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just sold all my orks and want to start death guard army, just one thing.....I hate large numbers of models (hence leaving orks) but I love the looks of nurgle/death guard. so wanted a little help with some starter lists I came across here that would still be fun and still some what able to win. im open to all suggestions and criticism. and what best to add to get to the 1000pt level

First
Typhus 175
Malignant Plaguecaster 110
Foetid Bloat- drone 124
Plague Champ, 4x plague marines 85
494pts

Second
Daemon Prince w/ wings 130
6 plague marines, meta, rhino 183
6 plague marines, meta, rhino 183
496pts

Thyphus is a LOC that boosts Poxwalkers, and you are not running Poxwalkers
Rhinos don't kill anything.
17 Plague Marines with 2 Meltas isn't a significant amount of firepower and they would need to get close, leaving your objectives unprotected

Death Guard [56 PL, 988pts] Battalion Detachment +5CP
HQ
Daemon Prince of Nurgle Malefic talon x2, Wings
Malignant Plaguecaster Plague Wind, Putrescent Vitality
Troops
Chaos Cultists x10
Chaos Cultists x10
Chaos Cultists x10
Fast Attack
Foetid Bloat-drone 2x Plaguespitters, Plague probe
Heavy Support
Plagueburst Crawler 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger
Plagueburst Crawler 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger
Plagueburst Crawler 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger

3 Plagueburst crawlers can hold down your backfield while peppering the enemy 48" away.
The Cultists can be spread out as bubble wrap for the Crawlers and to deny deep strike.
The Demon Prince and Bloat Drone can advance while the Plaguecaster buffs them.

I think you could simply add your two starter lists together and that would be a decent force. I would hate to see that many Plague Marines headed my way. However, I would bring all my squad numbers up to 7, for I am a fluffy nerdlinger and I do things like that.

Also, great username. Girthquake. Its like if Dana Carvey were a pro wrestler.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, you could probably drop Typhus for a Lord of Contagion if you were concerned about not buffing poxwalkers. The LoC is a brute in melee.

A daemon prince with wings is 180pts not 130. I quite like the daemon engines myself so I go heavy on them. With the bloat drone you're not including the weapon cost in your post. As mentioned before typhus is only good with poxwalkers. If you're wanting to start around 500pts I'd say just get hold of the death guard half of no know fear. Then to expand later get a second box of know no fear and get a plaguecaster off ebay.

If you are starting from scratch, the DG half of Dark Imperium is probably the best bang for your buck.

Are you sure you want normal DG in your DG army, because normaly they aren't seen that often. People tend to focus on the poxs and the cultists and as many crawlers as they can fit in to their lists.

Karol wrote:
Are you sure you want normal DG in your DG army, because normaly they aren't seen that often. People tend to focus on the poxs and the cultists and as many crawlers as they can fit in to their lists.

OP said he does not want lots of models, so that is why he is not going the typical poxwalker/cultist route.

Op was also fielding 7 men + Rhino units, so 10 cultists is only 2 more models while costing alot less in cash and points

Plague Marines are fine, don't hesitate to use them. But if you use them, you should equip them properly, as that's the great thing about them aside from being annoyingly tough.
For only thousand points the OPs list is fine - a bloat drone, a prince and Typhus on that points level is not that easy to handle. But as I said I'd give the PMs some weapons, preferably plasma, blight launchers or one squad with some of the new nice CC weapons. I'd swap those weapons for one Rhino. Rhino is not as important in 8th and you are Death Guard, every Plague Marine is a tank .

Thanks everyone for your input. Happy hobbying

 ikeulhu wrote:

Karol wrote:
Are you sure you want normal DG in your DG army, because normaly they aren't seen that often. People tend to focus on the poxs and the cultists and as many crawlers as they can fit in to their lists.

OP said he does not want lots of models, so that is why he is not going the typical poxwalker/cultist route.

Well that is fine as an idea of a new army, but it is like trying to play and build an BA army that doesn't do melee. All DG armies are either swarms, or are some sort of soups with gazylion DPs from different books with Moryrion and Magnus running along side them.

Now I don't know how OP financial situation looks like, but considering he does ask questions, am assuming his stash is not limitless, And I can personally attest that it is not fun to buy 1000 or 2000pts of stuff only to find out later on it just doesn't work or is not played.

