Death Guard and...?

Don't worry, this isn't me second guessing my army selection for Konor. Since starting to paint the Death Guard I've found them to be both user friendly and rather interesting to work with. Rather, this is about expanding the army beyond the contents of Dark Imperium and the odds and ends I had lying around (like the Helbrute).

For one thing, of course, there's the new tank that's been doing the rounds on the rumours sites, the Plagueburst Crawler.

courtesy Mini Wars

To the look of it, its essentially a Bombard with what looks like the same guns as the Feotid Bloat-Drone as sponson weapons. It fits very well with the idea of the Death Guard as footslogging attrition specialists in a way I don't feel the Predator does. And I don't just say this because I hate the Predator and the way its sponsons snap off if you so much as brush your hand against them reaching for a dice.  

Of course, we live in the world of Keywords now so there are so many posibilities for expansion in the future, probably after Konor since I already have more than a 75 power army on hand in various states of half-painted. So, the candidates:

Daemons of Nurgle

I have never used Daemons. I don't particularly like them as their own army and my previous Chaos armies have been focussed more on mortal characters.

The big benefit of having them as a small addition to the larger army is I can get pretty much everything I want for them out of the Start Collecting set. The set includes a Herald, ten Plaguebearers, three bases of Nurglings (so cute...) and three Plague Drones. That 19 power levels, which is more than enough to be getting on with though I might get another little box of Nurglings because a) adorable af, and b) I used to have a massive ten base unit of “Gibbering Hordes” aka Nurglings in my Lost and the Damned back in the day and nostalgia is a powerful motivator.

Green Vanilla Chaos Marines

As it happens, I already have one unit from the Heretic Astartes list as Death Guard don't have the option for Terminators at this time. That'll probably change when their Codex comes out but until then that's where we are. There are also numerous Daemon Engines I like the look of, which are horrible and mutated enough that it won't matter that they're not strictly Death Guard.

There are other units in the Heretic Astartes, though, that don't fit the Death Guard theme as well as Terminators. Things like Raptors, who just aren't something they ever had, the Death Guard Legion not maintaining dedicated assault squads. I also have a Terminator Lord because I got the Lord and Terminators box set before I knew the Lord of Contagion existed.

My solution, should I go this route, would be to paint the more vanilla Chaos Marine units as The Purge. The Purge have a colour scheme that is both similar enough to the Death Guard to not clash and different enough that they'll be easily distinguishable. I also like the idea of having some random, post-Heresy Space Marine hanging around who absolutely worship the Death Guard as Nurgle's chosen whilst the Death Guard themselves think of them as cannon fodder, unworthy of particular attention.

The Lost and the Damned

My beloved Renegades & Heretics list is dead, sadly, but if I didn't have infinite hope for the future I wouldn't still be a Lost and the Damned player, would I? Regardless, the Astra Militarum list remains as a dependable back-up. I likely won't be painting them as Nurglesques, simply because I have a longstanding LatD force I've been meaning to revisit for a long time. Happily, their colour scheme is black fatigues with flak armour drybrushed to look like polished bone, which is more than morbid enough to fit the theme.

I painted a few test models a while back using the Forge World Chaos Renegades upgrade torsos and they came out rather well.

Not something I could use in store but for friendly games at home amongst the group they'll be fine. We've already come to the agreement that I (and Matt, who also has a Traitor Guard force) will simply count all Imperium keywords and Chaos keywords. On the plus side, when I can use them they give me tons of boots on the ground as well as a choice of tanks that both look better than Rhino variants and don't have crappy, snappy sponsons.

*****

Those are my thoughts for the moment and hopefully the next time I talk about the Death Guard I will have some finished models to show off.