Yes, it was removed in return for the Invulnerable Save, in the same way the AVs lost 5cm move.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Hey I just noticed that the army list doesn't include the harbinger. Was this intentional, and if so, why?

Harbinger?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Is there any previous DG list that's included the Harbinger?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Not sure, I just thought it was a bit odd that's its included in most other lists but not this one. We have the hellblade and helltalon so why not the harbinger

It could be added if there's a lot of call for it, but it's not like Death Guard have a lack of templates...

After a long dry spell for Epic gaming I got a 2k game in last night which reinforced some suspicions I already had.

Likely changes for DG 0.3.2:

Chaos Spawn - increase cost from 25pt each to 30pt each.
Reason - I'm finding that they're too much of an auto-include when writing garrison-heavy lists. Being as tough as a Plague Marine stand and not having the DG Retinue care much when they die makes them the default starting point for any Retinue that isn't in Rhinos. It's not a big change, but it makes them a less obvious choice.

Blight Drones - increase cost from 250pt for 5 to 275pt for 5.
Reason - they feel just that bit too powerful in robustness, speed and firepower for their points. I considered bumping them up to 300pt for 6 to match the Red Corsairs list, but that actually makes the problem worse because you can no longer break them with two casualties, while not making a massive difference to activation count at 3k. They also fill a bigger hole in DG lists than Red Corsair lists where formations can triple and are generally faster anyway.

Thoughts?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

well, i wouldn't be argueing about the spawn point increase.

but about the blight drones i view this sceptically. as you pointed them out rightly in direct comparison to the red corsairs you've included the stand alone reason for their current cost. with the low mobility of the dg the drones are a key element for it to work. this is not that valid for red corsairs as they suffer no movement restrictions. but from my point of view blight drones in an dg force are essential for grabbing or contesting objectives, claiming crossfire and generally more likely than any other unit being able to support when needed.
you could point this role out to motorized retinues but one rhino gone and they are of no use mobilty wise. same goes for predators or vindicators. they are simply to vulnerable as compared to blight drones. i'd say rather limit them to 1 per 1500pts than to increase their cost making them an expensive must buy for aforementioned reasons thus limiting your other already expensive formations.

true, in my games the perform quite nicely on a constant level and honestly they are most likely to tip the game from loss into a draw. but only if the are played smartly. and an point increase could have impact on the low number of activations even more.

please keep up the good work, i really apriciate all your effort. maybe i overcome my laziness and limited time at some point and provide some battle reports as well.

cheers

Edit: just realized the drones are ini 1+ in your list. Maybe lower them to ini 2+ at the same cost in order to give them somewhat of a throwback. They are demon engines after all.

also at its current state, what is the reason for a plaguebearer to be favored over a beast of nurgle? the are both 15 pts each and 1 pt to summon and the beast stats are simple better than the plague bearers.. or am i missing something?

Going to have to agree with Graf on the drones. Keep them at 250 for 5. They are really critical formation for objective capturing/contesting.

Had a narrow victory a few weeks ago against a speed freaks list. Was one of the best games I've had in a long time. My opponent while scoffing at all the fearlessNess and inV. saves still agreed that It was well balanced by the slowness of the major formations. He did like other opponents I've had take exception to the ability:price ratio of the plague towers though.

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Thanks for the feedback. Apologies for the long quiet period (even if I warned people ahead of time).

Has anyone managed to get more playtesting in?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

So, back to the grindstone.

To summarise the current situation:

• Plague Towers are still the biggest issue in the list, even when taken back to 15cm move.
• Plagueships have had too little testing, but at 200pt I'm not too concerned out them being overpowered.
• Beasts of Nurgle are too good in too many situations compared to Plaguebearers.
• Nurgling Swarms have had too little testing.
• Chaos Spawn are probably too cheap for their utility.
• Plague Hulks seem to be working well as a unit upgrade, adding a lot of CC punch to formations but being very weak at range. They also add AV to garrisoning DG Retinues, making them more susceptible to massed firepower.
• DG Assault Dreadnoughts have now been used in several of my games and seem to be reasonably balanced - they add some nice CC/FF punch but again at the cost of ranged ability.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Beasts of Nurgle

As these only appear here and in the experimental Ghalamore Incursion list I'm not considering the statline to be set in stone. This means that the easiest fix would be to drop their FF value to 6+ to match the Plaguebearers.

