ADEPTUS MECHANICUS: LET'S LOOK UNDER THE HOOD

DISCLAIMER: I do not play this army, I have never played this army.  However, I will, at some point have to play against this army.  This will likely be the point of view I will take on many areas, how do I defeat this army.  Those of you who play this army can use that as ways to shore up your defences or strengthen you offence.  If I have overlooked something please leave me a message on whatever social media you find me on.  Thank You.

All the robots

I've got a lovely Bunch of robots, there they are standing in a row.  Big ones, small ones, some as big as a hab-block...
Ok, it's a work in progress, but here we are with my first non-chaos review in a long time.  I'm sure you've read the disclaimer, and I don't particularly care about the back story, so without too much messing around, lets dive right into this sucker.

I think I've used this pic in an older post...

Canticles of the Omnissiah is a table that gives you 2 options, at the start of every battle round you can choose the result or you can roll for the result, but GW did something I LOVE!  If you decide to choose your result, you can not choose the same option twice per game, however, if you roll, you get what you get even if you have chosen or rolled it earlier in the game.  Now there are some shenanigans that exist that can help you with the rolling, which we will get to later.  There are 6 results on the table which are:
1) Re-roll failed morale checks.
2) Roll a D6 for each enemy unit within 1" of a unit with Canticles of the Omnissiah rule, on a 6 that unit takes D3 mortal wounds.
3) Re-roll hit rolls of 1 in the fight phase
4) Count as being in cover
5) +1 S
6) Re-roll hit rolls in the shooting phase.
Clearly the winners are 4 and 6, especially since the strength of this army is it's shooting.  While that's where the real punch of this army lies, there is a strong melee presence so the other results on the table have their place, they just aren't as useful as often.  The real neat thing about this table is that you can roll on it in the first few turns, then choose the one that you really need to get at the right moment.
Another thing I noticed is that every single unit has, at least, a 6+ invulnerable save from the lowly Skitarii to the Kastellan robot.

Much like the Astartes have chapter tactics, and Chaos Astartes have Legion rules, so to do the AdMech called Forge World Dogmas.  These have all the same rules and all of the units in the detachment must have the same dogma in order for that detachment to gain the benefits of the rule.
Detachments from Mars get to roll an additional die on the CotO table and get both results, though if a duplicate is rolled it is not re-rolled and you get only the one result.  The way it is worded is that it looks like you would roll one die, which would affect your whole army with CotO rule, then roll a second one that would affect the Mars detachments.  This one is clearly the best, and when we get to Belasarius Cawl, who just so happens to be from the Mars Dogma, it gets even better.
Graia grants a pseudo sort of Feel no Pain.  Each time a model is either slain or removed due to a failed morale check, roll a D6.  On a 6 that model ignores the last wound that killed it or decides not to run away.  This is kind of better than most of the other Feel no Pain type rolls where you have too roll for each wound suffered and doesn't do diddly against failing morale.
Units with the

dogma ignore the penalty for firing assault weapons after advancing, and treat rapid fire weapons as assault weapons after advancing.  This is pretty good, and helps with the mobility of most of the lighter infantry units, but most of the bigger more dangerous things all have heavy weapons.  A good dogma if you like heavy infantry armies and need the mobility.
The Lucius dogma lets you ignore the -1AP value of enemy weapons.  But only -1AP, it doesn't do anything to -2AP or -3AP.  But you can ignore -1AP.  This is weird but useful if you opponent happens to have a lot of -1AP weapons.
Agripinaa dogma unit fire overwatch on a 5+, the other standard rules for overwatch stay the same.
Stygies VIII are all shadowy and whatnot, so if you are more than 12" away your opponent has a -1 penalty to hit.  Pretty damn good if you're playing against another shooting style army.
Finally we have the Ryza Dogma, allowing units to re-roll 1's to wound  in the fight phase.  Yeah, we already discussed the combat capabilities of this army.  Strong, but not their greatest strength.

For Warlord traits, I'm conflicted.  There are several that seem like they are pretty good, but because I have yet to actually use any of them I can only theorise.  First up you get one free re-roll once per battle that can only be used on your Warlord, PLUS every time you or your opponent uses a CP roll a D6, on a 6 you gain a CP.  Now, this is not for each CP you use, so if you use a stratagem that costs 2CP, I think you still only get one roll.  Next up is your warlord can re-roll failed wound rolls against infantry, beasts, and monsters, not bad but your warlord isn't usually a damage dealer.  Third puts a -1 to hit for any vehicles targeting your warlord, yet if you have vehicles targeting your warlord, you've done something wrong.  Fourth one allows your warlord to repair one extra wound when fixing things that's a pretty good one for obvious reasons.  Next up is a re-roll to the first die generated when rolling for Canticles (remember about Mars dogma getting 2 rolls on the table) which is pretty good if you don't have Belasarius Cawl in your army, who we will talk about later.  Last of the general ones give a 6" bubble of re-rolling failed hit rolls in the fight phase, stacks nicely with the Ryza Dogma making combat more viable.  For the dogma specific ones, the Mars one adds 3" to all aura abilities, pretty good when you got a shit ton of robots you gotta get within 3" of Mr. Fixer-upper.  Graia units within 6" of your warlord can shoot assault and rapid fire weapons while locked in combat, but must target the closest enemy unit.  Nice, but most of the assault and rapid fire weapons are held by infantry who, generally, you would like to fall back so you can shoot with your good heavy weapons.  Now Metalica's warlord trait of allowing units that have fallen back to shoot with a -1 hit penalty is fantastic, not getting hung up on having to fall back is an immense boon to armies that favour shooting, and even the -1 hit penalty is not that imposing.  Lucius adds 1 to your warlords invul save.  Agripinaa reduces the damage taken by your warlord by 1 to a minimum of 1.  Stygies VIII gives a +1 to wound against units that don't have chaos, imperium, or unaligned keywords.  And Ryza gives one of their non-relic weapons +1 to S and D.  Those last 4 are pretty much shit.  If you need your warlord to be more durable, you've fucked up somewhere and are not going to win that battle, chaos and imperium armies make up over half the armies played, and you're warlord is not bad ass enough to deserve a stronger weapon.

Lets move on to units, starting with the stoned caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland...

Well, this is awkward.  Seriously though, take a Mars detachment and take him in every list you can for these 2 reasons.  If you decide to roll on the Canticles table, and remember the Mars Dogma allows you to roll 2 dice, you may add or subtract 1 to the die roll as long as Beli is on the table.  You can also re-roll ALL failed hit rolls in the shooting phase for Mars units within 6", which is actually 9" because he auto comes with the Mars Warlord Trait.  Not to mention his stat line, T6, W8, 2+/5++, a gun that's S10 AP-4 Dd3, regains D3 wounds at the start of your turn.  He is easily worth his 250 points in his special rules alone.

