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 Virulent Vectorium from the Death Guard.
The updated version of the Index Detachment for Death Guard, the Virulent Vectorium Detachment represents the basic “combined arms” form of the Death Guard, giving the army a way to sticky objectives and increase the value of units across the board.
Detachment Overview
This is your classic generalist Detachment. It’s got tools for everything in your army and just helps your guys do their thing more efficiently. Those who’ve played the index will find it familiar but its also pretty significantly different from the Index Detachment.
The Video Version
If you’d like to watch a video version of this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered here:
Detachment Rule: Worldblight
If you control an objective at the end of your Command phase and a Death Guard unit is on it, you keep control of it until your opponent takes it and until you lose it, that objective has the Nurgle’s Gift ability. For a slow and elite army like Death Guard this is a fantastic rule to have on hand. This will let you move your big bricks of dudes without worrying about who’s gonna stand around on the objective, and means you can safely walk off your home and keep moving forward inexorably.
The Nurgle’s Gift component is nice, but most of the time either anyone you want to be Afflicted will be, or your opponent will have stolen the objective from you. It’s more like a fun additional effect, especially given that your Stratagems no longer key off of you or your opponent being within contagion range of an affected objective marker.
Enhancements
Most of these Enhancements focus on buffing the individual character rather than the unit their attached to. That said most of these are solid adds, if a bit expensive.
- Daemon Weapon of Nurgle – Lets your character’s melee weapons score critical hits on 5+. This one is cheap but also not really something you want to build towards, it’s cute on a Daemon Prince if you have the points, and for only 10 points it’s a good space filler.
- Furnace of Plagues – Increase the Strength and Attacks of a melee weapon by one and that weapon gains Devastating Wounds. Going to S9 doesn’t seem like a huge increase but when you combine it with the -1 Toughness effect from Nurgle’s Gift you’ll be wounding T10 units on a 4+. Adding dev wounds is nice here as well and helps your Daemon Prince hit like he’s a World Eater.
- Arch Contaminator – If your unit is on an objective marker you control you can re-roll your wound rolls. This is fine on a Lord of Contagion and Deathshroud but amazing on a Lord of Poxes, where having a 6-attack sword with Devastating Wounds means that he can hit like a Chaos Lord when you control the objective he’s on and your Plague Marines can pretend to be tougher, sexier Legionaries.
- Revolting Regeneration – Gives the bearer a 5+ Feel No Pain. Your primary target for this is a Daemon Prince, giving you a T12, 12-wound mini-Mortarion. A great go-to points filler.
Stratagems
The Virulent Vectorium gives you a diverse tool box of stratagems to use here. It’s a shame the Tallyman is bad since you’ll want the extra CP.
- Putrid Detonation (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – you can auto explode a Vehicle or Monster when it’s destroyed and until the start of your next turn that target is Afflicted. Being able to dish out some mortal wounds when it’s favorable to you is a great trick to have in your back pocket. Shoving a Land Raider on its last legs or a beleaguered Mortarion into your opponent’s lines for a fun surprise is a really nasty move with this one. The Affliction rider is more of a nice-to-have due to its timing. Most of the time this will be relevant in your opponent’s turn, when they’re either gonna fight you and already be Afflicted or shooting where it won’t matter unless you picked the -1 to hit plague.
- Disgustingly Resilient (Battle Tactic, 2 CP) – the return of a classic, except now it works in either the Shooting or Fight phase, giving opponents’ attacks -1 to their damage characteristic to a unit for the phase. This won’t be useful all the time but when you can put it to use it can be absolutely devastating – there are a lot of damage 2 and 3 attacks in the game and making your terminators that much harder to remove will save games. This Stratagem is one reason to have a Daemon Prince on hand – just to be able to use this every turn.
- Plaguesurge (Epic Deed, 2 CP) – Used in your Command phase, targets your Warlord, and gives all your units +3” to their Contagion Range. This is expensive, but the effect is massive in those times when you need just a bit of extra range to pull of a key Deathshroud deep strike or kill a key unit. It targets your Warlord, so be sure to keep a Daemon Prince nearby to reduce the cost of this.
- Leechspore Eruption (Epic Deed, 1 CP) – In your command phase you select a model that has lost wounds, pick an enemy within 3”, then roll a die for each missing wound it has and on a 5+ you do a mortal and you heal a wound, to a max of 6. This can really punish an opponent who didn’t quite kill Mortarion and is great for finishing off something that was in a grueling fight with him. The fact that it heals is nuts, and it’s amazing on Mortarion.
- Overwhelming Generosity (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in the Shooting phase. Select an enemy unit visible to one of yours; until the end of the phase any time it’s targeted with ranged attacks you can re-roll the dice for the number of shots. There are a bunch of different ways to use this, but it’s great on Deathshroud, big units of Plague Marines with a Blightspawn, and on Defilers and PBCs. It’s also great in concert with the Lord of Virulence.
- Creeping Blight (Wargear, 1 CP) – Used in the Shooting phase on a single Death Guard unit to give full re-rolls to hit and wound against an Afflicted target. This is, in a word, nuts. It’s a great way to dramatically boost the output of a single unit against something you casually tagged with a Plague Marine unit, and is the closest you’re going to get to having Oaths of Moment. Blightlords love this one as it lets them operate without a Lord of Virulence.
Playing This Detachment
This is the Detachment which will most play like the Death Guard you remember from the Index. The name of the game here is to keep moving forward – tag objectives, sticky them, then carry on and into the opponent’s face. You’ll want a wide range of units, combining melee threats and shooting, and you’ll probably want a Daemon Prince and a Lord of Virulence in the mix to keep your army buffed.
Your biggest threats here are going to be enemy armies with lots of deep strike and uppy-downy shenanigans, as they’re going to force you to actually sit on the objectives you’ve touched instead of moving off them and continuing on into the opponent’s lines. Keep an eye out for units that can just pop up behind you and be ready to take them out at a distance – your units are easily kited most of the time.
Strengths
- All-rounder. This Detachment has tools that help everything in the army.
- Board Control. You have some fantastic board control tools here and having sticky objectives with everything means that once you hold something, an opponent has to come take it back.
- Mortal Wound output. Great mortal wound output through Putrid Detonation and Leechspore Eruption
Weaknesses
- CP Hungry. Having two different Stratagems that cost 2 CP means you’ll be hungry for CP a lot of time.
- Melee buffs. Most of your tools here are utility pieces rather than buffs to your damage output.
- Movement. While you can move off objectives there’s not much here to help you get around the table.
A Sample List
Here’s a sample list for the army running a combined arms approach.
”Sample
This list aims to take a little bit of all the good stuff and fails because there are simply not enough points to explore all the cool things in this book. The Poxwalkers provide early pressure and if they aren’t taken care of, will open up some 6” Deepstrikes for your Deathshroud. Meanwhile you’ll be sending a ton of shots down range with your Bloat Drones and PBCs forcing your opponent to come to you. The prince helps a lot by making Disgustingly Resilient 1CP each round and with the 5+ Feel No Pain he’s a mini-Mortarion.
Final Thoughts
We expect to see a lot of Virulent Vectorum lists floating around when this book launches. It helps everything and doesn’t require you to do a ton of work to get the most out of it. If you’re looking to try out the new tools and see what they can do, definitely start here.
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