First games of 8th Edition: Impressions of the Game and the Death Guard

TJ here with some 8th Edition 40k experience under my belt. I want to share the experience here for anyone who hasn't tried it yet or who wants to beef up their XP by reading about mine. Let's take a look:
First off, I got back into GW's games with Age of Sigmar and when I experienced the General's Handbook there, I saw the path to a simpler 40k that could still offer a good depth of play ... in fact, I said it would be great to almost port the rules over and hoped they would. That says a lot coming from being a tournament player in 4th, 5th and 6th edition. When they finally started leaking rules, I was happy to see that influence in the game along with some additions that made it uniquely 40k.

***Also, that's a partially painted Death Guard model above. It's the direction I am going and I will talk more about it at the bottom of the post.***

All of my games thus far have been 1k.

My first game was against Pete's Iyanden Wraiths. This  is probably the army I would have least expected to play in my first game. I brought Typhus, about 50 poxwalkers, a Nurgle CSM Daemon Prince with 2x Talons, 3 obliterators and a Heldrake with Baleflamer.

Pete brought a farseer, a wraithlord, 5 wraiths with D cannons and 5 with Swords and Shields (I don't know Aeldari names).

The game introduced me to the way flyers work (at least the non-supersonic variety) and taught me some of the basics. I learned that flying is strong, but isn't a huge deal for a DP that moves 8" without it. I also learned that Nurgle and CSM psychic powers are pretty powerful in terms of protecting your troops and getting key pieces across the battlefield.

Mobs of cheap horde troops are still good at holding elite troops in place as I was able to pin down the sword Wraiths. The Helldrake a DP managed to take out the Wraithlord, but lost their lives to the Sword Wraiths in the process. Aeldari powers are pretty good, but nothing game-breaking (I noticed most things were good, but weren't Game breaking). Overall, Typhus didn't do anything until the end of the game, but he did buff the zombies, which was just enough math to allow them to hold out and deny kills. I also stayed the hell away from those D cannons! Overall. I learned the basics of Psykers, denying powers and a little bit about monsters/ vehicles, which are almost one and the same now.

In my next game, I played against my veteran nemesis, Chuck and his Blood Angels! I brought the same list, but changed two things. I added a Bloat Drone and changed the DP to a Daemon of Nurgle DP.

Chuck brought 5 Terminators, a Terminator Captain, a sanguinary priest with jump pack, two tactical squads with flamer, heavy flamer and combi-flamer (combi-weapons are amazing BTW! You get both weapons all game!). He also brought a Furioso Dreadnought with a Frag Cannon and a Heavy Flamer and a DAKKA Pred!

I was truly impressed with the dreadnought and the predator in this game. The pred put out a fantastic amount of fire on a very survivable platform. It took a lot of work for me to get it's efficiency down by wounding it.

Even more impressive was the Furioso Dreadnought. Dreadnoughts now feel the way they always were meant to. They have the toughness and survivability of a vehicle, but they don't lose any of their power from taking wounds. You HAVE to kill a dreadnought to stop it! I got so excited by this that I started dusting off my Helbrute sprues!

I had a great game here and Chuck is always a tough opponent. We have met so many times that he knows my playstyle and I know his - regardless of game, regardless of army or edition! I learned here that deepstriking is amazing! My obliterators could be delivered turn one with surgical application! They also managed a charge, which is impressive because they needed 9 inches to get in!

The way deep strike works now was very impressive and felt more like the way it appears in the books. Chuck's terminators and captain also deepstruck and delivered 4 shots per stormbolter into my ranks and threatened to level me with powerfists! He took the center of the table with the pred and dread, then dominated it with the delivery of the terminator squad. It was incredibly brutal.

My reply was to lean into him with the Heldrake and DP. The Heldrake isn't a bad fighter and the fact that flying units can just leave combat and shoot now is pretty effective! He ended up killing the DP and Heldrake with the dread and terminators, but I was able to hold him in place with small zombie squads. Terminators are great in combat against other Elites, but get slowed down by hordes of zombies (poxwalkers) who don't care about multi-damage or about morale.

Chuck's remaining tactical squad was swarmed by zombies (I mean Poxwalkers lolololol). At the end of the day, he had really decimated the army, but Nurgle held on with more models on the objectives and a squad of Oblits taking Linebreaker. To make matters worse, Typhus once again killed a warlord in the last turn of the game.

I should also meantion that the Bloat Drone is a little slow, a little unreliable on damage output, but it really soaked up a lot of shooting. Being T7, 3+ save with a 5+ invul and the additional 5+ from Disgustingly Resilient makes them hard as nails. Had he not soaked up so much fire, I would have lost this game.

****

Since then I have played Chuck's Orks, which were fearsome. We played a 5-turn game, where I replaced my Heldrake, DP and Oblits with Plague Marines, a Malignant Plaguecaster and a Maulerfiend.

What I learned is that every army should have a way to attempt to deny powers. My powers kept the orks from delivering their full damage potential.

I learned the Maulerfiend can mulch Nob squads, but should avoid crowds of boys.

I learned that orks mulch poxwalkers, even with typhus, but Typhus can kill a lot of Orks!

I am still not certain about plague Marines. They didn't do much, but I also might have played them too carefully. We will see with more games.

Finally, I am heading heading to Michigan for a couple weeks and look forward to more games. I am going to whip out Helbrutes, Plague Marines, Plaguebearers and maybe even Magnus for shits and giggles.

Now for the army, I have decided the Death Guard in my forces will have a toxic swamp theme, so I needed a little something for the bases. I wanted bubbles and didn't feel like GS'ing a million of them. Instead, I went to the local craft store (Michaels or Hobby Lobby in the US) and I found these half-pearls in the scrapbook section under a sign that said "bling."

The bling pearls come in several sizes on the save roll (like a tape roll covered in fake pearls) for about $5. There are enough on a roll for me to do all 3 sets of Dark Imperium models I own and probably enough to retro-base some of my existing models. 

You could use these ready made bubbles for nearly anything from lava to magic goo to toxic swamps.

In any case, I am loving the New 40k. Nothing seems like a bad choice and my list creation feels like it is more about my intended play style and less about killer units of broken horseshit. I am having a ton of fun now and it is great to see so many players coming back from semi-retirement to play some games!

How do you feel about 8th? How about my test model? How about them pearls?