Tactica Nurgle

[FraustyTheSnowman]

By request, here's the tactica for all things diseased, bloated, scabby, and/or infested. We have a tactica death guard, which though it's near and dear to my spleen, I think we could use something a little more broad.

I'll start things off by throwing out a few ideas, and see where things go for there...

First off, for codex daemons, I've got some thoughts on playing mono nurgle. Right off the bat, I'm going to say I don't see epidemius as worth taking. Sure, I'll throw him into an apoc list, especially if there are other nurgle players present for gits and shiggles...but for a straight, by the codex daemon army that I'd like to win games with. Nope. Two great unclean ones are they only way to fly (god I wish they could fly) in my opinion/experience.

I go for a daemonzilla approach, with the two GUOs, and three daemon princes of nurgle as the core of my army, and fill in points with plague bearers. Nurglings are cute, but ultimately no better than plague marines, and beasts are...well, difficult to see the value in, I'll put it like that.

Having five nice big monstrous creatures has both a mechanical affect, in that small arms fire really needs to be poured into me to get my attention, as well as a psychological affect, in that that's a lot of blubber that people need to wade through, which is demoralizing. Cloud of flies is manditory, as is flight on the DPs. Breath is nearly manditory, as swarms of infantry, heavy or light, will melt away before the rancid garlic breath of my nurgle collosi. Beyond this, I don't look much further for the GUOs, and normally like to keep the princes light as well. Noxious touch has it's merrits, if there's points to spend.

The rest of the army is in essense, x number of plague bearer units. Whatever it takes to fill in points. Normally speaking these guys are my second wave, so they can plop down on objectives while everything large and sweaty is being focused on. If the MCs have been charged, the hand to hand can be used to block line of sight on PB squads, which can charge in next turn and add their weight to the melee.

Beasts, I'm still experimenting with. There really isn't much you can do with beasts you can't do with plague bearers, but you can only have so many plague bearer squads.

For codex chaos marines, I run a mechanized deathguard list. Depending on who you ask it might be seen as fluffy, or not. I don't particularly care, as the storyline for warhammer is...well, juvenile...in my personal opinion, and largely unimpressive.

Anyways, following pretty standard chaos player protocal, the force is lead by two daemon princes. Depending on points they will either be spartan style (Sanctjud's pattented wings only variety), or winged, marked, and either warptimed or rotted. Often it ends up one with warptime, one with rot. All in all it doesn't matter, as I'm notorious for forgetting psyker powers. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet, but I've been contemplating two spartan princes used as mobile cover for my rhinos...which is opposite of how I normally run things. If I get an opportunity to play any time soon I'll have more to say on it later.

Just about the only other thing in my army is the troops. And their transports. Traditionally I run two to four units of five plague marines, with two meltaguns. Champ with combimelta, sometimes champless. These squads are in rhinos. No frills, no pazaz, just tough SOBs with a pair of anti tank guns. After this we have two units of eight or so plague marines with two flamers each, and a champ with combi flamers. They ride in landraiders. This is my two giant middle fingers of doom to orc players everywhere. In my neighborhood all you see (fungal wise) are huge mobs of boys, and some nobs with a boss. Three flamer templates, and a charge of 24 or so attacks, and there's a heeping pile of dead orks. This coupled with the fact that orks can't handle landraiders for squat, makes me very very happy.

Possible additions are lesser daemons, as these are the ultimate utility unit in the codex, and obliterators, which are the ultimate in offensive codex units. I've talked at great length (as have others) over the great things that can be done with lesser daemons, and I'm too tired to repeat myself right now. As for oblits...well, there are plenty of places to tell you how to use your obliterators...

[Mannimarco]

and......subscribes, you and i run similar lists it seems for the death guard. Mechanised DG seems to be they way to go

heres what i usually run

HQ: necrosius, fun character, hard as nails, works slightly different to typhus but still an excellent commander

elites: rarely taken but sometimes i break out the 10 man nurgle termy unit, 4 champs 2 with chain fists, 2 with twin claws, 2 heavy flamers, brutal unit that will decimate anything it touches but incredibly expensive

troops: always run at least 4 units of 7 mounted in rhinos, all have fist champs and either 2 melta guns or 2 plasma guns

fast attack: im having some pretty major success with blight drones, what else are you going to take in a pure death guard army?

heavy support: never taken but will reconsider when the plague hulk comes out

i must disagree on that "epidemius isnt worth taking" yes he is, in my experience anyway, drop him in with some plague bearers and let your hard hitters rack up the tally real fast, my daemon army (reworked from the one i posted earlier) always includes mamon and 3 winged armoured princes, the princes and mamon will travel in pairs, never came across anything they couldnt deal with

rest of the army is just basic plague bearers who hang back until the tally starts to fill

[Zanzibarthefirst]

Mannimarco, why break the theme and have 10 terminators, surely 7 is enough?