Tech-Priest Dominus is the next best thing, but at 135 points not worth taking if you also have Cawl.  If you are not playing Mars Dogma, he is a solid choice giving a re-roll of hit rolls of 1, also has a 2+/5++, and regains wounds, and can fix stuff.  He also gets a handful of pretty cool weapons, most of which, while not being as deadly, have a better range than Cawl's.

The Tech-Priest Engineer is a great second choice for an HQ, at a very discounted 52 points he can fix stuff.  That's a good thing.

Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard are the 2 light infantry Troops choices in the book.  I really like both, each having a solid place in a list, the rangers being more long ranged, the vanguard being shorter ranged.  They can each take at least 2 special weapons, and an additional one if there are 10 in a unit. I could see the ranges being used as a sniper caddie with 2 Trans-am-antic thingys, you know, the sniper rifle things.  They are 60", S7, AP-2, and Dd3 that can pick out characters.  With some of the upcoming elite slot character becoming super popular I think this is an irreplaceable option even at 25 points a piece.  The Vanguard have an 18" Assault 3 S3 gun that, when combined with their ability that reduces the enemies T by 1, the plasma caliver, and the Graia warlord trait that lets them shoot while in combat, that's a nice little combo right there.

The Kataphron Breachers and Destroyers, as seen above, are one of the less human looking augmented humans in the AdMech army.  The breachers have combat potential while the destroyers are straight up shoot your ass to death.  Destroyers tend to be more popular because people are still stuck with the mindset that shooting is the more powerful than combat.  While both units have shooting weapons, the destroyer's are more powerful, but at a cost both points wise and durability.  The breachers have a better save and more combat attacks while still having a formidable gun themselves.  With all the other shooting that this army has to offer, I think the breachers need another look.

Servitors...I don't get this entry.  It's 4 dudes, 2 of them can take guns, the other 2 are stuck with servo arms.  You need to take a character to make them not suck ass and their best quality is that you can buy them as cheap as possible, which is still 50ish points for the 4 guys, then if you happen to have a couple die, but not all of them, and you have 1 CP left, you can use it to bring back the rest of the unit.  You can't even use them as a speed bump cause they still cost more than 10 pts a dude and there are only 4 of them.

The one and only Elite slot character is the Cybernetica Datasmith, and he is neat, I guess.  Not really much different than the Enginseer, and is actually better in many ways.  This guys main downfall is that he can repair only the Kastellan Robots, but when you look at the Kastellans you see how good they are he, all of a sudden, becomes good.

Speaking of Kastellan Robots, I'm going to jump around a little and move on to them because of their synergy with the Datasmith.  These guys are straight up huge stompy killer robots and I don't quite see how they get past the whole no AI allowed situation, but it probably has something to do with the Datasmith.  Anyway, these guys are basically dreadnoughts that can be taken in unit of 2-6.  They come with power fists and 12" heavy flamers, but the more popular option is the full compliment of 3 heavy phosphor blasters.  This runs about 110 points per, so they are not cheap, but they have some tricks up their sleeve starting with their 5++.  If they happen to roll a 6 when making an Invul save, then the unit that caused the wound suffered a mortal wound.  They also have 3 battle protocols, first of which, and the one that is active when they are deployed, is the Aegis which gives them a +1 to all armour and invulnerable saving throws.  Yeah, that means you're bouncing mortal wounds back on a 5+ when you make an invulnerable save, and have a 2+ normal save.  If you happen to get Shroud psalm on the Canticles they are rocking a 1+ armour save.  Now of course while all ones fail, this still goes a long way to protect them from better AP weapons.  The conqueror protocols remove their ability to shoot, but allows them to attack twice in the fight phase.  The protector protocol is the opposite side of that coin as they cannot move or charge, but doubles all the shots from their guns.  And that is why they are so popular, being able to pump out 18 S6 AP-2 shots per robot is astounding, even with only BS4+.  Stick Cawl next to them and activate the stratagem Elimination Volley and they are racking up the damage.  Do not be surprised to see units of 6 of these guys in every army.  Dealing with them is pretty simple.  Neutralising them will involve assaulting them and trapping them in combat, but unless you have something that hits really hard you will not be killing them any time soon so look to tar pit them.  They will likely be armed will all phosphor blasters so staying alive should not be too big a deal, but unless they are switched to the conqueror protocol, they will not be causing a ton of damage with their 3 attacks.  While you are at it, try to get the Datasmith wrapped up in that assault as, I think I forgot to mention, he needs to be within 6" of the robots for them to change their protocols.

Lets get back on track with the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Infiltrators.  Once again, the AdMech have taken the same basic unit and re-purposed it to do 2 different tasks.  Both have 8" move, S4, W2, SV4+/6++ but the Ruststalkers have an extra attacks and close combat weapons that deal mortal wounds on 6+ while the Infiltrators have access to high rate of fire pistols and taser goads (a hit of 6 causes 3 hits), and can deep strike (basically), which makes them the better choice of the 2.  While being fairly similar, the Ruststalkers not having the ability to infiltrate really changes their role to being a more counter charge type unit, yet they can be more offensive with their movement of 8" rushing up the field.  Both units do only have T3, but they are surprisingly durable due to their W2.  The Infiltrators, well, it should be pretty clear how these guys are good.  They will absolutely delete any sort of infantry unit with their 5 shot pistol and extra hit causing power maul.  Easily worth the 26 points per model.

The Electro-Priests are yet another one of those dual purpose chassis with different upgrades.  The Fulgurite rocks a big stick with a better AP and the chance of dealing mortal wounds while the Corpuscarii has magic gloves that shoots and punches, all hits of 6+ causing 3 hits.  They are only T3 with a single wound, but they do have a 5++ and a 5+FNP.  These guys are super glass cannons and not worth the points, especially when you have other models that are tougher, punch harder, and move faster.  See Sicarian above.

The chicken walkers continue the trend of 2 units made from one body giving them a nearly identical stat line, 10" move, WS BS 3+, S5, T6, W6, Sv4+.  GW really went all in with the dual purpose kits.  The Sydonian Dragoons can be equipped with a taser lance (Melee, S8, AP-1, D2 each hit of 6+ causes 3 hits) or can swap that for a radium jezzail (a S5 sniper rifle).  It also has a -1 mod to hit it which increases it's life and helps it get into combat.  These guys in themselves have a dual purpose role, character sniping or combat.  Since the Rangers have a better gun and are cheaper, I would leave the character hunting to them and keep the taser lance on the Dragoon.  The Ironstrider Ballistarii has either a twin cognis autocannon or twin cognis lascannon.  The cognis means they can advance and shoot with a -2 to hit, luckily there is a stratagem for that.  Not only that, but the Ironstrider is the lightest unit that has access to a lascannon like weapon.  The next strongest gun from all the units we've covered so far is probably the plasma culverin on the Kataphron destroyers but still come up shy when compared to the neutron laser.  Considering their movement, the stratagem that lets them ignore penalties for moving, and their fairly durable stat line, they are a pretty good buy for under 100 points.  Your opponent will have to focus fire on them to bring them down if he wants them down, which takes focus off the rest of your army.  They do not degrade as they get damaged so they will always be moving that 10" and will be just as deadly at the end of their life as they were at the start.

