Detachment Focus: Mortarion’s Hammer (Updated September 29, 2025)

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 Mortarion’s Hammer from the Death Guard.

The new Death Guard Codex comes with a dizzying amount of quality datasheets, providing a plethora of different ways you can approach building a list. Lets be honest though, you’re here for the tanks. Sure the big smelly guys and the zombies are cool but the big tough vehicles are one of the main draws of the faction. Mortarion’s Hammer focuses on those units while also providing some tools for a more well rounded approach.

Changelog

• 2025-09-29: Updated for the Q3 balance update
• 2025-04-26: Initial Publication

Detachment Overview

First and foremost, Mortarion’s Hammer is a Vehicle Detachment. While the Detachment rule itself helps everything (especially one specific non-vehicle unit we’ll discuss later), almost all of your stratagems only work on Vehicle units. Expect to bring some Drones, Blight-Haulers, and maybe even Plagueburst Crawlers or Defilers with this one. The point increases to Plagueburst Crawlers really hurt this one, but it still has a ton of play and there are just matchups that can’t handle a cavalcade of cheap vehicles.

The Video Version

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

Detachment Rule: Miasmic Bombardment

At the start of each battle round, pick a number of enemy units more than 12″ away from every model in your army that is on the battlefield. Until the end of the battle round, those units are Afflicted. You can pick 1 unit in an Incursion game, 2 in Strike Force, and 3 in Onslaught.

This is a really simple rule, but it can be devastating under the right circumstances. For one, your Plagueburst Crawlers can now reach out and hit backline objective holders with the benefit of Rattlejoint Ague applied (-1 to saves). But the real fire here is using this to create windows for your Deathshroud Terminators to deep strike in more than 6″ away from Afflicted units. There are a ton of other applications as well – this is a very flexible rule. That said, it’s also a rule that kind of doesn’t matter late in the game unless you’re suddenly out of position across the table from something you need to kill – you’ll typically find that by round 5 you often don’t have any units you can mark.

One thing to note with this Detachment is that 12″ rule – you’ll often be running Poxwalkers in this Detachment, and using them as screens, often ahead of the army. If you’re doing that, you’ll want to be careful that you don’t push so far forward that your screens stop you from using the Detachment rule – this will often happen if you deploy your Poxwalkers 9″ away from the enemy deployment zone using their Infiltrators ability. Make sure to plan around this when you’re deploying them.

Enhancements

Unfortunately since vehicles can’t get enhancements, there isn’t a ton here that’s really on theme with the Detachment. The best you’ll get is something that works well with a Lord of Virulence, this Detachment’s best friend. That said, there are some bangers here.

• Eye of Affliction – Gives this character’s unit Ignores Cover. This is fine but most of the time you’ll be running Lord of Virulences with Deathshroud, and those all ignore cover anyways. Good if you’re running a unit of Blightlords, though.
• Bilemaw Blight – This one can only go on a Plaguecaster. In the Shooting phase they get +12” on their Plague Wind. This is fine but isn’t really helpful given the only way you’ll want to run Plaguecasters here is in a Rhino where they won’t get the benefit.
• Shriekworm Familiar – Once per battle round, this model’s unit can use the Fire Overwatch stratagem for free. Now this is what I’m talking about. This is amazing on Deathshroud with a Lord of Virulence, where you’re automatically hitting with their Plaguespurt gauntlets when you fire Overwatch. 
• Tendrilous Emissions – This one’s the must-take. A Lord of Virulence model in your army gets Lone Operative while they’re within 3” of a VEHICLE unit and he gives those Vehicles the ability to re-roll 1s to wound with ranged attacks. This is amazing and will help keep your buffs online even farther into the game, allowing your Lord of Virulence to take up more risky positions out in the open in order to spot targets for the rest of your army. You also don’t have to take him alone for this benefit, but you probably should.

Stratagems

The Stratagems on offer here give you a lot of interesting tools to work with, including several that boost your movement on vehicle units. You won’t necessarily be using them all most games, however – there are a lot of good tricks but nothing you’re absolutely using every game.

