In our Faction Focus series we take a look at the game’s factions and talk about their rules, their units, how they play, and what competitive lists for the faction look like. This is part of a larger series of articles in our Start Competing series. In this article we’re looking at the Sons of Mortarion, the Death Guard.

Changelog

• Update (Latest): 2024-11-11 for the Q4 Balance Update
• Update: 2024-08-14 for the June 2024 Balance Update and Pariah Nexus missions
• Update: 2024-05-02 for the Q2 2024 Balance Dataslate
• Update: 2024-02-20 for the Q1 2024 Balance Dataslate
• Update: 2023-10-3 for the Q3 2023 Balance Dataslate
• Published: 2023-08-03

Why Should You Play This Faction?

The Death Guard started off 10th edition in a very rough place but have had a series of buffs and later nerfs which have largely “fixed” the faction’s biggest woes. Generally speaking the Death Guard are slow but durable, and capable of hitting pretty hard when they finally arrive on the enemy’s doorstep. In addition they have access to a solid variety of units and are capable of dealing with a variety of threats, and following the Q4 balance updates are in a very good place competitively, with multiple viable builds using a wide variety of units.

Army Rule: Nurgle’s Gift (Aura)

If your Army Faction is Death Guard, while an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, subtract 1 from the Toughness characteristic of models in that enemy unit. Contagion range changes over the course of the battle – in the first battle round it’s 3″, in the second battle round it’s 6″, and in battle round three and afterward it’s 9″.

This is a solid ability – those toughness modifiers will do the most work against infantry, where you can suddenly start wounding T4 targets at 3+, or your T3 targets on a 2+ – but it didn’t become truly useful until the addition of additional contagion rules in the September 2023 Dataslate. More on those below.

The New Contagions

When the September 2023 dataslate released, Death Guard were one of the big winners, receiving a major overhaul with an improvement to their contagions. As a quick recap, before each game you now choose the following effects to have in addition to -1 Toughness:

• Skullsquirm Blight (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the BS and WS of weapons equipped by models in that enemy unit by 1.
• Rattlejoint Ague (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the Save characteristic of models in that enemy unit by 1.
• Scabrous Soulrot (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the Leadership and Objective Control characteristics of models in that enemy unit by 1 (to a minimum of 1).

Each of these is a powerful effect, though you’ll generally find the most value in Skullsquirm Blight and Rattlejoint Ague, depending on the opponent. Both are solid options – Dropping enemy WS and BS makes it difficult for them to remove your units once you finally close the gap, significantly improving your army’s durability. While the added offensive bonus from reducing an enemy’s save by 1 can make many of the army’s low-AP weapons suddenly very deadly, especially when paired with the Ferric Blight Stratagem.

Playing Death Guard well requires managing your Contagion Range and “tagging” targets with an effect. It’s worth noting that modifiers to WS and BS do stack with modifiers to hit rolls, so if you give someone -1 to their WS with your contagion and -1 to hit in melee with Nurglings or Typhus, they’ll be effectively hitting at -2, which happens very rarely in 10th edition. It’s a powerful effect and worth creating opportunities for stacking. That said, most games you’ll find getting targets into contagion range isn’t that difficult, especially on rounds 3+.

Five Things You Need to Know

• You Need to Learn How to Use the Contagion Rules. Being able to pick a secondary Contagion effect each game allows you to tailor your game plan to the enemy at hand – but doing that effectively means understanding your army and your opponent. Sometimes this will be easy – extra AP is a lot better against enemies who don’t roll to hit often, and much less useful against targets with a good invulnerable save. It’s worth practicing with each effect to understand when and how it helps. For the most part, you’ll be taking the -1 to saves in most games and taking -1 WS/BS when that doesn’t make sense, such as against Chaos Daemons.
• You don’t need Mortarion on the table anymore. Mortarion can be a solid force multiplier in the Death Guard army, but with the changes to indirect fire in late June his ability to ignore modifiers has become much less useful. You can buy a lot more for the points he eats up and these days he’s not a mainstay of competitive lists. He still has some value if you’re going up against lots of modifiers to your damage or characteristics, and at 300 points following the Q4 update he’s at least relatively cheap for his durability, but he’s not the must-take he used to be.
• Your Army is slow… kind of. Real slow. Few of your non-vehicle units have more than 5” Movement, and your terminators and poxwalkers have been saddled with 4”. That means some of your movements are going to be deliberate and telegraphed to opponents, making it easy for opponents to plan for your tactics. Become familiar with the Rapid Ingress Stratagem, because it’s going to be a key tool in your arsenal when it comes to putting terminators into a position to do things. You can also mitigate this somewhat with faster units and more vehicles – it’s very easy to “accidentally” build a Death Guard army where everything moves 10″ or more, and competitive lists built around vehicles won’t feel slow at all.
• Learn when and how to leave objectives behind. Spread the Sickness is a powerful ability that helps make up for your units’ lack of Movement – being able to leave an objective that stays under your control is huge when your army needs all the Movement help it can get. That said, when and how you’ll be able to do this will vary by mission and opponent, so understand when you can and can’t afford to leave an objective unguarded. And remember that it doesn’t kick in until your Command phase, so you need to survive on the objective for a turn.
• You’ll need to push forward aggressively. Your army has a relatively short range and will perform best against targets within 12” (or closer if you need to hit contagion range on earlier turns), and that’s going to be a tall order against enemies who can easily avoid you with higher Movement values. It also puts you in a vulnerable position and while your army is more durable than some, it’s not so durable it can just tank shooting from the game’s better shooting armies. That said, once you’re on the objectives, the opponent will have to come to you.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

