TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 10: Testing New Death Guard Lists

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I talked about some outstanding Crusade games and my first practice game with a new version of my Death Guard list, hoping to make some adjustments that will make it a bit more versatile. This week I’m talking about my two practice games over the weekend, what I learned, and how I’m making additional tweaks and testing.

The List

Here’s what I ran last time around. The basic premise is swapping out one unit of Deathshroud and the Lord of Virulence for a pair of Myphitic Blight-Haulers. The idea is that the Blight-haulers give me a bit more anti-vehicle/heavy infantry punch while also giving me two fast, durable units to range around the table.

My test list - click to expand

I played one game with this against Imperial Knights and while that was a fine start I needed to get in a more serious test with the list against some top-of-the-meta opponents. So I queued up another pair of practice games over the weekend: One against fellow Goonhammer Contributor Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson and another against Erik, my frequent sparring partner. As it turned out, both were playing Chaos Space Marines and with very similar armies. Let’s dig into the two games to see how they turned out.

The Mission: B (Priority Targets – Search and Destroy – Hidden Supplies)

This was Mission 2 in last year’s GW US Open pack, and it’s a good mission to start with this time around – CSM have a small advantage here, both out-ranging me on the long lines of sight, and having much more deadly melee in the middle, plus only having an 18″ gap to clear if we both deploy on the line. It’s a good test for my list and I ended up playing it in both games.

Game 1: vs. Dan’s Chaos Space Marines

Dan's List - Click to Expand

Dan’s running triple Predator Destructors, and I’m not gonna lie; that’s a pain in the ass. One of those bad boys can easily get lucky and drop a PBC and Dan is running a Helbrute to give them juiced-up Pacts. I didn’t appreciate how nasty that was going to be, in part because it hadn’t occurred to me that having critical hits on 5+ means you get both the sustained and lethal results if you roll a 5. Dan’s also got Raptors and Nurglings in Deep Strike, meaning I’ll have to protect my backfield all game to prevent him from coming in. The Nurglings aren’t a threat to my home objective, but the Raptors are. Fortunately I can screen them out.

I’m going second. 

That’s not what I want in most games but it’s fine. I’d rather not get shot by Dan before I can go but I don’t have a ton of options here for deployment with this map, unless I want to leave something exposed. That’s not the worst idea – having something Dan can see means he’s likely to get aggressive and make a play, and with how he’s deployed he’s going to max out at two Predators shooting Mortarion. That’s more than I want but I can drop -1 to hit and he’ll have cover from their shooting so that should help me pull enough saves to keep him on the table. At least, I hope anyways. We’re both on Tactical Missions. Dan puts his Possessed into Strategic Reserves.

I’m on Rattlejoint Ague, for -1 to saves. That’s almost always the play against power armor.

Here’s the plan:

The plan is to disembark both units of Plague Marines from the Rhino up top. From their position one can reach the mid-table objective with a regular disembark move while the other needs a 1″ Advance to reach the north objective. I want to hit both on Turn 1 and sticky them, forcing Dan to remove me from both if he wants to keep me off 10 VP per turn. If he gets aggressive at midtable and moves up with his Maulerfiend, I’ll press the PBCs up there and unload, using Mortarion to slingshot off the Maulerfiend and into some Predators. I can use Plague Marines to clean up the Legionaries. You can’t see it in this photo but I have one unit of Nurglings in the lower right ruin. My plan is to either push back with them and Investigate or move them forward to harass Dan’s units. I’ve got another unit in the corner of the left-side mid ruin who can walk out and around.

How Round 1 Unfolds

Dan’s secondary draws: Investigate Signals, No Prisoners

Dan plays more coy with his Maulerfiend, afraid to lose it right away. He sneaks up with his Predators and unloads, killing the Blight-Hauler and dropping 13 damage on Mortarion after I rolled incredibly poorly on saves. That’s not ideal, but as long as Mortarion isn’t dead I’m okay. It’s not an ideal turn, but Dan only nabs 2 each for Signals and No Prisoners.

