Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Death Guard (section)

==Why Play Death Guard==
For the first time in 40k's history, Grandfather [[Nurgle]]'s favorite pus-sacks have gotten their own Codex, and it's a solid mix of the fluffy and crunchy. You might not exactly be zipping across the board, but if you want a footslogging army that can shrug off almost anything the opponent can throw at them and retaliate with punishing short-range attacks (and have an obsession with the number 7), the Death Guard is the army for you. 

===Pros===
* Can fire Assault and Heavy weapons with none of the normal penalties when footslogging and Rapid Fire weapons can double tap from 3/4 (18") max range instead of the usual half range. This makes them the best shooting army for Chaos until [[Iron Warriors]], [[The Fallen]] and [[Dark Mechanicus]] get actual rules.
* Plague weapons make wound rolls reliable with easy access to re-rolling 1s, and can be buffed in several different ways.
* Excellent Toughness on average, and most of your army, including some of your vehicles, have Disgustingly Resilient (which can be buffed), giving you a 1/3 chance to ignore every unsaved wound, even a mortal one! 
* Lots of debuffing auras to discourage choppy armies from getting too close to you.
* Your basic troops are T5 - which in this edition is a serious boon, as all but the most lethal of weaponry will still only wound them on 3s. You need a Demolisher Cannon to hurt them on 2s!
* Gained Hateful Assault granting you +1 Attack when charging, being charged, or intervening, same as our loyalist brethren 
* Many of your units have ways of dealing mortal wounds, letting them bypass those annoying invulnerable saves.
* They have access to a Primarch.
* As the other army in the starter set and the Conquest magazine, alongside the Primaris Marines, it'll be easy to start up a collection. 
* They are one of the most up-to-date lines of Chaos models.
* Thanks to Grandfather, your auras have a greater size compared to nearly all other armies (7” compared to 6”), which is obviously very useful (and fluffy!)

===Cons===
* Lack of Anti Armour capabilities at range. 
* The infantry that makes up the bulk of your army is SLOW. Most units have 5" of movement at most, and the Terminators are stuck with Cataphractii armor so they'll move even slower.
* Practically no ''designated'' long-range fire units outside of vehicles.
* A slight lack of rerolls; only 4 units have access to them (5 if you count the Termie Lord apart from the normal Lord). This is a much bigger problem in the infantry-heavy Death Guard with high numbers of troops and several back-sitting long-range fire support options in the codex.
* While they did gain some new daemon engines in the bloat drone, blight-hauler and crawler, they also lost access to the maulerfiend, forgefiend and heldrake.
* Some lazy ports of standard chaos units.
* Elites slot is rather crowded. Not much of an issue since a Battalion detachment has tons of Elite slots to accommodate all those Characters, but you might fill them out to capacity.
* Many of the units that made up the core of a Death Guard army in 7E Traitor Legions are no longer accessible to the new Death Guard. This includes absolutely crucial fire support such as Havocs and Obliterators, as well as Bikers and pretty much anything that went fast in previous editions. Nurgle armies looking for those will need to use vanilla CSM rules and detachments.
* Most of the mortal wounds you deal out require you to be very close if not in melee range, putting your units at risk against fast, shooty armies like the Eldar as well as flyers in general.
* Several of your more important characters (eg noxious blightbringer) are not available separately
* Low model reusability. In spite of the fact that they're still technically Death Guard, you're probably not going to find much use for your old Plague Marine minis now unless you can kitbash their new weapon options on. Even if you previously had a DG army, if you want to run DG using THIS codex, you're probably going to have to start from scratch as all the actually good units are new, or equipped with new gear. Just like the Thousand Sons before them.
* You'll eventually get tired of the coronavirus jokes.

===How to handle these cons===
* You should imagine playing a DG army as a slow-growing but potentially lethal tumor. Sure, we are slow, but we can utilize Spawn, Possessed, Tanks or flying DPs to move ahead of the main wave and cause dissent before the rest catches up into mid-range to cause maximum damage.
* If you had Bikers, Helturkeys, and Obliterators in 7E and want to use them in a DG army, you still can, but they must be restricted to a separate detachment of vanilla CSM (if you want your DG to keep Inexorable Advance and Plague Host). In addition, nothing stops you from painting your Bikers in DG colors and running them with rules for regular CSM Bikers, so get creative! It's all about [[your dudes]]!
* Transports can help our slow-moving troops to get across the board, but most of them don't have Disgustingly Resilient. [[Rhino|Metal Boxes]] are not as good as they used to be. Taking transports has always been a tactical choice, but now more than ever. This subject is a bit of a [[skub]] depending on who you ask and on the kind of terrain you usually play on. I suggest experimenting with having more troops, but no transports OR 2-3 transports, but less troops. There is always a sweet spot in balance that Papa Nurgle would approve. If you have a LoW slot to spare and can afford Forge World, the Hellforged Spartan Assault Tank is a perfect solution to the transport issue. 
*Opinion on transports. Put a plague marine squad (7 if you're feeling fluffy) and characters to fill the rest of its capacity. Counts as 1 unit drop during deployment while deploying as many as 4 units inside. This can help you gain first turn to move up the board and fire what long range weapons you can. Start the game on your own terms.
*An option for a slightly less expensive long range anti tank than predators (as long as you don’t mind taking an allied detachment or two) to take some R&H Disciple/Command squads with las cannons or missile launchers. A second much less expensive option is renegade heavy weapon squads with las cannons, they’re cheap but they will miss more often than not.
*Consider taking a Sorcerer on a Palanquin (Legend) or an Index Daemon Prince (totally not a Legend), or alternatively allying with a CSM sorcerer, with warptime and 1 other power (Prescience is a good pick). Dark Hereticus powers affect Heretic Astartes, rather than [Legion] models, so it will buff your Death Guard. The ability to move an appropriately killy unit twice in an army as slow as DG can make a huge difference in getting your guys where they need to be, when they need to be there.