so

I doubt it too, and wouldn’t want it, because that would make drones and PHCs with spitters unable to fire while in combat.

Blight bombardment just got OP.

darthryan wrote:
Having seen how blast weapons work next edition who else thinks flamer type weapons will be blast or have similar rules. Fingers crossed , drones with spitters would become an a++ unit instantly

Zero chance. GW already toated flamers in vehicles as excelent in melee. If they were blast they could not be fired while in melee...

Of course this means you are doing your autohits at will in melee.

Anyone found any leaks or previews yet other than what GW put out??

This is from facebook. The guy translated the German leaks to English.

Jesus there's some good stuff in there! Will take a while to go through all this, but off the top of my head a DP with the Eater Plague warlord trait and the Foul Amulet looks absolutely obnoxious.

Thanks MrFlutterPie for posting this - much food for thought!

There's some outstanding stuff. We got some serious love. First thing that jumped out at me - entropy can be made plague weapons. As someone who loves his 3 entropy PBC, this makes me happy.

A lot of the stuff is garbage and stuff that should've already been standard to begin with. ONE Plague Company gets a Strat for THREE vehicles to give Inexorable Advance too? Pathetic to be honest. LoCs needing a CP to give a reroll they should've been giving?

I am confused by inexorable advance being able to go on vehicles if PA books are future proofed. Is there anything on DG vehicles that would benefit other than combi-bolters in 9th?

Unless this is evidence of the next Death Guard book having new Inexorable Advance rules. Though the new strats would then be published in that book....

Vehicles should already have it though. Definitely something that was very clearly not future proofed.

Some of the stuff is cool however.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
A lot of the stuff is garbage and stuff that should've already been standard to begin with. ONE Plague Company gets a Strat for THREE vehicles to give Inexorable Advance too? Pathetic to be honest. LoCs needing a CP to give a reroll they should've been giving?

Shoo, go to another threat for complain just for the sake of complaining.

I'm also a bit bemused by the Inexorable Advance on 3 vehicles. At first I looked at my trio of predator annihilators hopefully, and then I remembered they'll be doing that anyway once 9th finally hits...

Still, what I will be doing is giving all three predators DR, and then stacking them with a blightbringer with the Daemon's Toll for some more durable anti-tank. I know it's not good damnit, but I'll run it anyway! (At least once, before I acknowledge it's a terrible idea and move onto something more sensible.)

I love the chosen sons! I would love it to run that spewer relic!

 Drakeslayer wrote:
I'm also a bit bemused by the Inexorable Advance on 3 vehicles. At first I looked at my trio of predator annihilators hopefully, and then I remembered they'll be doing that anyway once 9th finally hits...

Still, what I will be doing is giving all three predators DR, and then stacking them with a blightbringer with the Daemon's Toll for some more durable anti-tank. I know it's not good damnit, but I'll run it anyway! (At least once, before I acknowledge it's a terrible idea and move onto something more sensible.)

DG still have the old killshot stratagem, so it's not as terrible as it sounds. Makes sure to keep those three predators alive.

Disgustingly resilient Leviathans!*

*Probably about to get nerfed in the new FW books, but hey ho.

Some nice new toys that will unlock interesting new combos. But a lot of the strats are used to fix inconsistent or lackluster unit entries which seems like very bad game design to me. Why not update some units (for pts increaseses) instead? I guess there is hope they will do this with a new codex early into 9th...

This all sounds pretty awesome. But with all the pregame strats I'm probably starting the battle without command points left so I can hardly use any of it

I see some nice synergies here between the general stratagems/ relics and the company rules. Terminators got a lot of stuff and where already a good unit.

I think GW is afraid of changing datasheets outside of codices because they fear invalidating those - a datasheet containing all the rules you need is one of the big improvements of 8th.
So it's not unexpected that they went this route, as they did the same for all the PA that came before.

Personally, I'm not too fond of upgrading a chaos lord either.
However, I used to pay one CP for the relic sword almost every game anyways, so he could fight off melee units that threatened my gunline.
Now I pay the same one CP and 11 points to upgrade my terminator lord to get +1T, disgustingly resilient, nurgles gift (which actually make sense when you defend something) and a man reaper, or an additional 3 points for a plague reaper. That's more than good enough for me.

I love the idea of upgrading the LoC to get the Lord aura, I hate deep striking in my Chaos Lord with my blight lords for the aura because I feel the Chaos Lord at t4 without DR just sucks. A LoC with both is occasionally useful (and I do mean occasional) mortal wound aura, his super beefy stat line and now his reroll 1s aura, he’s a no brainer. I like it! I don’t think much of this stuff will have a huge impact in high competition but this makes the codex feel like it should have at release, and makes the army a lot more fun for those of us Dg players. Thanks GW!

I don't normally have too many CPs in my DG army. I think it's probably a good thing I won't get a game with them again before 9th hits as I would probably have none left before the battle even started in 8th

After reading the leaks a dozen or so times my initial excitement has died off a bit. What has me still happy is a few things.

- Making a 3 PBC castle with upgraded entropy cannons and a Lord with the Poxbringer vectorium 4++ demon engine relic.

- New sword relic for the demon prince. Seriously upgrades the damage output.

- The 5++ bell relic for some footslogging plague marines. Pair with some MBHs and you have a very tough to shift core.

Other than that it's a few quality of life upgrades like the LoC upgrade (which it should have had in the first place) and allowing DR on anything that doesn't have it (rhinos and defilers come to mind). The plague bolter strategem I can see using and the damage reduction in terminators.

Everything else, including vectorium rules just seem so 'eh.'

What are others thoughts?

With the new Disgustingly Resilient stratagem, some of the Lord of War choices are starting to look real juicy.

A Fellblade with an upgraded Mortarion's Chosen Apothecary running around with a 5+++ (or better with one of the strats I forgot the name of) re-rolling 1s and 2s (if the apothecary applies to vehicles as well) is no joke.

These three gems are pure gold. PBC are stupid hard to kill and very deadly now! Not to mention they can move and shoot their guns with no penalty in 9th.

-1CP Parasitic Fumes: End of Movement phase. Chose a Myphitic Blight Hauler unit. Until end of turn when a friendly model within 7" attacks add 1 to the AP characteristic of its weapons.
-1CP Accelerated Entropy: Pre Battle. Choose a PBC. Until end of battle its entropy cannons and all entropy cannons of PBC within 7" get Plague Weapon, Damagerolls of 1 or 2 count as 3.
-Relic Iron coagulation oven Poxmonger Daemon Engines have a save characteristic of 4++ as long as they are within 7" of a model with this relic


The parasitic fumes is such damage boost for your entire army and so good. It makes MBHs auto includes now (and they get the 4++ which helps keep them alive)

One of the dudes from Tabletop Titans, Brian, was one of the play testers for 9th edition and he hinted in one of the battle reports that DG are going to be in a pretty good spot in 9th.

So, if he has seen all the rules and played some games with DG and says they are in a good spot than I'm inclined to think he knows what he is talking abut, at least more so than random people on Dakka who know less than 1/2 the rules.

On that same note and not related to DG he did say Tau armies (with multiple detachments and Riptides) are going to be "less powerful" and will require major changes to the list.

The summoning strat for the miserable seems like it'll actually make summoning interesting. 1CP to guarantee getting 8PL unit but on a 2+ your on 9+PL. The Demons codex strat is 2CP for 9+PL.
No chance of perils and you can move and summon. Looks like you don't need the whole daemons detachment for the CP benefits in 9th.
Move a character forwards, summon 12" ahead, decent chance of being able to sit a line of 20 if not 30 plaguebearers 9" in front of your opponents army. Only need an 8 to make the charge and could block in a whole chunk of their army...

I just wish Demons didn't break our Legion trait tbh, it is so far the only letdown of this PA although I did not honestly expect them to fix it. For me the value would be in infiltrating nurglings pre-game, which summoning just doesn't let me do.
Having said that, I think this PA is pretty encouraging for what a PA can do. Like some said, should some stuff just be baseline rather than strats? Yes but if you thought PA was going to do a lot of unit profile upgrades you were setting yourself up for disappointment from the word go. To me it shows GW listened/noticed some common complaints about our codex and gave us stuff to fix it with PA, and then hopefully do a proper rework when we get our next Codex.

Well we'll have to wait and see what the rest of 9th brings but from what we know at this stage, the DG legion trait is next to useless. I'm not great on the subtleties but if we don't need the legion trait then why not run a mixed nurgle detachment? I think access to stratagems may mean you need a DG detachment too? What about obsec would troops still get that?

In a vacuum it is next to useless but the army I run has a lot of plasma PM's and considering our slow movement RF at 18 rather than 12 inch is quite a big help for me. Is it better than infiltrating 2/3 nurglings pre-game? Dunno, I haven't tried yet, but fact is losing our rules for daring to include a unit or 2 of demons is silly to begin with.

Updates from the DG Facebook group from David Demmel:

Hey folks, I went through the english translations someone made of the German PA content and cleaned up some inaccuracies and ambiguity. Hope it's allright to leave that here. All my additions are in allcaps.

