In our Faction Focus series we take a look at the game’s factions and talk about their rules, their units, how they play, and what competitive lists for the faction look like. This is part of a larger series of articles in our Start Competing series. In this article we’re looking at the Sons of Mortarion, the Death Guard.

Changelog

Last update June 25, 2025 - click to expand

Why Should You Play This Faction?

The Death Guard may have started 10th edition in a rough place but the release of Codex: Death Guard in May really delivered the faction to new heights. Generally speaking the Death Guard are slow but durable, and capable of hitting pretty hard when they finally arrive on the enemy’s doorstep. They sport some of the game’s toughest infantry and their army ability revolves around getting close and afflicting the enemy with your contagions, weaking the foe before you finish them off. In addition to being tough, they have a good variety of vehicles, and operate as more of a mid-range shooting army these days with some solid melee finishers than a melee army. They’re currently one of the game’s most powerful armies, and have a large variety of cheap, dangerous vehicles they can rely on to support their already very good infantry.

Army Rule: Nurgle’s Gift (Aura)

If your Army Faction is Death Guard, while an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, it is Afflicted. Contagion range changes over the course of the battle – in the first battle round it’s 3″, in the second battle round it’s 6″, and in battle round three and afterward it’s 9″.

Afflicted

During the Declare Battle formations step, select one of the Plagues below. Until the end of the battle, while an enemy unit is Afflicted, subtract 1 from the Toughness characteristic of the unit, and that unit has the effect of your chosen plague.

• Skullsquirm Blight (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit makes an attack, subtract 1 from the Hit roll.
• Rattlejoint Ague (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the Save characteristic of models in that unit by 1.
• Scabrous Soulrot (Aura): While an enemy unit is within Contagion Range of this unit, worsen the Move, Leadership, and Objective Control characteristics of models in that enemy unit by 1 (to a minimum of 1).

Each of these is a powerful effect, though you’ll generally find the most value in Skullsquirm Blight and Rattlejoint Ague, depending on the opponent. Rattlejoint Ague sees the most play by far – the majority of your weapons top out at AP-2, so getting to AP-2 with -1 to saves hits some key breakpoints against things with a 5+ invulnerable save, and it’s generally better to take the offense and table someone instead of getting cute and reducing their effectiveness. Plus, sometimes you give someone -1 to hit and they just roll high and kill you anyways, and that feels awful. It can also give certain armies, like Khorne Daemonkin, fits as they suddenly become anemic with their damage output. It can also be cute against Emperor’s Children for that reason, though you’re usually better off with Rattlejoint Ague into targets with a 3+ save.

That said, there are plenty of times when you’ll want to take Skullsquirm Blight instead – usually when an opponent already has terrible saves or army-wide invulnerable saves. Chaos Daemons and Drukhari are typically opponents where you’ll want -1 to hit, for example. Scabrous Soulrot is interesting as an effect, and the codex adding -1 to move makes it more interesting, but generally speaking this is a very niche effect you won’t be likely to use.

Playing Death Guard well requires managing your Contagion Range and “tagging” targets with an effect. While you can get this from a Detachment ability in Mortarion’s Hammer, the primary way you’ll be doing this is by getting into Contagion Range with your units, and that’s where fast-moving units like vehicles and Chaos Spawn and Infiltrating Poxwalkers can do their best work.

Five Things You Need to Know

• You Need to Learn How to Use the Contagion Rules. Being able to pick a secondary Contagion effect each game allows you to tailor your game plan to the enemy at hand – but doing that effectively means understanding your army and your opponent. Sometimes this will be easy – extra AP is a lot better against enemies who don’t roll to hit often, and much less useful against targets with a good invulnerable save. It’s worth practicing with each effect to understand when and how it helps. For the most part, you’ll be taking the -1 to saves in most games and taking -1 to hit when that doesn’t make sense, such as against Chaos Daemons.
• You don’t need Mortarion on the table anymore. Mortarion is still a very scary unit, and can be a solid threat in the Death Guard army, but he’s not the force multiplier he used to be. He’s expensive but fairly costed, and there’s a place for him in Virulent Vectorium lists, where his ability to hand out a reactive move and general nightmare levels of durability with the Disgustingly Resilient Stratagem make him a nasty threat. But he’s not a must-take, even in that detachment.
• Your Army is slow… kind of. Real slow. Few of your non-vehicle units have more than 5” Movement, and your terminators and poxwalkers have been saddled with 5”. That’s not great, but the good news is that you have a lot of ways to mitigate that now. Deathshroud Terminators being able to drop outside of 6″ from an Afflicted unit makes them an incredible deep strike threat on rounds 2 and 3, and your vehicles all enjoy 10″ movement with some solid ranged output that lets them get good angles and hold objectives early. You still lack an up/down mechanic in most detachments, so once you’re down you’re down, but it’s easy to build a Death Guard army which can get where it needs to go during a game.
• Learn how to use Poxwalkers. Almost every list you’ll build will contain two or more units of Poxwalkers. You need to learn where and how to use these based on the matchup in order to ensure you’re getting the most out of the rest of your army. Poxwalkers with Infiltrate are power pieces for controlling objectives, movement, and handing out Affliction via contagion auras.
• Small Vehicles. Bloat-drones and Blight-haulers are some of the game’s most efficient units, and the ability to take a swarm of small, 100-point vehicles that can punch up and trade effectively while moving 10″ and offering OC 3 really gives the Death Guard the kind of mobility and punch it needs. 