So with an army full of robots, we finally get to the entry that looks least like a humanoid, only to discover that it is actually driven by two of previously mentioned humanoids, and it ends up digesting one of them.  Is that irony?  I'm not super intelligent, I didn't take English literature in university...I didn't go to university, but that feels like irony right there.

The Onager Dunecrawler is basically a vehicle, that 2 Skitarii are plugged into, shoved inside of, and drive.  The Vanguard steers and is slowly digested, the Ranger shoots and doesn't care that his buddy is slowly being eaten by the machine they are riding in.  Fuck'n weird.
Anyways, the Dunecrawler, just so happens to also carry around the the biggest gun in the book, the Neutron Laser at HeavyD3, S10, AP-4, and Dd6.  It also has a minimum damage of 3, so if you roll that 1 or 2 it counts as 3.  This sounds amazing, but it only increases your average damage from 3.5 per successful wound to 4 per successful wound.  Still, this is your big guns, and at only 135 points, its not a bad purchase.  It is the first unit that does degrade as it takes damage though, so that 135 is only really worth it until it hits about 50%, then it starts to lose it's value.  It has other weapons available to it, but the only one I have really seen used other than the Neutron laser is the Icarus Array, which is an array of weapons that gets +1 to shooting units with the FLY keyword but -1 to shooting everything else.

The last big stompy robots I have to cover are the knight titans.  They have 4 listed in the book and despite all being different power levels differ in only their weapon choices.  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail with these guys cause they are huge robots with big punchy bits and big shooty bits.  We all know and love them and while they can...

...they are not invincible only having a 3+Sv and a 5++ that only works vs shooting.  You will likely see them with 2 guns, but don't think you can get in close with them and tie them up, not only can they just walk away OVER enemy INFANTRY, it can shoot and charge after it falls back, plus it can make 12 attacks at S8 AP-2 Dd3 with it's feet.  Yeah, fuck hands, who needs that shit?  He's gonna tap dance all over your ass like an old French grandmother stomps grapes for wine.

Or this could happen

That's the last of units, and with that poor woman landing on her face, wind knocked out of her, groaning in agony, we move on to the stratagems.  Some of them I already talked about, where they can be used, who to use them with, so I won't go into great depth.
The first two are worth 2CP and affect the Canticles table.  Again I'll iterate how valuable Cawl is as both of these become almost useless with his ability to roll 2 dice and move them up or down 1.
Zealous Congregation allows a unit of Electro-Priests to fight a second time.  That is pretty cool but it costs 3CP.  This has potential if you use the priests as a counter attack unit later in the game, but that's assuming the priests survive, and even then it means you've been saving 3CPs for it.
I've talked about Elimination Volley, it's the best 2CP you will spend.  Pick a Kataphron Destroyer and Kastellan Robot unit within 6" of each other.  They both get +1 to hit.  To put that into perspective, if you have each unit with 5 members, and the Kastelans are on their protector protocol with all the heavy phosphor, and the destroyers have heavy gravcannons, they can kill a knight.  Yes, those 2 units will make up around 1000 points, but you just killed a fucking knight in one turn!  What more do you want?
We have to talk about Scryer Skull for a minute as it has had some controversy about how it's worded.  It costs 1CP and you play this stratagem anytime to do one of the following: reveal d3 hidden set up markers, identify a mysterious objective, or shoot with an AdMech unit from your army without penalties to your hit rolls from the dawn raid, low visibility, cover of darkness mission rules.  Some people seem to think that this gives the target unit an extra shooting attack, and while the wording may suggest that, it does not follow the format of any other stratagem that allows additional attacks.  Specifically the part where other stratagems say "...may shoot a second time..." or "...may fight a second time...".  Hell, we already covered one for the Electro-priests and it cost 3CP.  I will state this plainly...IT...DOES...NOT...GIVE...YOU...MORE...SHOOTING!  It simply allows you to ignore those mission specific rules hit penalties.
Dataspike is 1CP and lets your character punch a vehicle for D3 mortal wounds.  There are 2 Doctrina Imperatives that give bonuses to hit in the shooting phase or fight phase for Skitarii units, each cost 1CP.  Pretty good if you have a unit of rangers with 3 sniper guns and you really want to hit that Primaris Lt who's is giving all those wound re-rolls.  Even your chicken walkers and dune crawler have the skitarii keyword, as do both Sicarian units.  For 1CP one of your characters can use hit MR. Fix-It ability twice, even on the same model.  One of the better ones in this list is the ability to let your knight (or dunecrawler) use it's top damage profile, regardless of it actual damage, for 1CP.
Acquisition at any Cost (2CP) gives you a huge boost at that critical time when your opponent is looking to take an objective from you, or you have taken one from them and need to hold it.  Pick an infantry unit within 3" of an objective, that units adds 1 to their saving throws and gains +1A until the start of your next turn.  You use this stratagem at the end of your turn though, so you can't really use it offensively.  Although if your unit is also in cover, or has the shroud psalm canticle going on then your opponent might feel a little offended.
You can turn one of your infantry units into Coteaz and shoot at a unit that arrived from reinforcements within 12" of it with -1 to hit.  You can auto-explode one of your AdMech vehicles, so no knights, but I love it.
Another stratagem causing controversy is Fresh Converts.  You pick a unit of Destroyers, Breachers, or servitors with the Agripinaa dogma, pay 1-3CP depending on the units power rating.  You remove it from the table and set it up, at full starting strength, as reinforcements, in your deployment zone, within 6" of the table edge, and outside of 9" from enemy models.  The controversy it's causing is that the FAQ states that this stratagem does not cost any reinforcement points, but people are butt hurt because it's not fair.  That's about all I really get from all the bitching.
You can choose to deep strike a unit with the Lucius dogma for 1CP.  It doesn't place any restrictions on this so feel free to go buck wild on this one.  You can choose to "deep strike" a unit of Stygies VIII before the first turn starts for 1CP, sort of like Alpha Legion...  Ryza sure likes plasma, cause for 1CP you can add 1 to the wound rolls and the damage of plasma weapons in the chosen unit.  Graia infantry units can deny psychic powers on a 4+ for 1CP.  Mars, here we go with Mars again, for 2CP you can give a unit the ability to cause a mortal wound on a wound roll of 6+ in the shooting phase, in addition to other damage.  So that big unit of Kastelan robots that are pumping out 108 shots, use it on them.  For 1CP each you can give a Knight the use of the canticle generated and give +1 to his invulnerable save.

