New to Death Guard

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

Hello, I'm considering playing Death Guard as a new army in lieu of my Chaos Space Marines and was wondering if you all had any advice on how best to start? My second question is it easy and common to convert CSM to DG models and do you have any examples?

[Marshal Loss]

The Death Guard half of Dark Imperium is the most obvious (& best) place to start. You get a wide selection of units and it's great value for money. From there, it's really up to you. I'd probably pick up another box of Plague Marines and a Plagueburst Crawler to flesh out the army. PBC's are arguably our best unit. Daemon Princes are also great. Blightlords are tons of fun and a unit I never leave home without.

 

As for the conversions, I didn't bother doing any converting cross-range because of how gorgeous the new DG line is, but it wouldn't be that hard. A quick google will find you decades worth of Nurgle conversions. Just keep in mind that if you're converting pre-2019 era CSM they look a little small compared to the new Plague Marines.

[Special Officer Doofy]

Marshal Loss made some good points. Best bang for your buck is the dark imperium. For $160 you get a lord of contagion, Noxious blight Bringer and Plague caster, which death guard characters are $25 on their store so that's $75 there. You get 7 marines which is another $50. A bloat Drone (that comes with the best load out) which is $50 and 20 pox walkers which is again about $50 (assuming you get everything new from gw). So that's $225 worth of death guard for $160, but also gets you a $40 rule book and $200 some worth of Primaris marines you can sell. Or on sites you can just get the dg half for around $50 (that's what I did).

 

As far as converting I feel nurgle stuff is the easiest to convert and use green stuff because it's supposed to look sloppy and gross. That said though, marshal is right. The new units are beautiful and I would recommend just getting new marines. There is the 7 from dark imperium. There's a box of 7 individually. There's an easy build pack that comes with 3 (ones a champ that comes with a plasma gun and one has a blight launcher, arguebly their best weapon) for only $15 and another overpriced pack of 3 for $40. They are all different. I like using minimum squad size units (5) because that gets you the champ and two special weapons and don't have to worry about moral losses. I got the 7 from dark imperium, 7 from their own box, and got 2 of the 3 pack with the champion and with only buying one blight launcher bit and a couple plasma guns have 4 easy load outs of 2x 3 plasma and 2x 1 plasma and 2 blight launchers. Each champion has a powerfist too. Just giving you an example of something you could do. But the new marines are large, not just in height but stocky too.

 

As far as units go I feel the strongest for the points is by far the Plague burst crawler (with spitters), bloat drones (with spitters) and daemon princes. They have some of the best movement (which is something death guard doesn't have alot of) and the spitters auto hitting, based on the units strength and rerolling ones to wound is great. Most other units like the characters in the elite slots can be good, even great, but generally only in certain situations.

 

And as far as allying, you get way more synergy (and fluff) with nurgle demons then you do with another CSM legion. The nurgle daemons will only synergize with your <nurgle> <daemon> units from the death guard, but the three best units I mentioned above are all nurgle and daemons so it's pretty nice.

 

I tried to fluff my army as the "putrid choir" which means lots of bells. I have the doomsday bell on my great unclean one which at the beginning of every turn let's me restore a model to a unit of nurgle daemons on a roll of 4+. The blight hauler (death guard Fast Attack unit) is a nurgle daemon vehicle that can be taken in groups of three, and getting one back on every turn if you roll a 4+ is nice when the hauler has T7, 8W, 3+ 5++ 5+++.

 

Mortarion is cool but a fire magnet. If you get to go first and can get a turn one charge he wrecks house. But if you go second and are playing 2000pts+, he usually gets shot down or atleast taken down a bracket or two which is the end of him and the upwards of 500pts spent for him.

 

My last peice of advice is if you're the type of person that likes to table opponents, death guard might not be the best team for you. It's hard to do as death guard. Death guard usually win based on getting on objectives, blocking the opponents advances and trying to not die (again this is all my opinion, experience and what I watched in battle reports before I got into death guard).

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

Thank you all for the lengthy and expedient responses.

[Aerisson]

The Plague Marines box also has o lot of spare parts. What you could do is buying one and buying a MK3 Marines Unit (you can find cheap one on sites form BoC or BoP box set). That's what I did. Sure the MK3 Marines are not as bulky as our Plague Marines but it does a pretty good job.

 

you can see the result here :https://photos.google.com/u/1/share/AF1QipPtTCLvlj4yP133DvJzlD-9ItxPTis7EpLDI2aZKCE-XsHD6NvjoEuCqKaBOaS9OQ/photo/AF1QipMDtDGtewXjXEO-yrvm8X_D5mkh9eCvD_kWqs0Z?key=WDNFNjh4SFJQSkxyZ25CRzJtSGJvVW9ManRxcW53