Main changes: Looked up the correct weapon names, added clarification about who must be in an aura to do things. Changed the "Parasitic Fumes" strat to reflect how it is actually worded and how it works. Added the missing relic (which is a pretty cute auto-hitting grenade). Lots of small corrections. Added some commentary to Plague Company rules. Also, if anyone has the German version of Faith and Fury, White Scars / Imperial Fist Supplement or another book that has a rule that adds damage to an attack, hit me up to clarify the "Creeping Plague" stratagem.


Relics:

The Feverstone:

LoC only

Substract 1 from the Strength characteristic of enemy models AS LONG AS THEIR UNIT IS within 3″ of a model within your army carrying this relic.



Allwilter

Model with BALESWORD only and replaces the BALESWORD

Allwilter: Melee +1S -3AP 2D

Plagueweapon, INVULNERABLE saves cannot be taken against attacks with this weapon.



The Daemon’s Toll – Already previewed


The Epidemicystic Blade

Hellforged Sword only, replaces the hellforged sword

Epidemicystic Blade melee +1S -2AP 3D

plague weapon, UNMODIFIED HITROLLS OF 6 CAUSE ONE ADDITIONAL HIT



The Foul Amulet

Psyker only

models with this relic know an additional psychic power. Once per psychic phase, after this model manifested a psychic power heal it for D3 Wounds



Wormspitter

Bolt pistol only, replaces bolt pistol

14″ pistole 1 5S -2AP 1D

Plague weapon, If you hit a model with this weapon successfully it gets corroded until end of turn… when a friendly death guard model attacks a corroded unit it’s weapons gain the plague weapon ability.



Stratagems:

1CP: Plaguechosen

Pre battle after chosing a warlord, chose a death guard character model of your army without warlord trait and chose a unique warlord trait for it

1CP: Soulharvest

use this stratagem in the fight phase if a death guard daemon prince gets chosen to fight with its axe or sword. Add 3 to the Attack characteristics until the end of the phase. Only infantry units can be the target of its attacks

1CP: Emissary of Nurgle

Pre battle. choose a LoC unit in your army. until end of battle it gets the ability

Emissary of Nurgle: Reroll Hits of 1 for attacks of friendly DG units within 6″ of this model

1CP: Disgusttorrent

Use this stratagem in the shooting phase if a foul blightspawn model gets chosen, roll AN ADDITIONAL d6 to determine shots for the flamer and discard one. Same for strenght value.

1CP: Infecting Rounds

Shooting Phase when a PM unit gets chosen to shoot

Until end of phase the bolt weapons become Plague Weapon and against infantry an unmodified woundroll of 6 gets -4 AP

1/2CP: Endless Volley

Shooting Phase when a DG Infantry unit shoots. Until end of phase bolter and the bolter profile of combiweapons get rapid fire 2. Combibolter get rapid fire 3. Units with 6 or more models pay 2CP

2/3 CP: ???

Shooting phase or Fight Phase when a PM Unit gets chosen as target for an attack. If the unit is 10 or less models 2CP otherwise 3CP. Add 1 to Disgustingly Resilient Rolls

1CP: ???

Before Battle. Choose a Plague Surgeon model in your army. Until end of battle it gets the following ability

Hypertoxic Tincture: Reroll woundrolls of 1 or 2 for attacks with plagueweapons made by friendly dg models AS LONG AS THEIR UNIT IS within 6″

1CP: Trenchfighters

already previewed (extra attack with plague knives)

1CP: Warptoll

At the beginning of morale phase. Choose a Noxious Blightbringer. Add 1 to dicerolls for morale tests of enemy units within 7″ and double the amount of fleeing models if it fails.

1CP: Creeping plague

Fightphase when a DG unit in your army gets chosen to fight. Until the end of the phase add 1 to Damage characteristics for attacks and unmodified wound rolls of 6 get -4 AP

(COMMENTARY: This one is weird. The way the german is written suggests that the damage bonus only affects damage rolls. Since I don't own german books that include rules with a similar effect, I can't verify - better wait for the release before you plan around this)

1CP: Grimeeruption

If a Deathguard Terminator model gets destroyed, before it gets removed roll a d6 for every unit within 7″ without the Nurgle Keyword. on a 4+ deal 1 mortal wound

1CP: Toxic Burst

any phase except morale if THE LAST MODEL IN A DEATH GUARD UNIT OF YOUR ARMY gets destroyed. Chose an enemy unit within 3″ of the model and subtract 1 from their hitrolls UNTIL THE END OF YOUR OPPONENTS NEXT TURN when they attack.

1CP Mutated Stem

Fightphase if poxwalkers fight.

Until the end of the phase unmodified wound rolls of 6 against infantry units deal mortal wounds INSTEAD OF THE NORMAL DAMAGE. Unmodified hit rolls of 1 deal 1 mortal wound to the attacking unit

2CP: Miasmatic Sickness

Beginning of Fight phase.

Choose an enemy unit within 1″ of a friendly PM unit. Subtract 1 of its Toughness characteristic as long as it isnt in Mortarions Toxic Presence ability

1CP: Lifeeater

In fight phase if a DG unit gets chosen to fight.

Unmodified 6s to hit with plague weapons by the chosen unit cause an automatic wound.

1CP: Overwhelming Generosity

already previewed

1CP: Accelerated Entropy

Pre Battle.

Choose a PBC. Until end of battle its entropy cannons and all entropy cannons of PBC within 7″ get

Plague Weapon, Damagerolls of 1 or 2 count as 3.

1CP: Firefever

shooting phase after youve allocated the shots of a helbrute with 2 ranged weapons. Until the end of the phase you can reroll all hit rolls if you shoot all shots at one target for this model. (COMMENTARY: The way this is worded suggests it only applies to "Helbrutes", not models with the HELBRUTE keyword)

1CP: Contaminated Monstrosity

Before Battle.

Chose a DG Unit (no chaos cultists or titanic units) with 12 Wounds or less or for 2CP 13 Wounds or more. Until the end of the battle the unit gets disgustingly resilient. (COMMENTARY: Despite the name, this seems to be able to affect multi-model units.)


1CP: Parasitic Fumes

End of Movement phase.

Chose a Myphitic Blight Hauler unit. Until end of turn, WHENEVER AN ATTACK IS ASSIGNED TO AN ENEMY MODEL WITHIN 7" OF THIS UNIT, IMPROVE THE AP OF THAT ATTACK BY 1 (e.g. AP 0 becomes AP -1)


Plague Companies:

If your army is battle forged and the detachement is a DG detachment you can chose which plague company it belongs to.

All DG units in the detachement except chaos cultists, poxwalker and named characters get the <Plague Company> keyword.

You get the plague companies:

Warlord traits

Relics

Stratagems

COMMENTARY: This seems to be worded the way that the Thousand Son Cults are worded. Expect to only get the WL Trait/Relic of the Company your ACTUAL WARLORD is a part of. No "I'll just take a Chaos Lord, 3 PBCs and pay 1 CP for the extra relic to get a 4++.)


Harbingers:

Poxwalkers in this detachment get the Harbingers Keyword.

Warlord Trait: Zombie Plague

If your warlord destroys an enemy infantry model in melee add a model to a friendly Harbingers Poxwalker unit within 7″. You have to pay reserve points for models above its starting unitsize

Relic: BLIGHTSKULLBOMB
Replaces a Blight Grenade

6" // Grenade 2d3 // S5 / AP -" // D 2

Plagueweapon. Do not roll to hit when making an attack with this weapon, it automately hits.

Stratagems

1/3cp: From the Carrion Heaps

already previewed

1CP Life transcending Death

Fight Phase when the last model of a Harbingers Unit gets destroyed. The enemy unit that destroyed the model suffers D3 mortal wounds


The relentless:

Warlord Trait: Ferric Blight

If an attack of a friendly <Relentless> unit targets a Vehicle UNIT within 7″ of this warlord add 1 to this weapons AP characteristic.

Relic: Leech Spore Casket

If a model gets destroyed in melee by a model with this relic heal a friendly <Relentless> vehicle within 18″ by 1. Every model in your army can only recover 3 Wounds per round THROUGH THIS ABILITY

Stratagems

1CP: Unholy Essence

Beginning of Shooting phase.

Choose up to 3 <Relentless> vehicle in your army. until end of the phase they get Inexorable Advance

1CP: Iron Miasma

Enemy Fight Phase if a friendly <Relentless> unit gets targeted by an enemy infantry unit. Subtract 2 from Attack rolls.



Mortarion’s Anvil

Warlord Trait: Gloaming Bloat

UNMODIFIED Wound rolls of 1-3 always fail against your warlord, REGARDLESS OF ABILITIES OF THE ATTACKING MODEL OR ITS WEAPON.

Relic: The Tally

Tallyman only.

Melee attack of <Mortarion’s Anvil> units within 7″ get AN EXTRA HIT if they roll a 6 to hit.

