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I see the many videos on the YouTube as I am sure many others have but one thing I see missing from any of the tactics or battle reports for Death Guard are the Blight Haulers. Am I the only one who sees how 9th edition really make these things crazy good or is it some kind of conspiracy to hide their awesomeness for tournament play?

On a serious note however, they were buffed massively and were almost designed perfectly for 9th edition in my opinion:

With new and wonderful rules over cover, they apply a rolling cover to your army which is designed to advance.
They got a points drop which is awesome considering they got stronger
Their weapon load outs are designed to get better as you get closer (especially now vehicles can fire in combat)
Those weapons add a much needed anti armour capability
They are faster than the majority of Death Guard
They are remarkably tough to kill with their wounds, toughness, saves and disgustingly resilient rules - especially for he points
They are cheap models.
You can take them in units up to 3 models

Am I missing something obvious to say why they are not great for the points?

I think we'll be seeing a lot of them, especially if those changes to Multi-Meltas come true. Its just going to take some time.

I have many DG players in my area so Im only speaking from being on the recieving end.

I detest those things!! Them and the blimmin PBC. TBH i never understood why you wouldn't take them. Now MSU DG marines with bligh launchers bubble wrapping the haulers might be a thing.T5 2+/5+++ is a great stat line as objective holder.

I really rate them as I always find them extremely annoying. One killed my wraithseer in cc coz its actualy not too bad at that too.

I'm not sure players are ignoring them. They are great for all the reasons listed and are cheap at 100pts. I know I bring a unit of 3 in all my recent DG lists.

I think its just that some DG players expected a real kit to show up at some point, and may have shied away from picking up an EZBuild kit.

Which they may not even have known existed. Dropping 'Myphitic Blight-hauler' into WarCom's search function picks up some AoS stuff and nothing else.

Not sure how many stores even carried the thing.

Every store had multiple of them, they were usually located near the starter sets and the other ETB kits.

The main reason why people haven't been using them is that they were horrible overcosted for most of 8th, so many might not have them in their collection.

That said, I have been running them regularly every since CA2019 made them playable and the have gotten vastly better due to the changes in 9th and its mission, as well as the ne stratagems and relics from War of the Spider.

 Jidmah wrote:
Every store had multiple of them, they were usually located near the starter sets and the other ETB kits.

I haven't been in a GW store in... this century, probably? So I have no idea why anyone would stock a store that way.

Every indie store I've been in organizes 40k stuff by faction (with maybe a brief exception for new releases, until the next ones), and these days, very few stock anything close to the entire product line. I've never seen these models in any stores, and the only EZs I've seen on a shelf have been the paint & 3 model kits and the poxwalkers.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
I think we'll be seeing a lot of them, especially if those changes to Multi-Meltas come true. Its just going to take some time.

What exactly are those MM changes?

Anon052 wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
I think we'll be seeing a lot of them, especially if those changes to Multi-Meltas come true. Its just going to take some time.

What exactly are those MM changes?

They've been shown on the Invader ATV profile that's been leaked - an extra shot, and getting 1d6+2 dmg at half range instead of roll two and pick.

If Death Guard ever get another wave (which they probably will next time they get a book update), I'd wager we'll see a kit that builds the Blight Hauler with more weapon options, or also builds another unit type based on the same chassis. Seems the trend these days is to represent different weapon configs as different data sheets.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see a Transport based on the Plagueburst crawler chassis too. But I wouldn't expect to see DG get expanded until after EC or WE come out.

In terms of DG expansion, I'd settle for news on when SM Heroes 3 is due to be released outside of Japan...

 Dysartes wrote:
In terms of DG expansion, I'd settle for news on when SM Heroes 3 is due to be released outside of Japan...

I have seen the whole box available on ebay in the 70-80€ euro range already, I doubt it will get much cheaper than that. The only reason why I haven't gotten them yet is because I maxed out on my hobby spendings thanks to 9th

I used them mid 7tg edition after transporting Plague Drones around became too annoying (and still is).

I would use them as bumper cars to shield a flying Prince up the board.

Wouldnt work now, but they were always surprisingly hard to move. The MM was useless but I'd always get lucky with the ML and gnawing in CC.