AoS 2 - Maggotkin of Nurgle Discussion

[Aphotic]

I quite like the army so far. It's solid and it is really tough to get through.

[Kasper]

5 hours ago, Enoby said:

Is there a general consensus on the book? It seems to have just passed by and feels a bit forgotten at the moment! 

Its fun to play on the table and somewhat durable. The book got some tricks but I worry as people get experienced with it they will be able to easily outplay those tricks. This is nowhere near S-tier book but is probably around the upper part of the fat middle of armies.

The army is slow, doesnt have serious punch outside of a couple of heroes (Glottkin and Maggoth Lords) and even then it is nowhere near Fulminator-level damage and is really bad at spell casting. 

[Rors]

Personally, I think a well ballanced book is way better than an 's-tier' army.

I think this book has a surprising level of depth and while never being brokenly powerful it'll reward skilled play.

As a community I don't think we should look to 'strong' books as the standard. The book has rule depth, fairly decent internal ballance and it's priced fairly as opposed to under or over costed, mostly.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, Rors said:

Personally, I think a well ballanced book is way better than an 's-tier' army.

I think this book has a surprising level of depth and while never being brokenly powerful it'll reward skilled play.

As a community I don't think we should look to 'strong' books as the standard. The book has rule depth, fairly decent internal ballance and it's priced fairly as opposed to under or over costed, mostly.

Yeah, definitely. The new book is not weak and has some fun stuff in it. I think it's designed a lot better than the old book in so far as it actually gets across what Nurgle is supposed to feel like: Super tough and grindy, but slow. The only thing I would criticize is that between the wheel, summoning points and disease points I think there is one thing too much to keep track of.

Competitively, I am unsure about the book, though. Nurgle being slow again now might be a win thematically, but it does not exactly help win games in a tournament context. That combined with the low amount of bodies this army tends to bring is probably going to set us up for an uphill battle against any list designed to go hard at the objective game.

[Kasper]

21 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

The only thing I would criticize is that between the wheel, summoning points and disease points I think there is one thing too much to keep track of.

Honestly this is not an issue at all. Without being disrespectful, if this is difficult to keep track of I dont understand how you would be able to play basically any other army that has a lot more going on for them in the hero phase etc. Nurgle got almost no buffs or other things to keep track of. 

Once your opponent has played against Disease a couple of times he can easily assist with counting up disease tokens while you do hit rolls. Otherwise it pretty much only happens at the end of the movement and end of combat. Summoning points is really fast and only happens at the start of the hero phase anyways and you should already ahead of time know if you are getting for your territory and/or your opponent's etc. The wheel you do before rolling for priority and it only ever moves forward, theres no thought going into it unlike previously where you could switch it around.

 

But yeah I agree that new books should aim to not be S-tier books and instead aim to be around the fat middle. You can say what you want about the book being thematic but at the end of the day you arent having fun if your book is significantly worse than other people. I can understand people not being super satisfied with the Nurgle book after seeing how powerful both Ironjawz and SCE are (largely Fulminators and Longstrikes, sure).

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, Kasper said:

Honestly this is not an issue at all. Without being disrespectful, if this is difficult to keep track of I dont understand how you would be able to play basically any other army that has a lot more going on for them in the hero phase etc. Nurgle got almost no buffs or other things to keep track of. 

Once your opponent has played against Disease a couple of times he can easily assist with counting up disease tokens while you do hit rolls. Otherwise it pretty much only happens at the end of the movement and end of combat. Summoning points is really fast and only happens at the start of the hero phase anyways and you should already ahead of time know if you are getting for your territory and/or your opponent's etc. The wheel you do before rolling for priority and it only ever moves forward, theres no thought going into it unlike previously where you could switch it around.

 

But yeah I agree that new books should aim to not be S-tier books and instead aim to be around the fat middle. You can say what you want about the book being thematic but at the end of the day you arent having fun if your book is significantly worse than other people. I can understand people not being super satisfied with the Nurgle book after seeing how powerful both Ironjawz and SCE are (largely Fulminators and Longstrikes, sure).

