vs Death Guard

Sometimes the dice just don't go your way. But even then this game is a blast, as long as you let it be.

I played against Death Guard last night. This friend of mine is a fairly new player and Death Guard is his fourth army. He bought into AdMech, Necrons, and then dipped into Black Legion before trying out the Death Guard and really resonated with them. I'm pretty sure he is drawn to their innate toughness and staying power, but he could also just be a disgusting person who likes disgusting things.

We each came to the table with 2000 points. We rolled up Vital Intelligence as our mission (the one that the Tabletop Tactics guys so affectionately refer to as 'Multiball'), and Hammer and Anvil for deployment. He chose sides, I deployed first.

For my forces, I brought along a Terminator battalion for the first time in many months. I've been really trying to play competitively at the club and Terminators just... don't quite do their jobs, most of the time. 205 points for a five-man unit that rarely lasts more than a round on the table. With the two HQs in there, the battalion comes in at 1000 points. Obviously this isn't the cheapest battalion that the Grey Knights can do, but as I've mentioned before I am just not a fan of Strike Squads. I'll go into why in a future post.

In addition I brought my 10-man Paladin squad to wreck some house, which means that with HQs I was fielding 28 dudes in TDA -- and I gotta say, they look pretty cool! If nothing else, this looks like a super elite force of psychic badasses. I also brought my Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight, a Grand Master on foot with a Daemon Hammer, the unpainted Brother-Captain, and 2 Ven Dreads. I know that Death Guard is a pretty in-your-face kind of army, so I planned on meeting him in melee and crushing him up close.

He brought 3 Plagueburst Crawlers and a spattering of troops, and also Mortarion.

3 PBCs? So much for close range.

I knew that the PBCs would be giving me trouble. They can hit anywhere they want without line of sight, and their mortars are S8 AP-2 Dd3, also known as the Perfect Terminator Killing Weapon. My initial assessment of his army was that he would have a load of long range firepower and then two big battering rams in the form of Typhus/Poxwalkers and Mortarion. I knew how to handle Typhus' whole mess (storm bolters), and I figured that I could keep Mortarion distracted and then eliminate him with lascannon fire. The PBCs felt like the biggest threat.

Here is where I made my biggest mistake of the match. I have been reading so much of the meta in my quest to become competitive with Grey Knights that I saw Mortarion and my mind immediately thought, "meh, that dude isn't competitive. All the best Chaos lists omit him entirely because he just gets shot off the board turn one." So I chose to focus instead on the PBCs, which the meta says are the best tanks the Death Guard can field. And, well... I chose to ignore Mortarion. Because he isn't a competitive threat, because he just gets shots off the board turn one. Only... I, uh, didn't. I didn't shoot him off the board turn one. I just left him alone.

Which wasn't, like, super tactical.

Here's me using Gate of Infinity to jump in behind one of the PBCs turn one. Yay Grey Knights.

My Dreadnoughts blasted apart a Rhino to get First Strike. My Terminators stayed back to hold objectives. I teleported behind a PBC to slice it down with my GMNDK. Strength 10 sword, swinging for d6 damage. I successfully charged it and sliced it up for 17 wounds, but he saved 7 of them with Disgustingly Resilient. On his turn the PBC pooted away 4 inches, giving Mortarion enough room to just plop down in front of my guy.

Oh hello. I hope you like my 3++ save.

I wasn't worried. The GMNDK can be pretty indestructible. I just spend CP to reroll the failed 3++ invuln saves. Mortarion comes swinging at my GMNDK. He has 6 attacks, which turns into 18 attacks when he uses his Reaping Scythe. Hearing that Mortarion was making 18 fucking attacks at S8 filled me with indeterminable dread. I suddenly realized that not lascannoning the bastard in the shooting phase was a huge mistake. My buddy went to roll the dice and I stopped him. I quietly told him that Mortarion has the new Hateful Assault rule, so he gets an additional 3 attacks with Reaping Scythe on the charge. He says, "oh! Rad, thanks," and rolls the dice. After rerolls, he got 21 hits. I stopped him again before he picked up the dice to roll for wounds. He looked at me a little confused, like I was about to say he'd made some mistake.

I stared at the seven 6s in his hit pool, and then whispered "death to the false Emperor" in a small voice.

His eyes go wide and he rolls 7 more dice, netting a total of 28 hits from a model with an attacks characteristic of 6.

My GMNDK was absolutely obliterated. No amount of invuln save could protect him from firepower of that magnitude.

Playing it safe and staying back now.

He held more points than me in the first round. On my next turn, I deep striked (deep stroke?) my Paladins into a ruin and threw my Grand Master and Banner Boy into the street to buff as many units as possible. I was gonna take out Typhus this turn, who was his Warlord. Somehow my mind still told me it was okay to ignore Mortarion at this point. I think I was subconsciously fearing about falling into a sunken cost trap, and I wanted to trust my earlier assessment that Mortarion was to be ignored. My real threats were the PBCs and Typhus and his bodyguard of Poxwalkers, I told myself. Don't get distracted by the loss of your beloved GMNDK. Stay focused, stay cagey. Grab points and slay his Warlord.

These Terminators landed here so that they could bolter some Plague Marines and smite the last wounds off of that PBC that fell back from my GMNDK. They succeeded in that second part, but the Plague Marines easily soaked all of the storm bolter shots.

But of course Mortarion was still over there, and decided that these guys should no longer exist. The Daemon Prince didn't even need to swing.

Mortarion moving on from one dead Terminator squad to reap the souls of another.

All my characters were across the board and Mortarion just swept through my lines, stealing one of the two points that I had in the back. My Terminators were absolutely powerless against him. No heavy weapons, and he denied all our smite attempts.

Fortunately we ruined this dude in melee, so not all was lost.

I dunked on Typhus with my Pallies (but not before he killed 4 of them), and then I moved in a squad of Terminators to snag the central objective. I had to get three of them. If I didn't, he was going to run away with the points. My Terminators are Troops, though, so if I killed enough Plague Marines our ObSec would trigger. I just needed to kill the Plague Marines and survive the Daemon Prince that was heading our way.

Pictured: Totally two inches and completely legal unit coherency.

My Termies survived the strikes from the Daemon Prince, miraculously, but then this single Plague Marine here. This single goddamn Plague Marine. In this fight phase, that idiot with the flail there took 3 wounds from a Nemesis Falchion. My buddy rolled two Disgustings, and then paused. He stared at that failed die roll and then snap-decided to spend a CP. He rolled, and got a 5. This one guy soaked 3 damage from a Force Sword.

For the record, it was totally clutch and both of us cheered when he rolled that final Disgustingly Resilient. This Plague Marine should not have survived, and the fact that he did was beautiful and the chorus of our combined exultant cries when he succeeded is exactly the kind of feeling that I play this game for. But then this Flail Dude slew all three Terminators and that was total bullshit.

Mortarion wiped out my last Terminator squad. I was down 9 points to 17. I decided screw it, I was going to at least kill Mortarion this game. I buried him in daemon-killing 3 damage smites and got him down to 3 wounds. All it would take is one successful charge and a few failed Disgustings and I'd do it. Me and my buddy both agreed that he had won this game, but I wanted to achieve some semblance of honor and glory in this battle. We were going to play out this fight phase. My fancy new unpainted Brother-Captain was 4 inches away after moving. Just had to get in and swing with 5 attacks, and I'm rerolling to wound because Mortarion is a daemon. Let's do it. I went to charge.

Goddammit. Well, okay. That's why we have First to the Fray. To reroll this shit.