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Hello everyone,

I was quite out-ranged and out-gunned in my last Deatguard army's fight as it was slaughtered by tank heavy Imperial Guard, including several tanks with armour 13 on their front and 3 valkyries with lasers that came late in the game, killed my plaguemarines and took the objectives. My 2 Helldrakes were shot down the second they came from reserves by 2 IG anti-aircraft tanks. It took a whole unit of Nurgle Chaos Spawn to carry my Chaos Lord biker with powerfist to destroy the tanks and he died soon after leaving them as wrecks, mostly because of those 3 full-laser mounted valkyries I couldn't shoot. On half the turns, the Enemy's units were out of range of my Obliterators (because of the mandatory weapon alternance rule), so attrition eventually got the most of them.

We're playing at 2000 pts. My opponent has 25 years experience gaming while this was my 3rd game.

I was wondering if anybody had suggestions on how a Nurgle-themed CSM army could hold against such a mechanised army without resorting to allies.

I was considering for next game taking the following (2000 pts) :

- 2 Aegis defence lines with 2 quadguns (antiaircraft), manned by 5 plaguemarines and 9 chaos marines respectively
- 2 forgefiends, hidden behind the Aegis D.L. near the frontline
- 6 obliterators, hidden behind the Aegis D.L.near the frontline
- 2 squads of plaguemarines with rhinos, each carrying a Chaos Lord of Nurgle with a powerfist.
- 10 cultists with autoguns gone to ground behind the Aegis D.L. (2+save)

Thanks for any tip!

It sounds like his IG tank wall is just sitting back and nuking you before you can get close enough. How do you defeat that? Get closer. You need to get up in his face just like you did with the spawn/lord. That is his weakness.

1. Forgefiends, although nice, will get ripped up by the many vendetta twin-linked lascannons. The same goes for predators and any other vehicles. Death Guard is not really made for long-ranged mech, so I do not suggest going toe-to-toe in this manner with IG or you will probably lose.

2. Consider replacing spawn with MoN bikers equipped with 2x melta guns. Keep the powerfirst on the lord. Spawn are good for absorbing wounds, but melta is what you want against vehicles. Both are fairly survivable. Use cover if possible while advancing. Maybe even run 2 of such squads, one advancing on either side of his tank wall.

3. Obliterators... I suggest not utilizing them only as expensive lascannons. They can go midfield, frontline, or even deepstrike. They can melta vehicles apart and then torch/assault whatever pops out. T5, 2 wounds, and termie armor. Perhaps do multiple squads of 2-3. Don't forget they have power fists just like your lord.

4. If you are going to use heldrakes, you need to primary his 2x AA tanks and vendettas, otherwise you are throwing points down the drain. You could potentially switch the baleflamers for autocannons against a mech-heavy opponent to optimize damage on vehicles/flyers. His infantry will die to a stiff breeze, so you don't really need the baleflamers anyway. Vector strike and then hit rear armor with the autocannon. Let your troops mop up his crap infantry.

5. Make sure to use cover. FNP and T5 may be negated by his high strength weapons, but cover isn't. Maybe throw in a defense line and quad cannon to help against the vendettas. Place one of the objectives near it, and use some marines/cultists to secure it.

6. Are you using rhinos on your plague marines? Put 5 plague marines in a rhino with 2x melta (maybe a second unit like this too as a backup). Make sure you pop smoke. Deliver the melta plagues to his front line asap. You don't really need the plasma against guard, so use melta/flamers.

 Rakarsis wrote:
It sounds like his IG tank wall is just sitting back and nuking you before you can get close enough. How do you defeat that? Get closer. You need to get up in his face just like you did with the spawn/lord. That is his weakness.

1. Forgefiends, although nice, will get ripped up by the many vendetta twin-linked lascannons. The same goes for predators and any other vehicles. Death Guard is not really made for long-ranged mech, so I do not suggest going toe-to-toe in this manner with IG or you will probably lose.

2. Consider replacing spawn with MoN bikers equipped with 2x melta guns. Keep the powerfirst on the lord. Spawn are good for absorbing wounds, but melta is what you want against vehicles. Both are fairly survivable. Use cover if possible while advancing. Maybe even run 2 of such squads, one advancing on either side of his tank wall.

3. Obliterators... I suggest not utilizing them only as expensive lascannons. They can go midfield, frontline, or even deepstrike. They can melta vehicles apart and then torch/assault whatever pops out. T5, 2 wounds, and termie armor. Perhaps do multiple squads of 2-3. Don't forget they have power fists just like your lord.