It's not that I think the complexity is unbearably high, but I do think that between the wheel, disease and contagion points, the juice of how interesting their effects are is absolufely not worth the squeeze of the added cognitive load. In general, I think that if you have mechanics that ask you to keep track of a resource or changing game state, it's better to have one of them that provides a big, interesting effect instead of several that give you minor benefits.

My problem is less with contagion and disease points here. Contagion points are really pretty simple to keep track of. Disease points are a bit more iffy in my opinion, because I still think they feel like worse mortals on 6s with extra steps. The wheel is the one that I really don't like very much, since it's a bunch of minor to medium strength effects that change every round and you can't meaningfully interact with. It's true that advancing the wheel always happens at the same time, but the effect of the wheel does not happen at the same time. I can't honestly say that I will always remember to apply that heal d3 wounds instead of 1 effect, for example.

Personally, I'd rather have another always-on effect instead of the wheel. Maybe something that allow disease points to help in te objective game, although the disease mechanic would probably have to work differently for that to be feasible.

[Kurrilino]

7 hours ago, Rors said:

Personally, I think a well ballanced book is way better than an 's-tier' army.

I think this book has a surprising level of depth and while never being brokenly powerful it'll reward skilled play.

As a community I don't think we should look to 'strong' books as the standard. The book has rule depth, fairly decent internal ballance and it's priced fairly as opposed to under or over costed, mostly.

Actually a well balanced book makes an "S-Tier" army.

We run into the same problems like before, just combined it with being slow.

Our magic phase, while thematic, is difficult to cast and the few spells we have can be easily disabled by many other armies.

Our almost non existing shooting got way worse and we can't look anymore for help from somewhere else.

Because being extremely slow also takes away the option to pick fights to our advantage.

This is not a rant or complaining, this is reality

I absolutely think we will not be tabled but the games will be a very slow grinding loss. Not to mention what Slaneesh will do to us because of our contagious rule. This is auto loss from the beginning.

A way better use of contagion points lore and rule wise would be to weaken the opponents infected, like -to wound and -to cast in an aura... anything but those ultra low magic wounds here and there.

If the opponent is road blocking me with 5 cheap point models, the damage is already done.

 

And this is when a whole community looks at the "strong books" because ours is not rewarding skilled play,

it creates frustrating game experiences until people are fed up, doesn't matter how deep and cool the lore and internal balance is.

People are sick and tired of being the "most welcome|" person at the table while the other guys having tremendous fun mopping the floor with us.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2022 by Kurrilino

[Aphotic]

Stormcast dragons are totally out of control good I'm not sure nurgle has an answer at all.

 

[Rors]

5 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

Actually a well balanced book makes an "S-Tier" army.

We run into the same problems like before, just combined it with being slow.

Our magic phase, while thematic, is difficult to cast and the few spells we have can be easily disabled by many other armies.

Our almost non existing shooting got way worse and we can't look anymore for help from somewhere else.

Because being extremely slow also takes away the option to pick fights to our advantage.

This is not a rant or complaining, this is reality

I absolutely think we will not be tabled but the games will be a very slow grinding loss. Not to mention what Slaneesh will do to us because of our contagious rule. This is auto loss from the beginning.

A way better use of contagion points lore and rule wise would be to weaken the opponents infected, like -to wound and -to cast in an aura... anything but those ultra low magic wounds here and there.

If the opponent is road blocking me with 5 cheap point models, the damage is already done.

 

And this is when a whole community looks at the "strong books" because ours is not rewarding skilled play,

it creates frustrating game experiences until people are fed up, doesn't matter how deep and cool the lore and internal balance is.

People are sick and tired of being the "most welcome|" person at the table while the other guys having tremendous fun mopping the floor with us.

 

 

Being well ballanced is by definition not going to be s tier because to be s tier you have to power creep above the standard power level.

