Tuesday 6 June 2017

Death Guard - Tactical Squads

Hi all,

Seeing as this my second blog post, I thought I would start by talking about one of the fundamental units of any Legion - the humble tactical squad.

I have two ten man squads of Tactical marines for my Death Guard army.  I used the FW MKIII kits as the GW ones had not been released at the time.  I gave them Phobos pattern bolters as I felt it was the traditional bolter for the XIV. 



I made a point of adding bayonets to every bolter.  This was a fiddly task, but I’m happy with the appearance it gives them.  I didn’t use the head/torso upgrade kits, but did splash out for the FW shoulder pads.  I added nuncio voxes and vexillas as well.



My Sergeants are both identically equipped – power fist and bolt pistol with artificer armour. 



Before I go further, I should stress I am by no means an expert gamer.  I’ve probably played 20-30 games of Heresy since I picked up the hobby.  I was also lucky enough to play in this year's Heresy Double Tournament where I managed to rack up an impressive ratio of five loses in five games – all Ikthelion’s fault!

I’ve tried numerous rites of war and various tactics with my squads.  Despite this I cannot recall a game where they have shone or performed above my expectations.  Going from memory, I didn’t even bother disembarking them in any of the doubles as they would have been slaughtered.

Having said that, I still can’t quite bring myself to leave home without them when the XIV march to war.  I feel like it would be an ultimate betrayal of the XIV fluff! In order to stick to the fluff, my original plan was to have tactical squads moving forward on foot en masse.  However, after suffering even worse defeats than normal I buckled and added the Rhinos. 


One of my Rhinos led to my proudest moment in the hobby when I had the fortune to bump into Duncan from Warhammer TV.  He specifically singled out my Rhino as being “really nice”.  I’m sure he was just being polite and said the same to everyone he spoke to, but I won’t ever forget that compliment! Sad I know….




Anyways, how do you run your tactical squads?  Have you had more success than me?   

Ps.  Has everyone seen this?


13 comments:

  1. As an Ultramarine player, I typically run 2-3 units of 10 barebones tac quads in rhinos as the bonuses for Ultramarines really requires small units to mark targets while bigger ones do the damage; rhinos shine in that role. That being said I do find it fun to run big 20 man blobs of tactical marines if i feel frisky or like my opponent wont have a ton of ap 3 to just mow them down.

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    1. That is my worry - AP3. I just can't see how tactical squads can stand a chance against phospex quad mortars.

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  2. Very nice and fitting Death Guard minis!!

    And yes, your rhino is very good indeed!

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  3. For my Salamanders I currently take two 10 man squads and a 10 man veteran tactical squad with 2 heavy bolters with suspensors and use them for holding my deployment zone.
    I've had the odd success with fury of the legion shooting but this relied on enemy advancing on them so I've now added 2 rhinos but yet to use them! But they might be used to transport heavy flamers and multi-melta squads.

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  4. Great looking units! The rhinos look fantastic! The compliment from Duncan is more than deserved!

    I think if you want tacticals to survive and cause problems then you needs loads of them!! They die easily to a lot of stuff and thus 2 10 man squads don't pose much threat. Where as 60 of them could pose all kinds of problems, as the weapons that killed them so easily can't put out enough firepower to pull them all down!

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    1. 60 Death Guard legionaries marching across the board would look good. I'm not sure I could stomach churning that many out though. I still can't believe you've almost done it with the Children!

      How are you going to paint them?

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    2. Haha! It is a lot of troops to churn out! Not sure on painting the EC yet as not tried out my plan. I'm hoping it will work with silver base, silver highlight, black wash, forgeworld clear purple and then detail. Or something along those lines!

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  6. Try units of 21 including a medic for maximum appreciation from Papa Nurgle. You may not win more games, but you may get a boil or two!

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  7. For my death guard I run the minimum mandatory tac squads and then take advantage of the support squads as compulsory choices with flamers as our Death Guard legion rules make for nasty flamers. Mix in rocket launcher heavy support marines as troops cause were death guard, that's what we do, and go to town with the gun mine backing up the 10 man tac squads. Mass infantry is a very fluffy and pretty efficient death guard tactic

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  8. Those are and nice looking D-Guard dude!!

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  9. Excellent looking XIVth, personally I've only used my XIVth without transports. Using The Reaping ROW I form them up into platoons. My elites and big hitters go with the warlord, a Praetor, then I have two platoons, led by a Siege Breaker and Master of Signals, made up of two full tactical squads with added ccw and a heavy support squad.

    Generally speaking my tactical squads have caused more damage than they have taken by slowly advancing up the board and sitting on an objective of choke point. That might be because of my preferred deployment meathod drawing more heat to my heavy hitters, meaning my tactical platoons and artillery can blast away with little worry.

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