Death Guard - Vehicle and Armour Assets: Rusted tracks crush rubble and bone. Slime-clogged engines roar, spewing putrid smog into the sky. The ground shudders as though revolted by the passage of the Death Guard battle tanks and other vehicles. These pock-armoured behemoths bludgeon their way through the enemy lines to deliver lethal firepower and bands of warriors into the heart of the foe.Despite his penchant for infantry tactics, Mortarion always recognised the role of heavy armour upon the field of war. However, during the years before the Horus Heresy, many of his Legion's tank crews were wholly Terran, and it was no accident that these were subsequently annihilated during the monstrous betrayal on Istvaan III.The Death Guard have slowly replenished their tank brigades since that time, stealing and desecrating Space Marine tanks and churning out new vehicles from rusted manufactoria on stolen Forge Worlds. The Death Guard still treat their battle tanks as utilitarian supporting assets, not relics or noble constructs to be venerated, and prefer infantry-heavy assaults. Despite their subordinate role in the Plague Companies, however, the battle tank squadrons of the Death Guard and their other vehicle-class assets are a formidable force on the battlefield.Helbrute - Should a great champion of the Heretic Astartes be mortally wounded, they may be consigned to the armoured sarcophagus of a Helbrute so that they can continue to fight. Biomechanical war machines with armoured hides, these monstrous walkers excel in supporting infantry assaults with their punishing firepower and vicious close combat weaponry. Trapped forever within the Helbrute's innards, the husk of the champion is rendered functionally immortal. However, the claustrophobic horror and constant agony of his incarceration soon conspire to drive him mad. Helbrutes become little more than rampaging beasts, bellowing mindlessly as they storm into battle, desperate to inflict as much suffering on the enemy as they can in the vain hope of meting out a measure of their constant torment before being destroyed for good. Helbrutes are a common sight amongst the ranks of the Death Guard. So resilient are Mortarion’s sons that death does not come easily to them. Their unnatural fecundity keeps even the most sorely wounded champion alive long enough to be transplanted into a Helbrute sarcophagus, and ensures that the grafts and sutures take successfully. Mortarion's Plague Surgeons take a perverse delight in sealing rivals and superiors into these hellish mechanical prisons, chanting Nurgle's blessings of decay and rebirth as they do so. It is a testament to the stubborn determination of the Death Guard that most bear their incarceration with stoicism, and take far longer to devolve into insanity than the champions of other Traitor Legions. When not in battle, Death Guard Helbrutes are kept chained in the lowest decks of Plague Fleet warships, engulfed in cradles of squirming tendrils and slime-slick flesh. The machines feed parasitically upon the energies of the ship, healing their wounds and growing bloated and strong. By the time they are herded aboard heavy landers and ferried into battle, Death Guard Helbrutes are saturated with the blessings of Nurgle. Seething with unholy vitality, they storm the enemy lines like living battering rams, spreading airborne contagions and foul plagues even as they tear their enemies limb from limb.Foetid Bloat-Drone - Labouring through the air on buzzing turbines and driven by the trapped essence of a Nurgle Daemon, the Foetid Bloat-Drone drifts towards the enemy like an armoured plague fly. This hideous war engine bears monstrous weapons onto the battlefield to annihilate the enemies of the Death Guard. Clad in rusting plates of rot-iron armour, their hulls overflowing with flabby foulness, Foetid Bloat-Drones can withstand ferocious amounts of punishment and still keep fighting. They are designed to hover in close, drifting lazily through the most treacherous of terrain to provide supporting fire with their deadly and virulent Plaguespitters, which spit out a hideous cocktail of hyper-concentrated toxic slime. No cover or defence can protect the target from this lethal rain of filth. Victims find their bodies convulsing and twisting in the grip of a thousand maladies, rotting and bloating until they collapse into a heap of decaying, highly infectious matter.Myphitic Blight-Hauler - Powering into battle on a trio of articulated track units, the Myphitic Blight-Hauler is a light Daemon Engine that provides the Death Guard with heavy firepower wherever it is needed. Resembling a Bloat-Drone that has been stripped of its turbines, this strange machine has heavy weapons mounted on its carapace, typically a combination of Multi-Melta and Missile Launcher for mid-to-close range tank hunting. Most Death Guard commanders use packs of these Daemon Engines to fill the role that Havocs or Obliterators might in other Traitor Legions. The possessor entities that animate Myphitic Blight-Haulers are as loyal as hounds to their masters, rushing to obey any instruction they are given.Plagueburst Crawler - Plagueburst Crawlers are lumbering, formidable siege tanks whose huge ram-blades, thick armour plating and daemonic energies provide them with incredible resilience. Their fearsome Plagueburst Mortars boast a parabolic fire arc and terrifying range, while the shells they fire combine high-radius explosives with lethal clouds of corrosive spores to inflict damage comparable to that of Imperial Demolisher Cannons. Plagueburst Crawlers are not swift vehicles, even running at full power. Yet their advance is as grinding and relentless as the Death Guard themselves. Mortarion himself perfected the designs for the first Plagueburst Crawlers as a labour of pure spite as he sought to create a superlative mobile artillery piece that would outclass any comparative Imperial weapon, and thus demonstrate his Death Guard's superiority over their corpse-worshipping former kin. Mortarion's decision to make these vehicles Daemon Engines says much for his contempt for all living things.Defiler - Defilers are monstrous, crab-like Daemon Engines that clatter into battle on piston-driven legs. Their huge claws snicker and snap, chopping armoured warriors into bloody chunks and tearing open battle tanks to get at the screaming crew within. Their weapon arms send hails of shells or gouts of flame into the foe, while the Battle Cannon built into each Defiler's torso hurls explosive ordnance that leaves nothing but blasted craters wherever it strikes. The first Defilers were created by Warpsmiths on the order of Abaddon the Despoiler to support his