AoS 2 - Maggotkin of Nurgle Discussion

[knas]

How do Nurgle daemons / maggotkin generally deal with spellcaster heavy armies?  I keep beating a friend at a local gamestore with my tzeentch daemon caster army and I worry my friend will lose interest because of it.

[sal4m4nd3r]

13 hours ago, Ajay29 said:

Ahoy!

Been away from the grandfather for a while, now looking for help making a 2k list, really having trouble getting everything I want in...

I feel like I want a GUO and a big block of Plaguebearers to hold the line, I want the Glottkin and a Harbinger to buff up stuff, I want some blightkings and Gutrott to pop up backfield , and I want plague monks to buff up and murder things!

I’ve tried building lists and find that I always have to compromise on something... So my question would be if I have to lose out on something, what gets cut? OR can someone show me a list where I get what I want?

Pick one big guy and build around them.. but not both. Glott favors horde units and units with many attack profiles (drones). GUO is just an all around get support piece and caster. Can also carry the witherstave on a huge base. Harbinger only buffs mortals, so if you include him, youll need a substantial amount of blightkings in order to beenfit from the constant command point drain. Also if you bring in gutrot, the kings that outflank with him are almost always going to be outside of his command range. So keep that in mind when building lists. 

Finished up my Wildfire Taurus this weekend. Went with a "wall street bull" theme. (Working class always strikes last HAH)

Going back and forth in list building between including 30 bestigors, Shaman and the Taurus as an ally contigent... or the contorted epitome, blight cyst and the required LoB. I like the merits of both but cant decide what to roll with. Im also about $70 in to an EPIC Contorted eptiome conversion that I will post WIP shots soon. 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by sal4m4nd3r

[Dreadmund]

34 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Finished up my Wildfire Taurus this weekend. Went with a "wall street bull" theme. (Working class always strikes last HAH)

Made me laugh.

Love the bull, looks great.

[DragonRider]

Hello guys,

I started an Idoneth Deepkin Army and really dig the aesthetic. I'm looking for an evil(maybe chaotic) army to counter their orderly ways. I got a Nighthaunt army but the flimsiness and quantity scared me away and I ended up selling them. I'm looking for an elite army of sorts which is fun to paint and that has nice lore and Papa Nurgle caught my eye. I've seen many 2000 point lists and saw that the model count was shockingly low so that's a plus too. I like tankiness, defensiveness and regeneration so I think Nurgle checks those boxes too. 
How should I start collecting Nurgle? Couldn't find many armylists in 700-1250 point range that are up to date. Are the Pusgoyles viable at the moment or are they too expensive as the consensus seems to be still. Maybe Daemons of Nurgle SC box or Maggotkin SC box? What after then? I saw a Gnarlmaw unit and looked cool, but maybe prioritize something else first?
Appreciate any help ^^
 

[Dreadmund]

19 minutes ago, DragonRider said:

Are the Pusgoyles viable at the moment or are they too expensive as the consensus seems to be still. Maybe Daemons of Nurgle SC box or Maggotkin SC box? What after then? I saw a Gnarlmaw unit and looked cool, but maybe prioritize something else first?

Pusgoyles being the same cost as Plague Drones makes them a lot more appealing IMO. They have better armour save and can benefit from the Harbinger of Decay command ability that gives them the standard nurgle 5+ ward save. That makes them pretty tanky for a cavalry unit. The Drones do more damage when fully buffed but the Pusgoyle's attacks are often better when you can't get your buffs aligned because there is more access to rend and exploding attacks. They have a smaller footprint than drones which can be a blessing if you intend to fly over other units or terrain in order to attack something vulnerable. I'd say PGBL and Drones are roughly equivalent now in terms of cost vs reward.

You should get a Gnarlmaw, full stop. It costs you no matched play points and you get one at the beginning of every game for free. The buffs you get from it are very useful. There's no reason not to have one.

A Start collecting daemons box is a good investment, because everything in the box can be summoned. Another box of 10 plaguebearers so that you can summon a unit of 20, and your most common summoning options are pretty much filled. I'd say it's a good place to start and then you can build up from that to a Daemons list or start putting together a Mortals List with your summoning sorted.

If you want a small elite force with low model counts, Mortals are the way to go. Otherwise you will be looking at a couple units of 30x Plaguebearers as your battleline.

