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Morning. My first post, so please be gentle
Just a general question really; my regular 40k opponent jus started playing chaos marines and they've made a habit of making all their marine and cultist units nurgle with the mark of nurgle as well. This results in everyone running around at T4. I don't really have a problem with this, I was just wondering why anyone would use any mark other than nurgle, +1T seems a better option than any of the others...

Your correct, +1 T is extremely good.

That's why you will hear people talk about the CSM codex as Codex:Nurgle

Putting marks on cultists seems pointless anyway. They're already rather costly, and paying for +1T is an incredibly inefficient way of having resilient troops choices.

For cultists, I guess T4 is better than the other options, but it's still not great.

Edit: On the marines, yes T5 is fantastic. The only one I can think of as being maybe worth it is Slaanesh to hit first in combat.

They make good objective holders at the back of his set up zone...

Dregstar wrote:
They make good objective holders at the back of his set up zone...

T4 with a tshirt save is as bad as T3 with a tshirt save when it comes to how I deal with hordes; i.e. high strength blasts. Against bolters, it is definitely a survivability increase, but against str:6+ like manticores or griffons, the difference is quite literally zero.

Mark of Nurgle is better with costlier models.

For the price of 10 cultists with MoN you can wield 15 cultists without which is better.
That said the price of the MoN increases for costlier models. it costs 3 points per model for a CSM while it costs 6 for a terminator or biker, Nevertheless Nurgle bikers are the most popular ones although the MoK only costs 1/3.

Cool. Blast weapons=death. I like it...

Mark of Slaneesh. You get the option to give some units the Icon of Excess (feel no pain) which is pretty great. +1 Initiative is pretty great too...

But then you have to paint perfectly good marine models in pastel colours...

Have to? No. A middle or dark purple is still Slaanesh enough and even then it doesn't matter what you paint.

I agree, many moons ago when I had a slaaneshi list, it was black and silver. With a few parts of gold and red. Not pastel colours.

That sounds quite good, I admit I'm not a chaos player so I've not explored all options, purples good tho...

I would have kept that army up instead of ditching it all on eBay if the slaanesh stuff had been any where near as strong as Nurgle. The +1 Initiative doesn't work with noise marines now they have salvo weapons rather than assault weapons. Plus losing the Lash in the new codex sucked. That thing was so cool.

I would have tried to make a nurgle army, but I suck at using green stuff, and there's no way I wanted to drop money on fine cast plague marines. Still, IG are hella fun, so I can't complain about my switch.

I prefer to have some units with the mark of nurgle and the others run mark of khorne, just to help save some points cause that MoN is expensive.

personally im not a fan of the other two marks.

Flamers and blast templates eat Cultists alive.

It's all about the unit.

For cultists, mark of nurgle is probably the only thing you wanna use. Mark of khorne can work, but nothing else.

As for everything else, khorne plus icon makes them CC killy, slanessh plus icon makes them harder to kill, and so on.

T4 Cultists are funny, but yes, the upgrade makes them expensive relative to their old incarnation, and still killable by a lot of long-range firepower. They're basically more expensive Ork Boyz that are suckier in CC if you give them MoN. MoN is still great though, it's still probably the best mark in the Codex. It's mandatory on any of your infantry HS choices (Havocs, Oblits), and great on any CSM. MoS is okay, but on most things it's redundant -- Bikers and CSM are okay with it and the FnP icon, but then they get expensive. MoT is bad in all cases except on Terminators and Terminator Lords.

Honestly, the funniest mark that I can think of for Cultists is Khorne. Give them that, put them with Kharn so they're fearless, and just send him and 35 cultists forwards. Even with 3S, they'll get 4 attacks each on the charge, which can overwhelm things, and they serve as lovely meatshields and friendly fire punching bags for Kharn. MoK also gives you stuff like Juggernaut Lords with the Axe of Blind Fury.