Prot's Quick Batrep: Death Guard vs Nids (pics) 2K Maelstrom

[Prot]

So I'm a bit strapped for time and I'll try to get this done in a reasonable fashion with some pics.

First up, I apologize for so many unpainted figs. In my batreps I really prefer more painted stuff but I've had a few people actually ask me to do some of my DG games up as batreps.

Secondly a shot from the heat of the moment.... bodies are flying, and Genestealers are turning into Poxwalkers, while Poxwalkers are being consumed for Genestealers... it's a bloody mess, yet one particularly stinky champion stands out amongst the carnage....

+++ Typhus stands amongst the carnage. The smell would kill a horse... or make a plaguebearer smile. Take your pick. The Nids have poured their chaff into the fire, but now Old One Eye enters the fold, backed by a Hive Tyrant and a Dakka-Fex. Can the Poxwalkers hold? Will Typhus cut the Nids down? All to answer the question: Which stinky force is more desperately in need of some Old Spice? +++

The Game:

- 2,000 pts Maelstrom. It's a new one where you MUST complete your 3 cards by the beginning of your turn as all cards are discarded. This feels like a disadvantage to such a slow moving army such as mine.

- Deployment is in opposing quarters with a no man's land in the middle (18" bubble)

- My Army:

Typhus

20 Poxwalkers

Lord in termie armour with Combi Plasma (Warlord - re-roll Plague weapon aura)

5 Blightlord Termies 1 combi plasma, one flail, one Blightlauncher

2 squads of Plague Marines

10 Cultists

Plaguecaster

1 Plague Crawler

1 squad of 3 Myphitic Blight Drones

1 Foul Blightspawn

1 Tallyman

1 Plague Surgeon

1 Blightbringer.

Nids:

Flyrant

2 x Dakka fex

Broodlord

2 x 14 genestealers

4 Zoanthropes + the character Zoanthrope dude

3 Hive Guard

3 shooty warriors

Old One Eye

Drop Pod w/ a big bug with a mega flamer

3 Venomthropes... can't get enough of these guys!

First turns:

- This is the first time I have the +1 to my roll, and I actually have a tie/win on the roll off. I don't think first turn is too particularly important for me in this one aside from moving to objectives.

- He's clumped up, I'm clumped up.... there's not a lot I can do with some line of sight blocking terrain, it looks like I have to stay away from his Hive Guard since they ignore cover (negating Blight drones), and have indirect fire. I keep my Plagueburst Crawler out of his range though in case I need to do some damage.

+++ Deployment. Stinky clump of dudes vs stinky clump of bugs. +++

- with first turn I chuck out some Melta/Krak missiles from the Blight Haulers. They do very little because they are hitting pretty much everything on 4's. About the only thing that really goes off is my psychic phase. I buff the Poxwalkers with toughness, and get Miasma off on the Poxwalkers. I blow a CP on Walking Dead, and push up the Cultists of course. The Plague Crawler gives some good indirect shots to a dakka fex to start working him over...Everything pushes up, and I get only one point for an objective I happen to be sitting on.

- The Nid turn is far more dyanmic.... everyting rushes forward with the venomthropes super cloud.

- A Pod drops in on an objective with the super flamer Nid rolling out of it. Genestealers ultimately push forward hard and some of the Dakka Fexes make themselves visible.

- To my surprise the Nids hold back the Zoanthropes, the Hive Guard and the Warriors. Everything else is making a break for the edges of the ruins in the center of the board:

+++ Genestealers come crashing in.... the plague marines are waiting for it.. Typhus relishes it. The poxwalkers fill their pants. +++

- The buffed Poxwalkers do attract firepower. A good volume of it is wasted on them which I kind of hoped for. I think the Nids realized this wasted potential and started throwing shots on the Cultists... which turned into Poxwalkers... all according to plan!

- His psychics were limited to buffing running/shooting units. He had a mix of two different rules so he could reroll charges on his shooty units.... then something really goes against me.... I'm hoping this will be a game I get some real use out of the Foul Blightspawn but no...He gets off a psychic power that says my units must fight after his are done. Brutal. So it negates Foul Blightspawn entirely.

