Egorey and Mush's Nurgle Daemons Smelly Ideas!

Just thought this would be a fun place to chuck ideas around.

Mushkilla wrote:

Here's my current list:

HQ
Great Unclean One, Greater Reward, Exalted Reward(grimoire), Mastery Level 1 (Plague) - 240

TROOPS
10 Plague Bearers, Plagueridden, Icon, Instrument - 115
10 Plague Bearers, Plagueridden, Icon, Instrument - 115

HEAVY SUPPORT
Daemon Prince, MoN, Wings, 2 Greater Rewards, Mastery Level 1 (Plague) - 265
Daemon Prince, MoN, Wings, 2 Greater Rewards, Mastery Level 1 (Plague) - 265

Total: 1000 points

The DPs start on the board, everything else is in reserve. The Plague Bearers ensure the GUO comes down turn two and relatively accurately at the same time the princes move up and force saturation.

The grimoire lets my PB move into open ground when trying to get to objectives (if I fail the roll they just say in cover and sit pretty). I also use it when I need a DP to engage something in the open (as I like to keep them hoping from area terrain to area terrain) if the grimoire goes off they can land and risk open ground, if it doesnt they can just keep swooping from terrain to terrain killing things with their AP3 flamers and vector strike or assaulting stuff in cover. Basically shrouded means I'm not to fussed if the grimoire doesn't go off, as the affected unit can just stick to cover.

The GUO makes its way to one of my opponents objectives and just sits there (putting out AP2 large blasts if he rolls it and buffing things with grimoire). This basically means he is denying my opponent an objective and slay the warlord unless he puts considerable effort into removing him.

As my plague bearers deepstrike they tend to be in forward positions meaning my DPs can fly off and then deepstrike next to them with pinpoint accuracy thanks to the icons and use their flamer on anything that happened to be going after the plague bearers

The DPs are minamilist but effective. Shrouded/defensive grenades from MoN means I don't need to invest in hell forged armour saving some points and meaning a 6 on the greater gift table is no longer a dud. Having a 2+ cover save in ruins and a 3+ when jinking or in 5+ terrain (a 2+ when the firing unit has one model within 8") means as long as you are sensible with your positioning getting grounded isn't the end of the world. It also gives you the option to land if need be (to assault, to hide or to contest)! Using your D6 consolidate to get into cover after assault is also pretty handy.

It also means I don't need to depend on biomancy (which sets you back a fare bit for 3ML). The issues I have with biomancy are: it's another random table in a random army, I don't want to have to depend on rolling the right powers and passing a LD9 psychic test for survivability, there's also some overlap with some of the greater gifts (FNP and WND) meaning bad rolls is wasted points, poison also seems to be a hard counter.

One level in the plague discipline is great, the primaries is fantastic and you have a 50% chance of getting an AP2 poison 4+ large blast. These two powers are fantastic on a FMC and great for hunting troops, or softening up models for the assault. The primaris alone turns your DPs into mini helldrakes.

MoN also gives you access to the balesword, with all the big gribblies running around wounding T6 on a 4+ re-rollable with instant death at AP2 is awesome, the poison also let you re-roll those 2+ to wound against T4 or less. But you don't have to take it if there's nothing worth IDing in your opponents army, you can just keep the S8 AP1 lance or two protection gifts.

Not being able to sweeping advance is not the end of the world, in fact it's quite handy! If you are fighting near the board edge units can still run off, if they are below 25% they can't rally, and either way (marines aside) they will be limited to a 3" move next turn and will only be able to snap shot.

All in all it's been a blast to play so far.

Tried out nurglings at 1.5k and they seem to offer loads of tactical flexibility. Infiltrate is so useful, it's pretty funny when you can get behind an aggressively deployed army in vanguard deployment. Had any luck with them?

That is very close to what I run at 1000 ... I then start to change things up as points increase ...
Too many negatives floating around about Nurglings. They have so many wounds, they can INFILTRATE. They can be strung across the table to tarpit/buffer. Now i configure my DPs a little differently ( one greater reward and warp-forged armor). I like a portal glyph BUT I'm flexible on the GUO. I intend to test out a soulgrinder. Now Mush has mentioned he likes the slaanesh variety but I'm going to keep it Nurgle and test it out. Also after 1250 points I start to add CSM allies.

