Hello boils, germs, and themfections, and welcome to the Death Guard Codex review. The army has received a pretty major shift in identity and the book gives you a slew of new ways to play it. There’s a ton of stuff to get through, so let’s dive in.
We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Codex.
Army Overview
Death Guard have gotten a massive facelift from their Index. While the end result is recognizable almost every datasheet has changed in some way (almost all for the better) and their army rule has been vastly improved. As a blanket rule, any Death Guard Marine unit (Plague Marines; all the characters that’re not Mortarion; Terminators) got an increase to their toughness. The army also sees a shift to a midrange shooting army as opposed to a melee army throwing units of plague marines at you.
We think the following are five standout features of this book:
- Almost everything is tougher.
- Your shooting units have gotten way better.
- Way less reliance on Plague Marines and PBCs. (Although both are still great!)
- The army is much more elite, being only second to Custodes for value from each datasheet.
- Daemons are also here.
Where’s Crusade?
As always, we’ll have our coverage of the book’s Crusade rules on the Tuesday following this release. So check back then for the update!
Army Rule: Nurgle’s Gift (Aura)
Death Guard armies all gain access to the Nurgle’s gift ability. This is the same ability as the index detachment – Death Guard models have a Contagion Range aura that starts at 3” and grows by 3” every round until you hit 9”. While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range, they are considered to be Afflicted. While an enemy unit is Afflicted, they get -1 Toughness and one additional effect, which depends on which plague you choose before the game starts. These options are:
- Skullsquirm Blight, which gives afflicted units -1 to their to Hit rolls (a change from -1 WS/BS, meaning it no longer stacks with -1 to hit).
- Rattlejoint Ague gives afflicted units -1 to their save. This is probably your default unless you’re going into an army with a ton of invulns, and helps get past the fact that your AP is generally not amazing.
- Scabrous Soulrot gives Afflicted units -1 to their OC, Leadership, and Movement characteristics. A clear improvement from before, though not necessarily as good as your other two options most of the time.
This is a fantastic rule, and makes Death Guard a powerful force on the table. As we mentioned, you want -1 to saves in most games, but there are times when Skullsquirm blight is the play. Moving this to the army rule is huge, because it now gives you a compelling reason to try other Detachments, and makes Flyblown Host an amazing option.
On top of these is the Pact of Decay rule, which prevents you from picking PLAGUE LEGIONS as your army faction. In other words, you can’t take daemons unless the Detachment lets you do that explicitly.
Detachments
Death Guard armies have access to 6 detachments in the new book, 7 if you count Flyblown Host (you should). Of these we feel that Virulent Vectorum is likely to see the most play because of the fact that it helps every unit in the army and provides a ton of flexibility. That said, Flyblown Host is also bound to see a lot of play since the Infantry in this book is so good but there’s some good stuff elsewhere, and Mortarion’s Hammer looks like the play for vehicles. And finally, Shamblerot Vectorium may just have the most raw power by virtue of being incredibly annoying. You can find out more of these in our series of Detachment Focuses that you can see linked below:
The “Default” detachment for the Death Guard and the detachment that most closely resembles the Index’s Plague Company, the Virulent Vectorium gives all of your units the ability to sticky objectives, making those objectives emit your army’s plague aura.
Mortarion’s Hammer is the vehicles detachment, letting you afflict a number of enemy units every turn provided they’re more than 12″ away and giving you a ton of buffs for your vehicles.
Champions of Contagion is all about your characters and your plagues, letting you move characters around and double up on or change your active contagion each round.
The mixed daemons detachment of the book lets you add daemons of Nurgle in with your Plague Marines, giving them the ability to emit contagions and extend the range of contagions on your mortal units.
This is your Poxwalker Detachment. It makes Poxwalkers Battleline and on top of that, each round you add a 10-model unit of Poxwalkers to your reserves for free.
The Terminator Detachment for Death Guard, this gives you buffs to your Blightlords and Deathshroud and the units which can join them.
The Grotmas Detachment gives you Stealth on all of your units and a 5″ Scouts move on all your Infantry units. It’s a Detachment with strong abilities that improved substantially with the changes to the Death Guard army rule.
Datasheets
There’s a LOT to talk about here so buckle in. We in the Goonhammer offices were debating how we can go through these without listing every single datasheet, but the impacts here are too juicy not to dive into so we’ll be touching on most of them.
