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Wow, they hit DG hard with the points increases. I thought the reduction in PBC was not needed, but the increases in everything else??? They increased points in every single unit that is a staple that every single DG army uses...

Like is this GW trying to force us into using Plague Marines? lol

Was DG winning so many GTs they had to be hit so hard with the nerf bat?

The changes are indeed disheartening. I do hope they do a U-turn on this in the February FAQ, otherwise I'll be shelving my Death Guard for the time being.

Here to add my salt to the mix. GW is incompetent with balance and it's never been so obvious. DG nerfs with Dhurkari buffs... just epic

I've not really been playing 40k since 9th dropped but as far as I'm aware, these rises seem a little... uncalled for. Hey ho, back to Sigmar it is.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Wow, they hit DG hard with the points increases. I thought the reduction in PBC was not needed, but the increases in everything else??? They increased points in every single unit that is a staple that every single DG army uses...

Like is this GW trying to force us into using Plague Marines? lol

Was DG winning so many GTs they had to be hit so hard with the nerf bat?

Likely dropped they cost more so it can't be used for to the last secondary since cheaper than other options now

Eeeesh, these are rough. Nice of GW to kick us when we're down!

Hits my list very hard. Think I'll just sit and wait for the CSM book.

I feel that we really need to look seriously at plague marines now and not spam as many terminators. I don't like it, but if we don't want to play with less point, we may need to do this. Because from what I understand, troops are even more important going forward due to the Nachmund missions, so we can't play with barebone troops.

So, we may need to start to look at cultists as well for a source of cheap troops which can do actions.

Actually, if we play with 3 PBCs, we have 45 points savings to play around with. The blightlords went up 2 points each. And the Foul blightspawn went up 15. So, these two would reduce the 45 points saved to 20 points saved.

The blight lords also unlock cultists. Bring just one more plague marine squad would help us unlock two cultist squads. And we can also now bring two squads of poxwalkers for 10 points more. So, if we just bring one plague marine squad, we are kind of even in points.

This means we can't bring anymore deathshroud terminators though unless we want to now have a smaller army than what we would normally bring. Honestly, Deathshroud terminators are the key bummer here. At 55 points, they are honestly just too expensive. I mean, they are good, but they are not THAT good to be worth 55 points each. I hate this because I have quite a few of them and they are such cool models. Plus not taking them means that we can still use PBCs as our "To the last" along with one big block of blightlords.

The only way to get more savings would be to bring Blighthaulers, which went down 10 points each. So a squad of 3 saves you 30 points, and you can then take 2 squads of 3 Deathshroud terminators in exchange for a net zero gain or loss in points. Also, by bringing a squadron of 3 blighthaulers, you now have another big points unit along with your Blightlords bloc for "to the last". If you then bring Typhus or a flying daemon prince, you can then choose that over a 3 man Deathshroud squad for "To the Last" because Typhus and a Deathshroud unit are now both 165 points. So, it doesn't wreck the "to the last Secondary". But a squad of 3 blighthaulers is a massive amount of points, I am not sure if we can even fit all that into a list. Maybe take two.

Of course, the other way would be to bite the bullet and just take a smaller army, which is a feels bad.

Like I said, I honestly think we need to seriously look at making plague marines work now.

I feel also that if we really want to bring Deathshroud, maybe we need to think about going big and bring 6 in one squad. So that they are more worth it as a "to the last" unit. Its a huge sledgehammer, but its an alternative.

The problem I see is that I don't think Plague Marines are survivable enough. I feel you can build a 10 man unit that can do some damage, but I feel that same unit can get swept off the table fairly easily. Having a Plague Surgeon chasing them around would help.

 l0k1 wrote:
The problem I see is that I don't think Plague Marines are survivable enough. I feel you can build a 10 man unit that can do some damage, but I feel that same unit can get swept off the table fairly easily. Having a Plague Surgeon chasing them around would help.

Maybe just bring one squad. I brought a list last time to a local league tournament that had just one squad in it and the list did pretty well. When you have terminators, PBCs, and lots of other stuff to worry about, one 5 man plague marine squad is usually not a top priority to your opponent.

Just one squad of Plague Marines and One blightlord squads unlocks 2 squads of chaos cultists and 2 squads of poxwalkers, which means we are playing with 5 troops units. That's a decent number of troops to work with.

Or bring a squad of them in a Rhino along with a Biologus Putrifier. That would be a pretty nasty blight grenade bombardment if you spend the CP when they pile out of that Rhino with that Biologus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There is... another alternative, but its sort of unfluffy one. Bring chaos soup and have a DG detachment plus a Tsons detachment.