4. If you are going to use heldrakes, you need to primary his 2x AA tanks and vendettas, otherwise you are throwing points down the drain. You could potentially switch the baleflamers for autocannons against a mech-heavy opponent to optimize damage on vehicles/flyers. His infantry will die to a stiff breeze, so you don't really need the baleflamers anyway. Vector strike and then hit rear armor with the autocannon. Let your troops mop up his crap infantry.

5. Make sure to use cover. FNP and T5 may be negated by his high strength weapons, but cover isn't. Maybe throw in a defense line and quad cannon to help against the vendettas. Place one of the objectives near it, and use some marines/cultists to secure it.

6. Are you using rhinos on your plague marines? Put 5 plague marines in a rhino with 2x melta (maybe a second unit like this too as a backup). Make sure you pop smoke. Deliver the melta plagues to his front line asap. You don't really need the plasma against guard, so use melta/flamers.

This

A tank heavy guard player has a very small table presence. I suggest using deep striking obliterators and terminators with combi meltas, while pushing forward in cover with the rest of your troops and/or staying behind your own vehicles.

Now if your opponent isn't geared for hordes of stuff, something you aren't running, you should focus on lots of CSM units with melta guns and such.

I normally play against IG that run tank heavy, but normally can't take out large amounts of troops well spread out. With a few obliterators covering my advance it almost always works out.

Your problem seems to be the vendettas. I recommend taking out your opponents hydra, those tanks that shot you as you showed up. With those gone, your dragons can fly over the enemy vendettas and get nice str 8 rear armor shots with their gun, taking them down easily.

Just keep in mind you still want to build a balanced list. If you simply tailor to every issue you run across, you won't get better.

It'd be better to go defiler's than Forgefiend, not much can shoot farther than 72" or 3 Vindicators for lolz

I run hat trick vindicators in my Iron Warriors list, they will wreck parking lot guardsmen, or use the defilers with reapers for the anti-air and their battlecannons for the tanks(5+ invuls AND 4 hp is nothing to laugh about), because now templates hit full strength as long as it TOUCHES the model (unlike before when the center dot had to hit it). That means you can just strip hull points like it's cool not only because it is a str 8 pieplate, but also it's ordnance, so you get 2d6 pick the highest for armour pen.

Thanks for the tips. I'll spread my Obliterators in small units (since I can use up to 6 heavy support slots) and deep strike them, reducing mishap chances, and replace one (maybe two) Forgefiends with Nurgle bikers (I have 10, but last time they were shredded to bits by a predator or vindicator - the one with that large S10 AP2 template). I also have a lord on a bike and
2 rhinos to carry two units of 8 plague marines or so with a powerfist lord of Nurgle.

If I can I'll keep at least 1 forgefiend to see how well it does otherwise I'll replace both for a set of Nurgle bikers and a lord with a powerfist.

Since we play at 2000 pts my opponent really does have a lot of tanks on the table so my infantry, ironically can't do much of anything although a unit of 5-10 plague marines always seem to survive at least 3 turns whatever turns out against them, including a squad of termies with powerfists, (My recent opponent had 10 tanks last time, including 2 or 3 valkyries, 2 skyfire tanks (basilisk or something) and 4 chimeras).

Deepstriking units of termies with combi-meltas.

Lascannon predators are also cheap.

Yeah. If you want to keep to the death guard theme. Then use Typhus and plague zombies. Zombies are 4 points a pop and if he wants to waste heavy weapons shooting at those, he is welcome to try.

At the same time, so many cheap zombies means you will have lots of troops for sitting on objectives. Skip all the plague marines. Just use zombies as your troops. 30 zombies only cost 130 points, and he is not going to be able to kill 30 zombies behind an aegis defense line in 1 turn.

Then go with 3 squads of termis with combi meltas and combi plamas and 3 squads of Obliterators, and put Typhus into one of the squads.

Turn 1, he has nothing but zombies to shoot at.

Turn 2, most of your stuff comes in on his side of the table. Even if some don't, enough will all come in deep strike in his table, and blow all of his fancy armor to kindgdom come. The termis, along with Typhus can then go and mop up.

Look at the odds. You need a 3+ for them to come in from reserves. 3 termi squads plus 3 oblit squads means you have 6 units deep striking in. At 3+ to come in, 4 out of 6 squads will come in. That means 4 high value armored targets likely to instant die the turn you come in, with more to follow in the next turn.

Deep strike also allows you to hit side or rear armor rather than front armor.

Eldenfirefly: My opponent has lots of large blast weapons that will make soup out of cultists, alas. From an earlier game's experience, my unit of 35 cultists got shredded in a single turn, first by shooting then by melee, then my Terminator lord got alone and shredded on the 2nd turn.