General Unit Changes
The first and most impactful change is all your marine units – and several vehicles – gained a point of toughness. T6 Plague Marines put them at a very annoying break point to remove and T7 Terminators put them above almost all anti-infantry weapons. The book also sees a lot of random weapons gain Lethal Hits such as the Predator Destructor autocannon, the Defiler Battlecannon, and the Blighthauler Multi-Melta. These changes help these models punch above their weight class and makes them more efficient. Last but not least, there’s a lot more rules that tee off your Affliction army ability. This helps the army feel unique as well as appealing to all the combo players out there who like creating set ups and pay offs
Our Favorite Units
There’s a lot to like in this book, but here are the headliners.
- Deathshroud: Deathshroud see some really interesting changes, gaining a wound, more attacks on the sweep, and access to a 6” Deepstrike you can charge out of. That combined with their cheap cost helps make a very lethal unit that can slot into any list. Oh also they’re T7 with 4 wounds each now.
- Bloat Drone w/ Blight Launcher: the new drone variant is a great cheap and efficient generalist unit that’s a welcome addition to the roster. While it’s ability to spread affliction on a kill is a bit inconsistent, its gun isn’t. Its got great volume, solid strength, and consistent damage and thats all cranked to 11 with the help of a Lord of Virulence. Speaking of which…
- Lord of Virulence: The Lord of Virulence is a monster now which not only helps blast weapons, but all the shooting in your army. Rerolls are also much better for PBCs shooting indirectly since they can only hit on 4’s anyway. On top of that he’s still a nasty addition to Terminator squads, helping out new and improved Blightlords to punch high above their weight class
- Defiler: The Defiler was already a common appearance in Death Guard hull lists but it got a series of small improvements that turned a solid platform into a great one. It got an extra point of toughness, lethal hits on its main cannon, and the ability to strip cover. Expect to see some of these scuttling around on a table near you
- Plagueburst Crawler: while it didn’t see a ton of changes, Plagueburst crawlers see some major improvements. As we mentioned, the new Lord of Virulence buff makes them that much more scary, in addition the ability to spread Affliction at range helps make sure their targets are properly softened up before they start firing. Lastly their ability is now bonkers if you play it as written or just really solid if you play it as its most conservative interpretation.
- Plague Marines – Plague marines are staples of index Death Guard lists. They’re cheap, have access to great support, and pack a significant punch in melee. In the codex they also have a support role, giving you a ranged option for applying Affliction. This helps set up a lot of combo’s within the book beyond just your Plagues, one of our favorite being setting up the Deathshroud Rapid Ingress
- Poxwalkers – Poxwalkers were generally just backline objective holders in the Index. With the addition of Infiltrate and the ability to get character support, they’ve suddenly become much more interesting. Expect to see at least 20 in a lot of lists if not more.
Our Least Favorite Units
While most of the book is full of winners, there are some units that likely won’t see a lot of play.
- Icon Bearer: where before the Icon Bearer had a niche roll of expanding your early Contagion range, he now just adds OC to a plague marine squad and can once per battle un-Battle-shock a unit. Plague Marines don’t really need the extra OC since they’ll be bullying the point anyway and already have two, and un-Battle-shocking requires this unit to be nearby something that failed a Battle-shock test and that test actually has to matter. Pass on this dude
- Plague Surgeon: another Plague Marine buffer, the Plague Surgeon returns a model to a unit hes in and can get lethal 5’s on his sword. If you were to take a Biologus instead, you’d have the entire unit getting lethal 5’s. The revive is nice but he doesn’t quite get there.
- Predator Annihilator: The Predator Annihilator is supposed to be the Death Guard answer to anti heavy armor. Most of your anti tank tops out at S10, which means you’ll be relying on lethal hits for tougher targets. The Annhilator could solve that problem, but instead you get a twin-linked lascannon shot (at higher strength) and two normal ones. Into most targets the Destructor, your anti infantry tank, does more damage on average than the Annihilator. With the low volume here, you’d really hope for something more flashy
- Tallyman: Ignoring modifiers isn’t nearly as good as +1 to hit, but this guy’s also dirt cheap.
New Datasheets
There are two new datasheets in the book. One is the expected Lord of Poxes that’s coming out alongside this book. He gives his unit 18” Lone Op, which is great for a big brick of Plague Marines wandering around the table. He also has an extra 3” on his contagion range, which is really nice if you’re planning on getting stuck in. In terms of stats he’s equivalent to a Death Guard Chaos lord. He’s got a 3+ 4++ and 5 wounds, meaning he’ll stick around quite a bit longer than a Blightbringer or Foul Blightspawn. Lastly, his huge sword is equivalent to a powerfist with dev wounds and lethal hits and 6 attacks. This means he can brawl pretty well, but he won’t be soloing entire units.