Stratagems

2/3 CP: Personified Futility

Enemy Shooting phase when a <mortarion’s Anvil> terminators unit gets targeted. Reduce Damage characteristics of weapons by 1 (minimum damage 1). If the unit consists of 5 or less models the stratagem costs 2 otherwise 3 CP


1CP: &%S) Counterattack

Fight Phase. Choose a Mortarion’s Anvil infantry unit. Until the end of the phase it can perform heroic interventions as if it was a character model.



The miserable

Warlord Trait: Eater Plague

If your warlord kills a model in melee, he heals 1 hit point up to 3 per phase.

Relic: Daemon’s Favour

Malignant Plaguecaster Only.

Substitute the Pestilent Fallout ability with

Stream of Decay:

After manifesting a psychic power the closest enemy unit within 7″ suffers 1 mortal wound if the psychic test was <7. If it was >=7 chose an enemy unit within 7″ it suffers D3 mortal wounds

Stratagems

1CP: the decayed veil

end of movement. Chose a <Miserable> character model that didnt perform a daemonic ritual this turn. It can perform a Daemonic Ritual as if it didnt move. It doesnt matter if it arrived this turn as deepstrike. Furthermore only roll 1D6 for summoning and add 7 on the result

1CP: sevenfold blessing

Pre Battle. Choose a <Miserable> psyker model. Until the end of battle you can reroll one of the dice EACH TIME THIS MODEL MAKES A PSYCHIC TEST. You can use this stratagem only once per battle



Poxmongers

Warlord Trait: Sanguous Flux

WHENEVER A POXMONGER MODEL MAKES A MELEE ATTACK AGAINST AN ENEMY INFANTRY UNIT, IMPROVE THE AP OF THE ATTACK BY ONE AS LONG AS THAT MODELS UNIT IS WITHIN 7" OF THIS WARLORD.

Relic: Iron coagulation oven

MODELS IN Poxmonger Daemon Engine UNITS have an INVULNERABLE save characteristic of 4++ as long as their UNIT IS within 7″ of a model with this relic

Stratagems

1CP: gallic bloodrush

beginning of shooting. Choose a poxmonger daemon engine unit. Until the end of the phase it can shoot after it already retreated from melee.

1CP: subsiding dysentery

fight phase if a friendly poxmonger Daemonengine unit destroys an enemy model heal a model of the unit by D3 Wounds.





The Ferrymen

Warlord Trait: the Drowning

Add 2 to morale tests for enemy units within 12″ of this warlord

Relic: Ferryman’s Scythe

replaces a plaguereaper

melee melee +4S -3AP 3D

Plague weapon, unmodified wound rolls of 6 add 1 mortal wound

Stratagems

1CP: Pestwhispering

Shooting phase if a <Ferrymen> blightlord terminator unit getschosen to shoot. Add 1 to all hit rolls of the unit until the end of the phase

2CP: On Humming Wings

beginning of movement. Choose a Ferrymen unit. Until end of turn aura abilities of this unit add 7″ to their reach. (Nurgles Blessing still only hits enemy units within 1″ of a friendly unit)





Mortarion’s chosen sons

Warlord Trait: Crawling Pustulance

Melee attacks against your warlord get 1 subtracted from their hit roll. If an enemy unit (only non flying) within 1″ of your warlord retreats roll a d6, on a 2+ it suffers D3 mortal wounds

Relic: Vomitryx

REPLACES A PLAGUE SPRAYER

9″ Assault 7 7S -3AP 2D

Plague weapon. Autohits.

Stratagems

1CP: Alembic Narthecium

Pre Battle. Choose a Mortarion’s chose sons plague surgeon model. Substitute its corrupted Narthecium ability with

Alembic Narthecium:

reroll disgustingly resilient rolls of 1 or 2 for friendly mortarions chosen sons infantry models AS LONG AS THEIR UNIT IS within 3″ of this model

1CP: Plaguebrewer

In Shooting phase if a Mortarions chosen sons unit gets chosen to shoot. until the end of the phase PLAGUE SPEWER, PLAGUE BELCHER and PLAGUESPURT GAUNTLETS of models in the unit have a damage characteristic of 2D.

This is a massive improvement for Pox Walkers.

And Spawn will love that 1 cp for DR in my fluffy list.

Alot of these offensive/defensive strats stack well with them.

Extra damage, DR spawn, Mortsl wound land mine Pox Walkers. Blinding the enemy.

The plague father blessed us.

I’m seeing translation of other parts of the book listing Bile’s enhancement ability as being useable only in your own movement phase, and instead of mistakes causing a Mortal Wound they now inflict instant death

If true, he may be borderline unusable outside of a few niches

If you can get them into a fight to make replacements, ultra Poxwalkers might be one of them

broxus wrote:
Updates from the DG Facebook group from David Demmel:

Thanks for this!

My thoughts on the new stuff, skipping things that aren't interesting (warning, long):

My thoughts so far:

You can now really go for an offensive or defensive list. If you like mech the Poxmongers is the way to go. The 4++ daemon engine relic is very good not to mention the other stratagems. . Also the trait to improve the AP is good.

Top Character combos:
-You can really make a very tanky DP: with Supperating Plate and revolting resilient

-You can make a really killy DP: with the Epidemicystic blade and either arch-contaminator or the Sanguous Flux (-1 AP against infantry).

-You can make a very buff/support oriented LoC: with Fulgaris Helm, arch-contaminator, and Emmisary of Nurgle stratagem.

-You can make a very good infantry surgeon support character: with Fulgaris Helm relic, living plague, Alembic Narthecium Strategem (1s & 2s DR rerolls), and the Reroll 1s & 2s to reroll against plague weapons (see below).

-conversely another solid infantry support infantry support character: with wormspitter relic, tainted regeneration/rotten constitution, Alembic Narthecium Strategem (1s & 2s DR rerolls), and the Reroll 1s & 2s to reroll against plague weapons (see below).

You could also use Fulgaris Helm relic to extend ranges (if you do then you would take the Living Plague trait)

Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good). That’s not even discussing the new mutated stem strategem that makes 6s to hit do a mortal wound against infantry.

What good combos you guys see?

Lot's of good findings, especially the interaction between blades of putrefaction and worm spitter.

Gotta love how they went above and beyond with the "stupid combo" theme of the original codex

So do you think Typhus could be selected for the stratagem Emissary of Nurgle to allow him to give rerolls of 1 to hit aura? He does have Lord of contagion keyword... it’s not a warlord trait nor wargear or a relic, meaning I can’t find a reason why this unique character can’t be affected by this stratagem.

Depends on whether the stratagem says "Lord of Contagion" or "LORD OF CONTAGION". Sadly, I haven't found anyone to send me the leaked German pages to confirm.

Giving Typhus re-rolls would be rad.

I feel pretty confident that Typhus can use it. It was stupid he didn’t before.

I think everyone is under estimating the mortal wound output from using the mutated stem strategem. If you have 40 attacks and reroll all failed hits you will likely do 11 mortal wounds in one round of combat. Then they would have to take saves as normal.

Mutated Stem is basically how all Poxwalkers will fight from now on. If you just added that ability to their stat line as standard, that would be a scary scary unit to get into combat with.

Pics of new rules, stolen from fb.

Edit: double posted Harbingers by accident. Final srategem page at bottom.

Are there any details on the company traits and how you can select them? Do the traits only work on the actual warlord or can I have multiple traits from different ones so long as they are in different detachments.

Thanks for that. So it's official, Typhus finally remembered how to be a captain

 Jidmah wrote:
Thanks for that. So it's official, Typhus finally remembered how to be a captain

Is it ungrateful to wish it was 7"?

 harlokin wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Thanks for that. So it's official, Typhus finally remembered how to be a captain

Is it ungrateful to wish it was 7"?

Not at all!

Typhus also gains the Harbinger Keyword, too bad he can't have the warlord trait.

broxus wrote:
Are there any details on the company traits and how you can select them? Do the traits only work on the actual warlord or can I have multiple traits from different ones so long as they are in different detachments.

That's everything I got I'm afraid.

 lare2 wrote:

broxus wrote:
Are there any details on the company traits and how you can select them? Do the traits only work on the actual warlord or can I have multiple traits from different ones so long as they are in different detachments.

That's everything I got I'm afraid.

Thanks for sharing.

Has anyone else seen any other good combos or have any list ideas??

I'm thinking a Poxmongers list, with an outrider and spearhead of 1 DP and 3 Bloat Drones/PBCs, and then a battalion of 3 CC PM squads packed into rhinos (given DR for 3CP) and accompanied by a couple of foul blightspawn. (Alternatively you could possibly bash this into a brigade - bearing in mind 9th ed)

Make one DP the warlord with Sanguous Flux, and another to have Arch-Contaminator (another CP), and give him the Ironclot furnace. You've got 6 4++ Daemon engines bearing down on you, plus melee PM in rhinos ferrying them to the front lines - with benefitting from the additional AP against infantry in addition to any other nasty supporting strats with whatever CP you have left.

Target priority for your opponent becomes a bit of a nightmare, everything is obnoxiously tough and atypically speedy for a DG list. Only downside is lack of long ranged firepower but I still think the PBCs are better with spitters - never had problems wounding with entropy cannons. It was always hitting with the smegging things that tripped me up.

