Pure Death Guard 5-0 at the Michigan GT

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**Brymm**

Hi all!
This past weekend was the Michigan Grand Tournament in Lansing, MI USA. I believe 108 people attended the 40k championships. I was one of them.
Just a little background information: I am a father of three and husband of one, I work full time as a nurse and am a busy person. 40k is my hobby and I love it. I have no desire to play something that I don't like playing just to win, I don't want to feel bad when I play and I don't want my opponents to feel bad when they play. With that said, I want to win my games. I had no intention of showing up and getting stomped into the ground, so I read the primer missions, practiced the format and brought a fun and fluffy list that could do well in it.
Also, I used a dry erase marker on a laminated sheet for my notes, wound tracking, command point tracking and VP scoring. I'm working from memory with the report here so if I played you and you don't think this is how things went down, lemme know!
Another note: I played five of the coolest players that I've ever played against. Top to bottom, super nice people, friendly, helpful, great sportsmen and just good people.
So here it is: Death Guard using PLAGUE MARINES!

Spoiler:

Since the event used Maelstrom cards AND end game primary and secondary objectives, finding the right balance on what to focus on was key. After a few practice games, I found my self scoring as many or more points in Maelstrom cards compared to the endgame objectives. In turn I added more units that could hang on to the objectives or get to the spots that I needed to score points each turn. The Plague Marine squads could still advance and shoot the Blight Launchers, the Bloat Drones are fast, can fly and still shoot, the Daemon Princes provide buffs, Smites, and are also fast to get to objectives. Lastly, Mortarion was the ultimate fire magnet. I mentioned in a bunch of posts over in the Death Guard tactica thread that in every game, Morty was dead by turn 2, only getting over 400pts back of kills once. But that was what he was there to do.

So five rounds of battles, here I come.

Round 1: Vs Imperial Guard and an Imperial Knight

Spoiler:

This guy was super nice and his army was all Gretchin with the Knight and Baneblade being all orked up. Cool stuff. The Knight was the variant with the big chainsword.
I knew I would be playing a list just like this. Lots of infantry bodies, an Imperial Knight and a bonus Baneblade variant. Earthshakers in the back field, rough riders coming in later.
6 fixed Objectives, none in either deployment zones. Each would be worth 2 VP. Each mission had Maelstrom cards with them scoring as usual but all D3 VP counted as straight 2. Secondary were Warlord, First Strike and Linebreaker.
This was the closest game that played in the whole event.
I ended up getting first turn in which I flew Morty, the Daemon Princes and the three Drones (from this point forward, they will be known as "The Crew") forward directly towards the line. He deployed up almost to the edge of the deployment zone which worked out for me because I was right in the center of the board and could reach out and touch anything they wanted to turn 2. I moved up my PMs to hop on objectives or near them while trying to get within 24" to start lobbing Blight shots. I ended up casting Miasma on Morty plus a strong Curse of the Leper killing like 5 Guardsmen. I didn't get First Strike.

On his turn 1, he dumped a ton of fire into Mortarion and did about 10 wounds, then ASSAULTED WITH THE KNIGHT! Ballsy move, assaulting a Primarch. A daemon one no less. I weather the attacks and with a command reroll I come out with ONE WOUND before swinging back with the lowest profile. I roll 12 of the small attacks with the intention of getting some 6's to use the big swings. It works, I end up getting 5 6's, and rolling 5 more Eviscerating Blows thanks to Death to the False Emperor. He ended up taking 18 wounds from the big hits and quite a few more from the small ones. I had it down to its last profile when he wanted to use a stratagem to fight again. Alas, it turns out there is no such stratagem for his knights house.

On turn 2, I move forward with the unscathed Drones and Dps and start roasting Guardsmen and assaulting things. I begin to score Maelstrom cards too, like Big Game Hunter and secure objective whatever and defend objective whatever. That round sees both Morty and the Knight go down, a DP assault and find out that Baneblade variant tanks are nasty in close combat and the Guard fire base start to collapse. Also the Lord of Contagion made the deep strike charge and whacked a psyker in the back field then held an objective.
As the turns continue, he scores cards, I score cards and I slowly grind away his troops and other units. But time is getting down and as the game continues his tank is deleting units off of objectives and it appears my end game scoring is going to be in jeopardy. We end up playing all 6 rounds and when the dust is cleared I end up winning by 2 points! Holding objectives for end game pulled me ahead as he was unable to dislodge two squads of Plague Marines and the Pox Walkers.

