Myphitic Blight-Hauler

This runty little pug of a daemon engine almost makes it worth it to contract Super Ebola. Almost.

The Myphitic Blight-Hauler is only known for three things. The first is that it is yet another Daemon Engine of Nurgle from the new Death Guard codex. The second is that GW took forever to get around to releasing this model, seriously it was teased prior to the Codex launch in August and the release date is currently set for mid December. The third is that it is the cutest motherfucking daemon engine to have ever existed. Seriously look at this thing! It is like a Chaos Roomba come to life. Look at those stubby little feet, doesn't that make you just go "Dawww"? Only in Papa Nurgle's lair is it possible to have such a collection of adorable little monstrosities.

It’s one sick puppy. No, seriously, it’s a sick, plague spreading puppy to rival the Beast of Nurgle. That’s how much Nurgle loves you. He gave you a puppy.

The Blight-Hauler is a small little fighter that acts as both a portable gun battery and a light mobile artillery. Appearance wise, it looks much like a Foetid Bloat-Drone on land. Except instead of a duct exhaust fan for hover and limited flight, it has three caterpillar tracks that resembles the aforementioned stunty looking feet. The daemons bound within them are well-known for their obedience and eagerness to spread Nurgle's gifts. This gives the Blight-Hauler its name: it literally hauls the disease-propagating daemons directly to their enemies (the healthy) and spreads a toxic cloud wherever it goes.

Asides from acting as a Syphilis air deodorizer on treads, the Blight-Hauler also doubles as a fire support weapons platform, assisting its fellow Death Guard thanks to its Bile Spurt which is an Assault D3 Plague Weapon, a dedicated anti-tank platform due to the presence of a Multi-Melta or a makeshift light artillery with its Missile Launcher. Hell, it's even pretty decent as a melee unit due to its Gnashing Maws. All in all, the Blight-Hauler is perhaps one of the most versatile daemon engines in the entirety of the Chaos Space Marines, let alone the Death Guard.

Look at those stubby legs! It is to die for!

Crunch

For Crunch, what has been said about the Blight-Hauler's weapons and role pretty much applies to the tabletop as well, with the weapon combination it runs having something to counter horde armies, armored platoons, close-combat units and entrenched opponents. Additionally, the relatively small size of the model means that you can have a unit size of 1-3 and if you take then full size, you could get the Tri-Lobe rule to kick in, granting +1 to hit so they have Marine-tier WS/BS. 10" of movement may sound unimpressive on paper, but in an army where the bulk of your forces can barely manage half that distance they're lightning fast by comparison.

It’s also stable and doesn't suffer the -1 to hit for moving and firing heavy weapons, which is a nice match to the Death Guard Legion special rule for infantry. Another special ability is the Putrescent Fog which gives ALL friendly Death Guard within 7" the benefit of a mobile cover when making armor saves, which again mesh nicely with your advancing army of slow moving infantry armed with short range weapons that would be vulnerable to long range assaults. And in assault, Foul Stench applies a -1 to hit on opponents attacking it. There is also the usual Disgustingly Resilient rule will make those 8 wounds (high enough to take a beating, but not so high as to subject it to degrading stats from a damage table) last a little longer, while Daemonic and the 5++ that comes with it will further extend its lifespan even as it gets the opportunity to be buffed by allied daemons. Finally if it does go down, make sure it's nearby enemy units as it blows sky-high on a 4+, which you can ensure for the low, low cost of a single command point thanks to the Death Guard's Putrid Detonation Stratagem.

In 9th Edition, the entire DG roster was overhauled due to changing Disgustingly Resilient to become -1 Dam instead of a Feel No Pain. This has changed the Blight-hauler to be really tanky against anything smaller than a Krak Missile or Thunder Hammer (or against the few d3 damage weapons left in the edition), but is only Marginally Resilient against Damage 3 and Above, and doing nothing against the edition's clusterfuck of Mortal Wounds.

The Blight-Hauler has actually transitioned really well, which is more than we can say for other "New Models" that got nerfed with the changing editions. On the surface, it looks like it got nerfed quite a bit: It kept its -1 to hit in melee, but no longer provides a bubble of -1 to hit for other DG units, instead keeping its tankiness to itself by allowing them to reduce the number of shooting attacks against it by 1 through a stratagem. Stable-firing is now baked into all vehicles, and you can't switch out any of its weapons: it has two very decent Anti-Tank guns and its melee weapon can only be described as "better than nothing," but it still gets to squad up in units of three, and its WS/BS is now 3+, a 3+ that won't degrade because it only has 9W. The Blight-Hauler is comparable to a Multi-Melta/Missile Launcher Helbrute but significantly better in all aspects: it's faster, has an invuln, and because it comes in a squad, the enemy has to devote significant attention to take it off the board, and it only gets tougher with stratagems and subfaction support: with a stratagem, a wounded Blight-Hauler can heal itself by voring up Guardsmen like the sick-fuck it is; the POXMONGER Plague Company can bump the squad's invuln to 4++ and let it shoot all of its guns into melee.

Tl;dr, It's like a Venomthrope, but shootier.