Tsons have great troops, and at 40 points a model, their Occult terminators are better than our Blightlords. So, bring a Vangaurd detachment with 3 PBCs, use the 60 points saved to get more Tsons units in the Tsons detachment. Plus the PBCs are arguably some of the best tanks in the game now and Tsons are lacking in their Anti Tank department. Tsons has the mobility that DG lacks because they have the Yeet relic, yeet psychic if you take Cult of Duplicity, and Temporal surge (warp time).

Give up Gifts of Nurgle and give up cabal points, and give up Tsons or DG secondaries. Its a fair trade.

I love plague marines but every time they are put on the table they get swept off the table as if they were nothing.

I think I'll just start putting some lol-lists on the table. The current one I am entertaining is:

Malignast Plaguecaster

Plaguedrone with Mower
Plaguedrone with Mower
Plaguedrone with Mower
3xMBH
3xMBH
3xMBH
Plagueburst Crawler
Plagueburst Crawler

Not a competitive list, but at least it will be entertaining, or so I hope.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
The only way to get more savings would be to bring Blighthaulers, which went down 10 points each. So a squad of 3 saves you 30 points, and you can then take 2 squads of 3 Deathshroud terminators in exchange for a net zero gain or loss in points. Also, by bringing a squadron of 3 blighthaulers, you now have another big points unit along with your Blightlords bloc for "to the last". If you then bring Typhus or a flying daemon prince, you can then choose that over a 3 man Deathshroud squad for "To the Last" because Typhus and a Deathshroud unit are now both 165 points. So, it doesn't wreck the "to the last Secondary". But a squad of 3 blighthaulers is a massive amount of points, I am not sure if we can even fit all that into a list. Maybe take two.

Always take 2 blighthaulers in a unit, never 3. It means their super useful shoot reducing stratagem is only 1CP.

l0k1 wrote:The problem I see is that I don't think Plague Marines are survivable enough. I feel you can build a 10 man unit that can do some damage, but I feel that same unit can get swept off the table fairly easily. Having a Plague Surgeon chasing them around would help.

I already like a 10 man squad of Plague Marines with 2 flails and 2 cleavers. They pack quite the melee punch and are a good target for the blight grenade stratagem. However, cloud of flies is a MUST for them, otherwise they'll never get close enough. I generally find that the points cost of a Surgeon is better spent on simplify more bodies. Once they get stuck in, they're usually tough enough to hold their own, as must anti-marine melee weapons are only 2 damage.

I wonder if a list with two Rhinos with plague marines in them might work. I mean, sure our rhinos are easily popped. But we can also have 3 PBCs on the field. So, is our opponent going to dedicate his anti tank to pop one rhino at -1 to hit and expose himself to all our PBCs?

Besides, once our Rhinos have move advanced up the field once, they are probably far up enough up the board that even if they blow up, our plague marines can now pile out 3 inches and be within a move+charge range of something important.

The new mission set requires more troops. And honestly, I think having plague marines in a rhino up the field doing some of these new missions is more versatile and better than trying to move 20 poxwalkers at 4 inch move each turn or using elite terminators to do the job.

So how are people feeling? Anybody tried any lists with the new point changes?

Personally I am not a fan of the rhino due to how already expensive Death Guard are. Points spent on rhino are usually better spent elsewhere and if you are taking 10 man PM squad with rhino you are probably better off just taking Blightlords in regards to effectiveness for points.

Basically Plague Marines really needed a point cut in the new CA or just a new datasheet.

So just played a game against the new Custodes. It was technically a team crusade game, though it was really me vs the custodes. The mission was a 40PL per player kill mission and made us keep half our army in reserve. It was bad. Like want to shelve the army bad. They have so many buffs/debuffs and they're so resilient

 l0k1 wrote:
So just played a game against the new Custodes. It was technically a team crusade game, though it was really me vs the custodes. The mission was a 40PL per player kill mission and made us keep half our army in reserve. It was bad. Like want to shelve the army bad. They have so many buffs/debuffs and they're so resilient

Its ok. Custodes feel a bit overtuned right now. They didn't need the points drop in the latest chapter approved. Maybe upcoming quaterly faq changes will tweak them again.

Since we're using PL for our crusade points changes wouldn't help my group much. His -1 attack aura hurts and the fact we don't have a way to ignore invuln saves makes the game rough. I'm sure they'll get the nerf bat in a month or so.

 l0k1 wrote:
Since we're using PL for our crusade points changes wouldn't help my group much. His -1 attack aura hurts and the fact we don't have a way to ignore invuln saves makes the game rough. I'm sure they'll get the nerf bat in a month or so.

The problem with any nerfs is that they'll probably not change anything in Crusade as the PLs are quite fixed at the moment.

