Death Guard at the Grim Dice Tournament

Hello!

Been a little while since I've updated here, and since last time I wrote about my Death Guard toughing it out in tenth edition, I thought I'd continue with a brief overview of the Grim Dice Tournament, and maybe some bonus Death Guard content at the end!

The event itself was a pretty standard 2k one-dayer with about 12 players. I took a list featuring Mortarion running up the middle and a series of small units to try and play the missions, including three Blight-haulers, three units of mostly melee Plague Marines, two lots of Blightlords, a single Plagueburst Crawler (if I had more I would definitely have taken more), Rhino, Bloat Drone, Tallyman and a load of cultitst and poxwalker chaff. At time of writing the balance update has just come out so this list now would have an extra 250 odd points and a powerful new army rule, so I'm well aware I was playing as the underdogs!

First game was against Tim with Chaos Daemons. It was a high scoring win for the Death Guard, 93-89, only a few points in it. The army did what it was supposed to do, spreading out and hoovering up points, while the Daemons slowly murdered everything, but couldn't quite catch up.

Second game was against Robin and his Orks, started fairly even but Mortarion got beaten up badly by Mozrog Skragbad (which I wasn't too sad about too be honest, that guy should be pretty beefy!) and the game went drastically downhill from there. I think the final result was 93-53 to the Orks. My opponent here was a younger member of the community, and I think it's worth saying in case he reads this, I was impressed with both his tactical ability and his Orky spirit!

Last game was against CJ and his Necrons. This one went downhill pretty quickly, Mortation got stuck on the terrain then died fast, while the rest of my army was unable to compete with the 'crons either in their damage or their defences. This game above the others really highlighted the flaws in the index for me - they just can't deal with heavy firepower or really tough targets. Or at least they couldn't - the balance pass might have given them a big boost there. I don't remember the exact score but it was 90-40 ish.

In the end I managed to get roughly in the middle with the highest score of the one-winners. A little disappointing to have the games get progressively more unbalanced as the day went on, but I was ultimately happy to have won a game here. Looking back now on the day of the balance update it does throw it somewhat starkly into focus, the list I would have taken now would have been significantly larger and dramatically more dangerous. Regardless of results, I still had fun, it's always nice to have a day throwing dice!

And as for that Death Guard bonus content - I had a bit of a desire to have a big stupid tank to go with the collection, so I dipped into the Heresy range for this one:

The Typhon Heavy Siege Tank! Kind of like a big Plagueburst Crawler right? In any case, it was a lot of fun to paint up a big dirty rust bucket of a warmachine, using all the weathering techniques I've picked up over the years.

The Lord of Virulence approves! Now I need to play a game with legends allowed. Luckily most of my opponents seem to be pretty cool. Legends let legends use legends! Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!

Death Guard in 10th...

Hello!

So Death Guard. They aren't in a great place in 40k right now, and a lot of people have been fairly salty about this. Personally I'm not really one of them, to me Death Guard are not good, but they still kind of do what I feel they should and with GW re-writing rules for the entire game there was always going to be a few winners and losers on the balance front. With that in mind I have decided to plow on regardless with running Death Guard for the first chunk of 10th ed, until the Tyranid codex comes out at least. 

With that in mind I put a minimum investment in to playing the army - I bought the data cards and a few cheap deals off eBay, and got to playing some games and figuring out how to play the new edition. I managed to sign up for a Grim Dice tournament at the end of the month so I think my goal is probably to take Death Guard and win one game, but we shall see how that turns out. In any case, the new additions included a trio of Mephitic Blight-haulers, the most adorable of daemon engines, which I have painted up with lots of help from the sponge. 

Anyway, first game with Mortarion and friends was against Tom's Adepta Sororitas. I took the Primarch of course, with assorted vehicles (all I had at the time) and big blocks of Blightlord Terminators, melee Plague Marines and shooty Plague Marines, all with full character support. Basic plan was to smash into the middle with Morty and the Terminator block, while the vehicles got positioning and objectives.

