Games Workshop just revealed a lot of new Codex: Death Guard teasers. Come checkout the new Stratagems, Relics, and Warlord Traits.
The latest teaser from Games Workshop is giving us our first look at new features of Codex: Death Guard. Let’s see what they had to say about the new Stratagems, Relics, and Warlord Traits.
Stratagems
The Death Guard have a range of powerful Stratagems available to their army, all of which complement their relentless way of war. Cloud of Flies, for instance, can be used to shield a key Death Guard Infantry unit from enemy fire:
Meanwhile, Nurgle’s Rot can turn a key Death Guard character into a lethal plague bomb – combined with Mortarion’s Host of Plagues, this has the potential to cripple an army in a single turn, or slay characters like Commissars that try and hide behind their underlings!
Our favourite Death Guard Stratagem is Putrid Detonation. Here at Warhammer Community, a popular (if unreliable) strategy is to spitefully spend a key command re-roll to try and make a tank explode. With the Death Guard, things are much simpler – spend a command point on Putrid Detonation and punish your foes for daring to kill your Land Raider!
These new Stratagems look like they are going to do a lot of damage to enemy units if played right. Putrid detonation is going to be huge for getting your Death Guard Vehicles in close and automatically exploding it to cause even more damage, and at 1 CP you can’t beat it.
Relics
The Relics of Decay owned by the Death Guard have a range of fun (and deadly) in game effects. The Suppurating Plate is particularly deadly on a Death Guard Daemon Prince. A 2+ Save is superb on a Toughness 6 model with 8 Wounds and Disgustingly Resilient, while the secondary effect of the armour is punishing on melee units with a high volume of low AP attacks. A unit of Ork Boyz with 80 Attacks, for example, would only be able to deal 2 Wounds to this Daemon Prince, and would suffer around 5 mortal wounds in return!
The Pandemic Staff is a simple relic that helps your Chaos Sorcerers and Malignant Plaguecasters maximise the effectiveness of Smite. It also increases the chances of triggering Pestilential Fallout, another ability that helps your Malignant Plaguecasters stack up Mortal Wounds on the enemy.
The Dolorous Knell is yet another source of mortal wounds (are you spotting a theme here?) and a great way to rack up additional casualties from failed Morale tests.
The three relics show above are going to give you some good options to either increase the survivability or damage output of your Death Guard units. The Suppurating Plate is giving you a Save characteristic of a 2+, and every time this model passes a saving throw you’ll roll a dice, and on a 4+ the unit that inflicted the wound suffers a mortal wound after all of it’s attacks are resolved. Your Psyker is going to get a +1 to the Psychic test, with The Pandemic Staff, when attempting to cast Smite.
The Noxious Blightbringer will get access to the Dolorious Kneel trait. This is going to let you roll a D6 for each enemy unit within 7″ of that model at the start of each Morale phase. On a 6, the unit suffers a mortal wound. Additionally, every enemy unit within 7″ that takes a Morale test of this model must roll two dice and discard the lowest result.
Warlord Traits
While Mortarion and Typhus make for great leaders in a Death Guard army, if you’d rather lead your force with a character of your own creation, there are a host of powerful Warlord Traits to help you do so. Living Plague provides EVEN MORE mortal wounds for anyone foolish enough to stand in the presence of your Warlord:
Revoltingly Resilient means that a Death Guard character will ignore half the wounds he receives – combined with a Daemon Prince wearing the Suppurating Plate, or a Lord of Contagion, your characters are going to be all but unstoppable.
Arch Contaminator is a support-focused ability that helps your Death Guard threaten higher Toughness characters with their plague weapons:
These Warlord Traits are all going to benefit your Death Guard army, and allow you flexibility in how you build them. If you have a lot of plague weapons then Arch-Contaminator is looking like it’s going to be your go to, allowing you to re-roll failed wound rolls when attacking with a plague weapon for all friendly Death Guard units within 7″. Living Plague is going to keep your opponent weary of getting in close. You roll a dice for every unit within 4″ at the beginning of the Fight Phase, on a 4+ that unit suffers a mortal wound.
All in all the new teaser is making the Death Guard look very intimidating on the table top. This may just be the help that the Death Guard needed to become one of the strongest armies.
Make sure you check back in with us Thursday when they’ll be revealing Psychic Powers and universal rules available to the Death Guard.
What do you think about the latest teaser for Codex: Death Guard?.
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About the Author: James Rodriguez
