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Im in a bit of pickle here im looking to run several large blobs of plague zombies and im wondering is it a good idea to run them along defilers or obliterators to back them up for heavy support
for elites is it better if I run mutilators or plague marines?
the real pickle is fast attack as I don't know what to put in here

P.S my main opponents are tau, eldar and nids if that helps

Mutilators are terrible don't take them.
1 heldrake can be pretty great.
Obliterators are quite good with MoN and votlw but don't deep strike
I would run units of 5 nurgle spawn because they are great for tarpitting or slaughtering fire warrior type units. Give them a biker nurgle lord for extra punch.

Never take a defiler, ally in a soulgrinder instead (and that gives you some summoning too)

Squeeze Huron in the list if you can spare the points. That way, you can infiltrate those zombies. Against Tau, I find outflanking to work better, and you can threaten their flank about the same time the rest of your army gets in range.

For support, I recommend a heldrake and spawn for fast attack choices, as both can close quickly and threaten units that your zombies just cant reach. Plus, infiltrated zombies provide a nice cover save for your advancing spawn. Oblits will work for anti-armor, and you can drop Typhus [assume you are using typhus zombies here] in with them if you dont want to stick him with zombies (and are feeling lucky when reserving a 230 point character). Deep striking Mutilators could take the heat off...But I would rather bring more Oblits.

I have toyed with a sorcerer, sporting Gate of Infinity, warping in with a large zombie squad. Definitely an option, but placement can be tenuous, for sure. I would rather run with Huron, or even Cypher, to get them in close.

Zombies can route Tau off of the board, believe it or not...Just bring a lot of them, and enough other fast threats, to force your opponent to make tough decisions.

Zombies against Tau lists tends to be a.....slaughter? Its pretty one sided sadly due to the high rate of fire and ignores cover Tau tend to bring to the table. And since anything str6+ negates their FNP they tend to die to most of the Tau mechanized weaponry.

Now, that being said, to field them well, as stated in previous posts, Infiltration is a must. If you plan to walk them across the board to engage enemy models, you will need to lend them a hand. Infiltration allows them to close an otherwise too large of a gap quite effectively.

Blobs of no more than 20 would be sufficient and still decent for a squad size from my experience. Any more, and you are probably wasting points on other upgrades you could be giving to your other units / vehicles.

One of the reasons I don't take Chaos Spawn against Tau is because Fire Warriors have str 5 guns. That means they are wounding them on 4s unless you give them the Mark of Nurgle. Then it's 5s to wound them. All that said, Chaos Spawn have 0 form of defensive capabilities, so you might need to find an alternate form of defense against even the most basic of fire against the unit. Possibly Invisibility? To great effect that has worked quite well for me when fighting Eldar and Tau. Invisible Chaos Spawn and a Lord with the Axe of Blind Fury on a Juggernaut spells death to pretty much any unit they come into contact with.

Yeah Tau can put the hurt on Spawn if they get the opportunity. But they can't kill a full unit of tough Spawn AND Maulerfiends AND Bikers AND Zombies AND the Heldrake AND Rhinos all at once. The key to face-smashing Tau is give them so many things to shoot at that they can't possibly deal with them all in time. Then you reach their lines, and the feast begins.

Even multiple mid-to-large sized units of Zombies cause Tau problems. Especially considering a lot of their S6+ weaponry is what they need to point at our Spawn and Maulerfiends in order to catch them as well. If they focus on your tougher, bigger threats, then the Zombies have a decent chance to reach enemy lines. It's a lose-lose for them.
My CSM are 7-2 vs Tau, and I haven't lost a game against them since I expanded past the Dark Vengeance kit and learned the rules.

The way to run spawn is Mark of Nurgle, the only time you ever want unmarked is if you have a jugger lord in the unit.

I would run:
5 nurgle spawn (180 pts) + Nurgle lord on bike with PF+LC sigil (170)

That's 350 points so double up on it for 750 points.

If we are going for Typhus zombies then we need a second CAD to field him and a delivery mechanism that can keep up with the spawn. Something like a landraider with dirgecaster/dozer blade. Better make it a Proteus so it can take melta immunity and put some naked chaos marines in it (since that unit is getting expensive already!).

That should leave enough points for 12 squads of 10 zombies each who can swarm all the objectives. Any spare points can go an aegis + coms relay + heldrakes or another spawn + lord squad. Or just more nurgle spawn.

Please read Imperial Armor volume 13: Warmachines of the Lost and the Damned.

According to these know it all who advocate that FW is no more op than GW (Vakathi and Peregrine), FW is officially accepted and sanctioned. Mind you, the people at your FLGS may refuse to play you and your FW in a casual game.


IA13 gives you options to the Sicran battle tanks that ignore jinks, Rending Hell Blades jet fighers, Typhon siege tanks that drop the biggest and deliciously destructive pie plate that also ignores cover! Oh and Fire Raptor gun ships that fire independent guns!

For nids I recommend allying Daemons for Soul Grinders for skyfire and dropping pie plates on hordes.

For tau, you need to get spawns into their face! also, the deep striking Mutilator singleton will be a great distraction scapegoat for its points if you have any to spare...If they shoot even 1 squad at him then I think he did his job.

For eldar...beware the wave serpents and always destroy them as they are objective secured if they had carried troops. Sicarans help but they are not enough.

I like the Hellbrute Dataslates more than I like Typhus and his zombies these days simply because the Cultists are fearless and being NOT zombies, have access to their standard (Albeit terrible) ranged weaponry. But that being said 1 flamer can still deny a charge, and multiple times I've pushed wounds on Loyalist Terminators (Put that in your pipe and smoke it!) Even better is when the 100 point Hellbrute dies and confers Zealot to your Cultists making them even better!

For what ever reason I used to take Zombies (FNP mostly) I now run a Hellbrute instead with his followers.