- The good news is the Cultists die rapidly, and he doesn't know what to do with my growing numbers of Poxwalkers... does he engage them? does he ignore them?

- He does some good damage, gets first blood, and an Objective. Nids are up 2 to 1.

Turn 2:

- Somewhat a repeat of T1, except the Poxwalkers with Tallyman in effect absolutely tear into the Genestealers. It's shocking really. Even the Broodlord is overtaken. All of these absorb into Poxwalkers. Hey they were once humans, turned into Genestealers... now turned into Zombies. Works for me!

- I hold my Lord and Blightlord termies in reserve still. They just don't have great targets without sacrificing themselves, and I have no objectives in my opponent's zone worth getting. (I also don't want to deepstrike them too deep near all those Zoanthropes and Hive Guard.)

- I think the assaults surprised him.. .they surprised me.

- His heavy flamer bug in the pod was trying to snag 2 points for a 'Defend'. That plus the fact it was an infantry muncher kind of scared me, so I poured the Blight Haulers, the Plague Burst crawler and some desperate last shots to get the thing to die... it took a LOT of firepower, but it went down.

- Our Assaults continued like T1 I came out ahead, now he was surprised.

- In his turn he draws an objective on my Right Flank. He can't get to it on the ground so he deepstrikes the Flyrant and although he subjects himself to quite a range of firepower, it's a resilient bug.

- He puts a lot into my Blight Haulers and one goes down. This greatly impedes their shooting. I have no re-roll aura around. T3 is looking to be a big one....

Turn 3:

And here we are, back to the first shot of the game....

+++ Young Two Eyes wasn't available... so they sent in Old One Eye. Typhus cares not, but he is flanked on both sides by Dakkafexes, Old One Eye, and a Flyrant just dropped in. +++

- The Flyrant had good dakka, and I can see both Dakka fexes are going to wreck me. The high volume of firepower combined, is mulching my infantry. I'm VERY lucky I had Vitality running on the poxwalkers to make it harder... but that goes downhill at this point.... the Tyranids deny two of my powers. No more Miasma, no more +1 S and +1 T. Getting Blades off is huge on my Poxwalkers though.

- I have to get the Flyrant down first. He's sitting near an objective I need... I also need big game hunter, but my issue is I'm having trouble doing damage to all these Toughness 7 units! The Plasma isn't helping much, and the Blight Launchers are putting little dents in.

- I decide to call in the Termie Lord and Blightlord Termies!

+++ Termies to the rescue! Overcharge plasma to save the day? Or overcharge plasma to melt my own dudes? +++

- So this is the game I swap out melta for plasma on my termies and I'm starting to regret it. I overcharge everything and roll a lot of 1's. This scares me, but I get lucky and no 1's turn up on the re-rolls. But with the Flyrant's 4 ++ invuln, I'm hard pressed to get a shot through, so the only wounds that do count happen to only cause 2 Damage. I end up pouring a LOT into the Hive Tyrant. and I realize the 4++ save is just making this a wasted effort with plasma. I get off a few Plague Crawler shots and luckily I get a 5 damage wound through thanks to a CP re-roll (he finally failed a 4++). But he had 6 up feel no pain and saved 2 of them.

- I put a lot of wounds on his Dakka Fex on that same flank using my remaining Blight Haulers. Believe it or not I had a lot of low AP wounds on him to finish him off... 11 wounds. The Dakkafex saved 10 of them! WOW. He just went down.

- Without being able to do much to the Flyrant I had to assault... I made a 10" charge but that 4++ held through. I felt like I was now in big trouble. I also couldn't do anything about Old One Eye and more big bugs were rounding the corner.

- All said I did well in points and took a good lead. Going into bottom of Turn 3, my opponent did not feel great about his chances because he was down to his big bugs, but I insisted he had a chance...

