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

==Notable Strategies==
===Play it 30k===
Gimmicks are fine for starting play, but higher levels of play will require looking at what makes an army good. Death Guard have access to the absolute hardest to kill Terminators in the game, and they come in two flavors. They have one of the toughest tanks in the Plagueburst Crawler. Their Hellforged Dreadnoughts (Leviathan, Contemptor, Deredeo) all benefit from the Legion trait. Mortarion absolutely needs his bodyguard to survive Repulsor Executioners and Knights, and is worth the attention he lifts from the rest of your army, but he's not gonna hang around to dish out his buffs. Use an Index Daemon Prince to Warptime him up the table if something juicy is there T1, otherwise Warptime his bodyguard to hang out for just one or two more turns (depending on how much shooting they toss out). Roll those tanks onto objectives, and start hammering your enemies with your dreadnoughts (I prefer Leviathans, that 2+ armor and T8 is too good). Drop in with Blightlords, and vanish the screen before throwing Mortarion up their guts. Morty dead? Drop the Blightlords in cover, walk, and be dumb hard to kill while they have to decide to put tank-busting weapons into your Leviathans or Terminators. Try taking a Plaguebringer Jump Pack Lord to be Mini-Mort for when the big man bites it.

===ZOMBIE HARVEST===
Get a big blob of Poxwalkers and Cultists. Move the Cultists in front of the Poxwalkers, then use Cloud of Flies and The Dead Walk Again stratagems on the Poxwalkers. Now your opponent can only shoot the squishy Cultists, and your Poxwalkers become an even bigger tarpit with every Cultist that dies near them on top of any nearby enemy infantry that get killed by the Poxwalkers or the Cultists. Remember the Cultists don't necessarily have to be DG, so you can use Tide of Traitors for EVEN MORE bodies and increase the size of the Poxwalker blob to utterly ridiculous levels. This basically creates a reverse Distraction Carnifex, something that you literally can't respond to unless you deal with other units first. All smiles motherfucker! Expensive in CP, though. In Matched Play, Poxwalkers that exceed unit starting strength cost reinforcement points now. Bye bye Harvest.

Another option is if you have a "the purge" detachment, tie up an enemy unit with poxwalkers then pop the "Dead walk again" stratagem and follow up with "all life is Worthless" on a havok/obliterator unit to fire into the fight. Any losses from friendly fire should be recuperated with interest right away.

===Grenade Storm===
Get a Biologis Putrifier, as many Plague Marines as you can, and use the Blight Bombardment stratagem for an impressive amount of shots, up to 20d6 if the squad is full size. Combine with Veterans of the Long War to get Mortal Wounds on a 5+, in case you want to take down heavy vehicles using only grenades. For extra fun, deep strike a Lord of Contagion with the Arch-Contaminator warlord trait. Since you can take Plague Marines in 7 man squads, one possible delivery method is a Rhino containing seven Plague Marines, a Biologis Putrifier, and two more characters, like a Foul Blightspawn for 2d6 extra grenades or a Tallyman for a follow-up charge. 
*The major weakness of this strategy is that the grenades are 6 inch range and everyone and their mother will see it coming. However, with the addition of the new '''Blight Bombardment''' stratagem, you can DOUBLE the range of grenades (to 12"), since they are Plague Weapons. Trying to line up the shot is very difficult without the aid of something like Warptime or a Dreadclaw. It feels like this would be a great backup strategy rather than a main battle plan.
**As a huge fan of grenades, I've spent a lot of time trying to make this work. I find it is most effective as a backup option for your shooty marines. Having a Biologus hanging out in the back might seem kinda expensive, until your opponent deep strikes a Dreadnought on top of you or their Hive Tyrant comes to play. Unload on them with your plasma guns and blight launchers, but rather than wasting all those bolter shots on a tough target, you can get a squad and a bunch of supporting characters to all chuck grenades. With an Arch-Contaminator nearby, and VotLW, you can decimate an expensive deep striker unit with minimal risk of return fire. I've dropped everything from Terminators to Mawlocs in a single shooting phase with a 7 man squad and 2-3 characters. 1d6 shots, 2 damage, and bonus mortal wounds add up fast.
# 'Alternate Take' put 3 units of 7 plagues marines geared for melee in a rhino with feel no pain and an arch-contaminator near, a foul blightspawn oand the biologus putrefier. This will give you a tanky enought blob that can advance agressively.
Since the damage of grenade combos and blade of putrification combos are insane, you just have a 20" threat space for you... And since your ennemy want to score points, it will need to take down these.
Given that this combos damage are so insane that you can make your point back with just one iterration, it become a possible battle plan.
This was played in tornaments in Europe for sub-leagues with some success before War of the spider and v9 ( with 5 units of 5 plague marines in rhino), and was buffed to the roof with this early v9... So brace yourself people, grenades are comming!

