0.3.1 is up in the first post, ready for the weekend.


Notable Changes

Unit Change - Plague Ship changed to a single formation of 2D6+3 Plague Zombies after the barrage, applying Teleport rules.

Rolling for BMs should make it OK to keep the Plague Ship at 200pt, but obviously playtest feedback will be appreciated.


Unit Change - Grave Warden Terminator Alchemical Weapons name change and upgraded to give a 15cm ranged attack, also Ignore Cover.

As mentioned up-thread, I've tweaked the Grave Wardens to have Ignore Cover on their 'Alchemical Launchers' Small Arms Extra Attack, and given them a 15cm AP4+ Ignore Cover ranged weapon.


Additional Unit - an experimental Nurgling Swarm added to the Daemon Pool.

v4 of the Nurgling idea has been added to the PDF for testing. I've called them Nurgling Swarms to distinguish them from the Ghallamore Incursion version of the unit.


Additional Unit - Death Guard Assault Dreadnought loses all ranged AT in return for Heavy Alchemical Launchers.

A slightly revised version of the close quarters Dread idea has been added to the PDF for testing. This uses a longer range version of the Grave Warden's Alchemical Launchers and replaces the Twin Autocannon completely. So it now has no AT capability outside of assaults, but has an EA MW in base contact or an EA Ignore Cover in Firefights or supporting fire. I can see this getting used with Terminators as an actual garrison instead of always teleporting them in.


Upgrade Change - if a Daemon Prince replaces the Lord of pestilence, he gains the Supreme Commander ability.

Just to make it clear that you can put them both on the same unit.


Army Rule Addition - Implacable Advance now adds a +1 modifier for Marshal actions.

As discussed up-thread. A Deathwing-style 'all formations count as having a Leader' ability would be more fitting, but this is tried and tested and makes it easier for players when swapping between NetEA and EpicUK lists.


SUMMARY

This now sees all major changes and ideas included in the PDF. Obviously the new units and formation (Beasts of Nurgle, Nurgling Swarms, DG Dreads, DG Assault Dreads, Vindicator formation) are likely to see tweaks based on playtest experience, but I think this is pretty final in terms of new stuff.

Walker note - now that there are two Dreadnought variants, three Defiler variants looks excessive. Unless anyone makes an impassioned defence, the standard Defiler will probably be removed as an option. They do go well with Plague Towers, but Plague Towers don't really need the help...

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Good stuff! I approve! :-)

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https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

All looking good, can I suggest you change the contagion towers back to contagion engines as that is what they are, and have always been called, the entry in the TP is clearly due to someone making a small mistake

Also is it beyond the realm of possibility to have blight drones as int2+? They are daemon engines after all and int2+ is kinda their thing also if you want to match the RC list then that would help (not saying you should, I'm all for diversity)

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Just some guy

My hobby/painting threads

Army Forge List Co-ordinator

Ta and ta!

Contagions have a long and confusing history.

They were originally sold as a Contagion of Nurgle with no tower or engine in the name: http://www.solegends.com/citcat1995-6/c ... 149-01.htm but as they were Contagion of Nurgle Daemon Engines players sometimes called them Contagion Engines rather than Contagions. I don't remember ever seeing them called this in official publications at the time, but my WDs aren't accessible at the moment.

The original 2008 LatD list had Nurgle Contagion Towers with Ignore Cover on the Vomit Cannon.

The 2014 Compendium has Contagion Towers with Disrupt on the Vomit Cannon.

The TP site has Contagion Towers with Ignore Cover on the Vomit Cannon, so matches the original, apart from leaving off 'Nurgle'.

EpicUK has Contagion Engines with no special rules on the Vomit Cannon.

Having checked all of those sources (apart from SoL) before changing anything, matching the TP site and the original version for this edition seemed like the sensible option, and helps distinguish them from the EpicUK equivalent with it's different weapon profiles.


For Blight Drones, Initiative 2+ is something I'm seriously considering, but they're rarer in this list as they're limited to one elite formation slot per Retinue (shared with Terminators) compared to two support per core in Red Corsairs. So there's at least some justification for them being more elite here.

I was also thinking about Defilers, which are also Daemon Engines but don't seem to default to I2+.

To rephrase all that, I'm keeping an Initiative reduction in reserve as a nerf if feedback shows DG Blight Drones to be too powerful.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

I got a 2k game in on Tuesday, but it was a custom mission refresher game for someone getting back into EA, so not really worth a batrep. However I did try out some of the new stuff.

Nurglings were summoned before an Engage action because of their loss not counting towards combat res (the formation was one BM away from breaking) but I messed up the positioning and let a Plague Hulk get into combat and lost it, breaking the formation even though they won. However I can see this being a very useful tactic at the cost of 'sacrificing' some of the Daemon Pool as part of a clipping assault. The Plague Hulk had caused a big mess in the previous turn, with summoned Lesser Daemons letting him make good use of the double move for Infiltrator to reach base contact.*

*EDIT - 5cm coherency for the summoned Daemon plus the base width plus 15cm Engage move for the Daemon plus a further 5cm coherency and the Plague Hulk's base width means that you can move the Plague Hulk around 30cm from its initial position.

A Firefight-tooled up Death Guard Terminator formation Engaged a Devastator formation, rolling seven FF3+ dice including a MW. Only three hit (albeit resulting in three kills), but the two hits back managed to get through the armour save, the reinforced save and the invulnerable save, killing half the formation including the Sorcerer Lord and breaking them regardless of the combat result. To add insult to injury, they also lost the combat.

Blight Drones did a good job of zipping around the battlefield taking out infantry. They're likely to drop to Initiative 2+.

