So trying to decide which of the following lists to build...

[Flamebeast]

So yeah, as stated I'm struggling a little to pick between the following two lists. Feel free to suggest changes as well as helping me out with that, obviously. 

 

So yeah, list 1:

Death Guard, 3000 points.

 

Lord of War - Mortarion the Reaper (using The Reaping RoW)

HQ -

Crysos Morturg, rad grenades
 

Moritat, Artificier Armour, Jump Pack, Plasma pistol, volkite serpenta, refractor field, rad grenades

10 Deathshroud terminators (Infiltrate with Morturg), Melta bombs

 

 

Troops - 

 

Legion Tactical Squad, 20 marines, legion vexilla, artificer armour, rad grenades

 

Legion Tactical Squad, 20 marines, legion vexilla, artificer armour, rad grenades

 

Legion Tactical Support Squad, 10 marines, flamers, chem-munitions, rad grenades, Rhino APC

 

Legion Tactical Support Squad, 10 marines, flamers, chem-munitions, rad grenades, Rhino APC

 

 

Elites - 

Apothecarion detachment, 2 apothecaries, artificer armour, combi-weapons (go in tac squads)

Contemptor-Mortis Dreadnought, 2 Twin-linked Lascannons, Extra Armour

​Contemptor-Mortis Dreadnought, 2 Twin-linked Lascannons, Extra Armour

Rapier Weapons Battery, 3 Graviton Cannons.

Basic plan of the list is drop the morturg+deathshroud+morty deathstar into enemy territory and rampage. Rhinos ram the tacsup squads into enemy infantry and laugh at chem-flamer fun. Tactical squads plod onwards, mainly relying on cover and apothecaries to get into useful range intact, while the contemptors and rapiers provide long-range fire support and my ranged AT/AA options.


List 2:

Alpha Legion, 2997 points

 

Lord of War - Alpharius

HQ - 

 

Legion Praetor (Coils of the Hydra), Iron Halo, Digital Lasers, Cataphractii-pattern Terminator Armour, Master-crafted Paragon blade, Volkite Charger

Moritat, Artificer armour, refractor field, melta bombs, plasma pistol, volkite serpenta

 

 

Troops -

 

Legion Tactical Squad, 20 marines, Vexilla

 

Legion Tactical Squad, 20 marines, Vexilla

 

Legion Tactical Squad, 20 marines, Vexilla

 

 

Elites -

 

Contemptor-Mortis Dreadnought, Lascannons

 

Contemptor-Mortis Dreadnought, Lascannons

 

Deathshroud Terminator squad (Rewards of Treason), 10 men, melta bombs

 

 

Heavy Support -

 

Legion Sicaran Battle Tank, Lascannon sponsons, Armoured Ceramite

 

Legion Sicaran Battle Tank, Lascannon sponsons, Armoured Ceramite

 

Sicaran Venator Tank Destroyer, Lascannon sponsons, Armoured Ceramite

Very different, I know. Basically revolves around infiltrating everything except the dreads and tanks. Alpharius hides in one of the tactical squads then bursts out and starts murdering everyone. The Praetor goes with the Deathshroud, and predictably awful things happen to nearby infantry (and any tanks unfortunate/stupid enough to be close enough for assault. The tactical squads provide weight of numbers and huge volumes of bolter fire. Contemptors and tanks provide AT/AA.

Also if I'm shelling out silly money for a legion army then there's going to be a Primarch in there. And I've already bought some Deathshroud, so those two things are definitely going to be involved.

[1ncarnadine]

I like both lists, they feel pretty well rounded and characterfully legion appropriate, but I do see a few things to nit-pick. I'll start with list 2...

 

Alpharius already lets you take a RoW with Master of the Legion, so the Praetor might be a bit unnecessary. If Alphy is already giving the RoW buffs, the Praetor just ends up being an expensive beatstick, and you might be better served with the unit buffs from Consuls. A Tartaros armour Primus Medicae might serve the stolen Deathshroud better, for example. Or you could use the freed up points to attach apothecaries to the tac squads and enhance their survivability. If you want a Praetor though, and he's going to hang out with the Deathshroud, don't put him in cataphractii or he'll slow the whole unit down with Slow and Purposeful. If he's going elsewhere and staying in Cataphractii, then you don't need the Iron Halo as you already get a 4++ from the armour. So whichever works.

