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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/23/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-death-guard/

Summary:

-Not!FNP is in, basically all Death Guard units have it
-Death Guard detachment allows Plague Marines to be taken as troops
-Plague knives now reroll to-wound rolls of 1, Plague Marines get a new gun that's strength 6 rend 2 assault 2, each shot does d3 damage at <24''
-Poxwalkers are the new plague zombies, are immune to battleshock and the squad gains a new model everytime it kills an enenmy model in combat. Typhus increases strength/toughness of poxwalkers by 1
- Death Guard have access to a new psychic blessing which you can cast onto one of your own units so that, until your next turn, your opponent must subtract 1 from all hit rolls that target that unit.
-Orks are the next faction focus

Plague Marines are still Toughness 5, which means a lot of attacks only wound them on 5s. Their plague knives now allow you to re-roll wound rolls of 1 in close combat, but I think the most exciting thing about the new Plague Marines, is their new weapon, the blight launcher – an Assault 2, Strength 6, AP -2 weapon that deals D3 damage at 24″ range. Plague Marines will be tearing enemies apart from a distance and in combat. Overall, a very dependable Troops choice.

Not bad, a squad of 10 could put 20 str6 ap-2 shots at fairly reasonable ranges.

 Ratius wrote:

Plague Marines are still Toughness 5, which means a lot of attacks only wound them on 5s. Their plague knives now allow you to re-roll wound rolls of 1 in close combat, but I think the most exciting thing about the new Plague Marines, is their new weapon, the blight launcher – an Assault 2, Strength 6, AP -2 weapon that deals D3 damage at 24″ range. Plague Marines will be tearing enemies apart from a distance and in combat. Overall, a very dependable Troops choice.

Not bad, a squad of 10 could put 20 str6 ap-2 shots at fairly reasonable ranges.

I imagine it'll be expensive as hell, but that would shred marines pretty good. 7 dead marines in a single shooting phase, not counting battleshock.

It's equally deadly against MC's. T8 vehicles won't care too much but Swarmlord is losing 8 wounds a turn with average rolls.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Ratius wrote:

Plague Marines are still Toughness 5, which means a lot of attacks only wound them on 5s. Their plague knives now allow you to re-roll wound rolls of 1 in close combat, but I think the most exciting thing about the new Plague Marines, is their new weapon, the blight launcher – an Assault 2, Strength 6, AP -2 weapon that deals D3 damage at 24″ range. Plague Marines will be tearing enemies apart from a distance and in combat. Overall, a very dependable Troops choice.

Not bad, a squad of 10 could put 20 str6 ap-2 shots at fairly reasonable ranges.

I imagine it'll be expensive as hell, but that would shred marines pretty good. 7 dead marines in a single shooting phase, not counting battleshock.

It's equally deadly against MC's. T8 vehicles won't care too much but Swarmlord is losing 8 wounds a turn with average rolls.

Is it going to be on every model in the unit? Or just a special weapon that 1-in-so-many can take? I didn't see a clarification in the article.

Looking at the Starter Set announcement page, I only see what looks like standard Bolters and a Plasma gun on the Plague Marines in that box. It will be interesting to see for certain.

I have no idea actually, that's a good point. It may be restricted to 2 weapons/squad like most special weapons.

FNP across multi-wound weapons looks unnecessarily clunky.

As someone who plays sigmar and experiences this. That 5+ fnp-like save is a big deal.

So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

 Galef wrote:
So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

I assume they are gonna have more than 1 wound.

And I'm pretty sure that Plague Marines weapon is gonna be some kind of heavy weapon to the squad. Very powerfull to have a full squad armed with something like that. Or they are gonna be reeeally expensive.

Plague Marines look strong as hell.

My inner panda is sad for the tried and true TAC squad. It is horribly outclassed at this point.

Those plague marines probably have multiple wounds similar to primaris marines. Having layered saves will make them very tough.

If a TAC marine fires his boltgun at a plague marine, with the psychic debuff to -1 to hit, that means:

(0.5 hit chance) * (0.34 wound chance; str4 v tough5) * (0.34 power armor save) * (0.68 for 5+fnp) = 0.0374, or 3.74% chance to deal a wound.

So, if you fire 27 boltgun shots like this into a squad of plague marines, expect to deal only 1 wound.

Assuming no cover saves of any kind.

If these are multi-wound models they will be stronger than terminators.

Boltgun versus generic terminator would be a 5.56% chance to deliver a wound per shot. So, the expected shots to drop a 2-wound terminator would be 36, while the expected shots to drop a single plague marine troop would be 54.

Even without the extra wound, they're pretty darn close in terms of survivability in this regard.

 Marmatag wrote:
Plague Marines look strong as hell.

My inner panda is sad for the tried and true TAC squad. It is horribly outclassed at this point.