MVPs of the game were (as probably will be for the rest of them) the BLOAT DRONES, the little floating fire hydrants just fried troops, scored far objectives and plague probed the hell out of stuff. Most importantly, they absorbed huge amounts of fire.

Round 2: Vs Eldar / Dark Eldar / Harlies

Spoiler:

What a great opponent. A super nice guy that made the drive from Maryland. The set up was the circle in the middle (search and destroy?) where you deploy in opposite corners. He was playing Cabal of the Black Heart triple Ravangers, two Archons, Venoms with Kabalite Warriors, a Razor Wing, Troupe Master, Shadowseer, three troupes, a Solitaire, three star weavers and a Farseer. I was terrified of his potential mobility, psykers and just punishing fire power.
The end game objective was table quarters. You needed to have a non-flyer role, non-less-than-10W-character unit in a table quarter to control it and the opponent needed to have none. Each table quarter is three points. Again, in testing, cards generated more points reliably as it was so easy to contest a table quarter. Secondaries were Warlord, King of the Hill and Marked for Death (kill the opponents most expensive unit).
Pregame I figured the best bet was to send the crew to the middle of the board, control it while I advanced my troops to each table quarter and focus on not dying.
I ended up going first again, and advanced up to the center of the board. I got Miasma off and readied myself for the eventual DOOM casting on Morty. I had five Denies in the middle of the board and ended up denying a bunch of stuff that didn't matter but failed the deny on a pretty low roll for Doom. I didn't top it even using a command reroll. His shooting was all at Morty and he went down after taking his final wounds with only one Ravanger left to shoot.
On my turn two, he had just too much stuff within range and two drones and a Prince went to work in the center of the board blowing up Venoms and Starweavers, auto hitting with the double Plaguespitters and then rolling 10's, 11's and 12's for shots with rerolling all wounds just took down everything. The other prince, drone and a couple of plague marine squads shot down and assaulted the Razorwing on the left flank. Turn 2 was a pretty big blow for me but he still had nearly untouched Ravangers, as the Lord of Contagion made his deep strike charge on one and did a few wounds.
His strike back unfortunately for him was underwhelming as the Bloat Drones were the primary targets and they just soaked wounds. He was stuck in a bad spot where he had some Harlies that wanted to assault but would most likely die to overwatch Plague Spitters, so he had to assault the Deamon Princes, which they lived and shredded them back in combat.
During this time I was scoring cards by controlling objectives or killing flyers or denying powers or whatever. As the game wound down, he was nearly out of models that could hold or contest table quarters as dedicated transports aren't allowed to score either.
His last turn gambit was to contest one quarter and kill a bloat drone that was contesting his deployment corner, but alas, the Drone lived and scored a win in the ball park of 30-20 or 32-18, something around there.
This game went much the same as the first: My drones/Princes/Morty were in the middle of the board and I fried scoring units while my Marines and Pox Walkers scored objectives basically unmolested.
On a side note, my dice were on fire this game. My Princes were making 2/3s of their invul saves, I was rolling a million shots with the drones and making DR saves like they were 2+. But again, I had a great opponent and the game could have easily went the other way. I mean, his Archon failed the first 2+ save when facing down 11 wounds from a Bloat Drone...
MVP again were the Bloat Drones. They just don't die. I did also auto-explode one, marking the first non-Command reroll stratagem I used.