I had a lot of success using DG engines already, 3 PBCs and 3 Drones backed by princes was already a viable strategy, now it is MUCH better because of that 4++ rule. They were so hard to kill already and now they will almost certainly make it into the center of the board to do what they do: allow the rest of your army to score points and win the game. I’m excited to try it out!

The Vomitryx relic pairs really well with the +6" range for plague weapons stratagem. Giving it a 15" range. And add the 5" move of the Blightspawn and you have a 20" threat range. You can even advance him since the weapon hits auto.

I'm not a great fan of Mortarion's Chosen Sons though, they are a bit all over the place. The only reason to pick them for me would be running a large unit of Deathshrouds.

I like theMiseables, but mostly because it fits into models I have and how I play anyway.

A daemon prince who can get into combat and regain wounds along with a buffed up plaguecaster which I always bring close to the enemy anyway.

On top of that I just want to try out a daemon bomb. 20 PBs dropping in front of my lines while I try to advance sounds like a great distraction.

I haven't summoned since the edition started though.. are summons also limited to turn 2 onwards like reserves or can they happen turn 1? That makes a big difference

It should be fine.

YMDC thread on this can be found here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/766463.page

Much appreciate that link. Looks like consensus was that they could come in turn 1.

I suppose with CV-19 it is unlikely I will get a game until 9th hits anyway and who knows what reserve and summoning rules will be like then

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

Doohicky wrote:
Much appreciate that link. Looks like consensus was that they could come in turn 1.

I suppose with CV-19 it is unlikely I will get a game until 9th hits anyway and who knows what reserve and summoning rules will be like then

Aye, I'm the same. The new rules are all well and good but there's no chance I'll be trying them before 9th. Makes list building pretty hard when you don't know what the new edition looks like.

I doubt that list building will change a lot for DG, we just get more CP and need to bring less chaff.
Pox walkers also look like an awesome unit to do mission actions, as even a single surviving pox walker can keep scoring points.

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I think I've figured out what Unholy Essence is for (for the Inexorable).


It's for bloat drones with heavy blight launchers. Which are Assault weapons. So it can advance and fire these without penalty.

But if they really wanted to make that at all viable, they would have given us some sort of Discolord-style +1 to hit for Daemon Engines. It's an incredibly weak and niche role for this strat, but it does still work in 9th Ed.

4+ to hit is too bad dont worth.

 Drakeslayer wrote:
I think I've figured out what Unholy Essence is for (for the Inexorable).


It's for bloat drones with heavy blight launchers. Which are Assault weapons. So it can advance and fire these without penalty.

But if they really wanted to make that at all viable, they would have given us some sort of Discolord-style +1 to hit for Daemon Engines. It's an incredibly weak and niche role for this strat, but it does still work in 9th Ed.

I think it is even more likely that IA is changing for us I’m the next edition. It is already a useless chapter trait, but in 9th it is even more useless.

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here? Obviously it's intended to give the benefit of a plague weapon to any DG unit attacking the effected event unit, but given it grants them benefits, rather than gives them the plague weapon keyword, I'm not convinced that arch contaminator or blades of putefaction's MW component will work.

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here? Obviously it's intended to give the benefit of a plague weapon to any DG unit attacking the effected event unit, but given it grants them benefits, rather than gives them the plague weapon keyword, I'm not convinced that arch contaminator or blades of putefaction's MW component will work.

It says the firer gains the plague weapons ability, so yes they gain all the benefits of plague weapons. Unless they FAQ it, which if they did why wouldn’t they have made it allow units to reroll ones to wound vs granting plague weapons ability.

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here? Obviously it's intended to give the benefit of a plague weapon to any DG unit attacking the effected event unit, but given it grants them benefits, rather than gives them the plague weapon keyword, I'm not convinced that arch contaminator or blades of putefaction's MW component will work.

It says the fiercer gains the plague weapons ability so yes AC and all the benefits of plague weapons apply. Unless they FAQ it, which if theN did then why not just write it as allow units to reroll ones vs granting plague weapons

In hindsight, I read it as giving the weapon the abilities of a plague weapon, rather than the plague weapon ability, so I probably do come down on the side of it all working.

Why would they even reference plague weapons if they don't want us to use it as an enabler?

"Re-roll ones to wound" would have been much easier.

I really hope to get the new 9th edition point so I can start making some lists. Some seriously good options now if points don’t go up to much on units.

I am also hoping we get a new codex soon so we can get some of these buffs included in our units with having to pay CP. I’m also really looking forward to getting a new version of IA since literally it is the worst chapter trait in the game with the 9th edition changes. Overall this book exceeded my expectations, I thought it was going to be really bad like some other armies have had.

P.S. why do they call it psychic awakening when no one really seems to be getting psychic abilities?

Would love to hear what my fellow Death Guard players have to say about my hour-long deep dive into all the new rules in War of the Spider! I looked into almost every new DG rule, ability, and combo. This is based on my perspective of having played Death Guard at a large number of competitive tournaments over the last three years, with an eye towards 9th Edition. I think GW mostly knocked it out of the park.

 Virules wrote:
Would love to hear what my fellow Death Guard players have to say about my hour-long deep dive into all the new rules in War of the Spider! I looked into almost every new DG rule, ability, and combo. This is based on my perspective of having played Death Guard at a large number of competitive tournaments over the last three years, with an eye towards 9th Edition. I think GW mostly knocked it out of the park.

Nice one. There's my entertainment sorted for tonight.

Great video, I don't agree with everything, but you clearly understand DG better than every other reviewer I have read.
I listened to it until the end, and I usually prefer written reviews, so it was really interesting to keep me that long
There are some smaller rules issues (for example you can't use "end of movement stratagems after deep striking), but not enough for me to bother listing them
Too bad you skipped harbingers, I would really liked to have your opinion on those.

I'm really looking forward to you doing one for 9th, and there was no need for you to be so nervous at the beginning, you are doing fine

Great review.

I had my eye on the wretched myself.

I was thinking of using the daemon bomb to summon in a 20 man PB squad instead.

Very good chance of having them in enemy lines turn 1 which should heavily disrupt their plans.

Turn one combat from a pure deathguard list is not expected so screening may not be set up adequately.

But the best thing about that stratagem is that if it's not optimum summon a different daemon unit like your suggestion.

Whilst combos are nice, flexibility is even nicer

Very informative video, thanks.

Glad you all liked it! Make sure you Subscribe to the channel if you did, haha.

Yeah, I just don't think Harbingers are good, pending reserves changes in 9th Ed.

And I wasn't really nervous at the start, issue was primarily that I had already done the first 15 minutes in a prior broadcast attempt from a half hour earlier that I had to end early and delete because of sound loop feedback issues. Still trying to improve the production quality. I am immensely frustrated that the background graphics are low quality when I use high-res images and broadcast in HD. I am going to contact help support from the software I use.

I'm hearing talk of T8 PM. +1 for Fabius Bile, +1 for Putrescent Vitality and another magical one which I can't figure out from what people are saying.

With everything else they've got access to (2+ next to MBH, 5++ with bell relic, 4+++ with Putrid Fecundity, rerolling 1s and 2s with Alembichal Narthecium), T8 PM would be nigh on impossible to budge. Even at T7 they'd be nuts.

20 CC bearing down on you would be crazy tough to deal with. Granted, to do that you'd be looking at 4CP but I think I'd happily pay that.

I think only T7 is possible.

In general, nothing stops you from using bile on DG infantry, but he needs to go into his own detachment because "Shadowy Allies" only works for CSM.

He even works on pox walkers and terminators, so there might be some fun combinations.

So are the Harbingers the generic DG green and bronze color scheme?

Each plague fleet consists of seven sepsis cohorts, which in turn consists of seven maladictums.

The paint schemes match to warbands, which are usually drawn from the members of a single maledictum, so there is no direct connection between your plague fleet and your paint scheme, except that it's extremely likely that all death guard looking the same also belong to the same plague fleet.

According to the codex, the default scheme belongs to the "Tainted Sons" whose fluff makes them fit in best with Mortarion's Anvil, if that's important to you.

If you want it fluffy, just use the plague fleet that matches your idea of your DG army best, each one has a small description of their specialties in both the codex and PA.

Just picked up the new book and couldn't resist picking up Fabius. Can't figure out how to include him in a Death Guard army - any ideas?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Got it - the standard way. He needs to be in a CSM detachment.

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here? Obviously it's intended to give the benefit of a plague weapon to any DG unit attacking the effected event unit, but given it grants them benefits, rather than gives them the plague weapon keyword, I'm not convinced that arch contaminator or blades of putefaction's MW component will work.

It says the fiercer gains the plague weapons ability so yes AC and all the benefits of plague weapons apply. Unless they FAQ it, which if theN did then why not just write it as allow units to reroll ones vs granting plague weapons

In hindsight, I read it as giving the weapon the abilities of a plague weapon, rather than the plague weapon ability, so I probably do come down on the side of it all working.

