Nurgle Unit Breakdown

Just an insight into the nurgle units throughout the codex and whether they are usable in competitive play.

Great Unclean One
Papa nurgle has some pretty tasty stats off the bat, WS6 S6 T7 W6 A5 and rocking a 5++ like everything else in the codex. He has shrouded, slow and pruposeful, monstrous creature (Character) and posioned 4+ which grants him re-rolls to wound against anything under T7. He can be utterly brutal and I would always reccommend paying the ten points for a plague flail to make him S7, you might ask what can S7 do that S6 can't and it would really depend on your meta but for a measly 10 points even necron lords and ork warboss' are getting wounded on two's and even bloodthirsters are getting wounded on three's (just don't forget the poisoned re-rolls). GUO's also have the option of being Mastery Level 2 or 3, they come at 1 as standard. They can freely swap powers from plague or biomancy which unlike in the Chaos Space Marine book you aren't asked to pick atleast one from your codex discipline. If you have the points to spare a level 3 on biomancy is terrifying for everything (even the abaddons and draigos of the world will shit a brick), getting endurance or iron arm on your GUO's (possibly bringing him up to eternal warrior s10 and t10) is enough to give your oppoenents nightmares. The final bonus of a GUO is their ability to open up the heavy support slots for daemon princes provided they take the mark of nurgle. This leads to the possibility of you running a list with 2 GUO's and 3 flying Daemon Princes.

As with all monstrous creatures in 6th edition, poisoned attacks will bring the big guy down and even a humble force staff could pop him in one pathetic swing of a primaris psyker. The loss of eternal warrior from the codex hurt the greater daemons more then anybody meaning that GUO's went from being auto-includes in a Nurgle army to their merits being weighed up in comparison to the superior heralds.

Overall Rating 6/10

Heralds of Nurgle
This is where its at for Nurgle HQ's, for 45 points you get a WS5 S5 T5 W2 A3 beatstick with a 5++. Paying ten points for an etherblade is also a solid purchase for Ap2 shenanigans and with the ability to take four of them for a HQ spot provided that Daemons are your primary detachment you should never leave home without a handful of these guys. Heralds also bestow a locus onto nurgle units that they join but only one of them is ever worth taking and even so it is dependent upon the size of the unit. The Greater locus grants Feel no Pain which sounds incredible but it comes in at 25 points and you need to be running a squad of 20 for you to really get any bang for your buck. I think your better off keeping them cheap and taking them as 55 point monsters, I'd also advise avoiding the psychic powers. What seems cheap at 55 points starts appearing fragile when he's hitting the 100+ mark through spending points on loci and rewards. The palanquin option is also something I reccommend a +2 wounds mount? Yes please!

Overall heralds are a mainstay in nurgle armies and in my opinion the best HQ choice available to us 8/10

Plaguebearers
The humble plaguebearer took a bit of a pounding stat and rule wise in this edition but has it balanced out by a generous drop in points too. The drop from 5-4 in toughness and the loss of FnP stings but for 9pts a model you could do a lot worse then what your getting. An incredible attribute that these guys have is the touch of rust, when in combat with vehicles on a roll of a 6 in the armour penetration roll you glance the vehicle. a unit of 10 of these can take off a dreadnought on the charge and a unit of 20 can reliably pop a land raider. Rejoice disciples of nurgle when your opponent is nice enough to deploy tanks against you. They also come with poisoned 4+ and at S4 are re-rolling to wound against  everything short of lychguard. Throw them into tanks/spaace marines basically anything that takes  your fancy and watch your 90pt unit get its points back in spades.

Overall rating 9/10. If they'd kept FnP as standard I'd rate them full marks but without it its about the best you could hope for for their cost.

In part 2 we will be looking over the traditional nurgle units of nurglings and beasts before going on to plague drones, soul grinders and daemon princes. As always comments ar welcomed, how do you rate these units?