Round 3: Custodes with a Voystroyn Baneblade variant

Spoiler:

This round and my last round were against two GREAT guys, just super friendly, down to earth and great players. Byron was playing double Shield Captains, a big squad of flying bikes, three Custodes troops squads, anti-psyker assassin, some other character that had an aura and the big ass tank. The tank had the gun that got a big bonus versus Titanic models. Luckily, Morty is just huge, not Titanic.
The deployment was long way with a 24" no man's land in the middle. Kill points was primary and First Strike, King of the HIll and Linebreaker were secondary. My opponent said he plays against a Death Guard player with some regularity and that he has some ideas on what to do. Also, this game we were to draw 15 objective cards at the beginning but could only score 3 a turn. The Kill Points were based on power level though, which made sense.
I think I got first turn, again. He deployed up front, as did I. He was aware that my long range shooting is basically worthless but had mentioned that he needed to play aggressive to beat me. That seemed to play into my strengths, which I am okay with. I went first and moved the crew up and moved the Marines and walkers towards objectives. I believe I failed Miasma but Morty weathered the storm and the giant Baneblade super gun after he moved his whole army TOWARDS me. It wasn't what I expected but none the less they walked forward heroically. I had only played Custodes one time before but I knew they had lots of wounds with great saves and were good in combat. I don't think either of us scored First Strike.
On turn 2, I shot a lot of guys with Plaguespitters, Blight Launchers, Plasma, Smites and such. Morty had Miasma and Blades of Putrification and charged into a Shield Captain and Custodians. A Prince made it also and I rolled hot, killing the Captain a handful of Custodians. The center of the board looked brutal. On the bottom of two, my opponent used a stratagem to deep strike his bikes to lead a Heroic charge back, as he fell back exposing Morty to a million storm bolter shots and the big tank, he went down for the count. A Prince also fell to the Bikes assault and the other Captain wiped out a squad of Plague Marines. Suddenly, I was worried that my opponent was wise to the plan and was going to target my troops to limit my scoring. [spoiler]
On turn three I surrounded the Bikes with the Bloat Drones and just drenched them in wounds, followed up with volleys from my remaining Plague Marines and a charge from my Warlord Prince, killing them. The other shield captain faced a similar fate the next turn. My Lord of Contagion chased down his other character guy with the banner thing and cut him up with a rusty chain scythe.
As we wound down to turn 6, my Drones wouldn't die and I just tried to hide from the only remaining model, the big as tank. My opponent fought for every point though, and I ended up winning 30-20. That giant tank was worth another 6 victory points that I didn't get, which would have been a big win, I just didn't have a way to do nearly enough wounds to it.
My opponent was an awesome guy and a great general. He played with great courage and honor and left it all on the table. My MVPs were the drones yet again. They just didn't die and wounded the hell out of everything.

At this point, I am 3-0 at the end of day 1. I haven't won any games by more than 12 battle points so I am not actually too high up in the standings. I have mixed feelings about the scoring system used that gives more points based on how badly you win. I know this is super common but I am not a big tournament player. Coming from the M:tG world, a win is a win. But it is the way it is. I had no illusions that I was going to win the event anyways, so my feelings on scoring really don't matter.

Spoiler:

**John Prins**

Plague Marines are great. They don't hand out so much damage that they feel OP, but they soak up lots and lots of punishment.

Best of luck to you!

**Rynner**

Nice job going 5-0!

I was there too. Michigan was great this year!

Michigan was pure differential battle points for anyone wondering.

**NH Gunsmith**

Huh. How did you feel about a Maelstrom tournament? That sounds wild to me, and I could get down on it. My best games with my Blood Angels have been Maelstrom, so would for sure like that.

**Brymm**

I was super hesitant initially, but after practicing it, I warmed up to it. In the actual event, it was great. You need a tracking method though, and one that is visible to both players. Also save the cards you score. But it was great and I would play in one again.

**Zid**

Great showing, I definitely have reservations with Maelstrom missions in general; the game feels more skewed in many matchups to me, but the game does play differently from ITC.

I'd be interested to know why you chose the Drones (Speed/keep up with morty?) over ol' reliable, the PBC's.

**Brymm**

Yeah to FLY with Morty and the Princes. Just ignoring terrain and being able to get into combat and then fall back and fire was also too good to pass up.

**Zid**

Brymm wrote:
Yeah to FLY with Morty and the Princes. Just ignoring terrain and being able to get into combat and then fall back and fire was also too good to pass up.

I could see that; my playtests saw them die far easier than PBC's in a variety of situations; mostly because of being T7 and 2 less wounds. However, I see the merits of both, and have never played with Morty myself.