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

Welcome to the tenth edition codex version of the army. Every list you build starts with three Foetid Bloat-Drones with Heavy Blight Launcher. This is possibly the game’s most undercosted unit. For 100 points you get a 10-wound, T9 body with a 3+/5++ save and the ability to toss out D6+2 S10, AP-2 3-damage shots with [BLAST]. That’s just an amazing weapon statline, and it combos well with the Lord of Virulence thanks to having Blast, loves getting the extra punch from Rattlejoint Ague, and it has the movement to zip around the table and get good angles on its 36″ gun. You want three of these in every list, and running a Plaguespitter/Fleshmower two on top of those at 90 points isn’t a bad deal, either.

You also need Poxwalkers. They were already one of the army’s best, cheap units but now that they’ve gained the ability to Infiltrate, they’ve fully supplanted the need for Nurglings you used to have. Sure, they’re slightly more expensive, but they more than make up for that with the ability to walk through walls and hand out Contagion auras. Making good use of Poxwalkers is one of the key skills you need to learn to winning games with the Death Guard. Every competitive army runs Poxwalkers, usually two and often three units. They’re cheap, durable, and effective.

In games where your opponent doesn’t key off early kills, you’ll want your Poxwalkers forward, acting as screens to stifle enemy movement and jam them in their Deployment zones so you can spread out and control the table. In games against armies like Coterie of the Conceited or Khorne Daemonkin, you’ll use them more as backfield objective holders and screens to prevent getting tagged early. And against armies with weak or cheap melee infantry like Genestealer Cults or T’au, Poxwalkers can be amazing tarpits, sitting in combat and regaining models turn after turn as opponents flail back at them ineffectively.

Regardless of which Detachment you run, you’ll also want some Deathshroud Terminators. With the ability to Deep Strike more than 6″ away from an Afflicted target, these give you an omnipresent threat which opponents have to play around, and it’s very, very difficult to screen out a unit of three Deathshrouds. A unit of three with a Lord of Contagion or Typhus will kill a lot of things you need to remove in melee, and most lists run at least one and often two units of Deathshroud. Units of three at 140 points appear to be the preferred way to run them, but you’ll occasionally see a unit of six, though this will often be overkill, and removes some of your flexibility when it comes to being able to do that 6″ Deep Strike trick multiple times per game.

Deathshroud are great at killing horde Infantry units with their pistols and amazing at killing heavy infantry in melee with their scythes. They can also be effective at finishing off bigger units after a round of shooting, but you generally want to avoid situations where they’ll be rolling 5+ to wound. On that note, Deathshroud benefit tremendously from adding a Lord of Contagion, where adding [SUSTAINED HITS 1] and [LANCE] turns a 3-model unit into a legitimate threat against even most bigger targets.

In addition to Deathshroud, the Lord of Virulence often shows up in lists, even ones that aren’t vehicle-heavy. He’s both a solid add-on to a unit of Deathshroud, giving them extra ranged output and punching power in melee, but his ability to give units re-rolls to hit is massive for an army which otherwise struggles to get that effect. Even re-rolling 1s with non-Blast Weapons can be a big deal. Even running one of these guys solo without the Mortation’s Hammer Enhancement to give him Lone Operative can be fine – just make sure he’s appropriately protected if you do.