S tier armies can make well ballanced armies feel weak by comparison and it becomes instinctive to use them as the comparison point for where ballance should go but that's a trap. It creates a doubling down on power creep and also skews the game really hard. For example in 40k a couple editions ago the power creep got to the point that certain lists just deleted the other side turn one. The game became extremely cookie cutter and was basically over by end of deployment. If the game is full of units of power similar to say Morathhi and bow snakes or others over powered stuff you have a ****** game where dice rolls are kinda pointless and stuff just gets deleted and it's about hitting first not strategy.

None of the s-tier army lists are good or well ballanced.

Specifically on the Nurgle question:

In terms of being grindy and slow, you have the options to build a no drop list that comes in from board edges and units like plauge drones are fast enough and will delete screens. You can also build a summon list. You also have the ability to charge in the opponents turn.

There's so many ways to build lists in this book. You can very different game strategy from what you build. No of them are s-tier, and that's good. The moment you have an s-tier build you get cookie cut spam lists and zero creativity.

You'll get mopped up by broken lists but the problem is the broken lists not Nurgle.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Rors
closing rant off special on Nurgle topic

[Gesundheit]

Hey Guys, 

i played a Game this weekend.

my List was:

Drowned Man (For pregame move)

1 GUO, General, -1 to hit, witherstave 

1 Fecula

1 The Wurmspat

20 PB

5 BK

5 BK

2 BL

2 BL

1990P

I played against Stormcast.

My List worked Fine overall. Its tanky, and „fast“ enough for mid Field objectives.

Next time i would cut 1 troup of BK and fecula to Play roatspawned and 3 PD.

I won by 2 points in the end.

[Archibald]

45 minutes ago, Gesundheit said:

Hey Guys, 

i played a Game this weekend.

my List was:

Drowned Man (For pregame move)

1 GUO, General, -1 to hit, witherstave 

1 Fecula

1 The Wurmspat

20 PB

5 BK

5 BK

2 BL

2 BL

1990P

I played against Stormcast.

My List worked Fine overall. Its tanky, and „fast“ enough for mid Field objectives.

Next time i would cut 1 troup of BK and fecula to Play roatspawned and 3 PD.

I won by 2 points in the end.

What list did your opponent play?

[TimeToWaste85]

So, I haven’t bought the book yet. Wanting some thoughts first. I loved the idea of fielding Skaven Pestilens in my MoN army, but coalition rules hit that hard, and some random info online may have nuked it. 

Is there any value at all to Verminlord Corruptors or Plague Catapults? Do they still work towards things like Epidemius’s tally? Or plague drones near a daemon hero of Nurgle? I asked in the Skaven thread, but the Skaven rules didn’t change. The Maggotkin rules did. So here is better. Trying to determine if the Skaven stuff is worth holding, or if it’s just shelf stock now. 

[Nidskuuga]

13 minutes ago, TimeToWaste85 said:

So, I haven’t bought the book yet. Wanting some thoughts first. I loved the idea of fielding Skaven Pestilens in my MoN army, but coalition rules hit that hard, and some random info online may have nuked it. 

Is there any value at all to Verminlord Corruptors or Plague Catapults? Do they still work towards things like Epidemius’s tally? Or plague drones near a daemon hero of Nurgle? I asked in the Skaven thread, but the Skaven rules didn’t change. The Maggotkin rules did. So here is better. Trying to determine if the Skaven stuff is worth holding, or if it’s just shelf stock now. 

The wording has changed on pretty much everything in the new book to only affect Maggotkin of Nurgle keyword. There is some exceptions though, Sloppity Bilepiper's ability affects Nurgle Daemon keyword so that would cover the Verminlord Corruptor. Epidemius only affects Great Unclean One, Plaguebearer Host and Maggotkin of Nurgle keywords.

 

The synergy between the Nurgle factions has unfortunately mostly been lost.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Nidskuuga

[Kasper]

23 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It's not that I think the complexity is unbearably high, but I do think that between the wheel, disease and contagion points, the juice of how interesting their effects are is absolufely not worth the squeeze of the added cognitive load. In general, I think that if you have mechanics that ask you to keep track of a resource or changing game state, it's better to have one of them that provides a big, interesting effect instead of several that give you minor benefits.

