FA: Chaos Spawn [6 PL, 69pts, -1CP]: Chaos Spawn, Chaos Spawn, Chaos Spawn, Contaminated Monstrosity (-1 CP) Once you have selected an eligible unit to declare a charge, you must select one or more enemy units within 12" of it as the targets of that charge. The targets of a charge do not need to be visible to the charging unit. Exalted Sorcerer • Sorcerer • Warpsmith • Dark Apostle • Master of Possession • Master of Executions • Lord Discordant • Warsmith • Death Guard Sorcerer • Lord of Contagion • Malignant Plaguecaster • Plague Surgeon • Tallyman • Scarab Occult Sorcerer • Scarab Occult Terminators

As the Horus Heresy approached, however, curdled pride turned the legion away from the Imperial cause, and towards darker ends. Captain Calas Typhon seeded secretive lodges within the legion, creating a secret society that was more loyal to the legion than to the Imperium, while the Primarch Mortarion nursed his own old grudges against the Emperor. Mortarion was among the first to declare his fealty for Horus when the Warmaster dragged the Imperium into civil war. Wings: As well as the one’s called out above, you get the now-standard extra Warlord Trait and Relic strats, and for the latter there’s a separate strat letting you give a sub-set of the relics to unit Champions, Marine supplement style. The extra trait and relic strats both have the new wording requiring your actual Warlord to be Death Guard to use them, so you can’t dip into the traits and relics here without a reasonable commitement to the Plague Legions. The other two new ones that caught my eye were: Acidic Malady (20pts): +1AP. Surprisingly great on a Malignant Plaguecaster, as pushing their staff to S8 AP-2 makes it much, much more dangerous for opponents to wander into bonk distance. A Biologus Putrifier is a Chaos Space Marine specialist found exclusively within the ranks of the Death Guard Traitor Legion. These individuals are driven by an obsessive desire to test their concocted plague-batches to perfection, for it is the Death Guard's desire to spread Grandfather Nurgle's putrescent gifts to every corner of the galaxy. It’s been a long road to get here but Death Guard players can finally rejoice and enjoy the long-awaited gifts of Grandfather Nurgle because Codex: Death Guard is nearly upon us! Games Workshop have been teasing us with some incredibly nasty rules over the last four weeks and thanks to the wonderful folks over there we were finally able to sit down with a copy of the new book and dive into the rules.For his part, Mortarion is content to let his wayward son roam, spreading Nurgle’s gifts across an unwilling cosmos. Sometimes they make war together, when the cause will aid Nurgle’s plans – such as when Typhus supported Mortarion’s conflict in the Ultramar Segmentum. Some weapons have ‘Blast’ listed in their profile’s abilities. These are referred to as Blast weapons. In addition to the normal rules, the following rules apply to Blast weapons: The Bloodthirster and Great Unclean one are still overpriced and the Great Unclean one suffers from the new terrain rules, which make it visible through obscuring terrain. The rest of the HQs made out OK with 5- and 10-point adjustments with the exception of the Winged Daemon Prince of Chaos (+30), who is the big loser here as a result of the inexplicable need to make every Daemon Prince cost the same amount of points despite having different statlines, rules, and powers. The Winged Daemon Prince was already a rare sight in Chaos Daemons and so that’s not likely to change now. Rob: I have to admit I was skeptical they’d produce a fortification worth fielding competitively but the Contagions rules for this thing are solid – the Toxic Presence rule means that it always counts the current battle round as 4 for its contagions rules (so, max range), and its Putrescent Fog rule gives friendly Death Guard Infantry within 6” Light Cover or -1 to be hit if they already had light cover. Those are pretty great rules but the clincher is that you can deploy this model and its furnace buddy within 6” of each other anywhere more than 12” away from the enemy deployment zone and any enemy models, allowing you to drop these guys mid-table and control sections of the board as your units move up. They’re also a good way to score points for having objectives in contagions range for the Despoiled Ground secondary objective. B+ HQ: Lord of Change, Exalted: Random, Relic: The Impossible Robe, Powers: Infernal Gateway, Gaze of Fate, Treason of Tzeentch, Warlord: Born of Sorcery

During the Declare Battle Formations step, for each Leader in your army, if your army also includes one or more of that Leader’s Bodyguard units, you can select one of those Bodyguard units. That Leader will then attach to that Bodyguard unit for the duration of the battle and is said to be leading that unit. Each Bodyguard unit can only have one Leader attached to it.

Grandfatherly Influence (1 CP/2 CP) upgrades a unit of Chaos Spawn to get +1 Toughness and gain Disgustingly Resilient, and costs 2 CP if the unit has 4+ models. I really like Spawn in 9th edition and the rate here of 1 CP per 3 models improved is pretty solid. They’re hyper efficient with this buff, and you’ll probably see most armies that use them take exactly one squad with this. First off, a number of rules changed and a lot of these directly impact Chaos Daemons. Changes to Melee Combat Contagions: The Plague Company rules give you seven plagues to spread, and the book provides you a bunch of tools to manipulate them and unleash them where it matters most.