 

For List 1, it's a little flamer-heavy (but chem-munitions so fun...). You could maybe drop one flamer squad and use the points to buy a Sicaran or some Predators, and take enemy anti-tank pressure off your Contemptors while leaving you better able to deal with enemy armour at the same time. If you have 60 points to spare you can always upgrade the remaining flamers to a heavy support squad with heavy flamers for even more chem-beat, and they can even be taken in the same troops slot with the reaping! Not that that at all matters but why not. 10 S5 shredding templates might be overkill and draw more fire though. I haven't tried it, but the legion heavy flamer models DO look amazing. Maybe proxy it first. 

 

Last thing, I'm not sure about mixed weapons on the Moritats. Seems best to keep them specialized, and the dual plasma pistol beat is very tried and tested. Otherwise you end up with a jack of all trades and master of none that doesn't really know what type unit he really wants to murder. And when he gets to that unit, he can't actually murder it because half of his shots are kind of wasted on it. Sad Moritat. :(

[Flamebeast]

The thing with the DG list is that I've taken quite a lot of AT, when you think about it. There's 4 lascannon shots from the Contemptors, 3 grav-blasts from the rapiers, and a mortarion and 10 deathshroud with melta bombs running around. Short of Iron Hands-esque tank spam, I doubt i'll need more than that against anything. Also, running a Heavy chem-flamer squad (while hilarious) would die so much more quickly. And cost a lot more. And not be two squads of dudes with chem-flamers. I'll concede that the only thing enemy AT has to target is the contemptors - other than, you know, the mortarion-inclusive blob of deathshroud and morturg which will infiltrate and start making nuisances of themselves from the start.

 

For the AL list, you have a point about the Praetor. Swapping him for a PM would be better, probably.

Lastly, mixing weapons on the Moritat is how you get people to play against that kind of beat (you know, more than once). Yeah, his effectiveness against TEQ and tanks drops somewhat, but he'll still probably get 4-5 hits per turn with that one plasma pistol, which is still stupid. And then there's a volkite to chain more wounds against stuff, which is always fun.

[Slips]

You can get More Lascannon shots than that at 3k if you really wanted.

 

You can fit 3 Spartans quite easily into that points limit and thats 12 lascannon shots already. Give them Chem-Munition Heavy Flamers, fill them up with 20 man Tactical Marines each, attach an HQ and there you go.

 

If you then have the points left over, you could give Mortarion and his Bodyguards a Spartan too, adding 4 more lascannon shots and 5 HP between the enemy and your juicy unit.

 

With ~16 Lascannon shots, you could point them all at any flyers you might run into and instagib them out of the sky. With Armored Ceramite your safe from any melta. Flare shields make you even a bigger pain. 

 

Thats also 4 Heavy Flamers with Chem Munitions.

 

Collectively, thats 20 HP between enemy fire and any of your Infantry.

 

Only problem is, this'll cost you a LOT of cash :p 2-4 Spartans ain't cheap.

[Flamebeast]

Sure, I could take more lascannons in the form of many spartans, but since the point of the DG list is to be as true to mortarion's philosophy of war as possible (the Rhinos are the only concession to mechanised warfare in the list for that very reason), I don't really want to.

[Slips]

Well, if you ever want to cheese it a bit with the DG RoW Allowing you to take HS Squads as non compulsory Troops selections on top of being able to be taken as Normal HS Squads, you could load up on 5 squads of 10 man HS and gear them up as you see fit.

 

A rather Hilarious thing to do would be gear all HS Squads as 10 men with Volkite Culverins. Thats 50 marines firing a Heavy 4 Weapon so, 200 Volkite Shots with Deflagrate. Pew Pew Martian Death Beams.

 

Seriously now, I wouldn't attach a squad to Mortarion so that you can freely use shadow of the Reaper to murder things. He can't use this when part of a squad/unit sadly, AFAIK.

 

That said, I'd STRONGLY consider a Spartan for him and the Deathshroud for the Start of the game since they are VERY Pricey and losing them as they footslog across the field would be a BIG shame. Sure you could Infiltrate them but if your opponent has any Apothecaries/HS Sarges/MoS/Other-Unit-That-Can-Take-It, hes VERY likely to have Augury Scanners which create an 18" "no Infiltrate" Bubble, greatly reducing the rules effectiveness.

 

Drop the Lascannons on the Venator since its main Gun is Ordnance, they will only be able to fire Snap Shots in the same shooting phase making them essentially a waste of points. (Alpha Legion list) 

 

I'd personally make the Rapier Batteries Lasdestroyers over Grav Cannons but either can work. Maybe Cut one or Both Tac Supports and get a Heavy Flamer HS Squad in a Transport, maybe a Land Raider Proteus since it can Scout ahead and because the Sarge can take an Augury scanner if you outfit them differently.

