Contagion Engines: The 11th-Edition Death Guard Daemon Engine Detachment

Two clauses, and the first one is a keyword handout:

• Friendly FOETID BLOAT-DRONE, FOETID BLOAT-DRONE WITH HEAVY BLIGHT LAUNCHER, HELBRUTE and MYPHITIC BLIGHT-HAULER units have CONTAGION ENGINE.
• Friendly CONTAGION ENGINE units' ranged attacks have [ASSAULT].

[ASSAULT] means those weapons can be fired in a turn the unit Advanced. For an army whose guns, bodies and aura all arrive late, that is the single most valuable thing a cheap detachment could hand a vehicle.

Now read the list of names again, because this is where most write-ups of this detachment go wrong. Four datasheets. That is the whole set. The Plagueburst Crawler is not one of them. Neither is the Defiler, nor either Chaos Predator, nor the Chaos Land Raider, nor the Miasmic Malignifier. If your idea of a Death Guard vehicle list is three Plagueburst Crawlers, this detachment does nothing for it at all.

Also note that the three stratagems all target a CONTAGION ENGINE unit, so they inherit the same four-datasheet restriction. The detachment is genuinely narrow, and 1 DP is the correct price for it.

The pack states in the rule text itself that this detachment has the ENGINES tag and cannot be taken with another ENGINES detachment. The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 says the tag has been removed. That conflict gets its own section below.

Three, all 1CP, which is the standard allocation for a 1-DP detachment.

• Fresh Vectors (your Shooting or the Fight). When a friendly CONTAGION ENGINE unit is selected to attack, that unit's attacks can re-roll wound rolls of 1. Note it says attack, not shoot, so it covers a Bloat-drone that shot on the way in and then fought.
• Bloodrust Deluge (your Shooting). When a friendly CONTAGION ENGINE unit is selected to shoot, select one visible enemy unit; that unit is Afflicted until your unit has attacked. This is the detachment's quiet best trick: it applies the army rule to a target that is nowhere near your Contagion Range, and Afflicted means -1 Toughness plus your chosen Plague for the duration of those attacks.
• Soulrot Flux (opponent's Movement). When an enemy unit engaged with a friendly CONTAGION ENGINE unit is selected to make a fall-back move, roll one D6: 1 mortal wound on a 1, D3 on a 2 to 5, and 3 on a 6. It is a punishment for disengaging from a walker.

The habit to build: spend Bloodrust Deluge before you shoot at a tough target, because -1 Toughness moves a lot of wound rolls, and hold Soulrot Flux for the turn an opponent tries to peel a screen off your Helbrute.

Two, and both are Upgrades rather than character relics. This matters: you put them on the war machine itself, not on a Character, so this is one of the few Death Guard detachments where you do not need to buy a character to use the enhancement pool.

• Parasitic Woe-Reaper (Upgrade) (15 pts). CONTAGION ENGINE unit only. When this unit has fought, one model in this unit heals D3 wounds. On a Bloat-drone or Blight-hauler that keeps trading, that adds up across five battle rounds.
• Lancet of the Worldsore (Upgrade) (15 pts). Friendly HELBRUTE or MYPHITIC BLIGHT-HAULER unit only, so a narrower list than the detachment rule itself. This unit has MOBILE.

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

Faction Pack v1.2 prints UNIQUE: ENGINES above this detachment's page and restates the restriction inside the Warped and Rusted Animus rule text. 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. Both documents belong to the same 26 August 2026 release.

The tag mattered for exactly one pairing. On the older reading, ENGINES was carried by this detachment (1 DP) and by Mortarion's Hammer (2 DP), which is a 3 DP total and therefore an entire 2,000-point budget. It is also the pairing every Death Guard vehicle player wants: the mobility detachment plus the armour detachment.

We are not going to state which reading is correct, so we do the conservative thing: we never suggest Contagion Engines alongside Mortarion's Hammer anywhere on this site. If the tags really are gone, you have lost nothing except an option we declined to recommend. If they are not, you have avoided an illegal list.

Some supporting detail, so you can judge for yourself. Death Guard is the only faction whose Munitorum Field Manual page carries the UNIQUE TAG REMOVED note; we checked ten others on the same day and found none. The same site still prints UNIQUE badges normally for other factions, so the badge slot is working. And the note appears on exactly the four detachments the older mirror records as tagged. That is a consistent, deliberate-looking change rather than a rendering gap, which is why we lean toward the tags being gone. It is still not something to build a tournament list on without checking the app.

• Foetid Bloat-drone is named in the rule and is the fastest thing in the army, so [ASSAULT] converts a repositioning turn into a shooting turn.
• Foetid Bloat-drone with Heavy Blight Launcher is a separate datasheet, named separately, built from the same kit, and the ranged half of the pair.
• Myphitic Blight-haulers are named in the rule and are one of the two units the Lancet of the Worldsore can upgrade.
• Helbrute is the other legal Lancet bearer. It is built from the shared Chaos Space Marines Helbrute kit.
• Plagueburst Crawler is worth owning and is not a Contagion Engine. Take it as the anchor that stays still while everything else drives forward.
• Poxwalkers hold the objectives your engines are too busy to sit on.

One omission to note: Death Guard Possessed and the Death Guard Chaos Lord are Warhammer Legends datasheets in 11th edition and do not appear in the matched-play list, so neither is a unit to build around here.

Take it when you own a real block of the four named datasheets and want them to arrive on time. One Detachment Point for Advance-and-shoot on your engines is a good rate, and Bloodrust Deluge quietly extends the army rule to targets your aura will never touch.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. The rule covers four datasheets, not your vehicles, and your Plagueburst Crawlers get nothing. With only three stratagems it will not absorb command points. And the tag question above means one obvious pairing is off the table for now.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Shamblerot Vectorium (2 DP), which hands you a free ten-model Poxwalkers unit into Strategic Reserves in most battle rounds, so your engines never have to stop moving to hold a point. Put Lancet of the Worldsore on the Blight-haulers and Parasitic Woe-Reaper on the Bloat-drone that will be trading every turn. Advance and shoot on turns one and two while your Contagion Range is still short, spend Bloodrust Deluge on the hardest target you fire at, and keep a command point for Soulrot Flux.