Unit of the Week series: Deathshroud

[Wolf Lord Loki]

Our second unique terminator squad.

 

Armed with both a man reaper and plague gauntlets they can reap a heavy tally, if they can get close enough

 

Other rules are:

Plague chimes (can't remember if that's the name but it's what they look like) which do something to the contagion range iirc

 

Bodyguard they can take the hit for a character instead.

 

What do we love about these guys?

Edited March 26, 2022 by Wolf Lord Loki

[Plague _Lord]

Yeah plague chimes give you + 3'' to contagion range for the unit which can make them a decent vector for your warlords contagion if you take one.

I love this unit to be honest, they do heavy liftinh for me. I see that I play them different than most players - I deepstrike mine.

 

I play a squad of 3 (cause that's how many I've got) with dual flamers on the champ (free now, which balances out the points bump) and he also get's the reaper of glorious entropy to become a chaos lord in his own right. Now these guys usually drop turn 2 (allthough I've had great returns against aggressive armies, where I wait till turn 3 and then just melt my opponents backfield without reprecussion) and they are accompanied by my lord of virulence, equipped with acidic malady (so another 2d6 str 6 ap2 autohits) and arch contaminator. The lord of virulence is crutial to make the flamers do more - full rerolls to wound help counter both low strength and help me get ap-1 more often. This combo has on many occasions won me they game - they can either deplete or delete up to 2 backfield units on the drop (when facing tougher targets mortar support can help) with the flamers alone. They can also concentrate firepower on one unit and then charge another. With a decently small footprint I think the min squad is the way to go. Their biggest tally was absolutely destroying a 30 man ork boy blob from an objective.

 

Now the main thing that I recently learned was that you can play the +1 to wound strat on these mad lads - the flamers become pretty good and the swipe profile on the manreapers becomes deadly. What I want to try is a drop of 5 of these guys, along side the same lord of virulence in a chosen sons army. These guys with the combos delete 6 space marines on average - if they are outside of contagion range. If they drop to T3 then we are looking at an average of 8 deleted marines and you can rid them of cover if you take the vectorum contagion! Sure it's 400points of shooting and a 3 CP investment, but it's a lot of firepower and the close combat that follows can delete most things.

 

Overall one of our best units in the codex.

[Marshal Mittens]

For me the best thing about them is that they look really cool. The scythes, the armor, just all of it. I love their look.

 

In game they seem like they perform well too.

 

Overall I think in cost of the models they are just too expensive, like $50USD for 3 models, and too expensive points wise at 55pts each. But they still do well.

 

That said it's hard to beat some super killy termies with scythes for looks and such!

Edited March 26, 2022 by Marshall Mittens

[Plaguecaster]

Such an amazing unit with one if my most favorite models of the new DG update. Always take them as the perfect bodyguard unit for my plaguecaster warlord helping to keep him alive. Can tank alot of hits and can be quite deadly in combat especially with something like a Biologus Putrifier to inflict additional MWs. Edited March 27, 2022 by Plaguecaster

[Derpa Derpa 777]

Are people taking these over Blightlords? I have both sets of models so just curious how do they play without AoC? 50ppm seems expensive for what they do since they basically only have a flamer and scythe. Does the flamer really put out that much damage? And now it seems theyre only mediocre in cc compared to Plague Marines. Maybe in Arks of Omen it’ll be better to have more Plague Marines….

[Special Officer Doofy]

Compared to deathwing terminators with their free wargear and perma trans human they are over priced, for sure. I'm waiting on 10th at this point. Losing 5+++ for -1D was a kick to the nuts and almost got me to quit 40k and the illusion of -1T debuff aura being useful in the slowest army in the game has lost its luster. When you think about death guard's best melee, we have Mortarion, Death shroud, mower bloat drones and flail termies and marines. Mortarion had the -1T aura already in 8th and lost Dttfe, Deathshroud went from S5 to S4, and the mower and flails went from +2S to only +1S, so the toughness debuff didn't really affect our melee that much because they all lost strength with it.

[Derpa Derpa 777]

So what I take from that is Deathshroud really aren’t worth taking. That’s a disappointment. I’ll have to pick up another box of Blightlords since I only have 5. Do you think Blightlords will keep free wargear in 10th? What about deep striking Deathshroud? Has that been effective in games you’ve played or are the Deathshroud just sitting ducks?

[Special Officer Doofy]

My best advice is just have a little of everything. Death guard have never really had great rules, but we do have some of the best looking models. I almost always deep strike mine, but we never switched away from 6 x 4 tables because in my gaming group we all have our own tables and mats, so foot slogging is not really a viable option and there is plenty of room to deepstrike. I often run alot of Daemon engines to take care of enemy armor, so I typically use my death shroud to drop in and clear an objective. My main opponent is my brothers admech, they work wonders for clearing skitarii (T3 1W). The hand flamers only work on T3 trash and never add up on bigger and better stuff.

 

I can't see the free wargear lasting. Why does every plague marine in the box have the option for a bolter when you can take a special weapon like a blight launcher that is 100% better for no points. This free wargear stuff is to get people to buy more kits (mostly marine players) at the end of an edition when sales are the slowest (people tend to slow down at the end of an edition).

 

Having 10 Blightlord and 6 death shroud terminators is not a bad spot to be. Let's you switch them around when needed. Never put all of your eggs in the same basket!

 

I had fun running 5 death shroud and used the strat to give the champion a relic (Champion of disease). Gave him reaper of glorious entropy. Gives him 5 attacks at S8 (-1T) without the minus one to hit (death shroud were 3+ ws in 8th but their scythes didn't have -1 to hit) so he is hitting on 2+. -3AP and 3 damage, wound rolls of 6 do 1mw. You get to use the 4 bodies without the relic as extra wounds and they each have 4 attacks with the sweep or cleave profile.

Edited January 13, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[tychobi]

With armour of contempt deathshroud were so crazy efficient. Without? Not sure. Still miles better than blightlords in my opinion and a nice deepstrike at 150. 

[Derpa Derpa 777]

Welp. Just played a 500 point matchup vs Tau and lost terribly. My 5 Blightlords were the stars on my side though. They cleared a whole squad of Fire warriors in a round of shooting. I’ll try out Deathshroud on Sunday.