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Bingo. Calling what Death Guard got an "expansion" is fething laughable. They lost WAY more than they gained. That's not even debatable. You can even say the same for Thousand Sons too.

I'm not super familiar with TSons, but am an avid Death Guard player. I'm not sure how you can seriously make this statement.

What we got:

- Poxwalkers
- Multiple new/fluffy characters (several of them even good in a competitive list)
- Multiple new and effective demon engines
- Plagueburst crawlers
- Multiple ways to play the army in a way that feels propelry "Death Guard" like
- and what else .... oh yeah - a PRIMARCH

What we lost
- nothing. Literally nothing. You can take an allied detachment of whatever you need from the main CSM book


So explain to me how we lost more than we gained? Does the army need fleshed out a little more? Yes. Does it need an update? Yes. Even still, your statement is pretty far off from what actually happened IMO

If it was up to me the plan would be to return them to spectres of the past back to haunt their loyalists brothers.

Almost everything should be heresy era tech with the touch of chaos warping and changing them.

They should be a twisted mirror walking out of the warp reminding the Imperium and the Astartes of their past and what a lack of vigilance can lead to.

So much this. Waaaaaaay back in the day - like late 2nd edition, early third, the fluff around CSM revolved around the fact that most of the Imperial Citizenry (even including a lot of people in the IG) didn't know Chaos existed. At best your average Imperial citizen might have heard of things like Chaos Demons and/or CSM as legends, myths, fairytales, etc. Even the Horus Heresy was not widely known. So when someone did come into contact with CSM, it was that much more traumatic for them. One of the very early GW novels was about a Rogue Trader ship. At one point, there's a passage where one of the characters is on a ship that gets attacked and boarded by CSM. The passage describing what he goes through in realizing that these are the monsters his parents told him stories about (but that all these years later he had completely forgotten) is so well written. He basically goes through, confusion, recognition, denial, and then insanity just from SEEING a Chaos Space Marine. No magic or weapons or anything involved. Just the sight of a CSM was enough to drive him to insanity. I love that angle.

Obviously with Abby splitting the warp wide open, Chaos is now more of a thing than it was in those days, but I'd love a return to that kind of feel, rather than the Saturday Morning cartoon villians we have now. Heresy Era weapons, older Armor marks, a stronger familiarity with the warp ... sign me up!

Tycho wrote:

Bingo. Calling what Death Guard got an "expansion" is fething laughable. They lost WAY more than they gained. That's not even debatable. You can even say the same for Thousand Sons too.

I'm not super familiar with TSons, but am an avid Death Guard player. I'm not sure how you can seriously make this statement.

What we got:

- Poxwalkers
- Multiple new/fluffy characters (several of them even good in a competitive list)
- Multiple new and effective demon engines
- Plagueburst crawlers
- Multiple ways to play the army in a way that feels propelry "Death Guard" like
- and what else .... oh yeah - a PRIMARCH

What we lost
- nothing. Literally nothing. You can take an allied detachment of whatever you need from the main CSM book

Well, if you take Traitor Legions into consideration, we lost fnp on our lord, possessed and terminator sorcerer

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

I hope you're right. There's been speculation that his "new men" could be primaris chaos marines, which is a concept I hate. His assistant harvesting a primaris marine's progenoid doesn't bode well.

Nah. I think he'll just get a better buffing ability.

Possessed already fill the "Primaris" spot and I doubt GW would go an murder the investment they made on molds for CSM.

Given primaris are exclusively ranged and can be used in every FOC slot, and possessed are elites-only, melee-only, I'm not sure how possessed could be considered to fill the primaris 'spot.'
Fluffwise they seem opposites- 'Even more marine' marines vs 'less' marines.

Voss wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

I hope you're right. There's been speculation that his "new men" could be primaris chaos marines, which is a concept I hate. His assistant harvesting a primaris marine's progenoid doesn't bode well.

Nah. I think he'll just get a better buffing ability.

