2000 point death guard

[jake-man]

Heyy all, long time lurker...

finaly settled on doing death guard for the horus heresy and have come up with an army list for critique.

 

2000 points death guard

Rite of war: The Reaping

 

HQ

Typhon (joins the deathshroud)

 

Elites

2 apothicaries (each join a tactical squad)

 

10 deathshroud terminators

 

Troops

tactical squad: 15 marines, bolters, bolt pistols and close combat weapons, vexilia and nuncio vox

serg with artificer cannon, plasma pistol, power axe and melta bombs

 

tactical squad: 15 marines, bolters, bolt pistols and close combat weapons, vexilia and nuncio vox

serg with artificer cannon, plasma pistol, power axe and melta bombs

 

heavy weapons support squad: 8 marines with auto cannons

 

Heavy Support

medusa siege tank

 

sicarian battle tank with las cannons

 

sicarian battle tank with las cannons

 

 

General battle plan is for the heavy weapon squad and medusa to hold back and provide cover fire whilst the rest of the army to advance upon the enemy =)

 

sicarians provide a limited amount of AA each with 6 twin linked str 7 rending shots that ignore jink saves and they also deal with enemy tanks pretty well i think.

 

a couple of changes ive thought about but am not 100 percent on are to drop the medusa, nuncio vox's and deathshroud and take 10 grave warden terminators and a contemptor dreadnought of some variety...

 

Whats the communities thoughts?

[infyrana]

Hi, and welcome to B&C... please feel free to make fun and interesting posts - Death Guard is a great choice to make your entrance with!

 

Your sergeants in your tacticals may wish to wear Artificer Armour instead of an Artificer Cannon - unless I have missed a rule :)  Plasma pistol seems a pointless / expensive / dangerous affair when you could buy 3 more marines for the price of those two pistols.  If you play 40k lists (air / drop pods), consider some Augury Scanners on your apothecaries, as well as Artificer Armour, perhaps consider one for your AutoCannon squad too (scanner and/or apothecary).

 

I kinda like the list overall, but it relies heavily on that mass of terminators to make it into combat with big bulks of troops (and not high toughness or armour value models), and on your Sicaran's and single Medusa to really lay the rest of the smack down.

 

Typhon and 10x Deathshroud - not a single armour penning weapon in sight - might I highly recommend taking some Melta-bombs for your Deathshroud to cover all bases !  What a squad it is, on paper it looks like it could stick around a fair bit with two wounds and termi armour, but remember the Deathshroud doesn't have the same saving throw as Cata armour (except for Typhon of course).

 

On the flip side - I fear that if this unit does finally make it into melee combat - not only would it have been useless until it reached a troop target, if it made it fairly well in tact, then it would simply wipe the enemy troop squad in one swoop and be left stranded once more with no real ranged weaponry to take on nearby enemy.  You really need to get these guys into melee contact soon I think, transport is key.  I feel that reducing the numbers will allow them to be transported by different options (phobos/proteus as well as a spartan), and not put all your eggs in one big basket that won't do anything unless in melee contact.

 

You could tweak a few things here and there, drop some Deathshroud and fit in a Spartan to place them in the right place, or drop to 4 with Typhon and put them in the other LR options.  You could drop some Deathshroud and put in a squad of Grave Wardens or do the full switch as you have mentioned.  But you lack transport still and fall foul of having them walk up the field, and whilst the GW's have some range over the melee based Deathshroud, they still only have very short range weaponry.

 

A contemptor would allow you to have a little more firepower to help take the fire away from your three tanks and provide yet more anti-air etc.  Probably be more effective in the first turn or two than the excess of walking Deathshroud.

 

Overall I think your list resembles a lot of what mine looks like.  But sadly I have yet to play mine for actual gaming experience, so my info comes with a pinch of salt.

[KhorneFlakes]

I don't know how I can top infyrana's reply but I will say that reading over it it looks good and fun to play

[Moonstalker]

I don't think infyrana really nailed the point on the head squarely enough.  He's mentioned that you might have trouble with your Deathshround 'when' you get to melee.  I'm not sure if I can quantify how bad of an idea 600+ points of footslogging terminators & HQ is when using The Reaping.  You cannot run.  You're talking 3-4 turns before they make it into melee with a gunline.  Depends on how far back in his deployment zone your opponent stays and how good your charge rolls are.  If your charge rolls are especially poor and/or you have to go through difficult terrain on the way, you're talking 5 turns.  And that's assuming a static enemy that is just sitting there patiently, shooting at you while you trundle forward, and not one that moves six inches away for every six you move forward.  The game might be over before your Deathshrouds can kill anything.  The only hope you have at that point is that your opponent freaks out so much that he sinks several turns into trying to shoot them off the table, instead of doing the smart thing and just playing around them, knocking the rest of your army off the table while he ignores the painfully slow 600 points worth of terminators that only have template weapons.

 

2 sicarans, a medusa, 40 marine bodies (32 with FNP) split into 3 scoring units, that all looks like a solid core you can build around.  IMO, but the best anti-air has interceptor and skyfire.  Rerolls, ignores cover, and lots of shots are nice, but they don't make up for killing the enemy before they get a chance to fire.  Even without actually shooting down your opponent's aircraft, if you can force them to delay and stuff their flyer in the corner by scaring them with your interceptor fire, that can be a win.  If you don't expect many aircraft, the dual sicarans should be fine.  You have a similar problem with your tac marines, you're paying for close combat weapons when they're moving at the same glacial pace as your terminators.  You'd be better off just bringing more men so you've got more hands holding bolters.  I don't really see the plasma pistols as dangerous - with artificer armor, it's a 1 in 36 chance that you'll lose the guy.  I just don't know that it's worth it, points-wise.

 

The other option here is that you drop the RoW.  Then you can at least run with your Deathshroud.  But not with Typhon, since he has Cataphractii armor.

 

(Also, Typhon's bombardment can only be used if he doesn't move in the movement phase, so if you want to use that you're probably slowing your terminators down to do it)