It wasn't a totally embarrassing defeat, but the Death Guard were fairly comprehensively beaten. I learned that the big blocks just aren't that tough, even with character support, and I also severely lacked in cheap chaff units to score secondary objectives. Finally I learnt the power of overwatch when Vahl's unit took a huge chunk out of Mortarion with their multimeltas after he landed within nine inches of them.

Second game was shortly after with the same list and a rematch from one of my latter games of 9th against Sharpy and his Aeldari. This game featured Servo-skull objectives so it was a fun one to learn how to try and score the secondaries better.

This one ended pretty close, but another loss. The Eldar snuck ahead at the end thanks to swooping hawks pushing the objective around unopposed. Mortarion once again killed the Avatar (though it did take him a long time to do it) but the DG were once again not quite tough enough to get away with big units walking around in the open.

I decided to split my 10 man units up into smaller ones in order to hide them better and focus on the objectives. Without the big blocks I also dropped a bunch of characters in order to sneak in some Poxwalkers to do the annoying chaff thing.

Third game with the DG was against Mixtapir and a load of mostly Primaris Space Wolves. Like me he had decided MSU was the way to go so there were a lot of small units running around.

This time the list actually worked really well. While I know Space Wolves are also struggling a bit in 10th it felt like I was very rarely blocked out of scoring by a bad card draw or units being tied up with killing stuff. Mortarion flying up the middle as a big distraction kind of worked - the enemy decided to ignore him and focus on the light vehicles to get some easier kills and as such he got stuck into their front lines, and then back lines! For the first time in 10th (and possibly 9th as well?) I scored the full 100 points (I think the SW got 60 in the end, so not a completely one sided game).

The fourth and most recent game was once again against Tom's Sisters, now with Knight Armiger allies. We both had a lot of units to play with and it was the servo skull mission again so it would be all about pushing forward.

This game was really, really close, ending with 10 points in it. My forces did a great job of occupying the middle board and Mortarion took a hilarious amount of firepower from the Imperial forces. MSU worked great with lots of trading on the flanks, but I was once again undone by Vahl and her warsuits, eventually clearing their flank and escorting a servo skull into my deployment zone in turn 5. The various flaws of the Death Guard were pretty apparent in the end game here - struggling to remove enemy armour and their infantry lacking the famed survivability you might think they should have. None the less a well contested game and an encouraging sign for the future!

So, four games in an 1-3 with the DG, but lots of lessons learned and some close games so I'm feeling confident that I can get something out of them, so I think I will persevere to the tournament. On a practical point I have the cards for them and I've now learnt most of their rules, plus it has been a lot of fun painting up more dirty plague dudes!

Anway, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed! Stay safe out there!

Tempest of War Battle Report - Death Guard vs Aeldari

Hello!

Another Tempest game, again at 1750 points. As I said before I am trying to play mostly Tempest to see out 9th ed, and as part of that I am planning on attending a 1750 point Tempest event run by Wooden Spoon Wargaming soon. As such, this is more or less the army I'm planning on taking - Death Guard led by Mortarion! 

Now, fair warning, my battle reports are usually pretty vague and focus on the main thrust of the battle rather than all the details. I also find that Tempest is a little harder to remember in detail because of the revolving secondaries. And this game was over a week ago at time of writing. So what I'm saying is it's mostly going to be pictures!

That said, it was a good looking game as it was against Sharpy, who always puts on a good table, and his Aeldari, which are always a bit of a mix of classic space elf units. For this one he brought a Farseer and an Autarch leading Warlocks, Guardians, Warp Spiders, Shining Spears, a couple of units of Rangers plus their jet bike equivalents the Shroud Runners, Dire Avengers, a War Walker, a unit each of the Wraith constructs and the centrepiece - the Avatar of Khaine. His Craftworld traits were to reroll a wound roll once per unit per phase, and to get +1 to hit after a unit has lost a model - which is very nice on those tough Wraith units.

Arranged against them were my Death Guard forces, running as Mortarion's Anvil as usual. The big lad was of course here and the warlord, but I chose not to splurge too heavily on pregame CP to dish out a load of traits and relics elsewhere. Here it's a battalion and a super heavy aux, but this list will fit into the Arks of Omen detachment if it's in use.

