Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and gaming progress through 2025. Last time around I talked about playing practice games with Codex: Death Guard and getting in some teams practice for the upcoming GHAST event I’m attending this weekend.
Since then I’ve had a couple of more practice games, but they’re not games I can actually talk about at the moment. I’ve been testing some different builds with Death Guard in them however, and getting a better feel for the army. Last time around there were some things I realized about the army, and it’s worth repeating those here:
- One big unit of Deathshrouds seems like the correct amount. Two eats up so many points, especially two units of 6, and one does enough – it kills, it shoots, and it threatens and opponent’s screens and backfields. I may look at a unit of three later, but right now I’m thinking 1×6 and a solo Lord of Virulence.
- The Lord of Contagion is the best pick for that, as Lance + Sustained Hits on the unit gives them the melee output they need to be truly dangerous.
- The three bloat-drones is the right call and I’m going to build every list that way.
- Two units of Poxwalkers is likely the correct number. At least two, anyways.
- I need to build more seriously around Plague Marines as units and figure out where Plague Marines “fit” into these lists is the biggest issue. I want at least one Rhino for them, and while I don’t love the Tallyman, only costing 40 points is pretty hard to beat.
- I think I still want the Lord of Virulence in there, but I can probably run him solo. Maaaybe with three Deathshroud, but I don’t think that’s necessary.
Based on that, I played a practice game with an updated version of my list, and ended up testing the following:
Second Test Game list:
Virulent Vectorium
2000 Points
CHARACTERS
Lord of Contagion
Typhus
Daemon Prince of Nurgle
Biologus Putrifier
Biologus Putrifier
Foul Blightspawn
BATTLELINE
2×10 Plague Marines
DEDICATED TRANSPORT
2x Rhino
OTHER DATASHEETS
2×10 Poxwalkers
1×6 Deathshroud
3x Bloat Drone with HBL
2x Myphitic Blight-Hauler
The Test Game
I ran a test game with the new army to get a feel for how they’d do, and understand what I might need to change. The game itself was pretty short and not worth talking about, but here are the key findings:
- The Daemon Prince has to be the Warlord. He’s tough, and the ability to extend contagion range for 2 CP requires targeting your warlord while he’s on the table, so making this work basically means the DP has to be your warlord.
- The Lord of Contagion brick is perfect. It’s very nasty, and able to bring down a lot of threats the turn they arrive. They had the right feel when it came to punching up into tougher targets, and that’s exactly what I was looking for.
- The 2×10 Plague Marines weren’t it. I think 1×10 is more the play, and possibly 2×5 after that. A single big brick can do work; two bricks just wasn’t where I wanted to be and reintroduced the hitting up problems.
- Tyhpus isn’t as good as the LoV. I like Typhus; he’s very solid. But he shit his pants again in this game and didn’t do enough to help me, so I think it’s time to swap him for the equally-costed Lord of Virulence. Even if he only survives one turn after dropping in, he gets to help me focus down key targets.
- The Blight-Haulers are really good. Turns out Multi-meltas +1 to hit and wound and LETHAL HITS agianst vehicles and monsters can really push through some damage. I want more of them in my army.
- I really want PBCs. Death Guard really don’t want to turn around, and PBCs help stop that. Plus they’re just very good units and give more durability.
While overall I think the right move here is two PBCs and a Daemon Prince, I have three painted PBCs and my only painted DP has wings so I’m opting for three PBCs in the final list. Their mortars are stupid good right now, and that’s even if you don’t use the stupid “never goes away” wording on their mortars.