The other new surprise datasheet is that they split out the Bloat Drone with Blight Launcher from the other weapon variants. This is likely because they need to be able to balance it separately with the Lord of Virulence in play (more on him below). The Heavy Blight launcher is now Blast and Lethal Hits with D6+2 shots at Strength 10 Ap-2 D 3 at 36” range. This is a massive buff to the profile, and since its Blast it’ll work with the Lord of Virulence very nicely. As for its ability, if you kill something in the shooting phase you roll a D6, adding +1 if your target was Afflicted, and then on a 5+ everything within 6” is Afflicted until the start of your next turn. This rule is more of a nice to have than a build around, but the gun absolutely sells the unit on its own.
Updated Datasheets
As a blanket rule almost everything in this army got an increase in toughness. Terminators are now T7 (in addition to them all going to 5” movement), your power armor guys are T6. There’s a smattering of changes outside them with daemon princes going to T12 on foot and T11 with wings. Defilers go to T11 which gives them a nice durability buff as well.
A bunch of weapons picked up Lethal hits where they didn’t before. Some are somewhat bizarre, like the Multi Melta on the Blighthauler (but not the missiles!), the autocannon on the Predator Destructor got it for some reason, the Defiler battle cannon picked it up, the multi melta, the plasma cannon, and twin autocannon on the Hellbrute are all also lethal now. This bumps up these units to make them much more interesting, especially the Blighthauler and Defiler.
Removed Datasheets
Some sheets are also gone. The Chaos Lord, Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, Sorcerer in Terminator Armour, and Chaos Cultists are no longer here.
On to the individual datasheets.
Characters
Lets start with the big man himself, Mortarion. He gets an extra 6” on his ranged weapons and the Lantern gets an extra point of strength. The scythe picks up devastating wounds and while the damage on the strike moves to D6+1 (a nerf depending on how bad your dice are) the sweep is now one of the best in the game, sitting at S8 AP-2 D2 with lethal and sustained hits 1. This helps him mow through legions of space marines with ease. As for his abilities, everything here is different. He no longer grants the ability to ignore modifiers, instead at the end of your movement phase you roll for everything within 6” (adding one if its Afflicted) and on a 3+ they suffer D3 mortals. This can be devastating if allowed to trigger multiple times. In addition all of his Lord of the Death Guard abilities have changed. You can use any of these once per turn and they consist of; A reactive 5” move for a unit, a 2+ fight on death, or a shoot after being shot. All of these are really nifty in their own way, especially that reactive move, but they aren’t the passive buffs you used to have.
All the Terminator characters see a change for the better. Typhus gains an attack on his strike and two on his sweep. The Lord of Contagion is completely different, gaining +1S on the strike and +1S and AP on the sweep. His abilities also change, granting his unit Lance and Sustained Hits 1 and he can stand up after dying on a 2+. This makes him a great melee buff piece and also a pretty good solo character you can use for scoring since he’s so annoying to remove.
The biggest glow up, however, is the Lord of Virulence. His powerfist now hits on 2s but the biggest change is to the Blight Bombardment, which now requires you to pick something you can see within 30” at the beginning of the shooting phase, but grants full rerolls to hit for Blast weapons and reroll 1’s to hit for everything else in your army. This change is massive because not only does everyone benefit from it now, but it means your Plagueburst Crawler indirect becomes much more consistent.
You daemon princes both get a change as well. Both pick up an extra attack on the strike and their Plague Spewer has been replaced by an infernal cannon with lethal hits (that’s strength 7 for some reason). The winged prince loses its dev wounds and now forces desperate escape tests and the forced battleshock test is now at -1. This is pretty lame, don’t take the Winged Daemon Prince. The regular Daemon Prince now gets Lone Operative, can reduce the cost of a stratagem within 12” by one, and gives cover to everything within 6”. This is an amazing suite of rules on an incredibly tough platform and this guy should be considered for every list.
Your power armor characters are probably where you’ll see the most changes. The Malignant Plaguecaster now grants Sustained Hits to the attached unit when it attacks an Afflicted unit and the Pestilent Fallout ability now only affects your opponent’s movement. The Noxious Blightbringer now has Anti-Psycher 2+ on his bell, he forces battleshock tests, and grants +1 movement and reroll advance and charges. Both of these characters can also now attach to Poxwalkers, which can make them a really threatening unit, especially in the Shamblerot Vectorum detachment.
