Way better than having a "Death Guard Heldrake"!

Hello everyone! Zak Ludick here from Cape Town, South Africa and this is a Warhammer 40k - The Great Unit Review Wheel! post!

Now known as the Unit Review Library!

What is it all about? It is not there to just give a stat. It is there to give MY review of the unit!

A New Season of Reviews - A Challenge accepted!

The nefarious trio of World Eaters, Death Guard and Thousand Sons are set to get their new Codexes next. Actually, the great FOUR are each getting their favourite Legion's new Codexes but Emperor's Children did not have an actual Index before.

Anyway. I was speaking to my friend @nicolaasmuller about how my Review posts might not make a lot of money for me, but that cumulatively and on average some of them do good and overall there is an average that at least means that there is good movement of income into the Hobby Fund and that it would grow from there.

We were throwing around some numbers and looking at the average of my last 10 Review Posts, 20 Review posts and 30 Review Posts and we could come up with a range of how much I should theoretically be making across a large sample size of completing the remainder of the reviews for the nefarious trio mentioned above.

So Nicolaas says to me something along the lines of: That would be pretty cool if you could do it in like, a month. Maybe do like 2 a day.

So I explained it would be a little bit more than that but sure... it would be cool... is that a challenge? And yeah... here I am... Challenge accepted. 😎

It is now Day 25 of the Challenge.

Totals so far: 44/70 Datasheets done, 3/3 Army Rules done, 0/6 Detachment Rules done. Total 47/79.

Time elapsed: 83.33%
Progress completed: 59.49%

Hobby Fund - Working myself into the clear

With my hobby posts, I generate a hobby fund. 50% of the income goes into the fund. At the moment I put all my HBD earned from Warhammer posts into my alt account @zakl.hobbyfund.

I am collecting funds in the following ways:

• Blogging about Warhammer to earn HBD
• Accepting donations - Can be sent directly to @zakl.hobbyfund in HBD
• Selling some of the collection to friends.

At the current count I am paying off some hobby debts. I still have $288 to pay off!

Every bit counts!

Back to the review.

The whole project has become quite the Challenge! With so many units to review in the game the consensus in the hobby community is that I will not have enough time to review all of the Datasheets before the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 came out.

I should have started when 10th edition launched!
648 days since the start of 10th Edition.
This is Review #298, I am 350 reviews behind! (Lowest I have been is 314 behind)

Death Guard, Foetid Bloat-Drone

10th Edition Index

A Foetid Bloat-Drone is likely the replacement in the Death Guard army for the Heldrake. An Air-support of sorts. But this is NOT an Aircraft and it actually has OC so it can perform actions on the battlefield and capture objectives!

Already, a huge plus.

Also... they are only like 90pts so you can field 2x of them instead of a Heldrake!

The model costs $60

Let's check its stats!

Stats

Movement 10"
Toughness 9
Save 3+/5++(armor/invul/Feel No Pain)
Wounds 10
Ld 6+
OC 3

Weapons

Standard weapons include: Fleshmower, Plague Probe.

This model can replace its Fleshmower with one of the following:
1x Heavy Blight Launcher
2x Plaguespitters

Ranged Weapons

Heavy Blight Launcher

36" Range, 6 Shots, Hitting on 3+, S8, AP-2 and 2 Damage each.
Lethal Hits (Rolls of 6 to Wound cause automatic Wounds)

Plaguespitter

12" Range, D6 Shots, Hitting on Auto, S6, AP-1 and 1 Damage each.
Torrent (This weapon hits automatically, just roll for the number of shots)
Ignores Cover (Enemies do not get a Benefit of Cover against this attack)
Anti-Infantry 2+ (This weapon critically wounds Infantry on a 2+)

Melee Weapons

Fleshmower

10 Attacks, Hitting on 3+, S7, AP-1 and 2 Damage each.
Lethal Hits (Rolls of 6 to Wound cause automatic Wounds)

Plague Probe

3 Attacks, Hitting on 3+, S6, AP-1 and 1 Damage each.
Lethal Hits (Rolls of 6 to Wound cause automatic Wounds)

Abilities

Deadly Demise 1 - When this model is destroyed, roll a dice, on a 6 it blows up dealing 1 Mortal Wounds to each unit within 6"

Hovering Death

This model is eligible to shoot and declare a charge in a turn that it Fell Back.

Thoughts

Like I said... they are more useful and can kill more things than the Heldrake, especially when it is 2x Drones for 180pts while Heldrakes are 195 or 210pts.

It can Fall Back, shoot and charge making it tactically agile.

All the weapon options are valid. 2D6 anti-infantry flamer, 6 heavy shots from far or a melee unit with 10 attacks.

One might think that S7 is not too bad vs Marines with T4 which is a 3+ to wound, at least its not double at S8... and then you remember you are fighting Death Guard so your Marines are at -1T so its S7 vs T3 and it IS 2+ to Wound!

This unit totally makes up for the slowness of Death Guard infantry and can really help with board control with their OC.

That makes 21 Death Guard Datasheets Reviewed putting them on 65.62% Completed. The total Completed is 32.53% Complete! Can I review them all?!

Thank you for reading!

Warhammer Review Library

You can find all my previous links on this post: Warhammer 40k Links Container Post! 13/02/2025

I shall leave Army and Detachment rules here as well as World Eaters, Death Guard and Thousand Sons!

Army Rule and Detachment Rule Reviews

Datasheet Review list (Alphabetical)

Thank you for reading!

** Images in this post are from the Warhammer app, or Warhammer.com or otherwise referenced.

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Cheers!
@zakludick

Hive South Africa