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Everybody says orks are weak, and yet, I can't beat them.

I play allied Nurgle Daemons and Chaos Space Marines. We play Eternal War missions.

I have:
a daemon prince with wings
a CSM hero on foot (played as a sorcerer or a lord)
3 plague drones
a Rhino
17 chaos space marines/plague marines (with 2 plasma, 1 melta, 1 flamer)
10 plaguebearers
6 nurgling bases

The games look like that:
1. some of my most valuable units are shot to hell (mostly with a battery of Kustom Mega Kannons)
2. my shooting deals negligible damage and can't touch heavy armour (orkanaut, dakkajet)
3. most of my units get into combat with an ork deathstar (warboss + boyz or bikes, both often with a painboy) and lose.

I don't know what to do. On paper (with mathhammer) I can't find any unit that would be a match for orks. The only idea I have would be to disregard fluff and make a Screamer deathstar with 2++ rerollable, but I don't want to resort to the cheesiest cheese out there.

Would you have any ideas?

Honestly, I've played against Nurgle a couple times and it might actually be a matchup in the orks favor. Here's a few general tips.

Get your greater CC demons in CC with our warbosses. Yes, we are S10 with a klaw, but you'll strike first, and the only save he'll get at best is a 5+ FNP, and that isnt rerollable with the lukky stikk. In general, our CC HQs will lose to other CC HQs. Last time I fought a nurgle army he had some greater daemon with some auto-wounding beatstick. Get whatever that is because it ate my warboss.

Get some anti-armor. Orks are actually a decent armor spam army. Our vehicles almost never get saves outside of a 5+++ on the KFFs. Cripple our transports asap.


Assault those cannons. At range they are T7, but in CC they are T2 with a Ld of 5. Summon some nurglings and those grots will melt.

Unfortunately I don't have much advice vs nob bikers. They're our best unit for a reason.

In general, this is a tough matchup for nurgle, I think. Try doubling down on some psyker powers. We dont have any defence against those.

I have a buddy who plays CSM, and my orks do pretty well against them- but he has gotten a few victories.

Flying nurgle demon princes ruin my day- they are borderline impossible to hit when jinking. Psychic powers hit orks pretty hard, as most warbosses won't bring a weirdboy (and even if they do, we're no sorcerers).

In the games he won, my opponent ran a lot of spawn- fast, high toughness models who could run forward and tie up my front line while his real heavy hitters- chosen, demons, possessed -all got into position to charge. Ork boyz are good in melee against most units, but against a real dedicated CC powerhouse they'll just get rolled over.

Orks are quite weak to magic. Especially those kannons. If you force a ld on those ld5 grots, they'll run. If you have access to telepathy, you get a bunch of amazing powers like shreik - murderises kannons, bikers and meganobz. Dominate - our low ld makes this thing work 50% of the time on even boy squads. Place it on kannons and they'll get shut 8/9 of the time. Terrify. -1 ld and extra checks. Once again - makes those kannons run for their lives. Invisibility. Orks can't really counter invisibility on a tough unit. Even weight of attacks doesn't cut it. That's a single spell with which you can roll through our army.

You need anti-armor and anti-air. A Helldrake would probably fix the AA part.

With 17 Plague Marines you could already take a Plague colony formation to reduce his Ini and WS. Ini is not really needed but WS3 means you'll hit him on 3s.

Nurgle Prince with greater reward gives you the instant death weapon which ignores his fnp, so you shouldn't have problems killing his HQs as Orks lack Invulns.

The problem of your army is that it's rather small on either detachment. Especially the Daemons are basically nothing more than objective campers. Drones are usually to bring an icon forward and then deep strike other forces there but you don't really have anything that wants to be up front aside from the Prince who can fly . I'm afraid you would need more models to get the best out of either your Daemons or your CSM. Or you wait about two months until the new edition and new Death Guard arrives .

Leadership leadership leadership! Orks' bane is anything to do with Ld. I can't run bikes anymore due to insane amount of Psychic Scream. Also anything that ignores cover is worth its weight in gold!

The Orks biggest advantage is that other people think they can roll over them. Posts like this nullify that unfortunately.

I played against a Nurgle CSM including Chaos Knight and tons of FNP toughness 6 Bikers and the opponent got first turn and wiped out my MegaArmored Warboss attached to a full unit of KMK's without getting to fire a shot. My Orks still won easily. Shhh it's a secret.

 skybax wrote:

I have:
a daemon prince with wings
a CSM hero on foot (played as a sorcerer or a lord)
3 plague drones
a Rhino
17 chaos space marines/plague marines (with 2 plasma, 1 melta, 1 flamer)
10 plaguebearers
6 nurgling bases
Would you have any ideas?

Looking at your units i don't see a single threat other than your DP. Thats why you lose. You can't win if all you have is objective holders.

Lots of good ideas here, thanks, guys!

If, like killerpenguin said, I need more threats - what would you recommend? What works well as a threat in CSM and Daemons (preferably Nurgle)?

Daemon Prince in either. Under the current rules a marine prince with the black mace, a combat familiar, and a few rolls on biomancy is a huge pile of teeth. Sorcerers can also do work.

A herald with the bell relic would combo well with a number of sorcerers rolling at least 1 on telepathy for the afore mentioned shriek will do serious damage.

A nurgle grinder cam tear some stuff up too. Phlem if he uses blobs of boys, the flamer if he's mechanized.

Mess with his LD, get into assault with his kannons.

Make the DP an allied daemon detachment with the instant death blade. He has shrouded +jink + mastery lvls he can kill everything. Go to biomancy for buffs.

GUO with biomancy and grotti the nurgling.

Bullet soaking baddy too tough to instagib, especially if he gets iron arm.

Always my favorite HQ...

You could see if your opponent would let you proxy the DP as a GUO.

Also don't forget a Nurgle DP can 2+ jink on the ground, and with some lucky biomancy can be way tougher to deal with.