A Vindicator formation would have done a good job of Sustaining against the loyalist Terminators, but failed the activation roll due to a BM, then got FREEM!ed by four Land Raiders.

Beasts of Nurgle may need some further tweaking to balance them against Plaguebearers - with equal ARM and CC and better FF they're too obvious a default choice in most assaults. Even if you're facing infantry in a building which they can't enter due to Mounted, their FF5+ Ignore Cover is roughly as good as the Plaguebearers' CC4+.

In the end it went to the loyalists for holding more objectives, largely because of the DG Terminators messing up.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

I'm currently working on some terminators. I hope mine do better than yours did...
Interesting work here on the daemons. I look forward to trying them out.
Nice work on including the Vindicators unit too. Very fluffy in my opinion.

Also for what it's worth, I agree with making the blight drones Init 2+.

Keep up the good work, I'll try and get some games in.

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.'.
http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

Ta!

After the DG Terminators went down we were both wheezing and barely able to talk from laughing so hard, the previous week's intro game had involved seven successful Invulnerable Saves in a row, four on my side and three by SM characters...

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

After being busy with other gaming systems for a while I've got a full 3k test game lined up for next week against Speed Freaks.

Rather than try out one of the extreme lists (six Plague Towers or other silliness) I'm going to take a more rounded list to give me a baseline. It'll look something like this, 3000pt on the dot:

DG Retinue 575pt BTS
Sorcerer Lord
Havocs upgrade
Assault Dreads x 2
Chaos Spawn x 3
Desecrator x 1

This will garrison, and try to position so that the Assault Dreads can give supporting fire for nearby assaults.

DG Retinue 450pt
Lord of Pestilence Warlord
Havocs upgrade
Contagion Tower

This may garrison to support the BTS but I'm also considering using it as a tough Blitz guard and sustaining with the 1BP from the Contagion Tower.

Walker Horde 350pt
Desecrator x 3, Plague Hulk x 1
Chaos Spawn x 3

This is likely to garrison as centrally as possible to provide air cover, using the Chaos Spawn to stretch forwards from the Blitz if necessary, with the Plague Hulk to give them some more CC punch, although I'm also considering making all four of them Desecrators as they're still pretty beefy in CC.

Armoured Assault Company (6 Vindicators) 350pt
Plague Hulk

The Plague Hulk has the same 20cm move and Walker as the Vindicators, and adds a lot of CC punch in case the Vindicators get assaulted too closely.

Plague Tower 325pt

Plague Tower 325pt

Because Disrupt Barrage and Ork opponents go together so well.
I was considering making it a formation of two (and therefore the BTS) for the chance of the magical 10BPs, but it's already only a nine activation list and the Zombies from the Plagueship aren't likely to stay unbroken for long.

Plagueship 200pt

As above, and it needs testing, and it leaves a bunch of Zombies in the way of the advance.

Blight Drones 250pt

General harassment, supporting fire as needed, and about the only formation with a chance of getting to the enemy Blitz objective...

Plaguereaper 200pt

Again, Disrupt Barrage albeit with very short range. This may be the Blitz guard depending on how the garrisoning opportunities play out, otherwise it will be advancing up behind the Plague Towers to add supporting fire etc.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Looking forward to the battle report. I played a Ghaz list last year using a similar death guard force. My opponent used a lot of Zzap spam and a few large formations of infantry. The zap spam ripped my towers apart before the did really anything. My garrisoning large infantry formations did well at holding the objectives but in the end fell to the hordes of ork infantry. It was a lot of fun though I throughly enjoyed the game despite the crushing defeat. Should be interesting to see how the list fairs against an even more mobile horde army.

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Necron AC (click to see current Necron list threads)
Toronto Wargaming Group

Has anyone managed to get some games in with 0.3.1?

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

atension - yes, I can see Zzap-spam being an issue for Death Guard, fortunately that's not an option for Speed Freaks as they only have MW on the single Mek Biker Commander and on the Mekboy Speedstas which are very limited availability, and no TK at all.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Yep I'm well aware of the differences in the Ghaz and Freaks lists.

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Necron AC (click to see current Necron list threads)
Toronto Wargaming Group

yeah, yeah, Mr know-it-all...

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https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Liking this version of the death guard, so will do some testing got a game for next friday using this-
Incompertus, 3000 POINTS
Death Guard V0.3.1
==================================================
DAEMON POOL [45]
3 Plaguebearer
DEATH GUARD RETINUE [415]
Lord of Pestilence (Supreme Commander), 7 Plague Marines, Daemonic Pact (includes 1 Plaguebearer), 4 Death Guard Rhino
DEATH GUARD RETINUE [390]
Nurgle Sorcerer, 4 Plague Marines, 3 Havoc, Daemonic Pact (includes 1 Plaguebearer), 4 Death Guard Rhino
DEATH SHROUD TERMINATORS [425]
Plague Lord, 2 Death Shroud Terminator, 2 Grave Warden Terminator, Daemonic Pact (includes 1 Plaguebearer)
BLIGHT DRONE SWARM [250]
5 Blight Drones
WALKER HORDE [275]
4 Death Guard Desecrator
ARMOURED ASSAULT COMPANY [250]
6 Nurgle Vindicator
FESTER TITAN [275]
FESTER TITAN [275]
DEATH GUARD HELLBLADES [200]
3 Death Guard Hellblade Fighters
PLAGUE SHIP [200]

I will try to test nurglings as scout jobies.

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http://brokenuniverse1978.blogspot.co.uk

I'll be very interested to hear the results with that list, I can never bring myself to leave out the Havocs from a Retinue!

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion