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I played Death Guard back in 5th edition and I'd like to reboot my army. Most of my Plague Marines are invalid (Chainsword + Bolter) and the new PMs are bigger and better, so I'm planning on restarting with a whole new paint scheme. Here's my thinking on getting the most bang for my dollar:

2x Dark Imperium: Really, DI is too cheap to not buy it. The PMs, Poxwalkers and Bloat Drone by themselves would cost the same as a DI box (ok, no swaps possible, but the DI loadout isn't terrible). I can probably convert the extra Lord of Contagion into a Terminator Lord/Sorcerer Lord/Typhus proxy. and the other characters are fine in multiples. Bloat Drone with twin plague spitters is what I'd go for anyways, and 40 Poxwalkers is a shambling horde to be proud of. Of course I'd want Typhus; I'm fairly sure I have old Typhus kicking around my storage somewhere, if I can't find him then I'll have to get the new one (though he's mostly unavailable most places I've checked ATM).

2x Easy to Build Plague Marines: Mostly for the Blight Launchers and Plasma Gun champions. This brings it to 20 Plague Marines total, a decent start.

1x Plague Crawler: to give the army some powerful shooting that won't die easily. I considered Helbrutes, but if I'm going to have stuff sit back and shoot, the Plague Crawler seems the better choice.

1x Foul Blightspawn: too good to not have one.

1x Morghasts box: 2 Morghasts make some decent Death Guard Daemon Princes, assuming the whole wings issue gets resolved (and I think it will). Daemon Princes seem the best choice for buffing units, especially since they can buff Nurgle Daemons as well as Death Guard, and a way more mobile than the other HQs

1x Start Collecting Daemons of Nurgle: Plague Drones, Nurglings and Plaguebearers all seem all right to me. The Herald of Nurgle can buff the Daemon Princes if I have to defend the line.

I have quite a few old Nurgle Daemons to re-purpose - Great Unclean One, 14 Plaguebearers, 15 Nurgling Bases. I'm also considering stripping down my old Chaos Rhinos to save some money, but between Plague Drones, Bloat Drones and flying Daemon Princes there's a lot of mobility and you can get Nurglings up in the enemy's face pretty easily. The Noxious Blightbringers can hurry the army along fairly effectively when needed.

This is roughly 2600 points of new stuff for GW Retail $700 CAD, which is about as much as I want to spend, but I worry that it's a bit light on the shooty side of things. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Don't leave home without the biology professors. Those things are borderline broken as hell.

 Elbows wrote:
Don't leave home without the biology professors. Those things are borderline broken as hell.

I usually end up having to go to the enemy rather than having them come to me. If I wanted to celebrate Grenademas I'd probably have to invest in metal boxes, or a lot more Plague Marines, like maybe double my proposed amount. Of course, the same could be said for using the Foul Blightspawn, so I guess I should consider them.

I like everything except the start collecting Nurgle box. Most of it just isn't very useful or competes with what you have. If you have a limited budget, get stuff that has more use imo.

Mugaaz wrote:
I like everything except the start collecting Nurgle box. Most of it just isn't very useful or competes with what you have. If you have a limited budget, get stuff that has more use imo.

Mostly I was going to get the box for the fliers, but you're right in that a Daemon Prince or two plus Feotid Bloat Drones gives me enough highly mobile elements, especially with infiltrating Nurglings. Replace that with a 2nd Plague Crawler, maybe?

I'd recommend a second crawler. They're pretty cheap and with the 4+ to hit you really want to roll lots of dice.

I’ve been using LOTS of pox walkers and cultists along with a few dreads, a predator and typhus. I don’t think you need the Nurgle daemons start collecting box. Add another plague crawler.

PBCs are awesome. It does more damage than 4x lascannon predator and is more survivable than a landraider.

I'm building up to a 2000pt list, I got the Dark Imperium stuff, a second DI Foetid Bloat-Drone, a Fleshmower Drone, Deathshroud Terminators, Tallyman and Morty.
I run all the HQ's and Elites in a deathstar, Morty with Drones and my Plague Marines / Poxwalkers camping on objectives.

Playing with and against Death Guard I've found Plagueburst Crawlers can't hit the side of a barn, Morty is a wonderful distraction fairy and Bloat-Drones are nigh unkillable.

 Rolsheen wrote:
I'm building up to a 2000pt list, I got the Dark Imperium stuff, a second DI Foetid Bloat-Drone, a Fleshmower Drone, Deathshroud Terminators, Tallyman and Morty.
I run all the HQ's and Elites in a deathstar, Morty with Drones and my Plague Marines / Poxwalkers camping on objectives.

Playing with and against Death Guard I've found Plagueburst Crawlers can't hit the side of a barn, Morty is a wonderful distraction fairy and Bloat-Drones are nigh unkillable.

I'm okay with 4+ to hit, given how durable the platform is. Once you've got a pair of them, keep them together and augment them with a Daemon Prince.

Besides, they've got Dozer Blades.

I'm not the type to run Death Stars. I prefer a more likely force organization - infantry supported by vehicles with a few commanders buffing their abilities. I actually lean more strongly toward lots of Plague Marines, though the horde meta of 8th is pretty strong. But I'm not hyper competitive about army building, I just want to make sure it doesn't suck.

Okay, so my revised plan is:

2x Dark Imperium, convert one Lord of Contagion into a Deathshroud Terminator (see below) with extra scythe bits from their kit
2x Easy to Build Plague Marines for the Plasma champions and Blight Launchers.
2x Plague Marine box sets so I can have 2 squads of maximum plasma and the melee weapons, and that puts me at 34 PM total. I'd probably field 4 units of 7 and MSU doctrine can take a holiday.
2x Plagueburst Crawlers
1x Morghast box set for Daemon Princes
1x Deathshroud Terminators, one of which will become Typhus while the extra Lord of Contagion takes his place
1x Foul Blightspawn (could convert one, but not really worth it IMO)
1x Biologious Putrifier

That's just north of 3000 points of Death Guard and enough variety on what I can play to keep it interesting.

I think you could stretch out your money and your bits a lot further by doing some conversions and/or kitbashes. Just buying the Plague Marines and DI sets will leave you with a boatload of Plague Marines without all of the bits you might want to equip them with.

You will get:
6 Plasma Guns (2 from DI, 2 backpacks, 2 from the Plague Marines)
4 Blight Launchers (2 from ETB, 2 from Plague Marines)
4 Bubotic Axes (from the Plague Marines)
2 Flail of Corruption (from the plague marines)

So you will have enough Plasma and Blight Launchers for a couple of MSU each, but if you want to give them melee weapons or even do a close-combat squad you'll come up short. If you don't give anyone melee weapons you'll end up with 24 Plague Marines with Bolters and 10 with special weapons. That's 456 points of bolter marines loafing around just so you can get 6 Plasma Guns and 4 Blight Launchers. In contrast, I don't think I've seen a 2000 point list with that many points in Plague Marines total.

If you want to go to town on melee weapons, I highly recommend picking up the weapon arms from the AOS Putrid Blightkings box.

I also think you might want to consider the strategies you'll be using. There are some very synergistic combinations you can create, but you're selling yourself short if you don't include any. Your army is going to be extremely heavy on Plague Marines. If you field 4 squads of 7, two being max Plasma and the other two being max Blight Launchers, you're looking at 790 points of Plague Marines. As I said before, that's all for 10 special weapons. That's also without transport or screening units, one or the other of which would be necessary to make sure your Plague Marines even make it into 18" double tap range intact. I would strongly consider taking fewer marines and using some of those points for other units like Cultists, Foetid Blight Drones or elite characters. Essentially, your army will be a gunline without any way of harassing the enemy or defending yourself from harassment, or quickly moving units across the table to react to threats or take objectives. Poxwalkers could fill the role of screening units and objective grabbers, but not nearly as efficiently as cultists could.

Death Guard has a lot of good combos, but you really have to build your list with them in mind. Poxwalkers can be used to good effect if you take them with Cultists, Typhus and maybe a Tallyman. Same with assault-oriented Plague Marines. A gunline could be good with Cultists for screening and a Daemon Prince for rerolls, but you'd probably want more ranged firepower than 10 special weapons and two PBCs, especially considering you'll be going nowhere fast. And I know you said you're not into deathstars, but few early game distractions are as effective as Mortarion supported by a few Blight Drones and a Daemon Prince or two. The common theme here is that there are many viable strategies you can employ, but each one requires a certain investment of points in order to work correctly. If you don't have the right units to support each other then you're kind of wasting points.

