Chaos cult army list thoughts part 4 - Death Guard

Finally in the series we come to my personal favourites – the Death Guard. Firstly, plague marines have a lot going for them in the codex with the ability to take 2 special weapons in small squads, some close combat advantages (blight grenades, plague knife) and of course the durability factor with toughness 5 and FnP. Not only that, but we have another great advantage in that Typhus allows cultists to be zombies who also have FnP and fearless (and have now been FAQd so you can take large squads). Vehicles aside, who don’t seem to have had a lot of mark love this edition, almost everything can be marked in the codex. Sounds great right? Well, it’s a little but more complex than that and, IMO, one of the most disappointing things about the new codex. 

For starters we have mark of nurgle, which boosts every unit to +1 toughness as you would expect. This can make some units downright nasty, such as bikers (T6!) and obliterators/mutilators (T5, 2W). Makes for a great nurgle theme army so far, conjuring up visions of an encrusted, pustulant army trudging relentlessly across the battlefield with endless shots ricocheting off armour or simply passing straight through them. Unstoppable and terrifying. This is where problems start to creep in.

I personally love the look of death guard terminators and was hoping to add a unit into my army courtesy of Kromlech (legs) and forgeworld (torsos). All the Death guard were turned to Nurgle at the same time so it makes perfect sense that they should all be as durable as each other, whether they are power armoured, terminator armoured etc. I loved the idea of being able to field nigh unstoppable warriors, whatever the points costs, who do everything their little power armour pals do just much better. After all, GK get paladins with FnP, Blood angels get priests to grant their terminators FC and FnP. Surely there will be a way in the Chaos codex to grant your Death Guard terminators Feel no pain? Wrong.

I know a lot of people are moaning about this point, and I’m sorry to say I have to join them. I can see why Phil Kelly may not have wanted to add in FnP as a banner trait for MoN models – quite simply the combos with bikes, oblits/mutils and terminators may have been too powerful. But lets face it, balancing points costs across the board i.e. making them so darn expensive that any advantage in numbers is lost to durability would have sufficed IMO. Even if pairing these units up with Zombie blobs was also considered too powerful, it would have been nice to have been able to at least have the option. I’m certain there are ways of balancing points costs to compensate – other codexes seem to manage i.e. the price of sanguinary priests or apothecary upgrades for paladins, so why not this one?

There is also the problem that the icon of excess does pretty much the same thing as we hoped the nurgle icon would. It does make me wonder if unrestricting the Icons would have been a good idea and just rebalancing the points costs slightly to compensate. For example, making an icon that represented the power and favour of the Chaos Gods and the effect it has on that unit, driving it to perform all acts in servitude no matter the cost. This icon grants the unit feel no pain. You get the idea. Maybe I’m just wishlisting but as one of the armies I was condsidering making (and with more than just plague marines and zombies) I’m rather gutted that I can’t equip any other units with blight grenades, poisoned weapons and especially feel no pain. The only unit you can kind of get around this with are the ever useful bikes – just give them MoS and IoE and call them T5/FnP nurgle bikers. I’m also seriously considering using mutilators as stand ins for terminators with the 2W making them a little more durable as death Guard terminators should be. Here’s the list I would try and run at 2000 points:

Typhus	1
Mutilators	3	MoN
Helbrute	1	reaper, scourge, Heavy flamer,
Plague marines	10	rhino, 2 flamer, fist
Plague marines	10	rhino, 2 melta, axe
Plague marines	10	rhino, 2 plasma, axe
Zombies	32
Zombies	32
Land raider	1	Possession, dirge

Well, this marks the end of the 4-part series with me concluding that the new codex allows the following fluffy armies to be made. Slaanesh comes out in first place with the ability to make a full army of cult themed marines. In a close second place is Khorne which also allows most of the traits of beserkers to be spread around the army. Third place is Tzeentch with terminators mainly letting the side down. Last place in Nurgle, with the lack of ‘feel no pain’ leaving many units with plague marine envy. It’s been fun writing these articles and getting a good idea myself of how to approach army builds around cults. I hope to do the same for the other 5 legions in due course to see what the new codex has to offer them also. Cheers.