AoS 2 - Maggotkin of Nurgle Discussion

[Zplash]

Did I read it correctly that we are only allowed to summon 1 unit per turn? So no more chain summoning? 

I mean with 7 range and less contagion points we will have less of a chance to do a proper chain summoning at all... 

[IRRecio]

So I've tried out 2 Nurgle Lists so far against my buddy's Stormcast Eternals list. 

I tried

Subfaction: Blessed Sons                                          Subfaction: I forgot lmao (more on that below)

Grand Strategy: Hold the Line                                  Grand Strategy: Hold the Line

Glotkin (700)                                                             Great Unclean One - General (495)

-Spell: Rancid Visitations                                          -Command Trait: Nurgling Infestation

Lord of Afflictions - General (210)                            -Spell: Fleshy Abundance

-Command Trait: Overpowering Stench                   -Artifact: The Witherstave

Lord of Plagues (145)                                                Lord of Afflictions (210)

-Artifact: The Splithorn Helm                                    Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)

1x Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)                                   Orghots Daemonspew (300)   

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

                                                                                  Geminids (80)  

Total (1915)                                                               Total (1945)

Both lists in battle regiment.

Games ended 0-1-1 with the first list tying and the second list losing. They were really fun games that went all the way to turn 5. My opponent was running a pretty standard hallowed knights stormcast list with 15 liberators, reinforced vanguard raptors, reinforced fulminators, so we were not pulling any punches with these tests.

Some Quick Findings:

Movement is SO much slower. Expect to not get into combat sometimes by turn 3. With a movement of 4, you have a 50% chance of getting denied your entire move by redeploy and are pretty much guaranteed for half of your movement to be denied. My second game was on the vice so the bulk of my army did not make it into combat until turns 4-5. This makes it very hard for you to ever be the initiator of a charge. This is where the Glottkin shines. Being able to charge on your opponent's turn makes their movement yours. In my first game, I had my blightkings charge into a group of teleported fulminators to deny their charge bonus. It's probably not going to happen again, but it was funny.

I am still iffy on disease counters, leaning towards not liking them. Other than being near people and in combat (which may not always happen early game), there aren't really a lot of good ways to put disease counters on things (a spell with Nurgle's mediocre magic and shooting with pretty poor range). Which means that it will be hard to do that gradual damage. They are also super swingy even if you can get counters on things and there's a chance that you don't even get to the part of the wheel at all where your disease rolls are buffed. Damage output in general was kinda lacking from the blightkings. I could get all 25 attacks in pretty consistently, and maybe this was just stormcast getting high saves, but I would often find myself doing 1-2 wounds. That combat with the fulminators I mentioned earlier lasted two turns with the blightkings killing 1 fulminator before dying.

Speaking of inconsistent, Blessed Sons pretty much did nothing. So little, in fact, that I forgot to pick a second subfaction while making my second list. Will probably start running the tree subfaction now unless I decide to build something like flyers.

I really wish we had better heroes for our mortal artifacts. 

Now for the good:

Mortals are SO durable. A unit of blightkings often survived 2-3 full vanguard raptor attacks even with shooting in the hero phase.

Summoning is still pretty decent. I was still able to summon a unit of 10 plaguebearers by battleround 3, and threaten summoning nurglings by 2, which is good for screening out blightkings from those nasty charge fulminator attacks and do not count as movement so you don't trigger redeploy before you can get your units to safety. The range reduction sucks, especially since I've been trying less heroes and often times they get into combat. Not being able to summon a tree to extend summoning range followed by a consecutive summon on the same turn is kind of brutal.

Lord of Afflictions and company are so nice to have around. The ability to threaten objectives/backline/deepstrike is very nice to have and really tempting me to go all in on the bug list, but usually I would have to deploy them in the second battle round just to get the have 2 units in an opponents territory battle tactic as I was starved for tactics pretty early on in the game.

I am going to try a few more games and in those games try: more demon/mortal mixes, less GuO and Glotkin, rotbringer sorcerers, and maybe allies (Be'lakor namely). 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Hannibal said:

You can also get a more diverse army by using the SC Nurgle Daemons in tandem with a start collecting Maggotkin (if you can still get one) and/or one of the new Nurgle Vanguard boxed sets. 