Congrats on winning all 5, where did you place? I find it odd you go 5-0 and don't win the whole shebang. Did they do paint scores and all that?

**Brymm**

It was all Battle Points differential. That meant winning my first game by only like 26-24 meant I was only two points ahead of the guy I just beat. There were like 10 people that were either 50-0 or 49-1. Each round I was like that, my biggest margin was in the range of 35-15. When all was said and done I ended up like 24th of 108 I believe. I lost points on not having a written theme, for only having a 2D display board and a few other little things like that.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the Drones: I just flew them right at people and assaulted whenever I could. They were as tough as nails for me. The PBC lack of fly and not being able to fall back and shoot is what made the choice for me. I wish I could run 9.

**Brymm**

Game 4: vs Tyranids with GSC

Spoiler:

Starting up day two! I was pretty psyched that day one went so well. I went with my teammates to breakfast in the morning, had a full belly, had coffee and got a good night sleep the night before. To tell you the truth, I felt a big relief that I had won all three games the day before because that was my goal. I just wanted to go 3-2. These next two games were house money.
Mission 4 was Dawn of War deployment with 6 objectives placed by us, then we could each nominate an objective to be worth more points in secret and then nominate an objective to be worth less points in secret. An added bonus was that there was like old Night Fight rules in place for the first two turns where the further you were away from the enemy, your save was improved. I'm not sure if this was supposed to help me or hurt me but I would figure it out as I went.
He was playing Nids with the rerolls of 1 while standing still fleet trait. His GSC guys were a couple of small characters and a block of genestealers coming in from reserve, along with a trygon and devourer gaunts coming out of the tunnel. He also had a big brick of Hive Guard and an Exocrene and two flying Hive Tyrants and a neurothrope. Interesting list but I felt my list could weather the shooting and survive combat if/when it came down to it.

Turn 1. He went first I believe. I'm having a hard time piecing this game together in my head. He kept a lot off of the board but started with both of his Hive Tyrants out of line of sight, he tried to shoot Hive Guard and the Exocrine at Morty but the +2 to saves made him not killable turn 1, he did move up the Hive Tyrants though towards the center. On my turn I moved up my things and was able to kill things and assault things.
But my memory is all messed up. I believe Morty died turn 2 but I never assaulted anything. So maybe he died turn 1 and maybe I went first? I really should have kept better notes.

But this game ended up going a lot like the others. After Morty died I was able to have my Drones and Princes in great positions to just go to town on tender units, my Daemon Prince survived a charge against Genestealers due to some hot dice and I was able to fall back and shoot with Plague Marines and a Drone to down them. The Trygon popped up with all of his Gaunts and again, my 2+ Prince with the armor tanked like 90 shots and then lead a charge to wipe that unit the next turn. The Trygon went down to special weapons fire and Plaguespitters. His backfield stayed mainly intact but since they were the only guys really alive, he wasn't scoring many cards. As the game wound down, I was claiming many of the objectives, including the 4pt one.
In this game I learned to respect those Hive Guard. Jesus they could put out some highly accurate, highly damaging shots. This guy and the first opponent were the only ones to threaten the bloat drones seriously.
Also as the game was ending my opponent was informed he was in the running for best looking army and needed to be up for voting at the end of the round. So his final turns were rushed and I believe that helped me a lot in the game towards the end.
Again, a great guy and an amazing player.
My MVP in this game was actually the Daemon Prince with the Suppurating Plate. He tanking so many shots and just shredded in close combat, killing countless gaunts, the Hive Tyrant and he might have put the final wounds on the Trygon. I wish I had taken better notes but at this point I was stoked that I was going to my final game without losing.

Game 6: Vs Tau with Riptides and Forgeworld big-ass-battle suits

Spoiler:

This guy was an absolute riot. I was glad to have someone to play against that wanted to have fun and play a damn good game. He was funny, he had a great display board that had a video of scantily clad women singing and dancing on it, plus posters of other seductive looking women on the sides of his cart. Also, a bottle of lotion and tissues were provided on his cart. It was quite funny and inappropriate. But funny.

