40k on a Budget: Death Guard

In this video I will show you 3 lists for the Death Guard at 500, 1000, 1500, and 2,000 point values. I will also cover some of the reasons you may or may not want to start a Death Guard army yourself.
I do not own any of the art featured in this video. Art gathered was listed as Games Workshop Official Art. If I have used your art by mistake, please reach out and let me know.
0:00 Intro
0:13 Rules For List Building
1:46 Who Are the Death Guard
2:31 Pros to Death Guard
4:20 Cons to Death Guard
5:56 Army Rules
7:43 500 pt List
9:15 1000 pt List 1
10:20 1500 pt List 1
11:50 2000 pt List 1
13:51 1000 pt List 2
14:58 1500 pt List 2
16:30 2000 pt List 2
17:41 500 pt List 3
18:35 1000 pt List 3
19:26 1500 pt List 3
20:29 2000 pt List 3
21:27 Tiering and Outro

[@FlourEater]

Warhammer veteran of over 20 years here, just wanted to say that your videos are awesome and I always applaud the effort of making Warhammer more accesible and beginner friendly.

[@skinnytentacle481]

death guard player here! The combat Patrol comes with 7 plague marines by technicality only because grandfather blesses he who kitbashes. The Poxwalker sprues in the combat patrol are from the dark imperium box , which contains 3 pairs of legs, 3 backpacks (with a plague knife), and an arm with plague boltgun. You get enough chest plates, arms, and heads with the combat patrol to make a set of 10 marines instead of the 7 by doing a bit of surgery with the 3 extras. You can take the 500 point list, and cut the squad of 10 poxwalkers and increase the plague marines to 10. With a 10 man squad, the 500 point list can take 2 additional Heavy Plague weapons, or an additional Blight Launcher and Plague Spewer, although I don't think the combat patrol comes with an extra one of either. So feel free to run them as standard bolties/melee/plasma. Feel free to kitbash a second Champion so you can run 2x5 squads if you want as well. This means for all 3 lists, you can slightly decrease the cost by being the plague surgeon IRL with the combat patrol, and then only buying 1 box of marines plus the plague marine reinforcement box which contains 3 alternate sculps of the marines, since the lists past 500 play 2x10 squads. god i wish the malignifier was good

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

Great extra information here!

[@dittmar104]

This but realistically I’d either cut from the 20 man or run two squads of 5 plague marines so you have enough game pieces for objectives rather than two units and a rhino. However this doesn’t decrease the cost of the first lists tree since you still need two boxes of plague marines to reach a second 10 man. And you’ll have 4 left over.

[@ShootMe0002]

Really enjoying these army budget videos you are pumping out, finding them really useful in deciding what I want my second army to be.

[@BakersfieldBhakti]

Personally I love Deathguard for two main reasons- I hate when my guys die and they are tough and I'm a barefoot gardener so dirty guys spreading the bounty of life resonates with me and it's a comical taking it to such an extreme because sometimes I feel this is how posh, snobby people look at me. That being said, I really like putting my opponent in a tough choice situation- deal with the immediate threat or the long term victory condition. 3x Plagueburst Crawler 3x Foetid Bloat Drone with plague spewers running up the battlefield with a Daemon Prince of Nurgle with wings and claws. If this tanky ball makes it to your battle line you're in a world of trouble not only because flamers, but also if they explode prepare for serious mortal wounds. Have a Chaos lord with jump pack and chainsword and big unit of termys with combi-bolters in deepstrike waiting for an ideal opportunity and as many Nurglings as you can procur both holding your backline from deepstrike and slowly expanding up the board taking objectives. If they don't deal with my murderball I can put in some serious hurt starting turn 3, but if they focus on taking my Daemon Engines down first that lets me completely dominate the board and objectives with my Nurgling hoard. Not necessarily the best list ever, but I really enjoy watching even veteran players sweating over which threat to start with because either option will take SOOOOOO much firepower to wipe out that even Tau runs out of ammo.

[@StarkMaximum]

In the first 1500 list, you say that we're picking up a Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, show the Chaos Lord box, and then talk about using a Terminator Sorcerer, which is the unit that ends up on the list. So I assume the Sorcerer is the intent? Edit: Oh, I just realized the Terminator Lord can probably be built as a Sorcerer.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

The Terminator Lord box has the parts to either be a terminator captain OR a sorcerer. It requires small kitbashing to make it more nurgly (which I should have mentioned but forgot to).

[@johnbrennan9617]

I love the second list. Seems so much fun, and for a Death Guard army, I think it will catch a LOT of people off guard with just how fast it can actually be.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

I like it a lot more than the first list personally. It's just different enough that people are unlikely to be prepared for it

[@Msomuk]

When I first started playing 40K I was so close to playing DG but went with Necrons and CSM/Black Legion. Glad I did because as you say, GW can't figure out what they want DG to be, but as far as look, they are awesome! And you get to paint trim!

[@deepseaminingsyndicate]

The War Dogs are such a cool pick!! This video came to me at the perfect time!

[@darthinfamous73]

Thank you for intending your puns

[@Crestfallen-man]

Sing praises for the grandfather, Sing his song of life, bring joy to his future children.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

Remember that grandfather loves you!

