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(and there's more puns where that came from ^-^)

Well this isn't the most original idea, so there's others out there; but I felt like making some rules for the fun experimentalism of it.

The general idea of this 40K Zombie army is having infection as its main weapon; infecting any infantry or even monstrous creature unit with the virus. The army will have base units that aren't so great on their own but brings the risk of causing a snowballing zombie epidemic as the opposing player's units turn against them.

Zombie traits

Undead gaze: Due to the undead's uncanny ability to ‘smell’ living flesh, possibly even due to an unknown sixth sense, zombies are able to pick out their prey even when in complete darkness. Zombie units are not effected by Night Fighting rules.

Infection: Once a Zombie player has taken the last wound from an enemy Infantry, Jump Infantry or Monsterous Creature model, the Zombie player must then roll D6 for Infection; on a 1, 2 or 3 the model is removed from the table. On a 4, 5 or 6, that model is infected and joins the nearest Zombie unit at the start of the Zombie player's next turn. The model then has the Zombie racial rules and the following changes are made to its regular statline:

WS:-1 BS:-2 S:+1 T:+1 W:-1 I:-2 A:+1 Sv:+1 (eg; Sv:5+ becomes Sv:6+)

Statline properties can be lowed to a minimum of 1, apart from BS and and Sv which as a minimum of '-'.

Wounds: For example, a model that would normally start with 4 wounds will start with 3 wounds when joining a Zombie unit. However, a model that normally stats with 1 wound will still keep its 1 wound when joining a Zombie unit. This, along with the weakened armour save represents the severe disfiguring the model has received at the hands of the undead. The ‘Feel No Pain’ rule and increased toughness already serves to represent the undead body’s resilience to pain and fatal damage.

While Jump Infantry can still be infected, they cannot use their Jumpbacks or Jetpacks. Any vehicles that are destroyed by a Zombie unit can no longer be used. However, once the vehicle is destroyed, the Zombie player still rolles for Infection for the amount of crew that are inside the vehicle. The resulting infected crewmen join the nearest Zombie unit and count as Zombie Spawn.

Braaains!: The virus infuses Zombie units with an unquenchable hunger for living flesh. In addition to this, the unreceptive nerve endings in their own undead bodies make them care even less about what the living defend themselves with. All Zombie units count as Fearless and Feel No Pain.

Units

HQ:
Chosen of Nurgle
While the vast majority of the infected beings are merely the result of a biological virus, a select few have been given the blessings of Chaos.
WS:3 BS:2 S:6 T:5 W:2 I:2 A:4 Ld:10 Sv:6+

Equipment: Ripper Gun

Unit Type: Infantry

Troops:
Zombie Spawn
Infected Guardsmen or Conscripts who have long left their Lasguns behind in their persuit of edible flesh.
Pts:12 WS:2 BS:- S:4 T:4 W:1 I:1 A:2 Ld:10 Sv:6+

Unit Type: Infantry


I left out the points on the Chosen of Nurgle, since it's hard to make a serious points value when I haven't really made a full codex to go with it. Plus it begs the question how balanced the 'infection' thing is when you can just get a new HQ choice by eating them. But I think the point of buying an Infected Ogryn Bone 'ead is that it may be easier to make a snowballing epidemic. They'll also need somekind of anti-armour unit, so that Armoured Company doesn't pwn them too easily. Though the new CC rules in 5th edition will be making it easier for them.And there's also other units to make, since there is a only that 1 Troop and 1 HQ choice at the moment, plus there needs to be some Nurgle/Tyranid style wargear avalible.

Infected units get -2 BS instead of having no BS whatsoever (unless they were orignally BS 2 or lower, of course) so that there's at least some point of chosing to infect shooty units rather than CC units. By strict zombie lore, the infected units probably wouldn't even think of using their guns; but hey, there's 101 other things in 40K that work for gameplay but not for fluff.

I love the idea of someone laughing at a Fire Warrior charging at them, then to realise that it's a zombie Fire Warrior! : And thank god that the consolidation rule is gone for 5th edition!

I am a big Max Brooks fan and actually field(ed ) a rouge pysker animated zombie army using LatD. I think the rules in the LatD codex were quite adequate to represent zombies. While in update rules I could see them replacing their 4+ armor save with feel no pain.

In terms of viral infection it would take more then 5 seconds to zombify a fallen combatant. In movies and books in which the dead instantly reanimate it is more in the realm of magic, psychic phenomena, or some global dead rising possessed by evil spirits deal.

Your rule for infection implies that you would actually use your opponent’s miniatures for your army. I know a lot of people who would not be happy to have someone touch their models let alone drag them around the table.

I think it would be better and easier to make a standard zombie stat and maybe a standard monstrous creature stat if you want to use newly infected zombies – you would also have to provide the models the same has chaos players turning models into spawn. Either way the infection rule you have is pretty powerful especially against horde armies. As a zombie player myself I would just be happy if GWS reintroduced LatD so I could field my undead hordes again.

woah that first post is oddly familier, could swear i saw it on some tau forum