===Nurgle Daemonkin===
Mortarion and the Daemon Engines have the '''NURGLE''' and '''DAEMON''' keywords, allowing them to benefit from the buffs of Poxbringers and Epidemius' Tally of Pestilence. With this, Mortarion can be buffed to an S9 T8 21 Attacks monster, and that's without any psyker shenanigans! You can also get S8 Plaguespitters on your Bloat Drones in case you wanted anti-tank flamers. Blades of Putrefaction and Virulent Blessing can also make a nasty combo if applied to Mortarion or a Fleshmower Bloat Drone, and Fleshy Abundance is always useful. Since you can organize an army around the '''NURGLE''' keyword, you can have an Outrider Detachment based on Bloat-Drones and Blight-Haulers (who won't mourn for the loss of Inexorable Advance seeing as they never benefited from it) lead by Epidemius and/or a Poxbringer. Horticulus Slimux can help out further by providing healing (via Cultists dying near him) and planting Feculent Gnarlmaws which provide cover (For infantry), more buffs(Charging after Advancing/Falling Back), aid in summoning, and mortal wounds to non-Nurgle things all at the same time.
* Seriously, never overlook the Gnarlmaws.  They're a pain in the ass piece of terrain for your opponents.  Also, as noted, Mortarion is a Nurgle Daemon so Gnarlmaws will let him charge after advancing.  If you can figure out how to buff him with Warptime, he'll be in your opponent's lines and melting face faaaar quicker than they likely anticipated with an average total movement of 34" at full health. Even if you're not running a Daemon Detachment, consider a Fortification Network for these nasty trees.
* Another way to use Nurgle Daemons is to get a Supreme Command Detachment and fill out the rest with Nurgle '''Chaos Daemons''' ''not'' Death Guard ones. Locus of Virulence will cause any wound rolls of 6 for your Daemon Engines to deal 1 additional damage if they're near a character from this detachment.
* Yet another alternative is to rely on summoning: with Plague Pact (CP 1) summoning most of these are trivial, since 4d6 has an average roll of 14 - which lets you summons basically *any* creature from Codex: Chaos Daemons, including all these mentioned above. Epidemius himself has such a low PR that 2d6 is already reliable enough. Just remember to keep points in reserve - which you might want to do anyway if you're using Typhus and Poxwalkers.

===Tides of Deathvomit===
When building an army list, it's often better to think of it in terms of move speed and attack range. What you want is to hit your opponent in waves, forcing them to react to your moves rather than letting them do what they do best. First waves are usually fast moving units like Mortarion, Bloat Drones, Plague Drones and Daemon Princes, since they have ridonkulous movement range. Second waves are usually deep strikes and marines popping out of rhinos to deliver faceful of grenades, deep frying with plague flamers, or melee Helbrutes leaping into the fray. Final waves are usually Typhus and his zombie mosh pits. The downside to this strategy is that you'll be absolutely shit when it comes to holding territory. Then again you're a filthy heretic, who cares about defending?