With the aforementioned changes to Indirect, Mortarion is much less useful, and is no longer a must-have for the faction, though his points drop in the Q4 update makes him much more attractive to take. Instead, the core of the army have become Plague Marines. Plague Marines are some of the game’s most solid, versatile BATTLELINE units, able to work well as either short-range shooting or hard-hitting melee units, and they benefit a ton from having a Foul Blightspawn and/or a Biologus Putrifier attached. There are a few ways you can run them, and how people do has changed over the last few months as changes to the Putrifier have made taking lots of small squads less valuable. You’ll want at lest one unit of Plague Marines in your army, and many lists run at least one unit of ten to get the most out of the Blightspawn, but taking 3-4 units of 5 Plague Marines is also perfectly viable if you’re going heavy on Infantry, and we’ve seen successful lists running as many as 40 plague marines.

You can build your Plague Marine units any way you want, but you generally always want to max out on the number of heavy plague weapons you can take – this will be three in a unit of five (two per five and one on the champion), and five per unit of ten. If you’re going with five-man units you’ll typically want to finish them out with a Blight Launcher and Meltagun, though in big squads you can either double up on those or go with flamer options to turn the unit into an overwatch nightmare for infantry units. While you want either a Putrifier or Blightspawn (or both) for each unit, the Malignant Plaguecaster is a fine alternative option as well.

You’ll also generally want a Death Guard Rhino for each of your Plague Marine units. This helps their durability, gives them a big speed boost, and gives you a useful unit for blocking off enemy movement and doing actions after you’ve dropped off your pestilent cargo. Rhinos are some of the game’s best units – give yours a plague combi-bolter, combi-weapon, and a havoc launcher. Rhinos are also great Contagion spreaders, able to range ahead and act as very large sources of your Contagion aura. They’re also super important if you’re going up against Exorcists or other indirect fire threats which can level a Plague Marine unit sight unseen.

At 110 points for three, there’s no reason right now to not load up on Deathshroud Terminators. They’re one of the game’s most durable units, especially when paired with Typhus or a Death Guard Sorcerer in Terminator Armour. They’re very slow, but they have some of the army’s only multi-damage melee attacks and some very solid anti-infantry torrent pistols which get pretty nasty when also benefitting from -1 to saves from Rattlejoint Ague. That said, with only 4″ movement you’ll often want to Rapid Ingress a unit of them if you’re taking multiple – and lots of competitive lists now are running 2-3 units of 6.

On the character side, Mortarion isn’t a must-take any more. He has some solid abilities – ignoring modifiers and being able to re-roll wound rolls of 1 is no joke – but his melee output is pretty bad and with the changes to Indirect killing the Plagueburst Crawler trick players have started swapping him out for 2-3 other vehicle threats. Typhus on the other hand, is a must-take in Death Guard lists, even if you aren’t taking Poxwalkers or Deathshroud. He’s a big, nasty Terminator character but most importantly his ability to throw out D6 mortal wounds at 18″ is huge. His -1 to be hit also stacks wonderfully with the -1 WS contagion effect, and helps transform Deathshroud into one of the game’s most potent tar pits.

From there, you have a lot of options depending on whether you’re going to go heavy on vehicles or not.