Nurgle by Nurgle

Great Unclean One (mlv1 - plague,  greater reward, portalglyph/grimoire ) 240 - warlord
Typhus 230
2x 10 Plaguebearers (icon, instrument), Plagueridden 230
==7 Nurglings 105 (1850+ - drop a zombie) ==
22 Plague Zombies 98 (typhus here)
==15 Plague Zombies 70 (1750+)==
Heldrake, (baleflamer) 170
2x Daemon Prince, (daemonic flight, mlv1-plague, warp forged armour, greater reward, daemon of nurgle) 530
==Soulgrinder, (phlegm bombardment, daemon of nurgle) 180 (1750+)==

(1500)

Look closely at the list and you will see the imbedded 1000 and 1500 list in there. I want CSM at 1500+ levels. Typhus is a monster. Heldrakes are just too good. And fearless, fnp zombies are the cat's meow.

Now I mentioned I never tested the SG yet. But here is the issue with Nurgle that cannot be avoided. We play the mission. The list is not all that mobile. I can add mobile elements - DPs and Heldrake - but otherwise we are static. So this leaves us with a few options to control the table the biggest being DSing effectively. So as an example I can hide 25% of my SG in cover and use it as a backfield firebase and a deterrent to protect zombies sitting on an objective. That could work well in some missions against some lists. But Zombies are pretty tough anyway and it is not likely that my opponent will be focusing all his firepower on them when I have much more serious threats to deal with. So I could just DS my SG center of the table. He is going to be one troublesome area denial unit. He will take some heat of my warlord (GUO). He will force my opponent to decide idf the DPs or the SG or the Heldrake needs to be dealt with first. He adds to my skyfire. So here we have a flexible list capable of aggressive play or suitable to play a defensive cautious mission.

Now the other list I'm considering ...

== Nurgle with a chance of Slaanesh  ==

Keeper of Secrets (mlv3 - telepathy, 2 greater rewards) 260 (1850+)
Great Unclean One (mlv2 - plague,  greater reward, grimoire/portalglyph) 265 - warlord
Daemon Prince (mark of burgle, wings, black mace, power armour) 265
2x 10 Plaguebearers (icon, instrument) 220 (2 plagueriddens 1850+)
10 Daemonettes 90 (1850+)
10 Chaos Cultists 50
Heldrake (baleflamer) 170
2x Daemon Prince, (daemonic flight, mlv1-plague, warp forged armour, greater reward, daemon of nurgle) 530

(1500)

Let's start bt saying adding Slaanesh is never a bad choice. Sure I would like to play pure Nurgle (and will at 1500) but once we begin to expand ... KoS is tough. What can I say. I'll miss my zombies but meh ... PBs can hold the fort so to speak. At lower levels I can always fall back on the portalglyph.

So this list drops typhus and focuses on using the black mace prince at 1500. After taking to Kevin at 40k daenons I think Typhus may be weaker overall that a DP with mace. Kenny Boucher's Nurgle list has been schooling people with the above DP. Worth a try at least. The guy really is a bit of a monster and very tough to take down. An AP2 black mace is some good. Shrouding does not hurt. Sure ... no sweeping advances .... well all my DPs have no sweeping advances and that has not hurt me yet. Swooping with a 3+ is nice indeed. The Nurgle prince is a basic "point it and watch it kill" model against most anything. And do not take psychic powers on the CSM DPs.

Now why the Keeper at higher point levels? Cheap, access to extremely annoying psychic powers, benefits from all greater gift rolls, and has fleet/rending, and is no slouch in combat. I won't use lash even unless I pick up a gift I do not need. Those gifts should be ones that make him more durable. I feel this is one of the better GDs for the cost and synergy it has with the DPs and the GUO.  She could become a mainstay in my list.  

- a note on DSing - it is a mixed list. KoS will scatter d6" off a nurgle icon - but that is not terrible. Question is whether you need to with +d3" movement and fleet.

Enjoy. Hope that helped.

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http://www.thedarkcity.net/t6960-lig-s-duckdrake-s-tdc-blog-tactics-unit-analysis-batreps-observations-mandrakes-sept-1st

Thats some pretty good if not competetive lists right now, whats winning tournaments is the dual DP build with 50+ plaguebearers.
Your lists are pretty defensive in nature and thats good, 2 Flying Daemon Princes are no joke, another awesome build would be the tzeentch deamon prince build of a 3+ rerollable on a 1 that has saved me so many times on top of being hit only on 6's makes them exetremely competetive. Right now as it stands the current lists you have win games alot btw i usually use torrent weapons with my chaos like the bruning brand on my HQ daemon prince. Just fly around and burn things when they almost cant touch you. Cheers oh and another thing Bloodcrushers being buffed by the grimoire is serious business, 3+ invl riding on juggernauts with T5 and 3 wounds would murder anything. Lol Great unclean ones are awesome, i tend to take 2 for craps and giggles. Ha, dont even get me started on the Karios build everyody seems to exploit this edition.
Oh and for chaos Space marines another great unit and so many people under estimate them, Chaos Spawn with the mark of nurgle lol T6 3 W is the greatest tar pit chaos has available lol. They bog down almost anything. Just some more ideas

The myth of Markerlights > Shrouded

A lot of players seem to assume Tau hard counter mono nurgle daemons. At first you might think that Tau hard counter mono nurlge armies due to their ability to ignore cover at will thanks to markerlights. However if we delve a little deeper into the tau markerlight mechanic we will find that this is not the case.