Wormspitter wrote: When resolving an attack made with this weapon, if a hit is scored, the target is corroded until the end of the turn. When resolving an attack made with a weapon by a friendly DEATH GUARD model against a corroded unit, that weapon gains the Plague Weapon ability for that attack.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Life-Eater applies.

Overwhelming Generosity does not. You check ranges before you Resolve Attacks.

 lindsay40k wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:

nfe wrote:

broxus wrote:


Oddly enough very few DG have bolt pistols to replace with wormspitter the army. Only the chaos lord/sorcerer, Surgeon, and Plague can can use it. Only the chaos lord hits on a 2. The good thing you can extend the range since it is a plague weapon with the range to 20”. If it hits a target it is a very huge damage bonus for Poxwalkers. 20 of them now can benefit from blades of putrefaction power, veterans of the long war strategem, a tallyman nearby with The Tally Relic (exploding 6s), and arch contaminator trait will delete a knight in one round of combat (it is stupid good).

I wondered about this but the wormspitter text grants the benefits of a plague weapon to the attacker rather than gives their weapon the plague weapon keyword so we'll need to see how that gets FAQ'd.

It says other friendly DG units so it was intended to everyone to gain the benefit.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here? Obviously it's intended to give the benefit of a plague weapon to any DG unit attacking the effected event unit, but given it grants them benefits, rather than gives them the plague weapon keyword, I'm not convinced that arch contaminator or blades of putefaction's MW component will work.

It says the fiercer gains the plague weapons ability so yes AC and all the benefits of plague weapons apply. Unless they FAQ it, which if theN did then why not just write it as allow units to reroll ones vs granting plague weapons

In hindsight, I read it as giving the weapon the abilities of a plague weapon, rather than the plague weapon ability, so I probably do come down on the side of it all working.

Wormspitter wrote: When resolving an attack made with this weapon, if a hit is scored, the target is corroded until the end of the turn. When resolving an attack made with a weapon by a friendly DEATH GUARD model against a corroded unit, that weapon gains the Plague Weapon ability for that attack.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Life-Eater applies.

Overwhelming Generosity does not. You check ranges before you Resolve Attacks.

Huh??


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does anyone have the pages that talk about what you are allowed to put in the companies? Can you put Poxwalkers in the sons of Mortarion company? I am curious if I can use the plague surgeon’s reroll ones and twos for DRs on them?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does anyone have the pages that talk about what you are allowed to put in the companies? Can you put Poxwalkers in the sons of Mortarion company? I am curious if I can use the plague surgeon’s reroll ones and twos for DRs on them?

You can add Poxwalkers to Mortarion's Chosen Sons company but they do not gain the MCS keyword and so cannot benefit from the Narthecium Stratagem to reroll DR rolls of 1's and 2's.

Cultists as well can be added to any company but none of the companies listed give them the <Company> keyword.

So other than cultists and pox walkers ALL other DG units benefit from the DR reroll 1's and 2's.


Not too shabby. I have Typhus and lots of pox walkers. I think the Harbingers Company is a good fit for them. Typhus can be given the warlord trait that adds models to friendly pox walkers units within 7" of him whenever HE kills a model in melee. You have to pay reinforcement points for those models but with the stratagem to bring up to 2 pox walker units on anywhere with 9" of a table edge and 9.1" from an enemy unit and the changes to OW it should be easy to get him into assault to kill things.

Death Guard w/ War of the Spider & known 9th edition rules, Battle Report:

++ Battalion Detachment ++ (Death Guard) [1,750pts] ++

Poxmongers Detachment

+ HQ +
Daemon Prince of Nurgle [9 PL, 180pts]: w/ Wings and Miasma of Pestilence
-Revoltingly Resilient trait
-The Epidemicyst Blade relic

Lord of Contagion [7 PL, 112pts]: w/ Manreaper
-Nurgle’s Gift Aura
- Arch-Contaminator trait
-Ironclot Furnace relic
-Harbinger of Nurgle strategem

Malignant Plaguecaster [6 PL, 95pts]: w/ Blades of Putrefaction and Putrescent Vitality
- Wormspitter relic

+ Troops +
Plague Marines [7 PL, 100pts] 3x Plague Marine w/ boltgun; 2x Plague Marine w/ Blight launchers
Plague Marines [7 PL, 100pts] 3x Plague Marine w/ boltgun; 2x Plague Marine w/ Blight launchers
Plague Marines [7 PL, 100pts] 3x Plague Marine w/ boltgun; 2x Plague Marine w/ Blight launchers

+ Elites +
Blightlord Terminators [14 PL, 208pts] 4x w/ Bubotic Axe & Combi-bolter; 1x Flail of Corruption
Foul Blightspawn [4 PL, 77pts]
Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought [10 PL, 138pts]: 2x Butcher cannon
-Contaminated Monstrosity strategem

+ Fast Attack +
Foetid Bloat-drone [8 PL, 116pts]: Fleshmower, Plague probe
Foetid Bloat-drone [8 PL, 116pts]: Fleshmower, Plague probe

+ Heavy Support +
Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 136pts]: 2x Entropy cannon, Heavy slugger
Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 136pts]: 2x Entropy cannon, Heavy slugger
-Accelerated Entropy strategem
Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 136pts]: 2x Entropy cannon, Heavy slugger
-Accelerated Entropy strategem

++ Total: [111 PL, 1,750pts] ++ 8 pre-game CP spent (4 left)

I played a tank heavy IG list with a mainly consisting of:
-1x LR commander w/ punisher turret
-3x LR w/ Demolisher Cannons
-3x Hellhounds
-3x Basilisks
-2x units is plasma scions & 3x hotshot gun units

-Results: smashing win for the Death Guard

Key findings (The good):
-The upgrade to the entropy cannons now deletes enemy armor. An auto include IMHO.
-Now being able to move and fire PBCs without penalty allows you to move everything and always get key shots off
-The Ironclot Furnace is amazing and makes hard to kill units even harder
-The Lord of Contagion with 4x Auras is a beast. Some IG got close to him and he deleted them all
-The DP broke off after turn one with the Bloat Drones and wrecked everything. His fancy new sword is very good at killing stuff. The Revoltingly Resilient trait allowed him to stay alive since no supperating plate relic means he can die easy
-The Bloat Drones with flesh mowers is still a steal
-Dropping down your Blightlords and casting blades of putrefaction and using the Veterans of the Ling War & Creeping Blight strategems on them after they charge deletes anything it touches (2+ to wound a LR and MW on a 4+)

Key findings (The bad):
-Since everything is almost already plague weapons the Wormspitter was useless in this list
-Plague Marines just held back objectives and everything else moved forward. They had no role that nurglings or poxwalkers couldn’t do much cheaper.
-I would love to use the plague surgeons new DR rolls of 1 & 2 strategem, but it is locked behind the Sons of Mortarion Company, has a 3” range, and doesn’t work on Poxwalkers. So it really doesn’t work on much.
-The Contemptor Dreadnaught was focused fired turn one and it sticks he does t get a 4++ also. It was the entire reason I took the Wormspitter
-I kept thinking I wish I had the points to summon Epidemus or a had one of the new Great Unclean Ones
-Having to spend 8 CP before the game started to get stuff that should already be included was annoying.

List updates? Well this is certainly not a optimized list. It is very survivable and does a good amount of shooting and melee damage. The 44”x 60”, no universal overwatch, and vehicles getting to move and shoot without penalty were huge bonuses to the DG! The game feels much more mobile now and has more action. I am still looking for ways to improve the list and wouldn’t mind adding some Defilers if their points are good (but giving them DR costs a lot).



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jivardi wrote:
You can add Poxwalkers to Mortarion's Chosen Sons company but they do not gain the MCS keyword and so cannot benefit from the Narthecium Stratagem to reroll DR rolls of 1's and 2's.

Cultists as well can be added to any company but none of the companies listed give them the <Company> keyword.

So other than cultists and pox walkers ALL other DG units benefit from the DR reroll 1's and 2's.

Well infantry that is. So Plague Marines, Terminators, Possesed, and Characters. If they made it have a 7” range maybe it would have been useful, but 3” is blah. He is just too slow and it has too short of range to be of any use. If you were going to make a Death Star unit you would just use cloud of flies anyways.

 lare2 wrote:
Just picked up the new book and couldn't resist picking up Fabius. Can't figure out how to include him in a Death Guard army - any ideas?


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Got it - the standard way. He needs to be in a CSM detachment.

Or maybe just put him into a "Auxiliary Support Detachment" for 1 CP? I've been thinking about this option.

broxus wrote:
Does anyone have the pages that talk about what you are allowed to put in the companies? Can you put Poxwalkers in the sons of Mortarion company? I am curious if I can use the plague surgeon’s reroll ones and twos for DRs on them?

Poxwalkers, Cultists and named characters don't get the <PLAGUE COMPANY> Keyword unless the corresponding plague company explicitly says so. Pox walkers (and Typhus) only benefit from harbingers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

jivardi wrote:
You can add Poxwalkers to Mortarion's Chosen Sons company but they do not gain the MCS keyword and so cannot benefit from the Narthecium Stratagem to reroll DR rolls of 1's and 2's.