My problem is less with contagion and disease points here. Contagion points are really pretty simple to keep track of. Disease points are a bit more iffy in my opinion, because I still think they feel like worse mortals on 6s with extra steps. The wheel is the one that I really don't like very much, since it's a bunch of minor to medium strength effects that change every round and you can't meaningfully interact with. It's true that advancing the wheel always happens at the same time, but the effect of the wheel does not happen at the same time. I can't honestly say that I will always remember to apply that heal d3 wounds instead of 1 effect, for example.

Personally, I'd rather have another always-on effect instead of the wheel. Maybe something that allow disease points to help in te objective game, although the disease mechanic would probably have to work differently for that to be feasible.

I feel like this is a different conversation though. Initially it sounded like you found the 3 different mechanics to be too mentally taxing which kinda boggled my mind since other armies have tons more stuff going on/keeping track of.

I do agree with your points though.

Summoning feels OK and sometimes a bit much if not for our units being a wee bit overcosted. How you generate summoning points does feel a bit "meh" imo, like theres very little involvement in how you gain summoning points - Its basically just about territories and obviously you can opt to deepstrike for +3 and keep a guy wholly within your own etc. Overall I dont feel like I can make a real difference here. It just passively happens. 

Disease points do feel like a straight up worse MW mechanic. I wouldnt necessarily call it a "fun" mechanic to keep track of, but IMO it isnt a huge burden, especially if your opponent assists with flipping D10 dice or whatever you use as you roll to hit etc. Theres not a ton of engagement here from me either and it essentially is just some extra delayed damage at the end of a round that passively happens by and large.

The wheel is weird. Its entirely random what happens at round 1. Some of the effects are insanely powerful if hit at the correct timing and against certain armies. This might explain why there is no mechanic that allows you to mess with the wheel (except a single command trait). But it again creates a situation that is out of my hands - Sometimes it lands right and its a huge power spike, other times its almost worthless. The effects are also super varying in how powerful they are. Like getting the 1 dice per battle round and on a 4+ you gain a summoning point is ****** the first turn compared to having the anti-pile in effect on your entire army the turn your melee opponent is about to charge you.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Kasper

[Gesundheit]

19 hours ago, Archibald said:

What list did your opponent play?

My Opponent played something like this but i am not 100% sure:

1 Lord on Dracoth

1 Lord Ordinator

1 Lord Relictor

1 Knight venator

3*5 vindictors 

2*2 fulminators 

5 vigilors

2 ballista 

And damn those fulminators Hit like a Truck…..

[Gesundheit]

Sorry for the double post, but I am going to play another game today against lizards.

My List will be:

1 GUO, Bileblade, Bell, Fleshy Abundance, Tome of thousand Poxes in Warlord

1 LoA, Living Plague in Warlord, General!

1 Rotbringer Sorc, Rancid in Warlord

20 PB in Warlord

2x5 BK in Hunters of the Heartland

2 BL in Hunters of the Heartland

1 BL

1 Burning Head

My Plan is to put the LoA and the BL in Reserve to be a threat in Turn 1. Walk up with the rest with and hopefully win the objective game.

I will tell you how the game went, what changes I would do, what performed well and wich unit ***** balls.

[Smashin']

On 1/2/2022 at 6:54 PM, Aphotic said:

Stormcast dragons are totally out of control good I'm not sure nurgle has an answer at all.

 

I played a game against them just before Christmas and wiped them all besides a single stormdrake guard.

My list was Blessed Sons and had:

• The Glottkin
• Festus the Leechlord
• Lord of Blights - General (Overpowering Stench + The Muttergrub)
• 4x Units of Putrid Blightkings

My friend was playing:

• Krondys
• Knight Draconis
• 3x Units of Stormdrake Guard

Disease did almost all of the damage, my plan was to hold them up and inflict as much disease as possible and it worked. Weight of attacks with 5 a piece from the Blightkings get a few 6's, they explode in pus when they die giving a few more potentially and the tick at both the movement and combat phase helps seal their doom, I maxed it out to 7 on at least 1 unit every turn and rolled well for it dealing damage. They had no healing and the cycle of contagion that blocks heroic actions stopped a clutch recovery.

