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 Shamblerot Vectorium from the Death Guard.

Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, High School Musical 3: Senior Year. All of these films feature glassy eyed, brainless zombies shambling towards a unified goal. If you’ve ever seen any of these and thought the concept was pretty cool, Shamblerot Vectorum may be for you.

Detachment Overview

The Detachment goes all in on Poxwalkers. On their own, Poxwalkers are a pretty solid unit. They’re cheap, can start at midboard, and often take more investment to remove than their cost would imply. This Detachment gives you a suite of tools to overwhelm your opponent with bodies and eventually win through attrition.

The Video Version

If you’d like to watch a video version of this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered here:

Detachment Rule: Numberless Horde

In your Command phase, in each of the specified battle rounds, you add a 10-model unit of Poxwalkers to your army, placed into Strategic Reserves. The rounds you do this on depends on the game size – 2 and 3 for Incursion, 2, 3, and 4 for Strike Force, and 2 through 5 for Onslaught.

Additionally, Poxwalkers units in your army gain the BATTLELINE keyword.

This is unique as a Detachment rule, and it lets you run nine units of Poxwalkers. That’s insane.

To fully get a handle on this, let’s take a close look at the Poxwalker stat block. Poxwalkers move 5”, are T4, have a 7+ save (so only a save with cover), one wound, Ld 8+ and OC 1. They also have the Infiltrators and Feel No Pain 5+ ability letting them usually play the role of an early game speedbump for your opponent’s army. Offensively each gets two attacks, hitting on 5’s, at S3 AP 0 D1, with the ability to return lost models to the unit if they take down a non Monster or Vehicle. If you’re sending a 10 man unit into a unit of intercessors and you took the -1 save Plague, you are just barely likely to kill one space marine before they punch you back and take out quite a few zombies in return. In short, these aren’t powerhouses even with 20 models (getting all those models fighting is difficult enough). That said, this Detachment gives you some other tools to take advantage of the unit’s strengths.

We should also mention that the Noxious Blightbringer and the Malignant Plaguecaster can attach to Poxwalkers now. The Blightbringer does a lot to help them zoom up the table and the Plaguecaster helps push them over to a more consistent threat (although still not a particularly potent one). Typhus can also join a unit of Poxwalkers, and his Eater Plague ability can return models to the unit, making him a very strong include in this Detachment. However, if you attach any of these models to the unit, they lose Infiltrate, which means you’re either coming from reserves or footslogging through the table or riding in a transport.

Enhancements

All of these enhancements only work on models leading Poxwalker units, so they’ll be going on Plaguecasters and Blightbringers. It’s worth noting you can combine some of these effects by attaching two characters to the same unit.

• Witherbone Pipes – This one can only go on a Noxious Blightbringer. Poxwalkers in his unit get +1 OC and +1 to leadership/battle shock tests. 2 OC Poxwalkers can be incredibly annoying and make for a great brick to sit on an objective. Comboing this with the Talisman of Burgeoning or Typhus makes for a brutal board control unit.
• Lord of the Walking Pox – Lets the bearer’s unit come in from strategic reserves at any time as if it’s the third battle round. This lets you apply some serious pressure early and forces your opponent to screen their deployment zone well or sets you up for a gnarly turn one charge.
• Sorrowsyphon – This one gives a Plaguecaster +1 damage to his Plague Wind weapon at the cost of d3 Poxwalkers every time he shoots. Honestly, pass on this one.
• Talisman of Burgeoning – Gives the Poxwalkers in the bearer’s unit +1 toughness. Really simple, but T5 Poxwalkers are super annoying to remove.

Stratagems

As you might expect, your Stratagems primarily benefit Poxwalkers. They’re all priced to move at 1 CP.