Your Plague Marine specific characters also get some big updates. Starting off with the big ones, the Foul Blightspawn gets a sidegrade. Instead of a flat Fights First you instead can select one Foul Blightspawn to give his unit Fights First each round and its only once per game. He does gain another ability however, turning off advance moves within 9”. Generally speaking you’ll get the most impact out of fights first once per game anyway and denying advances will do a great job of protecting you from advancing and charging threats. The Biologus Putrifier also gets some changes. His Hyperblight Grenades got +2 strength and his pistol picked up Anti-Infantry 2+ and Precision. He still gives the unit he’s leading lethals and crits on 5’s but he no longer has free grenades but instead gets +6 OC after his unit kills a unit in melee. He absolutely still has a place but you may see a bit less of him.
As for the less popular support characters, Tallyman now just grants ignore hit modifiers instead of +1 to hit, the Plague Surgeon no longer heals wounds but instead gives himself crits on 5’s or 4’s if the target is below half strength, and the Icon Bearer now just gives a once per battle “Unbattleshock a unit” and gives his unit +1 OC. These are all nerfs but they’re to characters you weren’t bringing anyway for the most part. Just stick to the Blightspawn and Putrifier for your plague marine squads.
Infantry
Let’s talk Plague Marines. Stat wise they get the toughness increase and the sergeant’s Powerfist now hits on 3s. Ability wise, instead of getting effectively nothing, they now Afflict anything they shoot for the round. This is an amazing ability considering how much keys off affliction. A lot of lists will likely see a unit with two heavy plague weapons, two plasma guns, and a blight launcher just to sit and deliver plagues at range.
Blightlord Terminators see a major glow up. Their melee weapons went to damage 2 and they now have an ability that gives them +1 strength and AP when shooting a target thats Afflicted. This combos really nicely with Plague Marines, and with a Lord of Virulence in the squad they can produce some really nice shooting.
Deathshroud see some pretty big changes too. Stat wise they pick up an extra two attacks on their sweep (although it moves to WS 3+) and they gain another wound. Ability wise, they lose the -1 to wound but they can now Deepstrike outside 6” of Afflicted units and still charge. This is massive for delivering some surprise tricks to your opponent’s backline if you can sneak some stuff back there to get things within your Contagion Range or if you’re running Mortarion’s Hammer.
Poxwalkers gained a ton of usefulness. They got Infiltrate which is a massive change to how you play them. You can now deploy 20 zombies in midfield and if your opponent can’t chew through them (or if you go first) their whole army is going to be Afflicted for the round. This makes them a staple in every list.
Although it’s not Infantry, we’re throwing Chaos Spawn in here because it’s not worth giving them their own section. Weirdly they don’t get lethal hits, but are T7, can scout 6” and can explode for one mortal now. As for abilities, their regeneration is gone and replaced with the ability to do mortals per attack allocated to model on a 4+. This means that for every attack that doesn’t kill the unit (to a max of 6) you have a 50% chance of doing mortals. This is a really nice deterrent to stop your opponent from just charging into your scoring pieces and the T7 means they’ll stick around for a while.
Vehicles
Let’s start with the iconic Plagueburst Crawler. Stat wise entropy cannons move to 36” range which is a welcome addition to the profile. Their ability got replaced with Spore Laced Shockwaves which has you roll for everything within 3” of your mortar target and for every 6+ (5+ if the thing being rolled for is Afflicted) they get “struck by spores”. After resolving your attacks everything that’s struck by spores takes D3 mortals. So this is good on its face, but rules as written, since it’s a persistent effect, every time any PBC fires every unit that was ever struck by spores takes D3 mortals regardless of where the mortar goes. This doesn’t even go away at the end of the turn. It’s unclear how intended this is so I wouldn’t bank on it sticking around but the fact that it’s a status leads us to believe there’s some intentional persistence here. Hopefully we get an FAQ or Errata soon. Regardless, this platform will do very well and will be in a lot of lists.
The Helbrute also makes some waves with its changes. Its ability now gives it +1 to wound against any Afflicted unit (for those following along at home this means it’s always +1 to wound with its melee weapons). It also weirdly got faster, which makes it a pretty nice cheap missile unit to send into your opponent’s army. Powerscourge + fist or autocannon is probably the move here but this is a pretty flexible platform.