[@Elmarto14]

I am not building second army! I am not building second army?

[@blackbusterletsplay9377]

i ask myself how you're able to build a plaguemarine squad with 2 Plasmaguns when the kit only comes with one?

[@DarrenMalin]

Death guard are not slow , that is what Rhinos are for , load them up and charge ,,, once in range your Rhino is basically another marine with a storm bolter and missile launcher. A mechanised Death guard army is very good people just do not expect you to move that fast.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

I totally hear what you're saying, but FLG rules for terrain had to be changed specifically because there was very real odds that advancing death guard units on foot couldn't clear the space between ruuns

[@nonkama-uj5cy]

As gross as they are they look cool. Reminds me of a doom metal band for why ever.

[@pedro-fd6sb]

The deimos pattern rhino is a bit cheaper (not be much) if you an your opponent are ok whit proxing it as a 40k rhino

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

Especially for DG, take some Greenstuff and just make boils on it.

[@FlourEater]

I feel like it´s kinda easier for people to accept 30k minis in 40k, rather vice verca. Since those can be in services for thousand of years, rather than traveling back in time.

[@jonhy8351]

I got the Know no fear box for 25 bucks and bran new a couple of days ago lmao

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

Not bad at all. I got my start in tau in a similar way. Starpulse cadre box +stormsurge+broadside+hammerhead+ghostkeel for $180 brand new

[@altulbluo404]

I know you try dont talk abaut conversation, but i think you should talk about felithus box he can go as lord of contagion or sorcerer and leftower terminators are eazy to cenvert in to sorcerers or lov. (don't ewen mentioning 3 spare pm body's in combat patrol or converting virions from spare pm). And for other critics you give pm not optimal lodaut, pm should have some bubonic wepons, and you don't take bligstpawn with them(and you take to litle in infantry list). Other than that rezonable lists, im not fan of some of choices (i would go in more pm and shraunds in place of blightlords) but there is a rezonable argument of blight lords being rezonable cheap anchor (and being good points to money ratio)

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

Bubotic Weapons vs Heavy plague weapons is ultimately a call for the player on their individual lists. Digging through the data I found that most high placing lists ran Heavy Plague weapons in favor of Bubotic weapons, so I opted to omit them. I did not take Blightspawn because it is $35 for 50 points which is hard to recommend for just starting out. My original 2000 pt infantry list was 4x10 plague marines with 4x rhinos, 3xPutrifiers, but the list came out to over $1050.

[@altulbluo404]

@@Speeds_Gaming_Corner I thought about bubonic wepons in place of shoting wepons, but otherwise fair points.

[@IlanMuskat]

Any thoughts on whether incorporating a Helbrute or two - particularly with Plasma, to interact with the Lord of Virulence's Blast bonus - and spread the contagion range across armies is something worth considering? Or the relatively high points-per-dollar of the Winged Daemon Prince as a melee threat?

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

The helbrute as a support piece is something I considered when I wrote a document discussing balance at the start of the edition. I personally love it in theory but I think it's a bit too cute. As for the daemon prince I like the 6+++ of the one in foot more. Put him behind a wall an he can be amazing support for the midfield by throwing off numbers just enough on those 2D attacks. I think that death guard already has no shortage of melee threats so adding in more isn't super needed. If you were running a vehicle heavy list I could see an argument for it.

[@sickboi11111]

Death guard being tough is a myth you should not believe. The real design philosophy behind the death guard is that they make the enemy less potent by debuffs. Blight lords are also a poor right now, and that is why you don’t see them. They are not as survivable as they need to be and their weapons are lower damage than they should be. Those points would be better spent on bloat drones or wardogs IMO.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

They are not as durable as you would like them to be, but they are OBJECTIVELY tougher than normal marines as they do literally have a higher toughness which does skew some math a bit. It just turns out when most of the game is S8/S9 having T5 instead of T4 isn't as much of a big deal as you would like. I would personally prefer them lean more heavily into the debuff idea and when they get their codex having the different detachments have different cool debuff effects.

[@sickboi11111]

@@Speeds_Gaming_Corner Yeah T5 is pretty meaningless, and no access to FNP or other toughness boosting tricks is a clear and purposeful choice by GW. Right now IMO deathshroud are the much sounder investment, given BLTs have been fairly bad for 3 editions and deathshroud have always been solid because they slap hard.

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

You can get a FNP aura from the demon prince. If I remember correctly you can also give him the enhancement for the aura range increase. It's too big if a commitment for too small a return

[@sickboi11111]

@@Speeds_Gaming_Corner 100% I still dont understand why DP is so expensive for what he does. Not worth paying that much character tax for a 6+ FNP, when BLTs 'should' have something like the old innercircle "only on a 4+" IMO. Again Death Guard are not really about being more tough, they are about making you less tough/killy. If BLT weapons had flat damage 2 or an extra AP to make them as punchy as CSM terminators, that would also go a long way to improving their viability

[@Speeds_Gaming_Corner]

If the DP gave a 5+++ aura I think he would see some actual play with the aura range increasing enhancement. I don't think lowering his cost (unless it was an insane price drop) would make him see play.

[@jayplanet8929]

1st