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So I have a mono nurgle demon army list going, and I picked up the FW Plague Hulk of Nurgle model because it looks great and why not. Now I am running into the problem of do I play it as a Nurgle Soul Grinder or as the Plague Hulk?

The Hulk is alright, very similar stats at 150 points but with weaker weapons. It lacks the ability to shoot at any sort of flyer. Whereas for 150 I can have the Soul Grinder Demon of Nurgle and for the extra 30 add on the more powerful pie plate dropper. At 150 it comes stock with ability to shoot flyers down.

Am I missing something on the Plague Hulk rules because at the moment it seems a lot less good.... Opinions?

If you want a general purpose walker go with Plague Hulk.
If you want anti-air go with the Grinder.

Plague Hulk is better because the draw backs that make it 30 pts cheaper aren't real drawbacks.

The S6 rending battle cannon - Its just as good if not better against infantry (since it can deal ap2 wounds). The only thing weaker about is is against vehicles but battle cannons are bad against vehicles in 7th anyway.

No anti-air - You don't need anti-air you can just ignore almost all flyers. Besides 3 bs3 S7 wasn't good at AA anyway and was just distracting you from what they are really good at which is killing ground targets. Plus you get a real good template weapon instead.

Initiative 2 - Like it matters? Anything that could hurt it is either still going after it at I1 or was going to beat a regular Grinder's i3

BS2 - It shoots a blast and a flamer. It doesn't need BS.

Valid point. I have a couple flying demon princes in there as well that could hurt flyers anyway if the need arises, thanks for the opinions guys.

Nurgle Soul Grinder sitting in cover is an absolute beast and it has never failed me. I use two in every game. I would recommend both TBH, but if you have to chose between them, I would go with the Soul Grinder because it is more flexible with the weapon options.

I agree with CrownAxe's points. I personally run the Plague Hulk over the grinder and leave Anti-Air for units that can be expected to do some damage or ignore it completely.

CrownAxe wrote:Plague Hulk is better because the draw backs that make it 30 pts cheaper aren't real drawbacks.

The S6 rending battle cannon - Its just as good if not better against infantry (since it can deal ap2 wounds). The only thing weaker about is is against vehicles but battle cannons are bad against vehicles in 7th anyway.

No anti-air - You don't need anti-air you can just ignore almost all flyers. Besides 3 bs3 S7 wasn't good at AA anyway and was just distracting you from what they are really good at which is killing ground targets. Plus you get a real good template weapon instead.

Initiative 2 - Like it matters? Anything that could hurt it is either still going after it at I1 or was going to beat a regular Grinder's i3

BS2 - It shoots a blast and a flamer. It doesn't need BS.

These are very good points. I agree with most if not all of them. IMO though there is not really a clearly better choice. Plague hulks are great because they are cheap and their rules don't confuse people into thinking they should use them as ranged AA or leman russ battle tanks. Plague hulks are excellent at the ground game against pretty much many of the best units in the current meta. They make things like skyhammer annihilation force and scatbikes look silly.

The one saving grace the soul grinder IMO really has is the baleful torrent. Torrent weapons even at AP4 are amazing. You can usually get hits on 5-9 models every time you shoot and this weapon usually gets several rounds of firing. The Str7 shooting is also not bad against light transports like rhinos. I agree that for the most part excluding a select few fliers whom 3 Str 7 shots accomplish little against flyers can be mostly ignored. This ability shouldn't IMO be ignored though as it does occasionally come in handy. It also becomes pretty good when you walk your grinder forward to engage meaningful targets and get to shoot the rear armour of a baledrake or vulture, at the very least it makes the opponent have to be careful and loose opportunities.

Grumblewartz wrote:Nurgle Soul Grinder sitting in cover is an absolute beast and it has never failed me. I use two in every game. I would recommend both TBH, but if you have to chose between them, I would go with the Soul Grinder because it is more flexible with the weapon options.

This is actually where I have seen a lot of people get confused. 3 BS3 S7 shots just doesn't accomplish a lot. For less than a 150 pts every other army would get either double the number of hits on an AV14 platform usually with a 4+ save or those shots would be small blast and AP2. Soul grinders are extremely poor ranged damage for their pts.

You really need to use the melee abilities and the shooting of the soul grinder to make them worthwhile. Luckily nurgle soul grinders w/ flamer are actually pretty good when they move forward as they can shoot the side and rear armour of vehicles then and still usually have a 3+ or 4+ cover save depending on whether you have a lot of ruins or you use units to shield the approach.