Against Death Guard

What have you all found works against Death Guard? I'm fairly certain we can outrun them, but I'm struggling to find anything that can output enough damage to take them out fast enough.

Make sure to kill the DP's, Drones, and Crawlers, honestly after that its just a battle of attrition.

amishprn86 wrote:

Make sure to kill the DP's, Drones, and Crawlers, honestly after that its just a battle of attrition.

Thats easier said then done. The major issue is getting past the ludicrous durability. I recently played against them round 1 in a tournament that used epidemious tally to get them all to even higher durability. My answer which worked OK was to focus down the bloat drones with my entire army while I use venoms to assault and tie down the crawlers. That said, I still struggled to remove his models. it took three turns to kill two bloat drones lol. I actually think they are one of our worst matchups, I did OK this time (second time facing his list) because I was rocking coven as my second obsession rather then cult, so he struggled to remove my stuff that walked him down.

Mortal wounds. Haywire, screaming jets. Also, having poison weapons is great vs T5 and anything that buffs them, flayed skull or poisoned tongue will help. Otherwise use your maneuverability to secure objectives and deny objectives. Theres not much chance of killing them quickly.

Surely even Mortal Wounds aren't that great when they have a 5+ save against them?

Nah mortal wounds suck, they can also use CP to heal their crap, double heal if they dip into forge world and get a helwright. Best answer is to grab more table with your speed, then lock up anything that isn't a bloat drone. Coven IMO is a must against death guard, we can actually match their durability with grots and talos. The list I have had the hardest time removing models from was:

Demon Battlion of Nurgle
Demon prince with wings and talons
Epidemious
2 units of 3 nurglings
10 plaguebearers

Death guard Out rider
Winged Prince talons
unit of 3 blight haulers
2 bloat drones

Death Guard Spearhead
Prince with wings and talons
3 Plague burst crawlers

That army gets scary if it gets the tally going, toughness 8 and 9 demon engines is no joke.

You only use MW's like Torment GL to knock off the last wound on an important unit.


But with CWE supreme command... Doom/Jinx just makes it so much easier. They go down in 1/2 the shots its crazy good, you literally are picking off an important unit a turn, and the poison shots can focus on little guys, then you have extra shots to turn other units.

Got a 1250 game coming up, not sure his list, but any pointers? I saw coven was mentioned.

I suggest you avoid splitting your fire. Death Guard are durable and you'll need to focus your attacks to kill their units. But, they're a bit slow and their plague spitters have a shorter range than our guns. I tend to spread my forces out and use my fast mobility to take objectives with venoms that they would have a hard time contesting from their area of the table, while focus firing the bloat drones and crawler tanks as they come. If my opponent camps a crawler on an objective, I'll usualy just let him have it and shoot at a unit that is a bigger threat to me this turn. You'll need a lot of high strength attacks to take chunks out of Death Guard. So, ravagers, talos, razorwing jetfighters, voidravens, grotesques, things like that. You can use your fast speed to kite them to some extent. You can also drop scourges beside or behind them, which will force them to change direction. Don't let them dominate the table and push you out. Their fat save makes them a pretty tough nut to crack, but it can be done with enough strength 5/8 attacks and mortal wounds.

Good luck with your game!

Thank you. So have more dark lances than dissies?

Both are good against Death Guard, but because those annoying crawlers are T8, dissies are actually better at putting wounds on them than dark lances. Dark lances can still do work though.