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Yesterday I played a game with my Deathguard.. My list looked something like
4Termies Typhus LR
Bunch of PMs in Rhinos
Vindi and 2 Oblitz..

He had what it seems like 3 squads of Suits with ML/PR Load out, 3 Broadsides, etc..

Needless to say I was chewed up.. he blew up Almost everything just as I reached his side or in the middle of the table.. Then rapid fired me to death with plasma shots. It chewed through everything ... termies, PMS, his Broadsides broke my army like it was paper.

What is some good options to counter this Tau loadout? He almost tabled me.. Also to mention I am new to Deathguard.. I can destroy his list with my Daemons no problem, but I want to work with the DG...

Any suggestions, change up in my lists.. some tactics I can try to implement.. Anything would be great, I plan to go back today and give him some work.. I dont want to be weak and pull out my daemons.. So any help would be great.

Thanks,
Mausama

Deathguard is the paper army to Tau scissors. You've got small, high toughness and armor model counts good in medium to close range versus a high strength (making toughness irrelevant), low AP (making armor irrelevant) shooting army, good in long to medium range. Plaguemarines excel in attrition fights, but when your knock down drag out ability is negated you're just fielding expensive marines.

Deathguard will counter a fire line army, but not a crisis suit army. You'll run into that problem all day if you keep trying to throw Deathguard/Plaguemarines against ML/plasma suits.

The Chaos dex *will* counter Tau, though. Lash is brutal because Tau has 0 defence against it, except to stay out of range which is nearly impossible while mounting an effective offensive.

Drop the Land Raider and Rhinos, spam 20 man squads of plague marines with Icons, and have the termies and lesser daemons deepstrike off of the icons. Drop the Vindi and bring more oblits.

Basically just march forward to the objectives, plant 20 plague marines on them, and rapid fire/drop daemons on him to death.

The error you are making is that you are advancing on him. Advancing into JSJ rapid fire plasma is a fool's game. Obliterators can duel with Broadsides without any real advantages one way or the other, and you can survive his plasma and missile pods at range without much trouble. Just sit on your objectives and take the draw. You may not be able to advance on his objectives, but he sure as heck can't push your out of cover and off yours.

If you want to win, put a Lash Sorcerer or two in your marines, and shove them off their objectives in the end game.

If you are trying to play "pure" death guard here's a couple of things.

How is he configuring his crisis suit units? Is he taking drones or are they by themselves? If he isn't taking any drones simple 3-4 man squads of termies with either combi-plasma or combi-melta, deep striking will ruin his day for the suits.

Same question for the broadsides. You can also use oblits to do some deep striking also.

Drop your land raider and replace typhus with a dp with wings. Keep it cheap at 150 (wings and the mark) it's a great fire magnet and if it actually makes it across the table it'll do some good. Nurgles rot is actually very effective against tau but not really necessary. That gives you about 300pts to play with. You could add 2 more termie squads into the mix for that.

Drop the vindicator for more oblit's unless you want him to shoot it instead of rhino's.

How are you configuring your pm squads? Plasma or melta? You really should be running every turn until you make it into hth or at least until you are in rapid fire range of something.

Also nurgle bikers are pretty cool. A one turn turbo boost for a 3+ cover save and if you can time it with the deep striking termies or oblits for target saturation you should be able to get something into his lines.

Or you can just take 2 lash princes or sorcerers and beat him that way .

Thanks for the responses..

Yeah was trying to stay Pure DeathGuard; I thought they was pretty solid until I met up with this Tau List.

Yeah his Broadside had 2 shield drones each.. Also the only reason I didnt run more oblitz was as Warmaster said.. My Rhino's would catch all Heavy Weapons.

However, I do like the Idea of Nurgle Bikers.. Dropping the Raider, and DS another squad of Termies.. Going to mess around with a list today at work.. Ill post it up in a few..

My loadout with the PMs was Plasma Guns; he just shut me down when I was advancing.. Which has me alittle worry about trying to run up the field towards him. Also, I dont want to make a stale game by castling up on my objectives.. decisions decisions..

Also, I was thinking about breaking the termies into smaller squads.. Like Typhus and crew made it up the field, but they was too strong and wiped out one squad, but he was sitting pretty to get punch hard in the face during his turn..

So If I DS smaller squads and hope to win combat in his turn.. might be worth while. Dont know

Mausama

How many points are you guys playing at? I usually play an all foot nurgle army. From 4th to 5th feel no pain got a bit of a nerf, but the pm's gained the run rule and better cover saves.

Some thing's I've done before.

When you are paying 23 pts a guy 13 pts. for a lesser daemon isn't a bad option. I like to use nurglings for the bigger base size. Taking 2 squads of 7 allows you to put down a cover screen for your plague marines. This isn't too effective if he has a lot of fire warriors, but if he's running minimal warrios and lots of suits the screen could help. It at least takes a few units of shooting away from the crisis suits.

Also theres nothing wrong with just using the rhino's to make some cover in the middle of the field. If you can block off his firing line from his rail guns with blown up rhino's it works just as well.

I would really recommend the DP, tau players fear them to no end and since he can't be insta killed it'll take quite a few shots to put him down.

The other concept is speed. If you are running a walking squad, take a lord on a bike with a daemon weapon.

Crisis team? Swat. Broadsides? Swat.

Other stuff has basically been said. Lash, lesser daemons, etc.

Pete

I've had luck with the Defiler vs. Tau, when he's not nuked on turn 1. He's awfully hard to hide, but given the choice between an LR, Rhinos with zerkers, and a Dread, the opponent has occasionally left him alive a few turns. Pie plates make those pesky Tau disappear, but bikes seem better suited to the role since I'd love to waste precious rail gun shots on turbo-boosted cover saves. (haven't tried it yet though, models in construction)

Pdeflorio wrote:The other concept is speed. If you are running a walking squad, take a lord on a bike with a daemon weapon.

Crisis team? Swat. Broadsides? Swat.

Other stuff has basically been said. Lash, lesser daemons, etc.

Pete

Going this route you just have to be carefull about not getting insta-killed by a rail gun or suicide fusion.

I am not familiar on how survivable Nurgle Bikes are... How many would you recommend running?

I have been messing around with like 12 of them, but its super expensive.. they are like 600+ points..

Let nurgle be your guide . Honestly I wouldn't run more than 5-7 in a unit. Any more than that and it's getting realy expensive.

[theoryhammer]

I would run them as normal bikes with minimal upgrades, possibly two packs of 3-4, with meltas and no champ. They're on a suicide mission to buy the rest of your army time to advance in the face of overwhelming fire. Use Turbo Boost to get saves vs. instant kills.

This would run you about the same as a 10 man CSM squad with Rhino and some weapons, which is a worthy sacrifice if it allows the rest of your forces to close.

[/theoryhammer]

Warmaster wrote:Let nurgle be your guide . Honestly I wouldn't run more than 5-7 in a unit. Any more than that and it's getting realy expensive.

Yeah I was thinking about 2 units of 6, but if I want to be blessed by the plague father.. I should run 2 squads of 7, or maybe 7 total.. squad of 3 and squad of 4.

Mausama