Clearly, the Tallyman has been busy writing down new tactics for the Death Guard to use, as War of the Spider features lots of Stratagems. If you like your Plague Marines to get up close and personal, pay a Command Point to make them into Trench-fighters.

You can use Plague marines as a bait unit. Most units capable of destroying plague marines cost more than they do in either points or opportunity cost. Next: Chaos Space Marines In this article, we’re joined by Don Hooson and we’ll be looking at the Death Guard, who got a significant boost from the new Armour of Contempt rule. Foul Blightspawn [6 PL, 100pts]: Blight grenades, Krak grenades, Plague sprayer, Revolting Stench-vats, Unholy death’s head grenade, Viscous Death [1 PL, 10pts] You then make a Charge roll for the charging unit by rolling 2D6. The result is the maximum number of inches each model in that unit can be moved if a Charge move is possible. For a Charge move to be possible, the Charge roll must be sufficient to enable the charging unit to end that move: Tri-lobe: +1 to hit if this unit contains three models, this is both for ranged and melee. It is expensive but taking a unit of three would up your damage output quite a bit and help out in the killpoint department as well. Suddenly these guys moving up with a lord of a prince are hitting on 3+ with reroll 1’s. Solid.

The new Force Org

I’m also doubling up on Psykers here and that’s both to give myself some additional mortal wounds output/unit support and create some insurance for myself if I want to go for Warp Ritual or Interrogate. There’s a world where I drop the Inexorable here for the Wretched and potentially swap a Plaguecaster for a Daemon Prince. So right off the bat the flavour text gives us a fairly accurate description of what the unit is good at: mid range tank hunting. The blight-hauler very often will also serve as support units on the tabletop due to their amazing putrescent fog ability (more on that later). Unlike the other Death Guard daemon engines such as the Foetid Bloat-drone and the Plagueburst Crawler these little guys may be fielded in squads of 1-3, gaining bonuses while the squad is at 3 models. Unlike many other vehicle squads they however do not get to split up once the game starts, meaning you do have to keep them in coherency at all times. The result is that Death Guard feel like a strong mid-tier faction now with some interesting options, but not a faction that is likely to dominate. The changes to marines probably mean that we’re in store for a lot more AP-2 2-damage weapons to show up and that’s largely good news for the Death Guard, since paying points for 2-damage weapons is exactly what we want our stupid opponents to do.

Don: So fleeing Vectors is the obvious play. With the doubling of the bare minimum points, it is pretty reliable outside of Custodes and Knights lists. With Ferric blight in the list and Armour of Contempt exiting the game, the ability to flash outbreak a greater blight drone and run it up in to a part of your opponent’s army that needs to be destroyed. It is a shooting army for the most part but has a fairly easy way of getting around phase caps with how many phases it does damage with. The Plague marines can do actions and act as cheap screening units. You can also keep your greater blight drones safe for a turn 5 Despoiled ground play. Don’s list is an evolution of the vehicle-heavy lists he brought to tables in 2021, though he’s lightened up on the Daemon Engines in favor of Forge World units. Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Highlands) may take longer to reach you.

Relics of Decay

If you’re looking for something a little more battle-tested, consider Aiden’s Death Guard list, which he piloted to a 6-0 finish over Craftworlds at the Gravel Pit GT, the first event using the new dataslate. You can find the full write-up in that week’s Competitive Innovations article. Sisters of Battle are another matchup that is now much better for Death Guard. Repentia need to spend a CP to have a real shot at effectiveness against Death Guard and units like the Blightspawn can turn off Zealot. The challenge is that they can score a ton of VP without interacting, which means Death Guard armies need to be ready to go on the aggressive against them. This list is built to be tough, decently fast, and difficult to steal kills from. It should play well against Thousand Sons, particularly if they make the mistake of trying to take Wrath of Magnus. There are other list types out there. See what works for you. Rob’s List With a new batch of rules updates comes the need to revisit the strategies and tactics of each faction. Today Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones is looking at the traitor legions and how the changes to the points, dataslate, and army construction rules affect them.