The Glottkin didn't last long against them lol, they dealt a ton of damage, but attrition won it.

Sidenote: I feel like Nurglings are great summons if you want to ramp up disease, 15 attacks in a unit makes me favour them for the new book, of course if you just want bodies save up for the Plaguebearers but Nurglings are nearly half the cost.

[Nasnad]

With how expensive everything is in this book, how viable is it to make a, mainly mortal, 1000 point army?

And how fun is this army to play with/against compared to the other chaos armies?

Edited January 6, 2022 by Nasnad

[Gesundheit]

1 hour ago, Nasnad said:

With how expensive everything is in this book, how viable is it to make a, mainly mortal, 1000 point army?

And how fun is this army to play with/against compared to the other chaos armies?

I would play something like:

1 LoA

4 BL, 2 BL, 1 BL

This in drowned man.

It’s pretty Tanky and fast. But you Lack damage. It could be Pretty much fun!😅

 

My match against Lizards went well.

He played 2 Stegadons, 1 Slann, 1 Bastilladon, 2*5 chameleon skinks, 5 guards, 5 lizards on lizards, 2 priests, 1 Flagg bearer.

First the cons: Spellcasting is realy not good with Nurgle! I just popped 2 spells of in the hole game! Bad rolls and bans where the reasons. The badest unit was the sorc. He did absolutely nothing. Just  shield ones, wich did not change anything because the other unit got targeted.🤷🏼‍♂️ Then died to shooting und turn 3. another con is the lag of damage. Against high armor targets we realy need to grind it out. (Wich worked fine!) 4“ is really ridiculous slow!

pros: the GuO is a absolut Monster.

8 wounds in turn 1. my turn 2 wounds left. Awesome! He can crush nearly any enemy! I realy think I try a List with two of them. The BL are worth every point! The fast movement und the reserving with the LoA is really strong.

[spenson]

I'll play my first 2 games tomorrow with this list:

Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle
- Subfaction: Filthbringers
- Grand Strategy: Hold the Line
- Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Orghotts Daemonspew (300)*
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)*
- General
- Command Trait: Grandfather's Blessing
- Lore of Malignance: Magnificent Buboes
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)
- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
- Lore of Malignance: Rancid Visitations
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)*
- Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease

Battleline
10 x Putrid Blightkings (500)*
- Reinforced x 1
5 x Putrid Blightkings (250)*
10 x Plaguebearers (150)*
10 x Plaguebearers (150)*
10 x Plaguebearers (150)*

Endless Spells & Invocations
Soulscream Bridge (70)
Umbral Spellportal (70)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 152
Drops: 2
 

We're still waiting on the pairings so I don't know yet what I'll play against but it'll  probably either be shootcast, DoK (with a ton of stalkers), first prince or soulblight (kastelai with blood knights).

The goal is to play nurgle in team tournaments but for now I mostly want to feel how the new army plays.

Edit: just noticed that the battle regiment is 2 sub commanders max so I have 2 drops instead of 1 and this is really bad news. Maybe I'll change the list.

Edited January 6, 2022 by spenson

[Kurrilino]

On 1/2/2022 at 3:13 PM, Rors said:

You'll get mopped up by broken lists but the problem is the broken lists not Nurgle.

 

And this is helping with the gaming experience how?

 

[kore5022]

4 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

 

And this is helping with the gaming experience how?

 

Did you play 40k before the big reboot? It was ****** awful and the product of each new book creeping on the last.

Books need to not try to match the previous best or the game goes to complete ******. If smashing face at tournament is your ideal gaming experience go play the meta book?

[Fellman]

Progress

[Harbinger-of-Nurgle]

I just brought the Vanguard box set and a Great unclean one. just wondering but which is the better loadout for the Great Unclean one?

 

Also is the Harbinger of Nurgle still ok to use planning on converting one up as always liked the unit

Edited January 7, 2022 by Harbinger-of-Nurgle

[Rors]

10 hours ago, Kurrilino said:

 

And this is helping with the gaming experience how?

 

The solution to the problem is more well designed books not to wreck the game by following up bad with worse.