 

While the Moritat is cool, unless you give him a Destroyer Bodyguard/Meatshield, he's likely to get erased off the map ASAP since almost everyone knows how deadly they can be with RNGesus on your side. Also, more Rad Missles can't hurt since they reduce toughness by 1 (it can stack too, iirc, but not from the same source).

 

With 2 Sicarians and 2 Contemptors, your anti-air is beefy enough so thats good. The Venator should be more than enough to wreck anything short of a Spartan and even then It can probably do it since its gun is so good.

 

Thats all I could think of atm.

[1ncarnadine]

The thing with the DG list is that I've taken quite a lot of AT, when you think about it. There's 4 lascannon shots from the Contemptors, 3 grav-blasts from the rapiers, and a mortarion and 10 deathshroud with melta bombs running around. Short of Iron Hands-esque tank spam, I doubt i'll need more than that against anything. Also, running a Heavy chem-flamer squad (while hilarious) would die so much more quickly. And cost a lot more. And not be two squads of dudes with chem-flamers. I'll concede that the only thing enemy AT has to target is the contemptors - other than, you know, the mortarion-inclusive blob of deathshroud and morturg which will infiltrate and start making nuisances of themselves from the start.

For the AL list, you have a point about the Praetor. Swapping him for a PM would be better, probably.

Lastly, mixing weapons on the Moritat is how you get people to play against that kind of beat (you know, more than once). Yeah, his effectiveness against TEQ and tanks drops somewhat, but he'll still probably get 4-5 hits per turn with that one plasma pistol, which is still stupid. And then there's a volkite to chain more wounds against stuff, which is always fun.

That's a pretty good point on the Moritat, friends > cheese. You could always magnetize him just in case, or if you wanted to play two volkites sometimes? I don't know though, without the dual plasma pistols he might struggle to make up his points at all, as they tend to draw a lot of fire anyway on their own. You also don't have too much reliable AP2. It's up to you.

I'm still concerned about AT in the DG list though, mostly vs AV14. You really just have the Contemptors and Grav Cannons as reliable platforms. As Slipstreams pointed out, augury scanners are cheap and relatively common and make infiltrating effectively in some games a challenge. Augurs aren't exactly pervasive, but it looks like the deathshroud infiltration is a core part of the DG list and it'd be a shame if it got thwarted by a few 5 point upgrades and left you with a bunch of foot-slogging targets. You do get to infiltrate like 3 units though so it's not too bad.

Anyway, that means the deathshroud might not be able to reliably get close enough to vehicles on their own. Even with a deep infiltrate I'm not sure how many players are willing to leave a vehicle near a mob of melta-bomb wielding terminators either, even in very casual games, unless said vehicle just disgorged something terribly nasty of its own on your unit. It's nice to have the bombs so your opponent doesn't get to drive around with impunity, but yeah, they probably won't use them often. They might if they were popping out of a transport but without one the utility is limited. It's not like you're about to start running to chase down anything, because, you can't. Morty only has the Lantern for AV14 and he can't shoot that after Shadow of the Reapering around. He can deal with rhino chassis by using SotR and sundering their side/rear, and maybe sicarans. But not spartans and land raiders.

If you're not playing against 30k so much none of that might be so much of a problem. Also if you're worried about keeping to the fluff, Graham McNeill did have the Death Guard go all mechanized army to get across a planet in Vengeful Spirit, although there are a few parts of that book that felt like they missed the mark a little. I need to read Daemonology I guess. Personally, I feel like the Death Guard deploying a bunch of heavy transports to cross no-mans lands is pretty appropriate. I think they're not so likely to deploy squadrons of Predators, Sicarans or complicated super-heavies like the Glaive, and definitely not so much on air support in general. But Spartans, Land Raiders and Rhinos that revolve around the infantry that the legion emphasizes? Yeah, I can see it. They are a galaxy-conquering Legion of thousands upon thousands of soldiers with the accompanying supply train and motor pool that that implies, regardless of their core doctrines and tendencies. At least that's the direction I'm going with my DG, but it's up to personal interpretation. I'm going full-traitor so I don't have Morturg's infiltrate option either

Seriously now, I wouldn't attach a squad to Mortarion so that you can freely use shadow of the Reaper to murder things. He can't use this when part of a squad/unit sadly, AFAIK.

SotR lets him ditch his old busted unit for whatever new hotness lies 10" away. He's only locked out of it when he's in a transport or combat, I think.

