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I want to do a hard nurgle army up to 1250 points but between all the books I'm lost...

Doesn't have to be competitive really just cool. Also the summoning idea I don't get can you summon an extra 1k points say for argument sake. Any ideas for list building appreciated just no allies just dirty nurgle

Funnily enough nurgle has the best spells in the daemons codex! And one of by far the best formations. I have come up against the tallyband twice and it is hell... most armies will have a lot of trouble against that formation. A key point is to know your strengths and weaknesses, your strengths are nurgle units are hard to kill and are cheap, if you have a tallyband and give your herald the loci of 5+ feel no pain, all units within 12 of him have feel no pain and it hurts! It makes them very hard to kill, buff their toughness with nurgle spells and you have yourself a near unkillable daemon horde. Your weakness is they are VERY slow, so you need to decide are you going to start on the board with so many units that your opponent cant escape, or try deepstriking most of your army with an icon of chaos so no scattering. But there will be moments like with Tau that they will outrun you no matter what, so you either need good tactics or run so many units that they span the whole board!

Think of it kinda like old zombie movies, your literally shambling across the board but you will inevitable shamble your way around and surround them. A bright side to this is you have some of the best offensive spells in the game, internal iquification is very deadly, and your buffs are great. I dont reccomend summoning with nurgle, just use your spells for buffs and offense because you don't have enough warp charges, leave that to tzeench.

Another option besides plaguebearer spam are plague drones, the are both fast and deadly and are the best unit that nurgle has for price and power, but are less expendable than the zombies and can die to a myriad of things, nurgle help you if they have Str 10 or D weapons because those flies with drop like... well... flies.

If ya want an example nurgle list that is newbie friendly than try something like this, feel free to play around with the ratio of nurglings to plaguebearers all you like they are semi interchangable, but make sure you have big units! Nurgle is if anything, fun.

Tallyband --

Herald of Nurgle - Psy Lvl 2, Loci of Fecundity

6 x nurglings
20 x plaguebearers
20 x plaguebearers
10 x plaguebearers
10 x plaguebearers
10 x plaguebearers
10 x plaguebearers

Daemon Lords ---
Great Unclean One - psy lvl 3, Exalted Rewards/Book of True names

Auxillary ---
4 x Chaos furies

Total Points ----- 1235

This list is a basic daemonic incursion (see new wulfen book) which means you have better control of the warpstorm table and your whole army wont explode on a roll of a 2 (see warpstorm table) daemonic incursion also lets you corrupt objectives, and re-roll failed instability tests making it very handy, the tallyband has a range of powerful abilities including the enemy cant overwatch against tallyband units and when in CC the enemy loses 1 strength and 1 toughness.

Nurgle is a great patron god, and as a servant of slannesh and Tzeench I do get envious on the occasion as your spells are better than tzeenches and your swords cut better than my rending claws of slannesh. The best thing I can reccomend is play around with the daemonic incursion list guidelines as much as possible, maybe even throw a CAD with it as well, but the bonuses it gives are lifesaving and I highly reccomend it.

Have fun and nurgles blessing.

Doesn't have to be competitive really just cool. Also the summoning idea I don't get can you summon an extra 1k points say for argument sake. Any ideas for list building appreciated just no allies just dirty nurgle

You can, but it'll rarely win you the game. Theoretically you can summon units to (next turn) summon more units and so on and just drown the board in daemons, but:

1) Unlike Tzeench, you lack a psyker available through the Malefic Primaris (the only power you can garuantee getting)

2) You lack a troops choice psyker, so have far fewer warp charge to play with

3) Nurgle stuff is damn hard to remove in the first place so just double down on toughness

Summoning is a nice 'tool kit' power for daemons - lacking (for example) the options for melta bombs on your 'sergeants', being able to pull a pack of screamers out of your ass on demand is priceless. Summoning daemons to fill tactical gaps as they occur is very useful - but not an option if staying purely devoted to one god from the pantheon.



Nurgle units, as Reavas says, are ridiculously tough. Their most important power is Shrouded - +2 cover save which stacks with other abilities - and because you're not fearless (even though you have many of the positive bonuses thereof) you can go to ground.

if you go to ground behind a ruin, or a wood, or even just another squad, you get a 2+ cover save. Nurglings have 4 wounds each.

If they're dug in on an objective in a ruin, three nurgling bases are less than the price of a squad of Imperial guardsmen, and are about as hard to kill with ranged gunfire as a full terminator squad. Worse, if (as noted) you give them Feel No Pain from a herald.