Turn 3 Nids:

- It's about time he moved his Zoanthropes up and sure enough the 'super smite' hurts like hell....

- The Hive Guard finally have some targets, he's mobilizing his reserves but I think it's too late for them. I feel lucky he left them back there so long.

- His Hive Tyrant simply flies away from my Termies and starts pelting my Plague Marines.

+++ All of the sudden with a Hive Tyrant in my backlines, I can't help but feel a great need for a melta gun right about now. +++

- The Hive tyrant almost blicks a 7 man squad of Plague Marines.

- Old One eye starts wrecking face because my Psychic buffs were all denied.

- The Venomthropes slink into the ruins so now my shooting is going to be further nerfed.

- This turn of events puts the Nids tied with me... crazy stuff.

Turn 4:

- I have to be very smart this turn. I don't have enough left to make a huge push. I know Old One Eye is his Warlord,

- The thing I wish I had a picture of is the Venomthropes in the ruins..... I have an epic moment with the Foul Bligh Spawn. He advances in the ruins, pulls the hose out of the Toilet on his back, and hoses the Venomthropes with true filth.... Strength 10 Filth! Now that's 'venom'..... The 3 Venomthropes take all 3 wounds which are 3 damage a piece.... just killing all 3 of them to finally get rid of the -1 to hit!!!! Huge moment.

- I lob some indirect on the Zoanthropes killing one, bringing their numbers to 3 and reducing the super smite ability.

+++ A flock of brain bugs... just floating casually in the background (thankfully they stayed too far back to have any real effect until late game). +++

- I've had it with the Flyrant, but he's down to one wound so I throw 11 wounds from various stuff at him in a volley... (not to be confused with the 11 wounds from the previous turn) ... he saves ALL of them.

So I overcharge plasma on my Warlord Terminator, roll a 1, re-roll a... 1!!!! I've killed myself, surrendering Slay the Warlord, and give the Nids a 1 point lead! Damn Papa Nurgle is fickle sometimes.

- Old One Eye is his warlord, and I also need another large target for a card, he'll do fine...so Typhus runs in and guts him... thankfully buying me some time on that flank.

- I get a few points out of all of this and take a good lead, even with the misfortune of my Warlord.

- Nids Turn 4 is looking pretty bleak. He can't draw cards that give him anything 'easy' and he doesn't have the model count. We play through the turn but he can't make up the deficit and we call it in turn 5... a Death Guard victory.

Conclusion:

- I really missed melta in this one. I know everyone is a fan of Plasma on Termies... I just don't know.

- I miss having two Plague Crawlers. One is just a little hard to take advantage of.

- Poxwalkers probably had their best game here.... they were insane and I think they truly shocked both of us. With Tallyman they were a force to be reckoned with for once (they usually get shot up before they ever have an effect in game.)

- Typhus the more I need him, the more trouble I'm in. He only saw action once, but it was brutal.

- At first the Foul Blightspawn seemed like he wasn't going to have any effect with that crazy psychic power making me go last.... but then his one toilet spurt event on the Venomthropes was truly epic... that may have changed the game (I cut out all the misses I had firing at stuff in that bloody cloud).

- The Nid Flyrant absorbed a ton of plasma. So did the Carnifexes. This caused me to heavily rely on the Blight Haulers and Plague Burst Crawler for heavy duty firepower.

- The Blight Haulers had me rolling 2+ on Plague marines. That was nice.... really nice at times. But their shooting stunk once they shrunk down to 2 dudes.

I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for checking it out!

[MyD4rkPassenger]

I love that your blightspawn sewerblasted that venomthrope unit, those are the moments that make this game for me.  I really like your list, and I'm now convinced in taking Typhus every game.  Great battle report as always.  

[Charlo]

Nice report and quite insightful.

 

The Blightspawn seems truly amazing.

 

I want to fill a Rhino with Ten of them.

[DaisyDuke]

Good stuff Prot, I really enjoy your bat reps.