From there, the units you need vary based on how you want to build. Competitively right now there are three major Detachments for the Death Guard:

• Champions of Contagion – These lists run very heavy on Infantry and Characters. The big core here are ten-man units of Plague Marines supported by a Biologus Putrifier and a Foul Blightspawn or Malignant Plaguecaster. You’ll also want more Deathshroud and characters to support them.
• Mortarion’s Hammer – The Vehicles Detachment. This is the only Detachment where you’ll run Plagueburst Crawlers, and also the only place you’ll see Defilers, since they need the Detachment’s “walk through walls” Stratagem to move around most tables. These lists also need at least two units of Deathshroud, as the ability to mark units to be Afflicted every round doubles as a great way to push Deathshroud onto the table.
• Virulent Vectorium – The “standard” detachment, this one supports more “all rounder” lists, and tends to have the best Stratagems, plus a killer detachment ability in that it gives all of your units the ability to sticky objectives. These armies are the ones which tend to use Mortarion, and they’re also likely to pack a Daemon Prince, both for the ability to reduce the cost of the Disgustingly Resilient Stratagem and the enhancement you can give him to make him a mini-Mortarion.

Two of these Detachments make strong use of Plague Marines, who have become one of the game’s toughest units now that they’re T6. The unit still sports a wide variety of guns and melee weapon options, and your best bet is still to give them as many heavy plague weapons as possible, then fill the remaining slots with Blight Launchers, Plague Spitters, and Plasma guns. The unit champion will typically have a plasma gun and power fist, and it’s worth noting those fists hit on a 3+ instead of a 4+ now, though heavy plague weapons are still on a 4+. The big change to these guys from the Index is that their Detachment rule has changed, and now after they shoot they can pick an enemy unit they hit to be Afflicted until the start of your next turn. This means they can’t help Deathshroud drop in close, but what they can do is tag an enemy unit to soften them up for the rest of your army.

Every unit of Plague Marines generally wants a character or two to help them out, and the army is full of dirt-cheap options to go with, though the best of those are the Biologus Putrifier, who has some great ranged weapons and gives the unit critical hits on a 5+, and the Foul Blightspawn, who has a good overwatch gun and gives the unit a once-per-game ability to Fight First, which turns them into a nigh-unchargeable death brick with five power fists and a host of great overwatch guns.

That said, Plague Marines are slow, so you want a Chaos Rhino to carry each unit of them you take. Rhinos have the added benefit of being great support units, able to block movement, hold objectives at OC 2, and give wound re-rolls to the unit it was holding.

There are a host of great vehicles in the Death Guard army, and if you’re running Mortarion’s Hammer, it’s worth looking at Plagueburst Crawlers and Defilers, where the former love hitting Afflicted units with Indirect bombardment and the latter need the ability to walk through walls. That said, Predators and Myphitic Blight-Haulers are also great in the army, and worth looking at to support a vehicle-heavy strategy.

Chaos Knights

With Daemons moved to a specific Detachment – one that’s not very good or worth talking about right now – your big ally option for Death Guard are Chaos Knights. And in that regard, those aren’t the powerhouses they used to be, but they still have some value. A fast-moving, durable, OC 6 unit can bring a lot to the army and it’s worth noting that Rattlejoint Ague doesn’t only work for Death Guard units – it worsens the armour save of the afflicted unit. This means it’ll work just fine for War Dog Brigands, which very much need the boost with their updated datasheet to hand out AP-2 chaincannon shooting. The Brigand isn’t the amazing addition it used to be, but if you want to take one to support your army’s strategy in Vectorium or Champions, it’s not terrible, either.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Mostly by standing on them with units that are tough to dislodge – and then usually walking away if that unit survives. Either a 20-model blob of Poxwalkers that effectively has 30 T4 wounds, a unit of plague marines with OC 2, a unit of Deathshroud Terminators, or a whole ass Plagueburst Crawler. You may also just tag an objective and leave it in the Virulent Vectorium Detachment, if your opponent can’t just deep strike or move onto it later – even if you’re removed from objectives, opponents have to move on to them to take them, thanks to your Spread the Sickness rule.

A successful game for Death Guard isn’t necessarily one where you move onto objectives and stay there, but rather one where you’re able to move through objectives and put pressure on an opponent. That said, once you’re on the objectives, the opponent will usually need to come to you, forcing them into Contagion range. If you aren’t playing Vectorium, you’ll need to reserve some units to sit on objectives, and those will usually be vehicles with good ranged weapons, like Plagueburst Crawlers and Heavy Blight Launcher bloat-drones. Or Poxwalkers, if you haven’t already rushed them forward and sacrified them to kill the opponent.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

If there’s an area the Death Guard can excel at, it’s handling hordes. The army has a solid amount of smaller and ANTI-INFANTRY shooting, including the ability to take Torrent weapons with Anti-Infantry 4+ and 2+. Their Contagion ability is a big help here as well, as being able to wound T3 targets on a 2+ actually does tip most of the army over into effectively able to remove horde threats in melee, while having T5/6 means not having too much to fear from retaliation. Plagueburst Mortars are also excellent for wiping out hordes, and Deathshrouds and Mortarion have sweep modes which can cut through hordes pretty well. That said, against hordes of T5 targets like Ork Boyz this is more of an uphill battle, and your melee output will definitely not be enough, though having Lethal Hits on your weapons and Anti-Infantry options will go a long way to softening them up prior to an attack.