Black Crusades. The news of their creation spread quickly throughout the Traitor Legions and Renegade warbands, and thus entire campaigns were fought for possession of the dark lore behind the process. Mortarion did not need to resort to such desperate measures. He simply demanded the requisite hexamechanic scrolls from Abaddon as tribute, and the Warmaster of Chaos -- seeing no advantage in antagonising one of the Daemon Primarchs -- provided them without question. A Daemon Engine is an animate killing machine, a construct of cold iron and cogwork powered not by plasma or Promethium, but by the infernal energies of the daemon bound within its hull. Such entities rage against their captivity, but they are powerless to resist, their wills captured and directed by the runic wards of their machine-prisons. The daemons of Nurgle are unusual, however, in that they adapt to their captivity more swiftly than the servants of the other Dark Gods. Whether through glum resignation or the gleeful realisation that such a form allows them to inflict all manner of mayhem, a daemon of Nurgle is much more amenable to being trapped inside a Defiler's shell. Once resident, the Daemon's essence infests the Defiler and leaves the unmistakable mark of Nurgle upon it. Metal rusts and lubricant clots and drips. Lambent slime oozes from the machine's joints, while pustules and sores mar its armour plates. A foul stench billows around Death Guard Defilers, of spoiled meat, ordure and other, unnameable effluvia, while clouds of flies buzz and crawl about them. The Death Guard maintain numerous Daemon Engine manufactoria, churning out steady streams of Defilers and other infernal war machines. From the Black Manse of the Plague Planet to the Scourge Stars, the summoning works of the Warpsmiths and Dark Mechanicum pulse with putrid energies and throng with chanting cultists day and night. Since the opening of the Great Rift, such practices have become far easier to maintain, allowing the Death Guard to amass huge packs of Defilers with frightening ease.Chaos Land Raider - Few battle tanks can match the indomitable might and exceptional utility of the Land Raider. Combining the firepower of an entire squadron of lesser vehicles with incredibly resilient hull armour, these behemoths are all but unstoppable on the battlefield. Their versatility is further enhanced by their ability to safely deliver even the bulkiest of armoured warriors into the thick of battle, disgorging their passengers to wreak havoc even as they unleash their own destructive potential to reduce enemy armour to scrap and annihilate infantry. Though they have striven to amass as many Land Raiders as they can over the millennia, still the Death Guard suffer from a paucity of these magnificent war engines. They are thus seen as status symbols within the Traitor Legion, and those Lords of the Plague Companies that have a considerable number of Land Raiders at their disposal take an uncharacteristic pride in their hard-won collection. As with all the battle tanks of the Death Guard, their Land Raiders are ripe with the dubious blessings of Nurgle. Parasitic horrors and unnatural plagues swarm through hulls that drip with foulness and are encrusted with revolting growths. Engines whine and drone like vast plague flies, spilling smog into the air in billowing, chemical-laden clouds. Weapons glow with leprous energies, and thrumming masses of bloated insects swarm and writhe around them. Some Land Raiders have been claimed as hosts by powerful daemons of Nurgle. These machines display a malefic sentience more akin to huge predatory beasts than war engines, and have been known to devour their crew, instantly heal battlefield damage, and hunt specific prey who have shown the audacity to fire upon them.Chaos Predator - Rumbling into battle with their heavy weapons blazing, Death Guard Predators provide mobile fire support for the Heretic Astartes advancing around them. Return fire rebounds from the Predators' bloated hulls, doing little more than bursting pustulous growths and spraying corrosive slime across nearby combatants. Driven hard into the enemy lines, squadrons of these repugnant battle tanks can destroy enemy armour, mow down ranks of opposing infantry, or eliminate key targets with their massed fire. Those Death Guard who crew Predators are often assigned to do so as a punishment, for it is seen as an ignominious duty. There are those who volunteer, relishing the thought of directing the tank's withering firepower, but they are a minority. Either way, the assignment is a one-way ticket. Imbued with Warp essence or claimed by daemonic entities, these tanks are sentient enough to have become morose and jealous things that resent their low status. When they acquire new crew they quickly claim them, biomechanical tendrils and mutated tubes growing into the bodies of the Plague Marines and fusing them permanently with their machineries. Over time, the crewmen are absorbed until they become little more than fleshy nodes within the Predator's hull, their personalities subsumed into the machine they serve. Most Death Guard Plague Companies maintain at least a few squadrons of Predators to operate as an armoured reserve. By comparison, the 2nd Plague Company fields dozens of these twisted war engines, building entire strategies around armoured spearheads, line-breaker assaults and heavy flank-attacks intended to crush the foe beneath the grind of their armoured treads.Chaos Rhino - Whether ferrying squads of Death Guard to new battlefronts, bearing them safely through hostile terrain, or moving them up in support of armoured offensives, the Rhinos of the Death Guard are ubiquitous and versatile. These armoured transports can carry up to ten power-armoured warriors within their festering holds, protecting them inside a cocoon of slime-smeared armour plating. Since the earliest days of the Great Crusade, the Rhino APC was the workhorse of the Legiones Astartes. Their reliability, durability and ease of repair all recommended them for this role. Those used by the Death Guard are riddled with rust, muck and decay, groaning and creaking as though on the verge of falling apart. Yet this could not be further from the truth, for the blessings of Nurgle saturate their very fabric. Mutant flesh and noxious matter binds their verdigrised hull-plates together, layers of rotting flab and swarms of burrowing parasites absorbing and diffusing the force of enemy fire. Anyone who has ever seen a Death Guard Rhino plough through a hail of enemy fire to disgorge its passengers into the heart of the fight can attest to the fact that these pugnacious vehicles are unnaturally hard to destroy.