Phew, finally done...right?

Wargear, you'd think it would be something that the AdMech would have in abundance, and good shit to right?  Well you'd be surprised at how many close combat weapons they have in here instead of guns.  Close combat is not this armies strength, and specially not with it's characters.  There are a couple gems in here though that can stack with some other rules to make some really nasty combos.  Like the Autocaduceus of Arkhan Land, where do they get these names from?  This lets you re-roll the result for fixin shit.  Roll a 1 to fix that Dunecrawler when you really need a 2 to get it back up the next damage tier?  This'll help.  Combine this with Tech Adept strat, so you can fix it twice, and your Warlord trait Necromechanic and you're getting +1 to the result.  This means your warlord can fix a model for 4-8 damage.  Per turn.  PLUS he regains a wound at the start of each turn.
That is about it.  Sure there are others, but 5 of them are melee weapons, one is an 18" phosphor blaster, 2 are once per game, and 2 others boost your fight potential.

Lets talk serious for a second.  I'm sure some of you out there are going to rile against me and tell me I am wrong and say all kinds of mean things about my mother and such and such.  It's the internet, I would be disappointed if you all took this calmly.
ADMECH CAN'T FIGHT!  I can't understand the amount of abilities and weapons and rules that are in here to try and polish that turd.  Don't get me wrong, there are a couple units that can pack a punch like Electro-Priests and Ruststalkers AND THAT'S IT!  You can use these guys as counter assault units, but don't take more than 1 or 2 units of them.  The more points you put into them the more points you take away from shooting.

The scariest thing in the army is a big unit of Kastelan robots on defender protocol sitting on a midfield objective with Cawl next to them.  That is a ball of death that can touch you in places you though were safe.  The robots put out 108 shots per turn, so getting them to stop is objective #1.  If you can kill them, do that, otherwise assaulting them and tying them up is smart.  If they have all the guns, for max shooting damage, they won't have fists so they won't inflict a ton of damage in combat, but it's those couple units I mentioned above counter-assaulting that will clear the robots of debris so kill them ASAP.  With that in mind, beware of the unit that has the phosphor blaster arms but keeps the shoulder flamer.  Assaulting that unit will hurt.

Other than that, this army is pretty straight forward.  I couldn't really find any kind of super combo involving overlapping rules and multiple stratagems but that doesn't mean the army isn't good.  It's strong in a very conventional sense, and the few stratagems that are useful make them on that much stronger.

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DEATH GUARD: DO YOU SMELL THAT?

Oh sweet holy mother of god!  It's here!  Ok, kiddies, lets sit back and let me tell you of a time when the Death Guard were actually a playable army.  Way back in 2002, a codex was released, playfully called 3.5, it contained rules to play each and every legion as a legion unto itself.  And here we have it again (and hopefully it will last longer that "Traitor Legions" did), with a bunch of new units and abilities.  Lets go in for a closer look shall we?

Now I could go on and on and regale you with the exploits of the Death Guard, their origins, and their fall from grace during the Heresy.  So I will...

Things begin at the beginning, go figure.  The origins of the Death Guard begin with the Dusk Raiders, warriors built form the gene stock of Albia, an empire of Terra known for it's tenacious resistance to the reunification.  So named for their tendency to attack the enemy as the sun sets, using the change in light to distract their foes.  They favoured the use of heavy infantry with a relentless advance when attacking, and a stalwart/stubborn defence.  Durable and resourceful, they were often self reliant and able to complete any task with out specialist units or weapons, relying on "boots on the ground" and weight of numbers.  Thanks to that durability, they were not simply throwing bodies at the problem as it would seem, each warrior able to withstand large amounts of damage even for an Astartes.

Before they become the Death Guard proper though, they must meet their primarch who has been lost on the planet Barbarus.  The planet of Barbarus is ruled by powerful warlords who live height in the mountains, of which the planet has many of.  Barbarus is also covered in a poisonous fog that becomes denser and more virulent as the altitude increases.  The humans of the planet lived deep in the lowest valleys and were often treated as cattle and experimentation subjects to the evil and grotesque machinations of the warlords of the planet.

Scattered to the winds of chaos Mortarion's pod came to land in the middle of a field post-battle.  Thousands and thousands of bodies littered the ground for miles around, the result of a battle between warlords, of which the winner was lauded as the most powerful on the planet.  More importantly, he was still there.  Hearing the cries, he was amazed that the child actually lived as they were too high of any normal human to survive the poison fog.  He brought the young primarch home with him and taught him everything of war and Mortarion lead the warlords forces against other warlords and their creations which varied from zombies to biological daemonic monstrosities.
Mortarion was still human though, at least mostly, and when he discovered that there were other humans deep in the valleys there was nothing his adoptive father could do to stop Mortarion from leaving and joining them.  Shouting of his treacheries, the warlord made it clear that Mortarion was cut off, and to return would be death.  The realisation that they prey the warlords fought over and experimented on were his own people gave Mortarion a deep self loathing and he vowed to give the people of Barbarus justice.

This was a little harder than expected as he himself was a monstrous human-esq being with pallid flesh and hollow eyes, and it took the raid of a lesser warlord to cement his place amongst the people.  Picking up a large scythe, he waded into the warlords forces hacking them to pieces.  Seeing he was to lose the battle the warlord ascended his mountain where he thought himself safe, not realising that Mortarion's hardy constitution could withstand the poisons, until it was too late.  With the peoples trust earned, he began training them in the ways of warfare, travelling from valley to valley, teaching, fighting, training, and building up the defences.  It wasn't until he created a crude breathing apparatus that he was able to lead other humans into the fog and take the fight to the warlords.  The men that went with him into the fog were the strongest and most resilient he could find and he named them the Death Guard.

I assume they would look something like this.

After years of war, and hundreds of battles, there remained only one warlord left to destroy.  Of course it's Mortarion's former foster father.  Before he could mount an attack, there came rumour of a great warrior who has come to grant them salvation.  This pissed Mortarion off because he would be the one to grant salvation and retribution to the people of Barbarus, not this fancy pants in his shiny gold armour.  However, once Mortarion met the stranger, it became apparent who he was.  It was of course the Emperor, who challenged Mortarion to take the final bastion alone and kill the last warlord.  If he could not complete this challenge, then Mortarion must swear fealty and join the Emperor's ranks.

