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So, I'm trying to build a Fluffy-ish Nurgle Chaos Space Marines army with some Daemons thrown in for good measure. This isn't exactly going to be a tournament build, I'm only going to use this in friendly games against friends, but I'd still like to optimize it so I actually have a chance to win. I'm mostly going against Orks and Astra Militarum, if that matters.

I figured you people might have some tips and tricks I've missed, since I'm basically a beginner when it comes to Chaos.

EDITED LIST 11/11/2015

Combined Arms Detachment - Primary Detachment

Chaos Lord - 165pts
Bike, Lightning Claw, Power Fist, Mark of Nurgle, Sigil of Corruption

2x
Plague Marines - 214pts
2x Meltaguns
Plague Champion with a Combi-bolter
Rhino with Havoc Launcher

Chaos Bikers - 186pts
5x Bikers, Mark of Nurgle, 2x Melta

Heldrake - 170pts
Baleflamer

Allied Detachment

Great Unclean One - 280pts
2x Greater Rewards
Psyker Level 3

Plaguebearers of Nurgle - 90pts

Soul Grinder of Chaos - 180pts
Daemon of Nurgle, Phlegm Bombardment

Total 1499pts



So my general plan is to have my Lord join the biker squad and go around the board taking out squads where he can in close combat and be a general nuisance. The Daemons support on the front lines while the Plague Marines stay back and take objectives. The Herald would summon more Daemons as needed.

My main concern at the moment is if I have enough Warp Charges to actually summon the Daemons and if it's actually a valid strategy at all, I haven't had a chance to test this yet in actual play. Should I just drop the Psychic levels all together to get something else instead or should I use the charges for some other powers?

Also I read somewhere that the Lightning Claw + Powerfist gives you a +1 attack since they're both specialist weapons, hence why the Biker Champion has them. Is that correct?

that is true about the weapons.
strongly advise putting the same combo on your lord. the black mace is garbage if it's not on a daemon prince. even against orks you've got to expect that your lord will run into 2+ armour. if he can't deal with it, it'll hurt.

if you can get a copy of the Crimson Slaughter detachment you can look at some wargear on your lord I love using
Daemonheart - 2+ armour, plus it will not die
Slaughterers Horns - rage and furious charge
Special Sword (cant remember the name) - gets buffed as he kills stuff. fun sword, claw and fist are probably better though.

psyker level will be doable. generate a few dice with the warp roll. get 2 from the herald. need 3 success. throw everything at it and keep summong plaguebearers.

here's some notes

Lord - give him better wargear, fist and claw is good or use crimson slaughter stuff
Bikes - take double melta. you're really lacking it. probably dont need the fist and claw on the champion. take the fist only if you want more punch.
Plague marines in a rhino with 2 melta is always good. i run that a lot. get melta.
I would Drop the plague marine squads with no rhinos. maybe take 7 guys in the 2 rhino squads. no rhino and they're a waste of time. free up some points for elsewhere.

Herald - locus is a waste of time unless he's in a good unit. a unit of 10 plague bearers doesn't need feel no pain. won't make your points back.

on the other hand, if you drop the extra plague marines and take 20 plague bearers with their shrouded and feel no pain you will have a unit that's basically impossible to move off of an objective. it will also have enough attacks to kill tanks that get too close etc.

soul grinder is always fun. phlegm is good. gives you a bit of skyfire too.

make those subtle tweaks and you'd have a decent list for friendly but competitive games.

lord and bikes turbo forward on turn 1 and then drop melta into something. maybe the lord even splits off to fight on his own while the bikes melta something else etc.

two plague marine rhinos with melta follow them up with turbo. when the rhinos get popped the marines will be in better position to melta slag something and then get into a fight. plague marines are pretty solid in close combat. theyre tough, hard to kill, hard to wound and have lots of attacks. against orks and astra youll also be rerolling your failed wounds in combat due to poison. dont forget that.