 Girthquake wrote:
just sold all my orks and want to start death guard army, just one thing.....I hate large numbers of models (hence leaving orks) but I love the looks of nurgle/death guard. so wanted a little help with some starter lists I came across here that would still be fun and still some what able to win. im open to all suggestions and criticism. and what best to add to get to the 1000pt level

First
Typhus 175
Malignant Plaguecaster 110
Foetid Bloat- drone 124
Plague Champ, 4x plague marines 85
494pts

Second
Daemon Prince w/ wings 130
6 plague marines, meta, rhino 183
6 plague marines, meta, rhino 183
496pts

I know where you are coming from, when I was looking for a second army because orks suck to play right now, I wanted to have something with low model count, too.

As for starting Death Guard, here is my suggested way of starting them:
Step 1)
Get Dark Imperium, twice. Sell, trade or split the primaris, you will have no problem finding someone who wants them at a local store. You can also just buy full sets of DI Death Guard on ebay for cheap. You will end up with:
2 Lord Of Corruption (useless, but you can proxy them as Lords of Chaos or Typhus)
2 Malignant Plaguecasters (Decent casts, it even makes sense to run two sometimes)
2 Noxious Blightbringer (Good support for plague marines with blight launchers, drones and pox walkers. You'll never need more than one though)
2 Foetid Bloat-drones (One of the best units in the codex. Very durable, agile, flies and does lots of damage to the right targets)
14 Plague Marines (Two champions, two plasma gunners, rest bolters)
40 Pox Walkers (You can run units of 10, put them on an objective and forget about them. Units of 20 also work really well)

At this point you already have a playable 1000 point army ready to go

Step 2)
Currently your plague marines are under-gunned and you are lacking some heavy weapons, so getting two boxes with ETB plague marines will get you two champions with Plasma Guns and two marines with blight launchers. Re-arrange your marines into one unit with 3x Plasma and one with blight launchers. Due to inexorable advance, the blight launchers can advance and still fire their weapons, so I usually don't put a plasma gun on their champion.

Step 3)
Get a daemon prince. With the suppurating plate relic our daemon prince is a force to be reckoned with, and he helps flipping tanks. Both dual talons and sword w/ plague spitter are viable options.
You can also add additional characters like the Tallyman (CP regen and CC), Foul Blightspawn (flamer that can kill almost anything) or the Biologus Putrefier (grenade combo). Just stay away from the Plague Surgeon, he is a trap unit.

Step 4)
Add anti-tank. PBC, Helbrutes, Blight-Haulers, defilers, predators, more daemon princes or fleshmower drones are all viable options. Pick the one you like most.

This will get you up to 2000 points, from there you will probably know where to go next.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 ikeulhu wrote:

Karol wrote:
Are you sure you want normal DG in your DG army, because normaly they aren't seen that often. People tend to focus on the poxs and the cultists and as many crawlers as they can fit in to their lists.

OP said he does not want lots of models, so that is why he is not going the typical poxwalker/cultist route.

Well that is fine as an idea of a new army, but it is like trying to play and build an BA army that doesn't do melee. All DG armies are either swarms, or are some sort of soups with gazylion DPs from different books with Moryrion and Magnus running along side them.

Now I don't know how OP financial situation looks like, but considering he does ask questions, am assuming his stash is not limitless, And I can personally attest that it is not fun to buy 1000 or 2000pts of stuff only to find out later on it just doesn't work or is not played.

That is just plain wrong.

Cultists and Poxwalkers are superior to plague marines, but DG armies are mostly not swarms. Plague Marines are probably one of the best power-armored troops in the game. Unless you play for grand tournament wins, there is no need to play pox walkers and cultists outside of one or two small units for objective camping.

Step 4)
Add anti-tank. PBC, Helbrutes, Blight-Haulers, defilers, predators, more daemon princes or fleshmower drones are all viable options. Pick the one you like most.

Anti-tank is what made me hesitate to consider a Nurgle army. Predators, Defilers and whatnot are not viable options for me.

If you are looking to win tournaments (or are playing in a meta at a similar level), you should be playing Chaos, not Death Guard.

If a pure Death Guard army is viable, so are predators.

