The latest draft of the Armies of the Warmaster pack for The Siege of Terra is now online.

Thousand Sons are still missing and not all of your feedback has made it into this draft. Expect both to be attended to for 1.3

Thank you for your patience. The Siege continues!

Armies of the Warmaster Pack

with regards to the Death Guard pack, im guessing that it will be finished in 1.3?

one thing i noticed...

could the Justaerin Terminators possibly have the special rule of being fearless

as mainly Abaddon uses this as his personal retinue but he loses the Fearless rule when he joins them and if anything, i wouldnt understand why if a unit is being joined by someone such as abaddon... They suddenly lose faith...

Just and idea and has nothing to do at all with me being the only one using this army...

honest

in all seriousness it just struck me as odd

apart from that, nice work on the pack, would be nice to see what gifts my brothers Mortarion and Magnus can bestow upon terra...



nice one Ulf

SF

It looks really good so far. Everyone is getting alot of love! Well maybe not the poor Deathguard and Thousand Sons players, although with the new book out for the Thousand sons I bet they will have some real treats coming.

Deathguard.

Is there a reason why Grulgor is missing from the Deathguard pack, did he Die?

The Plague Marines seem hard done by especially compared to the World Eaters Bezerkers. They are more expensive than the Chaos Codex Plague Marines but worse.

What happened to there boltguns and blight grenades? Now they cant run they won't even have a chance to fire there Bolt Pistol

Are they intentionally only aloud the one Special Weapon?

Not seeing the rules for Typhus or Mortarion so they could have new legion tactics. But isnt the poison resistance ability kinda useless unless the Deathguard player is planning to drop pod a bunch of Barbarus stings ontop of his own guys.

The World Eaters have, Rage, Fearless and +1 Weapon Skill! The Deathguard have poison resitance...

I hope that Helps.
Cheers.
Mike.

PS. I may have completly missed it but the Iron Warriors dont seem to be fighting in a warzone.

PSS. Are the Deathguard now all Plague Marines?

same feeling........

Yeah i have the same feeling on Death Guard as well.

They seem to be lacking somewhat.

According to lexicanum Grulgor was last seen leading a company during the Medusa V campaign so he is alive according to them. I'm hoping he is because I just made a model for him. Which included buying warlord queek just to get a part of his weapon.

My idea of the death guard were foot slogging troops who are hard to kill. (Nurgle personified) Supported by the plaguebearer lackies.

As far as I know the fluff tells us that the death guard are layed low in their ships on the way to Terra and mortarion makes a deal with Nurgle to prevent the loss of his legion. Typhus becomes home to Jeff Goldblum and his mates and the rest are made into plague marines. This happens before the final battle so to speak.

Currently the way i'm looking at it is the plague marines aren't worth the valuable elite slot they take up. the bezerkers as Shaw points out have been buffed beyond the their current rule set in the CSM dex. But it seems that for roughly the same points the PM have been taken down a peg or two. Blight grenades, the ability to have two special weapons, running and our precious boltguns have been exchanged for the same toughness but without the brackets and rending CC weapons. If you give us back our stuff keep the brackets and give us the rending CC weapon I think that makes for an elite unit. Hard to kill but not really anymore unbeatable than their 40k counterparts.

I'm playing like most are for fluff reasons.So I want to be able to field a fluff army. I'm sure there are many interpretations on what that consists of. To me though I want some plague marines and some plaguebearers because I feel they are the mainstay of the death guard forces. If I have two squads of each that would leave very little left in the way of elite choices. I thought that plague marines would just be a given and a troop choice. I was hoping that we would have something different to play with elite wise. perhaps a plague terminator squad.

Anyway I'm tired now and I shall go to bed now that I have this off my chest.

p.s give us our boltguns back

cheers

Rob

Hi Ulf,

Many thanks for all your hard work in getting this out to us.

I'm really pleased with the selection of characters that you've given the Word Bearers and the ability to take Daemon Princes and daemon troops from Codex: Daemons is great.

However, I'm wondering why we're lacking our signature unit: The possessed. While they aren't particularly effective, they really help to hammer home the Word Bearer's devotion to chaos.

