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It's a tale as old as time ... a young, scrappy upstart meets a formidable, worthy opponent, gets soundly thrashed, learns from their mistakes, trains better, studies harder ... and still isn't very good.

Death Guard have been the bane of both of my armies since the beginning of 8th Edition last summer. My Index Tau never had much success against them and my Alpha Legion struggle against the durability of their targets, though I guess that's what I get for counting on cultists. To be fair, I will be the first to say that I don't field the most competitive of army lists, but I'd like to think that I at least start the game with a fighting chance (the most recent iteration of my Chaos list can be found here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/753143.page). Anyway, I've booked a game later this week against a Death Guard opponent. It's 1,750 points, an Eternal War mission on a 6' x 4' table with a fair amount of terrain, and I'll be fielding essentially the list over there. My opponent has gamely informed me that he will be fielding Mortarion. I also know that he has access to multiple Plagueburst Crawlers, Foetid Bloat-Drones, and Deathshroud Terminators.

My question to the Dakka community is this: Can Death Guard be defeated without out shooting them or should I just approach the game knowing that it is already a lost cause?


Specifically for my army ... my strategy so far consists of "Forward Operatives" stratagem for my Possessed, dumping everything my Renegade Knight has into Mortarion, and watching my cultists die in droves.

Well, listbuilding means way more than any tactics you can employ. Besides, all is left to be considered 'tactics' is pretty basic like target priority and bauble wrapping. So, if you don't want to hear "get a bunch of berserkers for your alpha legion" than...you're out of luck with this game.

Well shooting helps.

You are running your cultists badly...

This is a competitive trick:
Give em mark of slannesh and infiltrate them. Have a slannesh sorcerer nearby with prescience and delightful agonies

put the agnonies on them they now have 5+ ignore wounds
put prescience on them they now hit on 3s
use the VOTLW strat so +1 to wound
shoot 80 shots which are effctivly marine boltguns now
use slannesh strat to fire them again

160 marines firing boltguns more or less.

Possessed aint up to much, they got better but just dont do it for the pts imo. I think some folks said it on ye thread but chain axe zerkers are what you prob want esp vs DG where you need the strength buff.

The issue with your list is you have two big points sinks in the form of the knight and possessed both of which are easily dealt with and you lack anti-tank and by the sounds of his list you are gonna need it.
If you can't change up ye models at the very least i'd do the cultist trick above because with that many shots you can kill big stuff with weight of fire.