This makes Beasts better at FF when attacking low-save units in cover, and better at CC against the same units at the cost of lower manoeuvrability to reach them. While Plaguebearers are better at moving through terrain and equal for CC and FF against all other targets.

Another alternative would be to beef them up a bit and make them two Summoning Points each, but unless I'm mistaken that would be unique across all the Chaos lists, and not really needed.


Plague Towers

And now the tricky one...

The current statline but with 15cm speed seems to be the way to go for the unit itself, and should match LatD Redux. Which leaves points and army slots.

At the moment I'm considering bumping up both Plague Towers by 25pt, so transports become 325pt and formation ones 350pt. Although they're arguably worth more than that in a lot of games (especially in a Strategy 4 list compared to LatD) the lack of Void Shields or Power Fields makes them very vulnerable to TK hits.

So the next thing to look at is where and how they fit into the army. While I can see Cultists running up behind a wall of moving Plague Towers, for the more disciplined Death Guard it doesn't seem like such a good fit - yet the Death Guard can take 'more' of them as the transports in LatD use up a support formation slot.

Therefore I'm now looking at balance-by-restriction.

Low restriction option - adding a Plague Tower to a DG Retinue uses up a Support Formation slot. However this doesn't really affect Tower-spam even with the points bump as a 3k list can fit in three 'bare' Retinues and six singleton Towers, or five singleton Towers and some upgrades.

High restriction option - move Plague Tower formations to the Elite Formations slot where they're competing against Terminators and Blight Drones. In addition, a Tower added to a DG Retinue uses up an Elite Formation slot. This has the downside of making the Elite slots very sought after but that's not necessarily a bad thing anyway. If a player really wants to field lots of Plague Towers they still can by taking Elite formations of 2-3 Towers, but at the cost of very low activation count.

Plague Towers added to Contagion Engine formations don't appear to be an issue in terms of restrictions because you lose the very useful ability to garrison the formation, the Contagions are comparatively weak compared to the Tower, the formation is at least 650pt, and the Indirect Fire of the Contagions doesn't combine that well with the Tower's barrage. Although it's truly terrifying if someone does end their activation in range and sight of the Tower, with 7+d3 Disrupt BPs.

On the subject of Contagion Engines...


Contagion Engines

Will probably drop back to 325pt from their current 350pt - partly because I keep ignoring them during list construction as being expensive, and partly because it's a full 50pt over adding four of them to a couple of DG Retinues.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Though I'd stop by and offer my thoughts as well. I'm new to the list and working on building the army. It'll become my main project after taking Tau to Fall In this weekend so I should be able to start helping more with play testing.

I agree on the Contagion Engines. They're just priced to high for consideration in a fairly expensive list. I think pushing up the price of the Plague Tower should help this also since right now, for my lists at least, those two are competing for space.

For Plague Towers, I think bumping them by 25 pts is fine. I don't usually use them as transports, but this will make weight felt more in building.

I'm not sure about adding the Plague Towers to the elite slot. Doesn't feel exactly right, but I understand the balance issues. Would there be a way to put a restriction on how many may be brought in an army, ie: 0-4? As a follow up, how many do we think are considered as "too many" in a list to the point where the they've broken the list?

Thanks for the time and effort you're putting into this!

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The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Much appreciated!



It would be possible to have a '0-x per 3,000 points' system, but I'm not a huge fan of that when there's already the Elite and Support Formations system. It feels a bit clunky to be using both at once.

'How many is too many' is definitely a good question - thoughts from other players?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Don't know, but im sure you'd like to show me ! :-)