Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been playing Death Guard as my main army for about 5 years, they're in a far better place now than they were when I first started, that being said some of your suggestions would make sense,
Army wide toughness 5 and feel no pain, makes sense.
7'' auras is fluffy and not too overpowered
Daemons should have the Death Guard key word, absolutely
Terminators across all factions that can take them need a point reduction.
Hellbrutes, should have access to Death Guard heavy weapons (obviously would need a new model... please GW?)
All the above would be nice without going too far, on the other hand Foetid Bloat Drones should have a point increase, and Deamon Princes should be limited to one per army.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I literally LOL at the notion of a 50 point price hike. Some of you are as bad at balancing as normal GW.

Also I would totally run mono Death Guard again if my Plague Marines had 2 attacks again. Noise Marines and Berserker Marines kept theirs.

Again? When did they have two attacks? They have not had more than one attack since 4th edition, maybe even longer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DudleyGrim wrote:
Well I haven't played many games with my DG yet, but I would like to see more reasons to take Plague Marines, they are really cool models, but they don't really feel as good as the old plague marines. Old marines had +1 attack, and the option to take two of all special weapons. I really miss having the melta guns, I mean I KNOW triple plasma is way better, but I miss the option.

Plague marines have not had two attacks since 4th (I have both codices in front of me) and they can still take two melta guns, just like the could in the last codex.

 Jidmah wrote:
Plague marines have not had two attacks since 4th

Bolt pistol & cc weapon/plague knife i'd guess.

A.T. wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Plague marines have not had two attacks since 4th

Bolt pistol & cc weapon/plague knife i'd guess.

In the 3.5 codex (the bestest thing there ever bested) they had True Grit (Always +1 A while fighting with a bolter and ccw, no bonus A for charging though), I think? That's the book where cult marines were just marines for the last time, before they came separate entities in the 5th codex, or am I misremembering things?

 Grimtuff wrote:

broxus wrote:

Bremon wrote:
Death Guard are already a competent book. Some of the infantry need point cost reductions. The Plagueburst crawler needs a 50 point hike.

If it got a points hike no one would take it because you must take them in numbers due to their terrible BS and lack of ways to buff them offensively via strategems or psychic powers. If they move you are hitting on 5s or 6s.

PBCs aren't taken for their mortars...

And herein lies the problem. PBCs need a tweak, no doubt; but they also need to be brought back into what their intended role is of heavy support and not a ground-based version of a Bloat Drone it currently is.

Been thinking about that myself... I think that it might be a good idea to give them the "Grinding Advance" treatment: Plagueburst Mortar can shoot twice at the same target if the Crawler moves less than half of it's maximum distance but the points cost of the model goes up by about 40. This gives you two options: Crawlers that go all-out offense with Entropy Cannons or a more balanced loadout with Plaguespitters that still retains decent firepower through it's 2D6 Mortar shots if not moving too much but can also defend itself against light and medium infantry. This makes them fit their intended niche better and I feel that Grinding Advance Plagueburst Mortars are also very fluffy for DG.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I literally LOL at the notion of a 50 point price hike. Some of you are as bad at balancing as normal GW.

Also I would totally run mono Death Guard again if my Plague Marines had 2 attacks again. Noise Marines and Berserker Marines kept theirs.

Again? When did they have two attacks? They have not had more than one attack since 4th edition, maybe even longer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DudleyGrim wrote:
Well I haven't played many games with my DG yet, but I would like to see more reasons to take Plague Marines, they are really cool models, but they don't really feel as good as the old plague marines. Old marines had +1 attack, and the option to take two of all special weapons. I really miss having the melta guns, I mean I KNOW triple plasma is way better, but I miss the option.

Plague marines have not had two attacks since 4th (I have both codices in front of me) and they can still take two melta guns, just like the could in the last codex.

They had a Pistol and the Plague Knife being a regular CCW. They also used to have True Grit as well before the 6th edition codex. Now you have to forfeit all shooting just for an extra attack, which is silly as they used to always have it.

 Sherrypie wrote:
In the 3.5 codex (the bestest thing there ever bested) they had True Grit

True grit was essentially a poor mans bolt pistol & cc weapon - from the 4e dex and onwards they just had all the weapons.

It's only noticeable in 8th as everyone else wound up with the chainsword secondary attack.

A.T. wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
In the 3.5 codex (the bestest thing there ever bested) they had True Grit

True grit was essentially a poor mans bolt pistol & cc weapon - from the 4e dex and onwards they just had all the weapons.

It's only noticeable in 8th as everyone else wound up with the chainsword secondary attack.