If you’re going heavy on vehicles, you have a ton of options. Bloat-Drones are dirt cheap now, and the Plaguespitter variant has some pretty solid, reliable shooting output. The Fleshmower variant also has some utility, though I’d avoid the heavy blight launcher. Death Guard Predators are also very solid units in both forms, though recently the Destructor has seen more play thanks to having a 3-damage gun. The ability to combine their shooting with the Rattlejoint Ague contagion for -1 to an enemy’s saves really makes their Predator Autocannons a nasty threat, and when you add in their Destructor ability against Infantry they’re suddenly hitting at AP-3 or AP-4 with Ferric Blight tacked on. That means you can put out an insane amount of damage and it’s not rare to see a top 4 Death Guard list running 2-3 Predators.

It’s also worth looking at some Plagueburst Crawlers. These got a points hike in the Q1 Dataslate and no longer have the ability to hit indirect targets on a 2+ with help from Mortarion and a Lord of Virulence but they’re still very good and some of the army’s best damage output. The big difference is that now you just play them more aggressively, moving up and taking on targets you can see. The PBC combines a solid mix of movement (10”), and Toughness (T10, 12W, 2+/5++) on a body that includes the army’s best anti-tank weapons and a solid indirect fire option in the Plagueburst Mortar. I still prefer Entropy Cannons on mine for some anti-vehicle support but having one with plaguespitters is a solid shout.

If you want more vehicles, Myphitic Blight-Haulers are fast little anti-vehicle machines, and cheap enough to play, though their inability to hurt MONSTER targets and small shot count make them a bit too unreliable for my tastes. The Death Guard Helbrute has the tantalizing ability to afflict any unit he hits with your contagion effect, letting you apply that effect at range, but in my experience this just doesn’t matter that much – he’s still too expensive and ineffective and you’ll just get into contagion range the next turn by plowing forward with vehicles anyways.

Finally Defilers have made a real comeback recently, and we’re seeing successful lists running three of them. Pairing their 3-damage Defiler cannons with a Lord of Virulence and a trio of other vehicles can really open up some fun skew lists, and their ability to punch hard in melee makes them fun dual threats.

Character-wise, we’ve covered the stand-outs, i.e. Tyhpus, the Putrifier, and Blightspawn. If you’re still looking to use others, there are a few other options to look at. The Lord of Contagion has become more popular recently in lists, thanks to the ability to give a unit of Deathshroud re-rolls to hit and his very solid melee profile. He’s a good second leader option after you attach Typhus to a unit. The Terminator Sorcerer is also a pretty good option for pairing with Deathshroud – getting -1 damage on incoming attacks in melee is very solid as well, and good for going up against Custodes and Lychguard.

When it comes to other character options, the Chaos Lord – both the power and terminator variants – have a powerful aura ability that causes enemy units within Contagion range to suffer D3 mortal wounds on a D6 roll of a 4+. Not massive but pretty good given it’s free of charge. 

Allied Units

With Death Guard you have two options for Allies: Chaos Knights and Daemons. On the Chaos Knight front, Brigands are the most popular choice – a combination of BS2+ and added AP against the closest target makes them a nasty threat when you can combine that with Rattlejoint Ague to give them what is effectively AP-3 chaincannons. They went up in cost to 180 points in the Q1 dataslate, but that’s a minor setback you can work around for a unit that’s fast, lethal, and packs an insanely high OC. You typically see Brigands in lists which don’t take Mortarion. Thanks to point increases, it’s also common to see the occasional Karnivore show up as an allied unit – the extra speed and melee punch can really fill a hole Death Guard can’t normally, and again, the additional save modifier on top of their AP-2 and AP-3 attacks can make a huge difference.

Finally, there’s Daemons. Nurglings have fallen a long way in Pariah Nexus, as being OC 0 now means they can’t perform actions, substantially reducing their value and dropping them out of being one of the game’s best units. That said, they’re still perfectly capable of scoring Area Denial, Behind Enemy Lines, and Engage on All Fronts, and their 6″ Mischief Makers aura stacks with the -1 WS contagion effect to create bubbles of -2 to hit (for non-VEHICLE/MONSTER units) which can make your Plague Marines damn near unkillable in melee – and it’s especially easy to do this now that Heroic Intervention only costs 1 CP. They still infiltrate, they still Deep Strike, and they’re still BATTLELINE, meaning taking one opens things up to take other Nurgle Daemon units. The big thing to watch for is to remember that they’re a SWARM and can’t walk through walls like INFANTRY – I see a lot of players forget this and get stuck in bad positions (or inadvertently cheat). Even in Pariah Nexus, Nurglings make a great addition to almost any Death Guard army.

