la petit morte - a lil death... guard army

Part of my goal for this year is to clear out my backlog.

What's a backlog? Its kind of like a pile of shame, a mountain of grey, or a mound of potential (think pack of sheep and you get the idea.) I know it sounds like a joke, b

Anyhow, with Warhammer 40,000's 10th edition rolling around, my shop chucked all of its 9th edition stuff, and I maybe went back in the dumpster and fished out a handful of books that I didn't want to send to a landfill, one of which was Death Guard. With these two thoughts rolling around in my head, it occurred to me that I was sitting on a few more armies than I remembered.

8th Edition had started with plague marines vs space marines (lotsa marines back in those days,) and I'd gotten the starter kit to compare and contrast with other starters I'd seen. The kit then went back in its box and was never heard from again. On top of that, I was given some resin recasts of the old metal plague marines (not the old old ones, but older ones than now,) and also (also) I'd been donated a pile of space wolves at one point and could take a few for an odd cause.

The Minis

So that's what started happening. I also began cloning pieces since I had to stretch the handful of grubby gerkins I had. I wanted a solid block of Death Guard Troopers, so I got very liberal with my use of green stuff.

Feel free to play "spot the copy" with these pix. They're truly some of the goopiest, dumbest looking blue-stuff recasts I could have made given my impatience and lack of proper pushfit moldmaking skills.(Its mostly a matter of backpacks, but since those face me whenever I play, I figure its fine. 

As a side note, I know that it's Dark Angels who're the ones with the red gun casings. I just liked them a lot, and wanted to do that here since I couldn't give a fig about the Dark Angels. That's all.

Also also, I painted these guys while I was sick. That's not an excuse, I just figured I'd share the whole story on account of my feeling exposition-y.

Then I had a bunch of models leftover from my Genestealer Cult, and so I made a shambling horde of Poxwalkers by chopping up Wargames Atlantic prisoners. I tried repositioning their arms and legs into zombie poses, and also gave them a very uncoordinated assortment of weapons. Lastly, I popped helmets on all of them, as I'd been thinking of the Doctor Who episode "Silence in the Library," and wanted to make my undead as anonymous as possible. 

Lastly, a friendly local hobbyist sold me a Helbrute, which helped me round out my army, along with Chaos Lord cobbled together from contemporary Death Guard and Classic Terminator and Chaos Warrior bits. While neither of these are probably optimal builds, the Helbrute came pre-magnetized, so if I ever feel like mucking with its gun arm, I can make those changes without fear.

And here's the big family portrait. Ta-Da. A solid little list coming in just shy of 500 points. I've played a few games of 8th and 10th with it now (this bit's being written in August while I started the post in May,) and I definitely feel like the force has had a glow up in the later rules. Sticky objectives go quite a ways in keeping your advantage on the table while waddling towards the enemy, plus with so many opportunities for devastating wounds and critical hits, its easier to hold your own against some of the fight-ier units, or at least the ones I fought against. 

The Poxwalkers still do fuck-all besides objective camping, but that's to be expected.

What's Next?

I know you're not asking, but I am I guess.

In a perfect world, where a Plagueburst Crawler isn't an investment, I'd like to get one or perhaps a different kind of vehicle on the path to 1000 points. Furthermore, more Death Guard troopers would be a good anvil, along with fleshing out my Poxwalker unit to 20 strong, and adding a tallyman and/or a plague surgeon to the batch. These decisions are less tactical and more just models and units I want to see added to the ranks, but I think my instincts are solid as more Poxwalkers will translate to "unit that is harder to chew up," and more Death Guard just seems good for getting table coverage and higher lethality.

Plus, the Plagueburst Crawler just looks like a beast.

And while I'm not sure, I have a hunch that a Tallyman and a Plague Surgeon would be fun to convert. My ulterior motive is that since my army is using firstborn marines to make its Death Guard troopers, all of the modern Death Guard models I have are much too bulky to hide in their ranks. This is to say that they'll only see play if I can convert them into characters, and so I suppose I must since this project is (almost) all about putting waylaid models to good use.

Anyhow, that's all for this special episode. Thanks for reading, and stay awesome out there.