Hopefully they are balanced by points. I.E: two-ish TAC squads for every plague marine squad, or more flexibility for TAC squad equipment. But then again the TAC squad is just a TAC squad, it shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with the chaos god's chosen troops on a flat plain.

Thousand Son Rubric Marines (the Tzeentch equivalent of Plague Marines) only have 1 wound each.
If Plague Marines are keeping their T5 and FNP, there is no reason to give them 2 wounds, or rather giving it to them would be a slap in the Rubric Marines face.

If Disgusting Resilience is meant to replace FNP, than taking a separate roll per damage dealt is how they are addressing the absence of Instant Death.
I really like that it seems all Nurgle get this, both CSM and Daemons

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 Marmatag wrote:
If a TAC marine fires his boltgun at a plague marine, with the psychic debuff to -1 to hit, that means:

(0.5 hit chance) * (0.34 wound chance; str4 v tough5) * (0.34 power armor save) * (0.68 for 5+fnp) = 0.0374, or 3.74% chance to deal a wound.

So, if you fire 27 boltgun shots like this into a squad of plague marines, expect to deal only 1 wound.

Assuming no cover saves of any kind.

If these are multi-wound models they will be stronger than terminators.

Boltgun versus generic terminator would be a 5.56% chance to deliver a wound per shot. So, the expected shots to drop a 2-wound terminator would be 36, while the expected shots to drop a single plague marine troop would be 54.

Even without the extra wound, they're pretty darn close in terms of survivability in this regard.

Personally I have no problems with Nurgle-related stuff being the most resistent thing in all of 40k. In the other hand, their offensive power should be mediocre at best to compensate. Or be correctly priced.

 Galef wrote:
Thousand Son Rubric Marines (the Tzeentch equivalent of Plague Marines) only have 1 wound each.
If Plague Marines are keeping their T5 and FNP, there is no reason to give them 2 wounds, or rather giving it to them would be a slap in the Rubric Marines face.

If Disgusting Resilience is mean to replace FNP, than taking a separate roll per damage dealt is how they are addressing the absence of Instant Death.

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Is not a slap in the face if Rubric marines have a much bigger offensive power. Tzeentch as Slaanesh has always been the "fragile" Chaos God.

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Plague Marines look strong as hell.

My inner panda is sad for the tried and true TAC squad. It is horribly outclassed at this point.

Hopefully they are balanced by points. I.E: two-ish TAC squads for every plague marine squad, or more flexibility for TAC squad equipment. But then again the TAC squad is just a TAC squad, it shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with the chaos god's chosen troops on a flat plain.

Yeah but even so, these are available as a troops choice.

With the new edition you're forced to take a lot of troops to get command points. If games become mainly troops versus troops, these will shine in a big way.

This is also why i've argued that toughness should increase on terminators. The resilience you get from an extra toughness point is very good...

We may see Death Guard with 2 wounds with all their other options, and they may be a balancing unit to the Primaris Marines. The balancing unit to Tactical Marines may still be regular Chaos Marines with Mark of Nurgle on them. Plague Marines have always had more than Tactical Marines and regular Chaos Marines. The question is how Plague Marines fit into a Chaos Marine/Death Guard army in comparison to Primaris Marines in a Primaris/Astartes army.

Looking at the model count of the new Starter Set, I would think that the Plague Marines do have 2 wounds each, considering the number of models available to each army assuming a semblance of balance between the two forces.

So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

Why would you shoot a lascannon at a marine? Seems abit overkill. Unless there's nothing better to shoot at of course...

melbards wrote:

So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

Why would you shoot a lascannon at a marine? Seems abit overkill. Unless there's nothing better to shoot at of course...

Battle cannon then. I just used Lascannon because it caused D6 damage

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 Marmatag wrote:

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Plague Marines look strong as hell.

My inner panda is sad for the tried and true TAC squad. It is horribly outclassed at this point.

Hopefully they are balanced by points. I.E: two-ish TAC squads for every plague marine squad, or more flexibility for TAC squad equipment. But then again the TAC squad is just a TAC squad, it shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with the chaos god's chosen troops on a flat plain.

Yeah but even so, these are available as a troops choice.

With the new edition you're forced to take a lot of troops to get command points. If games become mainly troops versus troops, these will shine in a big way.

This is also why i've argued that toughness should increase on terminators. The resilience you get from an extra toughness point is very good...

They are availible as a troop choice into a Deathguard detachment/Army, so you lose all the flexibility of being a generic Chaos Army, with the plus of having more elite and "niche" troops and units.

Another thing that makes me think they will remain 1 wound is transport capacity. Bulky is gone, so capacity will likely revolve around your wounds. We know Terminators have 2 wounds, so only 5 fit into a Capacity 10 Transport.

