Death Guard Secondaries

[KingYertle]

Yesterday Ninja made an excellent point regarding how disappointing he finds the DG secondaries.   I agree 100%, and am curious, what secondaries are people having success with?  

 

Outside of WWSWF, I have struggled to score 10+ points on my secondaries. 

 

I've had success with Physic Ritual in the past.  But have found that it drastically alters the play style for the game, requiring you to focus on protecting your PR.  It is fun narratively but gets old, and it ties up key units from assisting in other areas limiting your ability to react to your opponent.

 

Spread the Sickness is very frustrating IMO.  It is so thematic that I want to love it, but the limitations on when you can score are significant, especially considering you incur MWs.  Simply removing the limitation on enemy units within 3 inches would have at least made it viable (giving you the turn to clear the objective and then contaminate it). 

 

I've had decent success with Despoiled Ground, but those games were blow out victories were the points from Despoiled didn't have much impact.  It definitely plays like a win more option vs something that can you play to for the win.  Playing for it also means late game shenanigans of hiding units, advancing to get into proper position or even deep striking into out of play areas, which are not an exciting way too play.  Also it is ridiculous that our daemon engines cannot score it.  Is there any other codex secondary that limits which codex units can score it?  This secondary seems very tailored to Terminus Est, and perhaps that is where it should have been published. 

 

The author's were on the right track with spread the sickness, but otherwise they really missed the mark.  STS deals MWs, we should totally be able to cut open our bellies and contaminate an objective even if the enemy is nearby.  Despoiled Ground should score points each turn as we inexorably advance up the board.  Fleeing Vectors should score whenever an enemy falls back or fails morale making it at least somewhat interesting as an option.  With the Death Guard's theme there is so much they could have done, it is definitely disappointing that they fell so flat.

 

 

 

   

[Marshal Loss]

Domination/Despoiled Ground
Grind Them Down/WWSWF
Banners/Deploy Scramblers
Assassinate/Titan Hunters

Some mission secondaries can also be really good for us (Retrieval, Scouring, Sweep, PT). Our faction specific secondaries aren't must-takes like some of our rivals, but it hasn't bothered me too much.

[Plague _Lord]

I take Spread the sockness every game and it ended up giving me 9-12 every game. I've even taken mortals on PMs - 3vps is well worth the loss of plague marine.

 

Despoiled ground is meh for me. More often I take attrition.

[Special Officer Doofy]

I heard the new chapter approved is redoing and balancing alot of the secondaries, hopefully that will help make up for our not so great ones.

[techsoldaten]

I think DG will benefit from the new CA. Some of the secondaries are being improved in ways that should make it easier to score points.

 

They're changing Abhor the Witch. Instead of getting points for killing psykers, you get points for denying psychic powers.

 

While it's situational (your opponent has to have psykers,) this could be useful for Death Guard given the number of psychic units that can appear in a list. 

[Tokugawa]

Death Guard is not famous for its psykers; don't having +1/reroll to deny make DG vulnerable to some crucial psychic powers.

[McElMcNinja]

I am hopeful the new secondaries help us, this weekend I took domination, spread the sickness, and thin their ranks. It was against a Necron list and I knew they would be reanimating a lot. But if thin their ranks is 1 based off hp, then scarabs become an even better target, same with things like ripper swarms.

This particular game my opponent conceded turn 3 as I had already gotten 9 for domination, 9 for spread, 6 for thin, and 30 on primary. He had 20 on primary, 8 for his codex secondary, 4 on banners, and I had killed 2 of his WWSWF. I had also reduced him to 1 troops unit and some characters (including the silent king), so he didn’t really have much left. He had killed a 2 drones and some Poxwalkers, but not an entire unit.

Back to secondaries, I hope the changes a beneficial for every faction and I would like to see them ban codex secondaries from tournaments.

[techsoldaten]

Death Guard is not famous for its psykers; don't having +1/reroll to deny make DG vulnerable to some crucial psychic powers.

 

Don't need great psykers for DTW. A +1 only means your opponent's odds of beating it improve by 8%.

 

Don't have my Codex in front of me, doesn't Mortarion have multiple DTWs? Then Daemon Princes, Typhus, Malignant Plaguecasters, etc. 

 

Feels like there's some lists where this would not be too hard to max out.

[Relentless]

 

They're changing Abhor the Witch. Instead of getting points for killing psykers, you get points for denying psychic powers.

 

 

Doesnt Abhor the Witch require you to not have any psykers in your army?  How do you deny powers?

 

I like the spread the sickness but never manage more than 9pts (and only when there's 6 obj).  Wish there was an option to take 2d3 mortals with enemies nearby or something like that, especially against fast armies like DA and DE who can get up on most obj before we can

Edited June 1, 2021 by Relentless