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I started 40K back with the Death Guard, when they got their codex. I really like the aesthetic of a slow, tough, close-quarters army. However, I have a problem. I play 1-2 a week due to lockdown, usually 1000 point games, and have never gotten past turn 2 with them. I have only ever gotten them in combat once, against some Skorpekh. I am always shot off the board. I have used cover, applied auras, and always remember disgustingly resilient. We have recently started a crusade, and I have become the "free experience" farm. If of any help, I usually run 10-man melee plague marines in rhinos, deep striking blightlords, lords of virulence with deathshrouds and blightspawn, poxwalker hordes to hold back objectives, and the occasional fleshmower bloat-drone. I would like to kindly ask for help to, not necessarily win, but to make the death guard the unstoppable glacier I keep hearing them lauded as by goonhammer and 1d4chan. Thank you very much for any help at all.
What the heck are you being blown off the board with? Death Guard should be able to survive a lot of firepower between T5, 3+, and Disgustingly Resilient.
Death Guard were one of the worse armies for most of 8th edition, but even then getting tabled by turn 3 is crazy! Who are you playing against? What sort of terrain are you using?
Now in 9th they're a top tier army and should have no problem weathering anything beyond a melta attack bike span list. Even when you lose you should still have a decent amount left on the board by turn 5.
I'm not trying to 'have a go' at you. It just sounds like a fundamental mistake is being made somewhere.
Normally, I face biker-heavy Salamanders, Expansionist Necrons with Forgeworld tanks and warrior blobs, Imperial Knights with Ad-Mech support, and more recently a Drukhari Kabal list with lots of long-range lances. terrain is usually forests and some ruins, with the occasional obstacle.
Buy a Plagueburst Crawler or two. Use a LoC or a DP over a LoV. Plaguecasters are great also. Concentrate on Poxwalkers & Terminators over PMs. Always include a Tallyman. Try taking advantage of your innate durability by marching Terminators up the board rather than deep striking them.
There is an errata that removes the Lord of the Death Guard keyword from the Daemon Prince. You can have both a Lord of the Death Guard (which includes Typhus) and a Death Guard Daemon Prince in the same detachment. So a battalion can have a LotDG, a Death Guard Daemon Prince and a Plaguecaster as your three HQ choices.
I think I have an idea what to do. This is a Crusade, so my only limit is 50 PL.
LoC with Arch-Contaminator as Warlord
Plaguecaster with Miasma and Vitality
10 Cultists
20 Poxwalkers
10 Poxwalkers
5 Blightlords with Autocannon and Flail
3 Deathshroud with Chimes
Tallyman with Tollkeeper
Plagueburst with Entropy and Slugger
Plan is deepstrike LoC with Deathshroud, march Blightlords with Tallyman on objectives, Plagueburst sits in the back with 10 walkers, 20 walkers clog up big guns (either deepstrike or slog) with plaguecaster as support, and cultists run around for actions.
Aren't DG armies running multiple units of termintors in every build they run? Only 2 units of terminator class units, and walking them up the board seems a recipe for disaster, specially in games where there is not mortarion to focus all enemy fire power on himself.
And running a single tank in an army is bad idea too. Unless it can be made indestructible like old IH dreads were, it just dies too easy. Maybe cutting it from the list, cutting the cultists and reducing the poxwalkers to 3 units of 10, would allow you to get a second termintor unit if one of the characters got cut. But maybe this is not possible. The army size you play seems to be too small to run an optimized DG army.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Deepstrike Terminators, hide everything else if possible in case you go second, everything advances turn 1, turn 2 the Terminators deepstrike, the Plaguemarines get out of their Rhino and charge with as much as possible. Don't split up more than you have to, if your opponent kills more than half of your army turn 1 you should be able to counterpunch. Daemon Prince hides behind one of the two vehicles as they advance together. Ideally, DP casts Miasma on the Foetid Bloat Drone turn 1 and on the Terminators turn 2. Blightspawn rides with Plague Marines in Rhino, pop smoke if your opponent has any serious amount of ranged anti-tank.
Increase Terminator shooting damage from 1 to 2 if shooting at T4-5 multi-wound models while the Terminators are in range of the Foul Blightspawn's WL trait, against other targets and when not in range it is probably not worth it. The extra damage Stratagem might also rarely be worth it on the DP or Plague Marines.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/04/25 06:45:13
My suspicion is you might need more obscuring keyworded terrain.
I primarily play 2000pts on 44x60 so that alone makes my experience a bit different, but I've played both my Necrons and Blood Angels against DG multiple times and neither of my armies have the opportunity/capability to really deal more than 200 odd pts of damage in the first turn between being out of line of sight, obscured, out of range, or just plain old DG toughness (and that's with 2000 pts of firepower). Compressing the board kind of takes range out of the equation, but you should still be able to use LoS and obscuring to your advantage.
Get some crates, or make some big solid walls out of pink foam that fully block LoS and put them in the deployment zones to hide behind. Have some obscuring keyworded terrain around midboard that splits the board into firing lanes rather than allowing free targeting across the full board. Sprinkle in dense terrain like forests or piping when appropriate that hand out -1 to hit.
Particularly in a crusade format, it makes sense to set up a board that considers both armies capabilities and how they interact. If one army is all melee and one army is all shooty gunline, you want to pick the right terrain to give both armies an opportunity to play their game. Maybe one zone of the board is more open advantaging the gunline and one zone is more closed off advantaging the melee army.
Specific to list building, here is what causes me problems in the Deathguard army:
- Mortarion (not an option at 1k I suppose)
- Deathshroud Terminators teamed with a Plague Surgeon and/or Malignant Plaguecaster buffs (I typically just avoid wherever these guys are, they just take too much to kill)
- Plague Marines w/ Foul Blightspawn armed revolting stench vats relic (Plague Marines with a flail fighting before your chargers ruins their day)
Really you can mix and match the characters above across any of the Marine units to produce no charge zones or units that take an extraordinary amount of firepower to take down.
