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The Codex releases soon, but there are leaks out there, so Imma start this early.

A combo immediately sticks out to me-10 Blightlord Terminators with 2 Reaper Autocannons, 2 Spewers, and 2 Blight Launchers plus 4 CombiBolters, all led by a Lord Of Virulence.

Assuming you're targeting an Afflicted unit (which should be easy-a single squad of Plague Marines can easily Afflict any target within 24") you've got...
3d6 S6 AP-2 D1 hits (with Anti-INFANTRY 2+)
2d3+2Blast BS3+ S7 AP-2 D2 shots (with Lethal Hits)
8 BS3+ S8 AP-2 D1 shots (with Sustained Hits 1 and DevWounds)
16 BS3+ S5 AP-1 D1 shots (with Lethal Hits)
All rerolling wounds.

Against something that's T10+ (after the -1 Toughness from Affliction) and 2+ (which could be a 3+, if you pick the right Plague) you're dealing...

2.92 from Spewers (3.89)
1.78 from Launchers (2.37)
2.47 from Reapers (3.09)
1.70 from Bolters (2.56)

Number in parentheses is if they have a 3+ Save base or you use the right Plague.
That's a halfway dead Land Raider (3/4ths with the Plague) which is pretty nice!

Edit: Using AnyDice, Imma check to see what the odds are of toasting a Land Raider entirely, with the -1 Save Plague.

The numbers show: 11.89% chance of one-phase killing a Land Raider.
64.89% chance of getting it to bracket, though!

Speaking as a non-DG player, I've seen some of my fellow eldar players stressing out over the rule that basically gives you a 50% chance of doing mortals to afflicted units every turn. It seems like it would be relatively easy to spend a turn afflicting most of the enemy army in one go and then watching MSU armies melt?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Speaking as a non-DG player, I've seen some of my fellow eldar players stressing out over the rule that basically gives you a 50% chance of doing mortals to afflicted units every turn. It seems like it would be relatively easy to spend a turn afflicting most of the enemy army in one go and then watching MSU armies melt?

My Knights don't like this at all. It's hard enough to dislodge DG forces... I don't need them slagging my Armigers.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Speaking as a non-DG player, I've seen some of my fellow eldar players stressing out over the rule that basically gives you a 50% chance of doing mortals to afflicted units every turn. It seems like it would be relatively easy to spend a turn afflicting most of the enemy army in one go and then watching MSU armies melt?

The exact wording of the rule is:

In your opponent's command phase, roll 2d6 for each Afflicted enemy unit, subtracting 1 from the result if that unit is Below Half-strength. If the result is 6 or less, that enemy unit suffers d3 mortal wounds.

So 41.66% chance for units that are not below half, 58.66% for those that are. There is a stratagem which allows a Lord of Virulence to make an objective marker within 30" radiate contagion and plague marines can tag you with affliction by shooting. Otherwise, it's the same contagion range game it always has been, sprinkled with infiltrating poxwalkers instead of cultists.
Edit: Forgot the new shooty drone. It can cause a 6" AoE affliction effect on a unit it shoots.

Important here is context. This is the detachment rule for the TERMINATOR detachment, all enhancements and stratagems only work for terminator units, which is blightlords, deathshroud and potentially a unit of poxwalkers lead by Typhus.
Both types of terminators have improved by a lot, and as a result will get more expensive. While anyone should know that the points in the back are worthless, it's an indicator: Blightlords go up 50 for 10, deathshrouds a whooping 110 for 6. An army focused on terminators will have a very low unit count, so the ability is more or less compensating for the much lower damage output compared to an army loaded with plague marines and vehicles.

I also think that the detachment as a whole compares poorly to others. None of the enhancements are above "I got points to spare" level and the stratagems are all quite weak. I don't think you will see that detachment often in competitive, every other options looks way better and isn't locked into terminators. But take that with a grain of salt, I have played no more than a hand full of games with Death Guard in 10th.


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 JNAProductions wrote:
The Codex releases soon, but there are leaks out there, so Imma start this early.

A combo immediately sticks out to me-10 Blightlord Terminators with 2 Reaper Autocannons, 2 Spewers, and 2 Blight Launchers plus 4 CombiBolters, all led by a Lord Of Virulence.

To me the whole codex looks like combo-land. Plague Marines with Malignant Plaguecaster and Biologus jumping from a rhino stick out as an insanely shooty unit, Lord of Contagion and Deathshrouds seem like a match made in the garden of nurgle, and almost every shooting unit either has some sort of debuff it applies to its target or gets extra effects for shooting afflicted targets.

