I only Paint You when I'm Sick

Dearest Reader,

I'm typing this from the horizontal position, feeling like someone stuffed a balloon up my nose and then inflated it like some clown doctor with a PhD from Honk U. This feels fitting though, as before I felt gnarly, I had started the earnest work of bringing my Death Guard from 500pts to a solid 1K, and anyone who shows the slightest devotion to Nurgle. Did I get sick because I was working on my plague marines, or was I working on plague marines because I knew I was getting sick? The answer is a flat "dunno," because at the end of the day all that matters is I didn't die, and now my toys look good.

When last we spoke, I had speculated about what additions I might make, were I to continue with this army. I'd supposed that a plagueburst crawlers would be neato mosquito, but when the time came I wound up getting a pair of them because the only thing better than one chungus is two chungus. I told an associate about my funny little army plan, and he expressed hesitation on account of how tough the crawlers are in current 10th edition 40k. In hopes that I would not regret this move, I took to reddit and asked the same question; if two were too many for a 1k match. I got some answers.

 

I found it incredibly funny that my decision had boiled down to "you are being a meanie," "this is 100% legal," and also "you are going to lose so hard." I decided that I could live with myself being all of these things at once, since sucking but being hard to kill was already my M.O. and so in the final days of 10th I'll just continue to be bad at the game, and hope for the best in 11th.

Two crawlers however didn't quite fill up the points, since shrinkflation had left me quite low in the switch from 9th to 10th, and so I decided to cut my poxwalkers for another unit of plague marines, and a pair of icon bearers to increase the OBSEC of those two units. I had a great time shopping and gluing my third batch of finecast models (narrator: this is untrue,) and after much hard work I'd doubled my playable points by adding 9 new models to my army (after taking 10 away I guess.)

To summarize between the first post and this one, here is the army as it stands

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Lord of Poxes, leading a 5 man squad of plague marines (blight launcher, bubonic weapon)

Icon Bearer, leading a 5 man squad of plague marines (melta, fist)

Icon Bearer, leading a 5 man squad of plague marines (plasma, fist

Helbrute (fist, flamer, multi-melta)

Plagueburst Crawler (rothail volley gun, 2 entropy cannon)

Plagueburst Crawler (heavy slugger, 2 entropy cannon)

985 pts

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Now I'm not a power gamer, despite/just like the redditors have said, but I like this list for a few reasons. This force feels super elite since I don't have a ton of bozos to throw around, but also my bozos are harder to kill than other bozos. Alsos, there are five different kinds of units here, and that sparseness keeps what I need to remember to a minimum, which has thus translated to me being able to focus on playing better instead of remembering a sprawling list of blorbos and how exactly they interact mechanically. The coolest part is that even though this list is bad now, it'll be much worse next edition what with how hidden and objectives are going to work. Hopefully this translates to me dutifully looking like a huge problem to the undiscerning gamer, and then get slaughtered mercilessly in a great triumphant moment.

Or I could just get tarpitted out of the action, as that’s what happened in first game with this list. Like I said, I’m no master tactician or math-hammer-er, but knowing how vulnerable this force is to getting trapped in sticky fights with tough foes, I can just opt to start the game in castle-mode, where my tanks hang back with a unit of goobers while everyone else surges to control the middle. Then if I need the tanks to plant their butts on objectives (only relevant in 10th) they can just park on the spots and soak up damage.

(Editor's note: hey everyone. Ben got better after this but forgot to finish the post, and never finished painting the army. Instead of rewriting everything here, I'll just say that maybe painting an army while trying to recover from illness is maybe not ideal conditions for making something you're proud of/pleased with. We will return with more word on the Death Guard in the not too distant future, but for now, if you're sick and if you're not, hydrate or something. It's good for you.)