 

—-----------

From what I heard so far, things I like about the new book:

1) Really it's the first time my model collection becomes more expensive points wise. 

2) similar to 1) my beloved army is now an elite force, something I wanted to possess for years. 

3) GUOs and other big guys are way more offensive, meaning there is a chance to at least do some damage.

4) maggot lords seem to be playable now. 

5) There is at least a chance to play the magic game right now. 

That's about it. Everything else is a bummer for me. 

A) why coalition units if they can't benefit from the armies special rules? Big bummer here for long time model collectors. 

B) Speed4 really? 

C) Low model count always has been the Bane of my Nurgle existence. Can't see how to win the objective game right now. 

D) That 5+ ward seems to be part of the allegiance abilities and not part of the war scrolls, meaning my Plague bearers are no more suited for the Legion of the First Prince. WAIT! There is still that 5+ ward command trait in LotfP, isn't it? 

Nevertheless I can't wait to get my copy of the book and play some games. 

 

I'll ues this post as a spring board for some stream of consiousness writing, if you don't mind. I am still in the process of wrapping my head around the battletome as a new player. A few thoughts:

What the whole Nurgle range seems to lack is access to cheap bodies. Every unit in the book is a hugely tanky mega-anvil, but none have any capture pressure. The best unit is probably Plaguebearers, but even they are not in that ~100 point for 10 range you want for chaff. I suppose the solution to this are coalition units. You can pull in cheap bodies like Plague Monks, Ungors, Marauders and Warcry cultists to help with the body problem. Sucks if you want to play pure Maggotkin, but the option is there.

Nurgle seems to want to play a game that goes long. Like, the full 5 turns, probably. As mentioned, every unit in the book is super tanky and likely to stick around, and disease points will eventually wear the enemy down. With 4" move nearly across the board, it seems like you need to also expect your units to take a turn to get into position. It seems to me that investing in some kind of movement shennenigans is a must. Either a Lord of Afflictions general, or Drowned Men, or Gutrot Spume (although board edge summoning seems like an unattractive option, given the low move of Blightkings). Lord of Afflictions general seems like a generally good choice, though, with the Overpowering Stench trait, so not a big tax here.

Not sure about what army makeup is best. My intuition is that going exclusively mortals or demons is probably not optimal. A mix seems stronger. But then you also have to keep coalition units in mind, so hard to say. I think the army probably wants to build low drops. There are a lot of OK artefacts in the army, but I don't see the need to aim for 2+ from extra enhancements. I don't think most of them give a larger boost than being able to take the initiative turn 1.

But builds with mutliple small heroes also seems very possible. A Lord of Afflictions, a Maggoth Lord, a Harbinger, a Sorcerer and plus another support hero does not seem like an unreasonably large command suite. You are nearly at the point of double Warlord/Command Entourage with those already.

It seems to me that magic heavy and summoning heavy builds are an option. The average army probably won't need a huge summoning board and should probably shoot for a unit of Plaguebearers plus one more thing (Bilepiper or Nurglings or something). Reaching the 30 points for a Great Unclean One would require some dedication, but you should be able to get it by turn 3 if you really gun for it. Magic-heavy lists also seem to be able to put an impressive number of casts with some good bonuses on the table. The question is whether the spell lore and warscroll spells are good enough to warrant it. In any case, lists will want at least one wizard to unbind. The sorcerer with arcane tome seems decent enough in that role.

 

[boombyeyeah]

thx for the report @IRRecio

at least mortal units seem to have good durability.

After watching/reading some reviews i like most parts of the battletome, but i think most units are overcosted, i guess GW hasnt considered that we lost very powerful munificent wanderers allegiance from Wrath of the Everchosen.(worsen melee profiles -1 Rend, MWs on 1s to hit for enemies - general trait)

For Example Plaguebearers:

So yay... 2 wound Plaguebearers, but they've gone from an easy achievable 4+ save and ignoring 1 Rend to a 6+ save. But +40points  .