My Secondary Draws: No Prisoners, Area Denial

On my turn I adjust the plan a bit. I still press the PBCs to midtable – I need one up in there to score me five VP for Area Denial – but I swing Mortarion out of line of sight. I use Gifts of Decay to heal him for 2W and he’s back up to 5. It’s not ideal but I’ll get there. I keep him within 6″ of all three PBCs so they can use his re-roll 1s to wound and ignore modifiers auras. Then I start unloading. I swing around up top and use the remaining Blight-Hauler to drop eight damage on Dan’s Rhino, but it manages to survive the Plague Marine shooting and I’m forced to use two mortars to take it out, leaving me little to shoot the occupants with. At midtable Dan is on fire with his 5+ and 6+ saves and I end up only killing the Rhino this turn and doing little other damage. The upside is I get a stellar advance for my Nurglings, moving them out. I need them in position to basically blunt Dan’s Chosen.

The other big one is on the edge, where I move my Nurglings out and then manage a 9″ charge to get them into combat with Dan’s Rhino and Predator this turn. Neither will hurt them much, giving me a bit of extra insurance. The Nurglings were rock stars this game.

On Dan’s turn he pulls Engage on All Fronts and Secure No Man’s Land. Secure is free and using his reserves he can get small Engage. Dan can charge onto it with the Maulerfiend but I have 11 OC of Plague Marines sitting on it just under 1″ away from the wall on the other side, making them unassailable to the Maulerfiend unless it walks around. Dan snags 10 for Primary and gets to work. He charges his Maulerfiend up the table, intent on cracking one of my PBCs, while I realize I’ve made a horrible mistake on the right side: Chosen can Advance and Charge (I had forgotten about this). On top of that, Dan rolls a 6 for his Advance, giving them an easy charge to my rhino and a good chance of wrapping it completely. He opts to shoot it instead, and pops it with his first predator. The unit gets out behind it and while they can’t overwatch, they’re still going to fight first when he charges.

Up top Dan sweeps into my units on the objective and loses a few models to Overwatch but is in good position. His other Predator makes short cross-table work of my other MBH and his Legionaries + MoE drop my Plague Marines, scoring one CP in the process for killing my Putrifier.

It took Dan a little too much to crack my Rhino and he only kills two plague marines before he has to charge in with his Chosen. He loses five Chosen to fights first, and as a result the Blightspawn survives the onslaught. He’ll fail his battleshock test the following turn, but pass his breakout test falling back.

At midtable Dan presses forward with the Maulerfiend, then charges my PBC. Then he just completely whiffs in combat, leaving the PBC on 2 wounds. So I shoot it off the table the following turn.

On my turn I pull Cleanse and Engage on All Fronts. I use one PBC at midtable to steal the objective from Dan’s rhino, then use the Nurglings to Cleanse. That’s my only attempt, as I need all the offense I can muster everwhere else. I drop my Deathshroud at the top of the table, then Dan uses Rapid Ingress to bring in his Possessed on the left side, aiming to take me off the corner. Mortarion is within contagion range of my home objective in the Command phase so I heal him back up to 8 wounds. Now we’re talking. He sweeps right and kills the chosen, wearing them down and using the stragglers to slingshot onto the objective. The mortars take out half of the Possessed, and the Plague Marines and Deathshroud finish off the Legionaries. Things are looking okay right now.

From here, things Snowball. Dan kills everyone but Typhus in my Deathshroud and wipes out my Plague Marines. He scores three for Defend Stronghold but nothing for Tempting Target (the one in the middle with all the PBCs on it).

but I’ve got solid control of the middle of the board and I start sweeping up with Mortarion, who can easily kill a Predator in one round of combat, especially when he’s effectively on AP-4 with the contagion. The PBCs can pick off the Possessed at a distance, and the Raptors won’t make it to my Rhino in time to cause problems. Dan can’t score Storm Hostile on turn 4 but gets 3 for Cleanse and snags some good secondaries on his final turn – Storm Hostile and Deploy Homers are free for him – but he’s behind on Primary while I max it out.