From my personal experience using a similar Death Guard list, I am right with you on Melta for the blight lords. The main weakness of the Guard is a lack of long range effective firepower. And Melta Blightlord can pull that duty, especially as the guard have plasma from other sources.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Looks like a crazy game and I might just be picking up a blightspawn after I'm done my hauler.

 

Some things about nids. Theres a huge amount of mortal wound potential; Flyrants, biovores, zoanthropes. Lots of potential to avoid the high toughness and to go to DR. Minuses to hit or plentiful too. You pretty much have a poor time hitting from venom coverage; plague spitters are extremely useful. Genestealers are terrifying, you need screens of poxwalkers and stuff to wear them down.

 

Generally things like typhus, Deathshroud, mortarion and dronemowers can crush through their MCs. Enough Blight Launchers can do the trick too, especially ones with 3+ saves.

 

Um in the future consider taking more cultists to act as a battery, dropping the surgeon for really anything else and maybe squeezing in a drone. Maybe drop the tallyman if you're not going to get more cultists to make more poxwalkers, since that's the only real melee unit you have going.

[Archaeinox]

Thanks dude, really appreciate you posting that.

 

Have you, by chance, had a friend run either that or your Thousand Sons and have your two armies duke it out? :D

[Kilofix]

Thanks for the batrep. I feel like it confirms that Pox are simply boss vs horde opponents as we get to convert so many of them.

[Prot]

Thanks guys. Some great comments too...

 

 

I love that your blightspawn sewerblasted that venomthrope unit, those are the moments that make this game for me.  I really like your list, and I'm now convinced in taking Typhus every game.  Great battle report as always.  

 

Nice report and quite insightful.

 

The Blightspawn seems truly amazing.

 

I want to fill a Rhino with Ten of them.

 

Yup, the Blightspawn is always fun for me. He may not be the most competitive option but in games like this he always comes through with something. Last game he stood in front of a flyer and hosed it down with sewage, shocking my opponent... asking me; what did I get sprayed with? ... you don't want to know.

 

 

 

Good stuff Prot, I really enjoy your bat reps.
From my personal experience using a similar Death Guard list, I am right with you on Melta for the blight lords. The main weakness of the Guard is a lack of long range effective firepower. And Melta Blightlord can pull that duty, especially as the guard have plasma from other sources.

 

Well there is a debate going right now in the Death Guard forum, and my belief in the melta is definitely in the minority there. So I wanted to try plasma and just see.... I'm still not sold on Plasma in that squad.

 

 

Looks like a crazy game and I might just be picking up a blightspawn after I'm done my hauler.

Some things about nids. Theres a huge amount of mortal wound potential; Flyrants, biovores, zoanthropes. Lots of potential to avoid the high toughness and to go to DR. Minuses to hit or plentiful too. You pretty much have a poor time hitting from venom coverage; plague spitters are extremely useful. Genestealers are terrifying, you need screens of poxwalkers and stuff to wear them down.

Generally things like typhus, Deathshroud, mortarion and dronemowers can crush through their MCs. Enough Blight Launchers can do the trick too, especially ones with 3+ saves.

Um in the future consider taking more cultists to act as a battery, dropping the surgeon for really anything else and maybe squeezing in a drone. Maybe drop the tallyman if you're not going to get more cultists to make more poxwalkers, since that's the only real melee unit you have going.

 

You have to realize these are 'fun' lists I'm using with as many newer units as I can fit in. I'm not really going for the jugular in these games... neither was my opponent. But the Tallyman and Poxwalker combo blew me away. They became outright viscous combined with psychic buffing. I was shocked. Genestealers just disappeared.

 

If I were trying to make the list stronger, I'd probably drop all the elite characters. They're there for flavour. I'd probably go up to 20 Cultists, and use the Generic Chaos Cultist Recycle Strategem after I've turned about 15 into Poxwalkers and bring them back out at full strength just to see if I could do it again.

 

That said I am having tremendous issues with IG, and some other armies. I may have to consider doing some of these things to just make a game of it. I did have (and continue to have) issues with High T, multiwound stuff.