Possessed already fill the "Primaris" spot and I doubt GW would go an murder the investment they made on molds for CSM.

Given primaris are exclusively ranged and can be used in every FOC slot, and possessed are elites-only, melee-only, I'm not sure how possessed could be considered to fill the primaris 'spot.'
Fluffwise they seem opposites- 'Even more marine' marines vs 'less' marines.

Just because they don't carry the same weapons / slots doesn't mean they aren't "enhanced" super soldiers.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

I hope you're right. There's been speculation that his "new men" could be primaris chaos marines, which is a concept I hate. His assistant harvesting a primaris marine's progenoid doesn't bode well.

Nah. I think he'll just get a better buffing ability.

Possessed already fill the "Primaris" spot and I doubt GW would go an murder the investment they made on molds for CSM.

Given primaris are exclusively ranged and can be used in every FOC slot, and possessed are elites-only, melee-only, I'm not sure how possessed could be considered to fill the primaris 'spot.'
Fluffwise they seem opposites- 'Even more marine' marines vs 'less' marines.

Just because they don't carry the same weapons / slots doesn't mean they aren't "enhanced" super soldiers.

No, they're not enhanced super soldiers because they're daemons wearing a marine as a suit- they're less than they were before.

The fact that they do exactly none of same things with absolutely no overlap mean they aren't equivalent.

I don't think you understand. The goal isn't to make CSM a perfect analogue of Marines. Hence daemon engines.

Well, if you take Traitor Legions into consideration, we lost fnp on our lord, possessed and terminator sorcerer

IDK if I'd call possessed a "loss", but those three things you listed hardly add up to Slayer-Fan's point of "Lost more than gained", and my point still stands that if you need those things, you can take an allied detachment and run them w/out issue.

Tycho wrote:

Well, if you take Traitor Legions into consideration, we lost fnp on our lord, possessed and terminator sorcerer

IDK if I'd call possessed a "loss", but those three things you listed hardly add up to Slayer-Fan's point of "Lost more than gained", and my point still stands that if you need those things, you can take an allied detachment and run them w/out issue.

Except you're wrong, because that's not Death Guard and don't benefit from Death Guard character abilities or auras or Strats. So you're 100% wrong.

Except you're wrong, because that's not Death Guard and don't benefit from Death Guard character abilities or auras or Strats. So you're 100% wrong.

I don't really need them to. I can get some overlap by running The Purge and having some keywords in common (for things like Waptiming DG units, etc), and, were DG to stay in the main book, these limitations would still likely have stayed in place, so I'm still not sure where you're coming from with your point. Additionally, that allied detachment will run without penalty. It will still have its own abilities, strats, etc. Will they have DG traits? No. And this would have remained true were they to stay in the main book.

It's hyperbole for hyperbole's sake. Maybe you're right for Thousand Sons - I don't know anything about them, and their book seems crazy thin, but to say it's not even debatable that DG lost more than they gained is on the extreme side don't you think?

Even in the much vaunted 3.5 'dex, they added similar limitations, so keeping them in the same book would likely have just meant that they got fewer new units ...

Edited because I can't type today ...

Tycho wrote:

Except you're wrong, because that's not Death Guard and don't benefit from Death Guard character abilities or auras or Strats. So you're 100% wrong.

I don't really need them to. I can get some overlap by running The Purge and having some keywords in common (for things like Waptiming DG units, etc), and, were DG to stay in the main book, these limitations would still likely have stayed in place, so I'm still not sure where you're coming from with your point. Additionally, that allied detachment will run without penalty. It will still have its own abilities, strats, etc. Will they have DG traits? No. And this would have remained true were they to stay in the main book.

It's hyperbole for hyperbole's sake. Maybe you're right for Thousand Sons - I don't know anything about them, and their book seems crazy thin, but to say it's not even debatable that DG lost more than they gained is on the extreme side don't you think?

Even in the much vaunted 3.5 'dex, they added similar limitations, so keeping them in the same book would likely have just meant that they got fewer new units ...