He is a pretty experienced player and we both made a point to have fun and play our best. I made sure to ask him how his overwatch rules worked and he repeatedly answered my questions during the game as to not mislead me into making some terrible mistake. There would be no "GOTCHA!" overwatch shenanigans. It came into play because my working knowledge was that you could greater good once an assault phase, and luckily he corrected me in that EACH UNIT can Greater Good per phase. This was critical because I would have charged into some intense autohitting giant flamers from those Forgeworld suits.
This game sure felt the closest but the scoring at the end would say otherwise. We ended up making it to turn 5. Had it gone a 6th, it would have narrowed a little bit.
Something to note in this game: There were four objectives in no man's land this game but each one was to be treated like the Relic in the big rule book and would be worth three VPs. Knowing this, my main objective the entire game was to kill his Firewarriors and infantry keyword characters. His Battlesuits and drones would not be able to hold the objectives because they couldn't pick them up per the main rule book. We got clarification in about turn 3 and all of the Firewarriors were dead. The judge ruled that only Infantry could move them but any unit could score them by being within 3 inches and ObSec would apply and if someone was carrying it, it couldn't be contested. This changed things a bit.
His army was double battalion with 6 minimum strength squads of Firewarriors, 3 or 4 infantry characters, a commander model that could advance one time at 40 inches, two Forgeworld 400+ pt suits that had DMG3 Flamers and some sort of plasma cannons, then two Riptides with shield drones.
Again, I went first and drove up field, I got Miasma up but against the kind of shooting he had, that really didn't matter. It was Marker lights, then massive shooting. I feel like this shooting phase took 40 minutes and he was playing quickly. Morty died and to my opponents detriment, I think he thought it was wrapped up. But again, the crew was mid field and I enacted the plan of just frying, smiting and assaulting Firewarriors. Some Firewarriors were Plague Probed this battle. On his next turn he shot with the suits again and I rolled pretty hot with saves on the drones, but his positioning was good and was able to get a Prince as the closest model and fried him.
By my turn three I had three of the relics in my dirty little hands and had moved them back into my deployment zone. This was about the time we got the ruling on the Relic and CK began to shift gears and move those big ass suits into my areas. He realized he needed to knock down the Plague Marines so they would drop the relics and he could at least contest or outright score them. There was another problem he had: He wasn't scoring cards. He drew a lot of "Secure objective 5" or "Defend objective 6" that were the relics my guys had in my deployment zone. So while he wasn't scoring those cards, I was, I repeatedly had the "secure objective 4" or "kill a unit with FLY" or "destroy a unit in the shooting phase." I was wracking up the points. Additionally, his most expensive unit was Marked for Death, it had FLY and only had like 3 wounds left when I killed it in close combat with the Lord of Contagion, netting me 4 VP in one go with another card that said if I killed a unit in CC I got a VP.
By turn 5 his other big suit was in my deployment zone and had killed the Pox Walkers who had controlled 2 objectives, preventing a landslide victory in my favor. Final game scoring had him win Primaries 7-6, us tie secondaries 2-2 but me win the tactical objectives 9-1 (or 2). Controlling the objectives all game just let me score points that he couldn't.
If the Relics were scored as the BRB, I'm sure he would have played differently out of the gates. But alas, his army wasn't able to really go out and get objectives like that, his troops were too weak and slow on foot. I felt a little crumby near the end because I felt that my opponent was having a lot less fun as it appeared that he wasn't going to win, because I think he was okay with helping me not make dumb moves in assault against the Greater Good due to my lack of understanding of the rule. We also discussed in the game on if the best move when shooting at big suits is to target the drones or just shoot the damn suit. He thought shoot the suits. I ended up shooting the drones later anyways.
But he apologized almost immediately if he seemed salty, he said he just wanted to get to game turn 6. He might have closed the gap a little more.
Either way, salt was forgotten almost immediately, and discussion of Adepticon and strip clubs took over, He ended up giving me some awesome laser cut terrain supply crates that he won in an auction at the event.
I built those crates.
They are great.

So all in all, I finished up 5-0 in about 23rd place out of 100+. If I had maxed my display board and written a theme, I would have probably made top 10, but I just didn't read the rubric. I'll update with pictures soon! Thanks for reading!