TL;DR: You could get a better list for less money if you choose a synergistic combo or two from the Codex and specialize in it.

 Luciferian wrote:
I think you could stretch out your money and your bits a lot further by doing some conversions and/or kitbashes. Just buying the Plague Marines and DI sets will leave you with a boatload of Plague Marines without all of the bits you might want to equip them with.

You will get:
6 Plasma Guns (2 from DI, 2 backpacks, 2 from the Plague Marines)
4 Blight Launchers (2 from ETB, 2 from Plague Marines)
4 Bubotic Axes (from the Plague Marines)
2 Flail of Corruption (from the plague marines)

So you will have enough Plasma and Blight Launchers for a couple of MSU each, but if you want to give them melee weapons or even do a close-combat squad you'll come up short. If you don't give anyone melee weapons you'll end up with 24 Plague Marines with Bolters and 10 with special weapons. That's 456 points of bolter marines loafing around just so you can get 6 Plasma Guns and 4 Blight Launchers. In contrast, I don't think I've seen a 2000 point list with that many points in Plague Marines total.

I doubt I'll be running 28-34 PMs most of the time. Probably the plasma squads will be mainstays, and they don't belong in close combat, so spending points on anything other than bolters on ablative meat doesn't make a ton of sense. Probably I'll have 2 squads with plasma and a squad full of CC weapons with a Rhino.

Also, it looks like the point costs on PMs is coming down a few point in the Chapter Approved, which is nice.

If you want to go to town on melee weapons, I highly recommend picking up the weapon arms from the AOS Putrid Blightkings box.

Probably cheaper to hack some old ork models up, or maybe stealing some chain axes from Khorne Berserkers. I've probably got enough old stuff to do plenty of robbing.

I also think you might want to consider the strategies you'll be using.

Thinking on it. Nurglings will be important. I have 15 bases of them, and they're useful on offense (infiltration and delay) as well as defense (screen vs deep strikes). You don't see them in many DG lists but that's probably b/c they're harder to get hold of (or no one likes the new models). I had tons of fun with basically PM+Nurgling lists back in 5th, and while I don't know how it'll work out in 8th, I'll probably have fun finding out.

I'm not enamored with Cultists. Less than stellar models and T3 with crap save and crap weapons. I know chaos doesn't have much for horde options, but if I wanted to go that route I'd roll Thousand Sons and bring Tzzangors. Maybe we'll get Pestigors someday, who knows?

People complaining about the deamos don't know much. You can summon the unclean one easier and safer than most and it forses the enemy to fire at an insanly tough cookie in instead of swishy pox walkers.
Also the herakd of nurgle buffs works in a lot of the DG army including the bloat drones and the primarch meaning str 8 flamers from drones which he can heal or 18 str 9 attacks from the primarch. He is almost a must take for a DG list.

Also cultists are there to die and with your pox walkers give them the dead walk again and the flies (that basically makes them characters) means that the cultist screen the pox walkers while 18" rapid fire and swarming objectives and die and come back as a pox Walker which is worth more.
Nurglings are also great for alpha charge or take points on first turn also meaning that the they cannot target screened units

Pick up some bloat drones, those things are terrors!

If the rumours are to be believed, Deathshroud Terminators are dropping 15pts per model and Plague Marines drop 2pts per model

I found that the DI Plague Marines are fairly easy to up-gun to extra plasma guns, which I swiped from Betrayal At Calth. There's 3 models that are easily converted with a simple gun swap, including the champion. I only did 2 this time around. The hardest part is cutting the marine fist off the plasma gun.





Gotta love the power fist and plasma gun combo, at least for a unit that's going to be hanging back shooting with 3 plasma guns total. The BatC guns aren't nice and fat like the DG ones are, but they're older looking 30K guns and they're pretty much the same length. The gun swapping was actually done after assembly! I didn't think of it until I had most of the unit put together.

I have 2 DI, probably for the second group I'll give the champion a plasma pistol and stick him in a CC squad with box set Death Guard, and use the other potential gun swap of the seven. We'll see.