Death guard is strong!

Just finished a game that I lost. 1500 points.
2 things I learned: the bloat drone is really durable and puts out a lot of damage. Not to mention maneuverable. I want this thing in my army. The second thing is that the psychic phase is still super annoying especially for an army without it. And mortal wounds are mean.
My list:
Archon blaster agoniser
Wych squad x4, venom, agoniser
Kabalites, venom, agoniser
Kabalites, venom, agoniser
Scourge, 4 blasters
3 razorwings w/ dark lances
3 ravagers triple dark Lance

His list: (lots of dark imperium death guard stuff)
Typhus
2 bell back dudes
2 psycher dudes
3 bloat drones
3 pox walker squads
And a defiler

Basically the bell back dudes have an aura that let's units roll 2 dice (take the highest) for advancing. The bloat drones are basically 2 heavy flamers which ignore penalties to hit (the -1 to hit usually makes us a lot more resilient). And they have the fly keyword so they can attack flyers and can leave combat and still shoot. Oh and their overwatch is just as punishing as their shooting. Holy cow these things are good.

Then there's the psychic phase. Basically as good as flamers, but with mortal wounds, so my invulnerable saves are useless, and my razorwings get eaten as fast as a squad of warriors.

In the end, great game, great player, I had fun.
If I approached it again I would play a bit more cautious and not run the razorwings into the middle of the army.

What would you do?

How did you feel your Dark Lances worked against the bloat drones? I know most Nurgle stuff has that disgustingly resilient ability that's a better version of our Feel no Pain but were you still getting work done with the dark lances?

Also, how resilient were the pox walkers? I feel like they would be a decent counter to our massed poison attacks.

My first turn I spent 2 razorwings and 2 ravagers and all 4 scourge blasters into one bloat drone (with shatterfield rockets) and it went down 5 wounds. I shot 1 razorwing and 1 ravager into the other drone and only did 3 wounds. (Because of positioning, I should have focused one down at a time) I think I was very unlucky. I had maybe 3 lances roll a 1 on the damage. Even when I did multiple damage, his feel no pain saved a lot.

The pox walkers went down surprisingly fast. My first turn I think I had 3 venoms take down a 10 man squad giving me first blood. Once the pox walkers were gone I could only fire at the bloat drone because everything else is a character.

I'm a little underwhelmed with how much damage the venoms put out at long range, but my warriors are so fragile against units that know what they're doing in close combat like typhus or the other characters. I ended up charging a drone with both warrior squads, my wych squad, the archon, and a venom and did 1 wound to it. I'm considering trading in warriors for something more cc oriented.

- - -

Other than that, the dark lances are amazing.

My first 2 games of the day the dark lances were doing work, and I like the flexibility of the scourge. I just ran into a brick wall with durable units that don't need to hit that I can't charge and ignore my invulnerable saves. I felt it was a strong list. I need to probably update mine.

Also in a traditional 2000 point list, I would have 500 more points of just ground forces. Perhaps I over invested in dark lances? But my first 2 games were quick and my ranged fire did work

Mhmm, from personal experience and the batreps I've been watching, Dark Lances are back with a vengeance. Even when rolling 1 for damage, as long as you have more to back it up, big monsters and vehicles arent as big of a problem any more.

As you rarely get the full amount of damage from them, they work ok against necrons as well.

I used Kabalite squads in raider with lances against death guard recently. That worked but I must admit he didn't use 3 drones but one in our 1000 point game

He seems to have a lot of characters and not that many troops aside from the poxspam.

I may be biased but I've found Mandrake assassin units beat Wyches no contest. 5 Wyches aren't doing much, but 5 Mandrakes that appear behind a character and throw mortal wounds at them can be particularly damning. I'll run a bunch of little 5 man squads of Mandrakes to pop up around the back line and start hunting enemy psykers. They're usually not super durable compared to the combat warlord, and if you drop the lynchpin of their army then they start to flounder.

Mandrakes and DLance Scourges are sooooo nice.

On the topic of death guard, I just played a nurgle/death guard based list and came up against a combination that seemed pretty strong.

He took a unit of nurgle terminatiors each with combi-plasma, accompanied by a chaos lord and a sorcerer, both in terminator armour. The sorcerer had Prescience and Warp Time both of which he cast on the unit.

This meant that he was able to overcharge the plasma with no fear of overheat, for S8 D2 (due to plus one to his hit rolls) and was hitting on 2+ with the ability to re-roll 1's. He was also able to move closer with Warp Time so only needed a 4" charge.