• Blighted Land (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP) – At the end of your movement phase, you can select a terrain feature within 24” and visible to a vehicle in your army and everything within 3” of that terrain feature is Afflicted until your next turn. This can be brutal when used in conjunction with your Plagueburst Crawler’s Spore-Laced Shockwaves ability if your opponent is bunched up around a terrain feature. The two CP cost is a bit steep but if you can make it happen this stratagem can be devastating. This is typically something you use in a game going second, on the first turn, or going first on your second turn.
• Relentless Grind (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – The quintessential vehicle Detachment strat. This lets your vehicles go through walls while moving. You basically need this if you want to play Defilers at all, but it’s plenty good on Blight-Haulers and PBCs to push them through walls in a key moment. Can also be good on Helbrutes.
• Drawn to Despair (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – This is the one stratagem in the Detachment that works on Non-Vehicles. For one CP a Death Guard unit gets full re-rolls to hit against a target they can see in your opponent’s deployment zone. There’s not a ton of great shooting in Death Guard that isn’t on vehicles and won’t already be benefiting from your Lord of Virulence painting targets to make this worthwhile. If you’re running Blightlords, it could be nice for them.
• Font of Filth (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase. This one simply gives a Vehicle’s weapons Assault for a turn. Useful for when you need just a few extra inches for optimal sightlines, getting around corners. This and Relentless Grind essentially give you a way to hide two units behind terrain, then move them out and snag good sightlines. Also helpful for extending onto an objective with one of your 3 OC vehicles and forcing opponents to play around the sudden burst of range.
• Eyestinger Storm (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – In your opponent’s command phase you can force a battleshock test on every unit on an objective that a vehicle in your army can see. This doesn’t have any penalties to the roll, which can make it a bit of a long shot, but it could be nice to deny some points and it’s nice you can use it before the battleshock step so they can’t use Insane Bravery to automatically pass their test. This combos well with Deathshroud, whose -1 Ld aura makes it hit a bit harder. This isn’t super reliable, but the upside of spending 1 CP to cost your opponent 5+ CP and keep them off Stratagems (or orders) for a turn is huge. 
• Stinking Mire (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – at the start of your opponent’s charge phase you pick a vehicle from your army and enemy units charging it get -2 to their charge rolls until the end of the phase. Great for guarding your home objective with a Plagueburst Crawler or just putting your thumb on the scales during your opponent’s go turn. Helps mitigate one of your biggest challenges with the army, which is keeping your units out of melee with the enemy. This is a good one to have in a pinch, but be mindful that opponents can and will just roll high enough to make the charge anyways. This one’s better as a deterrent tool than something you actually use.

Playing This Detachment

This Detachment skews you toward a shooting castle with some mid board brawlers/control units. You want a Lord of Virulence selecting a target each turn for all your Vehicle-based blast weapons to systematically remove your opponent’s units from the table as you set up your board state. The lists here essentially consist of three parts: Vehicles to make up the core of the army, Poxwalkers to screen and extend contagion range, and Deathshroud Terminators to take advantage of your ability to tag units with the detachment ability. 

The Detachment ability is crucial here – in most games you’ll be combining it with Rattlejoint Ague to give a target -1 to saves. That makes it ideal for taking down key targets from a distance, and that’s also why this detachment loves Plagueburst Crawlers, whose mortars can hit targets out of line of sight at what is functionally AP-1. This is gold for taking out your opponent’s key home objective holders and scoring units on the first turn – you want to use this to tag units like Biovores, Scouts, Grots, Flayed Ones, and Cultists, using it to take them out and derail your opponent’s strategy.

If you’re running Skullsquirm Blight (-1 to hit), then this ability is helpful for tagging your opponent’s best anti-tank shooting, keeping them off peak efficiency. Doomsday Arks and T’au units in particular chafe at taking that penalty. But regardless of which you pick, the ability’s core benefit is forcing an opponent to spend the entire game screening Deathshroud Terminators out ouf their backfield, where you are constantly threatening 6″ deep strikes with the ability to just tag two units and drop down near them. A Hammer list needs at least one units of Deathshroud Terminators at a minimum, and  often runs two. You typically don’t want to bring them in at the same time unless doing so will cripple your opponent – you want that second round of deep strike threat.