My fluffy 1250 list runs as 3 7 man squads with 2 flamers/meltas/plasma and fist along with 7 terminators with reaper cannon, 4 combi-plasma, chainfist, powerfist and Typhus. I also ahve a termie lord with a chainfist and combi-melta if i feel the need to bring a double balded chainfist althouh thats most of my apoc datasheet

[Mannimarco]

7 is more than enough, the 10 man squad was written in for an apocalypse game and have since found a home outside apocalypse and always draws an insane amount of fire when they come down and any fire hitting the T5 2+ save termy is fire thats not hitting the rhinos

[Corpse]

Space Marine Advice part.
Mechanized:
8-7 models out of a rhino is easier to hide them behind it when the rhino dies. Use 10 if you want sheer survivability and abuse of the model count of 10 combined with FNP & T5 & 4+ cover from the rhino alive/dead or in actual cover.

Using vehicles enhances the strain of anti tank weapons being used to remove plague marines. They are as tough as terminators when trying to kill them with low AP and strength weapons.

The best place normally for plague marines is in melee. Strength 3 power weapons almost make it not worth while though, almost. Most models in the game do not have power weapons or the means to harm the plague marines. While keeping damage to just the melee, where the only death the unit must fear are the models in combat with them.

Twin Meltaguns, Power Fist is a must for the spendy unit of plague marines. Can min/max with 5 models and 2 special weapons. Combi weapon best used for plague marine champs are combi flamers, since being able to hit with a combi is a must when its just one shot with one model (unlike termicide where you get multiple combi's).

Rhinos are a must unless you plan on having a home objective keeping unit, which can also benefit with one rhino blocking some LoS to grant them 4+ cover, (3+ going to ground).

Daemon Prince with warptime is a good setup, almost always with wings unless you plan on keeping it cheap to take hits.

Greater daemon is worthwhile even when it eats a spendy champ, the greater daemon was kept cheap because of that. (Look at the GD's of the daemon codex and you see 100 pts+losing a champ is ok)

Lesser daemons are very good on the defensive role, and add punch if you use a mecha army, since icons are cheap and also disposable.

Nurgle bikes are worthwhile for being mean to Str4 models in melee, and mostly just for that purpose. Nurgle raptors in large squads are like bikes, two turn assault, no bolters but extra melee attacks instead with the toughness 5 covered at a cost of 22.5 points a model at 20 over an icon. Also no fear of losing the icon until you fall below 7 models or so. the unit becomes 21 models for fluff freaks if you add a winged sorcerer or lord.

The lords daemon weapon of nurgle is the most worthwhile one of all five out there, as it fulfills many purposes.

Sorcerer of nurgle with nurgles rot is an effective way to wade through large numbers of light infantry. Great for adding punch to being solo if you split off from a unit to assault multiple units, a single sorcerer using that power on 10 guardsmen + charge can be reliable on top of its toughness 5.

Daemons Advice part.
I know a fella who abuses nurgle (You heard me). He runs LOTS and LOTS of nurglings with epidemus. Now, imagine killing 10 models and having noxious touch with all those nurglings. He has two units of plaguebearers to score for him, and the rest is spamming nurglings and epidemus inside a unit to keep him safe. He runs some princes I believe, and he claims he hardly ever loses.

I don't like the way he uses his nurgle but his squads of nurglings are to be feared after he kills 10 models.

Cloud of flies and noxious touch is a must for daemon princes though IMO. Some say that epidemus makes nurgle viable, I disagree to a point but at the same time I can't see 50 plague bearers facing a large number of FNP removing weapons a viable way to win.

Remember you can run your squad after it deep strikes. To spread them apart to avoid being blasted easily. I say that every time and I feel repedetive, but seeing some players not doing so makes me cringe sometimes seeing the templates being placed over them.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Now realize once that one single toughness five two wound model dies, noxious touch goes away, and all you have is a hord of nurglings and some plauge bearers.

I'll type more when I'm not in the bath, but I cannot get behind epidemius in competitive play. If we're talking about just playing the game, hoping you win, but more concerned with having a good time...yeah, sure, epi's a cool character. As far as playing to win, tourny style...he's garbage.

[Garanaul the Black]

I'm running a mech Nurgle Chapter of my own design, The Sons of Despair. Its a real WIP, but I'm really very pleased where its heading. What had started as a straight up Death Guard force now boasts Oblits, Havocs (with an assortment of options, currently Missile Launchers are WIN), and TLLC / ML dread complete with his own personal 'guard spawn' to shoot up when he looses it. I'm also in the process of building another unit of Chosen, this one with X5 plasma guns. Why is any of this relevant? Simply put, aggressive, shooting heavy Nurgle forces are, IMHO, the way to go.