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

24 minutes ago, boombyeyeah said:

thx for the report @IRRecio

at least mortal units seem to have good durability.

After watching/reading some reviews i like most parts of the battletome, but i think most units are overcosted, i guess GW hasnt considered that we lost very powerful munificent wanderers allegiance from Wrath of the Everchosen.(worsen melee profiles -1 Rend, MWs on 1s to hit for enemies - general trait)

For Example Plaguebearers:

So yay... 2 wound Plaguebearers, but they've gone from an easy achievable 4+ save and ignoring 1 Rend to a 6+ save. But +40points  .

A 4+ save ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 1 wound is exactly the same as a 6+ save not ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 2 wounds. And you can give the new plague bearers +1 to saves, as well, making them actually ~1.3 times more tanky against rend -1, more tanky than that against rend 0 and weirdly also against rend better than -2 (since you can't rend them down lower than a save of '-', wasting any rend above 2).

Edit:

Here is a chart of old vs. new Plague Bearers in terms of defensive strength. It's just multiplying their wounds characteristic by all the multipliers they get from saves/wards:

	Rend 0	Rend -1	Rend -2	Rend -3
Old PBs	2,25	2,25	1,95	1,5
+1 saves	3	3	2,25	1,95
New PBs	3,9	3	3	3
+1 saves	4,5	3,9	3	3
Old vs new	1,73	1,33	1,54	2
+1 saves	1,5	1,3	1,33	1,54

 

As you can see, new Plague bearers are always tankier than old Plaguebearers, factoring in their "ignore rend -1".

To be points efficient, new PBs need to be 1,36 times as tanky as the old ones. I have included the ratios in the "old vs new" rows. You dip slightly below that number on for -1 rend attacks, and for -2 rend at +1 saves. However, at -2 rend you have the option to just not use all-out attack/mystic shield and get the same result, which is arguably still better.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Nurglete]

24 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

A 4+ save ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 1 wound is exactly the same as a 6+ save not ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 2 wounds. And you can give the new plague bearers +1 to saves, as well, making them actually ~1.3 times more tanky against rend -1, more tanky than that against rend 0 and weirdly also against rend better than -2 (since you can't rend them down lower than a save of '-', wasting any rend above 2).

The old plaguebearers were tankier even with 1 wound. I think you didn´t take into account the -1 to hit.
For the same price they were tankier and had more bodies.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Just now, Nurglete said:

The old plaguebearers were tankier even with 1 wound. I think you didn´t take into account the -1 to hit.
For the same price they were tankier and had more bodies.

Ah, right, they got -1 to hit, too. That makes it trickier to know how much tankier they were, then.

[Zplash]

17 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

A 4+ save ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 1 wound is exactly the same as a 6+ save not ignoring rend -1, 5+ ward and 2 wounds. And you can give the new plague bearers +1 to saves, as well, making them actually ~1.3 times more tanky against rend -1, more tanky than that against rend 0 and weirdly also against rend better than -2 (since you can't rend them down lower than a save of '-', wasting any rend above 2).

Didn't recalculate your statement but even if that's true so without extra invest (you will have other places to use all out defense) we have the same durability  for a ~40% points increase? 

To be fair it's looking better for shooting and MW

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Zplash said:

Didn't recalculate your statement but even if that's true so without extra invest (you will have other places to use all out defense) we have the same durability  for a ~40% points increase? 

To be fair it's looking better for shooting and MW

It's just a bout the same durability or better in most cases, taking the points increase into account. That's what the 1.36 number represents: Points went up by a factor of 1.36, and tankyness is usually thereabouts or better. Basically equal against rend -1, better against anything else if unbuffed.

But then again, I didn't include the -1 to hit. I suspect that makes fairly significant difference in melee.

[Ajmaus]

But the old plague bearers also help objectives better because you had more models for less points 30 models for example were 330 points compared to 20 models at 300.. 

The failure on the new plague bearers is 1 attack. I think we need them to match that attacks of the plague drone rider.. both are plague bearers with the same weapon. Do what they did for brutes and pigs..

