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I've seen lists of it in the list forum but has anyone actually tried this out, does it work out in practice?

Why would you pick gretchin over boyz if you ally orks? It's not like gretchin can do anything but sit on an objective and maybe man a fortification.

You bring a model with aura of decay in an epidemius list and use it to kill your grots. They count towards Epidemius's tally. Sure Aura is only S2, but grots are only T2...

If you play by rules, it does not work too well.
Because by RAW you cannot use Aura of Decay, unless you have valid target within range. And the allied Grot unit is not valid target.

Now, if you do have valid target (=opponents unit) within range of Aura of Decay, you can also kill Grots with the Aura and they count for your tally.

Though as desperate allies I would accept the grots as enemy models. Though this is a bit dodgy.

Grots to man a fortification sounds a reasonable idea. They are very weak and will run off the board but they are silly cheap.

Wasn't there something about runes of warding affecting allies?

This clearly needs to be moved to YMTC, please mod.

MFletch wrote:Though as desperate allies I would accept the grots as enemy models. Though this is a bit dodgy.

How generous of you to accept rules explicitly spelled out in the BYB

All allies but brothers in army are explicitly considered as enemy units, but you may not shoot, assault or otherwise actively try to harm them.

Accepting of them being enemies, not so accepting they can die.
Not a template, blast, psychic power, or shot.(page 112, the same page as you)
The aura seems weirdly fine.

I can't see any problem RAW and sacrificing units to the daemons is definitely fluffy. Its not even that OP given that you can't take chaos space marine allies.

It's completely illegal. All shooting attacks must have a legal target. Just because Aura hits everything in a radius does not exempt it from this rule. The only way this works is if there is a both legal target and a mass of grots within 6". Otherwise you are breaking the rules.

Aura is ranged weapon, so we are meant to conclude it is a shooting attack? Silly 4th edition wording.
You can not shoot allies, but then are treated as enemies in every other way.
So if it wasn't a shooting attack then it would(or the other small number of things that can not hit allies) not touch the grots.
Why is this not on YMTC?

Not again....

Aura isn't a shooting attack, it's an attack with range that just hits all enemy units in it's area of effect. Allies of convenience are treated as enemy models.

It's still a stupid trick, not something I would ever do, and smacks of WAAC and TFG play.

It may be fluffy, but saying that the player can go ahead and have 2+ poisoned weapons, FNP on a 3+ and ignore armor saves from all attacks on all their models with the mark of nurgle... it's just dumb.

Things like this are so stupid you may as well soak your head in vinegar. I can unstand a hypothetical discussion of how it would work but I wouldn't have thought anyone would ever try to pull it.

 juraigamer wrote:
Not again....

Aura isn't a shooting attack, it's an attack with range that just hits all enemy units in it's area of effect. Allies of convenience are treated as enemy models.

It's still a stupid trick, not something I would ever do, and smacks of WAAC and TFG play.

It may be fluffy, but saying that the player can go ahead and have 2+ poisoned weapons, FNP on a 3+ and ignore armor saves from all attacks on all their models with the mark of nurgle... it's just dumb.

From the Daemon Codex: "Aura of Decay is a ranged weapon"

From the BYB: "During the Shooting phase, a unit containing models armed with ranged weapons can be nominated to make shooting attacks."

"Any model that is found to be in range of at least one visible enemy model in the target unit can fire."

Not in range of visible enemy target=can't fire.

The book says in big bold letters that allies of convenience are treated as enemy models that cannot be shot or targeted. Therefore allies are never legal targets for Aura of Decay.

 Jidmah wrote:
Why would you pick gretchin over boyz if you ally orks? It's not like gretchin can do anything but sit on an objective and maybe man a fortification.

Clearly you don't know the combo the OP is refering to.

slaede wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:
Not again....

Aura isn't a shooting attack, it's an attack with range that just hits all enemy units in it's area of effect. Allies of convenience are treated as enemy models.

It's still a stupid trick, not something I would ever do, and smacks of WAAC and TFG play.

It may be fluffy, but saying that the player can go ahead and have 2+ poisoned weapons, FNP on a 3+ and ignore armor saves from all attacks on all their models with the mark of nurgle... it's just dumb.

From the Daemon Codex: "Aura of Decay is a ranged weapon"

From the BYB: "During the Shooting phase, a unit containing models armed with ranged weapons can be nominated to make shooting attacks."

"Any model that is found to be in range of at least one visible enemy model in the target unit can fire."

Not in range of visible enemy target=can't fire.

The book says in big bold letters that allies of convenience are treated as enemy models that cannot be shot or targeted. Therefore allies are never legal targets for Aura of Decay.

You are my new God. I love this explination.

I'm going to assume, as this is in the Tactics forum, that when olim says "does this work" he means from the point of view of effectiveness. Can we please keep the RAW argument to the existing threads in YMDC? *NO-ONE* has bothered answering his actual question.

To respond to the original post, and assuming that the strategy is valid under RAW...

In practice, it will give you a nigh-unstoppable list for the purposes of capturing objectives. You will still want to take some specialist units to take care of high armour such as AV14, but most units you can simply tar-pit or grind down.

One thing you must do to make this work, though - get the Grots out of sight or behind an Aegis line. Otherwise an opponent that can see what you're attempting will take the first turn if they can and focus on those Grots.

If this is valid the fluff is great.

For game terms its quite brutal. I can't see that much that would do well against this kind of force.

Steamroller for the win I guess.