9e army composition query

[me_in_japan]

Howdy - I'm starting to dig into the nitty gritty of army building now, after a long hiatus from the game, and I have a few questions regarding my death guard.

Back when I built my army (like, literally assembled the minis), we didn't have a Death Guard codex. Everybody was just chaos space marines, and if you wanted to be nurgly (or khorny or whatever) you gave your guys Marks and Icons and did the same for your HQ, and that was that. Now, however, not only is that not how it works in the CSM codex, if you're running a Death Guard army you have a whole separate book.

This would be fine, but half my nurgle units aren't in the Death Guard book. I have nurgle bikers, nurgle raptors, nurgle chosen (with plasma guns everywhere), and nurgle devastators, to name a few. None of those units are in the DG book. So, I took a look at the CSM book (well, the wahapage thereof) and while it seems doable to have those units and give them the Mark of Nurgle, I'm left with a few questions. Specifically:

If I make a detachment with those non-DG guys, plus whatever I need to make it a legal detachment, and put it in an army with mostly DG detachments, how does this completely screw me? (I believe that mixing detachments completely screws one, according to el Internetto). If it does completely screw me, that seems a bit rubbish for anyone who didn't happen to build their old CSM army according to the future requirements of the DG book. My admittedly vague and half-arsed understanding of it is not only do the separate detachments not benefit from each others' rules (which makes sense) they actively lose those rules if you mix armies, which seems unnecessarily harsh.

Is there any known reason why these units aren't in the DG book? I mean, the minis exist. Why take em out?

Will this even matter in 6mos to a year, as I believe we're due a new edition sometime in 2023?

Cheers in advance all

Ps : I'm also still really annoyed that you're penalised for taking units in non-multiples of five. My DG all have 7-man units, because flavour. Now I either pay X PL for 5 dudes or 2X PL for 7 dudes. I have to leave 2 guys out of every unit, or pay way over the odds for a proper 7 man unit. Boooooo!

[Jye Nicolson]

OK so the short answer is each army with a 9th edition Codex (so now almost all of them) has a bonus rule of some kind of your list only includes units from that army.

So for example for Drukhari it's Power From Pain, for Craftworlds it's Strands of Fate, for Harlequins it's Luck of the Laughing God. You can make an Aeldari army with a detachment of Craftworlds and a detachment of Drukhari but they would not gain Power from Pain or Strands of Fate. Otherwise they keep all their rules.

Increasingly GW has put in rules for appropriate forces to be able to be added to a list of another army without that army losing its bonus rules. Sometimes this is a unit (Inquisitors or Ephrael Stern can just join any Imperial detachment), othertimes a detachment (a patrol of Harlequins can be added to a Craftworlds or Drukhari army without breaking Strands of Fate or Power from Pain respectively, though they would not themselves get Luck of the Laughing God). This is how I had a force of Nurgle Demons joining my Death Guard on Sunday. But otherwise the incentive to field a list from a single army remains in place.

Why is this?

1. 40k currently has a strong concept of what each army is in terms of composition and behaviour and lots of rules reinforce that. This is also part of the answer to your question as to why they "took out" the Nurgle marines from the Death Guard - they're not treated as a generic Chaos Space Marine army with extras but a distinct army with its own units (mostly) its own models. This is also true of the Thousand Sons and soon the World Eaters. They're no longer intended to be fielded alongside "regular" CSM without paying an opportunity cost, much as I *could* take a cheap battalion of Guard to hold objectives while my Space Wolves do the fighting but there are incentives in place to make that less of a no-brainer. Death Guard remain slow as a wet week outside a few select options.

2. Speaking of a cheap battalion of Guard, in mid 8th many, many tournament players took armies consisting of:

- 1 Knight Castellan
- Exactly 32 Imperial Guard
- As many Blood Angels Captains as would fit

If you are looking for someone to blame for us not being able to have nice things, that's them. But the intention seems to have been giving nice things to people who stick to one army more so than banning soup.