The end result was that the terminators killed a vehicle (shooting did 12D) and a full ten man squad on the first turn, after charging the squad.

Any suggestions for a counter?

decado4184 wrote:

On the topic of death guard, I just played a nurgle/death guard based list and came up against a combination that seemed pretty strong.

He took a unit of nurgle terminatiors each with combi-plasma, accompanied by a chaos lord and a sorcerer, both in terminator armour. The sorcerer had Prescience and Warp Time both of which he cast on the unit.

This meant that he was able to overcharge the plasma with no fear of overheat, for S8 D2 (due to plus one to his hit rolls) and was hitting on 2+ with the ability to re-roll 1's. He was also able to move closer with Warp Time so only needed a 4" charge.

The end result was that the terminators killed a vehicle (shooting did 12D) and a full ten man squad on the first turn, after charging the squad.

Any suggestions for a counter?

He grilled you 200 points with a squad of TEQ and 2 HQs, and they ended up alone (right ?) in your depoyment zone ?
My first suggestion would be to light them up (rapid fire range, you spammed dissies, they should die), but i guess you tried that. So what did you have and what did you do ? Can we get a look at the list ?
At 1500-1750 points, you should have the tools to wipe them, even with the lost raider. A hundred shots of rapid fire poison, dozens of dissie cannon shots, voidmine, dark eldars have lots of ways to inflict pain to an overextended squad of termies. Be it Nurgle or not.
If this is a 1000 points game or less, i'm starting to see the problem, it can be hard to deal with.

On a more strategic analysis, what he did to you is basically seize the initiative. You play a faction that has to invade the ennemy and make him feel uncomfortable, and he did that to you. If you start playing defensively and reactively with DE, you are half-way to defeat (IMO. This can be debated). So you had to retake the initiative, and make him feel remorse for his balls-out offensive. Be it destroy his squad, or bury them under a hundred birds/naked ladies and destroy the rest of his army, you have to dictate the rules of the game. Which is, of course, a lot easier to say than to do

Sadly they were not alone as they were right next to a helldrake, they are fast now with a 30" move. They also both hit the very end of my line reducing the number of units which could respond. I shot at the Helldrake with everything, as it seemed the larger threat due to its speed and only took it down to one wound.

Generally curious what units you would recommend against an army that has an alpha strike capability with the warp time terminators (overcharged plasma and charge) and helldrake (baleflamer and charge), controls the middle of the board with three 20 man blobs of Plaguebearers and 2 Blight Drones and has supporting fire from two Havoc squads with lascannon/missile launchers?

Would razorwing flocks be effective in bubble-wrapping?

Just very conscious that if I castle to avoid the alpha strike then I give him battlefield control, but if I spread out then the alpha strike can eliminate an isolated portion of the army, seems a catch 22.

decado4184 wrote:

Would razorwing flocks be effective in bubble-wrapping?

Can't think of a situation where they wouldn't be

Also, i never spread in deployment with dark eldar. I pack everything in the middle of my deployment zone. Then you can bubble-wrap everything, and become immune to first round charges. And since everything you have has at least 14" mvt, i don't feel like you're giving him battlefield control. Castle up in deployment, you can hit anything with everything. If you spread, you lose your fire focus.
Helldrakes are very annoying, there we agree.
As for what i would recommend :
- A void mine kills of 30% of the terminators in the squad. Everything I encountered TEQ, they got hard countered by dissies (agreed, they were not Nurgle, so it's going to be a little harder, but still think it'll work). I don't think you really need lances against him, so spam dissies.
- A Helldrake can fall back and shoot, sure, but it can't fall back and charge. Running some barebones Reavers squads could do the trick and lock him down some turns. With a grav talon they might even hurt him.
- Surviving lascannon shots is stressfull, indeed, but havocs are basically infantry with expensive guns that will go down if any number of dissies look up to them.

So to summerize my suggestion for a first turn respond would have been : Strike the termies with a void mine if you have any, 2-3 are going down. Target the termies with 30 dissies shots (something like 3 raiders left, 3 ravagers, a razorwing maybe). That kills 3-5 of them. Then you have blasters, missiles, Void Scythes... If they are dead, you can shoot down the sorcerer (the Chaos lord will be hardier, but without the sorcerer he will have to walk, right ?), and charge the Helldrake with some reavers.

Don't want to sound like it's an easy match-up or anything, Chaos got a lot nastier this edition, but there are definitly things to do against them, so i would not call them OP.