Result: 91-68, win

That went pretty well, but I definitely made some big mistakes. Forgetting the Chosen could Advance and Charge hurt me, and I think I got lucky that Dan committed to charging my unit and losing most of his Chosen – he’d have been better off kiting me. I got lucky with my Nurgling charge, but otherwise this was a slog; Dan was crushing his saves early on. I think he didn’t quite have the firepower to sit back and play as coy a game as he did.

While the game was a success, I didn’t love the MBHs and I continue to struggle with them a bit. For my next game against Erik I decided to go ahead and swap one for Fleshmower Bloat-Drone, allowing me to swap the Tallyman for another Putrifier.

Game 2: vs. Erik’s Chaos Space Marines

Erik’s not a big Chaos player but after three years of trying to make melee space marines work in some capacity he’s finally come to the realization that CSM just play how he wants a power-armored army to play.

Erik's list - click to expand

Erik’s list is for all intents and purposes a better version of Dan’s, trading out the Possessed and Helbrute for Vindicators and saving points by dropping Chosen for Legionaries. It’s also packed with Bikers, who are exactly the kind of unit an Eldar player would take if they were playing CSM. Erik’s also less aggressive than Dan, and the Vindicators add a ton more destructive firepower, forcing me to play more coy.

I’m going first.

I played things pretty safe turn 1, staying out of line of sight and working on some better angles. I did the same trick again with my Plague Marines on the upper left objectives, this time getting a better advance roll to hide in the ruins and using my Fleshmower for support. I don’t have as many photos of this game but it was pretty wild. There was a ton of back-and-forth and while on the whole our dice tended to be average, it was in that “rolling lots of 6s and then lots of 1s” way where we’d go back and forth spiking rolls in ways that made things kind of ridiculous.

Once again I saw a Maulerfiend not accomplish much – he nearly biffed his rolls trying to kill my Fleshmower on turn 2 (making the charge coming in from reserves), but I failed every single save for the mower in order to balance things out. Then I promptly removed the Maulerfiend with grenades and entropy cannons the following turn. The Vindicators and Predators continued to be big problems, but they were a lot less devastating when they weren’t snagging lethals on top of sustained hits.

This was a game I ultimately felt I shouldn’t have lost – I managed to put a steady hurting on Erik’s units and removed them from the board before they could make profitable trades. Erik for his part kept pushing for points, and ultimately beat me on card draws – I had a disastrously unlucky final turn, pulling three unscorable objectives and losing by four VP. Likewise, Erik pulled the coup of the game with a 10″ charge out of reserves on his bikes in round 4, getting insanely lucky and doing 10 damage to my rhino with the two power fists in the unit and allowing them to sneak onto the lower right objective, allowing him to get to 50 VP on primary instead of 45. Just a perfect storm at the end to cap things off but it was part of a trend Erik noticed much earlier – I’d just been having really bad secondary all game to that point, pulling unscorable objectives turn after turn when trying to overcommit to score them would have lost me the game. Meanwhile Erik had been reliably pulling 6-8 per turn and staying just far enough ahead. Brutal loss but I don’t think I’d chalk this one up to play mistakes.

Result: 83-87, Loss

Two games down and I think I much prefer the double Putrifier list to the Tallyman version. The Fleshmower didn’t do any more than the MBHs did but that’s kind of not an issue, right? He’s marginally better against monsters and a bit more versatile since he can Fall back and shoot/charge, and in both games I’ve come to understand that using one of the little guys to draw out bigger targets isn’t the worst thing given they’re only 100ish points. It’s a fine trade. I think this is the list I’m taking to the RTT this weekend.

Next Thursday: The May Asgard RTT

That wraps up this week’s recap but come back next Thursday when I’ll have the writeup for this weekend’s RTT. It’s my final prep before the GW US Open in Dallas next week, and I’m excited to see how my list fares against some of the tougher players at Asgard. Of course, Dan and Erik will both be there, and I’m sure to have to play against one of them before the day’s over. So we’ll see how it goes.

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