**akaean**

Thinking about it, I think the Maelstrom victory cards really played into Death Guard's hands. Your troops are bulky and strong, which means once they get to an objective they are a lot harder to sift!

I think this was most evident against the Tau in your final match, where as potent and devastating as his shooting was, and offensively he certainly held the initiative, he wasn't able to deal with your scoring units and could not prevent you from massively outscoring him. Deathguard durability also makes your army one of the absolute hardest to completely table in 5 or 6 turns, which means the other army will likely need to actually outscore you in order to win!

I was at the event, but I was actually playing Bolt Action instead of 40K. Still, i'm actually glad to hear that the 40K event used Maelstrom cards, and I'm also glad that it was a successful implementation. In truth, I only play 40K with the maelstrom cards because it adds so much to the battle and requires the players to be focusing on scoring objectives right from the word go. I love having something to fight over, and objectives do a good job of providing that.

Nevertheless awesome job going 5-0! Its good to see the Deathguard going out in force and bringing in some glory to the dark gods! It really goes to show just how effective playing to the objectives and scenarios really is, and I think its something so many 40K players forget about when going for the table.

**gwarsh41**

Man, this really shows how strategy can be such a game changer. I ran a pretty similar list in a GT earlier in the year as the ringer, meaning I played the bottom players who had no one else to face due to odd number of attendees. My job was to play a game, and bring a list that wouldn't cause problems.

Very awesome work, you put creed to shame!

**djones520**

How do you go 5-0 and end up in 23rd?

That... I don't understand that.

**BaconCatBug**

djones520 wrote:
How do you go 5-0 and end up in 23rd?

That... I don't understand that.

Because you get ranked by victory points.

Somebody who wins all games 50-0 will outrank someone who wins all games 49-1, etc.

**tneva82**

Brymm wrote:
I was super hesitant initially, but after practicing it, I warmed up to it. In the actual event, it was great. You need a tracking method though, and one that is visible to both players. Also save the cards you score. But it was great and I would play in one again.

Here standard is keep cards you score. As all d3 are counted as 2 here it's dirt easy to calculate VP's from cards so you just need something to track first blood/slay the warlord etc.

Oh and combination of maelstrom+eternal war is standard here as well.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

djones520 wrote:
How do you go 5-0 and end up in 23rd?

That... I don't understand that.

By winning but not scoring much points. Seems it's different in that tournament but for example here depending on scale of victory you can get anywhere between 11-9(for you and opponent) to 20-0. Now imagine if you get 5 11-9 victories. That's 55 points for you(and your 5 opponents got 9 pts each). Compare that to winning 4 games 20-0 and losing 1 game 5-15. That's 95 vp's. Full 40 different to the 5-0 guy in this example.

Guess the tournament organizer didnt' go just win/lose but also tracks level of wins.

**Brymm**

That's exactly right.
Another interesting thing is that I was always paired up against someone with similar points, not a similar record. So I believe I played against the three people after round 2 when they each had a loss or even two.
And again, I lost a lot of points on my display board, adding to my ranking. One of the organizers had let me know that I lost quite a few places because of that and my lack of a typed out theme and back story. Next year I'll have those hammered out so I don't leave so many points on the table.

**tneva82**

Brymm wrote:
That's exactly right.
Another interesting thing is that I was always paired up against someone with similar points, not a similar record. So I believe I played against the three people after round 2 when they each had a loss or even two.
And again, I lost a lot of points on my display board, adding to my ranking. One of the organizers had let me know that I lost quite a few places because of that and my lack of a typed out theme and back story. Next year I'll have those hammered out so I don't leave so many points on the table.

That matches here. Somebody with 60 pts after 4 rounds with 3-1 record(wins being 20-0) is ranked higher than somebody with 52 pts with 4-0 record(13-7 each). More points, higher ranking and highest ranking faces next highest etc.

**Brymm**

That format, in comparison to win loss pairing, let me have 5 close games against people that were much closer to my actual skill level. There was like elite teir players there, maybe 12 of them that had some mean lists, great displays, incredible paint jobs and travelled to be there. I believe any of them would have wiped the floor with me and by this system, I never played one of them. If I had, obviously I would not have been undefeated. Plus games like that aren't really fun.