Death Guard is very much suffering from "early codex" syndrome at this point.

Considering that only one Death Guard list made the top 50 (36th), and two made the top 100 lists at LVO (sadly that is using pre-points nerf) I think we can officially say DG is dead as a competitive faction. Sure play it if you enjoy the fluff, but you are not going to win any events with it. After the points nerfs I can’t imagine how badly DG will perform. They needed a points cut, instead GW raised those points.


That all said I’ve moved other to playing a Nurgle in Age of Sigmar. It is a much more balanced game system. New codexes are strong, but not broken like 40K. 9th edition started out great and balanced and since Drukari released it has been a dumpster fire.

broxus wrote:
Considering that only one Death Guard list made the top 50 (36th), and two made the top 100 lists at LVO (sadly that is using pre-points nerf) I think we can officially say DG is dead as a competitive faction. Sure play it if you enjoy the fluff, but you are not going to win any events with it. After the points nerfs I can’t imagine how badly DG will perform. They needed a points cut, instead GW raised those points.

With players going more and more into Daemon Engines and Epidemius I get the feeling Death Guard is becoming a pseudo 8th codex with people foregoing core units and instead mixing and matching just to make up for the weakness of the codex. We have at least 5-12 months of that until the next point update.

Fun times...

 Eldarsif wrote:

broxus wrote:
Considering that only one Death Guard list made the top 50 (36th), and two made the top 100 lists at LVO (sadly that is using pre-points nerf) I think we can officially say DG is dead as a competitive faction. Sure play it if you enjoy the fluff, but you are not going to win any events with it. After the points nerfs I can’t imagine how badly DG will perform. They needed a points cut, instead GW raised those points.

With players going more and more into Daemon Engines and Epidemius I get the feeling Death Guard is becoming a pseudo 8th codex with people foregoing core units and instead mixing and matching just to make up for the weakness of the codex. We have at least 5-12 months of that until the next point update.

Fun times...

Even worse they are going to enjoy facing the new Tau meta. Vehicles are not going to be smart choices.

If we're lucky the Feb balance update may correct the terrible mistakes of CA2022, but I'm not holding my breath....

I'm back to my 8th edition policy of "casual games only" with the DG. I'm lucky enough to be in club where that's possible, but still sad to see my 2022 plans of attending some competitions won't be happening.

What would be the preferred unit for taking on the new Custodes? Bloat drones with flesh mowers or Myphitic Blighthaulers? I already run Terminators of both flavors and Poxwalkers to big them down for a turn.

Data slate is out. No points changes or changes for DG. Guess we keep sucking!!

Guess we wait another 3 months. Or more likely, another 6 till the second CA

Also for those entertaining putting Plague Marines in Rhinos. The new dataslate has changed it so that Plague Marines coming out of a Rhino do not get Inexorable Advance.

I am just wondering why GW thought DG were such an OP army.

Plague Marines were already unappealing with that ghastly unit entry, so it almost borders on silly to even make the change.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Plague Marines were already unappealing with that ghastly unit entry, so it almost borders on silly to even make the change.

I feel that they were clarifying a specific rule in the rulebook, but then as usual they forgot to change the Inexorable Advance entry.

https://www.goonhammer.com/warzone-nachmund-faction-focus-death-guard/

A more optimistic take on the current state of Death Guard, than we're seeing aroud these parts. Thoughts?

 MinMax wrote:
https://www.goonhammer.com/warzone-nachmund-faction-focus-death-guard/

A more optimistic take on the current state of Death Guard, than we're seeing aroud these parts. Thoughts?

The lists are interesting, but apparently one of the article's authors is going heavy into Daemon Engines and his list was more or less theoretical. I think we have to wait and see how it works out.

I am not sure how good it will be to lean into 10 man walls like this, but it might be difficult to remove them when they get going. I am tempted to do so even if it means I have to paint 10 more Plague Marines.

I am personally aiming for this list to try out:

Sorcerer in Terminator Armor
Malignant Plaguecaster
3x5 man squads of Plague Marines
2x10 man Poxwalkers
5 man Blightlord Terminator squad(I feel like the deepstrike is helpful in them and they only went up 2 points each).
Foetid Bloat-drone with Mower
2x2 MBH
3xPBC

I am kind of hoping to use the vehicles as sort of Distraction Carnifexes that can potentially take stuff out while the infantry do actions. With the point drop on MBH I am really warming up to using them as they are now cheaper than the Drones. Also, with their weapon loadout they do offer versatility and have stratagems that can minimize attacks on them, as well as -1 to hit in close combat. If I didn't want to test the FBD first I would probably have gone 3x2 on MBH.

The Poxwalkers, even if they are slightly more expensive, still serve as useful chaff and screening.