Why exactly is the Plague Surgeon a trap unit? Now, this is all personal taste and everything, but slap Fugaris' Helm on him and he becomes awesome. Granted, this is only in lists when I'm not running my DP, who otherwise gets first dibs on the free Relic and the surgeon stays at home.

But I'm failing to see how something that stops stuff dying in an army that has stuff that is hard to kill a bad thing?

 wuestenfux wrote:

Step 4)
Add anti-tank. PBC, Helbrutes, Blight-Haulers, defilers, predators, more daemon princes or fleshmower drones are all viable options. Pick the one you like most.

Anti-tank is what made me hesitate to consider a Nurgle army. Predators, Defilers and whatnot are not viable options for me.

It's tough as you have to rely on CC. I'm coming to rely more and more on 2 fleshmower drones instead of spitters just for that reason. With bad matchups for DG including the top meta lists of knights, hellhound spam, and bash bros it is like playing on hard mode.

I still run at least 2 entropy PBCs as well for anti-tank. Mathhammer, and experiance, shows they are medicore at the role but they are better than nothing and draw a decent amount of fire which is its own value. Another good option I've found is to ally in some demon plague drones, like 9, which are durable enough you can bad touch and tie up anything that is not a knight and even them sometimes if you can surround them (they are calvary so knights can't step over them). They may never kill anything but it's good enough to take enemy armor out of the fight so you can score objectives.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Why exactly is the Plague Surgeon a trap unit? Now, this is all personal taste and everything, but slap Fugaris' Helm on him and he becomes awesome. Granted, this is only in lists when I'm not running my DP, who otherwise gets first dibs on the free Relic and the surgeon stays at home.

But I'm failing to see how something that stops stuff dying in an army that has stuff that is hard to kill a bad thing?

Thing is, he doesn't stop stuff from dying. You get to re-roll ones on a roll that only succeeds on a 5+, which boils down to 5.55% more wounds for models near him. The actual effect on a game is basically zero, you could just add one more model to each unit for less points and more effect.
He simply doesn't do the job he is designed for, and therefore is an objectively bad unit.

The only thing he is good for is trolling marine players. Give him the plague bringer relic, put VotLW and Putrefying Blades on him and he can one-shot almost any Adeptus Astartes infantry unit in the game in single round of combat.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Why exactly is the Plague Surgeon a trap unit? Now, this is all personal taste and everything, but slap Fugaris' Helm on him and he becomes awesome. Granted, this is only in lists when I'm not running my DP, who otherwise gets first dibs on the free Relic and the surgeon stays at home.

But I'm failing to see how something that stops stuff dying in an army that has stuff that is hard to kill a bad thing?

Thing is, he doesn't stop stuff from dying. You get to re-roll ones on a roll that only succeeds on a 5+, which boils down to 5.55% more wounds for models near him. The actual effect on a game is basically zero, you could just add one more model to each unit for less points and more effect.
He simply doesn't do the job he is designed for, and therefore is an objectively bad unit.

The only thing he is good for is trolling marine players. Give him the plague bringer relic, put VotLW and Putrefying Blades on him and he can one-shot almost any Adeptus Astartes infantry unit in the game in single round of combat.

Well I've found a way to make him work in my lists, but I'll concede he is one of the first things to be benched when I want to fit something else in etc.

It's not like he does nothing for your army, it's just that he has little to no impact on the game on average.

Of course, as with anything with low chance and high impact, a couple of lucky rolls could make him very worthwhile in a single game.

 Jidmah wrote:
It's not like he does nothing for your army, it's just that he has little to no impact on the game on average.

Of course, as with anything with low chance and high impact, a couple of lucky rolls could make him very worthwhile in a single game.

Sadly this is very true. The 1 or 2 extra DR's the surgeon will give you doesn't make him worth it - may as well invest the points in more models at that point. Which is a shame because it's a very cool character both from the sculpt and fluff POV.

Give his rule +1 to DR on the other hand.. and now you have an awesome unit that borders on OP!

I don't really think so. +1 DR means you gain one additional wound per six wounds in a unit. Mortarion, pox walkers, blight hauler trilobes or ten blightlords would gain three wounds from this, five blightlords, drones, PBC or DP gain one or two, plague marines gain one wound on average.

For comparison: A pain boy saves about 5 wounds per unit of boyz nearby, an apothecary heals about 2-4 wounds of a nearby primaris squad.