Back again, after another months-long break from Epic...
After a game last night plus a load of discussion during the game, followed by reading back through the last three threads, my main priorities for testing and feedback are Beasts of Nurgle, Terminators and a slight reduction in overall complexity.
Beasts of NurgleThe per-unit Nurgle's Rot works reasonably well both mechanically and thematically, the main issue is balancing this in the statline, so that Beasts of Nurgle and Plaguebearers both have their place.
The next version I want to test will be:
Spd 10cm Arm 3+ CC5+ FF-
Ignore Cover on their CC attack.
Expendable, Inv Save, Mounted, Nurgle's Rot, Walker. (And removing the Playfully Distracted rule so that they now count for outnumbering.)
Summon: 1pt
Plaguebearers are going to give you a better chance of winning the assault* due to Spd 15cm CC4+ and FF6+, but the Beasts are going to make the assault more painful for the opponent due to potential multiple Nurgle's Rot rolls.
*Although poor-save enemy formations in cover (as long as it's not Buildings) will still be the prime target for Beasts due to Ignore Cover on their CC5+.
TerminatorsRound and round in circles...
Last night against Tau I took a formation of two Blightlord stands, two Deathshroud stands and a Nurgling Infestation upgrade, but proceeded to lose the strategy roll and they were target priority number one for the Tau, breaking almost instantly from multiple attacks followed up by more attacks to try and wipe them. And then didn't rally. But later in the game the one surviving stand of Blightlords
very nearly beat up a formation of Crisis Suits in an assault. I forgot to apply the 5+ Inv Save, but as one of them died from rolling three ones in a row to save, it wasn't that critical.
Still, it wasn't that useful as a test. As previously discussed, I think it's partly just an issue of hitting the design space limitations of the game mechanics, which aren't designed to represent very expensive INF units.
The Cataphractii rule and 5+ Inv Save will probably go, but I'm considering bumping the Deathshrouds up to 3+ Reinforced.
Rules & Units ReductionOn top of taking away the Playfully Distracted and Cataphractii rules, I'm probably going to take away the PM Retinue's 'free Leader when on an objective' rule which removes a big chunk of DG-specific rules.
I've also been re-writing the transport rules so that Nurgling Infestations aren't listed in the transport capacities - instead,
all AVs in the list can transport one Nurgling Infestation unit (in addition to any existing transport capacity) and all War Engines can transport as many as their starting DC. This reduces the transport text considerably and is much easier to remember. This could lead to some odd edge-cases if the Nurglings are the only units left from a formation, such as hitching a ride on a Fester Titan, but I don't think that's likely to cause issues.
In terms of reducing the number of units etc, the main options would be:
Defiler equivalents - the obvious choice would be dropping the Plague Hulks, as I appear to be the only player using them in any quantity. However this would be a shame as it's the only Chaos Power-specific Defiler that actually exists in the background.
Death Guard Dreadnoughts and DG Assault Dreadnoughts could be rolled into a single unit with two weapon options (like Space Marine Dreads), but I'm not sure this actually reduces things much.
Biologus Putrifier Character - six upgrade characters is manageable, but there's a lot of the overlap with the formation-level Nurgle's Rot upgrade. I might combine this with the Champion or Iconbearer.
I'm also considering combining the Walker (Defiler equivalents) and Dreadnought upgrades into one upgrade of up to three Defilers/Desecrators/Plague Hulks/Dreads/Assault Dreads in any combination. However I'll have to see if Chosen are OK if you can add Desecrators, and Contagions if you can add 50pt Assault Dreads.