Eh not terribly poor. As far as I recall they just didn't get an extra attack on the charge, which about evened out for not needing to pay for the extra bolt pistol or anything.

Seriously a buff DG thread?

 Xenomancers wrote:
Seriously a buff DG thread?

Every army has bad units/issues. I'd say this should go to proposed rules maybe, but even the best armies have units no one takes and can be buffed.

All I see is - I want all my units to get a 5+++ for the cost of 0. Cause reasons. Meanwhile Greyknight auto lose vs daemons. Come on man. This is distraction.

 Xenomancers wrote:
All I see is - I want all my units to get a 5+++ for the cost of 0. Cause reasons. Meanwhile Greyknight auto lose vs daemons. Come on man. This is distraction.

Hate to gatekeep here, but I take it you don't play DG. There is ZERO logical reason why Chaos Lords, Sorcerers and Possessed do not have T5 and DR, yet the rest of the army does. This is a stupid whim of GW as they are victims of the "no kit, no rules" dumbfethery. Numerous people who play against DG assume they do and are always surprised to find they don't.

Give them a points bump. Nobody is asking for this for free.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Give them a points bump. Nobody is asking for this for free.

I'm pretty sure they were, in fact I think it was the main objective of this thread...

Except almost all DG players in this thread disagreed with the OP.

 Xenomancers wrote:
All I see is - I want all my units to get a 5+++ for the cost of 0. Cause reasons. Meanwhile Greyknight auto lose vs daemons. Come on man. This is distraction.

Ahh yes. Ignore other armies problems because some other army has problems. Makes sense. It should obviously come with a point increase, but the discussion shouldn't be limited to certain factions just because others are bad.

I don't go around saying that you can't talk about SM problems because my lost and the damned are gak now, do I?

 NurglesR0T wrote:

DudleyGrim wrote:
Well I haven't played many games with my DG yet, but I would like to see more reasons to take Plague Marines, they are really cool models, but they don't really feel as good as the old plague marines. Old marines had +1 attack, and the option to take two of all special weapons. I really miss having the melta guns, I mean I KNOW triple plasma is way better, but I miss the option.

You can still take 2 specials in min units...

Agreed though, I wish they still had 2 attacks. Would make assault unit variants much more deadly with the additional +1 attack (3 attacks each with Bubotic Axes would be insane)

I think with their current iteration, a drop to 15 ppm would help them see more common table time





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Toofast wrote:
A Death Guard list won BAO recently. However, it had a renegade knight and 2 helverins. Running mono DG without any knights is a losing proposition. In this meta, anything that can take knights should be taking knights.

That is not a DG list. Nurgle Daemon Soup with Knights is not a DG list.

The issue with competitive meta is soup in general though and a whole other discussion.

Woops just rechecked my codex, yep, meltaguns are still there! My bad.

A post I made in the DG Tactica thread a while back. These are some changes I would like to see made (with relevant point adjustments etc):

Giving LoC the "Lord of Nurgle" buff to allow units reroll 1's to hit would go a long way in increasing his viability. At his current cost, that buff alone would make me consider taking him.

Chaos Lord/Sorcerer needs +1T and DR - This one irks me the most. Why the leader of a Death Guard warband/Vectorum is weaker than the plebs he orders around makes no sense. Only explanation is that they wanted to be consistent with other codexes so a Chaos Lord in DG is the same everywhere else.

Change to Blightlords - Blight Launcher, increase the points by 5 and make it Assault 4 (A middle ground between normal launcher and the heavy variant). While their at it, Reaper Autocannon needs to be 2 damage.

Deathshroud - at their current cost, give them an extra wound so they are 3 wounds a piece.

Plague Surgeon needs a rethink. Changing his aura to +1 DR instead (or in addition to reroll 1's).

Land Raider needs to be cheaper (an issue for all factions to be fair)

I'd just give the blightlords access to the heavy blight launcher, with appropriate cost.

As for Death Shrouds, their problem is not durability or lack of damage, they simply can't get anywhere to do anything, including their intended bodyguard role. They need some way to get to places, for example a stratagem that allows you to re-deploy them near a character or simply making landraiders useful.

Plague Surgeon should simply be +1 to DR for infantry. He then makes sense for plague marines, pox walkers, possessed and terminators, but doesn't buff our already powerful DP or vehicles.

That's a good fix for the Plague Surgeon.

Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

 Marmatag wrote:
Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

This is nonsense. The best units are: Crawlers, Bloat Drones and DPs. Other units hardly see any action, let alone Plague Marines. Death Guard suffer from a lack of strategems, copy paste units that in the spirit of "Death Guard" make no sense and overpriced infantry; like many other codices. I don't want a "top faction" soup codex, I want playable units other than the top 3.