HQ: Lord of Virulence (Acidic Malady), Malignant Plaguecaster (Plague Wind, Curse of the Leper)

Troops: 7 Plague Marines (power fist, blight launcher, sigil, two plasma guns), 2x 10 Poxwalkers

Elites: 7 Blightlord Terminators (combi plasma, blight launcher, flail of corruption), Helbrute (fist and multimelta), Foul Blightspawn (Revolting Stench-vats, Viscous Death)

Fast Attack: Foetid Bloat Drone (Fleshmower), Myphitic Blight-hauler

Heavy Support: Plagueburst Crawler (entropy cannons, rothail volley gun)

Lord of War: Mortarion (Miasma of Pestilence, Gift of Contagion, Putrescent Vitality, Warlord, Gloaming Bloat)

Deployment was a pair of opposing triangles with a bubble missing in the middle, 9 inches around the centre. The mission was to hold one, two and extra points for claiming an objective with an action - which was a bit of a problem with me since most of my troops can't do actions (a revision of this list might add in some cultists for this reason). I choose to keep the Terminator armoured units in reserve in case some appropriate secondaries came up, with the Eldar left the Warp Spider and Shining Spears to sneak through the webway.

Aeldari got the first turn and moved up to take shots. Nothing really died apart from some Poxwalkers but the Shroud Runners got in some sniper shots at the Foul Blightspawn, reducing him to one wound. With the Avatar marching up the middle it was obvious there was a challenge issued...

Which Mortarion gladly accepted! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Elsewhere I moved out to try and get towards some objectives, with the Plague Marines engaging some Rangers and smashing them off a point. Shooting was fairly ineffective with the combined firepower knocking off a Wraith construct or two.

Not too many points on offer here, but the big duel raged on, with the Avatar skimming a few wounds of Morty but dropping by half himself.

Turn two saw the Aeldari use their speed and tricksy ways to surround the Death Guard, pouring fire into the units on the flanks. Wraiths caused heavy damage and threatened to take objectives...

But more significantly the Shining Spears made it into melee with a strands of fate 6 to tie up the PBC and steal my backfield objective! Morty eventually slew the Avatar (though it fought on death to wound him further) but the Aeldari's champion was just a distraction to allow the rest of their forces to spring the trap!

In DG turn two I drew the 'Behind Enemy Lines' card and decided to drop my Terminators into the corners to grab some points and pressure the Eldar back lines. Morty stomped forward and dispatched the Dire Avengers, while assorted shooting dealt with the Shroud Runners, but I was unable to shift the Spears or Spiders.

The Lord of Virulence gooped all over Guardians and charged the Rangers, but I messed up here as due to the funky deployment zones this actually took him out of the zone and meant I didn't score the secondary. He didn't even kill all the Rangers on his first go!

As the game wore on Morty basically cleared a bubble around him, but the Eldar were tenaciously sticking to my back lines and denying me load of points. In particular those Shining Spears just refused to die to close range Entropy cannons.

The Terminators failed their initial charge on the Walker, eventually killing it a while later, but wasting their chonky ObSec presence in the far corner of the board - a poor move deploying them all the way over there.

In the end I wasn't able to cycle through a series of secondary objectives that were tantalisingly close to achievable, but the stubborn space elves weren't having it. 

Dramatically at the end the remaining Aeldari forces made a play for Assassinate, reducing Mortarion to a single wound, but he survived. With the too-late Terminators finally adding their firepower the Eldar were all but scoured from the board (aside from a couple of the cheeky Aspect warriors fighting over my objective), but the points told a different story, something like 90-45 to the Aeldari.

Having recently said Tempest produces really close games, I guess this was bound to happen! Still, it was fun and though not tight in the points it did allow Mortarion to do his thing in his first game, which was cool. Also, lots of lessons learned for the future - primarily regarding those Terminators and their deployment (probably best start on the board) and the chasing of marginal objectives rather than discarding them.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Stay safe out there!