Death Guard 2.0 v1.0

Death Guard 2.0 v1.0.zip
I was quite disappointed with the Death Guard index. They've lost their identity, they're not very durable and they're generally weaker and more expensive than other factions and nevermind that, there's just some flat-out retarded design choices and mistakes here. This is my attempt to fix that, giving a look at everything, adjusting prices and giving them a well-deserved Feel No Pain to bring them back to "toughest army in the game" status. I'm not saying I'm fanboying out here, they were also given some deserved point increases to coincide with this but some units didn't because, well, they weren't good enough to begin with. I wrote some "patch notes" while I made this, they're unscripted and get ranty but it sums up my thoughts quite well.

Instead of lowering toughness, nurgle's gift lowers the movement and advance/charges of enemies the same way similar abilities do. I was debating making it halve movement and -1 to advance/charge but that seemed too oppressive, especially when combined with other anti-movement things. The lower toughness ability clashes with all the lethal hits so I thought that having this ability that kinda mires enemies in muck and drags them down to the same level as the death guard was thematically appropriate and more useful, not REALLY powerful but clearly has a purpose, as it should be. It's a bit jank because I have no idea what the hell I'm doing at all, basically if you start a phase within contagion range, the ability takes effect until the end of the phase. This is to prevent situations where a unit moves slightly to get out of range and gets the movement back. I don't have anyone to bounce these ideas off of so here's my solution, even though it reads a bit odd.

The idea isn't a new index, it's to give a lookover for everything that got shafted. Not every single thing will be changed, some things will be left alone.

I didn't want to radically change the ability because a fair amount of stuff in the index revolves around contagion range and I didn't wanna bother with revamping all that, it's an unnecessary upheaval.

Disgustingly resilient was changed to work IN THE SHOOTING PHASE as well and all units (the ones that should have it at least) have a 5+++ because when introducing universal rules back into the game, why the fuck do death guard not have this one, barely any in total if you count abilities. I'm so fucking mad about how the person who wrote the death guard index clearly doesn't know what the hell death guard should be about, hint: it's not pecking high toughness models with automatic wounds. Anyway, it's still 2CP because since the units get a FNP and the fact that it works in the shooting phase now compared to similar effects makes it look fine.

Because cloud of flies clashes with disgustingly resilient as the durability stratagem (and because there's a CSM stratagem that's literally the same but better), I replaced it with an different one. It was gonna be a buff for torrent weapons but there's enough weapon-boosting stratagems already here. This one lowers the OC of an enemy, fitting into that "drag them down with you" theme I've started to like so much.

Was reading goonhammer for differing opinions and they complained about boilblight only working for the unit in contagion range but in the index, it says "weapon equipped by a death guard model from your army" which is specifically different from other strats, was it FAQed or did he read it wrong? I dunno. This is kinda off-topic.

Enhancements mostly unchanged. The droning was changed to forcing a battle-shock test on one unit within contagion range at the end of the movement phase. The regular ability didn't really synergise well with anything else and it felt a little pointless (aside from it being super cheap but that's just boring), increased in price to compensate.

Winged daemon prince was kept the same but the price was decreased as I don't think it's 45 points better. Price for both was increased anyway.

Foot prince gives out a -1 to hit in melee and Typhus gives stealth instead.

Nothing for generic chaos lords aside from a points increase to coincide with the buff. They're fine. I'm not gonna list every little change like this from here.

On that note, most units are generally being increased in price, unless specifically being buffed, because they're getting their FNP back.

I wonder if the thing the regular data devs were complaining about was the inability to add modifiers in an entry link. It's pretty annoying.

Terminators and the like are bumped back to 5" movement.

Abundance of sickness for the lord of contagion was changed. This was not only to bring it more in-line with a lord of virulence in terms of usefulness but because it was too samey with the chaos lord ability. It dampens attacks in melee.

Wondering if you could combine nurgle's gift with the enhancement and a malignant plaguecaster to practically freeze a unit in place. Hey, if you wanna try getting all these things in one place to do that, be my guest.

Dude, FUCK these weapon options, I guess being more beginner friendly stops at "don't you fucking dare use any parts outside of the box". Pain in the ass to make in battlescribe. Doing the awkward "must take this many models" thing was surprisingly easy though, technically you don't have to take that many models but you pay for the increased number regardless, I'm too lazy to take it back in battlescribe though.

Replaced the plague marines ability because it was so situational and minor, it's pointless compared to all sorts of good shit other units get like "re-roll wounds on objectives" or whatever. It can now ignore modifiers to move/advance/charge so they don't get slowed to a crawl by the multitude of new movement modifiers in the game, which is still situational but actually really useful if it pops up. Points bumped up to 21 per model basically but this means that 7 models is uneven, I wasn't gonna price the models at 25 points just to make it even, so you've got an awkward number of points if you use 7.

Death guard cultists don't get any FNP. I think they're fine as-is, being able to scout and a 6" move plus some special weapons gives them a use over poxwalkers.

Speaking of which, poxwalkers are at 5.5 points. 6 points for an extremely slow footslogger? No thanks. Problem is I would put them at 5 points if it wasn't for the cultists which are shared with other factions, gotta keep consistent with those and I think 5 point poxwalkers would make them less appealing by comparison considering they're fighting for the same spot, basically.

The foetid virion models, that group of colourful buff characters, are unchanged. I like what they do, they're all useful to some degree.

The blightlord ability was kinda weak, very situational and is overwritten by the LoV which is probably one of the characters you'll want to be using a lot. I replaced it with a solid one that gives them a once-per-turn FNP 4+ against overwatch attacks, I like this one. Price bumped up to 41 points per model thanks to the buffs, which equals them to other terminators at the least, weaker melee but significantly more durable.

Death guard helbrute kept the same, meaning he can slow units down across the map which is a hefty boost compared to the old version. I debated increasing the points cost but the world eaters one is less expensive despite having a very good ability so I've kept it the same.

Seriously, why the fuck does the blight-hauler ability only work on vehicles? 99% of abilities like this got changed in 10th because having your anti-big ability suddenly not work because of an arbitrary keyword was DUMB, of course death guard still got shit on (haha), seriously though this is stupid and should never be the case.

Decent points decrease for the bloat-drone, what's worth 20 points more on this model over a blight-hauler?

Plagueburst had toughness increased to 11 (literally). I started thinking if I should break consistency with other factions and change the points cost of some identical units like defilers because they're a bit overpriced here, I want to do this because if I keep the plagueburst crawler so much cheaper, it becomes a significantly better option than the defiler and that's bad. Here's what I'm gonna do: add a recommended points cost and an official points cost, you pick which one to use, everyone's happy.

Pondered adding possessed back but I think that goes against the point of this homebrew.

Mortarion no longer ignores his own -1 to hit thanks to lord of the death guard. If it was an intentional effect, why even have the bracket? Makes no sense, I'm assuming it's an error because GW is the type of company to release FAQs for books before they're even released and this index has some errors already.

Gave the miasmic malignifier a boost. Really annoying how there are universal rules and still several copied abilities, like fortifications.

Want to know something funny? The person who wrote the death guard index cared so little, the two models of the miasmic malignifier aren't a different model rules-wise. Fixed that shit. GW didn't give a fuck about this index.

Guess that's it. Gonna give everything a once-over and then finish up.