Gryphonne wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

This is nonsense. The best units are: Crawlers, Bloat Drones and DPs. Other units hardly see any action, let alone Plague Marines. Death Guard suffer from a lack of strategems, copy paste units that in the spirit of "Death Guard" make no sense and overpriced infantry; like many other codices. I don't want a "top faction" soup codex, I want playable units other than the top 3.

A list with a bunch of plague marines and 0 crawlers or bloat drones just finished 6th at Warzone Atlanta, and only finished 6th on VP. They didn't lose a game.

Gryphonne wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

This is nonsense. The best units are: Crawlers, Bloat Drones and DPs. Other units hardly see any action, let alone Plague Marines. Death Guard suffer from a lack of strategems, copy paste units that in the spirit of "Death Guard" make no sense and overpriced infantry; like many other codices. I don't want a "top faction" soup codex, I want playable units other than the top 3.

Imagine how the people with books that are worse at mono faction that DG, which is...a majority of them.

 Toofast wrote:

Gryphonne wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

This is nonsense. The best units are: Crawlers, Bloat Drones and DPs. Other units hardly see any action, let alone Plague Marines. Death Guard suffer from a lack of strategems, copy paste units that in the spirit of "Death Guard" make no sense and overpriced infantry; like many other codices. I don't want a "top faction" soup codex, I want playable units other than the top 3.

A list with a bunch of plague marines and 0 crawlers or bloat drones just finished 6th at Warzone Atlanta, and only finished 6th on VP. They didn't lose a game.

Yes, one instance is a fully valid empirical data set from which to draw conclusions from.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bremon wrote:

Gryphonne wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Death Guard are one of the top factions in the game. They're already great.

This is nonsense. The best units are: Crawlers, Bloat Drones and DPs. Other units hardly see any action, let alone Plague Marines. Death Guard suffer from a lack of strategems, copy paste units that in the spirit of "Death Guard" make no sense and overpriced infantry; like many other codices. I don't want a "top faction" soup codex, I want playable units other than the top 3.

Imagine how the people with books that are worse at mono faction that DG, which is...a majority of them.

It's not like anyone here denies that there are far worse factions than DG, but essentially what makes DG good for the most part is a handful of units, whereas the rest of the codex is unused. These nonsensical reactions need to stop; there is a clear problem with nearly all if not most factions. We're here to make ALL of them better. If you're salty about your specific faction being bad, create your own thread, it's that simple.

Well that’s true. Complaining that DG isn’t as crappy as the rest of us doesn’t mean they aren’t sort of crappy.

Lord of Contagion needs a better aura.
Chaos Lord and Sorceror need +1T and DR and a points hike.
Prince likely deserves a points hike.
Plague surgeon needs to be reworked into something that isn’t trash. The +1 DR aura for infantry seems decent but is likely deserving of a price hike.
Blightlords are damn good. +1 wound if all termies get the same.
Deathshroud need +1 wound, and to be much deadlier to make up for their (lack of) speed.
Possessed need buffed.
Helbrutes need a DG themed buff.
The marine tanks need a chapter tactic. DR should stay in daemon engines only, but implacable advance letting them move and shoot heavy without penalty wouldn’t be outrageous. Maybe limit the distance moved without penalty so the horde rolls forward together.
Land Raiders power of the machine spirit being corruptible would mean I’d be open to its BS decreasing but becoming a Daemon Engine. Even wth DR it’s likely a touch overpriced.
Plague marines need 2 wounds if chaos goes the Primaris route, otherwise just a points cut. I’m partial to elite thugs being elite instead of the game becoming horde marines. I’m also open to their bolters being plague weapons. 1kSons have special bolters, and bolters need all the help they can get. Combi bolters should follow suit as well.
Drones need a slight points bump.
Crawlers should be the price of a Predator, if not slightly more. These things would still be taken at 200 points.

That said, I’ve only played a handful of games with Death Guard. I don’t think they need a major change. Certainly not to the extent of OPs wet dreaming. Minor tweaks and they’d be n a great spot. Internal balance in the book needs revised; balance in regards to the rest of the game is about average. Most factions need to be buffed up to DG levels, some need to be nerfed down.

Contagion discipline is reasonable. As always, the mortal wound spells that aren’t smite are crap, but there are definitely 3 good spells in there. Stratagems are decent. There are duds but most armies are happy if they have a small handful of decent ones. Veterans, detonation, the daemon engine one, healing wounds, cloud of flies, etc. are all usable. Veterans especially is great.

Bremon wrote:
Well that’s true. Complaining that DG isn’t as crappy as the rest of us doesn’t mean they aren’t sort of crappy.