If this is the case, I really doubt Plague Marines would be denied putting 7 models in a Rhino.

 Galef wrote:
Another thing that makes me think they will remain 1 wound is transport capacity. Bulky is gone, so capacity will likely revolve around your wounds. We know Terminators have 2 wounds, so only 5 fit into a Capacity 10 Transport.

If this is the case, I really doubt Plague Marines would be denied putting 7 models in a Rhino.

They have already said that Transport Capacity revolves around models. They put the example of having 10 independent characters into a Rhino.

I'm not sure DG will even have basic csm. They mentioned plague marines as troops and poxwalkers as their other troop, anot "another". It's probably nothing but who knows.

 Roknar wrote:
I'm not sure DG will even have basic csm. They mentioned plague marines as troops and poxwalkers as their other troop, anot "another". It's probably nothing but who knows.

Fluffwise it would make sense. Thousand Sons only have Sorcerers and Dust Marines, so Tz marked CSMs wouldn't make any sense.
Deathguard should have all Plague Marines and Zombies.

A few thoughts:
1) With the new to-wound system, Death Guard are a little less resilient than they are now, being wounded by a 5+ by most things. Against Guard and the like it was common to wound them on a 6+, and even Marines were wounding bikes, DP, Spawn on a 6+.

2) They refer to Poxwalker's as "the other Troops choice for the Death Guard", which I hope is a mistake. They surely do not mean that you can't have CSM with MoN as a Troop choice - or do they? Perhaps Cultists may be out also - perhaps they just become Poxwalkers with the MoN.

3) I do hope that CSM are still in because, as much as I think the Plague Marine models are cool, they're too busy and just trying too hard to be gross for me. I would always add one unit to my army, but I still want a MoN CSM core.

CSM with MoN aren't Death Guard troops. They represent all the Chaos Space Marines favoured by Nurgle, but they aren't part of the Death Guard.
For a Death Guard army is totally reasonable to only had Plague Marines as Troop choices. And the plague zombies.

If you want a MoN CSM core you can have a generic Chaos Space Marines army and field the Plague Marines as elites, and other Death Guard units too. The Poxwalkers will probably be a valid troop both to Deathguard and generic Chaos.

TonyH122 wrote:
A few thoughts:
1) With the new to-wound system, Death Guard are a little less resilient than they are now, being wounded by a 5+ by most things. Against Guard and the like it was common to wound them on a 6+, and even Marines were wounding bikes, DP, Spawn on a 6+.

But likewise, there are quite a few things that once wounded them on 2+ that will now wound on 3+. Plasma, Missiles, Lascannons, etc. are now not as easy to wound, and anything Str10 will still allow their Disgusting Resilience roll.
Overall, I would say it evens out.

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 Galef wrote:
So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

I don't think you save wounds. I think you save damage.

Obviously we don't know yet, but every time I have seen them mentioning the save with multiple damage weapons it seemed like they were implying that it's

Roll to hit > Roll to Wound > Roll Damage > Save against each damage > FNP like effects.

But I suppose it is Possible that it's

Roll to hit > Roll to Wound > Roll Save > Roll Damage > FNP like effects.

 Galas wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Another thing that makes me think they will remain 1 wound is transport capacity. Bulky is gone, so capacity will likely revolve around your wounds. We know Terminators have 2 wounds, so only 5 fit into a Capacity 10 Transport.

If this is the case, I really doubt Plague Marines would be denied putting 7 models in a Rhino.

They have already said that Transport Capacity revolves around models. They put the example of having 10 independent characters into a Rhino.

presumably things like terminators will have a special rule that reuces their ability to sue transports.

or Maybe GW's decided that in 8th edition it's more trouble then it's worth to restrict terminies ability to deploy on certain transports.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Galef wrote:
So a Plague Marine gets hit with a Lascannon. AP -3 means it only gets a '6' armour save and fails. Now you roll D6 damage. A '4' is rolled for damage, now the Plague marine has to roll 4 'not' FNP rolls.

Yeah, seems clunky. Like, why bother when you know you'll fail at least 1 of those rolls and die.

I don't think you save wounds. I think you save damage.

Obviously we don't know yet, but every time I have seen them mentioning the save with multiple damage weapons it seemed like they were implying that it's

Roll to hit > Roll to Wound > Roll Damage > Save against each damage > FNP like effects.

But I suppose it is Possible that it's

Roll to hit > Roll to Wound > Roll Save > Roll Damage > FNP like effects.

GW has clarified in the FB replies about the Battle Cannon. You roll damage AFTER a failed save. So a Lascannon having 1 shot means you will only every kill 1 model.
If you took saves after the damage roll, you could potentially kill more than 1 model, which is contrary to what they have said.

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