Make plague bearers 2 attacks 3s and 3s so they match the identical guy riding a fly.. blight kings and pusgoyles have the same profile and they technically arent even the same guys armed with the same things

[Drazhoath]

18 minutes ago, Ajmaus said:

But the old plague bearers also help objectives better because you had more models for less points 30 models for example were 330 points compared to 20 models at 300.. 

The failure on the new plague bearers is 1 attack. I think we need them to match that attacks of the plague drone rider.. both are plague bearers with the same weapon. Do what they did for brutes and pigs..

Make plague bearers 2 attacks 3s and 3s so they match the identical guy riding a fly.. blight kings and pusgoyles have the same profile and they technically arent even the same guys armed with the same things

Yeah, but 10 PB with 2 attacks, 3s and 3s with 2 wounds and a 5++ would and should cost 200 points or more.

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I'll ues this post as a spring board for some stream of consiousness writing, if you don't mind. I am still in the process of wrapping my head around the battletome as a new player. A few thoughts:

What the whole Nurgle range seems to lack is access to cheap bodies. Every unit in the book is a hugely tanky mega-anvil, but none have any capture pressure. The best unit is probably Plaguebearers, but even they are not in that ~100 point for 10 range you want for chaff. I suppose the solution to this are coalition units. You can pull in cheap bodies like Plague Monks, Ungors, Marauders and Warcry cultists to help with the body problem. Sucks if you want to play pure Maggotkin, but the option is there.

I like pretty much everything you said, but just as a quick point I don't think you can coalition in warcry cultists right now since they don't have the 'Mark of Chaos' keyword. Too bad really because untamed beasts would be pretty great. I think having a couple units marauder horsemen or maybe just foot marauders would probably help a ton with early objectives but I worry they'd make really obvious targets and just get nuked off the board since they're so squishy. 

For the plaguebearer discussion: I do think they're worse than they were overall but honestly they were hugely overtuned in order to prop up an old janky book. Their resilience was ridiculous and the damage output with all the buffs was staggering when it lined up. The real question we need to ask is are they good enough now. They provide bodies in an army that can lack them and needs all the help it can get on objectives. That's hugely important. They're resilient enough to last 3-4 rounds against everything but the hardest of hitters, which means that they're going to be tossing out enough disease points to cause 6-8 mortal wounds while they fight. They still get the sloppity and spoilpox buffs and those can be brought in for free much easier due to the reduced summoning costs on those units. They are super slow though and of course their standard damage is terrible so they're pretty much entirely reliant on disease or buffs to do anything. Personally I don't think you can make an army of them anymore, but I do think they're going to be a part of most lists since they're our best objective grabbers. 

Edited December 13, 2021 by Grimrock

[umpac]

9 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's just a bout the same durability or better in most cases, taking the points increase into account. That's what the 1.36 number represents: Points went up by a factor of 1.36, and tankyness is usually thereabouts or better. Basically equal against rend -1, better against anything else if unbuffed.

But then again, I didn't include the -1 to hit. I suspect that makes fairly significant difference in melee.

Its not too hard to calculate. -1 to hit reduces damage attacks with a hit value of 2+ by 20%, 3+ by 25%, 4+ by 33% and 5+ by 50%. On the other hand its pretty easy for some armies to negate -1 to hit with AOA and a source of +1 to hit so it has less value that it used to have. 

[Tizianolol]

Guys if I summon a great unclean one, can I give him a spell from the lore?

[Zplash]

7 minutes ago, Tizianolol said:

Guys if I summon a great unclean one, can I give him a spell from the lore?

Yes, should be possible. 

[Zplash]

Maybe stupid question but what do u guys think we do about all the order gotrek lists? 

How should we be able to touch him? Even 10 blightkings (they can't hit him at a time) won't kill him

Disease dmg will be max 1 dmg on him due to his ability right? 

I can't see a chance in the whole book to deal with him... Halve move and minus 2run/charge is our best bet and of course after successful cast within 14 you have to roll the 4 + can't believe that dumb rules after the casts to role another dice to get hopefully the effect of the spell... 

