Nurgle Unit Breakdown Part 2

Finishing off my rundown on the nurgle units

Beasts of Nurgle
For 52 points you get a T5 W4 model with IWND plus your basic daemon shenanigans of shrouded 5++, poisoned 4+. They are also unit type beasts which give you something sadly lacking in a Nurgle daemons list, speed. Movement 12" and taking no penalties for terrain means these guys are capable of second turn charges. A unit of 6 of these cmoes in north of 300 points but your running around with 24 wounds for your opponent to get through, the new rules for wound allocation allows for some funny tricks for these guys. Keep changing the model closest to your enemy and short of bad save rolling on your part most of these guys should get there. Beasts also have a handy special rule called attention seekers, which means if a unit of yours is charged within 12" of the beasts you have the ability to make a charge yourself. IN YOUR OPPONENTS TURN. Their major downside is being only s4 and having d6+1 attacks, while it could work incredible and be rolling into combat with 42 attacks you could also end up with 12.

Overall Rating: 6/10

Nurglings 
The same price as scarabs with none of the effectiveness, are useless against everything better then a guardsman and give away first blood way too easily. Their small base size makes it easy for you to get sover saves with them but the loss of eternal warriors means a single psycannon could take off a unit of these a turn.

Overall Rating: 1/10

Plague Drones
I really like these guys, and I think they are perfect to go hunting after monstrous creatures especially when you give them the instant death upgrade. They are also your only fast attack unit meaning you have a scoring nit for the scouring. They come in at ten points cheaper then beasts and for that they lose a wound and ITWD, on the plus side they have the option to take an icon of chaos and are still movement 12". These guys are your reliable linebreaker unit and the addition of an icon means not only are you able to contest objectives that your opponent has tucked away but you can also deep strike down units of plaguebearers without the risk of scattering. These guys just have too many uses to leave out but I would strongly advise not goign above units of 3-4. After this point you start hitting the areas where your opponent sees them as too big a threat. And the models are gorgeous.



Overall Rating: 7/10

Daemon Princes
Before any equipment is bought these guys cost 160 for the nurgle upgrade, these guys are a pathetic T5 and W4 which means your opponent only needs a decent round of bolter fire to bring it down. Its upgrades are very expensive and to get the most out of it your spending 220 points to give him power armour and wings. If he gets to combat he will wreck things but he is way too big of a bullseye for him to get to combat against an opponent worth his salts. If you take one you need to take two and even then your relying on luck for him to be alive by turn 3. Clever use of terrain ins essential for this guy to make his points back. He does have the option of becoming a psyker but again your snking major points into a fragile unit.

Overall Rating: 5/10

Soul Grinder
The last Nurgle in the codex comes with your only skyfire short of fortifications and even that is a 3 shot S7 AP4 gun fired by a bs3 walker. That sucks, plain and simple. Now onto the good side of him, he comes in at 180 points for the nurgle upgrade and phlegm bombardment a s8 AP3 large blast ordnance. He has 4HPs with 13/13/11 and a minimum of a 5++, a lot of people talk about putting two of these guys onto a landing pad for a 4++ and this works fine for soul grinders of the other gods but cover saves are incredible for nurgle. Behind area terrain this guy is rocking a 3+ cover save and a 2+ behind ruins! These guys are horrifically hard to kill but I can't help but think the addition of interceptor onto their gun was a serious mistake.

Overall Rating: 8/10 although if your talking purely from an anti-air perspective then this drops rapidly

Thanks for reading guys, next up is a tactical guide on the army and some lists!

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?

Ku'gath Plaguefather

Ku'gath is the Great Unclean One special character in the book (sadly lacking a model, although there are some great conversions out there). He comes in at 260 points which is a fair bit more then you have to pay for a basic Great Unclean One, with the main difference being his extra wound statwise. He is the same base strength as a GUO but unfortuantely lacks the access of biomancy which is superior to the plague discipline in every discernable way.

The main caveat of taking Ku'gath is that with the slow and purposeful USR rampant throughout his Nurgle brethren his 24" large blast AP3 Poisoned (4+) gives you some range above and beyond what your soul grinders are doing. He also grants a wound to a nurgling unit within 6" which is handy in no situations whatsoever as there is no reason why they would be deployed together nor why they would be together at a later point in the game.

Overall he is a solid enough choice and for 260 points you could do a lot worse then having a T7 W7 monstrous creature as your warlord but he comes with the trait Immortal Commander which allows units within 12" to re-roll daemonic instability checks. As immortal commander is arguably the worst of the warlord traits (the exception being -1 for fear tests when your playing against a fearless/ATSKNF army) if your not going to play corner hammer with him he isn't worth taking. If he had been able to roll on biomancy then he would be incredible as rolling around with Iron Arm, Endurance or warp speed this guy becomes a primarch on crack. Unfortunately as is your better off running a basic Great Unclean One. 5/10

My favourite conversion for the guy

Epidemius

This humble proctor of pestilence has been seen as someone who got majorly dicked over in this new book, and I'm not gonna lie he is considerably worse then he was. This does not mean that he is a bad choice, far from it in fact, it just means that you actually have to think about what your going to do with him as opposed to the last book when you put him down and your all nurgle daemon army had the win in the bag.

For 110 points you get a WS5 S5 T5 W4 character with poisoned (4+), very bulky, daemon of nurgle, daemonic instability and a lesser locus. Not too shabby you say, the only thing that you'd want to add in to that is an etherblade which your other heralds can pick up for 10 points. Due to the strange idea that 4 heralds constitute a single HQ choice in a primary detachment fitting Epidemius in along with heralds to babysit your units is simple enough.

For what your paying for that alone your not getting hit too badly but its the talisman that he keeps that makes this guy special. Appointed by the Plague Lord himself it is Epidemius' job to monitor the many blessings Nurgle has bestowed upon an ungrateful universe. On the tabletop this amounts to you keeping a record of all wounds caused by Nurgle daemons through psychic attacks, shooting and close combat and on multiples of 7 (Nurgles holy number) fun stuff happens that boost all models with the daemon of nurgle rule within 6" of Epidemius. After 7 wounds have been caused you get +1S, 14 will give you +1T, 21 bestows Poisoned on a 2+ and the jackpot of 28 gives you a 4+ Feel no Pain.

Tactics wise it suits you to bunker Epidemius in a corner where he can give out his gifts to as many units as possible. Getting the tallt up quickly is essential, which means putting your soul grinders pie plates from phlegm bombardment onto nice squishy units like cultists, guard blobs, power armoured units, kroot, fire warriors....basically everything which isn't rocking a 2+ save. Put him in a nice unit of plaguebearers to soak up bullets for him as he has a major bullseye on him.

Overall Epidemius is still a solid choice and a good choice for warlord as you still get to roll on the delicious chaos daemons warlord traits for him.  While the loss of Eternal Warrior hurts in this new book, as it does for all Nurgle daemons Epidemius is still a solid choice just no longer an incredible one. Overall I'd rate him as 7/10.

Keep checking the site as next time we will be reviewing Ku'gath Plaguefather the GUO special character before a thorough run down of all the nurgle daemons in the codex. Thanks for reading!

As always guys feel free to comment on any experiences you've had with him, any tricks you think I may have missed/overlooked please let me know

Introductions

Hi all, first post here on this blog dedicated to Nurgle Daemons in 40k. I've been playing 40k for a number of years now and the latest lists that I've been running with in tournaments are mono-nurgle and then expanding with the introduction of allies. In the next few weeks there will be regular posts reviewing the potential of allied units, tactics that suit the army list and an in depth review of all the Nurgle units in the codex. Enjoy!