Edited because I can't type today ...

The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again.

Show me where I said it was?

And again, we've already seen what it looks like when they're all in one book. Each specific Legion (DG, TSons, IW, ETC) gets similar limitations to the ones already in their unique books, but with way fewer new units. Keeping them all in one book also limits how far you can expand on those sub factions in the future, and if your concern is that you have to bring two books ... sadly, you're playing the wrong game.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

Exalted. The system isn't absolutely perfect, but I've played Chaos since Rogue Trader (as much as you COULD play RT lol), and this is the first time in years that I've felt like GW has Chaos in a generally decent place. Could they all be better? Yes, and they could all stand to get a better update, but over-all, I feel like there's just a lot of crazy hyperbole at a time when GW has actually *generally speaking* finally been working towards giving us Chaos players what we've been asking for since 4th edition ...

These Death Guard arguments are silly. If I may quote myself from earlier:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Don't lose sight of the real goal. Being spread over multiple books is annoying, but it doesn't really matter if we get decent rules. And nobody will care how optimized a book is if the faction isn't worth playing.

What matters is getting basic marine troops worth using again. Why talk of stuff like making chosen troops, but giving them less options? That's called a Chaos Marine, guys. They are already troops. How about making CSM good as troops, and Chosen good as elites? Don't reinvent the wheel, fix it.

And the fixes are another layer of special rules, just like vanilla marines got. And perhaps some point changes. Those special rules need to give some increases to firepower, and then there should be options for either more defensive, or further increases to firepower.

Its not really a matter of how exactly you define Death Guard, or even what they gained or lost. What matters is: Are Death Guard good? And do they play like Death Guard are supposed to? And the answer is no and no, because at the end of the day, their basic and most defining units aren't good and don't work.

Remember how Death Guard are famous for grinding waves of implacable infantry winning through attrition? Back in 5th, Plague Marines were a great unit and played correctly. But of course, the rest of the death guard army was missing. But now we have the Plague Terminators, and even extra durable vehicles, and poxwalkers, etc. But the only types of DG armies that are working well are those that function much like other successful Chaos lists: Funky mixes of allies that emphasize Big single model units and chaff.

You won't see a proper, fluffy DG list that takes advantage of lots of plague marines because plague marines can't kill anything. And plague marines can't kill anything for the same reason that all the other marine infantry in the game can't kill anything (unless it has doctrines): S4 ap 0 sucks, both in shooting and melee. In 5th ed, plague marine's bolters ignored light armor like guard, ork, and gaunts. Now they don't. And 2 meltas in a 5 man squad was great anti-vehicle. And a powerfist champ could kill anything in the game, and was well defended by tough ablative wounds from the rest of the squad. Now they have none of that. Plasma got a bit stronger proportionally, and blight launchers are a good deal for what they do. But neither is enough to make up for the dead weight bolters and lack of melee. Hateful assault helps with their attacks, but its not enough with how assault rules changed. And Bolter Drill doesn't make up for S4 ap0. And Rhinos aren't good, so they are hard to get around.

The problem with Death Guard isn't their roster, and it isn't that some of their HQs are missing out on t5 and 5+++(silly as that is.) At the end of the day, the problem with Death Gaurd is that they are heavily defined by space marine infantry units, and space marine infantry isn't good in 8th because of system-wide changes. It requires a ton of special rules stacked on those classic marine statlines, and only loyalists have those so far. If these problems were addressed properly, death guard would get quite interesting, despite whatever other small issues we can complain about. A point of ap on bolters, or perhaps plague weapon rules, or a source of re-rolling 1's to wound, and suddenly everything changes.

So stop going after each other for these tangent issues, and focus on what has been the real problem for everyone since this edition came out.

Agreed. Marines of all (Chaos) flavors need to be better. Whether that means points drops, better rules, whatever. It's almost always better to take cultists in the CSM book, and/or Poxwalkers in the DG book (again, don't know enough about Tsons to have an opinion), but disagree with your points on how DG play.

