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Do nurglings have any decent tactical uses? As far as I can see their main plus point is being cheap, although they do have a decent number of wounds and attacks, Infiltrate/Outflank and Shrouded from Daemon of Nurgle. Drawbacks seem to be being slow, probably fairly easy to ID, and they aren't going to be that good in CC.

I was wondering whether they had any potential as cheap nuisance/distraction units to force the enemy to deal with them, either by infiltrating onto objectives or deep striking or outflanking into annoying areas? Or even as backfield objective campers? A maximum blob of 9 bases is still only 135pts.

Or are they simply a poor use of points, especially if you're taking some horrors or daemonettes for troops anyway?

Same reason Tyranid Rippers are useful. Cheap troop choice fulfilling unit that is OS that can be quite hard to remove (Especially nurglings)

- Shrouded
- Infiltrate / Outflank
- Deep Strike
- Ludicrous amount of wounds for the points
- 5+ Invulnerable save
- Fearless-ish
- Objective Secured
- Dirt cheap
- Tiny squad requirements
- Fills mandatory Troop requirements

Yeah, they are pretty outstanding. As with everything else, Daemons are an army of specialists and so it pays to focus on a single job per unit. You don't need your Objective nabbers to also be good at fighting. You want them to survive, and this means being tough enough to resist small-arms fire while being rubbish enough that bigger guns won't be aimed at them. You need to get them onto an objective (Infiltrate! Outflank! Deep Strike!) and then keep them there (Fearless! Sort of.)
For what you need Troops to do, they are absolutely awesome. Pay for cheap Troops to hold objectives, and you can afford more blenders to get the killing done. Don't take half-measures when you have access to the best.

To add to Mozzamanx's praise: the models are phyisically quite small, and easy to hide from LOS.

They're good for the same reason SM Scouts are good: they can lodge themselves in a piece of terrain, hold it for the entire game, and do that cheaply.

I think they would be good Outflankers for infantry gunlines, like Tau or Conscript blobs. Other than that, I would play em as cheap Objective holders that won't see much combat.

Nurglings have 2 awesome things going for them.

Defensive grenades and Fear.

Sure, they are not the most reliable, but if you chuck a defensive grenade into a low initiative unit, those little buggers will hold that line all day long. tournament lists? Nah, no tactical reason. Local play? Hell yes, I have found my opponent ignores them pretty often and they go around either jumping on objectives, or assisting in a charge.

I wouldn't garuantee them winning a fight, but deploying three or four bases on a midfield objective is VERY effective.

Because they aren't fearless and can still Go To Ground, they can get a 2+ cover save from pretty much anything - woods, intervening units, whatever. Combined with three wounds a model and never falling back, and the only way to clean a nurgling infestation off an objective is dedicating an assault unit to go in, or flamers, or other substantial ignores cover massed firepower to burn them off it.

Doing that for a low points cost is very, very useful - especially as malefic psykers can summon them mid-game if an objective opens up.

One other use for them - if you've got chaos marine allies - is to pack nurglings into a land raider with a herald of nurgle. Take the greater locus - the one which makes rolls of a 6 to hit poisoned 2+ - and laugh like a drain as the land raider up-ends a tidal wave of tiny snot-covered ninjas into the enemy lines.

I love the idea of filling a Land Raider with nurglings and spilling them out onto the enemy lines. Would there be room to disembark a full unit of nine bases and a herald from it though and stay close enough to the access point?

For some reason I thought daemons had a rule that prevents them from getting into a CSM transport.

Nope, they can do that.

Honestly the best non-hold use I see for them is to infiltrate a cheap horde near the enemy so he's forced to deal with them while your heavy hitters close the distance.

Or as a minimum troop requirement for allies. I like to use them to get blue scribes for summoning madness.

I use them to man Quad guns and FOR weapons sometimes.

Or drop a large squad of them as a moving wall to soak hits ahead of an advancing unit of plaguebearers.

Can be fun to drop a pile of them in the enemy backfield too. They soak low strength hists (5 or less) pretty well, and can be a very annoying distraction.

Plus they look cool

I love Nurglings and have actually tried the Land Raider rush with the little buggers accompanied by a Herald on a Palaquin + Contagion. You might wonder "Why Contagion?" Well, as silly as it sounds, Nurglings dont have any special rule for Poisons :( And therefore are quite silly useless for trying to kill anything tough like MCs. With Contagion you can at least have your small chances at Poison attacks on 6s.

I use a unit of Nurglings to sit behind my unit of 18 pink horrors and 4 lvl 3 heralds to provide wounds for Sacrifice . I have had all 3 bases with 1 or 2 wounds left at the end of a game doing just that.

I use Nurglings for my Daemon army.... which is all about being an utter bitch to kill.

2 Squads of Nurglings + a Great Unclean One at 500pts.
You really need template weaponry to effectively deal with the Nurglings and High Strength weapons to deal with the Great Unclean One.

They work together really well; they counterbalance each other's weaknesses and add to each other's strengths. It's a true symbiotic relationship.

what happens to majority toughness and can the GUO tank in front and pass the failed saves to the nurglings or how does it work?

Never assault a unit of nurglings with a joined GUO. The return hits will be against majority toughness of 3. Don't ask me how I know.

Also I find my nurglings often get instadeathed by high strength or double wounded by templates etc.

Udo wrote:
Never assault a unit of nurglings with a joined GUO. The return hits will be against majority toughness of 3. Don't ask me how I know.

Also I find my nurglings often get instadeathed by high strength or double wounded by templates etc.

This confuses me. A GUO can't join units of Nurglings. It can't join units of anything.

You could always vomit comet them with Chaos Landraiders and put a Herald in them with the Poison thing