One thing Nurglings do for you is open the gate to bring a Greater Daemon. While the Great Unclean One is a tantalizing threat, without the 4+ Feel No Pain enhancement he’s not quite worth his cost. On the other hand, at 230 points Rotigus has absolutely become a threat worth considering – he’s a solid, tough objective holder in his own right, great at sitting in the middle of the table, and his Deluge of Nurgle ability makes it hard for enemy units approaching the middle to get away from your Plague Marines or contest objectives. His Streams of Brackish filth ranged attack is a very good ranged attack, throwing out 2D6 torrent shots at S7 AP-2 with Devastating wounds and if you combine that with contagions to turn that into -3 you can really cook some units. He’s no slouch in melee, either, thanks to the ability to use Virulent Blessing to up his damage against a target in the fight phase, getting either 4 damage strikes or 2 damage sweeps.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Mostly by standing on them with units that are tough to dislodge – and then usually walking away if that unit survives. Either a 20-model blob of Poxwalkers that effectively has 30 T4 wounds, a unit of plague marines with OC 2, a unit of Deathshroud Terminators, or a whole ass Plagueburst Crawler. You may also just tag an objective and leave it, if your opponent can’t just deep strike or move onto it later – even if you’re removed from objectives, opponents have to move on to them to take them, thanks to your Spread the Sickness rule. A successful game isn’t necessarily one where you move onto objectives and stay there, but rather one where you’re able to move through objectives and put pressure on an opponent. That said, once you’re on the objectives, the opponent will usually need to come to you, forcing them into Contagion range. 

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

If there’s an area the Death Guard can excel at, it’s handling hordes. The army has a solid amount of smaller and ANTI-INFANTRY shooting, including the ability to take Torrent weapons with Anti-Infantry 4+ and 2+. Their Contagion ability is a big help here as well, as being able to wound T3 targets on a 2+ actually does tip most of the army over into effectively able to remove horde threats in melee, while having T5/6 means not having too much to fear from retaliation. Plagueburst Mortars are also excellent for wiping out hordes, and Deathshrouds and Mortarion have sweep modes which can cut through hordes pretty well. That said, against hordes of T5 targets like Ork Boyz this is more of an uphill battle, and your melee output will definitely not be enough, though having Lethal Hits on your weapons and Anti-Infantry options will go a long way to softening them up prior to an attack.

This is an area as well where being able to take two TORRENT weapons in a unit of Plague Marines can provide a lot of value, giving them a bit more oomph as an Overwatch unit for controlling the board. PBCs with Plaguespitters are also great in this regard, as they can take out hordes both at range with mortars and up close, and have little to fear from being charged by weaker enemies.

This is also an area where the Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) comes in handy – the added save reduction from things like plague belchers and plaguespurt gauntlets can be incredibly nasty against targets who’d otherwise rely on cover or be able to shrug off half the wounds with a 4+ save. It’s also handy against 2+ saves in cover, as worsening their save puts them on a 3+ and unable to claim the benefit of cover against an AP0 weapon.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

Bigger targets can be more of a struggle for Death Guard, who have some decent options – mostly Entropy Cannons and Predator Lascannons – but generally suffer from not having very good AP on most of their weapons. So while the majority of your army’s attacks have LETHAL HITS, they’re delivering those hits at AP0 or AP-1, which will often just mean watching your opponent shrug off attacks with a 2+ save on bigger targets. The army doesn’t quite have the volume of Lethal Hits it needs to get past this limitation, and so taking down bigger targets will often mean a mix of shooting from Entropy Cannons, mortal wounds from Psyker abilities and the Grenade Stratagem, and some finishing from Mortarion or a unit of Deathshroud.

More often than not your anti-vehicle strategy is going to involve either pouring Entropy Cannons into the target or using a Putrifier unit of Plague Marines. Even against high-toughness targets, closing in, throwing two grenades, then pressing the charge can be a huge swing and on average you’ll land 10-12 damage between the grenades and your plague fists.

Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) can be helpful here, giving you the extra punch to get through vehicle armor, though you’ll often find going up against knights and multi-tank armies to be more of a marathon than a sprint. In those cases Skullsquirm Blight (-1 WS/BS) may do more for you, as you can combine it with tying up enemy vehicles in melee to put them on what is effectively -2 to hit: You worsen their BS by 1, and then they incur a -1 to their to hit rolls thanks to Big Guns Never Tire, making them have to think much harder about whether they want to stay in combat or Fall Back.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

The Death Guard don’t have a ton of amazing combos but there are a few you need to know about and make use of in your games. 

Deathshroud Terminators

• A unit Deathshrouds
• One of:
  • Typhus
  • Lord of Contagion
  • Death Guard Sorcerer in Terminator Armour

These are basically the options you want to look at for your Terminator units, and Deathshrouds are the better of your two options, since their melee output is just better and their ability to give incoming attacks -1 to wound while they have a LEADER gives them a big durability boost over the Blightlords. The Lord of Contagion and Terminator Sorcerer are both solid options here – the LoC gives you a better melee unit while the Sorcerer is more a defensive play, and may be more easily replaced by Typhus. Typhus can also go here – and should – but we’ll talk about him below.

Typhus

• Typhus
• One of:
  • A unit of Deathshrouds
  • A unit of Poxwalkers

Typhus brings incredible value as a stand-alone model already thanks to his ability to just toss out mortal wounds but he also adds a ton of value to the units he leads by making them harder to hit in melee (-1 to the hit roll). This combines extremely well with Skullsquirm Blight to create units that are very difficult to kill – either Deathshroud thanks to being T6 and -1 to wound or Poxwalkers thanks to having a 5+ feel no pain and the ability to regenerate dead models with each kill. Typhus is a must-take, and you’ll often want a unit of Deathshroud to accompany him.

Plague Marines

• A unit of Plague Marines
• One or two of:
  • Foul Blightspawn
  • Biologus Putrifier
  • Malignant Plaguecaster

A unit of 10 Plague Marines can be outfitted with 4 heavy plague weapons (including the first on the champion), 2 blight launchers, and 2 each of plague belchers and plague spewer and for my money this is the best way to equip them – it makes them a terrifying Overwatch unit, especially when paired with the blightspawn, while giving them a pretty nasty melee punch.

If you’re taking a unit of ten plague marines, you’ll typically want to give them one or two characters for support.

• The Biologus Putrifier is the most popular option – this guy gives you a free use of the Grenade strat once per game and comes with both Assault and Pistol weapons, making him an extremely versatile unit to play with, plus his ability to have Lethal Hits proc on a 5+ can be huge with some loadouts. Even a five-man unit with a Putrifier can pack a nasty punch, wheeling into an enemy, throwing two grenades at them for an average of 6 mortal wounds, then charging in and landing another 2-5 unsaved power fist wounds to crack open targets of moderate size.
• The Foul Blightspawn makes them a terror in Overwatch and to charge thanks to Fights First. Giving the Blightspawn’s unit a pair of Plague spewers turns them into a legitimately scary overwatch threat, and you can further up the ante with a pair of plague belchers. The result is a unit that people will bend over backwards to avoid fighting.
• The Malignant Plaguecaster doesn’t need a unit of Plague Marines to do his thing, but if you have one without a leader, he won’t mind the company.

On the less popular, but still OK side, you have three other options:

• The Icon Bearer ups the unit’s OC but his real value is a once-per game 12″ Contagion range aura, giving you the ability to surprise unsuspecting enemy units with -1 to their saves or hit rolls. This can also work through walls, opening up enemy units to early bombardments from your PBCs that functionally hit at AP-2. Putting this unit in a Rhino means your turn 1 Contagion threat range is effectively 27″.
• The Chaos Lord is a good shout here, giving them re-rolls to hit on 1s and extra melee punch, while giving him protection until he can deliver his extra contagion aura mortal wounds.
• The Tallyman gives his unit +1 to hit, which can also be great for pairing with a Putrifier as it makes those power fists much more accurate when they can hit on 3s instead of 4s and it’s great for meltaguns. That said, the CP generation ability is pretty unreliable so don’t expect it to get you more than 1-2 per game, and likely when you’re already planning to discard a misison.

There are some other options here but the Plague Surgeon’s healing isn’t that useful and the Blightbringer’s advance and charge re-rolls and -2 Ld aura abilities sound cooler than they are in practice.

Sample Lists

The Death Guard continue to put up respectable results at the GT level, and have been putting up a ton of top-4 and TiWP finishes recent, usually mixing in the occasional win with some solid podium finishes. They’re in a really good place right now. We’re going to look at the three general varieties of list here: Infantry, Vehicle, and with Mortarion.