Essentially, the pure nurgle units do the following jobs:


Nurglings - deploy on objectives (in your deployment zone or by infiltrate) in cover and go to ground if anyone looks at you funny. Their job is to survive the first couple of turns and just farm tactical objectives for victory points for a minimal cost outlay. Take minimum sized squads, either in 'spare' troops choices or as a cheap tallyband with a Fecundity herald.

Plague Drones - aggressive assault units and icon bearers. They're damn good in a fight, and fast - so deploy forwards and zip up the board as fast as you can. When the reserves start arriving, they provide the icons in your opponent's half you can deploy onto, and then provide your decent assault units. Plaguebringers (the unit champions) are surprisingly nasty in a fight; combine a greater reward, plague banner and venom sting, and they can offer a poison 2+, AP2, master crafted, instant death attack. Even pretty powerful characters will steer the hell clear of that.

Plaguebearers - the 'wave II' infantry. Deep strike them in up-board - they're too slow to footslog. Drop them off icons held by plague drones - or off icons held by other plaguebearers (note that unlike teleport homers, chaos icons have no provision requiring them to have been there at the start of the turn!). They drop in, shuffle over to an objective, capture it and (once again) go to ground. Unlike nurglings, they have a hope in hell of beating off an assault unit so can be used more aggressively. Big units are good, and getting the charge is critical - so use the cavalry to screen them, not the other way around. Plague drones on the charge go from 3 attacks to 4 (plus the odd hammer of wrath), whilst big mobs of plaguebearers double their punch on the charge.

Heralds of Nurgle - 90% of the time, mobile Feel No Pain generators and biomancy/plague buff generators. Attach to big plaguebearer units for best results. You can also get bonuses with Plague Drones - heralds are slower, but if you have a 'conga line' of drones, the herald can easily stay in coherency for a turn or two, and Feel No Pain can really tip an early fight. Equally, a cheap Tallyband (7 x 3 nurglings, Herald with Fecundity) costs virtually nothing and provides a daemonic incursion core that gives you enough feel no pain nurglings to invest (infest?) any local objectives with one or more pack. The relics you can take are amazing - the Grimoire of True Names is infamous, but Grotti The Nurgling and the Doomsday Bell are just as good, and a Herald in a big plaguebearer pack with one or more other heralds and a champion is probably the safest place to put him.



Great Unclean One - Shoot me! I Dare You! This guy is a big distraction. Stick in reserve, deep strike in (make sure you have an icon! he's too expensive once equipped well to risk a mishap) and get aggressive with him. Take 2 greater rewards, mastery level 3 and biomancy and force your opponent to shoot at the toughest non-superheavy model in the game or be squashed by it. Instruments of chaos one plaguebearer packs are useful here - that way, 2 plaguebearer packs give you 3 shots at bringing the great unclean one in at the first opportunity.

Daemon Prince Of Nurgle - always, always wings. Shrouded + Jink is a 2+ cover save in the open. Telepathy is nice since it's the only access to it nurgle has - and with the Doomsday bell's -1LD, psychic shriek is extra nasty.

For pure Nurgle at 1250 this is about the best I could come up with. It's pretty straight forward and doesn't use too much trickery but it looks solid:

Tallyband:

Herald: ML1, Locus of Fecundity (FNP), Greater Rewards

7x 3 Nurglings

Daemon Lord:

Nurgle Prince: Flight, Armor, ML3, 2x Greater, Lesser

5x Furies

CAD:

Herald: ML2, Greater

2x 3 Nurglings

5x Plague Drones: Rot Proboscis

So you've got 2 fast moving, durable, hard hitting threats, a ton of objective corrupting Nurglings with possible FNP, and 2 units of obsec Nurglings to really make sure those objectives are yours. Nurgle Prince pretty much always takes the Balesword, unless theres truly nothing that sweet ID wouldn't help with. The Heralds are no slouches in Combat either. I always take the +1S AP2 weapon on them unless one of them rolls Iron Arm and I'll take the Balesword on that one if there's a good target for it.

Fun Fact: In a recent tournament I attended I had a Nurgle Herald Single handedly take down a Wraith Knight in one swing! He had Balesword + Iron Arm and I enfeebled the Knight so I was wounding on 3s. Got 3 wounds and rolled 4, 5, 6 for the D3 wounds from instant death and Poof! No more Wraith Knight. Granted that was above average rolling and a niche case, but damn the look on the Eldar players face was priceless.

Start with daemon princes with wings they have a 2+ cover save and they can have a weapon that cause instant death boasted by biomancy powers and you have a good starting point.