In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into an army’s Detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games. In this Detachment Focus we’re looking at the Champions of Contagion from the Death Guard.

The new Death Guard codex provides a ton of different ways to play the army. Champions of Contagion gives you a Detachment that wants you to take a bunch of characters and plague marines to go with them. If you want to run a lot of Marines, this one’s for you.

Detachment Overview

This Detachment is all about attached units and giving you more flexibility with your plagues. Between the Detachment ability, your enhancements, and your stratagems, you have a bunch of ways to cycle between what plague will be most valuable at any given moment. In addition, it has a lot of support for units with characters attached to them and buffs all your power armor characters in various ways.

Detachment Rule: Manifold Maladies

At the start of the battle round, you can select one of the plagues listed in the Nurgle’s Gift rule to be your chosen plague instead of anyone previously listed.

Most of the time this won’t be a huge benefit – you’ll have a “correct” choice for the opponent and even then the abilities may not matter – taking -1 to be hit early doesn’t help you since you’ll be outside of Contagion Range. The big benefit here is being able to switch to that third mode Scabrous Soulrot – late in the game when -1 to OC and Leadership will pay off big by letting you flip and maintain control of objectives. Otherwise you’re likely to sit on either -1 to saves or -1 to be hit all game.

The real value here comes from being able to double up on Plagues via Stratagems and an Enhancement.

Enhancements

The Enhancements here each target a different power armor character.

• Final Ingredient – This one’s for the Biologus Putrifier. Once per battle, if its unit kills a character you can select a Plague and it is active for your army for the rest of the game. This can be a very nice bonus. The combo of -1 to hit and -1 to save even when one isn’t particularly optimal is great to have.
• Visions of Virulence – This is the Malignant Plaguecaster’s enhancement. When they hit something with Pestilental Fallout, they’re also Afflicted. This is fine considering he’ll most likely be with plague marines to get two units when they activate or run them solo for an annoying guy hopping out of a rhino.
• Needle of Nurgle – Here’s the one for the Plague Surgeon. When they use their ability, you return D3 models to a unit instead of 1. It’s not quite enough to get the Plague Surgeon over when you can just take the better buffing units instead.
• Cornucophagus – Last up is the Lord of Poxes’ enhancement. When you declare your initial Plague, you also declare one for this model, and he has it for the rest of the game. This can be great for the same reason the Final Ingredient is but it’s a bit less flexible.

Stratagems

The Stratagems here are all focused on units with attached characters, meaning that you’ll need to pay that tax for every unit in your army, and also that you’ll need to keep them alive.

• Blessings of Filth (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In the shooting phase or fight phase you select an attached unit to get crits on 5’s for the phase. There’s a reason the Biologus Putrifier is so good and being able to use this on terminators is a great bonus.
• Malignance Magnified (Battle Tactic, 2 CP) – You get full hit and wound rerolls if you target a unit below half strength. This is fantastic with the Lord of Poxes, letting you fish for devastating wounds.
• Grotesque Fortitude (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Select an attached unit and it gains +2 toughness for the phase. This is a great defensive strat on everyone. T8 Plague Marines are nice, but consider T9 Deathshroud or T6 Poxwalkers with Typhus. 
• Rabid Infusion (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – This can only be used on a unit with two characters, so no luck for Terminators. For  CP you give the unit Fights First. This is always handy, especially with the Foul Blightspawn’s ability moving to once per game.
• Mobile Vector (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – This is a weird one. You pick a Death Guard unit with a character and that character can move to a nearby Death Guard unit that it could normally join without any characters in it. This is very limited in scope. There are not a lot of times where you’re gonna have a unit with no characters and a lone character near each other.
• Death’s Heads (Wargear, 1 CP) – Pick a Biologus Putrifier in the shooting phase and select a unit within 8”. Until the start of your next turn that unit is under the effects of all plagues. This one’s fire, being able to impose that many debuffs on something for just 1CP is a deal you can’t get anywhere else.

Playing This Detachment

With this Detachment you’re looking at a classic Rhino Rush with units of plague marines with attached characters as well as a unit of Deathshroud or two with Lords of Contagion. Ideally you want to get the Final Ingredient  to kick off early so you can rock two Plagues and you want to be Afflicting as much stuff as possible to take full advantage of that.

Strengths

• Lots of Flexibility. The ability to cycle between plagues is pretty great, and the ability to stack them makes them that much better. 
• Support for Stuff You Were Doing Anyway. You were always gonna have characters attached to your infantry, and this Detachment provides some great buffs to those units.
• Great Stratagems. Death’s Heads and Grotesque Fortitude are fantastic tools to have in your back pocket and the rest outside Mobile Vector are all valuable too.

Weaknesses

• You Usually Only Need One Plague. There is almost always a right choice for your plagues so switching between them doesn’t always have a ton of value.
• Too Focused. The laser focus on attached units means all of your units in this Detachment will have inflated costs with them if they want to benefit.
• Assassination. This list opens you way up for assassination as a secondary since you’ll be taking so many characters.

A Sample List

”Sample

This is more or less a generic Death Guard list that leans more into characters and Rhino rushing Plague Marines. The 10 man unit gets the Biologus with Final Ingredient and the Plaguecaster for Lethal Sustained on 5’s and the other two characters go with the 7 man units. The Deathshroud come in 6” away and start removing stuff with the help of some stratagems while your backline shooting blasts away.

Final Thoughts

We’re pretty split on this one in the Goonhammer Offices. On one hand, Plagues are a funny thing and don’t need to be cycled all that often. On the other hand the stratagems are great and stacking Plagues is very strong. Overall this seems like a fun Detachment to mess around with with a couple cool builds inside. 

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