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2000pts - Rot Tide

Battalion Detachment 1 - 3CP

HQ

Typhus 175
Miasma of Pestilence, Putrescent Vitality

Malignant Plaguecaster 110
Blades of Putrefaction, Miasma of Pestilence, The Suppurating Plate

Elites

Noxious Blightbringer 70

Blightlord Terminators x5 310
5x combi-melta, 5x Bubotic Axe

Troops

Plague Marines x7 196
Plague Champ - Plasma Pistol, Power fist, Plague Knife
2x Flail of Corruption
4x Bubotic Axe & Plague Knife

Rhino 72
combi-bolter

Plague Marines x7 181
Plague Champ - Plasma Gun, Plague Sword
2x Meltagun & Plague Knife
4x Boltgun & Plague Knife

Rhino 83
combi-bolter & combi-flamer

Poxwalkers x20 120

Heavy Support

Plagueburst Crawler 156
Plagueburst Mortar, Heavy Slugger, 2x Entropy Cannons

Plagueburst Crawler 156
Plagueburst Mortar, Heavy Slugger, 2x Entropy Cannons


Battalion Detachment 2 - 3CP

HQ

Terminator Sorceror 175
Combi-Melta & Force Axe
Warptime, Prescience

Warpsmith 76


Troops

Chaos Cultists x10 40


Chaos Cultists x10 40


Chaos Cultists x10 40


The Battleplan

The namesake of this list is a formation that takes advantage of the "The Dead Walk Again" strategum. The Rot Tide is a deathball with a unit of 20 Poxwalkers screened very tightly by 3 squads of cultists geared for assault and accompanied by Typhus and the Noxious Blightbringer. Each turn I'll spend 1CP on "The Dead Walk Again" for the Poxwalkers and another 1CP for "Cloud of Flies" to prevent my opponent from attacking the Poxwalker core. The cultists will be packed tight in front of a spread out Poxwalker unit to make sure that any cultist slain is slain within 7" of a Poxwalker model. These slain Cultists add to the Poxwalker horde. The Noxious Blightbringer will allow the whole deathball to advance at a faster clip, averaging about 8" per turn. Typhus is pretty self-explanatory.
Although low-quality and expendable troops, the horde must be dealt with in some way. However my opponent decides to handle them I can turn it to my benefit. An enemy who decides to focus their firepower on the Rot Tide will have to be killing cultists, which then will give me almost 30 more Poxwalkers. Typhus' buff to the unit can then be increased with Putrescent Vitality and once their cultist shield is gone they can be protected with Miasma of Pestilence. A horde of roughly 50 S5 T5 Poxwalkers barreling down on you is obviously a bigger problem than 20 Poxwalkers with 30 Cultists. However if they choose to ignore the Rot Tide and focus on the rest of my army, I'm going to be very disruptive with my cultist squads and, again, a squad of 20 S5 T5 Poxwalkers with Typhus. With such a slow-moving horde, the obvious counter strategy is to redeploy away from them, which depending on the mission and army could cede objectives and could play into a Hammer and Anvil overall strategy with the other mechanized portion of my army. I'd expect to expend between 5 and 8 CP out of my 9 on this formation.

The Terminator Sorceror will probably teleport in with the Blightlord Terminators, casting Warptime & Prescience on them so they can get into melta range with their combi-meltas. This is a unit that can destroy a piece of heavy armor in one turn if they've left me enough room to teleport in. With their added staying power, a squad of Blightlords with an accompanying Sorceror is another big problem for my opponent.

Plague Marines in Rhinos do what Plague Marines in Rhinos do. The Malignant Plaguecaster will climb into the Rhino with the Plague Marine assault squad and support them. The Plague Marine squad with Meltas are good all-rounders when supported with the Rhino with a combi-flamer. These two units will advance and engage the enemy while their Rhinos make a nuisance of themselves.

The Plagueburst Crawlers will be accompanied by the Warpsmith. PBCs are already tough as nails, but with a Warpsmith fixing them up that's even more true. I'll advance these tanks up so they present an additional target for the enemy and make sure the Entropy Cannons are in range. The Entropy Cannons are the real armament on these things. The Plagueburst Mortar can deal a heavy blow occasionally but there are too many dice rolls in the way to make it reliable. The remainder of my CP will probably be spent re-rolling 1's for the number of shots I get on the Mortars and possibly a good volley of Blight Grenades off the PM assault squad if the opportunity presents itself.