Your biggest challenge with this Detachment is melee pressure – you have lots of blast options and any list you build will likely run three heavy blight launcher drones – and lots of speed, but no ability to fall back and shoot and a large number of blast weapons. You’ll need to make effective use of your screens to stay out of trouble and losing efficiency.

There are multiple ways to attack this detachment after the points increase to PBCs, though they still have a place – they can just win you some games outright, and that can make up for their cost. Since the hike, Predators have become more common in Hammer lists as a threat that can do plenty of damage at a long range and strip cover from a target. Having a large number of dangerous, semi-durable light vehicles gives the army a way to trade up into other armies in a way that can be really frustrating for opponents. There are some opponents you’ll just outlast on unit counts, even with the dataslate changes. You don’t want to play fast and loose with your vehicles, but you can afford to trade them against more elite armies.

Finally there’s the ally option: A double battle cannon knight despoiler. Death Guard contagions are unique in that they afflict and debuff the target, and do not require the unit attacking them to be a Death Guard unit. This means that say, a Chaos Knight with two battle cannons can suddenly show up from reserves and shoot an afflicted unit at -1 to its saves and -1 to its toughness, letting it punch up into T10 and T11 targets and just absolutely wreck vehicles.

Strengths

• Leans Into Some of Your Best Units. Plagueburst Crawlers, Deathshroud, and Drones with Launchers all love this Detachment and you’ll be looking to run those in your lists anyway.

• Fantastic Detachment Rule. as we mentioned above, the Detachment rule is very flexible no matter what Plague you pick and it unlocks some combos that aren’t possible in other Detachments.
• The Lord of Virulence. It’s hard to overstate how valuable this guy is, making your vehicles even better while also providing a midboard action bozo who’s reasonably tough is a great add to the army.

Weaknesses

• Limited Scope. With five of your six stratagems only working on vehicles, you’re really pigeon holing yourself with the list options here.

• Non-Synergistic Enhancements. With the exception of Tendrilous Emissions, your enhancements won’t help your Vehicles do their job better or really make the game plan this Detachment wants you to adopt any better.

• Hyper Elite. Death Guard is already a fairly elite army, but making a list that wants to take a bunch of vehicles will leave you a bit light on the ground compared to something like a Flyblown list.

Devin Du Plessis’ List

There are a few different ways you could build a Mortarion’s Hammer list, and Hammer lists are perfectly capable of winning events with PBCs after the points increase in the Q3 balance update. Devin took this list to a 4-0-1, third-place finish at the SA Nationals event in late September.

This is very similar to what I ran when I won the Tabledtalk GT in late August, only trading out a unit of Deathshroud Terminators for two Scouting units of Chaos Spawn – a fine substitution. The key here is to use the PBCs to put immediate pressure on the opponent, often combining them with Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) to single out key action and objective units in the opponent’s army and kill them before they can provide any value. It’s one of the few lists in the game right now that really enjoys going first as it can spend that turn staging and disrupting an opponent’s plans – being able to score Overwhelming Force on the first turn by killing an opponent’s sticky objectives unit is a triple threat: It scores VP on a secondary that is hard to score early, destroys a key objective holder before it can sticky an objective, and forces the opponent to use a “real” unit to hold that all game, taking it out of the battle.

Adam Somers Vine’s List

For an alternative take, we can look at Adam’s 4-1, 5th place list at the same event, trading out PBCs for Predators:

Adam's List - Click to Expand

This one is real terrain-dependent – Defilers just cannot move on some maps, even with Stratagem help, but brings a lot of power and has more points to work with than lists running PBCs. Predators in particular are a lot cheaper and Defilers give you more of a mid-table brawling presence as they can actually fight effectively and punch into bigger targets to finish them off. What this list does better is going into horde and elite melee armies, where you have more anti-infantry firepower to work with and a better answer to getting charged (angry crab noises).

Final Thoughts

Mortarion’s Hammer lets you skew into some of the best and coolest units in the Death Guard roster while providing a pretty unique playstyle compared to the other detachments. There’s a lot of great tools here to make your vehicles sing and punish your opponent for daring to share a table with you. If you’ve got a big stinky motor pool of Death Guard tanks and Daemon Engines, this is the Detachment for you.

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