[sal4m4nd3r]

38 minutes ago, Dreadmund said:

Pusgoyles being the same cost as Plague Drones makes them a lot more appealing IMO. They have better armour save and can benefit from the Harbinger of Decay command ability that gives them the standard nurgle 5+ ward save. That makes them pretty tanky for a cavalry unit. The Drones do more damage when fully buffed but the Pusgoyle's attacks are often better when you can't get your buffs aligned because there is more access to rend and exploding attacks. They have a smaller footprint than drones which can be a blessing if you intend to fly over other units or terrain in order to attack something vulnerable. I'd say PGBL and Drones are roughly equivalent now in terms of cost vs reward.

You should get a Gnarlmaw, full stop. It costs you no matched play points and you get one at the beginning of every game for free. The buffs you get from it are very useful. There's no reason not to have one.

A Start collecting daemons box is a good investment, because everything in the box can be summoned. Another box of 10 plaguebearers so that you can summon a unit of 20, and your most common summoning options are pretty much filled. I'd say it's a good place to start and then you can build up from that to a Daemons list or start putting together a Mortals List with your summoning sorted.

If you want a small elite force with low model counts, Mortals are the way to go. Otherwise you will be looking at a couple units of 30x Plaguebearers as your battleline.

Points was never the issue with them, for me at least. It was because they cant cap objectives, or do enough damage to come in sweep a unit to take it.. usually. They have decent rend but low attacks with 4+ to hit.. and then attacks equal to 2 blight kings. They tank a butt load of damage though. Especially with harbinger support. Drones are the hammer because there are more of them per points, and more attack profiles ot buff via glott or GUO. And they have a shooting attack.. which also triggers blades of putrefaction btw. So for 200 points, I would almost always rather take 40 maruaders... who also make an amazing target for blades.. because of easy +1 to hit

Edited July 15, 2019 by sal4m4nd3r

[Dreadmund]

25 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Points was never the issue with them, for me at least. It was because they cant cap objectives, or do enough damage to come in sweep a unit to take it.. usually. They have decent rend but low attacks with 4+ to hit.. and then attacks equal to 2 blight kings. They tank a butt load of damage though. Especially with harbinger support. Drones are the hammer because there are more of them per points, and more attack profiles ot buff via glott or GUO. And they have a shooting attack.. which also triggers blades of putrefaction btw. So for 200 points, I would almost always rather take 40 maruaders... who also make an amazing target for blades.. because of easy +1 to hit

Everything you've said is true, but I don't think of Marauders and PGBL's as being interchangeable because they fill very different roles in the army. Marauders bash into things as a big lump. Flying Cavalry are more precise. The buffs to marauder damage might be better, but they're not going to be able to get to the best targets most of the time. A marauder is never going to get close enough to attack a Slann for example. They're really only interchangeable with Plague Drones who as I said in my post, definitely do more damage when buffed. But you can't always spare the command point, get a daemon hero in range and get blades off to make the most of them. It's a big investment. You're right though, a unit of Plague Drones, buffed by the GUO, with something like a Lord of Afflictions in tow to trigger their locus and with blades cast on them is definitely pretty scary. Without all that, they are surprisingly fragile and in my experience whiff the vast majority of their attacks with all their 4+ and no rend. Plus they're almost as bad at claiming objectives as PGBLs since they only have one extra model per unit. One benefit of PGBLs is that with the LoA they can cover some truly immense stretches of ground to deepstrike a juicy target that the enemy assumes is safe. But, Gutrot and a unit of blightkings might be as good or better for that and cost less points... But a Gutrot can be played around with positioning since they know it's coming!

I dunno, I think there is a place for them, particularly in a casual game. If you've got a harbinger in your army, I'd consider them. If you don't, I wouldn't.