Trenton Bate’s Plague Marines List

This list took first place at the Atomic City Warzone event in early November, going 5-0 while beating Black Templars, Thousand Sons twice, T’au, and Adepta Sororitas lists to get there. It’s a great example of an infantry-heavy list.

This list is running a staggering 44 Plague Marines – two units of ten, two units of five, and two units of seven, with three Rhinos to cart them around. There are a number of characters here to buff them – two Putrifiers, a Blightspawn, a Lord, a Plaguecaster, and a Tallyman, and depending on how you want to run and the opponent, you have a lot of options for how to configure them. One common option will be Blightspawn + Putrifier on a unit of ten, Putrifier + Chaos Lord on the other, and then leave the Tallyman and Plaguecaster as solo characters while the remaining 5/7 units go in Rhinos, which can hold 12 models. Or you can put the sevens in Rhinos with characters and leave the five-model units on foot. Or put one character with each five-man and put them both into Rhinos while leaving the remaining sevens on foot. Like I said, you have options and the need to put more units in Rhinos will depend on how much indirect fire your opponent has, how fast they are, and whether they have units which can go up and down.

What’s interesting about this list is the vehicle support – Two Bloat-Drones, a Blight-Hauler, and two Helbrutes, each with twin lascannon. That’s some interesting ranged support, and the Dreadnoughts double as melee threats in a pinch while the drones and hauler give the list a bit faster movement for flanking and taking objectives. Still, with only grenades, two lascannons, and a multi-melta, this list is going to struggle a bit against heavy vehicles and it’s fortunate that knights weren’t on the menu for the event. The Rhinos here were key to taking on the sisters list, with its two exorcists and two castigators.

Garrett Stacy’s Deathshroud/Mortarion List

Deathshroud for days. Garrett took this list to a 5-0 finish at the Rumble on the Rivers GT in late October, finishing in second place after beating Black Templars, Imperial Knights, Grey Knights, World Eaters, and Leagues of Votann. It’s a bit more balanced and makes heavy use of Deathshroud, relying on Mortarion and Rhinos to give it a tiny bit of speed.

Garrett’s List - Click to Expand

18 Deathshroud, and each unit of six has a Sorcerer in Terminator Armour accompanying them, helping them shrug off damage in melee. On top of that you’ve got Mortarion, plus Tyhpus with a unit of 20 Poxwalkers, who get -1 to hit in melee and can regenerate from Eater Plague kills. The extra piece of tech I like here is the Icon bearer with a unit of plague marines in a rhino – he can pop out and pop off his once-per-game 12″ contagion ability to soften up a key unit with Rattlejoint Ague when you need to take it out.

That said, this is a slow list – your three big units only have 4″ of Movement, meaning most games you’ll want to deep strike at least one and probably two of them onto objectives, and Rapid Ingress another. That can be a problem if your opponent has the speed to just block you out early and goes first, and Death Shroud really don’t want to have to rely on advancing to get anywhere.

Don Hooson’s List

Don makes it back into our showcase with this 4th place, 4-1 list from the Battle Against Breast Cancer AZ event in late October. It’s all-in on vehicles and Deathshroud, running three defilers, two predators, and a knight despoiler. 

Ryan’s List - click to expand

Here’s the thing: While normally Don’s lists are skew lists only he can run, he’s actually not the only person to put up results with a triple defiler list. Ian Harris also put up a 4-1 showing with triple Defilers in a list that same weekend, albeit running three predators and a land raider full of Deathshroud, plus three bloat drones. The Defilers can do a surprising amount of damage, particularly when you support them with a Lord of Virulence and they have the benefit of Rattlejoint Auge. AP-2 with Ignores Cover on 3-damage Defiler Cannons hits a wonderful breakpoint, and loading up your army with 3-damage shooting generally helps you clear a lot of the heavy infantry targets that blot up the center of tables right now, while also being pretty solid against vehicles. Giving things -1T to get them to T9 or T10 is also important for the breakpoints on your guns.

Final Thoughts

After a very rough start to 10th edition, Death Guard are in a great spot spot – they have decent of power and versatility, and they’re very fun to play. The Contagion ability is powerful and relevant, they can pack in a ton of weapons to work with, and they can build around faster units that help them extend their effectiveness ahead of slower units on foot. They’re not the absolute top tier right now but you can build some great lists with them, and almost every unit in the Index is a potentially relevant play.

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