I can just picture Mortarion with this attitude...

Well, like Yao, things don't go quite as planned.  As Morty ascends the mountain the poisonous gas become so lethal that it begins to eat through the hoses and armour.  As the fog overcomes him he falls unconscious, the last thing he sees is the Emperor stepping in his field of view and cutting down the Warlord just as the Warlord was about to do the same to Mortarion.

This doesn't quite feel right to me though, and I have a feeling that the Emperor manipulated Mortarion to get him to do something very stupid.  There didn't seem to be any time stipulation to the challenge, so why was Mortarion so determined to complete the task right now?  Why was this manipulation required?  Why didn't the Emperor just say, "Hey buddy, I'm your Pa.  Wanna go get some ice cream?  I'm sorry I haven't been there for you, but you know how it is, chaos gods scattering you across the galaxy and all.  I got here as soon as I wanted...  An evil warlord you say?  Oppressing the people you say?  Well, we can only have one of those around here, how about you and I go and end this guy together.  Father and Son, ruling the galaxy."

Either way you spin it, Mortarion kneels and pledges his loyalty, upon which he is introduced to the Dusk Raiders, promptly naming them the Death Guard.  He also double downed on the Combat Doctrine implemented by the Dusk Raiders.  Masses and masses of boots on the ground.  Unstoppably waves of heavily armoured, unkillable, relentless, warriors, each one capable of completing any task at hand being well trained in multiple weapon systems and combat styles.

As the composition of the Death Guard began to shift from being primarily Terran born to Barbarus born, a tension between the two began to develop.  It's never really clear when this rivalry began, but it is pretty clear it that it starts with First Captain Typhon (Typhus).

I'm going to leave the story here.  It picks up in the Horus Heresy books, and if you really liked the paltry story I retold, then I highly suggest you read these books.  It takes you through the battles at both Isstvan sites and the fall of the traitor legions, although none focus on the Death Guard quite as much as "Flight of the Eisenstein".

Lets move on...

So, what do you want to talk about now?  Rules?  Yeah, me too.

Starting off with the special rules we got Death to the False Emperor which we are all familiar with, giving an extra attack on a hit roll of 6+ in the fight phase, Disgustingly Resilient, basically the old school Feel no Pain 5+, and weapons with the Plague Weapon rule allow you to re-roll 1's to wound.  If your army is battle forged, which is pretty easy to do now a days, you also get Inexorable advance, and Plague host.  The latter being "ObSec" and the former allowing all infantry and helbrute units to ignore the -1 to hit penalty for moving and shooting heavy weapons and advancing and shooting assault weapons.  They also change their rapid fire range from "Half the range of the weapon" to 18" which is god damn fabulous, giving that double-tap plasma death bubble an extra 6".  This rule, overall, is amazingly good particularly for the Death Guard army as it helps negate their lack of speed, as almost all infantry units move less than 6".  Being able to advance and still fire assault weapons to full effect actually makes Death Guard Infantry surprisingly quick and dangerous and being able to ignore the penalty for moving and shooting heavy weapons not only helps the Infantry, but really keeps the Helbrutes a viable option as a fire platform and not just a close combat monster, the twin lascannon being a favourite of many.

Running through their warlord traits, there isn't anything mind blowingly awesome but each and every one of them have their uses..  We got +1 to DR rolls(except for mortal wounds), mortal wounds on enemy units within 3" on a 4+, regain one wound at the start of each of your turns, +1 T, reduce the DAMAGE of an attack by 1, and 7" bubble of re-roll ALL failed wounds with plague weapons.  I really like the one that passes out mortal wounds, something that this army does really well, but it will largely go unused if your opponent does not want to get into combat.

Excuse me, sir, do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour Nurgle?  Sir?

While the warlord traits are good, the psychic powers are amazing.  At least some of them are.  Miasma of Pestilence is back, giving a -1 to hit penalty on all enemy units targeting the recipient of the power.  We see Gift of Contagion again, handing out a -1 to A, S, or T.  The fact that the characteristic can't be reduced to below 1 really hurts the -1A result as many units already have only 1A making 33% of this power useless.  Next up we have Plague Wind, which is potentially very powerful against big units.  Roll a number of D6s equal to the number of models in the unit, for each 6 the unit suffers a mortal wound.  Blades of Putrifaction is new, and really really good.  It adds 1 to all to-wound rolls made by the target unit made in the fight phase.  If the weapon used has the Plague Weapon ability, you will deal a mortal wound, in addition to the regular damage, on a to wound roll of 7+(with the power, it's basically a die roll of 6).  Putrescent Vitality only affects Death Guard Infantry units, but it gives +1S&T.  Finally, Curse of the Leper, roll 7D6, for each die roll that is higher that the T of the target, that unit suffers a mortal wound.

That's it Frank, no more chilli for you.

Moving onto a low note, we have the relics.  These are underwhelming, some of them being gimmicky, other just not very useful, but they are free, and they all do something.  So you should take one just for the simple fact that it is better than nothing.  The Plaguebringer replaces a Plague knife, balesword, or power sword with a -2AP, d3D that does mortal wounds on a to wound roll of 6+.  It does not have the plague weapon ability though, so you re not re-rolling 1's, and you can't stack Blades of Putrifaction on it for double mortal wounds.  However, combining it with Blades and VotLW and you will cause mortal wounds on a 4+ in addition to wounding most things on at least a 3+.  The Suppurating Plate is armour that gives a 2+ save, and for each saving throw the wearer makes in the fight phase, roll a D6, on a 4+ the unit that caused the wound takes a mortal wound.  Toss this on a Prince and throw him into a unit that puts out tons of low AP attacks.  Watch as not only does he kill a bunch with Plague Wind, he will also kill a bunch in CC, then they will kill themselves trying to kill him.  The Pandemic staff goes to a psyker and gives them +1 to cast smite.  The weird thing about this one is that it's a weapon, but it doesn't have a CC profile, and we don't know what weapon it replaces.  As it is right now, you can take it on a sorcerer with a force axe and a combi-melta.  Really meh.  The Dolorous Knell is an upgrade for the Noxious Blightbringer only and adds aura abilities.  At the start of EACH Morale phase enemy units within 7" take a mortal wound on a 6+.  Furthermore, enemy units taking a Morale test within 7" must roll 2D6 and choose the highest.  This stacks nicely with his original ability of -1Ld bubble, and the Icon of Despair that Plague Marines can take which is another -1Ld bubble.  Next up is Fugaris' Helm which increases the range of any aura abilities the model has ON IT'S DATASHEET by 3".  That part in all caps in important cause it means that any abilities it can get that are not on it's data sheet are not affected.  Such as the Warlord Trait Living Plague, the one that deals mortal wounds.  Finally, we have the Holy hand grenade, or the Plague Skull of Glothila.  It's a one use Grenade with 1 shot and a range of 7".  If it hits, its basically Plague wind.  Roll a D6 for each model in the unit, on a 6 the unit takes a mortal wound.