(in the current season of competitive play you actually can't mix *subfractions* of an army - no Ulthwe and Alaitoc in the same army for example. But that's isolated to that mission pack rather than a general rule, and I'm not sure anyone in Aichi is playing with that pack)


In practice we could probably do a houserule if this is making it difficult for you to field your Nurgle folks - obviously you're not doing it for advantage so you could probably just say the older models can be added as a separate patrol ala Demons or Harlequins. They wouldn't get whatever the CSM bonus is (Let the Galaxy Burn? The thing that is like Combat Doctrines but way better and no I'm not bitter ) but your DG could keep Contagions.


The PL thing is a bit different. The current DG Codex appears to be treating the seven Plague Marine squad as a gimmick rather than a proper squad size, so it falls below PL's level of resolution. It's still viable if you use points but doesn't let you double up on special weapons. It's mostly annoying for me because I only have 14 of Grant's beautifully painted Plague Marines so I have to rely on models I painted to make up numbers


Edit: sorry I missed that you were talking about mixing DG and non DG in the same detachment. TLDR: don't do that. That turns off all sorts of rules, I just can't tell you precisely which ones because I've never done that. It might make your army not battle forged? Whereas I have often used a list with detachments from different armies and just gave up Contagions or whatever.

[Jye Nicolson]

OK I think I'm wrong and it's not that bad.

Mixing units that share a keyword (eg Chaos) but not the specific faction keyword (eg Death Guard) will turn off the rules listed under Detachment Abilities in your Codex. So for Death Guard that means Inexorable Advance, as well as Objective Secured for your Infantry (that's not actually that bad in Crusade play, it's more of a problem in Matched Play).

Interestingly it also turns off some of the rules that are restrictions rather than buffs - so I think you could have multiple Lords of Contagion or extra Poxwalkers or whatever in such a detachment. Your Foetid Virion folks would go back to taking up Elite slots though.

This still isn't a great idea, since your DG are now slower and your CSM are giving up Detachment Abilities from their book too but it doesn't look like the army implodes or anything.

[The Other Dave]

Death Guard will also lose Contagions in a mixed list, which is annoying but not world-ending.

Buy basically, I think, if you want a Nurgle list with a bunch of not-DG-specific units like bikers and raptors and havocs and chosen and such, with some plague marines also, "generic" Chaos Space Marines with heavy application of the Mark of Nurgle is probably the way you want to go. You can still splash in cult marines, and also take the full range of Chaos stuff that's out there, and while you lose some of the DG special rules you gain a lot of flexibility - you're kind of limited on what can get a Mark, you wouldn't get Contagions, and T4 plus the Mark of Nurgle is a bit less resilient than T5 plague marines, but TBH the flexibility in unit and weapon choice* will probably more than make up for it, plus (probably most importantly) you can use all your stuff.

*Particularly with all those fast units and offensive firepower you have. DG are very tough but very very slow, and can be pretty lackluster when it comes to actually being able to kill stuff. Having full DG toughness and Contagions, plus speed and lots of strong weapons, would be real good.

As for PL versus points, it is what it is - TBH and IMO, even power level is wonky enough that if you take 7-strong squads and pay the extra power for them you probably won't generally notice in casual play. If it really bugs you, just use points. Or, again, for playing with us, saying "these 7-strong units of chaos marines are [the PL cost of a 5-strong unit of chaos marines x 1.4] and I don't imagine anyone would bat an eye.

[me_in_japan]

Thank you, Jye, for the very thorough (and no doubt time consuming) answer. It's much appreciated

I may have been unclear in my goals. While I don't exactly like the fact that bikers et al aren't in the DG codex, I can swallow it as long as my non-DG units remain useable in one form or another. I have an ungodly amount of Nurgle marines, so I'm quite able to field a proper, legal detachment of either codex compliant DG or codex compliant nurgle-marked CSM, or even both simultaneously. I was just worried that using both detachments would be sufficiently detrimental to my army overall that id be better off just never using my non DG units. That'd be really annoying, as they're painted, converted, and numerous, thus representing quite the investment of time and money. I'll have a read through of the specific faction perks and decide whether it's a game breaker or not. Regardless, it still vexes me that GW would strip so many units out of an army for reasons of "flavour". It's not like my CSM were a soup army before - they were just CSM. Now GW have forced me to build a soup list if I want to use my own minis, and that rankles.