• Grip of the Walking Pox (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – In the Fight phase, roll a D6 for every poxwalker that died from an enemy attack; on a 6 you do a mortal and if those mortals kill anything you can return models to the unit. This makes attacking your big blocks of Poxwalkers a chore, but even if you’re going from 20 to 1 you’re only doing three mortals on average so don’t expect to do a ton of damage with this.
• Smeared With Filth (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Pick a unit that fought one of your poxwalker units that died this fight phase, they’re afflicted until the end of the game. Could be nifty for shoving into your opponent’s backline early to apply pressure with Deathshroud.
• Gnawing Hunger (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – In your command phase you select a unit and they get +1 move, strength, and attacks. This makes them movement 7” with a blightbringer and can produce an eye-watering number of attacks.
• Hidden Amongst the Dead (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – This can only be used on a Poxwalker unit without an attached character. In the movement phase, that unit gains deep strike. Unfortunately this can’t be comboed with Lord of the Walking Pox but this is still really solid for getting your spare Poxwalkers where they need to be for actions.
• Shock and Horror (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – This one works on any Death Guard unit. In the charge phase you force a battleshock tests on everything in engagement range of that unit at -1. You can use this to turn off fight phase strats but honestly just skip this one.
• Shambling Wall (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Pick a Death Guard unit that was just targeted by a shooting attack. Until the end of the phase, everytime that thing is targeted, if it successfully wounds, you don’t make a save, instead a Poxwalker unit nearby loses a number of models equal to the damage characteristic. This is amazing for something like Mortarion to deter enemy attacks and keeping him in the game.

Playing This Detachment

Outside of the strategy of “bring a lot of Poxwalkers” you’re looking to control the table and continually apply pressure to your opponent throughout the game and win by attrition. Even with buffs, Poxwalkers aren’t exactly offensive powerhouses, so don’t expect to remove units with even a 20 block of them. Instead you’re looking to just survive and shoot them with backline artillery while you score and they’re stuck dealing with all the zombies. You probably want a brick with Witherbone Pipes and either a Plaguecaster with Talisman of Burgeoning or Typhus to keep them in the game. You also probably want a big unit with Lord of the Walking Pox to apply pressure early and keep your opponent screening or just rapid ingressing turn one to reinforce a side of the board your opponent is committing to. Mortarion does well here as well, using Shambling Wall to keep him in the game and his passive ability will help you grind through enemies that are stuck in your Poxwalker tar pit.

Strengths

• The Most Unique Detachment Rule in the Game. Nothing else in the game works like this detachment does. Getting a total of 9 of the same unit is something no other army in the game can do and it’s a very strong ability even if it’s just Poxwalkers.

• Incredibly Frustrating Board Control. With Poxwalkers gaining Infiltrate, you can feasibly have 60 bodies in midboard at the start of the game while only dedicating about 400 points to the effort. If you’re going first, your opponent is gonna end up in Pox jail pretty quick.

• Great Enhancements. Almost every enhancement feels like it has use in every army and since you can attach two characters to the unit, you can stack the effects in interesting ways.

Weaknesses

• The Hobby Commitment. While not a mechanical weakness, you are gonna have to paint 100 Poxwalkers (and that’s on the low end) to make this Detachment really sing. The models aren’t as simple to paint up as Termagants so this is gonna take a significant amount of time to get battle ready.

• Blast is Very Scary. Blast weapons are gonna rip right through your hordes and they’ll generally be on platforms your hordes aren’t equipped to deal with. You’ll need some kind of strategy to mitigate this.

• Vulnerable to Fixed. Since you’re gonna want a lot of characters to buff up your Poxwalkers, you’re gonna be a juicy target for Cull the Horde and Assassinate. You can get around this by taking minimal characters, but then your zombies are really just 5+++ bodies that will die quick and easy. 

A Sample List

There’s no getting around the Poxwalker commitment you’re going to need to play this Detachment.

”Sample

This list aims to do one thing: put Poxwalkers on circles and stand there. Your drones act as your backline shooting for heavier targets while also being fast action bozos for when your Poxwalkers are tied up. Meanwhile, the Deathshroud gives you another way to punch up at tougher targets with a Lord of Contagion helping out. The Daemon Prince keeps your stratagems cheap while also providing cover for Poxwalkers, giving them a 6+ against AP 0 attacks, in addition to just being a melee powerhouse who can pass damage to nearby Poxwalkers with Shambling Wall.

The deployment breakdown goes something like this: one squad gets Typhus and a Blightbringer, either with Lord of the Walking Pox to get Typhus punching early or with Witherbone Pipes to make for a great Objective control unit if your opponent is relying on melee. Another squad gets other Blightbringer and the Plaguecaster with the Talisman. One squad of 20 starts in reserves to be a good target for Hidden Amongst the Dead. The rest (60) start in the middle of the table and provide your initial wall of meat. 

Final Thoughts

And that’s a wrap for our beloved brain-dead bozos. This Detachment is really neat, giving you extra units throughout the game gives you a great lever for applying continuous pressure. Beyond that, it’s also very strong. There’s a lot of great support here and a lot to like. Poxwalkers are already one of the best units in the book and this gives you another way to play them with a very unique playstyle.

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