Death Guard

How Death Guard play

Death Guard are the game's premier attrition army. Their infantry are slow and extraordinarily hard to kill, and their weapons degrade the enemy rather than deleting them. Nothing about a Death Guard turn is fast, and nothing about it is subtle — you advance, you become difficult to remove, and your opponent runs out of answers before you run out of models.

The contagion mechanic means simply being near your army makes the enemy worse. That passive pressure is the faction's real weapon: an opponent standing on an objective next to your Plague Marines is being ground down whether they engage or not.

The army's problem is always speed. Death Guard win any fight they are allowed to have, and a mobile opponent's entire plan is to not have it.

Building a Death Guard army list

Take mobility on purpose. It is the one thing the army does not naturally have, and a Death Guard list with no fast element cannot play half the primary missions.

Death Guard have an unusually large cast of support characters that can attach to Plague Marines alongside a Leader, which makes the 11th Edition Leader-plus-Support slot system especially valuable here. Filling both slots on a core squad is usually correct.

Death Guard FAQ

Are Death Guard hard to kill?

They are the most durable infantry army in the game. High Toughness combined with damage-reduction and Feel No Pain style rules means they absorb far more firepower than their model count suggests.

What is the biggest weakness of Death Guard?

Speed. The army cannot reach distant objectives quickly, which makes movement-heavy missions difficult and lets fast opponents dictate where the game happens.

How does the contagion mechanic work?

Enemy units near your army suffer penalties simply from proximity, scaling as the battle progresses. It applies pressure without requiring you to act, which suits the army's slow, grinding style.