Lord of Contagion needs a better aura.
Chaos Lord and Sorceror need +1T and DR and a points hike.
Prince likely deserves a points hike.
Plague surgeon needs to be reworked into something that isn’t trash. The +1 DR aura for infantry seems decent but is likely deserving of a price hike.
Blightlords are damn good. +1 wound if all termies get the same.
Deathshroud need +1 wound, and to be much deadlier to make up for their (lack of) speed.
Possessed need buffed.
Helbrutes need a DG themed buff.
The marine tanks need a chapter tactic. DR should stay in daemon engines only, but implacable advance letting them move and shoot heavy without penalty wouldn’t be outrageous. Maybe limit the distance moved without penalty so the horde rolls forward together.
Land Raiders power of the machine spirit being corruptible would mean I’d be open to its BS decreasing but becoming a Daemon Engine. Even wth DR it’s likely a touch overpriced.
Plague marines need 2 wounds if chaos goes the Primaris route, otherwise just a points cut. I’m partial to elite thugs being elite instead of the game becoming horde marines. I’m also open to their bolters being plague weapons. 1kSons have special bolters, and bolters need all the help they can get. Combi bolters should follow suit as well.
Drones need a slight points bump.
Crawlers should be the price of a Predator, if not slightly more. These things would still be taken at 200 points.

That said, I’ve only played a handful of games with Death Guard. I don’t think they need a major change. Certainly not to the extent of OPs wet dreaming. Minor tweaks and they’d be n a great spot. Internal balance in the book needs revised; balance in regards to the rest of the game is about average. Most factions need to be buffed up to DG levels, some need to be nerfed down.

Contagion discipline is reasonable. As always, the mortal wound spells that aren’t smite are crap, but there are definitely 3 good spells in there. Stratagems are decent. There are duds but most armies are happy if they have a small handful of decent ones. Veterans, detonation, the daemon engine one, healing wounds, cloud of flies, etc. are all usable. Veterans especially is great.

That is an excellent summary

That is *exactly* the scope of changes I would be hoping for. Some new and *fluffy* strategems would also be cool, because the ones available are rather bland/limited.

Other than that, yes, DG are in a good spot. I personally expect the PBC to get a modest pts hike in CA, the DP not so much. Now if possessed and hellbrutes would be worth it, that'd be great.

Land Raiders are terrible all across the board, really hoping for a decent change there.

Plague marines should either get a plague ammo strategem or some exotic plague ammunition that maybe re-rolls wounds (funny detail, this change would most closely resemble their previous AP5 in terms of mathhammer). If they don't get anything I would like to see all power armor drop a couple of points, because it's so much worse in this edition. Although in general I would prefer bolters to just receive something more substantial.

Naturally, I hope that the factions that need buffs also receive them, I can't begin to imagine the frustration of having an entirely unplayable army such as GK.

Bolters in general need help so badly. AP changes crippled them, and they weren’t superstars before 8th either. I think even if they were rapid fire 2, and stormbolters were rapidfire 4 people wouldn’t be in love with them lol.

Stratagems as a whole need a big rework. It’s hard to balance thematic and usable. Some are gamebreakers while others are a waste of ink, it’s quite frustrating.

Bremon wrote:
Bolters in general need help so badly. AP changes crippled them, and they weren’t superstars before 8th either. I think even if they were rapid fire 2, and stormbolters were rapidfire 4 people wouldn’t be in love with them lol.

Stratagems as a whole need a big rework. It’s hard to balance thematic and usable. Some are gamebreakers while others are a waste of ink, it’s quite frustrating.

I agree, I wonder how the bolter went from a pretty decent mainstay imperium weapon to something so... mediocre. I really wish they would have done the bolter fluff more justice rules wise. Considering they are mini rockets I would think that re-rolling to wound with them could be good as this *kind of* brings them in line with AP5 against infantry math wise. But something more original could be better perhaps.

Also agree on the strats, the trend in codices appears to be that especially early codices have very conservative strategems, while later codices just go all out on originality and power level. I'm hoping CA adds one or two cool strats per army in that respect, but I'm not sure how much risk GW is willing to take. Of course, if CA is just a points compendium (other than the sisters content, which is the other only other interesting thing) then how are they going to make people buy it?

If you doubled the shots that bolters and storm/combi-bolters got without changing their points significantly, you would see everyone spamming storm bolters and bikes. It's an easy decision.

Which hurts chaff and helps marines who are overpriced from MEQ to TEQ, and doesn’t force people to buy third party bitz to have enough plasma to go around. Thanks, you’ve convinced me that my off-hand remark is a good idea.