Goatboy’s 40K: New Death Guard Are Sick!
Let’s talk all about those new Death Guard Rules. This army looks SICK!
I won’t lie the lack of a new DG book did have me sad – but thankfully GW is giving us some nice bits of information before the book comes out. Overall I am pretty happy and even though I think a few things are a bit of a nerf – it is a nerf in the right direction. The direction of making an easier but effective army to play. I haven’t really had the chance to play a lot of the new edition so seeing that one of my favorite armies looks to be set up to run pretty simply and in the way I like it (big stompy monster bits), has me excited to see the new book come out. Let’s go over the 5 bits of information and see what I think.
Inexorable Advance
The big changes I am seeing in this book is that the army gets a bunch of rules that look to be always “turned” on if you are Death Guard army. This is great as while I like neat and interactive rules – having them be a bit difficult to keep up with can be annoying. I remember how I had to create “power” cards and tokens for my flying circus army and I am happy to see the rules seem to be very simple and effective that are always “working”. There doesn’t seem to be a dial of some sort I need to keep up with other than X turn means this gross stank is this big now. With that, the first rule released was Inexorable Advance which could be really interesting – again depending on who gets it and what kind of weapons they have. I call this the most regular Marine like rule we have seen as it feels designed to help those heavy weapons we could see show up in the Death Guard army. Could you imagine if we had things like Heavy Bolters for regular Plague Marines or just some Multi-Meltas beyond living on a Vehicle? I like the rule, it makes sense with how the army is supposed to play, and hopefully will indicate more rules to help make the regular Bolter deadly for them that isn’t just a copy of the Tactical Doctrine.
Deadly Pathogens
Next up with have one of the more interesting ones in that we didn’t get a ton of information other than it could make things more deadly. The Deadly Pathogens is an upgrade you can do to Plague Weapons to make them better – almost like how a lot of armies from Psychic Awakening got upgrades to regular options. I like this as it a way to make unique relics for your army without having to always take the same relic. I hope we see this in other armies beyond the whole default “Master Crafted” we see on the Marine side of things. Still, we only saw one rule which is just reroll the number of attacks bonus and I am hoping we see some other things show up on the ew icky gross meter.
Remorseless
The next rule was Remorseless and it feels like another one of those – look we can make leadership matter rules so will make a rule that makes leadership not matter. I don’t know how GW will fix Leadership to truly matter as so many armies have options to ignore it or abilities that just don’t care. I don’t think our Leadership methods now are bad – it’s just we don’t always give a toot about it. It continues in the realm of either nothing happens or holy crap I wrecked myself. This rule here lets you ignore any modifiers to the leadership role you make after you failed it so it could matter for big blobs of Plague Marines or whatever else we get to work (Pox Walkers?). I don’t think it is completely terrible and I hope the DG units don’t pay a pretty penny for points on what is a rule that might not have a true need yet.
Disgustingly Resiliant
On the 4th day of Stank Festival GW gave unto me a big change in Disgustingly Resilient. First, let me say yes it is a nerf – but it isn’t one I care too much about. We lost FNP but gained an extra wound and most likely extra attacks on a lot of my units. We also removed a ton of extra “dice” rolling time when we had to roll each individual batch of dice to see if something actually dies. This shift in the rule by removing a point of damage on all attacks could be really good if the meta shifts to just killing Marines (Which we all know – most likely will happen) so it isn’t terrible. I really like how it just simplifies things. Of course, my first question in this is – do Helbrutes now get to ignore 2 wounds for DG? We will have to see. The loss of FNP to a Mortal wound would matter more if we saw more Mortal wounds. I don’t know about you – but the current environment only really has one unit that spits out hot mortal wound fire consistently – the Decimator. But now instead of 1 Mortal most likely killing a guy – it now has to take 2 to kill one which is pretty important. Again if the game turns to more 3+ damage weapons this rule might not be amazing but removing FNP and most likely the point increase we would have to see to justify having that rule is probably for the best.
Contagions of Nurgle
Finally we have the Contagions of Nurgle rule explained. We saw it on Morty and now we know what it does. It is interesting as again it shifts the army away from dealing Mortal wounds when you get into range and just making you weak. Overall I think it is pretty neat as it will affect all the DG options by the looks of it so having things like a Suicide Door Rhino going into your opponent’s zone or a ton of those stank pipes all over the table might make this a very annoying army to deal with. I again like it as it is always on – there isn’t a roll to see if it even works. This is huge as again it makes the army work all the time and makes the game faster as you are not rolling a ton of dice trying to hit that sweet 4+ to cause some mortal wounds. I am sure they might have ways to do something neat on the Stratagem front so will just have to see.
Sick Rules!
Overall these 5 rules they showed are unique enough to keep me interested. I am liking how these rules don’t feel overly complex but unique enough to be strong. I think there is this dance of creating powerful and unique rules with the idea that they are actually useful. A game should have the ability to flow from turn to turn without overly complicated layers of interactions you either forget all the time or are not worth trying to “turn on”. I was sad to see Death to the False Emperor gone from Mortarion but then I remembered I always forget that dang rule with most of my armies. I am hoping we see some of this design aspect show up in Chaos Space Marines but we all know the real rules I want is true Legion stuff like the regular “good” guys get.
~All Hail the XIVth Legion!