[Mattb]

To be fair, while the Death Guard lose a lot of stuff, they also gained a lot of new things as well - like zombies, a bunch of plague demon engines and some really cool unique terminators. It's definitely rough if you love your bikers and raptors, but ultimately I think it's better for the game overall since 'Chaos Marines' and 'Death Guard' are now two unique factions with their own units, rules and playstyles rather than two factions that are exactly the same, but one gets more stuff.
If you have a bunch of Chaos Marine units, but none of the newer unique Death Guard units then the best thing to do, I think, is just run a pure Chaos Marine army with a strong Nurgle theme. That would actually be a pretty fun army, I think.

Oh also the power level system can be weirdly restrictive, yeah - it's mostly intended for casual pick up games. Most 40k players use points as it's more balanced and let's you take whatever size unit you want without feeling bad - personally I would actually love to play more games with points rather than PL, so I'd be happy to help you out there!

[me_in_japan]

@dave and Matt - thank you both for your responses.

Particularly @mattb - you've put your finger exactly on the problem. I have a bunch of "old" nurgle marines. I also gave a bunch of death guard. This used to be one army. Now it's half of two armies. I'm not cool with that, even if it is "better for the game" it sucks for me.

Likewise, my dark eldar used to be one, functional army. Now it's three. Yes I know they can do weird things with patrols. I'd rather just play my army without having to buy a bunch of stuff to make what I already have game legal.

And finally, my corsairs. Are no longer viable as an army. They've gone from a whole army, with jetpacks, Corsair jetbikers, unique composition rules and unique psykers, to being gone completely to being a single unit entry in the craftworld codex. That sucks. And to those who may suggest I just play them as craftworlders, i say:

1.my corsairs all have jetpacks.
2. I already have a craftworld army. I don't need two armies from the same codex which are functionally the same, just in different colours.

I have to ask, is completely hosing an entire army with a new codex release normal these days in 40k, or am I just incredibly unlucky with my army choices? I mean, I could handle a few units needing a few new guns, or maybe shifting from Troops to Fast Attack or something, but seriously, I've had 3 whole armies shotgunned out from under me, and every time I start looking into it it just gives me the twitchy-eye.

[The Other Dave]

Fundamentally, with 8th edition on especially, they've moved to a very strong "armies are made only of models that we currently sell" stance, combined with a "having, nay, getting to collect a bunch of new units when the new edition / codex comes out is a feature and not a bug" mentality, meaning that people with big legacy armies will, yes, generally find that lots of their stuff is unusable especially if it was a lot of models that might have been in the rules but never got official non-FW releases (like, say, death guard anything-but-plague-marines-and-terminators, or, well, corsairs at all). GW wants you to see now having two half-armies instead of one full one as an opportunity instead of a problem (you get to collect and paint new stuff to flesh out both your death guard and your non-death-guard plague marines into full legal armies, probably using some of the cool new sculpts they just happen to have, "enjoying collecting and painting" being sort of something they want to encourage in the customer base).

(Which is not to excuse the behavior of course, I can see how it would be frustrating, but it's definitely where GW is coming from.)

[Primarch]

And finally, my corsairs. Are no longer viable as an army. They've gone from a whole army, with jetpacks, Corsair jetbikers, unique composition rules and unique psykers, to being gone completely to being a single unit entry in the craftworld codex. That sucks. And to those who may suggest I just play them as craftworlders, i say:

1.my corsairs all have jetpacks.
2. I already have a craftworld army. I don't need two armies from the same codex which are functionally the same, just in different colours.

I have to ask, is completely hosing an entire army with a new codex release normal these days in 40k, or am I just incredibly unlucky with my army choices?

My Tyrant's Legion say 'Hi!'
The Imperial Armour books were really good in terms of new army builds and options, but FW never seemed to have the resources to keep them up to date.
For your corsairs, my suggestion would be to look very carefully at the current Eldar books and put together some rules/stats based on similar options and give them a try. Then refine them and try again until you get a reasonably balanced force.

[Jye Nicolson]

Corsairs may actually be playable, at least to some extent, there are Corsair units in the Forge World Legends document: https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp- ... 5VmR4f.pdf

I don't know if that covers all your figures but I'm sure any of us would be more than happy to play against a Legends list.

Edit: the Corsair units in that doc have rules that state they do NOT break army or detachment rules for Craftworlds or Drukhari so you can actually slap them into either army as you please.