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I run your standard competitive nurgle csm list, I'm wondering if allying daemons is work while competitively. Our is the standard full csm list better, i.e. plague marines, heldrakes, obliterators, etc.

If daemons are worth it, what models / detachments should I take?

By standard do you mean a zombie heavy list or plague marine list?

If you aren't using zombies, plaguebearers make for a great backfield objective holder, which frees your plague marines up to be more aggressive.

Soul Grinder with DoN and Phlegm gives you a much more durable defiler equivalent, which is nice if you need the extra blast weapon and armor saturation.

Plaguebearers are rocking objective campers, although I don't think you can get a herald to give them that gift that gives them their old FNP back.

A GUO with Iron Arm ruins everyone's day too.

Plaguebearers or Horrors make great backfield objective campers. They're a bit more expensive than Cultists, but cheaper than Plague Marines, and won't run from enemy shooting, and won't wilt to cover-denying weapons as quickly as cultists.

You can take quite a nice daemon prince or great unclean one as a strong monstrous creature assault option, or a tzeentch herald with Divination and/or a Grimoire (for Oblits, Possessed, Warp Talons, or a CSM prince) to enhance your CSM units, or you could take a Khorne Herald on a Juggernaut in a big unit of Flesh Hounds as a good assault and anti-backfield element. So there are multiple good options for the HQ.

I'm in the minority here. Other than nurgle soul grinders and nurgle prince, all the really great nurgle units are in the CSM book. Most of what you can take from nurgle daemons is better done by CSM.

Plaguebearers are great objective sitters... IF you buy a Herald to give them FNP (you can buy a single Herald, just not four as you can in a single slot if daemons are orimary) and that now expensive unit contributes nothing to shooting.

The other options are lackluster. A Great Unclean One is almost impossible to kill, but it's so slow that any decent player can just ignore it. It has to deep strike in or will never reach combat, and since it can't run smart players will just move away and kill everything else.
Now if I did want to run nurgle daemons I would take a daemon prince hq and keep him flying and either buffing units or shooting things. I would mostly keep him out of combat because he's slow and purposeful and can't sweep.
I would run a single unit of plaguebearers to sit in the backfield and a soul grinder to sit in cover and bomb things. If you bring a souk grinder you need some armor saturation in your list. A couple vindicators bring av13 and devastating large blasts.

Very good comments, but I guess I'm still wondering if competitively speaking just taking csm alone is.better in tourneys. Trying to figure out if they are worth investing in as an eventual second army.

My opinion is that competently they don't bring anything that CSM doesn't already have and have better... IF you insist on staying Nurgle.

If you are willing to bring in other gods, slaanesh and tzeentch codex daemons are superior to CSM princes as they don't have to roll on their respective table if they don't want to and each brings some powerful options. The greater and exalted rewards really open up more power as well.

Flesh hounds of khorne offer am amazing fast attack option. 16 points gets you a WS5,STR4,T4 2-wound beast with scout that can be taken in packs of 20.
CSM has nothing like that.

Seekers of Slaanesh are also great.

Soul grinders are good and various marks can change their role so they have some flexibility.
Seeker chariots are also viable.

The biggest thing is that where in CSM Nurgle is mostly the superior god, he's probably the worst in Codex Daemons.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Very good comments, but I guess I'm still wondering if competitively speaking just taking csm alone is.better in tourneys. Trying to figure out if they are worth investing in as an eventual second army.

Part of it depends on what you're currently running but I'd say that yes, going with Nurgle daemons can add to your list.

As I mentioned before, I think plaguebearers and soul grinders can benefit a Nurgle CSM list. I'd take plaguebearers over normal cultists anyway and I could save points by dropping Typhus if I was using zombies.

Before all these new books I used to love having plaguebearers on standby for my PMs. The PMs excelled at getting in close and firing. Having the ability to DS in some plaguebearers close at full strength took some of the heat off my PMs, including the incoming charges. It was really good having units to DS in where I need them. Traditionally nurgle CSM suffers in mobility, which is a good reason to have DSing demons. I know a lot of the rules have changed on both units, but the core concept should be there. I'm considering taking a couple units in the near future. I wouldn't use the plaguebearers in the back field though, I would DS them in close to my PMs. Let the get into CC where they should be. PMs can sit and shoot.