Cultists as well can be added to any company but none of the companies listed give them the <Company> keyword.

So other than cultists and pox walkers ALL other DG units benefit from the DR reroll 1's and 2's.

Careful, the Alembichial Nartheticum only works for INFANTRY, so vehicles near it get no re-rolls at all, as it replaces the regular one.

Not too shabby. I have Typhus and lots of pox walkers. I think the Harbingers Company is a good fit for them. Typhus can be given the warlord trait that adds models to friendly pox walkers units within 7" of him whenever HE kills a model in melee. You have to pay reinforcement points for those models but with the stratagem to bring up to 2 pox walker units on anywhere with 9" of a table edge and 9.1" from an enemy unit and the changes to OW it should be easy to get him into assault to kill things.

Typhus is still stuck with his locked trait, see here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789364.page

@Broxus, thanks for the batrep!

Given you were against a shooty, artillery heavy list, did you feel the lack of speed (which is the DGs biggest weakness) was after the update?

 buddha wrote:
@Broxus, thanks for the batrep!

Given you were against a shooty, artillery heavy list, did you feel the lack of speed (which is the DGs biggest weakness) was after the update?

We played the spearhead assault mission normally the worst mission against IG. With the table now being 12” shorter I was fully in combat turn 2. I could use cover to block LOS to most of my key units so the terrain rules really helped. My bloat drones, DP, and Blightlord Terminators deep striking are fast and put immense early pressure and is about half my list points wise. My army really can soak up damage especially with that 4++ save. The smaller tables gets you right into the action early.

Wormspitter, Arch-Contaminator and Blades of Putrefaction look like a winning combination.

With this even 10 15 cultists can be dangerous, doing a bit of theoryhammer with the following setup:

10 15 Cultists armed with brutal assault weapons.
Warlord trait: Arch-Contaminator
Relic : Wormspitter
Spells : Prescience, Blades of Putrefaction
Stratagems : Veterans of the Long War, Creeping Blight, Parasitic Fumes on a MBH unit
Aura : Tallyman's Festering Zealot.

Cultists charge an infantry unit (T4, Sv 3+) that has been already hit by Wormspitter.

9 cultists with 3 attacks and 4 for the leader, with Hateful Assault
14 cultists with 2 attacks and 3 for the leader
Attacks : 31

WS 3+ with Prescience, re-roll with Tallyman's Festering Zealot
Hit : 28

Wound normally on 5+, with Veterans of the Long War and Blades of Putrefaction goes to 3+, re-roll with Arch-Contaminator for Plague Weapons. 6 of these are now -4 AP with Creeping Blight. 12 mortal wounds on a 5+.
Wound : 24

Parasitic Fumes give -1 AP, 18 saves at 4+. 6 saves are at -5 AP, no save
Armour : 15

15 normal damage, 12 mortal wounds due to Blades of Putrefaction with Veterans of the Long War
Damage : 27

A theoretical 27 damage against a single infantry unit is interesting.

Using the same approach, 10 15 cultists can take down a Baneblade (T8, Sv 3+, W26). Half of the damage is mortal wounds.


EDIT : Removed hateful assault and added additional cultists to compensate, correcting the error pointed out below.

Not entirely sure, and overall the damage output is impressive if expensive CP wise, but I don't think Cultist get Hateful Assault.
Also yes if we get all of that off it is scary but parasitic fumes especially will be very situational since it has such a short range. Would have been better if they gave a 7" -1 ap aura to nearby friendlies which is how I read it initially.

An old piece of MtG wisdom says that the more parts your combo has, the less likely it is to succeed.

A plague marine unit with melee weapons and a third of those buffs will do just as well.

With War of the Spider and what we know of 9th, anyone had any thoughts of Morty?

I forget what it's called but can we spend a CP to put him into reserve? He can then come down on an edge, 9" away from the enemy... if I remember it correctly.

The pros: 9" away turn 2 without need of Warptime and not on the table to be blasted off turn 1. The cons: I never make a 9" charge, which means he'll be blasted off the board turn 2, whereas (if he survives turn 1) Warptime all but guarantees he'll be in combat turn 2.

Suppose we don't know enough yet really. He won't benefit from the new LoS rules, having too many wounds. Undoubtedly his points will be rising as well. Just hope he becomes playable again. The beginning of 8th was a riot with him.

 Jidmah wrote:
An old piece of MtG wisdom says that the more parts your combo has, the less likely it is to succeed.

A plague marine unit with melee weapons and a third of those buffs will do just as well.

So will a Poxwalkers unit.

 lare2 wrote:
With War of the Spider and what we know of 9th, anyone had any thoughts of Morty?

I forget what it's called but can we spend a CP to put him into reserve? He can then come down on an edge, 9" away from the enemy... if I remember it correctly.

The pros: 9" away turn 2 without need of Warptime and not on the table to be blasted off turn 1. The cons: I never make a 9" charge, which means he'll be blasted off the board turn 2, whereas (if he survives turn 1) Warptime all but guarantees he'll be in combat turn 2.

Suppose we don't know enough yet really. He won't benefit from the new LoS rules, having too many wounds. Undoubtedly his points will be rising as well. Just hope he becomes playable again. The beginning of 8th was a riot with him.

The only thing that charged for Mortarion is that he can throw his grenades at someone locked in combat with him, unless the become blast weapons...
In return, souping is more difficult, Mortarion doesn't benefit from obscuring terrain and you need to pay CP to bring a super-heavy or supreme command detachment.

War of the spider has two stratagems that make him more deadly in melee, if you ever feel like he needs that.

The reserve stratagem is still an unconfirmed rumor. We only know for sure that there is some way to deep strike reserves into your own deployment zone without limitation, but that doesn't help.

Many play testers insist that melee units will have less trouble in getting into combat, but that doesn't change that Mortarion.

So it doesn't look too good for the big guy.


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broxus wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
An old piece of MtG wisdom says that the more parts your combo has, the less likely it is to succeed.

A plague marine unit with melee weapons and a third of those buffs will do just as well.

So will a Poxwalkers unit.

They don't have plague weapons though, and using the wormspitter for pox walkers seems like a clutch.

Yep the Wormspitter and Poxwalkers with all those fancy psychic abilities and stratagems makes even 10 of them deadly in combat.

Why would you use a wormspitter (which means a chaos lord or sorcerer) with poxwalkers instead of ten plague marines?

 Jidmah wrote:
Why would you use a wormspitter (which means a chaos lord or sorcerer) with poxwalkers instead of ten plague marines?

Easy they cost far less and I can have more units of them for board control. Why people are talking about taking massive unit of PM I have no idea. It will likely cost 25% of your points for 20 PM in 9th and can be easily countered. Give me cheap and fearless units everywhere that can’t be ignored since they can almost one shot anything any day.

Except pox walkers are even slower, only a threat in melee and the new rules don´t seem to be kind on large blobs of anything. You make a valid point about points, but if they use this opportunity as a general balance pass, PM might actually be relatively unaffected while poxwalkers are probably in for the cultist treatment.

 Castozor wrote:
Except pox walkers are even slower, only a threat in melee and the new rules don´t seem to be kind on large blobs of anything. You make a valid point about points, but if they use this opportunity as a general balance pass, PM might actually be relatively unaffected while poxwalkers are probably in for the cultist treatment.

I am scared to death that after they spent years cutting points on Death Guard to make them viable, and they finally got their first new rules in 3 years, all their points are going to go up too much and make them terrible again without ever getting a chance to shine with the new supplement rules. And I am especially worried about less points in 9th Ed. given that DG are very reliant on synergies with multiple characters and now also units that use CP to make other units better.

My prediction: points will go to about what they were at the beginning of 8th. Check your hard copy codex for what they'll likely be like.

It may be cynical of me but I'm thinking points are only going up to make it cheaper for new players to buy in. Once a new bunch of players are hooked, points will drop again to force them to buy more.

 lare2 wrote:
My prediction: points will go to about what they were at the beginning of 8th. Check your hard copy codex for what they'll likely be like.

It may be cynical of me but I'm thinking points are only going up to make it cheaper for new players to buy in. Once a new bunch of players are hooked, points will drop again to force them to buy more.

That would be an absolute disaster since DG were incredibly overpriced at the start of the edition and have had 3-4 rounds of points cuts since index and many of those units STILL don't get used. They were dropped down pretty hard relative to other armies. Any increase would need to be based off the most recent points and just going up a certain amount, not resetting to index or even codex.

 Virules wrote:
I am scared to death that after they spent years cutting points on Death Guard to make them viable, and they finally got their first new rules in 3 years, all their points are going to go up too much and make them terrible again without ever getting a chance to shine with the new supplement rules. And I am especially worried about less points in 9th Ed. given that DG are very reliant on synergies with multiple characters and now also units that use CP to make other units better.