Alternate choices could be to drop the Warpsmith and take an Apostle to keep me from losing cultists to morale as the ones that run away don't come back as Poxwalkers. I could also take a regular Chaos Lord to put with the Rot Tide, the Plague Marines or the PBCs. I could swap out the Meltas in my PM squad and put in Blight Launchers instead and use them as a shooty fire-support unit, and replace the combi-flamer with a Havoc launcher on their Rhino.

My concerns with this list revolve around the Rot Tide either getting killed before they reach the enemy, or being too slow to reach the enemy. There are armies out there that I know can burn through this formation in a couple of turns of focused fire, or at the very least render it far less effective. That's going to take about 600 lasgun shots on average to do, or 420 bolter shots. But if they do focus on the Rot Tide, then at least that's shooting that isn't going to the rest of my army. An enemy being able to avoid it entirely is my biggest concern. In those instances I'll have to try to use my mechanized Plague Marines to pin them down before I can land my hammer blow.

Any comments or criticism would be greatly appreciated.
-WP

I like the idea of the "rot tide" formation, and it could be powerful... If it worked. Unfortunately, after talking to a few people (including the manager at my local store), I'm fairly sure that it won't work. Unless the death guard have a rule or there's an faq I missed you can only use one stratagem per phase, and both of the stratagems you're relying on for this occur in the movement phase.

One of each stratagem per phase, not one per phase total.


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I'm looking at a list like this.

Two possibilities win out for me.
Alpha legion cultists. Pros The -1 to hit is good and they can be deployed ahead of the poxes for extra movement. (Cons, no morale immunity unless you bring abbadon)

Renegade cultists/mutants. Pros, have morale resistance on the cheap with enforcers. Enforcers kill some of your guys in the morale phase, netting for extra movement for the poxes (which have to be placed next to a pox that was there at the start of the phase)
Cons (no legion trait or stratagems )

I checked the Strategum rules before I posted this list. You can only use a particular Strategum once per phase. I can use the two Strategums I want in tandem.

I like the cultists with Enforcers idea a lot.

I've also come up with an alternate list where I use Plaguebearers instead of cultists. I'm still really concerned that a Guard or Tau player will now through the Rot Tide like it's nothing. Plaguebearers are a lot tougher and will require more firepower to get rid of.

Captyn_Bob wrote:One of each stratagem per phase, not one per phase total.

Warmaster Phthisis wrote:I checked the Strategum rules before I posted this list. You can only use a particular Strategum once per phase. I can use the two Strategums I want in tandem.

I'll shut up then.

It looks good though, will probably stand up pretty well against most things.

Don't have the codex handy but doesn't the poxwalker-generating stratagem specify that it works on infantry models killed in the shooting or fight phase? So your morale phase enforcer kills wouldn't count. My bad if I'm misremembering.

Just says Slain, doesn't specify phase. Normal battleshock casualties wouldn't count, but murdering your own guys does.

An warpsmith can't repair a deathguard vehicle, right? It says "...a Warpsmith can repair a single <LEGION> VEHICLE.."

dBug wrote:
An warpsmith can't repair a deathguard vehicle, right? It says "...a Warpsmith can repair a single <LEGION> VEHICLE.."

Yes, but isn't Death Guard simply their Legion keyword? Which means that a Warpsmith would indeed be able to repair a PBC.

Pandabeer wrote:

dBug wrote:
An warpsmith can't repair a deathguard vehicle, right? It says "...a Warpsmith can repair a single <LEGION> VEHICLE.."

Yes, but isn't Death Guard simply their Legion keyword? Which means that a Warpsmith would indeed be able to repair a PBC.

No DG Warpsmiths. Theyre not in the index or DG codex as an option.

Yeah, loads of silly characters but deathguard forgot how to repair vehicles. Sigh


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Although the Nurgle daemon spell fleshy abundance will work on daemon engines