We even lost cheap 5 PBs summoning for roadblocks 😆

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by Zplash

[frostfire]

19 minutes ago, Zplash said:

Maybe stupid question but what do u guys think we do about all the order gotrek lists? 

How should we be able to touch him? Even 10 blightkings (they can't hit him at a time) won't kill him

Disease dmg will be max 1 dmg on him due to his ability right? 

I can't see a chance in the whole book to deal with him... Halve move and minus 2run/charge is our best bet and of course after successful cast within 14 you have to roll the 4 + can't believe that dumb rules after the casts to role another dice to get hopefully the effect of the spell... 

We even lost cheap 5 PBs summoning for roadblocks 😆

 

Stopping him from piling in with the bilepiper. I am happy that ability remain unchanged. 

[AmonRa]

2 hours ago, Zplash said:

Maybe stupid question but what do u guys think we do about all the order gotrek lists? 

How should we be able to touch him? Even 10 blightkings (they can't hit him at a time) won't kill him

Disease dmg will be max 1 dmg on him due to his ability right? 

I can't see a chance in the whole book to deal with him... Halve move and minus 2run/charge is our best bet and of course after successful cast within 14 you have to roll the 4 + can't believe that dumb rules after the casts to role another dice to get hopefully the effect of the spell... 

We even lost cheap 5 PBs summoning for roadblocks 😆

 

I can't figure out a counter to Gotek or gargants at the moment. Like anything.

[Zplash]

2 hours ago, frostfire said:

Stopping him from piling in with the bilepiper. I am happy that ability remain unchanged. 

Yeah would require to lean into Plaguebeaerers because sadly our Blightlords and LOA lost the daemon keyword... Sad story 

And of course you likely need to make the charge to position correctly if possible within 0,5 of another unit near by etc etc. A lot which must go our way and honestly lot of the good players will focus Our sloppity down with magic shooting before the combat with Gotrek

But let's see maybe bloab and his spell + Festus and his spell + blightkings all out attack etc can wrestle him down if he's not rolling over average with his after save rolls

[ibel]

9 hours ago, AmonRa said:

I can't figure out a counter to Gotek or gargants at the moment. Like anything.

But the "Bloab Spell" on him an charge him with a 20-30 Blob of Plaguebearer and then give him Dmg Every Phase (as good as u can)

Same on Garagnts. With tricks "like" this i think u can easylie put 12-15 Mortals per round on 1 target. Jes ist not super easy and so but … okay.

Maybe something (easy) like that:

Glootkin

Bloab

20 Plaguebearer

5 BK

5 BK

3 PlagueDrone

Jes, it feals like we have 1 or 2 Units lost but, the BK i heared are super strong alone so... and with the Rest u strugel down a Gotrek or a Gargant.... Maybe. We will see. Or Maggotkin become the next Army i owned and is Not playebel (my other Army is Hedonit, i know what i am Talking About )

[IRRecio]

17 hours ago, IRRecio said:

So I've tried out 2 Nurgle Lists so far against my buddy's Stormcast Eternals list. 

I tried

Subfaction: Blessed Sons                                          Subfaction: I forgot lmao (more on that below)

Grand Strategy: Hold the Line                                  Grand Strategy: Hold the Line

Glotkin (700)                                                             Great Unclean One - General (495)

-Spell: Rancid Visitations                                          -Command Trait: Nurgling Infestation

Lord of Afflictions - General (210)                            -Spell: Fleshy Abundance

-Command Trait: Overpowering Stench                   -Artifact: The Witherstave

Lord of Plagues (145)                                                Lord of Afflictions (210)

-Artifact: The Splithorn Helm                                    Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)

1x Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)                                   Orghots Daemonspew (300)   

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

5x Putrid Blightking (250)                                         5x Putrid Blightking (250)

                                                                                  Geminids (80)  

Total (1915)                                                               Total (1945)

Both lists in battle regiment.

Games ended 0-1-1 with the first list tying and the second list losing. They were really fun games that went all the way to turn 5. My opponent was running a pretty standard hallowed knights stormcast list with 15 liberators, reinforced vanguard raptors, reinforced fulminators, so we were not pulling any punches with these tests.