Edited July 15, 2019 by Dreadmund

[sal4m4nd3r]

5 minutes ago, Dreadmund said:

Everything you've said is true, but I don't think of Marauders and PGBL's as being interchangeable because they fill very different roles in the army. Marauders bash into things as a big lump. Flying Cavalry are more precise. The buffs to marauder damage might be better, but they're not going to be able to get to the best targets most of the time. A marauder is never going to get close enough to attack a Slann for example. They're really only interchangeable with Plague Drones who as I said in my post, definitely do more damage when buffed. But you can't always spare the command point, get a daemon hero in range and get blades off to make the most of them. It's a big investment. You're right though, a unit of Plague Drones, buffed by the GUO, with something like a Lord of Afflictions in tow to trigger their locus and with blades cast on them is definitely pretty scary. Without all that, they are surprisingly fragile and in my experience whiff the vast majority of their attacks with all their 4+ and no rend. Plus they're almost as bad at claiming objectives as PGBLs since they only have one extra model per unit. One benefit of PGBLs is that with the LoA they can cover some truly immense stretches of ground to deepstrike a juicy target that the enemy assumes is safe. But, Gutrot and a unit of blightkings might be as good or better for that and cost less points... But a Gutrot can be played around with positioning since they know it's coming!

I dunno, I think there is a place for them, particularly in a casual game. If you've got a harbinger in your army, I'd consider them. If you don't, I wouldn't.

Agreed on all fronts. Keep in mind the Harbinger will activate thier Locus as well.. as he has the demon keyword! I think a low lkey buff to them would to make them 100/1 instead of 200/2 so that way you could take 3 of them. I feel like 2 is not enough and 4 is a big points sink. I think I would enjoy taking 3.. And that way if you buy two box of them you you could build 3 and a LOA. 

[Dreadmund]

1 minute ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

I think a low lkey buff to them would to make them 100/1 instead of 200/2 so that way you could take 3 of them.

I wonder if they would do that if it weren't for the whole "only half the models in a unit can have a Dolorous Tocsin" thing. After making a LoA and buying a second box you'd be 1 tocsin down from optimal build, so you'd need to source a spare bell from another kit (probably a Gnarlmaw) and do a small conversion. Not really a big deal, but I get the impression that GW wouldn't like that and people would definitely complain. Not that they don't complain atm having a spare Pusgoyle left over after building the hero. I certainly do

[DragonRider]

Thanks for the help guys, editing this comment as went through armies with gf and she didn't like Nurgle but loved dwarfs(so do I luckily) so I'm switching camps 😅 May we face in battle one day!

Edited July 15, 2019 by DragonRider

[sal4m4nd3r]

13 hours ago, knas said:

How do Nurgle daemons / maggotkin generally deal with spellcaster heavy armies?  I keep beating a friend at a local gamestore with my tzeentch daemon caster army and I worry my friend will lose interest because of it.

There is only ONE way to even have a chance at mitigating spell casting and its ally in the Contorted Epitome for 2 ReRollable unbinds. And thats literally it.. unless Im missing another unbind ally, or dispel scroll ally. Nothing in the Nurgle battletome can stop magic, unless your unbind dice are HOT.

[Dreadmund]

1 hour ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

There is only ONE way to even have a chance at mitigating spell casting and its ally in the Contorted Epitome for 2 ReRollable unbinds. And thats literally it.. unless Im missing another unbind ally, or dispel scroll ally. Nothing in the Nurgle battletome can stop magic, unless your unbind dice are HOT.

Yeah this. For a faction that relies on magic as much as we do for buffs, we sure suck at it.

[GuitaRasmus]

10 hours ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Im also about $70 in to an EPIC Contorted eptiome conversion that I will post WIP shots soon. 

Now, THIS I want to see.

[sal4m4nd3r]

14 minutes ago, GuitaRasmus said:

Now, THIS I want to see.

Heheh! It’s quite clever if I do say so myself. It involves using the old greasus goldtooth ogre king model, as a corpulent/excess of wealth/gluttonous fatty who lounges on a pile of gold (using the “dragons horde” piles of gold from terrain crate) like Scrooge mcduck on a palanquin being ferried by a host of nurglings (the OLD OLD nurglings) instead of the knoblars.  The best part is I’m going to use the huge mirror from the Daighters of Khaine bloodwrack shrine to represent the contorted epitome mirror. More nurglings propping it up, with greasus reflection being a lithe, beautiful, blond haired handsome man.

