Making Plague Drones and Beasts of Nurgle work

[Scrags]

Hey all!

I tend to wax poetic so TL;DR are Plague Drones and/or Beasts of Nurgle worth their points and why?

So I've been working on expanding my pure Nurgle demons army and am trying to figure out which other Nurgle demons to add to my list. 

I have a solid core of plaguebearers to work with (60+ that I can use in any combination) every flavor of GUO and a Rottigus. 

So it comes down to either Plague Drones or Beasts of Nurgle for me. 

Plague Drones strike me as the more consistent of the two, they seem to be tanky statistic machines (tons of no rend attacks) and with the support of a Lord of Afflictions they might be able to get some work done though I don't see them doing any heavy lifting. I'd love to be wrong though and hear from someone who has used them. 

 

Beasts seem to have similar problems but are even MORE inconsistent with their single D6 of attacks (they get the tongue too but it's one attack) 

the additional damage for being near a hero is nice and I see the Slimux synergy. Their big gimmick seems to be retreating and charging and thereby fishing for mortal wounds procs, but again, to me this is a gimmick and difficult to build a list around with any sort of consistency. 

 

Thoughts? Anyone been able to make them work? Is there a Nurgle demon unit I'm forgetting? 

[TalesOfSigmar]

Plague Drones seem to be a go to for alot of people in a unit of 6.

Add the GUO command ability and have another Demon Hero up within 7 of them and they've got an additional 2 attacks on all weapons in melee and 1 additional attack at range.

If you can get Blades of Putrifaction on them then with all of those number of attacks 6s to hit do additional mortal wounds so they can go around and delete things off the board.

Beasts I've never seen played so cannot comment on them unfortunately.

[Scrags]

19 hours ago, TalesOfSigmar said:

Plague Drones seem to be a go to for alot of people in a unit of 6.

Add the GUO command ability and have another Demon Hero up within 7 of them and they've got an additional 2 attacks on all weapons in melee and 1 additional attack at range.

If you can get Blades of Putrifaction on them then with all of those number of attacks 6s to hit do additional mortal wounds so they can go around and delete things off the board.

Beasts I've never seen played so cannot comment on them unfortunately.

Interesting, yeah thats pretty much how I thought plague drones would work out. So the unit of 6 Drones that you mentioned runs you 400 points I think, then the GUO clocks in at 340 then we need another 120 for the cheapest Rotbringers Wizard I can think of. So we're looking at 460 points of support for our Plague Drones (The GUO in this instance is pulling double duty providing the buff AND being the Nurgle Demon hero for our Drones here). Now don't get me wrong, thats a LOT of attacks on a VERY durable unit, but given that not only are the vast majority of these attacks no rend, but I believe most of them hit of 4+ too so pretty swingy in my books. Basically this feels like a lot of points for a unit that MIGHT do damage. (I know the GUO is a useful unit by itself but lets just look at the Drones for now :P)

There is also a fair amount of matchup dependency for lack of better terminology. Stormcast Eternals in particular worry me with their high armor values. To be fair, we do have Blades of Putrification for Mortal Wounds but against 3+ god forbid 2+ re-rolling saves we're basically JUST fishing for 6s at that point. Fortunately there are plenty of factions out there where pure volume of attacks should be able to get the job done.

So who are our  heavy hitters? It seems like other factions have much more obvious choices. Retributors, Kurnoth Hunters, Skyfires, Bloodletter balls all come to mind. 

[sal4m4nd3r]

Nurgles strength is in resiliency and grinding an enemy down over time. Drones are the hammer of a maggotkin army.  With +2 attacks..those drones are doing 10 attacks each. 3 of those are doing d3 damage at 1 rend. That’s not to mention the 2 shots at ranger per drone...which also triggers mortal wounds from blades. 

Here is a damage breakdown of drones with +2 attacks and blades against a target with 4+ armor..that’s without deaths head shots. They are quite powerful when buffed. Doing 24-28 unsaved wounds 35% of the time they attack.

 

[Scrags]

48 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Here is a damage breakdown of drones with +2 attacks and blades against a target with 4+ armor..that’s without deaths head shots. They are quite powerful when buffed. Doing 24-28 unsaved wounds 35% of the time they attack.

Wow nice breakdown! What site did you use to get those numbers? As I mentioned in another thread I forgot that Pusgoyle Blightlords have the Demon tag as well. I didn't know if they would be a better option in a similar role especially with the classic Blightking "exploding 6s" mechanic. In the mean time though thanks again for the Drone breakdown, I have 9 of them so I'll run them more in the upcoming league at my local game store and report back

[sal4m4nd3r]

12 hours ago, Scrags said:

Wow nice breakdown! What site did you use to get those numbers? As I mentioned in another thread I forgot that Pusgoyle Blightlords have the Demon tag as well. I didn't know if they would be a better option in a similar role especially with the classic Blightking "exploding 6s" mechanic. In the mean time though thanks again for the Drone breakdown, I have 9 of them so I'll run them more in the upcoming league at my local game store and report back

I use the damage calculator on druchii.net. http://tools.druchii.net/AoS-Combat-Calculator.php

it is somewhat limited. For instance there is no way to calculate for blightkings blighted weapons ability (‘exploding’ 6s) butnyou can calculate blades damage if you add all the profiles and then a separate profile with all attacks combined, 6s “to hit” with auto wound and no save. Pretty handy and much better then trying to do math in your head! Gives you an accurate breakdown of damages as a spread.