Your Army is slow. Real slow. Few of your non-vehicle units have more than 5” Movement, and your terminators and poxwalkers have been saddled with 4”. That means some of your movements are going to be deliberate and telegraphed to opponents, making it easy for opponents to plan for your tactics. Become familiar with the Rapid Ingress Stratagem, because it’s going to be a key tool in your arsenal when it comes to putting terminators into a position to do things. You can also mitigate this somewhat with faster units and more vehicles. Aiden took this list to a 5-1, 6th place finish at Warzone Houston but he notably started 4-0 with the list, securing a TiWP for the faction. The Icon Bearer ups the unit’s OC but his real value is a once-per game 12″ Contagion range aura, giving you the ability to surprise unsuspecting enemy units with -1 to their saves or hit rolls. This can also work through walls, opening up enemy units to early bombardments from your PBCs that functionally hit at AP-2. Putting this unit in a Rhino means your turn 1 Contagion threat range is effectively 27″. Smaller model and smaller base. Can fly over enemies and still fit in small gaps, fits in ruins, fits easier in confined spaces next to daemon princes Mortarion etc. Paint any metallic accents, such as pipes or weapons, using metallic paints like Leadbelcher or Iron Warriors. Apply multiple thin coats to achieve a smooth and realistic metallic finish.

Entropy cannons: Heavy 1 S8 AP-4 D D6. Pretty much a las cannon. If you grab two of these on the sponsons the Crawler becomes the promised artillery piece, but i certainly would not call it mobile. The plagueburst crawler does not have a rule that lets it move and ignore the penalty to shoot heavy weapons, meaning its very bad BS of 4+ becomes a 5+ the second you move or are wounded. If you are wounded and move that 5+ becomes a 6+. But let us assume you park the crawler on an objective, dont move all game and just shoot. While you are not in a lower wound profile your ballistic skill is still a 4+. You would have a mortar, shooting D6 for an average of 3.5 shots resulting in 1.75 hits. You then have two entropy cannons resulting in 1 hit. The heavy slugger then adds another 2 heavy bolter hits to that. That’s alright but not very exciting for the price point in my opinion. And that damage output drops drastically as soon as you get wounded. Moreover it might be my local meta, but every other game i am playing against Alpha Legion, Stygies VIII, Alaitoc Eldar, Tzeentch Daemons with a changeling, Dark Angels with a Darkshroud, Raven Guard, flyers such as Stormravens…. Your mileage may vary but in my local meta a BS of 4+ degrading and not ignoring heavy penalties just does not cut the mustard. Chaos Cultists • Poxwalkers • Pestigor • Plague Zombies • Plague Ogryn • Thrall Wizard • Tzaangor • Tzaangor Enlightened • Tzaangor Shaman • Dark Disciple Oh, look, now we have a gradient on the models. This could be airbrush shading, recess shading. You could add mud splatters to the bottom, or slap some weathering powders there. The key is that each layer enhances the layers below it. In this case, the fade gives depth and variation to the chips, and dirties up the transfers, making them more interesting. Equipped with plaguespitters these units really put a lot of pressure on the opponent due to their decent damage output combined with their absolutely top of the line durability. I believe that they should be absolute staples in the mid field to any (competitive) Death Guard army. While the crawler is tougher and cheaper I believe that a good player will be able to do more with the additional benefits of the bloat drone, mainly the fly keyword. However these units are not mutually exclusive and taking a healthy mix such as 2 drones and 1 crawler or even 3 drones and 2 crawlers works very well.PBC's. Man these are horrible. Am I right in thinking that the Disgusting Force strat (flat 3Dam, splash mortals onto units within 3") only affects a single PBC per turn? Last game I played an opponent with two, who in T1 played the strat then had it apply to both...needless to say it wasn't pleasant, my squish sorceres that need to stay within 3" of units were getting splash mortaled to death. extra wounds and higher toughness. T8 versus small arms fire makes a large difference as well as against overcharged plasma and melta. Jony finished in the top 4 with Death Guard at Warzone Houston, starting the event with a loss but ripping off a 5-0 run after that to finish in the top 4. It’s also very notable for the fact that it doesn’t include Mortarion. When it comes to the Death Guard characters, it’s worth noting that while they tend to offer solid options as leaders, many are also perfectly fine as stand-alone takes. Doing so forces an opponent to waste fire on a suboptimal target that can often shrug off more damage than expected – especially for the terminator characters. A lone Terminator Chaos Lord can be pretty nasty, especially as a Contagion generator who throws out extra mortal wounds every turn. The Thousand Sons, meanwhile, will be taking advantage of their psychic mastery to destroy their enemies with blasts of sorcerous witchfire.

Using a sponge or a small brush, dab on patches of brown or orange paint to simulate rust and decay on the armor. For instance, you can use Rhinox Hide or Jokaero Orange to create these effects. You don’t need Mortarion on the table anymore… but you probably still want him. Mortarion is a powerful force multiplier in the Death Guard army and his ability to ignore modifiers is a must-have for overcoming some matchups. That said, you can get a lot more for the points he eats up even at his reduced cost, and as we’ll see in the lists section, it’s possible to play a successful list without him. You’re really going to wish he was around when you go up against movement modifiers or -1 damage, however. This is the most minor point ever, and therefore I almost feel like excusing myself when quoting you. However, STR 8 while fantastic; no longer wounds Orcs on 2+ due to their new T 5 status.

As for whether I’d play it again, ask me on Thursday. I don’t think I’d take this iteration to a GT again any time soon, even if there are some changes to the rest of the game, but for local RTTs and similar, I could see this being a really good time. With the right changes though, the toolset provided here could be a lot closer to viable than the current prevailing wisdom. It was a great challenge and definitely let me flex some different 40k skills and muscles than normal though and I’m glad I tried it out. Basecoat and highlightsOnce the hairspray is dry, you’re free to start applying your base coats and highlights. Since this is a 30k-scheme Death Guard Plagueburst Crawler, I’ll be using Menoth White and Menoth White Highlight, which are amazing go-to colors for any sort of cream, bone, or warm white in your life. On top of that, Kevin’s list goes hard on Predator Annihilators – running three of them. The Annihilator is a bit of an underrated option in Chaos lists, offering three lascannon shots (one of which is twin-linked) that can re-roll their damage rolls on a relatively fast, tough body with OC 4. This gives the list lots of play against knights and other vehicle-heavy lists, while still retaining lots of anti-infantry play via the mortars and Mortarion.

The crawler is also a bit cheaper than the drone, meaning you can get more crawlers for your points (or additional items next to your crawlers). Just to put into perspective how tough this 140 point tank is: a 350 point Landraider takes 9 las cannons to kill it whereas the crawler takes 10! And yes the Landraider has a transport capacity etc but it is 40k’s posterboy for a tough tank. Mobility It bears 2 plaguespitters on the sponsons, which you can replace with the 2 included entropy cannon, and the heavy slugger at the front-centre can be replaced with a rothail volley gun – each option is equally potent, but the biggest worry to the enemy is undoubtedly the plagueburst mortar, whose targeting mechanisms and enormous barrel dominate the rear of the vehicle.

The Death Guard don’t have a ton of amazing combos but there are a few you need to know about and make use of in your games. Plagueburst Crawlers Shade/start the grimeWhat we have now is a very clean, very rusted tank chassis. There’s no mud or grime (yet). To start building some of that up on the armoured panels, I like to use a brown Ink to give the panels some depth. Over the white, this ends up a little orange which just helps with the rust effect as well.