Fear in 40k for Me

  I noticed something the other day as I continued to ponder my T'au (and all my other armies- gamer ADD is a pain!)- I'm scared of Death Guard! My son is definitely my most common opponent and he owns quite a few armies himself. Each time we play, I have to choose who I'm playing, ask what he's playing, and then downpower my army a bit so it's not oppressive. You see, my armies are typically stuffed with everything, meaning that I can really cheeze my armies out. My son has a lot of everything for his forces, but he's more limited in many cases. 

  That is, of course, unless he uses his Death Guard.  He has EVERYTHING, and multiples of.  My biggest fear is that he saves up some coin and buys another box of Terminators.  Just like the tournie-bros out there, he knows that mobs of termies are just broken.  Worse, he has three of all the war machines.  Those Plagueburst Mortars are ridiculous!  

  However, my fear of his Death Guard has less to do with what he has and more to do with the army's special rules.  Ignoring cover and counting as stationary when moving makes their shooting (especially with bolters) great and they get all the buff auras that Imperials do with their characters.  But two rules in particular really strike fear into my forces.

First comes the 'minus one damage' rule.  

  In an army where every model (in power armour) has at least two wounds and Terminators have three, plus the characters and war machines and their copious wound count, multi-damage weapons suddenly lose effectiveness.  Let's look at the armies I depend on for this: 

  Adeptus Custodes- the 9th edition codex has been very kind to this army.  Unfortunately, the new book did reduce their damage while making it consistent (damage d3 to damage 2) for most of the weapons.  The Custodes should kill a Plague Marine with every shot and swing, but not with that special rule.

  Grey Knights- this is another 9th edition victory with a codex that upgunned everything about this book.  More wounds, more psychic options, more powerful weapons... oh wait- those weapons are damage 2 as well!  Against Death Guard, the mortal wound-spam is the answer, but Death Guard also have a plethora of psykers to shut some of that down.  So the sparkling blades have to do twice the work to chop down those Plague Marines.

  Necrons- "first is worst" is the old adage referring to 'codex creep' and the metal skeletons definitely suffer that.  But I play a pretty strong army with C'tan shards and Destroyer love.  And I do this for the high damage.  Just as above, this reduction special rule for Death Guard really neuters my undead-in-space and forces me to depend on AP and single damage weapons.  Thank goodness for attrition...

  Orks- the greenskins used to be my go-to army to crush any foe.  I spam Power Klaws in every unit that I can because that's all the damage the Orks can cause (and rokkits- lots of rokkits!).  Those klaws used to have random damage and could do up to three.  The new books have reduced them to two.  This is illustrated by my big mob of Meganobs getting into combat with anything in the Death Guard and underachieving.  

Then comes the Death Guard Lord of War, Mortarion.

  Luckily, my son is hesitant to use this model against me most of the time.  I encourage him to use the Daemon-Primarch, but I know I won't stand a chance.  Why?  Because this ancient warrior has the ability to shut down auras.  Some of my armies depend on those auras:

Mortarion from ArtStation

  Ultramarines- the chosen foe for the Death Guard in 8th edition's rollout, the blue-marines were really powerful.  But the Death Guard were updated in a big way while the Ultramarines only received a couple of units and this resulted in Morty being able to completely shut down those aura buffs the Imperials depend on.  Oh, and I focus on plasma weapons, making those rerolls key.  Did I mention that my plasma has a stat of damage 2?

  Word Bearers- Chaos Marines are still waiting on their book while Death Guard have been modernized.  This forces me to focus on Possessed and characters to keep pace.  Guess what- the Possessed and Daemon Engines depend on aura buffs from Daemon Princes, Greater Possessed, and Masters of Possession!  Morty denies all of that.  And that's why that army is retired (plus waiting on the new book).

  If you add the terror that is indirect fire of high power coming from extremely tough platforms infested by daemons as well as scary shooting from the regular troops, you'll see just how important being able to cause damage really is.  And Death Guard are ridiculously good at hampering that.  When an army can kill a model per shot and suddenly it takes twice as long (or longer when you depend on just the dice rolls), that army starts to feel the fear.

  This is probably the second most powerful rule in 40k (Transhuman being the best).  I am not a fan.  And that's where the T'au really come into their own- their weapons are higher damage and often cause mortal wounds!  Those ponderances the other day reminded me of why the T'au are feeling pretty good at this moment.  For almost all my other armies, the Death Guard and those rules really strike fear.  I wonder how my Eldar will fare...

Happy Gaming!