This is an area as well where being able to take two TORRENT weapons in a unit of Plague Marines can provide a lot of value, giving them a bit more oomph as an Overwatch unit for controlling the board. PBCs with Plaguespitters are also great in this regard, as they can take out hordes both at range with mortars and up close, and have little to fear from being charged by weaker enemies.

This is also an area where the Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) comes in handy – the added save reduction from things like plague belchers and plaguespurt gauntlets can be incredibly nasty against targets who’d otherwise rely on cover or be able to shrug off half the wounds with a 4+ save. It’s also handy against 2+ saves in cover, as worsening their save puts them on a 3+ and unable to claim the benefit of cover against an AP0 weapon.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

This used to be a bigger problem but these days Death Guard do quite well into both. That’s because PBCs and Defilers are more effective at shooting – Entropy Cannons now go 36″ and Defiler Cannons gained Lethal Hits – and because the key support units, Heavy Blight Launcher drones and Myphitic Blight-Haulers – are just much better at what they do. Lethal Hits on MBH Multi-meltas is just a wonderful extra touch and even if you aren’t running a vehicle-heavy list, it’s likely you’ll run three bloat-drones and a Blight-Hauler or two, giving you a great amount of anti-tank/anti-monster shooting to throw at a target. You also have the Lord of Virulence now, who can help you single out a given target by giving the army re-rolls to hit against it.

And then there’s Mortarion, who averages more damage now with his scythe and has a 2-damage sweep for when he really needs to kill heavier infantry targets. That sweep combined with Rattlejoint Ague may often end up being more effective into smaller vehicle targets, since 15 attacks wounding on a 4+ against a T9 target may do more for you than 5 attacks wounding on a 3+.

Your Deathshroud Terminators are also great finishers in this regard, and a unit of 3 can charge in and score 4-8 damage against most vehicle threats just on the volume of their attacks. With a Lord of Contagion they become much more effective at punching up and gain the ability to throw Grenades as well, and that can make a huge difference when it comes to taking out a big key target.

Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) is critical here, giving you the extra punch to get through vehicle armor, though you’ll often find going up against knights and multi-tank armies to be more of a marathon than a sprint. The good news is you have plenty of cheap, effective units to win that race in a very slow-and-steady fashion.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

The Death Guard don’t have a ton of amazing combos but there are a few you need to know about and consider when building a list.

• The Plague Bus – This one predates the Codex but generally is still very good. The idea is to put two Malignant Plaguecasters in a Rhino. This can be with Plague Marines or Poxwalkers attached to one of them, but really what you’re after is having both of their guns accessible via the transport’s Firing Deck rule, giving it 2D6+6 Torrent Psychic attacks that hit at S6 AP-2, D3 damage when firing (and typically getting an extra AP from Rattlejoint Ague). That’s just a very nasty gun no matter how you slice it and taking the Hazardous checks on the Rhino is a lot easier to stomach.
• The Walking Daemon Prince + Mortarion – Not necessarily a combo per se, but you want the Daemon Prince if you’re running Virulent Vectorium; his ability to reduce the cost of a Stratagem is huge for getting off 2 CP stratagems on the first turn. Most notably, Disgustingly Resilient, which helps elevate Mortarion into the unkillable threat you need him to be.
• Plague Marine Characters – As we mentioned above, you generally want your ten-model units of Plague Marines sporting a Biologus Putrifier and a Foul Blightspawn to make them into a nasty, unchargeable threat.
• The Lord of Virulence – This guy combos with everything in the army. He’s especially good with Bloat-Drones but giving a Blight-Hauler re-rolls to hit of 1 against targets it’s hitting on a 2+ is just as good, frankly. He’s also great with PBCs, Defilers, Blight Launchers on Plague Marines, and Mortarion’s psychic attacks.

Sample Lists

If you’re looking for sample lists, we’ll be putting those in the Detachment Focus articles for the Death Guard, as that will allow us to properly focus on each way to build. Though as we mentioned earlier, there are definitely three main competitive ways to run the faction, and the book is remarkably well balanced internally, so it’s hard to build a truly bad list for this faction.

Final Thoughts

Thanks to their codex, Death Guard are now one of the game’s best armies – they have great power and versatility, and they’re a blast to play. The Contagion ability is powerful and relevant, they can pack in a ton of weapons to work with, and they can build around faster units that help them extend their effectiveness ahead of slower units on foot. They’re absolutely going to get nerfed in the next dataslate, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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