The Myphitic Blighthauler can no longer be taken in units of three, but now not only works on Monsters AND Vehicles but also has +1 to hit AND wound against them. This is such a cheap and efficient platform that I would expect to see plenty of them zooming around tables.
Both predators also see some changes. The Predator Destructor’s autocannon gained a point of strength and lethal hits. It also now gives extra AP in shooting for units targeting what it shot (unless its a Monster or Vehicle). This is pretty slick and can really juice up some already potent shooting. The only downside is that you probably don’t need the buff if you shot a whole predator at an infantry unit. The Predator Annihilator now does d3 extra mortals against Monsters or Vehicles on a 5+ (4+ if its Afflicted). This is fine but probably not your first pick for anti tank.
The Defiler, which was already seeing play in Death Guard hull lists, gets a glow up as well. It gained an extra point of toughness, and the cannon gained Lethal Hits. It can also now strip cover after it shoots making it a nifty tech piece in addition to a really solid hybrid platform.
Both of the transports also got some changes. Both can now transport Poxwalkers which is very funny to picture. The Land Raider can now hold 14 models, meaning you can do 6 DS and a character (although I’d just Deepstrike them). Meanwhile the Rhino can now give a unit rerolls in shooting by shooting the target they wanna shoot after they get out. Both of these are really nice changes and pox busses may see some play in the Poxwalker detachment.
Finally you have the lowly Miasmic Malignifier which is still kicking around despite it never ever once ever seeing the table. It now prevents reinforcements from showing up within 12” which is nice for protecting your home, but without OC it’s not nice enough to look at unless it gets really cheap.
Daemons
These are all the same as their index counterparts. For more on those check out our updated index review here. In the book you get access to Rotigus, Great Unclean One, Plaguebearers, Plague Drones, Nurglings, and Beasts of Nurgle. The real value to these is all in the Tallyband Summoners Detachment, where you can combine your Daemons and Plague Marines to get some larger contagion ranges and some neat buffs. There isn’t quite as much synergy as you’d like there, but it’s not bad, either.
How They Will Play
We expect Death Guard to become an elite mid range shooting army with some powerful melee options. You’ll likely be seeing either Bloat Drones with Launchers or PBCs in a lot of lists paired with a Lord of Virulence alongside some Deathshroud. Outside that though there’s a ton of flexibility here. Everything here is viable, from infantry-only to mixed arms to Terminators to vehicle spam. And it’s all likely to be good – this army has some wildly strong datasheets and their points likely come in a bit low for the power you get out of them. If you were playing them before, you may not notice a huge difference in the roles of some units, but you’ll notice they’re just plain better than they were before – Plague Marines are tougher, hit more often with WS3+ power fists, afflict units at a distance. Deathshroud soak more damage. PBCs shoot further and do more. If you like Death Guard there’s a ton to be excited about here.
Example Army Lists
For sample army lists, check out our Detachment Focus articles linked above, where we go into detail on each Detachment and build a list. If you’re looking for immediate gratification, Norman made this one for you as a treat.
Norman's Sample List - click to expand
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
TheChirurgeon: Holy shit this book is absolute fire. When we first got our hands on it we spent a good hour just bugging out over the Datasheets, and at some point vaguely settled on the idea that if the points in the book were accurate, they might be OK.
Then we got the actual points and they were lower.
This book is fantastic. Almost everything in here is useful and playable. The Detachments are solid and offer valid alternatives. The army still has clear challenges in terms of movement – you’re still capping out at 5″ with your infantry and have limited access to uppy-downy and reactive moves – but there’s more durability than ever before and the damage output on your shooting and melee options has been ratcheted up another notch or two.
I suspect this is a temporary situation, however – I’ll be fairly surprised if we don’t see Death Guard get slapped back down hard come June or July.
Until then, Death Guard players will be eating good.
Norman: This book is fantastic. Not only is it strong (and boy is it strong) but it also lets me play Death Guard the way I’ve always wanted: a very elite force of a bunch of thick dudes with long range artillery backing them up. I think the book nails their identity and gives them a bunch of tools to play with. Points are gonna be tricky with this one, for example Deathshroud may need a nerf, so hopefully they get where they need to be sooner rather than later. That said the book isn’t without its flaws. For example some of the detachments are also a little too focused, a few more generic stratagems would have gone a long way in things like Mortarions Chosen or Mortarions Hammer. That said these detachments still have play and a few build to play around with.
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