Champions of Contagion: The 11th-Edition Death Guard Character Detachment

At the start of the battle round, you can select one of the Plagues listed in Nurgle's Gift. Until the end of the battle, that is your chosen Plague instead of any previously chosen Plague.

To see why that matters, remember what the army rule normally does. You pick your Plague during Declare Battle Formations, before the first battle round, and you are stuck with it for the whole game. It is one of the few genuinely irreversible decisions in a Death Guard list, and it is made before you know how the game will go.

This detachment converts that into a decision you make up to five times. Rattlejoint Ague when your opponent's saves are the problem. Skullsquirm Blight when a melee army is about to swing, or when a shooting army is about to fire and you would rather they had cover working against them. Scabrous Soulrot in the round the mission is decided by Objective Control.

Read the wording once more, though, because it is a swap rather than a stack: the new Plague replaces the old one, it does not add to it. Two enhancements in this detachment, Final Ingredient and Cornucophagus, are the ones that add a second Plague on top, and both are narrow.

At 2 DP it leaves 1 DP spare at a 2,000-point game.

Six, and four of them target a DEATH GUARD Attached unit, which is the detachment's whole design: characters glued to squads.

• Grotesque Fortitude (1CP, opponent's Shooting or the Fight). Just after an enemy unit selects its targets, one targeted Attached unit gets +2 Toughness for the phase. Two points, not one. On Plague Marines that is Toughness 7, which moves a very large slice of the game's shooting from wounding on 4s to wounding on 5s.
• Blessings of Filth (1CP, your Shooting or the Fight). One Attached unit that has not attacked scores a Critical Hit on an unmodified 5+ for the phase.
• Malignance Magnified (2CP, your Shooting or the Fight). One Attached unit that has not attacked can re-roll Hit and Wound rolls against a unit below its Starting Strength. A finisher, not an opener.
• Rabid Infusion (1CP, start of the Fight). One DEATH GUARD unit that contains two CHARACTER models has Fights First for the phase. Note the requirement, which is unusual and which shapes the list: you need two characters in the same unit.
• Mobile Vector (1CP, your Movement, before Reinforcements). A DEATH GUARD CHARACTER unit not currently leading a unit attaches as a Leader to an eligible friendly unit within 2 inches horizontally and 5 inches vertically. This is how a character whose squad died finds a new one.
• Death's Heads (1CP, your Shooting). A BIOLOGUS PUTRIFIER unit not in Engagement Range names an enemy unit, excluding Vehicles, within 8 inches and visible; until the start of your next turn that unit has the effect of all three Plagues.

Death's Heads is the one to build around. All three Plagues at once on a single unit is worse hit rolls, worse saves and worse Move, Leadership and Objective Control simultaneously, and it is the reason the Biologus Putrifier is not optional here.

Four, and every one is locked to a different named character. This is the narrowest enhancement list in the faction, and it means the detachment effectively tells you which models to buy.

• Cornucophagus (35 pts). LORD OF POXES only. In Declare Battle Formations select one Plague; until the end of the battle, enemy units within Contagion Range of the bearer have that Plague in addition to any other. The detachment's most expensive enhancement and its most reliable second Plague.
• Needle of Nurgle (25 pts). PLAGUE SURGEON only. The bearer's Tainted Narthecium returns up to D3 destroyed models instead of 1.
• Final Ingredient (20 pts). BIOLOGUS PUTRIFIER only. Once per battle, after the bearer's unit has fought, if one or more CHARACTER models were destroyed by those attacks, select one Plague; until the end of the battle every Afflicted unit has its effect in addition to any other. A conditional second Plague that requires you to kill a character in melee.
• Visions of Virulence (15 pts). MALIGNANT PLAGUECASTER only. While an enemy unit is enfeebled by the bearer's Pestilent Fallout ability, that unit is also Afflicted.

If you take one, take Cornucophagus, because it is the only unconditional stacked Plague in the list and its radius is Contagion Range, which every other Death Guard rule is trying to extend.

(Points come from the Munitorum Field Manual and move with updates; confirm in the app.)

The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3, read on 27 August 2026, lists no Unique Tag on this detachment and prints an explicit UNIQUE TAG REMOVED note against it. The community mirror, a revision behind, records this detachment as carrying UNIQUE: FLYBLOWN, shared with Flyblown Host (1 DP), and Faction Pack v1.2 still prints the FLYBLOWN banner on that detachment's page and restates the restriction in its rule text.

So on the older reading, Champions of Contagion plus Flyblown Host is illegal, and on the current Munitorum Field Manual reading it is legal. The pairing costs exactly 2 + 1 = 3 DP, a full 2,000-point budget, and it is exactly the list a character-and-infantry player wants: infiltrated Plague Marines led by the specialists this detachment is built around.

We do not state which reading is correct, and we never suggest that pairing anywhere on this site. Check the Warhammer 40,000 app before you commit, and ask your event organiser rather than your opponent.

The alternatives are genuinely good. Paragons of Putrescence extends the Contagion Range that Cornucophagus and Visions of Virulence both key off, and Contagion Engines supplies the anti-armour a character list has none of. Neither is affected by the question.

• Biologus Putrifier is named by both the Death's Heads stratagem and the Final Ingredient enhancement, so he is the one character the detachment genuinely requires.
• Plague Surgeon is the only legal Needle of Nurgle bearer, and the natural second character in the two-character unit Rabid Infusion needs.
• Malignant Plaguecaster is the only legal Visions of Virulence bearer.
• Lord of Poxes is the only legal Cornucophagus bearer, which at 35 points is the detachment's most expensive enhancement.
• Plague Marines are the squads all these characters attach to, and four of the six stratagems require an Attached unit to work.
• Noxious Blightbringer is a cheap second character to make a two-character Attached unit legal without paying twice for a specialist.

One omission to note: the Death Guard Chaos Lord and the Death Guard Sorcerer in Terminator Armour are Warhammer Legends datasheets in 11th edition and do not appear in the matched-play list, so neither is available as a second character here.

Take it when your collection is characters first, when you have been burned by locking in the wrong Plague at deployment, or when you want the highest single-unit durability in the faction, because +2 Toughness on an Attached unit for a phase is a bigger swing than anything else Death Guard can buy for 1CP.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. Every enhancement is locked to a specific named model, so the detachment is only as good as your character collection. Four of six stratagems need an Attached unit, so a list of lone operatives gets nothing. It does nothing at all for vehicles. And it is the weakest-sourced detachment in our Death Guard set, because the pack does not name it anywhere.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Paragons of Putrescence (1 DP). Build two big Plague Marines blocks, each led by two characters so Rabid Infusion is legal, with a Biologus Putrifier in one and a Plague Surgeon in the other. Put Cornucophagus on a Lord of Poxes in the middle. Open each battle round by choosing the Plague the coming turn actually needs, spend Death's Heads on the unit you most want crippled, and hold Grotesque Fortitude for the shooting phase that would otherwise remove a block.