Some Quick Findings:

Movement is SO much slower. Expect to not get into combat sometimes by turn 3. With a movement of 4, you have a 50% chance of getting denied your entire move by redeploy and are pretty much guaranteed for half of your movement to be denied. My second game was on the vice so the bulk of my army did not make it into combat until turns 4-5. This makes it very hard for you to ever be the initiator of a charge. This is where the Glottkin shines. Being able to charge on your opponent's turn makes their movement yours. In my first game, I had my blightkings charge into a group of teleported fulminators to deny their charge bonus. It's probably not going to happen again, but it was funny.

I am still iffy on disease counters, leaning towards not liking them. Other than being near people and in combat (which may not always happen early game), there aren't really a lot of good ways to put disease counters on things (a spell with Nurgle's mediocre magic and shooting with pretty poor range). Which means that it will be hard to do that gradual damage. They are also super swingy even if you can get counters on things and there's a chance that you don't even get to the part of the wheel at all where your disease rolls are buffed. Damage output in general was kinda lacking from the blightkings. I could get all 25 attacks in pretty consistently, and maybe this was just stormcast getting high saves, but I would often find myself doing 1-2 wounds. That combat with the fulminators I mentioned earlier lasted two turns with the blightkings killing 1 fulminator before dying.

Speaking of inconsistent, Blessed Sons pretty much did nothing. So little, in fact, that I forgot to pick a second subfaction while making my second list. Will probably start running the tree subfaction now unless I decide to build something like flyers.

I really wish we had better heroes for our mortal artifacts. 

Now for the good:

Mortals are SO durable. A unit of blightkings often survived 2-3 full vanguard raptor attacks even with shooting in the hero phase.

Summoning is still pretty decent. I was still able to summon a unit of 10 plaguebearers by battleround 3, and threaten summoning nurglings by 2, which is good for screening out blightkings from those nasty charge fulminator attacks and do not count as movement so you don't trigger redeploy before you can get your units to safety. The range reduction sucks, especially since I've been trying less heroes and often times they get into combat. Not being able to summon a tree to extend summoning range followed by a consecutive summon on the same turn is kind of brutal.

Lord of Afflictions and company are so nice to have around. The ability to threaten objectives/backline/deepstrike is very nice to have and really tempting me to go all in on the bug list, but usually I would have to deploy them in the second battle round just to get the have 2 units in an opponents territory battle tactic as I was starved for tactics pretty early on in the game.

I am going to try a few more games and in those games try: more demon/mortal mixes, less GuO and Glotkin, rotbringer sorcerers, and maybe allies (Be'lakor namely). 

Alright. So I tried another game without the big boys. This time I went:

Subfaction: Befouling Host

Grand Strategy: Hold the Line

Bloab Rotspawned (300)

Orghotts Daemonspew (300)*

Lord Of Afflictions- General (210)*

-Command Trait: Overpowering Stench

-Artifact: Splithorn Helm

1x Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

20x Plaguebearers (300)*

Battle Regiment*

Total (1970)

This time we played tooth and nail and I actually won!

Firstly tooth and nail stops reserves so I was really afraid of not being able to pressure out the vanguard raptors with my pusgoyles (and I was right. they never even got attacked).

First round I got my Bloab's spell auto unbound and moved up the board. Luckily in this battleplan I could immediately put a blightking squad on each middle objective and sat my plaguebearers in the back (they never moved from there). Vanguard raptors doubleshot Bloab off the board turn one (a lot less wounds into my blightkings I guess?).

One thing that I have noticed is that you REALLY want to roll a 2 or 3 on the cycle of corruption. 4,5, and 6 are such massive benefits on the later turns. I think 6 is probably one of the worst starting rolls you can get.

Orghotts was the MVP this round. Warmaster AND Lord of Nurgle make for nearly infinite command points. Even when my general was dead and Orghotts died on battle round 4 top half, I still had like 2 command points to spare after using 2 commands on my Orghotts.  This also let me consistently use auto 6s to run on blightkings, which is necessary. He also survived plenty of fulminator attacks after countercharging them (they insta-killed my pusgoyles). 3 up saves with +1 or potentially +2 with finest hour and an aftersave is insanely durable.