Also, while I can understand the need to balance the Daemonic Ally ability, my total ineptitude at rolling dice, makes me think that the current system is less than balanced, particularly as units can potentially disappear from the battlefield on turn 2. The horrible refrain "anything but a one" spring to mind!

Personally, I'd rather see a points hike (10-15% seems reasonable) for daemonic allies and a limit (no more than 3 slots or some such).

Looking nice!

A couple of suggestions:
Daemons
A lot of the Siege of Terra background has daemons taking a fairly major role – bloodthirsters rampaging around, hordes of monsters embattled at the Gate etc., so I'd really like to see more daemon thingies available to the Renegade legions – and I'd imagine there're a lot of old-skool cult players who have some 'proper' cult daemons in mothballs.

Of course, I don't want to steal the dedicated Daemon players' schtick, so I'd kinda like to see these limited to the cult legions at this point – perhaps a special Corrupt rule given to the Legion Tactics that allows daemon packs – but only of the relevant god; and with Word Bearers (and possible Sons of Horus?) retaining the ability to mix-and-match, summoning daemons from all their filthy gods .

If Alphas, Night Lords and Iron Warriors desperately want daemonic allies, they've still got lesser daemons, representing their lesser devotion.


I also think that Possessed marines are a cool visual link to how debased and monstrous these twisted Astartes have become (and we have the special Red Angel possessed already). Perhaps these could also appear in the Cult legions and Sons of Horus/Word Bearers?

If you're concerned about balance, you could create special character(s) for the different legions that allows access to Possessed and relevant daemons – but at the cost of limiting some other items. I'm not entirely sure what would be limited (p'raps vehicles/transports to offset the increased mobility, or Vanguard and Sternguard to represent the veterans giving themselves over to Daemons?), but then, I'm not writing the packs!

+++
Daemon Packs
I'd also echo Lucifer216's point about the 'fleeting aid' available to the Word Bearers. While I think it's a nice limiting factor, I'd mute it somewhat to the following:

1) Units taken as daemonic allies never count as scoring (this prevents 'objective swamping' by monstrous creatures).

2) Alter the 'remove the unit on D6 against game turn' to 'test on Ld with current game turn modifier – take a saveable wound for every 1 you fail by'
e.g. Third turn, a pack of Bloodletters tests against their LD at -3. For each point they fail by, they take a wound and must make a save.

The reason I like this approach is that it's not so dependent on luck (so no horrid disappointments for the Word Bearers as all their daemons disappear at once ), is scaleable, and the opponent can affect it with Sisters of Silence etc, which I think would be a nice touch, and hopefully encourage their use – they were hugely outnumbered by the Big Gold Buggers last time.

On a related note, does the current 'fleeting aid' thing only apply to the Word Bearers? I'm not too au fait with Codex: Daemons, so I'm not sure if it applies to units taken by the other legions.

Hope that's useful feedback – looking forward to seeing how the Thousand Sons appear!

yeah, like Shaw, i tend to hink some renegade legions really have lousy legion tactics, if you'll excuse me...

could the Death Guard get back the Bolter Drill in their legion tactic, as they had during the Great Crusade ?

i don't think this would be overpowerfull.

could the Death Guard get back the Bolter Drill in their legion tactic, as they had during the Great Crusade ?

i don't think this would be overpowerfull.

I think this was removed precisely because the feedback was that it was felt to be too powerful, wasn't it?

Could be entirely mistaken, of course!

A muted 'feel no pain' would be cool – 6+/5+? – as a Death Guard tactic, but what I'd really like to see is reduction of all weapon range to 18in, and relentless rolled out universally...

I hasten to add that I don't reckon that's a good idea (in fact, it'd probably prove hideously imbalanced!) just a characterful one!

+++Edit+++
Quick thought for a possible Legion Tactic that might be suitable for Death Guard before they became completely Plague Marines – how about a mechanic similar to the Eldar Bladestorm? Three shots at rapid fire range, but no shooting on the following turn.

That'd nicely represent a force that revolves around grinding forward, unleashing hell, then reloading, without being overly powerful/complex.

The same mechanic might just as easily be applied to any of the shootier legions – perhaps with the addition of 'Drill-Sergeant' upgrades, similar to the Priest-Sergeants etc.