Trying to hit the middle of a nurgle/Slaanesh venn diagram of  excess, gluttony, gross nurgle fat man. Pictures for reference. The massive turkey leg is just to good as well 🤣

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by sal4m4nd3r

[Sedraxis]

22 hours ago, knas said:

How do Nurgle daemons / maggotkin generally deal with spellcaster heavy armies?  I keep beating a friend at a local gamestore with my tzeentch daemon caster army and I worry my friend will lose interest because of it.

Nurgle generally has a pretty good matchup against magic-heavy armies because the 5+ saves they get. What's his army like and is he playing objectives properly?

You might just be better then him at the game, in which case you could try to help him with his tactics/list building or play unfavorable scenarios to give yourself an extra challenge.

[knas]

4 hours ago, Sedraxis said:

Nurgle generally has a pretty good matchup against magic-heavy armies because the 5+ saves they get. What's his army like and is he playing objectives properly?

You might just be better then him at the game, in which case you could try to help him with his tactics/list building or play unfavorable scenarios to give yourself an extra challenge.

My friend's most recent list was something like:

Sloppity Bilepiper
Great Unclean one (bell + dagger) (Witherstave)
Gotrot Spume
The Grand Cultivator (Horticulus Slimux?)
Rotbringer Sorcerer

5x blightkings (deepstrike with gotrot)
30x Plague Bearers
10x Plague Bearers

3x Plague drones
3x Plague Drones
2x Beasts of Nurgle
3x nurglings (deepstrike)

----

What I often find is me having 10+ casts per round I tend to melt a lot of the important targets before they reach me and/or sniping the heroes to break the synnergies. Once they reach my army my wall of pink horrors often means I'm still safe for a round or two. Objectives I often win by having quick flying heroes summon near objectives and simply drowning the enemy in blue / brim horrors.  Neither of us are using endless spells atm, I'm afraid introducing it would further increase my power, but maybe not? Since my friend will have access to stuff like cogs / lifeswarm.

[Dreadmund]

What's your list like? Your friend's list is not a very balanced. It seems to me he's just playing casually with what models he likes/owns which is fine obviously but if you're coming at him with a tournament level list when he's just playing what he has lying around for fun I'm not surprised he's having a bad time.

[hughwyeth]

1 hour ago, knas said:

My friend's most recent list was something like:

Sloppity Bilepiper
Great Unclean one (bell + dagger) (Witherstave)
Gotrot Spume
The Grand Cultivator (Horticulus Slimux?)
Rotbringer Sorcerer

5x blightkings (deepstrike with gotrot)
30x Plague Bearers
10x Plague Bearers

3x Plague drones
3x Plague Drones
2x Beasts of Nurgle
3x nurglings (deepstrike)

Quick feedback would be drop sloppity, gutrot (the deepstrike is mostly useless in most scenarios), beasts of nurgle and nurglings. 

He has Horticulous, which is the character to build a "summoning" list around. Those 3 nurglings will be summonable from turn 2/3 for free. Plague drones are the best damage output we have. There's a debate about running 2x3 or 6 as 6 can almost never be all in combat but giving a unit of 6 blades of putrefaction and triggering their locus makes them very powerful. I would suggest he gets another 20 plaguebearers to make 2x30 and another 5 blightkings to make a decent 10 man unit (41 wounds!).  

Against magic heavy is a struggle as the best spells are mortal ones (Festus', Blades of Putrefaction) and you can't get any bonus summoning for mortal nurgle. Nurgle's strength in that scenario would be the daemon's resilience with the 5++ save, so more plaguebearers should help. If he can get summoning going with lots of points per turn, it can help to control the board a bit more. 

[knas]

1 hour ago, Dreadmund said:

What's your list like? Your friend's list is not a very balanced. It seems to me he's just playing casually with what models he likes/owns which is fine obviously but if you're coming at him with a tournament level list when he's just playing what he has lying around for fun I'm not surprised he's having a bad time.

We both own a lot of models,  what I played against my friend last time was:

LoC
Herald on Foot
Gaunt Summoner
Curseling

10x Pinks
10x Pinks
30x Chaos Warriors

5x Chaos Chosen
6x Screamers

[knas]

59 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

Quick feedback would be drop sloppity, gutrot (the deepstrike is mostly useless in most scenarios), beasts of nurgle and nurglings. 