Based on that, here’s the final list I ended up with:
Death Guard
Strike Force (2000 points)
Virulent Vectorium
CHARACTERS
Lord of Contagion (110 points)
• 1x Manreaper
Lord of Virulence (90 points)
• 1x Power fist
1x Twin plague spewer
Malignant Plaguecaster (60 points)
• 1x Bolt pistol
1x Corrupted staff
1x Plague Wind
Tallyman (40 points)
• Warlord
• 1x Close combat weapon
1x Plasma pistol
BATTLELINE
Plague Marines (95 points)
• 1x Plague Champion
• 1x Plasma gun
1x Power fist
• 4x Plague Marine
• 1x Blight launcher
2x Heavy plague weapon
4x Plague knives
1x Plasma gun
Plague Marines (95 points)
• 1x Plague Champion
• 1x Plasma gun
1x Power fist
• 4x Plague Marine
• 1x Blight launcher
2x Heavy plague weapon
4x Plague knives
1x Plasma gun
DEDICATED TRANSPORTS
Chaos Rhino (85 points)
• 1x Armoured tracks
1x Combi-bolter
1x Combi-weapon
1x Havoc launcher
OTHER DATASHEETS
Deathshroud Terminators (300 points)
• 1x Deathshroud Champion
• 1x Icon of Despair (Aura)
1x Manreaper
2x Plaguespurt gauntlet
• 5x Deathshroud Terminator
• 5x Manreaper
5x Plaguespurt gauntlet
Foetid Bloat-Drone with Heavy Blight Launcher (100 points)
• 1x Heavy blight launcher
1x Plague probe
Foetid Bloat-Drone with Heavy Blight Launcher (100 points)
• 1x Heavy blight launcher
1x Plague probe
Foetid Bloat-Drone with Heavy Blight Launcher (100 points)
• 1x Heavy blight launcher
1x Plague probe
Myphitic Blight-Haulers (90 points)
• 1x Bile spurt
1x Gnashing maw
1x Missile launcher
1x Multi-melta
Myphitic Blight-Haulers (90 points)
• 1x Bile spurt
1x Gnashing maw
1x Missile launcher
1x Multi-melta
Plagueburst Crawler (195 points)
• 1x Armoured tracks
2x Entropy cannon
1x Heavy slugger
1x Plagueburst mortar
Plagueburst Crawler (195 points)
• 1x Armoured tracks
2x Entropy cannon
1x Heavy slugger
1x Plagueburst mortar
Plagueburst Crawler (195 points)
• 1x Armoured tracks
2x Entropy cannon
1x Heavy slugger
1x Plagueburst mortar
Poxwalkers (60 points)
• 10x Poxwalker
• 10x Improvised weapon
Exported with App Version: v1.33.0 (79), Data Version: v609
The idea here is to drop down to 2×5 units of plague marines and use them more as utility pieces that can punch than real damage/durability units, and use the vehicles for most of my damage output. There’s only one unit of Poxwalkers here, and the plan most games is to Infiltrate them and use the solo Tallyman to hold the backfield objective unless my opponent doesn’t have uppy/downy or deep strike threats, in which case I can sticky it early and leave. The Tallyman himself is a budget version of the DP and works as a fine compromise.
After that, it’s vehicle damage, baby. The list is super mobile with some good shooting and decent counter-punch from the plague marines and deathshroud. It’ll likely struggle a bit into melee pressure builds so I’ll want to avoid those but I like the matchup more into Chaos Knights now, even if it’s running fewer Deathshroud overall. I went with a Plaguecaster over a blightspawn because I liked his shooting out of the rhino a bit more, even in Overwatch and slowing enemy units can be pretty valuable.
Hobby Progress
As with the games, there’s hobby progress I can’t show this week. There’s stuff I *can* talk about though, which is shoring up some of my Death Guard. By my reckoning I need a trio of Blight Launcher Bloat-Drones moving forward and right now I only have one. I can use the other two as proxies, but I’d rather get a full set, and I already had an unassembled HBL drone sitting in my pile of unopened stuff. So I went ahead and put him together:
I don’t know if I’ll have him painted by Saturday, but I’m going to give it my best shot. At the very least, he’ll be ready for Dallas. I figure I can proxy a double spitter drone as a blight launcher drone a bit more easily than a fleshmower.
Next Week: GHAST and Dallas Prep
We’re now entering a brutal stretch of the year where I have three events in four weekends. I’ve got GHAST this weekend, which is fortunately close to my house and a bit more chill, then next week I’ve got the GW US Open in Dallas, and in two weeks a Teams event in Ottawa. It’s the busiest part of the year for me and after that things will quiet down a bit. I’ll be back next week with a recap of my games at GHAST and thoughts on Death Guard, and be sure to come back Saturday for our review of Codex: Thousand Sons.
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