The lords daemon weapon of nurgle is the most worthwhile one of all five out there, as it fulfills many purposes.

Too true, extra, poisoned attacks that ignore toughness and reroll to wound anything not tougher than my Lord is strong? Yes please.


G


BTW: Lucky Seven.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Might have a minute to actualy type this...we'll see.

Why I consider Epidemius "fun" and not "competitive".

Everything he gives you revolves around him being on the board first, and staying on the board. I've tried to use him on multiple occassions, and when it works, it works great. When the wave you don't want to show up comes on, it sucks furry Nurgle nipples. So yeah, right off the bat you have a one in three chance of him not showing up. Then, assuming you get the right wave, he can deviate off the table, ontop of friendly units, too close to unfriendly units, ontop of impassable terrain, or get wounded by landing in difficult terrain.

So you got his bloated accounting butt on the board safely...now he needs to stay there. If he dies, you lose the tally benefits. So you have a toughness 5 guy with two wounds that needs to probably hide in a squad, or find some bloody good terrain to cower in. This meens you're either dedicating a whole squad to him, or hiding him and hoping you hid him well enough. Well, you can throw him in a squad of plague bearers and plant them on an objective. Only now your opponent has a damn good reason to take that objective. Not only is it an objective, but if he wacks epi, you lose all your nifty crap. Or you can dedicate a squad of plague bearers to him, and hide them all somewhere "safe", and take an entire troop choice out of the game.

Hiding him by himself doesn't waste one of your troop choices, but leaves you WIDE open to be assassinated by armies capeable of getting into "safe" spots. Outflanking, deep striking, long range weapons, scattering template weapons, fast moving skimmers with crazy hand to hand based biotches that can possibly charge an entire foot...need I go on?

So, we'll assume keeping him in a big squad is the best of all these terrible choices. Now, remember the fact that he's an independent character? That translates to your opponent can single him out in hand to hand. You wanna see a quick game? Get a "good" epi list up against a good dark eldar list with either an archon or archite. I'll put my bet on turn three the nurgle player folds because epi's dead and his DPs are shattered.

I really like the idea of him, and like I said, I'll throw him in a fun apoc list. Still working on my sculpt of the throned one actually. I just can't imagine how people think he's usable in a solid list...

[Mannimarco]

yeah epi is risky but id still rather have him than not have him

the whole random scattering thing and maybe getting the wrong half of your army is somthing we all just have to get used to when playing daemons

he really does need a squad to hide in but as you say that takes a whole troops choice out of the game so what do you do? what i like to do is hide him in a smallish unit then hide them in cover somwhere, a unit of 6 or 7 isnt going to cost a lot and gives him somthing to hide behind

on a related note how do people feel about nurgle aligned vehicles counting towards the tally? in apocalypse we have the plague tower and plague reaper however nobody lets wounds caused by these count despite the fact they are clearly nurgle aligned but what about things like the plague hulk and the blight drone? the only way to get these in your army is to already have somthing from nirgle in there

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Far as I'm concerned plague tower and plague reaper are just as nurgley as plague marines. I don't know that I would throw too big of a fit over it, as it's apoc, so not really all that serious, but if people we're hell bent on it not counting I would likely not play them as often.

It's not all that hard to lower the chances that a bad "which wave" roll will screw you. Well, it isn't that hard if you play in a manner that makes it easy. Running two GUOs and three daemon princes, along with say six units of plague bearers, gives you either five monstrous creatures and a squad of PBs in one wave if you want to go front heavy...or three MCs and three PB squads in the first, with two MCs and three PB squads in the second if you wanna play it safe. By placing icons in the plague bearer squads you can make it very worth it to go front heavy.

Say I have my set up, of the 5 MCs, and six PB squads, some with icons. I go front heavy and put one squad of iconed PBs with the big bad guys. Nurgle sees fit to grant me my request, so first turn I drop five monstrous creatures semi agressively and a squad of PBs on an objective somewhere. The opponent cant either concentrate on killing the MCs, or removing the PBs from the objective. If they don't take out the MCs they get fragged the frag up. If they go for the MCs, chances are they won't kill all of them, and I'll have an icon ontop of an objective next turn...so they'll still get rufled pretty good, and I'll have that one objective held strong and can drop the rest of my guys on outlying objectives.