Double tree plus easy access to enemy territory made for like 8-9 contagion points a turn. I summoned like 3 squads of 10 plaguebearers.

Ultimately, I probably only won because my opponent took the turn on turn 3 instead of giving it to me, allowing for me to get rid of the second objective he had, permanently putting me ahead on points beacause he was never getting past my blightkings/plaguebearers on the other side of the board, but it was a REALLY fun game.

Plaguebearers were worth even if they were only to free up one of my units of blightkings. If you are wondering why I didn't run 2 squads of 10 (I thought about it for a sec), I really wanted battle regiment to be 2 drops or less to keep up with stormcast for 1st turn.

Edited December 14, 2021 by IRRecio

[Zplash]

2 hours ago, IRRecio said:

Alright. So I tried another game without the big boys. This time I went:

Subfaction: Befouling Host

Grand Strategy: Hold the Line

Bloab Rotspawned (300)

Orghotts Daemonspew (300)*

Lord Of Afflictions- General (210)*

-Command Trait: Overpowering Stench

-Artifact: Splithorn Helm

1x Pusgoyle Blightlords (110)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

5x Putrid Blightkings (250)*

20x Plaguebearers (300)*

Battle Regiment*

Total (1970)

This time we played tooth and nail and I actually won!

Firstly tooth and nail stops reserves so I was really afraid of not being able to pressure out the vanguard raptors with my pusgoyles (and I was right. they never even got attacked).

First round I got my Bloab's spell auto unbound and moved up the board. Luckily in this battleplan I could immediately put a blightking squad on each middle objective and sat my plaguebearers in the back (they never moved from there). Vanguard raptors doubleshot Bloab off the board turn one (a lot less wounds into my blightkings I guess?).

One thing that I have noticed is that you REALLY want to roll a 2 or 3 on the cycle of corruption. 4,5, and 6 are such massive benefits on the later turns. I think 6 is probably one of the worst starting rolls you can get.

Orghotts was the MVP this round. Warmaster AND Lord of Nurgle make for nearly infinite command points. Even when my general was dead and Orghotts died on battle round 4 top half, I still had like 2 command points to spare after using 2 commands on my Orghotts.  This also let me consistently use auto 6s to run on blightkings, which is necessary. He also survived plenty of fulminator attacks after countercharging them (they insta-killed my pusgoyles). 3 up saves with +1 or potentially +2 with finest hour and an aftersave is insanely durable.

Double tree plus easy access to enemy territory made for like 8-9 contagion points a turn. I summoned like 3 squads of 10 plaguebearers.

Ultimately, I probably only won because my opponent took the turn on turn 3 instead of giving it to me, allowing for me to get rid of the second objective he had, permanently putting me ahead on points beacause he was never getting past my blightkings/plaguebearers on the other side of the board, but it was a REALLY fun game.

Plaguebearers were worth even if they were only to free up one of my units of blightkings. If you are wondering why I didn't run 2 squads of 10 (I thought about it for a sec), I really wanted battle regiment to be 2 drops or less to keep up with stormcast for 1st turn.

Nice report thank you! 

Just one small hint. LOA is no longer daemon and so you can't play subfactions befouling host if he is your general... Sadly, I was planning to do that too. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

17 hours ago, umpac said:

Its not too hard to calculate. -1 to hit reduces damage attacks with a hit value of 2+ by 20%, 3+ by 25%, 4+ by 33% and 5+ by 50%. On the other hand its pretty easy for some armies to negate -1 to hit with AOA and a source of +1 to hit so it has less value that it used to have. 

Your math is right, of course, but figuring out by how much -1 to be hit reduces damage is not the hard part. The hard part is putting that info in the right context. Here's an attempt:

The damage reduction of a -1 to hit is somewhere between 20% and 50% for normal (non-mortal) damage. But that's only the first approximation. For starters, we should probably not value the effect of -1 to be hit very highly in the case of a unit with 4+ or 5+ to hit, because an attacking unit with those values is probably not a very good hammer and we don't need to be concerned with it in the first place. Most hammer unit in AoS, against which adding tankiness to a unit Plague Bearers is likely to matter, are probably on a 2+ or 3+ to hit. So treating -1 to be hit as a 20 to 25% damage reduction is probably more reasonable in terms of how we should value it compared to other defensive boosts.