I´ll be honest that´s what I´m afraid of as well. Oh PM´s kinda sucked all edition but we gave them some great strats now (nvm that they are still as durable as a wet paper bag) so that makes it okay to price them just under Intercessors like they used too. But I'm hoping that won't happen, this PA was obviously not perfect but it seems GW is somewhat aware of what plagues (heh) our army and took steps to fix it. Raising our points trough the roof again will undo all that effort. I'm ready to write off poxwalkers already though, I like using them but I think there is no way they won't go up 2 points like cultist do. The 2 units are too similar in price and battlefield role to escape that particularly jarring price increase.

broxus wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Why would you use a wormspitter (which means a chaos lord or sorcerer) with poxwalkers instead of ten plague marines?

Easy they cost far less and I can have more units of them for board control. Why people are talking about taking massive unit of PM I have no idea. It will likely cost 25% of your points for 20 PM in 9th and can be easily countered. Give me cheap and fearless units everywhere that can’t be ignored since they can almost one shot anything any day.

The guy holding the relic costs at least 74 points and losing him breaks the entire combo and 14" means that you don't actually have those one-shotting units "everywhere", even if you invest another 20 points into a jump-pack.
10 plague marines hit just as hard, but already come with plague weapons stock, are faster and can have two flails. At 190 they match the 194 for the poxwalker unit quite well, and they don't require a relic.

A single unit of 20 plague marines can easily be protected by the could of flies stratagem, and 9th doesn't really change anything about that, except giving your vastly more CP that you had previously.

I agree you can use 20PM to do all this. I just don’t think it will be competitive. If you don’t get first turn and the ability to put cloud of flies on them, then good luck. I already tried it last week against IG and they all died turn 1. That was with having a 4+++ and rerolling DR rolls of 1 & 2 and being in cover. I’ll keep it cheap and make it a threat with my Poxwalkers and if I lose them not biggy the enemy wastes lots of shots. However, all this depends on the 9th edition points so who knows what is viable. Maybe it is PMs.

I fail to see why you keep mentioning 20 plague marines.

10 plague marines can do everything 20 pox walkers can do without wasting a relic and taking less damage from blasts.

 lare2 wrote:
With War of the Spider and what we know of 9th, anyone had any thoughts of Morty?

I forget what it's called but can we spend a CP to put him into reserve? He can then come down on an edge, 9" away from the enemy... if I remember it correctly.

The pros: 9" away turn 2 without need of Warptime and not on the table to be blasted off turn 1. The cons: I never make a 9" charge, which means he'll be blasted off the board turn 2, whereas (if he survives turn 1) Warptime all but guarantees he'll be in combat turn 2.

Suppose we don't know enough yet really. He won't benefit from the new LoS rules, having too many wounds. Undoubtedly his points will be rising as well. Just hope he becomes playable again. The beginning of 8th was a riot with him.

based on what we know now demons primarchs remain unplayable, in competitive point of view.

3 CP to hide Morty in tactical reserve.


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Can bring him down in enemy deployment zone turn 3.

 lare2 wrote:
3 CP to hide Morty in tactical reserve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Can bring him down in enemy deployment zone turn 3.

Unless they are crazy backlining, I reckon turn 2 works just fine. You could also have a unit of Deathshroud teleporting in with him, in case he fluffs his charge

That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

 Jidmah wrote:
I fail to see why you keep mentioning 20 plague marines.

10 plague marines can do everything 20 pox walkers can do without wasting a relic and taking less damage from blasts.

I would argue 10 Poxwalkers cans do almost anything 10 PM can do at 1/4 the points. Now if they buff PMs or nerf Poxwalkers I may change my mind. Even a better argument is why go with 10PM when you could get 5 Blightlords for the same cost. We will see in 9th after the points drop.

 Jidmah wrote:
That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

He can charge, right? He can’t move and advance?

 avedominusnox wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

He can charge, right? He can’t move and advance?

He's allowed to charge but 9" charging is a big ask.

 lare2 wrote:

 avedominusnox wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

He can charge, right? He can’t move and advance?

He's allowed to charge but 9" charging is a big ask.

Agreed, that's why I think he should have Deathshroud Terms with him. Even if it's 3rd turn it's still 9" charge.
Him + bodyguard is not easy to take out in a turn

I also think it would be important to be running either a rhino rush or DP+ multiple Blight Drones to pressure or to have something else to hit if all shooting goes on Morty.

Doohicky wrote:

 lare2 wrote:

 avedominusnox wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

He can charge, right? He can’t move and advance?

He's allowed to charge but 9" charging is a big ask.

Agreed, that's why I think he should have Deathshroud Terms with him. Even if it's 3rd turn it's still 9" charge.
Him + bodyguard is not easy to take out in a turn

I also think it would be important to be running either a rhino rush or DP+ multiple Blight Drones to pressure or to have something else to hit if all shooting goes on Morty.

Yes totally agree. Still have to see how warptime will work. Not sure if it will at all..
Better 9” charge than blown to pieces inside deployment.. as it seems Morty will be 3cp and 6pl for other to fill..

Doohicky wrote:
Him + bodyguard is not easy to take out in a turn

I also think it would be important to be running either a rhino rush or DP+ multiple Blight Drones to pressure or to have something else to hit if all shooting goes on Morty.

I'm kind of worried about holding out for three turns with that many points off the table.

But then again, they need to chew through our 4++ daemon engines first.

One thing I'm pretty excited about is giving defilers DR - with regeneration and being able to move and shoot without penalty I think they finally might be worth their points.

I think Morty coming off the edge is an interesting problem. When would that make sense and when would that be the win condition?

If you’re running mono Death Guard, what type of list is going to make the most of those previous two turns so Morty can come down and wreck some face? As already mentioned, he is just going to be stuck making a 9inch charge, with command rerolls works about half the time. We don’t have a way to shorten that length or improve our odds of making it except for that command reroll. Hanging any plan on a 50/50 on turn 3 isn’t going to win very often AND will make you just feel bad half of the time as it doesn’t work.

Additionally, what type of list supports this plan? Your other 1500ish (or 1300 if you invest in Deathshroud!) points are going toe to toe with their roughly 2000 pt army (or whatever isn’t in reserves). What are you trying to accomplish? Make space for Morty? Not die? Pound down their heavy weapons so they can’t kill Morty when he arrives? The issue is is that DG don’t have the tools to be a long range army. I know that the new PBC Strat helps vs tanks and such but even with, I don’t think it’s enough.

Running Blightlords that deep strike where you need them without spending command points and being able to shoot AND try that 50/50 charge for less points is such a better idea. Plus there are all sorts of new strats that can improve them in survival and damage output.

As much as I want Mortarian to be better in this coming edition in pure Death Guard, I’m not hopeful based on the new leaked rules and PA book. He’s still dependent on being warp timed as a missile or being a 470pt distraction carnifex.

Why is everyone persisting with turn 3 here?

Turn 2 is just as viable unless the opposition have done some serious back camping. Remember that the deployment zones will be smaller in 9th (Normally)

The thing to remember too is that you don't have to put him into reserve until deployment (Or before battle starts etc)
It's just a tool that gives you an option.

Personally I am looking for fun and new ways to play him I don't do tourneys. It's more than likely not a tourney level idea, but I think it is certainly another option for me.

I hear that.

Don’t let me rain on the parade, I’m just of the mindset this early that all we’ve heard so far, using reserves for Morty doesn’t seem to accomplish more for him or you than the current available uses.

I’m all for using what you want and how you want to use it.

Another idea: using multiple units of Deathshroud with new PA buffs and blighthaulers to mitigate damage to Morty to the point where shooting at him is borderline pointless. Buffing just with either Futility made flesh or the new buffed plague surgeon, in cover from the Blighthauler, moving shots to Morty to a t5 +1/+4/5++ either reducing damage by 1 or rerolling resilience on 1s and 2s seems just Iron Hands level of toughness or shield drone level. Morty can start next to three Deathshroud, deep strike in another 3 when he moves up, seems like it could be a really fun way to play him.

Never mind, misread your post.

 Brymm wrote:
I hear that.

Don’t let me rain on the parade, I’m just of the mindset this early that all we’ve heard so far, using reserves for Morty doesn’t seem to accomplish more for him or you than the current available uses.

I’m all for using what you want and how you want to use it.

Another idea: using multiple units of Deathshroud with new PA buffs and blighthaulers to mitigate damage to Morty to the point where shooting at him is borderline pointless. Buffing just with either Futility made flesh or the new buffed plague surgeon, in cover from the Blighthauler, moving shots to Morty to a t5 +1/+4/5++ either reducing damage by 1 or rerolling resilience on 1s and 2s seems just Iron Hands level of toughness or shield drone level. Morty can start next to three Deathshroud, deep strike in another 3 when he moves up, seems like it could be a really fun way to play him.