Say nurgle gives me the stinky middle finger, and my second wave comes in first. I have at least one squad with an icon (depending on points I'll put upwards of three icons in a list like this, one with the big guys, and two with the rest of the troops) to drop semi agressively, and a number of other PB squads to plop down on objectives. Again, they can go after the threat (PBs with the icon), or try and clear the objectives. If they don't remove the icon bearing squad, big guys start dropping in with precision off that, and my opponent better hope he doesn't have any infantry near by.

[Mannimarco]

looks good, remember that pure nurgle daemons just arnt that great (no mono god is really) so a lot of your actual fighting will be done by your GUO and princes, dont scrimp on the upgrades for these

a combo i see a lot is the tripple winged armoured princes with unholy might, very expensive but will butcher one squad after another and are fast enough to take the fight to the enemy, everything else in the pure nurgle army has slow and purposful so these 3 princes help a lot

[claudiomarino]

Interesting thread, I'm subscribed.

[zaxxo1990]

for Chaos Space Marines, it actually is a really great army if you play the way it's good
subscribing

[Mannimarco]

couple of lists for y'all, ill try to field any questions about them

the first is my apostles of contagion, going for fluffy and competitive with this one, its done pretty well so far:

HQ

necrosius

TROOPS

7 plague marines
champ with power fist
2x plasma guns
rhino apc

7 plague marines
champ with power fist
2x plasma guns
rhino apc

7 plague marines
champ with power fist
plasma gun
melta gun
rhino apc

7 plague marines
champ with power fist
plasma gun
melta gun
rhino apc

FAST ATTACK

blight drone

blight drone

blight drone

the second is my daemon army, this one i havnt played at all as i dont have jibberjaw or a plague hulk (i could proxy a defiler though)

HQ

mamon

epidemius

TROOPS

8 plaguebearers
icon
instrument

8 plaguebearers
icon
instrument

8 plaguebearers
instrument

7 plaguebearers
instrument

7 plaguebearers
instrument

HEAVY SUPPORT

jibberjaw

plaguehulk

prince
wings
armour
mark of nurgle
noxious touch
cloud of flies

last we have my traitor guard army, this only exists on paper so far but i think it looks half decent

HQ

company command squad
plasma gun
missle launcher

fire support unit: 3 chemical mortars
fire support unit: 3 chemical mortars

TROOPS

renegade armoured fist squad
melta gun

renegade armoured fist squad
melta gun

renegade armoured fist squad
melta gun

renegade armoured fist squad
melta gun

17 plague zombies

ELITE

10 disciples
3 plasma guns

10 disciples
3 melta guns

5 plague ogryns

FAST ATTACK

banewolf

banewolf

[FraustyTheSnowman]

I think I would rather have noxious touch than unholy might. The extra strength is only really going to help against vehicles, which the back armor is generally 10, 11, or 14. So it's of questionable worth there. Good against walkers though...

Yeah, definately...the five MCs are going to be the work horses of your army. So no, it's not going to be a stellarly competitive army, but honestly, you can't make a stellarly competitive army with daemons.

I finally managed to dig up a looksee at the stats on blight drones...didn't get to see anything else in the book unfortunately, but there's always next time.

I forgot to check and make sure if they were fast skimmers, so for right now I'm just assuming. I also missed the explination on "daemonic"...though I'm guessing it works like the defiler...

All I have to say is...daaaaammn! I like these...alot. An actual worth while fast attack choice in the chaos codex...it's bloody amazing. I'm thinking the next game I get to play I'm going to proxy three of these guys (one unit each) and see if I can find an orc player to abuse. A heavy flamer AND a battle cannon? Sheesh.

I'm also pretty blown away by the plague hulk (found the PDF on forgeworld.co.uk). I'm thinking instead of defilers, I'll use three of these suckers and hide my rhinos behind them. PHs get cover saves for billowing smoke, rhinos get cover saves for hiding behind the hulks. Daemon prince and the drones will charge down a flank to keep the enemy occupied.

[claudiomarino]

@Mannimarco: Do you have any pics of those lists? It would be nice to see them.

Seems as Blight Drones ain't just really nice models but really useful to. I just might have to order some

[Mannimarco]

cameras pretty lousy, im looking to get a better one in the near future

dont have any of the renegade army yet, pdaemons are mostly painted but im going to redo them, all apostles painted except for the rhinos (dheneb stone armour, delvan mud wash with rusted trims)

[claudiomarino]

Is there any way to add a squad from the Chaos Renagade list to a regular CSM army using rules from Sige Of Vraks?

[Mannimarco]

no but you can take marines as elites and renegade guard as troops, its pretty much the guard codex with marine elites

[claudiomarino]

Oh cool that is defenitly a way to do it, though it means more models. But heck they are the reason I want to play Renegades. I have to get my hands on Sige Of Vraks III