Poxwalkers
 This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it |
There's a new kid in town and these shambling plague hosts are represented by the repugnant and varied Poxwalkers, each draped in scraps of clothing from their former lives. Poxwalkers are the new breed of Nurgle's rotting legions and sit somewhere between your basic Nurgle follower/cultist and Plaguebearers in Papa Nurgle's food chain. Crunch wise, Poxwalkers are smelly grognards with pretty terrible stats and no shooting weapons (flashlights make better clubs than guns tho to be honest), are slower than even Plague Marines, but can do Advance moves and get two base melee attacks. They also get the same Feel No Pain Disgustingly Resilient ability as Plague Marines so ignore any wound on a 5+, along with a 7+ armor save because that's a thing (since cover is a modifier now this can be improved). One of their only remarkable traits is that enemies slain in combat by Poxwalkers will themselves become a Poxwalker (sadly, they actually become a Poxwalker and not an undead version of themselves).
Poxwalkers can be affected by a few buffs that turn them from a meh tarpit unit into one that's actually kinda good. The first is that if a Poxwalker unit contains 10 or more models it adds +1 to its attack roles, making them hit on a 4. Another is Typhus; if he's within 6" Poxwalkers gain +1 S/T. Casting Miasma of Pestilence makes enemy shooting rolls -1, and all can be combined, along with Disgustingly Resilient ignoring wounds on 5+ and Curse of the Walking Pox adding models every time enemies are slain, to turn this into a shockingly effective blob unit. 20 of these will cost about the same as 5 Plague Marines (not counting Typhus' cost for the S/T boost).
In the fluff, Plaguebearers are actually mortals who have fully succumbed to Nurgle's Rot, so Poxwalkers may represent someone midway through that process, after they've died but before the Rot has completely transformed them and before they get their dirty tetanus swords. Since Plague Zombies haven't been mentioned in any of 8th edition's materiel (including Typhus' entry, which does specify Poxwalkers), and the fact that Poxwalkers for all intents and purposes have the same rules as Zombies, AND can add newly-murdered enemies to their units just like a Zombie unit should, Zombies may have just been retconned into Poxwalkers altogether. Considering that plain old zombies honestly have precious little going for them compared to these goofy pusbags, that's not necessarily a bad thing either.