With the Death Guard Codex on its way early next year, Games Workshop has released a preview of the five key changes to the Death Guard rules that will have the biggest impact on how the servants of Nurgle play on the tabletop.
First, let's look at the Death Guard's Inexorable Advance ability:
With Inexorable Advance being a detachment ability, every unit in a Death Guard detachment have access to it. The ability to move and shoot Heavy weapons without penalty gives the Death Guard the ability to remain mobile and hit hard. This will go a long way to help Mortarian's Traitor Legion play the mission better, an absolute key to success in Warhammer 40,000 9th edition. Inexorable Advance also synergizes will with the Malicious Volleys ability, allowing infantry to take advantage of their Rapid Fire weapons on the move.
Inexorable Advance also gives an advantage to Death Guard vehicles. They can fire at full efficiency from close range.
The next ability we will be looking at is the Deadly Pathogens ability. This ability allows for wargear upgrades to the Plague Weapon carried by a Death Guard character. Deadly Pathogen adds 1 Strength to a Plauge Weapon, and allows you to choose one of seven effects as well. Here is Viscous Death...
This can be a great upgrade to the twin plague spewer that's on the new Lord of Virulence datasheet.
This will give you re-roll Attacks, and bring the Strength up to 6 for the twin plague spewer. Knock down those T3 hordes by hitting on a 2+ and re-roll 1's on to wound rolls.
Remorseless is the ability to receive the next preview. It's an ability given to all Death Guard Infantry, including: Plague Marines, Possessed, Blightlord Terminators, and Deathshroud Terminators. Remorseless gives more defense to these already Toughness 5 bodies. Losing one of these expensive infantry to Combat Attrition can be brutal, so the ability to ignore modifiers can help save you from additional losses.
Yes, the one we have all been waiting for, Disgustingly Resilient. Disgustingly Resilient the rule that defines Death Guard.
The revision of this ability has been quite controversial on the internet. My personal opinion at this time is that, it actually looks good, but we can't judge it in a vacuum since any single ability can only be judged in the context of an entire codes. We just don't have the whole Death Guard codex at this time.
When you take the new Disgustingly Resilient and the fact that so many Death Guard units are gaining a wound, this is a huge jump in power level for the Death Guard. Pun intended, the Death Guard are about to become one of the most Disgustingly Resilient armies in Warhammer 40,000.
Last up, is the Contagions of Nurgle ability. This ability has a 1" radius in round one, so if anyone comes barreling into engagement range on round 1, they will be affected by the Contagion. We're looking at you Harlequins. I like the idea of this sickness slowly spreading as the battle continues. It adds a ton of flavor to the army.
Fast, durable units are going to be your best bet to start spreading the Contagions of Nurgle early. The new fortification, Miasmic Malignifier, can also spread Nurgle's Gift. It can be set up 12" from the enemy deployment zone, and starting in round 1, it can spread Contagion 9 inches.
That's all the ability previews for now, but we can't wait for the Death Guard Codex release early next year. We just placed an order for a ton of Death Guard, our first Chaos faction.