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I've heard that with the expensive stuff in the book, and a lack a a ton of worthwhile troops I should only look at cultists. However the idea of running no Chaos Marines out of the Chaos Space Marine codex is so wrong to me. This has me thinking and tinkering to try and get something to work. Nurgle seems the way to go for most, helps that I like Plague Marines. So the basic idea I have is Nurgle Prince, Nurgle Lord on foot, and Plague Marines in Rhinos. Now if your still here after all that rambling here are my questions. What equipment loadout should these things have? Also should I include long range firepower/allies?

I find an allied Armored Battlegroup detachment to be awesome with Nurgle marines. The tanks are fun to convert and very tough.

Also I strongly urge you to consider Nurgle bikes for the T6 goodness.

I love my nurgle bikers and lord, I put a PF and LC on the lord, and usually give my bikers VotlW (partially fluffy reasons but there are also quite a few marine players now) I dont usually put anything on the champion, he usually just stands up to take the first challenge if I dont want it >.<

I've used Nurgle bikers and they just seem to die without doing much.

EDIT: Typical formation of them is seven man, champ with axe and bombs, veterans all, two melta/plasma. Generally run two units.

EDIT: also the only allies I'm likely to see use are probably Daemons. Maybe Armored Company, depends on if I can remember which IA its in and if I have that one or not.

Nurgle bikers can be fun but as a lord delivery system I prefer spawn. Less dangerous terrain tests and garuanteed 3 wounds required to kill you. That 3+ is RNG and too easy to ignore. They are nice to run as 3 man units in reserve with 2 special weapons though.

In general I'd say ally with traitor guard. Take a vendetta or two and a pair of leman rus demolishers or eradicators depending on meta

Hm I had not even considered them, Spawn, to be perfectly honest. Or the small Spec Weaps Bikers. Might be worth a look see.

Nurgle spawn can make an effective delivery for a lord, 15 T6 wounds. If you keep them in cover they get at least a 5+ save and ignore it on the move, but you do have the problem of lack of champion for challenges. But a Pf/LC lord on a bike with sigil can actually take on a monstrous creature without fear of smash ID. Also 5 WS6 S8 Ap2 attacks will put the hurt on most monsters out there, even if you're last.

Cultists are useful for 3 things
1) they make a great unit to sit on a home objective having 10 bodies at 50 points.
2) 30 man blobs can act as ablative wounds meaning a lord/sorc can effectively have 32/33 wounds if only at the cost of 130 points and 1 toughness.
3) 55 points gets you an objective holder that can sprint for there objective and hold it with a flamer.

As for marines most people will agree that our 13 point marines aren't as good as the loyalist 14 point marines. If you are buying a chaos lord anyway get the cult marines. Plague marines do everything you would want a CSM to do but with more resilience to everything short of a demoliser round. (unless that demolisher round is <8" away in which case you get stealth from your grenades). Put them as squads of 5 with 2 special weapons in a rhino and sit on their objectives. Give the sgt a power axe is nice, 4 S5Ap2 attacks on the charge. Plus he is generally tough enough to withstand light challenges and still strike at I1. Optional on the rhino is combi melta if you face a lot of tanks or havoc launcher if you face a lot of infantry.

Plague marines and cultists (or zombies if you bring typhus) make excellent troops for holding objectives. Once you have that nice plague core, you can bring in the tanks. I actually think you can get away with staying pure CSM by including heldrakes, forgefiends and obliterators - nurgle for both rules and fluff.

Typhus works really well against any non monstrous creature. He gets a lot of hits with a daemon weapon or if youre getting mobbed, release the swarm and hit everything under the large blast template with S4Ap2. With T4 4 wounds 2+/5++ FNP, he can tank it against gunlines of marines (it takes on average 108 bolt guns to take him down) Deep strike him down with 2 nurgle oblits and put a strong threat not too far from your opponent. If can drop multimeltas on tanks or plasma on dudes + typhus psy powers. plus takes dedicated heavy fire to take them down - though is around 400 points.

I think the plague daemon prince doesn't work as a one of. You need more air saturation to not have him the focus of every skyfire weapon aimed at your head. If you have the ppoints for 2 or can bring some heldrakes then you can saturate the air with fliers but one is just not enough. Consider taking a lord and a sorcerer.

Here is approx the list I took the other week

1 Typhus
1 Sorcerer
+Psy lvl 3 +Bike +Force axe +Familar

5 Nurgle spawn
1 Heldrake
1 Heldrake

20 Zombies
20 zombies
5 PLague marines + 2 plasma + power axe
Rhino + combi melta
5 PLague marines + 2 plasma + power axe
Rhino + combi melta

3 Nurgle obliterators

Aegis defence line

Sorcerer rides with spawn, typhus can deepstrike in with an oblit for backup or walk in with zombies. Heldrake just does as heldrake pleases.

granted this wont win tournaments but it has a solid troops as a core, has both fast and heavies for scouring in their respective games, and has a good amount of psychic defense and offense including a fast tough lvl 3 sorc <150 points which gets stuck in fast. Roll on telep for invisibility to hide the spawn/halucinate for fun/puppet master for vehicles.

Do what I've been doing recently.

Deck out at chaos lord on a palanquin of Nurgle. 6 attacks on the charge, 4+ inv, 5 wounds, and can sweeping advance. I like to use a lightning claw and power fist, but another thing you can do is have him be black legion for a couple of their goodies. 6+D6 AP3 attacks striking at I6 is scary stuff when you give him a quicksilver blade. Add on the other artifact that gives him eternal warrior and adamantium will, and you've got yourself a monster that can hit as hard as a daemon prince for 100 points less, and you can put him in a land raider if you want.

Sacrifice an attack and a wound and take this setup on a sorcerer instead. You can only get two rolls on biomancy, but if you manage iron arm the emperor will not save your enemies. Endurance is almost just as good. FNP and IWND is delicious.

The palanquin is (ironically) one of the least survivable options for a lord with the added toughness from a bike (also giving pseudo eternal warrior) or terminator armour (1/3 chance to fail to 1/6 means 2x the save but only 2/3 of the wounds) making you more survivable, have a model and is cheaper point wise. Granted the output is less as you loose the +2 attacks from the mount but considering you're hitting with a daemon weapon, that shouldn't be a problem. Also with the bike you can take a powerfist + daemon weapon, have both the option to strike at high Initiative Ap3 or low Initiative, S8 Ap2. The Tough 6 means no doubling out, making force weapons the only real threat, you have 12" move + turbo boost to cover ground quickly, a twinlinked boltgun to fire on the overwatch and is cheaper to build (both in points and money) than the palanquin. The main advantage of the palanquin is it puts a real scare into your opponents when they hear that an infantry model has the same number of wounds as a greater daemon.

Another ok use for Palequin is for a Sorcerer with 2 biomancy powers and 1 nurgle power. Take a force axe and bolt pistol and it's 4 instant death AP 2 attacks and 4 wounds instead of 3 and 2 (respectively). The only down side is not being fearless and having a decent chance of being instagibbed by MC (although community support rerolls on the 4++ can help). For this roll I kind of prefer the disk of tzeentch so you can get 3++ T5 (and still +1 A) instead.

It comes down to whether you think you will be fighting tough characters (palequin sorc) or MC (disc sorc). But either way you might as well just pay a bit more for Abaddon.