The main source of ignores cover in the Tau army is from markerlights. Most Tau armies will be able to generate 5-6 tokens per shooting phase distributed across 1-2 target unit(s). This will allow two to three other units to ignore cover when shooting at the affected unit(s). This means two things, firstly, unless the tau army only has three units, you will still be getting your 2-3+ cover save against a reasonable portion of the Tau shooting. The second thing, the "catch" that is often overlooked is the ablity to ignore cover comes at the opportunity cost of boosting balistic skill, which is a big deal for a BS3 army.

Example:

First consider a unit of Daemonettes that has been hit by two markerlight tokens, the tau fire warrior unit of 12 uses these tokens to fire their 12 pulse rifle shots at BS5, on average inflicting 5.55 unsaved wounds on the daemonettes.

For the sake of comparing a T3 daemon unit with shrouded to a T3 daemon unit without. Now consider a unit of Nurglings that has been hit by two markerlight tokens, the tau fire warrior unit of 12 uses these tokens to fire their 12 pulse rifle shots at BS3 with ignore cover, on average inflicting 3.33 unsaved wounds on the nurglings.

As you can see a T3 unit with shrouded is still more survivable than a T3 unit without shrouded against Tau markerlights.

In conclusion shrouded is not a pointless special rule against Tau, as not only will it mean you will still get a cover saves against a reasonable portion of tau shooting due to "cover save saturation", but it will also mean that the Tau player will have to spend marker light tokens on ignoring cover, rather than boosting balistic skill, reducing the accuracy of his shooting, and as a result reducing incoming damage.

Not disagreeing with you Mush but I think we need to look at markerlights from all perspectives. They are important because they are so versatile and let your army do what you need it to. Tau can field lists that do not spend precious points on specialist weapons or niche weapons. You can with markerlights dictate how your army handles different kinds of threats and thus how it plays. I will increase ballistic when that is appropriate and cover when that is the better option. I won't argue that Nurgle is still durable. But I play a list with slaaanesh elements ot tzeentch elements then markerlights will certainly help and even against Nurgle they increase efficiency. So no - shrouded is not pointless but even increasing your overwatch ballistic skill sometimes helps.

What we need to do realistically, is look at the lists presented. Against both out variants we can deal with Tau. Getting into cc with tau is simply bad for them. Baleswords > Riptides. Any unit in cc is better than any Tau troops. I would send my Keeper at firewarriors without hesitation.

@ Eldritchwarmaster84
I would not agree that Nurgle is a bad tournament army. In fact it has done well with only twenty PBs nad cultists as troops at a numger of venues. Ask Kenny Boucher or Slaede. Certainly Fateweaver, screamerstar, fleashounds are the flavour of day but they are not the only winning lists. This thread is focusing on Nurgle.

Oh I agree markerlights are indeed powerful.

I just hear so many blanket statements that they counter nurgle, when in reality they give slaanesh, tzeentch and khorne just as much of a hard time.

Something I have started to notice with Stream of corruption, is it can be quite underwhelming, when you take into account a psychic test on LD9 (16.66% chance of failure) and deny the witch (16.66% chance to block the power), you only have a 66% chance of the power actually going off. If the unit has ademantium will or a psycher (5+ deny the witch) that drops to a 50% chance of going off! Add the fact that if you enter a dive you can only snapfire, and that it might make you fail a charge if you use it before charging (by removing too many models) and I'm starting to doubt it's value. Yes it is something to do in the shooting phase, and it can potentially do a lot of damage, but it's not exactly reliable. Would people bother with flamers if they had to roll a 3+ to hit?

I am actually playing a quite simulare list atm, and are going to play Nurgle FMC list next turnement season. Decided to go for a change from my Dark Eldars.

Anyway Tau might be a hard matchup, but its not a impossible race to beat. There are a few things that got ignore cover, but not all of it.

And I have to say that as mush says, steam over corruption is underwhelming. I did go for it when I started my first few matches, now tho I have moved mroe and more away from it