Living Plague stops opponents benefitting from any Aura abilities while within 3” of the Warlord. Not good against every army, but going to absolutely crush some opponents, especially on Mortarion. Speaking of… Plagueburst Crawlers are probably going to be the MVP of this list in most games. With that wall of plaguebeef in front of them, they can lob shells at the enemy and once they DO get close, you can infect them with those plaguespitters. Those things are gross. We’re gonna take two of these. They are 135 points + 5 if you want the Entropy Cannon. We’ll save some points for wargear at the end. But that’s going to run us 270 points for now.

The much-maligned Heavy Support slot for Chaos Daemons saw a collection of 10-point increases for every unit. This isn’t that big an increase, but most of the Daemons Heavy Support choices are hampered by being Chariots and not Vehicles or Monsters, meaning they get nothing out of the new rules. The exception is the biggest winner of these rules and points changes: The Soul Grinder, which in going from 180 to 190 points sees only a small percentage increase, and as a Vehicle gains the benefits of Big Guns Never Tire. Fortifications

Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of the Death Guard

Break Their Spirits (1 CP) is used in the Fight phase when you destroy a model with a Terminator model in an Infantry, Beasts, or Swarm unit. That unit gets -4 to its Ld until the end of the turn. This is a super nasty modifier to drop on a unit and killing a single model with blightlords isn’t terribly difficult. It also combines wonderfully with the auras on the Noxious Blightbringer. Spartan Assault Tank • Fellblade • Decimator • Typhon Heavy Siege Tank • Lord of Skulls • Death Wheel • Plaguereaper • Plagueburst Crawler • Silver Tower of Tzeentch Death Guard bring other defensive abilities to the field, too. Daemon engines like the Myphitic Blight-Hauler and Foetid Bloat-Drone have a 5+ invulnerable save. The stratagem Cloud of Flies is a potent defensive buff: for 1CP it grants one of your units the Stealth core ability during your opponents’ shooting phase, inflicting a -1 to hit penalty. I will not stop to tell you how to paint the Biologus Putrifier, this is not what we will do today, in any case here you can find the videos on how to paint the Death Guard marines. FA: Chaos Spawn [6 PL, 69pts, -1CP]: Chaos Spawn, Chaos Spawn, Chaos Spawn, Contaminated Monstrosity (-1 CP)

Don: Possessed are in a weird spot. They basically count as terminators for getting in to our codex transports and I would be willing to wager a Forge World Errata to normalise this is not far off. This means that they will most frequently have to foot slog. Yes, they are a bit faster than our other infantry, but they don’t necessarily hit much harder and have practically no interaction in the shooting phase. I just try to compare a plague marine to a possessed and ask why take the possessed. I compare 2 possessed to a death shroud and still shrug. Did possessed get better with the new book? Yes, they did. Did they improve as much as everything else? No, they did not. I am sure possessed will work, but don’t think they will do any better than points equivalent numbers of plague marines or terminators. Don: As with the other 9th edition codexes, the Death Guard book gives us a set of faction-specific secondary objectives to consider. There are three of these and two of them are pretty good. The Death Guard were the XIVth Legion Astartes, one of twenty forged by the Emperor to spearhead the Great Crusade that would claim the galaxy in the name of humankind. With their victims selected, the Biologus Putrifiers strike. They fire their Injector Pistols into vulnerable spots such as exposed flesh, chinks in armour and eyelenses before squeezing a concentrated dose of foulness into the target's body. The results are rarely less than spectacular, with victims erupting in explosive boils, liquefying into screaming sludge, vomiting billowing clouds of flies, and countless other revolting -- and mercifully lethal --Rob: As for Cultists losing Objective Secured – well, if GW doesn’t want me to buy any more of these ever again, sure. Whatever, I hate painting them anyways. No Mercy, No Respite secondaries are probably going to make more sense with a Nurgle-heavy army where Grind Them Down can benefit large plaguebearer squads that are hard to remove, or large units of Horrors that can split models and be a chore to grind through, making it likely you can score points for Grind Them Down on a smaller number of kills. Your game plan already relies on killing more units than your opponent most games, anyways. Thin Their Ranks isn’t liable to be something you’ll look at and is really more something you want to make sure you’re not giving up inadvertently – taking 90 pink horrors with splitting is going to make this one a no-brainer against you. While We Stand, We Fight isn’t likely to be a good play, since it’s most often going to double-reward an opponent for killing your greater daemons. Start layering the colors on the model to create highlights and shadows. Layering adds depth and dimension to the model. Use a lighter color than the base coat and apply it selectively to raised areas or edges. For example, use a lighter green like Warpstone Glow to highlight the edges of the armor.