Yeah, they have the fluff reputation of long, slow, grinding assaults. You CAN do that. I have even won tournaments doing that WITH marines. The DG marines don't NEED to kill anything. They're about being difficult to kill themselves, and they accomplish that well enough when used correctly. I completely agree that it's a shame they aren't better, and that you're almost always better off taking walkers/cultists, but that said, the core DG units absolutely DO function like they're supposed to. Would my marine heavy list win at a place like LVO? No. Or at least not with ME playing them, but a solo DG list isn't likely to win at a big event like that regardless of who's playing it. They are a solid mid-tier army.

On the subject of making the marines themselves better, in terms of DG, I would suggest either keeping the points where they currently sit, but giving an extra wound, OR keeping them as they are but dropping a few more points. I don't really have a good suggestion for fixing standard CSM. I feel like they're hurting pretty bad ...

Na, Standard csm need to be built around, they are not point and click.
But not Bad either, until you Run into marines with doctrines that is.
Think of them as Horde sisters in a way.

Tycho wrote:

The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again.

Show me where I said it was?

And again, we've already seen what it looks like when they're all in one book. Each specific Legion (DG, TSons, IW, ETC) gets similar limitations to the ones already in their unique books, but with way fewer new units. Keeping them all in one book also limits how far you can expand on those sub factions in the future, and if your concern is that you have to bring two books ... sadly, you're playing the wrong game.

You said they lost nothing, except they DID lose a bunch of stuff, and then you say ally in a bunch of non-Death Guard, which means they did lose stuff.
Also you have zero info on what Emperors Children and World Eaters have. Hell, World Eaters have access to Obliterators! Your attitude is also what allows GW to create the garbage that IS Psychic Awakening, which is the worst form of paid update we've seen in the game quite frankly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

Pray tell what's the narrow way I've defined them? I'm pretty sure GW gave the more narrow definition and like a good boy you've lapped it up.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Na, Standard csm need to be built around, they are not point and click.
But not Bad either, until you Run into marines with doctrines that is.
Think of them as Horde sisters in a way.

They're not bad until you compare them to the things they are supposed to be equal to?

I see, I see! **nods head vigorously**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

Pray tell what's the narrow way I've defined them? I'm pretty sure GW gave the more narrow definition and like a good boy you've lapped it up.

Ah, good, the "You're a GW fanboy" argument. I think I'll just opt not to engage with that one.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Na, Standard csm need to be built around, they are not point and click.
But not Bad either, until you Run into marines with doctrines that is.
Think of them as Horde sisters in a way.

They're not bad until you compare them to the things they are supposed to be equal to?

I see, I see! **nods head vigorously**

That is like being told by your mom your smart too, when reality your siblings are in good schools and you had to be put in to a school that would take you. Being bad only vs marines, when marines make a large, if not the largest chunk of armies played, is kind of equal to being bad in general.

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

Pray tell what's the narrow way I've defined them? I'm pretty sure GW gave the more narrow definition and like a good boy you've lapped it up.

Ah, good, the "You're a GW fanboy" argument. I think I'll just opt not to engage with that one.

It's the only excuse to defend the crap that is the Death Guard codex. They lost more units than they gained, the ones gained are overall bad, and there are TONS of inconsistencies in unit entries. So what's the defense for the Death Guard codex otherwise?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Na, Standard csm need to be built around, they are not point and click.
But not Bad either, until you Run into marines with doctrines that is.
Think of them as Horde sisters in a way.

Except far worse at it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I don't think you understand. The goal isn't to make CSM a perfect analogue of Marines. Hence daemon engines.

?? I have no idea how this fits in to your claim that Possessed and Primaris fill the same 'spot.' Hence... tea cups?

