The New Death Guard - And Rampant Speculation For Chaos Space Marines Changes

So, the Death Guard book hit the streets today. There are tons of folks who've already posted thoughts on it, and I'll get around to that. First off, though, I'm going to take a minute and speculate on what this might mean for the other chaos fellas. Remember, Death Guard may have a lot of special toys, but they've also got a bunch of units in common with regular Chaos Marines and other stuff. Some of these changes look pretty solid, and some others might be cause for concern. Also, some just plain confuse me.

The Good 

Demon Engines - I would expect them to go to WS/BS3+ across the board. The Lord Discordant may or may not keep his +1 to hit buff at this point; who knows. The Defiler - it got a better gun; flat 3 damage is something. 

 Helbrutes - Note that in an army full of '-1 damage' these guys have it too, but it's called 'Monstrous Resilience' which is pretty neutral. They get another buff in 'Frenzy' - unlike previous iterations where being wounded meant you killed your buddies, being wounded means that you get to re-roll wound rolls of 1. This combines neatly with the 1CP stratagem 'fire frenzy' which is good for +1 to hit and +1 to wound if you shoot everything at the same target. 

 Chaos Spawn - Their random attacks are a little more reliable; it's now 2d3 a model. The interesting thing is this - there's a stratagem, Grandfather's Influence, that grants them Disgustingly Resilient and T6. Makes me wonder if we're going to see similar god-specific stratagems in the new book. I think it's pretty neat. At 23pts a model, it's a reasonable distraction unit - even moreso if you can get some cool buffs out on them.

Miasmic Malignifier - Hear me out - the SM bunker of 'whatever' was so-so, and the Convergence of Dominion is weird to use.  This thing, though?  This thing is pretty solid, pretty cheap, and pretty usable.  The only potential problem is slapping it in a useful spot on a table.  

Foetid Virion - hey, you have lots of buff characters - and now you get 3 per Elite slot.  Rules like these help with army building, and it continues things we saw with Crypteks in the necron book.

The Bad 

Cultists - Hoo boy. Odds are that you have a pile of these guys laying around. They take a couple hits in the Death Guard book - you have to take BUBONIC ASTARTES units alongside these guys, so you can't just bring Demon Engines and cultists. (Not really a problem since this book's good, but worth noting.) Also, they lost Objective Secured. Really, what this does is mean that a big unit can't take a hit from a few guys and still hold an objective - it hurts, but cultists aren't known for sticking around long when bullets and blades start flying. 

 Lord Restrictions - it's not necessarily bad, but expect restrictions similar to marines and company with respect to HQs.  You get one LORD OF THE DEATH GUARD per detachment.  I mean, you were gonna be bringing psykers for our sweet, sweet powers anyway.  Regular Chaos Marines are bound to have solid variety in the the HQs.

Possessed - So, the downside is that they take 2 slots in a Land Raider, and don't fit in a Rhino.  I'd expect errata extending this to the Forge World transports as well.  So long as Warp Time remains a thing, I'm not sure if regular marines will worry as much.

The Ugly 

Plague Marine / Blight Lord Options - it seriously looks like some of the weapon options got dictated by the kits. I'm not sure what's up with this. I feel like someone, somewhere, was like "Oh, I bet it'll be easier if the weapon options are identical to the kit!" except having one of each combi-weapon on a blightlord squad is just weird - and there's not enough of eithr melee option to kit a full 5 out with each.  It's a little nonsensical.

  The Plague Marine squad is just kinda confusing, and is going to take a minute to sort through, especially if you want a melee squad.  There's a bunch of 1-per-5, so you could somehow end up with a 10-man squad that carried two plague cleavers, two flails, two paired plague knives, two meltaguns, a sigil of decay/boltgun, and a sarge with fist and daemonic plague knife.  (Good luck pulling casualties or rolling melee hits in a reasonable amount of time.)

Splitting Chaos Predator Datasheets - I don't see the relevance myself, but whatever.  I guess it matters if you somehow wanted to run 3 of each.

Overall

This seems like a net positive at first glance for Chaos Marines down the road - some of our stuff is bound to get tweaked, the only thing that really confuses me is the "ooh, maybe let's make options similar to what's in the box, except not always!"  Thank the gods that logic passed the Devastators by, because that would probably punt devs HARD.