There is also the question of how to treat the utility of -1 to hit in the case that an opponent chooses to counter it with a +1 to hit of their own. +1 to hit is probably the easiest buff to achieve in AoS. If you opponent chooses to apply it, then the -1 to hit from Plague Bearers does not actually provide any added tankiness. You still take "regular" damage. Or you could view it as the -1 to hit preventing the opponent's buff. The question is: Without the -1 to hit, would your opponent have buffed their attacking unit in the first place? If not, preventing their buffed damage is not really a defensive boost. But this is hard to quantify.

Another important consideration is the effect of -1 to be hit on units that cause mortal wounds on 6s to hit: It does not reduce the amount of mortal wounds you suffer from these attacks at all. But for some of the best hammer units in AoS, mortals on hit make up a significant percentage of their damage output. So we should probably value the effect of -1 to be hit lower than that 20 to 25% range.

I think that's as precise as I can personally get without looking into the actual distribution of to-hit values in AoS. But suffice to say, you probably don't care about tanking Skeleton Warriors or Clan Rats better. Those were never going to be a threat to Plague Bearers, -1 to hit or not. I personally think the new Plague Bearers look like an upgrade to the old ones in terms of tankiness. Going to two wounds is pretty great, since you can't get around big wound values with rend or mortal wounds. But the one thing that kind of sucks right now is how expensive Plaguebearers are in terms of bodies for objective play.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Double post, but bear with me. This one is about Blightkings.

So I think it's fair to say that a lot of Nurgle players chose the army because they want to run Blightkings. Or at least mortals, whose basic troop is the Blightking. But looking at their current stats, how do you actually make use of them?

Blight Kings are a pretty terrifying unit. They have huge defensive potential and their offense is actually quite decent, too. If I had to name their role, I would probably say "anvil", but they are offensively strong enough that it's probably more correct to call them "tanks". I feel fairly confident that they should be able to take almost any hit and have a good chance of grinding whatever unit attacked them down over a few turns with proper support.

Their weaknesses are that they are very slow in an army that has no real way to buff their movement. They also can't capture points on their own, because they only count as 6 bodies usually. So with that in mind, what is their actual role? I feel like I can't expect them to get into combat turn 1. Maybe not even turn 2 unless the opponent charges them. At that point, I think the game plan of grinding the opponent down over a few turns seems pretty shaky. The game will probably be over before the Blightkings are able to reach their full potential. At the same time, Blightkings alone don't seem ideal when it comes to capturing or holding objectives: Too slow, too expensive, and too few bodies. Even the average monster counting for 5 units when capturing is dangerously close to taking an objective off of a unit of 5 Blightkings at any given moment.

So how do you make use of Blightkings? Is the answer to have a horde unit tag along with them at all times? Like, a bunch of Plague Monks or something? I don't think bringing a mix of Blightkings and Plaguebearers is very good, because Plaguebearers are anvils in their won right, really, and don't need the defensive support from Blightkings. Right now, I don't really know how the Blightkings I have will help me win games. Any ideas?

 

[ibel]

7 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Right now, I don't really know how the Blightkings I have will help me win games. Any ideas?

In most of your Arguments i would agree so i would/will use them like a very good outflank Unit on the Right or left Missions.

In most of my games the big Trouble happens in the Middel and on the Flank there are Things like

5-10 Boys, 1 Bastilladon, 5 Bloodknight, 5 Windcharger or thinks like that and jeah i hope 1 BK Unit kann handel this alone. And if Nothing come to meet them i hope they stay Long enough to win me the game even i lose the Center in Turn 2 or 3.... I dont know if this is realistic but this would be my game.... or i Play 4-5 Units of them (with 5 Models) and they had to be Anvil and Hammer so.... i dont know. Better than my other army they are in every way. But jes they could be 220 Points, that sounds better/more realistic but.... lets stay and wait….