He has Horticulous, which is the character to build a "summoning" list around. Those 3 nurglings will be summonable from turn 2/3 for free. Plague drones are the best damage output we have. There's a debate about running 2x3 or 6 as 6 can almost never be all in combat but giving a unit of 6 blades of putrefaction and triggering their locus makes them very powerful. I would suggest he gets another 20 plaguebearers to make 2x30 and another 5 blightkings to make a decent 10 man unit (41 wounds!).  

Against magic heavy is a struggle as the best spells are mortal ones (Festus', Blades of Putrefaction) and you can't get any bonus summoning for mortal nurgle. Nurgle's strength in that scenario would be the daemon's resilience with the 5++ save, so more plaguebearers should help. If he can get summoning going with lots of points per turn, it can help to control the board a bit more. 

That's interesting! For summoning build do you need to go full Nurgle's Menagerie or is Slimux's extra tree enough to warrant focusing on it?

[hughwyeth]

2 hours ago, knas said:

That's interesting! For summoning build do you need to go full Nurgle's Menagerie or is Slimux's extra tree enough to warrant focusing on it?

It depends. Unfortunately, Nurgle's summoning is the easiest summoning to shut down- just stand near trees and it's gone. I've tried it a few times- against players who don't know it, you can summon 2x10 plaguebearers and maybe some nurglings in a game (nothing compared to slaanesh!).  For casual games, Horticulous should be enough. He's also got the best save for nurgle (3+) and is a decent model on his own, as well as moving fast enough to keep up with plague drones and triggering their locus ability. 

If I'm playing competitively I don't take him though as you're paying for +1 tree at the start of the game and like I said, it's not going to help because nurgle summoning is so easy to stop. There's two builds that can really work in competitive play- thricefold or blight cyst. Thricefold needs a lot of skill to play because 3x GUO are hard to maneouvre around and get the benefit of the battalion. Blight Cyst is pretty good, but very expensive battalion for what you get and the -1 to hit a lot of armies have renders blightkings pretty weak.

[sal4m4nd3r]

7 hours ago, knas said:

That's interesting! For summoning build do you need to go full Nurgle's Menagerie or is Slimux's extra tree enough to warrant focusing on it?

Competitively speaking, horticulous and beasts are unplayable.  Competitively speaking, a summoning build is unplayable. There are novelty artefacts and abilities to add contagion points, but in reality it doesn't add up to much when it takes 2 turns to muster the points needed to summon one nurgling base or 5 plaguebearers. 

[knas]

10 hours ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Competitively speaking, horticulous and beasts are unplayable.  Competitively speaking, a summoning build is unplayable. There are novelty artefacts and abilities to add contagion points, but in reality it doesn't add up to much when it takes 2 turns to muster the points needed to summon one nurgling base or 5 plaguebearers. 

Competitively speaking what type of lists do work? For daemons / mortals respectively?  Like in general, not specialists tournament winning lists! Is it just Blight cyst and the GOU batallion?

Edited July 17, 2019 by knas

[EMMachine]

On 7/9/2019 at 3:12 PM, TheVenerableBede said:

Am I right in thinking this FAQ confirmed that spells / abilities that work off characteristics also take into account modifiers?

If so, that makes Cloying Quagmire a bit more tempting, especially if you are likely to face Fyrelsayer 1+ saves or SCE 2+ saves.

 

On 7/9/2019 at 3:47 PM, Isotop said:

Pretty sure this does not work, since "armour enhancing" abilities do not modify the save characteristic, do they?

To say something about this point. Most modifiers for the save are modifiers on the save roll not the Save Characteristic, so it doesn't interact with Cloying Quagmire.

[hughwyeth]

2 hours ago, knas said:

Competitively speaking what type of lists do work? For daemons / mortals respectively?  Like in general, not specialists tournament winning lists! Is it just Blight cyst and the GOU batallion?

@sal4m4nd3r has some great lists they've had success with, so have a look back at these pages. In tournaments in the UK, it really is thricefold and nothing else going 4-1 for nurgle. But on a local level, there's a few lists that can be competitive. 

When I'm playing casual games, my list is something like:

GUO Bell/Blade
Sorcerer w/ Plague Squall
Festus w/ Blades of Putrefaction

30 Plaguebearers
10 PB
10 PB
10 PB
10 Blightkings
6 Drones

and it's......ok.....

Edited July 17, 2019 by hughwyeth