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

I bet he also hates that they diod a chaos deamons codex and seperated them from CSM too

Tycho wrote:


So much this. Waaaaaaay back in the day - like late 2nd edition, early third, the fluff around CSM revolved around the fact that most of the Imperial Citizenry (even including a lot of people in the IG) didn't know Chaos existed. At best your average Imperial citizen might have heard of things like Chaos Demons and/or CSM as legends, myths, fairytales, etc. Even the Horus Heresy was not widely known. So when someone did come into contact with CSM, it was that much more traumatic for them. One of the very early GW novels was about a Rogue Trader ship. At one point, there's a passage where one of the characters is on a ship that gets attacked and boarded by CSM. The passage describing what he goes through in realizing that these are the monsters his parents told him stories about (but that all these years later he had completely forgotten) is so well written. He basically goes through, confusion, recognition, denial, and then insanity just from SEEING a Chaos Space Marine. No magic or weapons or anything involved. Just the sight of a CSM was enough to drive him to insanity. I love that angle.

This sounds great! I'd love to read this if anybody has quick access to a scan or ability to cntrl+v!

Tycho wrote:

Well, if you take Traitor Legions into consideration, we lost fnp on our lord, possessed and terminator sorcerer

IDK if I'd call possessed a "loss", but those three things you listed hardly add up to Slayer-Fan's point of "Lost more than gained", and my point still stands that if you need those things, you can take an allied detachment and run them w/out issue.

Indeed. And I'm with you on the whole matter. My Obliterators, Bikes, raptors and Rapiers have moved to a different detachment, but that's just on paper. A friend of mine said I should change the background of my army because I'm playing them as renegades now, I told him just because GW changes units arbitrarily from one codex to another one doesn't change my background.
Overall I'm enjoying DG in 8th, even though it got much more vehicle heavy than before, but that's also because vehicles in general sucked in 6th and 7th. I can't complain about Plague Marines at all, they're doing good work with their Blight launchers and I can bring a bunch of them since they're pretty cheap in 8th.

Tycho wrote:

What we lost
- nothing. Literally nothing. You can take an allied detachment of whatever you need from the main CSM book

If you have to take allies to get something that your army used to not require allies to get . . .then you've lost something. UM don't "get" Thunderwolf Cavalry just because I can ally in Space Wolves and get some.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Purge is not Death Guard, so you're wrong again. If you need to run two separate codices to run an army you already had, you lost stuff. And yes Death Guard lost more than they gained, unless you think some gak character with a fixed loadout that lets you reroll 1s for FNP is somehow a gain LOL

"I'm defining Death Guard in an incredibly narrow way, nevermind that that leads to a situation I don't like and want to complain about, ALSO nevermind that someone is showing me RIGHT NOW how I can have my cake and eat it too, and I refuse to be swayed from my negative opinion or self-inflicted definition. Anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG."

I bet he also hates that they diod a chaos deamons codex and seperated them from CSM too

You can't even RUN Daemons in any of the codices without breaking your own damn Legion rules, so thanks for bringing that up.

Nurgle Deamons show up in an army dedicated to Nurgle and the Deathguard forget who they are.

can you not run a seperate detachment?

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Na, Standard csm need to be built around, they are not point and click.
But not Bad either, until you Run into marines with doctrines that is.
Think of them as Horde sisters in a way.

They're not bad until you compare them to the things they are supposed to be equal to?

I see, I see! **nods head vigorously**

Yes, csm should be equal to loyalist marines, but not the same. If gw can differentiate sm chapters from each other, yet make them all strong, then there is no reason they can't do the same for csm. Faith and Fury showed they still know how to make the legions feel right, they just need to take it a step further and allow them to do so without using flashy strategems, as that approach means they stop playing as they should as soon as the cp runs out, at which point everyone returns to playing like Black Legion with a different color scheme. And they should never be a horde.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I don't think you understand. The goal isn't to make CSM a perfect analogue of Marines. Hence daemon engines.

I don't think anyone wants csm to be simply a mirror of loyalist marines. But there are better ways to differentiate them than forcing the use of underwhelming units like daemon engines.