Goatboy’s FW Unit Breakdown: The Decimator
The Forge World Decimator is back with some tweaks. Let’s find out what Goatboy thinks of this Chaos Unit from Forge World.
Goatboy here again with another little break down of a FW unit. The Decimator was an interesting model in the older set of FW rules. It was one of the few target mortal wound generating units for Chaos mixed with a slew of Keywords to help it put it a bit over the top – like Daemon Engine and hanging out with its best friend the Lord Discordant. Now with the updated set of FW rules the Decimator did take a small nerf – but not in the ways I expected it to. Let’s get ready for a deep dive into the maw of Chaos and see if this thing is still worth it.
The Armor Save is a 3+ across the board – sorry about the glare.
Let’s talk about the good things about this update. First of all the model didn’t get Martial Legacy like a lot of the other Chaos Dreadnought like options. That is a good thing as you can easily take 3 of these models and not worry about having to be Red Corsairs to deal with the CP drain. This is great and a big plus to why this guy is actually staying good. On top of that they also kept their Regeneration, kept their weapon options (with tweaks), and stayed a Daemon Engine. These are all things that let it stay in the good section.
Now onto the bad side of things – they lost their ability to not care about lost wounds as they have a Degrading profile. This did come with 4 extra wounds but it means you need to care about their wound total as once they hit 6 wounds it becomes a lot harder to get the damage output you used to have. On top of that – they got slower too which is a bit of a bummer. Their Mortal wound output – while still there – is now different in that you have to roll to wound. A 2+ causes a mortal wound so while it isn’t nearly as amazing when you would throw out 4-12 shots and just told your opponent to take some mortal wounds it is probably for the best it got a smaller nerf. It also means that any kind of reroll wound option might be needed.
So overall I think the changes are minor in how they are going to work as I expect these models to continue to be a backbone “damage” unit that is designed to sit midfield, throw out some mortal wounds, and have a fat enough butt to stay on an objective or two. Plus they sorta got cheaper to by going to 180 points for your Mortal wound monster. The bigger issue in all of this is that can these guys show up for Death Guard? It is looking like a “no” right now with the rules but we could see it?
I can see any Chaos Space Marine armies that are running Lord Discordants to run 3 of these guys now as they are one of the only ways to get massed Mortal wound damage out there beyond the current “plague grenade” bomb and a few other massed Smite like options. Will we see these guys show up more? It depends on if will ever get a true Chaos Space Marine update in the coming year.
Until next time this is Goatboy saying Death to the False Emperor!
