Tallyband Summoners: The 11th-Edition Death Guard Nurgle Daemon Detachment

Two reciprocal clauses and an allowance, and the allowance is why you take it.

The allowance. You can include PLAGUE LEGIONS units in your army even though they do not have the DEATH GUARD Faction keyword, up to 500 points at Incursion, 1,000 at Strike Force and 1,500 at Onslaught. No PLAGUE LEGIONS model can be your Warlord. At a standard 2,000-point game that is up to half your list in Nurgle daemons.

The first clause. While a PLAGUE LEGIONS unit from your army is within 7 inches of one or more DEATH GUARD units from your army, that PLAGUE LEGIONS unit has the Nurgle's Gift ability. Daemons do not have the army rule on their own datasheets, so this is what makes them Afflict things.

The second clause. While a DEATH GUARD unit is within 7 inches of one or more PLAGUE LEGIONS units, add 3 inches to that unit's Contagion Range. So the daemons pay you back, and a Death Guard unit standing in the bubble is at 6, 9 and 12 inches across the first three battle rounds instead of 3, 6 and 9. Note the 12 inch cap Faction Pack v1.2 added applies after modifiers.

Seven inches is the number to internalise. It is not an aura on a character, it is a mutual proximity condition between two halves of your army, and it means this detachment wants a single dense mass rather than a spread-out board presence. Play it as one advancing block with daemons and Death Guard interleaved, not as two forces on two flanks.

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

Six, all 1CP, and most of them name PLAGUE LEGIONS rather than Death Guard, so half the suite is unusable until you have actually spent the allowance.

• Avatars of Decay (your Shooting). One PLAGUE LEGIONS unit Afflicts enemy units within 6 inches of it for the phase. A second way to apply the army rule from a unit that does not natively have it, and it works even outside the 7 inch bubble.
• Clutching Corruption (the Fight). One DEATH GUARD unit that has not fought can re-roll the Hit roll against enemy units engaged with one or more of your PLAGUE LEGIONS units. The daemons pin, the Death Guard kill.
• All Is Rot (your Shooting). One PLAGUE LEGIONS unit in combat stops counting as being within Engagement Range for the purposes of selecting ranged targets, so you can shoot into the fight, at the cost of a D6 per enemy wound lost, on a 5+ your unit takes 1 mortal wound.
• Mireslick (opponent's Movement). An enemy unit, excluding Monsters and Vehicles, selected to Fall Back from your PLAGUE LEGIONS unit must take a Leadership test and must Remain Stationary on a failure.
• Fleshy Avalanche (your Movement or Charge). A PLAGUE LEGIONS MONSTER can move horizontally through terrain for the phase.
• Persistent Pests (any phase, once per battle). A just-destroyed NURGLINGS unit is replaced by an identical new unit in Strategic Reserves at full Starting Strength and wounds.

The combination to learn is Mireslick into Clutching Corruption: pin a unit that wanted to leave, then re-roll hits with the Death Guard squad that finishes it.

Four, and two are locked to a specific model, one of which is a daemon.

• Beckoning Blight (20 pts). DEATH GUARD model only. Rewritten by Faction Pack v1.2, so this wording is first-party: each time a PLAGUE LEGIONS unit is set up using Deep Strike, if it is set up wholly within 12 inches of the bearer, it can be set up more than 6 inches horizontally from all enemy models instead of more than 8. Two inches does not sound like much until you remember that it is the difference between a reliable charge and an unreliable one.
• Tome of Bounteous Blessings (20 pts). MALIGNANT PLAGUECASTER only. PLAGUE LEGIONS units within 12 inches add 1 to Battle-shock tests, and on a passed test one model regains up to D3 lost wounds, or up to D3 destroyed models return if the unit is Battleline.
• Entropic Knell (15 pts). GREAT UNCLEAN ONE only. In the Battle-shock step of your opponent's Command phase, each enemy unit within 6 inches that is below its Starting Strength takes a Battle-shock test at -1.
• Fell Harvester (10 pts). DEATH GUARD model only. +2 Attacks on the bearer's melee weapons. The cheap generalist option when the specific ones do not fit your list.

Beckoning Blight and Tome of Bounteous Blessings both point the same way: this detachment wants daemons arriving from reserve near your Death Guard, then staying on the table.

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

Spending 1,000 points of a 2,000-point army on units that lack the DEATH GUARD keyword changes the army you are playing, and it is worth being honest about the trade.

What you gain: Great Unclean Ones, which are the biggest bodies available to a Nurgle player, Plaguebearers as an extremely durable objective block, Nurglings as the cheapest screen in the range, and Plague Drones and Beasts of Nurgle for speed the Death Guard do not otherwise have.

What you lose: half your list no longer has Nurgle's Gift on its own datasheets, no longer benefits from anything that names DEATH GUARD, cannot be your Warlord, and cannot take most Death Guard enhancements. Both clauses of the detachment rule exist to patch that, and both need 7 inches.

The practical consequence is that this is the least forgiving Death Guard detachment to position. Break the bubble and your daemons stop Afflicting anything while your Death Guard lose 3 inches of Contagion Range in the same instant. Keep it and you have the widest aura in the faction.

One more constraint that is easy to miss: your Warlord must be a Death Guard model, so your Great Unclean One is a centrepiece rather than a commander.

• Plague Marines are the DEATH GUARD half of the 7 inch bubble, and without a real Death Guard body count the detachment rule does nothing.
• Malignant Plaguecaster is the only legal Tome of Bounteous Blessings bearer, and a character who wants to stand inside the bubble anyway.
• Lord of Poxes is a DEATH GUARD model, so a legal bearer for Beckoning Blight or Fell Harvester, and a durable anchor for the overlap.
• Plaguebearers are the Plague Legions Battleline block the allowance is spent on, and the unit Tome of Bounteous Blessings can return models to.
• Great Unclean One is the only legal Entropic Knell bearer and the Monster that Fleshy Avalanche is written for.
• Nurglings are named by Persistent Pests and are the cheapest way to fill the allowance with bodies that screen.

Take it when you already own Nurgle daemons, or when you want them, because it is the only legal route to fielding them alongside Death Guard. Take it also if you want the widest Contagion Range in the faction without spending your 1-DP support slot on it.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. Half your stratagems are dead until you have spent the allowance. The 7 inch condition punishes spreading out, which is exactly what objective play asks you to do. And it is a codex detachment: the pack rewrites one enhancement but does not reprint the rest, so most of what is below rests on community mirrors.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Paragons of Putrescence (1 DP), because the two Contagion Range extensions stack toward the same 12 inch cap and a character inside the daemon bubble reaches it from battle round two. Advance as one mass. Put Beckoning Blight on a Death Guard character near the front so your deep-striking daemons land at 6 inches rather than 8. Use Mireslick to stop anything walking away, then Clutching Corruption on the Death Guard squad that finishes it, and hold Persistent Pests for the Nurglings unit whose death actually costs you an objective.