Now lets move into stratagems, some of these we see in the Chaos book, so I'll simply mention them and if you want to know what they are you can check out that post.  I will talk about them more when they come up in combos though, so don't worry there.
First up, we have Nurgles Rot.  This is a 3 CP start that targets a friendly Death Guard Character and can only be used once per battle.  Roll a D6 for each non-nurgle unit within 7" of the character, on a 4+ they take D3 mortal wounds.  I find that this being a 1 time use only, and that you need to roll for each unit, 3 CP is a little high.  Still, if you have a bunch of wounded units near you, it could very well be worth it to drop this one and pick them off.
Cloud of Flies is quite possibly the strongest, preventing your opponent from shooting at the target Death Guard Infantry unit unless they are the closest target.  Basically making the unit a character for targeting purposes for 1 CP.  Now, I have heard some contention as to how the wording is interpreted, and it could be interpreted as your opponent must target this unit if it is the closest unit.  It all depends on what word you put the emphasis on, but I believe that the former is the correct interpretation considering the flavour text.
For 2 CP we can have an apothecary.  An model in an infantry unit can regain D3 wounds, or a model can be returned to a unit with 1 wound left.
Did someone kill your tank?  Want them to pay?  For 1 CP Putrid Detonation will automatically cause the vehicle to explode.  I really like this one, especially late in the game when the enemy is in your lines surrounding your vehicles...
Do you like Zombies?  Do you like the idea of all your cultists dying to bolter fire only to stand again and join the ranks the ranks of the shuffling horde?  The Dead Walk Again is a 1 CP strat that changes the Poxwalker rule of adding a model to the unit to include any infantry model that dies within 7" of the target Poxwalker unit.
This last one is my absolute favourite, Blight Bombardment allows EVERY model in the unit to throw blight grenades.  Now with a range of only 6", this strat may only come into play once or twice a game, but holy smokes does it cause a shit load of hits and is part of a huge combo that I will talk about later.

Alright, we covered special rules, relics, stratagems, warlord traits, and psychic powers.  Whats left?  I covered it all, well thank for reading and until next time...

Ok, maybe you didn't really fall for it.

We gotta talk about units!

So the first up is the Daemon Prince, and he is pretty much the same as in the Chaos book with the addition of Disgustingly Resilient.  Now there is one point of contention, that we will have to wait for the FAQ on, in the data sheet it says he can take wings, but there is no points cost for a Daemon Prince with wings.  So we don't really know what the error is, the data sheet or the points list.  He is a beat stick, as he was before, but he is more durable now, for the same points.
EDIT: As I was typing this post the FAQ came out, there IS an entry for a daemon Prince with wings added to the points list for 170 points with no weapons.

Typhus got a little better, in that his weapon improved.  It is now master-crafted and deals a straight 3 damage which is absolutely savage as fuck.  He also swings at S7 and -3AP, and with 4A he is no slouch.  He also has the Destroyer Hive which is a pistol with 2D6 shots S4 and -3AP that ALWAYS hit on a 5+, including during overwatch.  That is pretty damn gravy if you ask me, don't forget you can shoot pistols while locked in combat.  He also has the Host of the Destroyer Hive which gives nearby Poxwalkers a +1S +1T boost.  He can also cast 2 powers and with Putrescent Vitality you can make those Poxwalkers S5 and T5.  He also has the aura that gives other Death Guard units the aura that causes mortal wounds to enemies.  He did get a points increase, which only makes sense because before he was less expensive than this guy...

The Lord of Contagion pretty much remains as he did before with a weapon option.  He can choose between a Manreaper (+3S, -3AP, 1d3D 17pts) or a Plaguereaper (+2S, -3AP, 3D 30pts).  The real difference depends on how much T6 and T7 units you face.  Monster heavy Nids, Rhino rush, Taurox parking lot scions, etc etc.  I like the Manreaper because it's cheaper and I will only really want to throw him in against other infantry units and use him for his Nurgles Gift ability.

Both of these guys are painfully slow, only having a 4"M and halving their advance distance, its almost better to drop these guys in when they are needed.

The Chaos Lord and Sorcerer have not changed.  They didn't get Disgustingly Resilient, which surprised me a bit since the Prince got it, but the Lord does grant the re-rolls to hit rolls of 1, which makes him still useful.  Take him cheap and keep him in the back near your Plagueburst Crawlers and keep the hits coming.  The Sorcerer however, is pretty much pointless as the Malignant Plaguecaster is far better for only 6 more points.  The Sorcerer can take some different weapon options, combi-guns and such, but I still think the Malignant Plaguecaster is better.  You will see why...

Cause he is next.  In a standard load out, compared to the Sorcerer, the Malignant Plaguecaster has T5, Disgustingly Resilient, and causes extra mortal wounds to enemy units if he casts a power with a test of 7+.  He has the same weapons to start, and can cast and deny the same number of powers.  The main difference is the Plaguecaster can't take Terminator armour and has a 5"M.

Here we are at the core of the Death Guard army, the Plague Marines.  Unfortunately, I have not seen a ton of army lists that have multiple units of them.  What I have been seeing is large units of them, this is because of a couple particularly interesting stratagems called Cloud of Flies and Blight Bombardment.  I'll give you a second to double check those, while you do I'll also mention that there are a couple psychic powers that really but them as well, Miasma of Pestilence, Putrescent Vitality and Blades of Putrefaction come to mind.  Since you can't cast the same power multiple times, it makes more sense to have bigger units than more units.  Your back form checking the stratagem?  Good, cause it's time for the first...

So you looked up Blight Bombardment, it allows every model to throw a blight grenade.  Now I have to mention a unit I have not yet talked about, the Biologus Putrifier, he has an ability called Blight Racks that increased the S and D of blight grenades in Death Guard units that are 3" away from him.  In addition to that, any to wound roll of 6+ causes a mortal wound in addition to other damage.  Now you take those things and add VotLW which adds 1 to all to wound rolls.  So in the end you are looking at something, potentially, like this...

Lets say you have a large unit of Plague Marines, and with Cloud of Flies, you have managed to keep most of the alive long enough to get them close to the enemy, I don't know, say a unit of Dark Angels Knights.  These guys all have thunder shields and can do some serious damage with their crazy maces.  Lets say you get 10 Plague Marines within 6" of 5 DA Knights and within 3" of the Biologus Putrifier, then you use the VotLW and Blight Bombardment stratagems, each 1CP.  That means you will get an average of 35 shots, 23 hits (with no re-rolls), 15 wounds with 8 mortal wounds on top of that.  Rolling average, hell, even rolling slightly below average, you are going to wipe that unit of 5 Knights.  Want another example?  Those same 10 Plague Marines will to 16 damage to any T7 Sv3+ model.  That means it will only take 5 Plague Marines to be in range to kill a Dreadnought.

