Warhammer 40K Hot Mess: Death Guard – Why GW, Why?
Finally we’re back to doing the Warhammer 40K weekly Hot Mess. With a new 10th Edition Death Guard are still just kind of a mess.
What makes them bad right now is that the army doesn’t have any real heart. It’s army rules just aren’t doing enough to match the fluff and how we think they should work. It just doesn’t fit. The Death Guard are not tough, they are not nearly as deadly as they should be, and their aura is just not that good in a world of high toughness. So what the heck should we even do?
Make Death Guard Tougher
Let’s start at the top and the whole toughness aspects. I don’t think we need to blow up their Toughness like all the vehicles have had happen. It does a lot of weird stuff to math and then causes other interesting things in anti effects, plus’s to wounds, and other fun things. I think the easiest thing would be that the army has a -1 to wound, they ignore Anti effects, and can never be wounded better. This would mean everything would have issues just wounding them in general and you would never see a 2+ to wound work.
I left the Rerolls alone as the hope is we would see less rerolls in general when codexes come out as well as some other options in the future. I am ok with Rerolls I just don’t like the sheer plethora of them we see within very specific armies. Having no rerolls available to your army is a pretty crappy rule.
Fix Their Aura
That would shore up its toughness aspects and next let’s look at the Aura. The whole -1 to toughness is just not the good – especially when things are Toughness 12. It would be a heck of a lot easier to just say the army gets a +1 to wound if within its Contagion range. This would push things to the 5+ to wound you would want on tough things as well as letting cool 4+ to 3+ that is important for all their short range bolsters.
Shifting the Aura up would just make the army better and let it balance out the lost of fast thing. Heck it would make the Helbrute interesting too because they could “gift” the Contagion with a rain of gross Bolter fire. I want the Contagion to be a thing and letting it interact in a way that isn’t just reducing the over push Toughness on things.
From there I would also look at a lot more Devastating Wounds for the army as a whole. Lethal hits can be interesting – but without high rate of fire power it becomes way to hit or miss. But Devastating Wounds on a bunch of 1 damage options might be ok. Heck it is probably the biggest issue with the whole Devastating Wounds right now is by throwing it on high damage options that just don’t need it.
Change Death Guard Weapons
Finally I would also shift a lot of their weapons to either Assault to allow them to Advance and shoot. Or figure out some way a lot of Death Guard units can be assisted by character auras – to allow the army to Advance and act as normal. Four-inch movement is pretty dang slow, but if you allow them to Advance and still be useful it could be neat way to balance things away from Advance and Charge options.
The army is supposed to be a wave of slow but unstoppable grossness. Letting them break over enemy armies like a rotten waterfall of death would make it interesting. I understand the army is supposed to be slow but it still needs to work in some way. Letting it advance and shoot is perfectly fine in the new 10th edition world of bullets reigning over gross scythes of mediocrity.
Fix Characters To Be Better Helpers
The characters for the army needs a few tweaks. The Plague Caster should let things be tougher. The Healer needs to heal things better and gift out FNP within its Contagion. The Icon Bearer needs to change and shift the Contagion options as well. Heck the whole plague things in the last book could just be the different Contagions each of the blessed options of Nurgle give out. This way you could create unique little units of snotty nonsense.
Death Guard just need small tweaks to their army to keep the same theme and still be good. They can be slow but that means they should be tough. They should also just be decent with consistent firepower that isn’t super lasers but instead rotten bullets of death.
They shouldn’t have to wait a year to be useful. I pray that Grandfather Nurgle will send them a FAQ sooner than later.