Diseased Minions and Infernal Jealousy essentially limit your army building for Death Guard detachments. Diseased Minions prevents you from taking more PLAGUE FOLLOWER units (Cultists) than BUBONIC ASTARTES CORE infantry units in your Detachment, and applies the same restriction for Poxwalkers, so a given Detachment can only have a maximum of one Poxwalker and one Cultist unit per Plague Marine, Blightlord or Deathshroud unit. This really only matters for Poxwalkers because well, you’re never going to take Death Guard Cultists again. Infernal Jealously limits you to one LORD OF THE DEATH GUARD unit per Detachment. What’s a Lord of the Death Guard, you ask? Well, the short answer is “any HQ that isn’t a Malignant Plaguecaster or a Sorcerer in Terminator Armour.” So if you want to take a Battalion Detachment or any Detachment requiring 2+ HQs, it will have to include a Psyker. Typhus, the Traveller, Herald of Nurgle, Host of the Destroyer Hive, master of the dead who walk… Typhus has many names, each one earned through uncountable atrocities enacted in the name of the plague God. The Barbaran youth Calas Typhon kept a secret: he was gifted with psychic abilities, not unlike those of the alien masters that ruled the planet Barbarus. Daemon Engines. Daemon Engines got +1 to their WS and BS. They’re generally much better than they were at baseline, but can no longer benefit from most auras. As the Heresy ground on, Typhon was drawn deeper under the sway of Nurgle. Mortarion was determined to spearhead the Warmaster’s assault upon Terra, but Typhon convinced him that the fleet’s navigators were agents of the Emperor, executing them all. Typhon then offered to use his gifts to guide the Death Guard fleet through the warp. Reluctantly, Mortarion accepted.Ok, let’s talk about the new ones. Here are my votes for the seven best new Death Guard stratagems: Chaos Cultists • Poxwalkers • Pestigor • Plague Zombies • Plague Ogryn • Thrall Wizard • Tzaangor • Tzaangor Enlightened • Tzaangor Shaman • Dark Disciple The Plague Surgeon, though in the narrative more concerned with curating new strains of disease than healing anyone, can return a destroyed bodyguard model to the unit he’s joined during the Command Phase with his Tainted Narthecium. He’s also able to join a unit with another character, and his ‘Diseased Healing’ allows him to return up to three lost wounds to a wounded character within 3″. On the tabletop, Typhus is a powerful character, combining psychic might and the formidable melee prowess of his Master-Crafted Manreaper. ‘The Destroyer’ Hive penalises enemies that target him or his bodyguard unit with -1 to hit. ‘The Eater Plague’ is a deadly psychic ability that on a 2+ inflicts D6 mortal wounds on an enemy unit, increasing to D3+3 on a roll of 6. Rob: Putting aside the fact that I think we’ll see errata for the Terrax drill to make it hold half the number of Possessed – and until it does I think the drill and Possessed have play in a mono DG list – I think there’s potentially a home for Death Guard Possessed, but that home is in a soup list. Without Rhinos or drills to move a unit of 10 across the table, Warptime is your next best bet for getting them where they need to be. Losing contagions for them stings a little, but opening up your arsenal to include Daemons and Chaos Space Marines gives you access to Poxbringers and psychic powers like Shrivelling Pox and Virulent Blessing as well as the Veterans of the Long War Stratagem. It’s the one area Possessed bring something to the table that Blightlords don’t, by virtue of being DAEMON units. I don’t know that Possessed are good enough with 1 damage weapons to make this worth it, but I think someone’s going to try.

It’s a solid list, and a few of them can be given to squad champions via a Stratagem. Deadly Pathogens Wings:They’ve definitely given this a proper try and it’s clearly much more in the conversation than most foritifcations we’ve seen, combining an attractive price tag, strong durability and a potentially powerful effect. Whether it works out is probably going to come down to whether you can consistently set it up in a way that leverages the effect without its presence becoming a liability by letting your opponent get extra movement by charging into it, and maybe even waiting out a shooting phase in engagement with it. Don: It seems like the only reason to run Cultists in a DG army is to have really cheap units to perform actions.Chaos Lord • Exalted Champion • Chaos Champion • Aspiring Champion • Sorcerer Lord • Daemon Prince • Daemon Prince of Nurgle • Daemon Prince of Tzeentch • Death Guard Lord The Keeper of Secrets’ datasheet got updated again, returning the unit to its rightful 14″ Movement. Despoiled Ground (Battlefield Supremacy): (end game scoring) This secondary gives you four conditions to score points off of at the end of the game: Both will add anti-tank firepower; the Crawler is slow, durable, carries a huge plague mortar that can target units out of line of sight, and has the option for sponson-mounted Entropy cannons, while the Blighthauler is fast, comparatively fragile, and happiest when it follows up a salvo of missiles and melta-fire by charging into enemy lines. As the Horus Heresy approached, however, curdled pride turned the legion away from the Imperial cause, and towards darker ends. Captain Calas Typhon seeded secretive lodges within the legion, creating a secret society that was more loyal to the legion than to the Imperium, while the Primarch Mortarion nursed his own old grudges against the Emperor. Mortarion was among the first to declare his fealty for Horus when the Warmaster dragged the Imperium into civil war.