big plague bearer unit can sit back and score and not move. soul grinder can hang back and shoot a few things.

if you want more punch look into a squad of about 6 plague drones and put your herald with them. THEN the fecundity makes sense. they can really hit like a ton of bricks. i also use a big nurgle beast star at tournaments and it does well.

look at epidimius if you're using lots of nurgle daemons. he can be a lot of fun.

a nurgle daemon prince from the daemons book can take a balesword. fly around and jink for a 2+ cover save and then charge big nasty targets with an instant-death sword.

a great unclean one with a couple of good biomancy rolls ends up being T10 and basically impossible to kill. as a nurgle player i take an unclean one and a prince all the time. 2 greater rewards on each and 3 rolls on biomancy. youll get solid powers more often than not and all of the greater gifts are good. you can either take the balesword or the etherblade for +1s if you dont really need ID because your opponent doesnt have multiwounds.

if you really want to take a blackmace then take a daemonprince so it's at ap2. that can really hurt.

might want some melta guns on the plague marines.

Eternal blade on a Guo is amazing

Wow, that was fast. Thanks for the suggestions! A couple of questions though.

Drop the plague marine squads with no rhinos. maybe take 7 guys in the 2 rhino squads. no rhino and they're a waste of time. free up some points for elsewhere.

Don't Rhinos have a capacity of 10? So 4 squads of marines should fit 2? Or am I missing something?

two plague marine rhinos with melta.

I'm using BattleScribe to build the list, so I'm assuming this is just a bug in that, but just in case: It keeps saying that all plague squads should have the same number of Special Weapons and I can't have more than 2 in my army total. Is that right? I was going to put two squads in two rhinos, both with two melta. Is that allowed?

My next reply from me won't come as quickly, I'm heading to bed.

I've never seen that issue with BattleScribe, it can be tricky sometimes though.

Yes you definitely can take 2 special weapons in every plague marine squad, that is their main strength. The best way to run them is as MSU, so 5-man units with 2 meltas each in a rhino (usually with a dozer blade). A 5-man squad set up like that is about 180 points, so you can easily get 2 of them if you make some cuts.

One cut I would STRONGLY encourage is to tone down that Biker Champion. You've given a 1 wound model 40 points of weapons, that's insane! I would just give him some melta bombs and call it a day, but at most give him a power axe.

I would also remove the 2 mastery levels on your herald. It's not enough to make him very useful, just a waste of points. You'll need more warp charges to make it a reliable tool, rather than just a lucky gimmick.

MSU for sure. While you can fit more guys in a rhino, it's a waste. The guys will die and get stuck somewhere bad.

OK, I made some changes. I should probably edit my opening post too, right?



Hey, we're one point closer to 1500. That's got to be an improvement, right?

Anyway, I'm still going to try to summon some Demons with the psyker level 3, I have a game today so if it turns out to be worthless I'll not do it again. I'm expecting horrible failure, but one can hope.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, I won the game! Couple of observations:

I don't have enough Warp Charges to use for Summoning, the other powers are just way too good to waste for a random squad of Plaguebearers

Which are basically worthless. I deep struck them to capture an objective, got the objective, but they then died the next turn when Orks charged them.

Meltas are... REALLY good. Holy gak those Battlewagons didn't stand a chance.

Great Unclean One is a MONSTER. Had him duke it out with a squad of Orks, they kept charging me hoping to inflict enough wounds but had to run away every time. GUO gave no gaks and kept regenerating because I luckily rolled Corpulescene from the Greater Rewards table. I also took a Balesword and just destroyed the poor Orks.

I'm really liking this list, the only thing I'm really lacking is proper CC. Basically only the Great Unclean One can safely assault against other CC squads, but if I want to keep the list flufy I can't think of anything to really fix that. Suggestions?

if there is anywhere you could cut some points, a spawn pack might be a nice CC unit for you! neat list though! would love to make mine close to this. take care!