 

I missed my dual PlagueBurst Crawler in this game.  Blightlaunchers are a favorite of mine... but as you noted, that -1 to hit Venomthrope cloud was killing my limited shooting.(Bighthaulers were hitting on 5 from T2 on!)

 

 

Thanks dude, really appreciate you posting that.

 

Have you, by chance, had a friend run either that or your Thousand Sons and have your two armies duke it out?

 

Ha... nope. I'm the only one I know who plays full Thousand Sons. (The rest play Magnus/Brimstone chickenwing soup). But I do know some other Death Guard players. I'll wait for the codex to come out to see.

 

 

Thanks for the batrep. I feel like it confirms that Pox are simply boss vs horde opponents as we get to convert so many of them.

 

This worked so well... but it was my first real shot at going against a true element of close combat horde-ish stuff. I know I never make it to Astra with these guys, but Orks (I actually find challenging to play against) would be another good test. 

 

I had a blast taking humans that were converted into genestealers, converting them  into Poxwalkers. The true circle of life in the Imperium!

Edited January 10, 2018 by Prot

[SkimaskMohawk]

I was just suggesting some minor things or alternatives, nothing about jugular-going or highly competitive. If you're using mainly the stuff you've finished painting and / or they're just sick models I totally get that.

 

Really wish melee marines were easier to do, love to see blobs do against nids or orks

[Kilofix]

When I played Orks last I ended up with a unit of 70+ Pox lol.

[Plaguecaster]

I love your Battle reports Prot and it's pretty awesome to see a Death Guard one this time. Did you find the Plague surgeon worth it in the end I am thinking of adding one myself as they are a cool model though unsure how they preform

[Prot]

I was just suggesting some minor things or alternatives, nothing about jugular-going or highly competitive. If you're using mainly the stuff you've finished painting and / or they're just sick models I totally get that.

 

Really wish melee marines were easier to do, love to see blobs do against nids or orks

 

Absolutely! Thanks for the thoughts. And melee Plague Marines would be a thing of beauty if they worked. There's some great tools there. I'd love to try it for fun as those are some of my favorite pieces in the box set.

 

When I played Orks last I ended up with a unit of 70+ Pox lol.

 

Oh that sounds juicy... Quite honestly I have a lot of problems with the Orks. People play them down but 180 are gross.... 30 man mobs hitting you in waves is no joke. Not a lot of armies can handle that level of board control as well.

 

He's toned his lists down a bit just to diversify. Still annoying rules like Jink, and the point reductions in the Gorka/Morka-bot things... those things are superheavies in disguise. I have no idea how I'll face them.

 

I love your Battle reports Prot and it's pretty awesome to see a Death Guard one this time. Did you find the Plague surgeon worth it in the end I am thinking of adding one myself as they are a cool model though unsure how they preform

 

I really appreciate that. I've done a million but it's always worth it when someone reads them!

 

The Plague Surgeon, in my opinion, is built for a list like this. Since I had no Daemon Prince it is a no-brainer to give him the Fulgaris' Helm. So his bubble became 6" and I lost count at about turn 3 I had saved about an additional 3-5 wounds. Poxwalkers tend to take lots of hits when your opponent figures out half of them used to be in his army! lol

 

I was disappointed in my Marines' saves. I would roll a lot of 1's for armour (yet I'd have a 2+ cover save with the Blight Haulers) and then for Disgustingly Resilient I'd roll a '2', never getting much use from the Plague Surgeon on them, but for the Pox Walkers he really helped.

 

For me the highlight was the Foul Blightspawn in one turn doing what he did. BUT overall.... it was Tallyman. I only got one CP back this game, but he made the Poxwalkers absolutely hammer the Genestealers.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

So does anyone else have any suggestions? I'm a little stuck on how to adjust the list without killing its effectiveness.

 

The Blight Haulers really are an interesting choice but I wouldn't say I'm sold on them, but it's so hard to tell firing into a -1 to hit cloud most of the game.