[Flamebeast]

Well, if you ever want to cheese it a bit with the DG RoW Allowing you to take HS Squads as non compulsory Troops selections on top of being able to be taken as Normal HS Squads, you could load up on 5 squads of 10 man HS and gear them up as you see fit. A rather Hilarious thing to do would be gear all HS Squads as 10 men with Volkite Culverins. Thats 50 marines firing a Heavy 4 Weapon so, 200 Volkite Shots with Deflagrate. Pew Pew Martian Death Beams.

 

Seriously now, I wouldn't attach a squad to Mortarion so that you can freely use shadow of the Reaper to murder things. He can't use this when part of a squad/unit sadly, AFAIK.

 

That said, I'd STRONGLY consider a Spartan for him and the Deathshroud for the Start of the game since they are VERY Pricey and losing them as they footslog across the field would be a BIG shame. Sure you could Infiltrate them but if your opponent has any Apothecaries/HS Sarges/MoS/Other-Unit-That-Can-Take-It, hes VERY likely to have Augury Scanners which create an 18" "no Infiltrate" Bubble, greatly reducing the rules effectiveness.

 

Drop the Lascannons on the Venator since its main Gun is Ordnance, they will only be able to fire Snap Shots in the same shooting phase making them essentially a waste of points. (Alpha Legion list) 

 

I'd personally make the Rapier Batteries Lasdestroyers over Grav Cannons but either can work. Maybe Cut one or Both Tac Supports and get a Heavy Flamer HS Squad in a Transport, maybe a Land Raider Proteus since it can Scout ahead and because the Sarge can take an Augury scanner if you outfit them differently.

 

While the Moritat is cool, unless you give him a Destroyer Bodyguard/Meatshield, he's likely to get erased off the map ASAP since almost everyone knows how deadly they can be with RNGesus on your side. Also, more Rad Missles can't hurt since they reduce toughness by 1 (it can stack too, iirc, but not from the same source).

 

First up, the Heavy Support Squads are non-compulsory, meaning you still need at least two compulsory troops. Pretty sure there aren't 7 troops slots in the AoD FOC, and also that would literally take forever to paint (properly).

 

Mortarion can in fact use SotR whenever he wants (except when in a vehicle or in combat), in fact the rule specifically states that if he's in a unit when he does it, the unit doesn't come with him and he leaves the unit if he exits coherency as a result of the move.

 

Fair point on the lascannons on the Venator, where would you put the newly freed-up points?

 

Grav cannons are better than laser destroyers at stripping hull points against AV12-14 (except flyers, obviously), because they get haywire against vehicles. Which is just tasty. Also makes them act as though on difficult/dangerous terrain for a turn, meaning they might immobilise themselves, which is always fun.

 

Can't argue about the Moritat, but Destroyers are expensive for what they do and (more importantly) take up an elites slot.

[Slips]

I did say that the RoW does make HS Non Compulsory Troops so getting 5 squads would mean using the 2/4 troops + 3 HS Slots. That said, the VOLKITE SPAM list is essentially a joke list because, while 200 Volkite Culverin shots is daunting, they are still S6 AP5. So, only good against infantry and quite worthless against anything else.

 

They also take A LOT of points. And therefore limit your options to fill any gaps left within your list.

 

To that end, just do it if you happen to have 50 HS with Volkite Culverins laying about (noone does...).

 

Thanks for the Clarification on SotR, I'm more familiar with Imperial Fists than DG :p

 

Removing the Lascannon lets you beef out any squads you may not have maxed out or give sergeant's upgrades you wouldn't have otherwise. Things like that.

 

Yeah, Grav cannons are technically better due to haywire, but Lasdestroyers give you some more utility. Personally, I'd go with Grav Cannons. Their Crow Control and potential to strip hull points like no ones business is much more enticing than Lasdestroyers but, I wouldn't discount them immediately.

 

Sadly, the Moritat is a unit that you need to build around and account for. He is a glass cannon of pain geared up properly but is very expensive to counter-balance that.

Even the RG Moritat HQ, while unable to join even destroyers, needs support. If you want to field one, dedicate at least another 300-500 points in your list to supporting him. Whether that be a Destroyer Entourage (the best ones, imo, since rad missiles reduce toughness by 1) or a Recon / Seeker / Tac Vets screen or Support / Heavy Support cover fire. 

 

Just don't let him go in alone and unsupported.

 

That said, taking him out frees up more points for the list so you can beef up your existing options.

[Flamebeast]

I love both lists, and am really struggling to decide which one to build (there may be a silent "first" here). I might just wait for an alpharius model to come out then decide which of the two primarchs looks like most fun to paint.