All that and I haven't even really talked about Plague Marines yet.  They have not changed drastically, but have a plethora of weapon options.  Their standard kit is a plague knife, bolter, and grenades, but they have access to all the typical special weapons such as meltaguns and plasma guns, and some not so typical plague weapons such as the plague belcher (basically a flamer with 9") and plague spewer (heavy flamer with 9").  The blight launcher you've already seen, but there are close combat weapons as well.  The bubotic axe, flail of corruption, great plague cleaver, and mace of contagion, all of which offer several options for butchering the weak, certain options even giving you an additional attack.  There is one weapon in specific that I want to talk about, the flail of corruption.  While making D3 hit rolls is pretty good, it's the ability that the wounds carry over to multiple models that really makes this weapon worth it seeing that it kills around 2 single wound. models per fight, which isn't terrible for a single model.

Now, the close combat additions actually bring me to...

That's right, combo number 2 with the same unit.  Once again we are taking a big unit of Plague Marines and using Cloud of Flies to keep them alive, we have to get even closer with this combo, up close and personal.  You need to cast Blades of Putrefaction and use the VotLW stratagem, then get those Plague Marines wielding those close combat weapons into combat.  Once again, lets say we have 10, and all of them are able to make attacks.  Say 2 have special ranged weapons, 2 have bolters, 2 have flails and 4 have axes.  This will result in around 4 mortal wounds, and 8 wounds after saves for a total of 12 wounds, assuming your attacking MEQs.

Well, that is a lot on just the Plague Marines, so lets move on to...

Jesus Christ there is a shit load of combos in this book and the best ones all surround the troops.  What you need is a unit of Poxwalkers, and cultists.  Lots of cultists.  What you need to do is keep all them cultists within 7" of the Poxwalkers, and using The Dead Will Walk Again and the Cloud of Flies stratagem on the Poxwalkers.  Now, since the Poxwalkers can't be targeted by shooting they are safe, and if your opponent targets the cultists, he will kill them, only to see their bodies added to the mass of zombies.  Now, this is going to bog things down, and the Poxwalkers are unbearably slow and will block the units they are in front of so their placement is key.  Also, the Dead Will Walk Again only affects infantry MODELS within 7", not units.  So you will have to have a large cloud of Poxwalkers and cultists that are not very dangerous, not very mobile, and a drain on CP until the magic happens.  There are a couple ways you can manipulate your opponent to your advantage, one of which is to use the stratagems the first turn, then hope he shoots a couple cultists and finds out what happens.  Then next turn, don't use the stratagems and watch him pump all the firepower into the poxwalkers and cultists so that bullshit doesn't happen again.  Or if he happens to have an alpha strike assault list, like some Genestealer cult lists, you do layers of bubble wrap so that the enemy charges the cultists with the poxwalkers behind them slowly growing as models die.  This does not work so well when your opponent has the first turn, but if you can get the poxwalkers within 7" and then shoot the shit out of what assaulted you, you can get a lot of zombies that way too.  Remember, The Dead Will Walk Again stratagem works for a whole battle round.

Cultists have not changed, but they did get buffed by the Inexorable Advance rule allowing them to rapid fire their Autoguns at 18" and not worry about moving and shooting the heavy stubber.

Plaguebearers and nurglings exist, but I advise summoning them.  As they don't have the Death Guard key word, they will stop you from having a Death Guard detachment thus cancelling out the legion abilities.  They are good for holding objectives, creating speed bumps, and causing general confusion.  They will not do much for damage, but the plaguebearers are all equipped with plagueswords so they are re-rolling all failed to wound rolls.

On to the Elite section characters, I'm going to keep these short as this post is running really long.  They all have the same stat line, T5, W4, Sv3+, disgustingly resilient, but their special abilities are their key.

The Noxious Blightbringer allows you to roll 2D6 and choose the highest for advance distances for unit within 7" of him.  This is pretty huge if you are using Typhus and Poxwalkers as a bubble wrap cloud as they are all slow.  This can also give you those much needed inches to jump your Bloat-Drones in someone face to spit plague juice all over them.

Next in line we have the Fould Blightspawn, you gotta love these names right?  He has got 3 tricks up his sleeve.  First, his fancy gun, 9", Assault D6, S2D6, AP-3, D3, Plague Weapon, auto hits, this thing is the flamer from your worst nightmares.  Once per game, he can give a nearby character a Death Head grenade, which will turn any Blight or Hyper Blight grenade into 2D6 shots.  So to add to the first Killer Combo, you could have this guy next to the the Biologus Putrifier and get an extra D6 shots with the grenades.  Now all that sounds great, but this guy has a really strong offencive ability that makes him nearly invaluable against heavy assault armies.  His Revolting Stench prevents units within 7", that have charged or have an ability that allows them to attack first in the fight phase, from fighting first and instead are chosen in order as per normal.  Add the fancy helmet that increases aura abilities to this guy to pump that bubble to 10".

I already mentioned the Biologus Putrifier and how is makes all the grenades better, but he can also explode too.  When he dies he will cause a mortal wound to all non-nurgle units within 7" on a 4+.  The last thing that makes him interesting is a 3" pistol that does D6 damage to non-vehicle models.  So not much really except for the grenade thing.

The Plague Surgeon keeps your dudes alive longer.  How?  By allowing them to re-roll DR rolls of 1. He is also really good at killing space marines getting to re-roll to hit and wound rolls when targeting Adeptus Astartes Infantry/Biker units with his balesword.

Our last new addition to the elite characters is the Tallyman.  He is basically a Dark Apostle, granting re-rolls to hit in the fight phase, but he as another ability that is far more useful.  The Seven-Fold Chant not only sounds amazingly bad ass, it IS amazingly bad ass.  If you have a battle forges army, and again, this is super easy to do, every time you spend command points roll 2D6.  If the result is 7 on the nose, you are immediately refunded the command points you spent.  I know it's only a 1/6 odds, which are not great, but what a fucking awesome rule in every aspect.  Getting free command points, the magic number 7, the bad ass name, the cool model.

So maybe GW read my Chaos Index post, or more likely I jumped the gun on calling GW stupid.  If you remember I called them out for not having terminators on the list of units allowed in the death guard army from the Chaos Index.  Well, we got them now, in 2 variations.  The Deathshroud and Blightlord and they both have T5 and DR.