It will be quite the learning curve to figure out how to use all these things in the best way possible.

Famous last words - but scattering mortal wound abilities have usually not been that good, as you can't rely on them.

I mean if MSU Eldar units are out in the open so Plague Marines can shoot them to make them afflicted, you can probably just kill them.

Plague Marine party bus led by plaguecaster and biologus out of a rhino getting sustain/lethal and crit on 5+, rerolling all wounds thanks to rhino disembark has me excited for DG again.

Genuinely reads and feels like a fun codex to play

Yeah, the synergy everything has with everything is awesome. I'm totally giving my orks a rest to play DG now.

I'd just brace for a wide-spread points hike next dataslate. Almost everything feel like it's too cheap.

A while ago, I tried to go over in my head how a unit could both have lethal hits and devastating wounds on a weapon profile, like the Lord of Poxes has, and I just couldn't figure it out. How does it work in practice?

Pretty sure the two rules don’t interact. So your lethal hits wound without being able to also be devastating wounds. See the designer's commentary, pg 17.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Pretty sure the two rules don’t interact. So your lethal hits wound without being able to also be devastating wounds. See the designer's commentary, pg 17.

Yeah, this.

For what it's worth, unless you have rerolls or something else real funky, a Lethal Hit is barely ever worse than a Devastating Wound.

If you have 36 attacks, hitting on a 2+, wounding on a 3+, and the opponent is saving on a 2+ somehow...

Lethal and Dev
36 attacks
6 wounds and 24 hits
6 wounds plus 12 wounds plus 4 DevWounds
7 wounds go through

Dev Only
36 attacks
30 hits
15 wounds plus 5 DevWounds
7.5 wounds go through

And since it's AP-2, realistically you're never gonna save on better than a 3+, which adjusts the math to 10 (Lethal and Dev) vs. 10 (Dev alone).

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
A while ago, I tried to go over in my head how a unit could both have lethal hits and devastating wounds on a weapon profile, like the Lord of Poxes has, and I just couldn't figure it out. How does it work in practice?

In practice, if you roll a critical hit, you skip the wound roll and tell the other player to roll a save. If you rolled a regular hit, you roll to wound instead. If that roll is critical, the target immediately takes the mortal wounds, otherwise they get a save.

For multiple attacks:
1) Roll hit, set critical hits aside
2) Roll to wound, add non-criticals to the dice set aside in 1)
3) Opponent rolls saves
4) Apply mortal wounds for critical wounds rolles in 2)

Quick question for anyone with the 'dex - I can just about make out from the image on the GW site that Dreadnoughts are still in. Any changes to weapon options, or are all options still valid?

Also - randomly found the DG-themed White Dwarf in Sainsbury's yesterday, even though it isn't sue out until next week. New Combat Patrol is interesting - would people like details?

Helbrute still has all options that come in the box, though some profiles were improved and the new ability (+1 to wound vs afflicted) makes it a bit better at shooting.
In general, the only big changes to unit composition is MBH going down to 1-2 (two boxes per unit rule applied), Lord Felthius' Cohort now being playable without extra purchases (3-10) and blight launcher and reaper cannon no longer being mutually exclusive on blight lords.
Oh, and you can have 6 drones now - launcher drone and spitter/mower drone are separate datasheets with different abilities and costs.

Is the new combat patrol the same as the box with the rhino and LoV?

No, it's a new one - a Marine/Daemon themed one.

Plague Surgeon, 5 Plague Marines, 10 Plaguebearers & 3 Plague Drones, with an optional enhancement giving you a unit of 3 Nurglings you can deploy mid-game.

Not that interesting to me personally, as I'm not a huge fan of nurgle daemons besides nurglings and GUO and thus don't own any.

How is the Chaos Spawns Lethal Ichor special rule supposed to work?

Each time a melee attack is allocated to a model in this unit, after the attacking unit has finished making its attacks, roll one d6 (to a maximum of six d6 per attacking unit): for each 4+, the attacking unit suffers one mortal wound.

Are these successful wounds, with failed saves on the spawn that trigger the mortals?

And what about wounds saved by feel no pain?

Assuming you've quoted the rule accurately, Nightlord, it doesn't look like it matters whether the Spawn gets wounded or not - the trigger appears to be the allocation of melee attacks against them, that's all.

What nightlord wrote matches my codex.