Hahah, funny you should say that.
As I said I don't play tourneys, but my gaming group all decided we would travel to the Warhammer Throne of Skulls doubles tournament in 2021 for some fun. My 900 pts was Morty, 2 x 3 Deathshroud and a Fould Blightspawn and a plaguecaster.
That was my exact plan. My doubles partner was Slaneesh CSM and would be the firepower, while I was the bullet

I had all models painted and ready to go
I have no idea if it is even doable for the points in 9th now :(

Note that the reduce damage by 1 only works for your termies if they are declared as the target of an attack. I´m not sure if it works when the attacks are transferred to them because of their bodyguard rule.

 avedominusnox wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
That actually seems decent enough, though he can't move after appearing.

He can charge, right? He can’t move and advance?

Fun fact - as a Nurgle Daemon, if he’s within 7” of a Gnarlmaw at the start of his next turn, he can move, advance, shoot, and charge

(Even if he starts the turn in close combat with something!)

Tricky to stage-manage, but. Especially since you can’t summon a FGM (without Horticulous), and we don’t know what detachments are going to be like.

3CP minimum to field Morty in a super heavy auxiliary detachment.

If you wanna put him into tactical reserves you're spending 6CP.

Ouch. I can see why it's 3cp for knights etc as they were being used in all sorts, but for us it's a bit of a kick in the teeth when it's a unit in our own codex that we are getting a heavy tax on.

They say that there will be ways to mitigate these costs in tomorrows faction focus chaos knights

Logically if he was made your warlord he'd refund the 3CP but it doesn't state the same benefits as that seen with the others previewed.

 lare2 wrote:
Logically if he was made your warlord he'd refund the 3CP but it doesn't state the same benefits as that seen with the others previewed.

That would be even worse surely? As that means you have to pay full price for your battalion.

Although, I suppose it could be fun to try it with an a vanguard detachment (characters and deathshroud) as well as a spearhead/ outrider detachment each specialised with their best plague host.

Would not be a huge CP drain then.(Assuming his get returned)
I doubt it is competitive, but might be fun.

 lare2 wrote:
Logically if he was made your warlord he'd refund the 3CP but it doesn't state the same benefits as that seen with the others previewed.

If you make Mortarion your warlord, your battalion costs 3CP and the aux detachment doesn't refund anything, for a total of 6CP to give Mortarion a warlord trait he doesn't need.

Hey so I got a little excited about the harbinger of nurgle stratagem but now I'm thinking I'm not so sure.
I wanted to create a central buffing warlord that could move up with my army and control the centre of the board.
My immediate thinking was give it to TYPHUS but because he can't take a relic or WT I'm not sure he's what I need.
Typhus would cost 155pts & 1CP
+ Reroll 1s, Nurgles Gift (6" Aura) Psyker, Mega Beatstick
- Only 4" move, No reroll wounds

If i give it to a regular LOC, he could also take Fugaris Helm and Arch Contaminator for a total of 112pts & 3CP
+Reroll 1s to hit and all wounds, Nurgles Gift (9" Aura), Beatstick
-Only 4" Move, No psychic

And so I'm really struggling to see why I'd take either. They're just so slow. Comparing to what we already had:

Chaos Lord with Fugaris Helm and Arch Contaminator - 76pts & 2CP
+Reroll 1s and wounds (9" Aura), 6" Move & full advance
-No disgustingly resilient, T4

Daemon Prince with Fugaris Helm and Arch Contaminator - 156pts & 2CP
+Reroll 1s and wounds (9" Aura), 8" Move & full advance

I mean I really want to run an LOC or Typhus for fluff reasons but I can't see what they give me. Even advancing him every turn he won't keep up with the rest of the army. The daemon prince can have wings and is just as nasty in combat while the points saved on the chaos lord can go most of the way to pairing him with another character with either the 4++ daemon engine relic or 5++ mega bell relic to throw another aura over the moving castle.

So can anybody justify the LOC to me please? Am i missing something? Thanks.

I think Typhus is more the guy you want to deep strike into your enemy lines, preferably with pox walkers or terminators at his side.

As for the LoC, he is probably more fit to protect static gunline elements like predators or entropy PBC.

If you want to bull-rush enemy lines with a ton of daemon engins, a winged daemon prince remains the best option, probably with the new sword to allow him to hold his own in combat or the psyker relic so he can cast more powers and heal himself.

Pox-walkers are still very bad barring a points drop. They simply are too pillowfisted to become a threat even with buffs, and to fragile to survive long even with buffs. Oh and GW costed them like they already had some the buffs prebuilt in.

I really don’t like that we are locked to have to have a plague company warlord to get the trait and relic. Means you can’t have the 4++ and any of the other interesting relics.

To be honest, with the information we have currently, I'd rather start with Morty on the board.

If you get 1st turn you can Warptime him across the board and all's good. The CP cost for a patrol CSM detachment is reasonable and would give you access to a fair amount.

If you don't get first, Deathshroud Termies next to a surgeon rocking Alembichal Narthecium would be pretty tough to shift.

We now know that Mortarion with Warptime will be costing 5 CP minimum.

 Jidmah wrote:
We now know that Mortarion with Warptime will be costing 5 CP minimum.

Yep with his high CP cost and all the extra points you need to make that combo work, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

broxus wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
We now know that Mortarion with Warptime will be costing 5 CP minimum.

Yep with his high CP cost and all the extra points you need to make that combo work, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

I'm thinking 5CP is pretty reasonable for what you get.

A 470 point unit that makes your army worse?

All speculation but Reece at Frontline stated there wouldn't be CP cost for Magnus, Morty, or Guilliman for their respective armies. But CP is required for other factions.

That would make sense

I hope that is the case because so far their (GW's) penalty against souping seems to be less against souping in general and more about people taking multiple detachments, mono codex or not be damned. Not that I'd personally play Morty in my 2k lists since I believe Super heavies do not belong in those kind of games but it would be silly if we pay more cp for fielding our own boss than an imperial list that's 3 knights and some guardsmen.

Not sure how it won't cost for Morty.

3 CP for a SHA detachment, 3 more CP if we want him in reserve. That's 6 CP to hold Morty in SR.

We can't take a SHA detachment as core so no way for him to be the Warlord in the primary detachment.

“Not sure how...”

Indeed, none of us are sure about anything in 9th. Even the rules previews we have now might turn out to have a totally different impact that we think because we don’t have the context of the entirety of the rules.

I’ve been pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by GWs rules in the past and certainly want to be able to take Morty in a pure DG army without penalty. Seems like common sense... but you never know.

There has been a leak on 4 chan claiming that Supreme Command detachment work differently now and give you a free detachment when a unit with the "supreme commander" rule is your warlord. He explicitly called out Mortarion and Gulliman to have this rule.

Link to the summary in the news thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/7830/788603.page#10846951

jivardi wrote:
Not sure how it won't cost for Morty.

3 CP for a SHA detachment, 3 more CP if we want him in reserve. That's 6 CP to hold Morty in SR.

We can't take a SHA detachment as core so no way for him to be the Warlord in the primary detachment.

to try a 9" inches charge most of times?

6 CP for a 9" charge that ISN'T guaranteed?

I like the Mortarion model but paying 3 CP to put him in SR on top of the 3 CP needed to field him is a lot of CP.

Starting with 12, adding relics and pre-game stratagems will drain you to almost nothing.

I don't quite like the idea of starting the game with like 4 CP

As above, you will be able to field Mortarion for 0 CP if you make him your warlord - which basically means losing arch-contaminator.

 Jidmah wrote:
As above, you will be able to field Mortarion for 0 CP if you make him your warlord - which basically means losing arch-contaminator.

Isn't there a new strat to allow a second trait from PA?

Oh wait You are saying Morty will be Warlord and therefore have Arch Contaminator and it won't be of much use. Gotcha!

The 3 "core" detachments are free if your warlord is in them. Morty is a LoW. You can't take a LoW in either a Patrol, Battalion, or Brigade detachment.

The SHA detachment costs 3 CP and it DOES NOT include the Command Benefit special rule allowing a refund of CP.

So taking Morty will cost 3 CP even if you make him your warlord. So a Morty held in SR will cost 6 CP.

You must have missed the leak about the supreme command detachment. Please scroll up to find it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Doohicky wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As above, you will be able to field Mortarion for 0 CP if you make him your warlord - which basically means losing arch-contaminator.

Isn't there a new strat to allow a second trait from PA?

Yes, but Mortarion is locked into arch-contaminator, so you can't give it to anyone else.

 Jidmah wrote:
You must have missed the leak about the supreme command detachment. Please scroll up to find it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Doohicky wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As above, you will be able to field Mortarion for 0 CP if you make him your warlord - which basically means losing arch-contaminator.

Isn't there a new strat to allow a second trait from PA?

Yes, but Mortarion is locked into arch-contaminator, so you can't give it to anyone else.

Just saw that but meh, some dude on 4chan. I'll reserve my joy over this "rumor" until and IF it's actually real and discussed on WHC site.

The points he leaked match up exactly with the pages leaked from a completely different source.

So MAYBE I stand corrected.

Not sure how often I'd run Morty in 2k, just depends on what the DG points inrease (have to assume they'll go up as well) will do to the rest of the list.

I'm hearing rumours of big wound models only being allowed to take a certain amount of wounds per phase, a la Ghazghkull Thraka. Included are primarchs.