The Deathshroud we know and love from the Horus Heresy lore, are Mortarions personal bodyguard who are never more than 77 paces from him at any given time.  Well it looks like that rule has slipped a little as you can take these guys anywhere.  They have a couple of rules that accompany them and very little in the way of weapon options.  They have a plaguespurt gauntlet and a manreaper which puts them at a whopping 75 points per model.  They do have S5, 2W and a 2+4++, but they are slow (4"M and halving their advance roll) and only have 2W.  They do something that I've not seen before though, they buff characters.  Nearly everything in this game so far is about characters buffing other units, but these guys give nearby character an extra attack and will also soak wounds from them similar to Look out Sir in previous editions.  It does not look optional though, and the Deathshroud must attempt to take the wound.

The Blightlords are pretty much your normal terminators.  They don't get quite as many close combat weapon options, but they get all the same gun upgrades and they can teleport, which is good cause they too are slow due to their cataphractii armour.  And just to keep thing interesting, on to wound rolls of 6+ with melee weapons their AP increases by 1 (-2 goes to -3)

There are Helbrutes, Possessed, Spawn, Landraiders, Defilers, Predators, and Rhinos, as well as Beasts of Nurgle and Plague Drones.  I'm not going to dwell on these too much.  The former 7 are all the same as in the Chaos Codex, the later 2 are a little more interesting.  The Beasts are pretty much the same as Spawn with an ability that causes unit that fall back from combat to suffer a mortal wound on a 4+, and the Drones are fast.  Other wise they are pretty much the same, lots of attacks, lots of wounds, good harassment units but won't break the enemies lines.

Foetid Blight-Drones got a bit of an overhaul in that they gained 2 new weapon options, the heavy blight launcher (36", Assault 6, S6, AP-2, D1d3) and the fleshmower (Additional 6 attacks in melee, S+2, AP-2 D2), both of these weapons I really like.  The number of shots put out by the heavy blight launcher is huge, but it's rather hefty price tag of 35 points makes me shy away in favour of the discount mower from hell.

The Myphitic Blight-Hauler is an interesting one, it's a jack of all trades but a master of none.  It has a variety of ranged weapons, not limiting it to long range or short range but only BS4+, it has a decent close combat weapon, but with only WS4+, 3A and 1D it's not that dangerous, it also gives the benefit of cover to Death Guard Infantry units entirely within 7" of it and is -1 to hit in the fight phase so it's also a defencive support unit.  It does not suffer -1 for moving and shooting heavy weapons, and it gains a +1 to hit when there are 3 in a unit, oh and you can take up to 3 in a unit and it does not degrade as it takes damage!  Of all it's abilities, it's durability is strong with a 3+/5++ and 5+DR it can withstand a load of punishment for 145 points.  I could easily see taking 3 of these and moving them up the table behind a wall of poxwalkers flanked by Plague Marines, laying down a hail of gun fire in a dozen different directions.

For only 150 points, you can get a Plagueburst Crawler, which is more durable that the Blight-Hauler with T8 and 12W, but has a couple issues with it's use.  It has some options for some pretty powerful guns, but with only BS4+ at full health and the -1 to hit with most weapons when it moves it really makes it's main weapon, the plagueburst mortar, a liability.  While it looks like a fire support gun platform, I really see it for it's use of it's 2 plague spitters and it's durability and the mortar as a secondary bonus gun, being able to pound away at hidden backfield units.  You could take the Entropy cannons(almost lascannon) for only 6 points more, but you would have to support it with a Lord and maybe even a Sorcerer from Chaos Space Marines and Prescience to keep it effective.

The Death Lord, Mortarion

Oh man, this guy looks fucking amazing in both rules and model.  I love that he is not super warped and still has pretty much the same look as he does in the Horus Heresy Forgeworld model, aside that he is bigger and has wings.  I don't really know where to start because we have quite a bit to talk about with this guy, so lets start with what he CAN do.  He can kill shit, really good.  Particularly in close combat with Silence, his massive scythe that has 2 attack profiles, one doing D3 hit rolls for each attack he makes but being only -2AP and 1D, the other being x2S, -4AP and d6D.  He has super-hyper-death head grenades and an "old school" beam weapon that hits each unit between him and his target that's 18" S8 -3AP and D3.  He grants re-rolls of 1 to hit to Death Guard units within 7", reduced the T of enemy units with 7" by 1, hands out mortal wounds to enemy units within 7", and can explode when he dies handing out more mortal wounds to units within 7".  And despite his 18W, 4++, and DR, he is not that durable.  The main reason for this is that he only has a 3+ save and T7 which means that massed Infantry fire can take him out, and of all the battle reports I've seen, that is how he tends to lose most of his wounds.  He is also HUGE and dangerous so hiding him is a pain, and trying to distract your opponent from his is nearly impossible.  When he is not the table his is priority #1, which is what you have to count on.  This might be garbage to say, but for the first couple turns, you can use Morty as a fire magnet to keep the rest of your army safe until you can get units in threat range and take some heat off.  Even then you will still need to try and get him cover and cast Miasma of Pestilence for that -1 to hit.  You can also drop in a unit of Deathshroud next to him to soak some wounds but those guys are expensive and put out a ton of damage themselves.  You can take a Prince or Sorcerer from Chaos Space Marines and Warptime him across the table, but you will likely hit a line of bubble wrap only to have them fall back and then his whole army is primed to kill Morty.  If that is your plan, I would suggest dropping in a handful of other units via deep strike to try and soften up some targets, draw some firepower, and get into combat to stop the shooting.  Either way you look at it, your opponent is gonna look at takin Morty off the table.

Well, that's it, that's all I got.  If you are still reading this I would really like to thank you because you've been a real trooper.  This was a long one, and I know, really late.  The Death Guard book having dropped a couple weeks ago already.  Since you have made it this far, I hope you can hang on just a little more because I got some huge news...

I mean I got a sponsor.

Someone actually thinks my blog is good enough press to want to put their business's name to it, and that name is Maxx Collectibles.  I've actually been gaming and buying my stuff from there for quite a few years now and the owner, and my friend, Garth asked if this was something I'd be interested in.  I made it clear that I would not be changing my writing style to good any time soon and he seemed ok with that.
Maxx Collectibles is located 835 Cavalier Dr, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.  Most of his store is dedicated to collectibles and comics...

...but he does have a significant miniature war-game presence lead by GW product.  He also hosts a monthly painting seminar where skilled painters come to his shop and give tips and advice.  All painting supplies are provided and if you don't actually play, he will provide practise models as well.

Well, thanks for suffering through that, but you'll see these pop up at the end of every post from now on, cause that's how sponsorship works.

If you have any comments feel free to leave them in the comments section, cause that's what it's for, or you can email me at 40kmisfit@gmail.com. Thanks for reading.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.