 

I miss having 2 Plague Crawlers too, but you can't have it all.

 

One thing I am positive of is going back to Melta-Blightlords. At least for my next game... which should be soon.

[Panzer]

I honestly think Orks aren't bad at all currently and have lots of potential to become really strong with a Codex. Boyz are super cheap, hit like a truck with the amount of attacks and by sheer number buff surrounding squads. Hell even the Weirdboy can cast anything he wants easily (and reach easily the 11+ for d6 damage smites) just by having lots of models around.

I expect a lot from their Codex!

[DuskRaider]

Nice report! I fought Nids a few weeks back too, it was a lot of fun... although the bubble wrapping to prevent assault was pretty annoying (especially when said bubble wrap can regenerate it's numbers each turn). 

[BlackTriton]

I suggest you take only 2 blighthauler and then 2 plagueburst.

You can Then find a reroll 1 to put with the hauler and plague marine.

 

Sometime, taking 3 hauler for the +1 to hit is just a trap. Consider what you could get by replacing that hauler by a plaguebusrt.

 

I find it so hard to replace my deamon prince, being both a psyker and a source of reroll on top of a capable fighter makes him such a good support unit.

[Prot]

Nice report! I fought Nids a few weeks back too, it was a lot of fun... although the bubble wrapping to prevent assault was pretty annoying (especially when said bubble wrap can regenerate it's numbers each turn). 

 

Yea I had a game a week ago against a different Nid player using that combo... it was incredibly frustrating to try to get passed that regenerating bubble. I learned not to take pot shots at it until I was fairly certain I could kill them all... I learned that pretty quickly. It was also very hard to get to the Venomthrope cloud which protected Zoans and Hive Guard.... This was definitely a different type of Nids. I think both of us were shocked what the Poxwalkers did.

 

 

I suggest you take only 2 blighthauler and then 2 plagueburst.

You can Then find a reroll 1 to put with the hauler and plague marine.

 

Sometime, taking 3 hauler for the +1 to hit is just a trap. Consider what you could get by replacing that hauler by a plaguebusrt.

 

I find it so hard to replace my deamon prince, being both a psyker and a source of reroll on top of a capable fighter makes him such a good support unit.

 

That's what I'm doing. It's at the cost of a few Poxwalkers (I'm down to 18 now) but honestly the 3 Blighthaulers is a bit of a trap, on the other hand it does ensure you should have 2 left for a large +1 save bubble, which as you say, sometimes doesn't matter.

 

On the Daemon Prince: I agree, but it's just super hard for me to fit him into this list... I'd need to find 50 extra points.  The "Elite" section of my list is pretty insane right now as I'm trying some weird combo's. It's really hard to take any of them out in this kind of list:

 

- Tallyman... makes Poxwalkers insane

- Surgeon.... probably the most replaceable but he's good against Astartes, and actually saves me an additional 5-6 wounds a game (last game was at least that) (Fulgaris' Helm also would be lost if I got a DP going with Supporating Plate)

- Foul Blightspawn.... cancels charges against my ground pounders. Incredible toilet flamer... burns down flyers, elites, hard targets, etc.

- Blightbringer... probably another replaceable.... I always roll my two dice one after the other to see what I would have been stuck with vs. what bonus I get... it's really not that great to me. But again... ground pounders list.

 

My Termie Lord with Combi-Melta and Balesword gets me the re rolls, and can go as deep striking with the Blightlords. That's pretty decent. Plus I use him as warlord with re-roll ALL plague weapon to wounds. (Which actually would be good to plop a lord with the Plague Burst cannons for reroll 1's and re-roll all to wounds.)

 

Anyway, next up it does look like Orks confirmed!

 

Thanks for the advice guys.

[CMDR_Welles]

I need an Incredible Toilet Flamer

[Prot]

I need an Incredible Toilet Flamer

 

We all need a toilet flamer in our lives! lol

 

That's one model I bought for comedic effect... however in games it's been deliciously stinky.

Edited January 12, 2018 by Prot