ITC Tournament Time Part 2: Death Guard Project Continues.

Out of the options available to me it became apparent that I needed to get the ball rolling. I still feel (for some reason) more comfortable with how my Custodes army plays, even though I’m positive my ‘pure Custodes’ list would get hammered in ITC.

That being said I am painting two armies at once, and it’s looking grim for the Custodes.

So I’m now painting a ton of Nurglings, 2 Poxbringers and potentially some Death Guard units depending on my Mortarion experiment continues. Mortarion is a favorite model of mine and I have said many times he was a blast to paint. (but very time consuming)

In my last post I had an ITC test game vs. Necrons and it went well for the Death Guard. It was a convincing win.

Oooh if only Necrons could smell what Mort is laying down right now… game over.

The game was fun, but I felt my opponent was much more geared for a ranged fight and could not sustain, or contain Close Combat damage.

Next up was the heinous Dark Eldar. “Poison” as a weapon in 40K is a weird thing. Quite often it’s just not worth it, yet a great deal of the time it’s exceptional against some of the best units in the game: Enter Mortarion, the “Nurgle” Daemon Primarch of death and decay…. and btw Poison hurts him. (anyone understanding Mort’s background would find this pretty absurd. Or at least as absurd as a giant flying super-human suspended over a sci-fi warground by moth’s wings, and a war scythe I call ol’ Trusty Rusty.)

Officially named “Silence” but me and Mort know it as “Trusty Rusty”. (I won’t tell you what we really call “Silent but Violent” in his arsenal.)

Anyway, the game went pretty sideways for me. I played out the secondaries a bit incorrectly and accidentally awarded my opponent -far- too many points for the inevitable death of Mortarion.

My deployment was good… Mort required a lot of readjustment by the Dark Eldar

By Mid-game I had a very strong lead, but that was due to my playing the objectives. The inevitable problem was the poison smacking through all the stuff I’m paying points, and using Psychic powers on to keep “tough”.

Dark Eldar pushback, but the Death Guard have a big lead.

At this point Mortarion has died to a bazillion lance shots. The lack of firepower I had, combined with a lack of speed was a real problem. I only had Mort for 2 turns so that means I’m at a 470 point deficit and Mort really didn’t ‘absorb’ as much as I hoped.

Mortarion’s final moments. He’s gone to that great ol’ fart cloud in the sky now…

Mortarion was down to 4 wounds by my Turn 2, and this is -after- trying to heal him with the psychic phase which went horribly. (I put about 9 wounds on my own guys from perils that turn! Plus Dark Eldar have nasty denial powers with ‘auto-perils’ side effects.)

Mort was so weak by the time he hit the Dark Eldar back lines his death cloud ability could only proc on a 6. He was down to 4 attacks with ol’ Trusty Rusty. He really didn’t do a heck of a lot aside from the odd foul gas cloud erupting from his… err… ‘back pack’.

So the game ended with my accidental concession. We thought he got a whooping pile of secondary points (13) for Mort’s death which had him tying me in the 4 th turn. The reality is he only could get a max of 4 points for that death. I would have had a substantial lead however it’s worth noting that I would have been in danger of being tabled. Poison is bad, m’kay?

Poison is only good when *I* use it!!!

So what could I have done differently? Everyone keeps telling me; Don’t take Mortarion.

I understand he is not going to win any tournaments. We are well past the Index days, and the Meta is full of ‘chaff’ units that GW definitely loves to sell hundreds of. Ranged, stand back and shoot armies are big. The new FAQ empowers these lists even more so.

I get it, Mortarion’s a bad idea. But I want to take a few more wacks with Mortarion. I’ve now included his personal bodyguard (who ironically can’t really act appropriately in that role until T2 thanks to GW’s FAQ.)

I’ve also had to ask Typhus to hit the road.

Sorry Typhus, really it’s not you… it’s the me(ta).

The Poxwalker nerf, combined with the point restrictions of the ITC event, combined with the meta… well I think one of these high priced characters has to go. Typhus will be missed, this marks the first time I’ve not used him since the official codex replaced the Index rules. Sorry buddy… them’s the breaks.

So I move onward with yet another ITC test game. I’m getting closer to just ditching Mortarion as well. But we’ll see if my new plan is clever, or just more stinky (not nurgle stinky, just bad-stinky) ideas.

Part 3 coming up soon.