===The Harvest===
Get a Tallyman and a Malignant Plaguecaster, give the Tallyman the Fugaris' Helm relic for the extra 3" range for re-rolls in the fight phase. Give the Malignant Plaguecaster 'Blades of Putrefaction' for +1 to wound in the fight phase as well mortal wounds on 7+ with plague weapons, and 'Putrescent Vitality' for +1 Strength, and +1 Toughness. Stick them in a 'Rhino' with a unit of your choice. Get a squad or squads of 'Deathshroud Terminators', put the terminators in reserve.  Ride the Rhino to the enemy line. Deploy when available to do so. Deep strike the Deathshroud Terminators as close as possible to the enemy but stay within the range of the Tallyman, and the Malignant Plaguecaster. Target the Deathshroud with the psychic powers. Keep in mind the modified 10" of the 'Tallymans' Re-roll range for the fight phase. Charge. Fast forward to fight phase. Use   Veterans of the Long War for a +1 to wound (This means due to BoP psychic Power, it's +2 to wound, and mortal wounds are now going off on 5+). Deathshroud are hitting on 3+, re-rollable misses, wounding anything Toughness 9 on 2+, rerolling 1s, and mortal wounds go off on 5+ in addition to damage. Very good at killing anything tanky like Land Raiders or Knights. Not a bad point cost for a death star. You basically have 'Mortarion', but doesn't die first turn. 
*A massive con for this strategy is the vulnerability of the Deathshroud after screwing up your charge. I hope you remembered the marines that were accompanying the Plaguecaster, and the Tallyman. Put them between the Deathshroud and the enemy. Use Cloud of Flies on the terminators, so the enemy can't target them. Charge your marines in, just so the enemy can't overwatch you. 
*Another con is the time it takes for this to work. You have to be a couple of turns in to be able to get the characters out the 'Rhino'. Heavily relies on deployment and enemy placement. Typically a lot of factors can make this strategy not work, but on paper it works great.

===Plague Marine Deathball===
With the new update to DG, plague marines are looking real tasty. This strategy takes a good amount of CP to work, but with 9th coming, everyone is getting more CP, so no worries about that. Essentially, this list focuses on one big blob of Plague Marines that walk up the board while shooting their bolters. This can get pretty nasty quickly with all of the synergies out there available to us now. Cloud of Flies is an obvious strat to use to keep them safe every turn. If you don't get first turn, just hide in some ruins out of sight if you can, but after that turn, you can hide them easily. Then you use Virulent Rounds as they move up the board to shoot at infantry units and rerolling wounds with Arch-Contaminator because you're always going to take that trait. If you really want to focus fire something down, use Relentless Volley and VOTLW strat to increase output and if you have some blighthaulers, you can use Parasitic Fumes to give those bolters -1 AP, but then that costs a lot CP. Finally, once you get into close combat, plague knives will do just fine now with the amount of mortal wounds that can be pumped out. You can use Trenchfighters to give every PM 3 attacks with hateful assault (if you give 2 plauge knives or a plauge knife and a Bubotic Axe/Mace of Contagion you can get them to 4 attacks, as result of their vectors of death and disease rule), then use Blades of Putrefaction or VOTLW (since hit and wound modifiers are capped at +1/-1 in 9th edition, unless the target has something that reduces you wound roll by -1 don't bother using both). This gives all of those attacks rerolling to wound with Arch-contaminator and mortal wounds on 6s, and wounding most Toughness 7 or lower units on 4s after rerolls. If you're facing a real tough nut, use Miasmal Afflictions to make a knight Toughness 7, but again, this is a lot of CP. Essentially this list focuses on Marines moving up and shooting, and then getting into combat and murdering there if they need to. You can protect them with other support units easily, and screen them with tough daemon engines as they walk up the board. This used to mainly be used as strategy with all close combat marines, but simple bolter marines have play now after the update and it's pretty cheap to run points-wise. 

===Morty loves to flank===
V9 is a huge boon for Mortarion, as he becomes totally playable in standard lists.
If you put him in flank reserve, it mean that you are assured than he will be able to try at least on 9" charge range before focus, a cast of -1 to hit spell on him... And that some deathshroud near him will be in position to also have more impact than only beeing ablative wounds for him!
So go put him in flank, and add some Deatshroud with him (2 unit of wine or one unit of 5 with envil of mortarion seem to be a good choice).
With a -1 to hit him and 10-20 ablative wounds on him, even if his first charge fail, your will totally be able to have a full life Mortarion in the ennemy line turn 3. Scary indeed. 
*Just be wary of where to place yourself turn 2: morty himself have enought mobility, but the surviving deathshroud can easily be made useless by a crafty oponent... And they are too expensive for that. This this little trick is not free either, Costing a whopping 6CP unless morty is your warlord and you are taking him in a Supreme Command Detatchment(then its only 3) and depending on your game size a quarter or more of your army in points.


[[Category:Warhammer 40000 Tactics(8E)]]
[[Category:Chaos]]

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