Allocating an attack is after successfully wounding, before rolling saves or using FNP. Step 3 of making an attack.

Huh, I remembered the sequence in the wrong order - still, saves of any form not being relevant is the important bit.

I was thinking you'd need to allocate before rolling to wound, but that's what I get for not double-checking.

 Dysartes wrote:
Huh, I remembered the sequence in the wrong order - still, saves of any form not being relevant is the important bit.

I was thinking you'd need to allocate before rolling to wound, but that's what I get for not double-checking.

Nah, that's why we have all those beautiful rules for figuring out what toughness a unit is, as well as all the threads raging about how Abaddon and Thrakka have less toughness than Gulliman

I explain it to new players this way: Attacking player gets to roll all the hits and wounds, then "hands it over" to the defender. That player then decides which model is taking the wound and does all the rolls related to that.

Got my codex today and have some thoughts a questions.

For a Lord of Contagion leading a unit of three Deathshroud which is the better enhancement; Daemon weapon of Nurgle, making all his critical in melee go off on a 5+ for both lethal hits and sustained 1 or Furnace of plagues; giving him +1 attack and strength and devastating wounds?

Would it be better to take two units of poxwalkers of 10 each or a single unit of 20?

 KingGarland wrote:
Got my codex today and have some thoughts a questions.

For a Lord of Contagion leading a unit of three Deathshroud which is the better enhancement; Daemon weapon of Nurgle, making all his critical in melee go off on a 5+ for both lethal hits and sustained 1 or Furnace of plagues; giving him +1 attack and strength and devastating wounds?

Would it be better to take two units of poxwalkers of 10 each or a single unit of 20?

For the latter, one unit of 20 is 130 points. Two of 10 is 120 points.
Unless you plan on using a lot of Strats on them, two of 10 for sure.

I'd lean towards 5+ Crits, but I haven't run the math on the former.

Quick napkin math says that at 5 attacks with 5+ sustained, you definitely get more attacks from the daemon weapon. +1 strength will at best increase your to wound roll from 4+ to 3+ against T10 models, giving you .83 extra wounds, the same amount as the extra lethals you get from 5+ crits.

When sweeping it's not even a competition, daemon weapon is way better, but devastating strikes are great at killing terminators and durable vehicles.

Honestly, I'd just go with one or the other depending on how many points I have left to spare.

Death Guard needs a nerf. Certainly points increases.
They are ridiculously powerful.

As I've not had chance to read the new dataslate or MFM yet - is that meant to be sarcasm, or a genuine opinion?

And if the latter, based off what?

 Dysartes wrote:
As I've not had chance to read the new dataslate or MFM yet - is that meant to be sarcasm, or a genuine opinion?

And if the latter, based off what?

Dominating Top 4 positions over the last few weeks? Something which is likely to become even more obvious after some of the more competitive choices got chopped.

I have a certain bias that perhaps makes me less hostile to factions I like doing well rather than factions I don't. But DG are clearly overtuned versus the pack.

Ah - I've not been monitoring tournament results this edition, so wasn't aware of that.

 Dysartes wrote:
As I've not had chance to read the new dataslate or MFM yet - is that meant to be sarcasm, or a genuine opinion?

And if the latter, based off what?

Several games played with them where I tabled opponents, ran away on points, and didn’t lose many units.

Completely agree with JNA.
Three out of four of my games end with me not suffering more than one or two units lost (the rhino always dies ), the opponent obliterated and a massive lead in VP. If they are running a horde army, it's even worse. In most games, round 5 is not worth playing, in some the game ends after my third turn.

And what I'm running isn't even close to an optimized list, I run no more than one of the truly powerful units (launcher drone, LoV, LoC, deathshroud, biologus), but even the second and third tier units are good or at least elevated to being good through synergy.

Tyel wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
As I've not had chance to read the new dataslate or MFM yet - is that meant to be sarcasm, or a genuine opinion?

And if the latter, based off what?

Dominating Top 4 positions over the last few weeks? Something which is likely to become even more obvious after some of the more competitive choices got chopped.

I have a certain bias that perhaps makes me less hostile to factions I like doing well rather than factions I don't. But DG are clearly overtuned versus the pack.

Is it the army though, or just competitive wonks spamming OP units until it's nerfed and then moving to the next meta options? Given that basicallyh all the competitive players magically had 3 HBL Drones now that they're good, and you see them in every list... I question if it's just the typical "GW can't balance gak and competitive gaks gravitate towards what's broken"