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So I'm writing a small 500/600 point nurgle themed (more fluffy than competitive. I'm never going to be in any remotely competitive games) chaos list. I'm also brand new to the game. Never played a game in my life but I feel like I have good grasp of the rules. I'm thinking a cultist squad with auto guns would be more effective than a melee cultist squad right? I already have nurglings and plague bearers for melee so I feel like I need a ranged element other than my small squad of plague marines.

Agreed. I've seen large units of these shoot down Terminators and Flying Daemon Princes, volume of dice can sometime pull wonders.

Yeah, volume of fire is a big deal with Cultists, in part because of how quickly they die. You can get a couple rounds of shooting in easier than you can get a couple rounds of melee.

That said, don't keep them on the back part of the board. They run easily.

I haven't seen cultists in melee doing well, but have suffered some embarrassing wounds from shooting blobs of them. Make em shooting unless their on guard duty as bubble wrap.

Great. Thanks, guys!

I usually play mine in blobs of 35 with ccw/pistol and Mark of Khorne, with Khârn in the blob for Hatred.
This amounts to 140 attacks on the charge, rerolling misses. Very few things survive that, and most opponents don't see it comming, because "it's just cultists"....
It's actually very funny to do.

One of the chaos players at my FLGS runs boat loads of cultists in almost all his list, the shooty ones most often, I have been on the receiving end of the volley of fire they can lay down and it's not nice!

Once you are rolling 20 saves for a squad at 3+ it's inevitable some are going to die! I always make sure I kill the stabby ones before they get close enough

Another tactic:
Tzeentch cultists and throw a 4++ from Divination on them (Heralds?).

Your enemy will weep as your cheap 3++ cultists will keep a couple of objectives (congo line!)