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Yes Im a chaos player, and No Im not a troll. I just don't like the nurgle look but a ton of players just love it. I do like the rules and the fluff, but I just don't like the look of them. Sorry if this is double heresy...

The appeal of Nurgle armies?

+1 Toughness.

No, really, it's more to do with the fatalism aspect, I suspect, and the perception that Nurgle is the only "good" chaos god because he "loves his followers".

Also, in terms of painting (just my opinion here) i find that painting up nurgle themes to be far easier than any other god based army.

Tzeentch and slaanesh being a royal pain at times due to bright contrasting colours and tons of thinned layers.
Khorne being in the middle here.

I prefer elite, low model count armies. Nurgle is particular good at filling this preference because Nurgle units are expensive points wise due to their durability ( which is something you always use ) as oppose to other elite armies with abilities that you may pay for, but never use.

The reason lots of people play nurgle is that plague marines and MoN is the strongest way to play chaos, and people want to win games. It rarely ever seems to evolve past that.

There are rare exceptions, though, and you can always tell because they have really great minis - nurgle being the best army for expressing greenstuff skills as you just have a lot more that you can do to "nurgle" models up.

True, but Im not talking about MoN, I mean just the look of them, It might just be the conversions I've seen, but most of them seem so... ugly, and not in a cool way. Dp of nurgle is good ugly, and one of the few models I like from them.

Right.

The reason most people bring nurgle units has absolutely nothing to do with how the models look. The only reason is because they're stronger on the table in-game.

If what's important is winning, then having bad fluff or bad models wouldn't make a difference.

Some people want to shoot the zombie, and some people want to be the zombie.

When I have considered Nurgle armies it's been just the idea to make them look putrid and nasty, like you'd be infected with tetanus if you touched one. Plus they are fairly forgiving to paint as you can't go wrong with slopping on some greens, browns, greenish brown and/or brownish green with some bone and have even a messy paint job look fine after a few glazes.

+ 1 T. T=6 are nothing to laugh at.

Realistically nurgle is not the best for winning by a long shot. If you really want to win then you want CD primary with cultists, heldrake, and either a slaanesh/Tz DP or MoK juggerlord w/ spawn. Notice none of those are MoN.

Out of the mono deity CSM list MoN is the one of the two best w/ slaanesh commonly held to be a bit worse but these really aren't that high up on the nasty list scale and they fall in somewhere below a balanced UM list.

The 3 reasons for taking nurgle IMO are the fluff, easy painting theme, and liking zombie/undead type themes.

The fluff for nurgle is great with a unique vibe and lots of cool references to throw around. When a nurgle player says his GUO just want to share nurgle's love he means it and it has an actual in game reference as affection to nurgle is infecting you with something. Nurgle is the deity of stagnation but also of fatherly love. Funnily enough his aspects fit the current IoM perfectly and you can make some great army concepts from this. Nurgle is also one of the easiest apocalypse narratives as nurgle can escalate quickly with the zombies and rampant diseases.

A quickly painted nurgle army looks really good compared to a similar effort of Tz or Slaanesh. Khorne is slightly more effort but can also be quick painted to reasonable effect. I did up 32 MoN marines with 2 sprary paint colors (aged brass and rust orange), green paint mixed with gorilla glue for the "tumors"/growths on them, and a brown wash. They took ~45 min total and I have been complemented on them My other themed anything took longer for a small fraction of the models and don't look as good at table top distances.

Here are some of the models I really like from the nurgle lines. I enjoy how they look. They are the decaying corpse, undead look of the 40K line.




To be fair the forgeworld and chaos daemon lines are much better than the very limited selection of GW models for CSM with nurgle theme. There are after all only 3 nurgle CSM models two of which are HQs. You can make some pretty awesome conversions for nurgle but the problem with that is that they are very busy and take a fair amount of effort to make look good. I have only 1 conversion I am reasonably happy with and he took me 3 hours just to get all the bits attached.

Also nurgling are just great and hilarious. They are the cute cuddly mascots of chaos...

Once again. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE RULES OR THE FLUFF I talking purely visually.

I personally hate chaos in every way. Nothing about it appeals to me. But Nurgle is by far the worst for me to look at. I will tolerate crazy bright demons but if I see nurgle forces it just fuels me to kill better.

I dont like corpses that look like they have been in water for too long and somehow turned green. Its not like they even look anything like sickly diseased people. They look like snot with attitude.

I also want to know why people like the look beyond rules or fluff.

thepowerfulwill wrote: Once again. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE RULES OR THE FLUFFI talking purely visually.

Well, here's your problem:

thepowerfulwill wrote:I just don't like the nurgle look but a ton of players just love it.

... the problem is that you're looking and seeing a lot of players with nurgle armies, and are assuming that the reason that they have nurgle armies is that they love the look of the models. This assumption, though, is false. Tons of players with nurgle armies is not necessarily a sign that people like the visual appeal of nurgle models. Indeed, it's possible that there are tons of nurgle players despite the models, rather than because of them.

Anyways, if I were to say something good about nurgle, visually speaking, I'd reiterate my point that they are the best conversion faction of chaos, especially for breaking out mad GS skills. Spend a little bit of time with google, and you'll see some nurgle units (especially demon princes) that have had dozens of hours of greenstuffing done on them. It also tends to make the army more individualizable. Ansacs just mentioned using the bubbling effects of gorilla glue, for example, and I'd never heard that technique before, but I'm not surprised at all that it was developed by a nurgle modeller, nor would I expect anyone else's army to have that technique.

I do agree though, that painting is usually what lets people down. One of the reasons I, myself, don't run a nurgle army is because I have faith in my greenstuff abilities to make things look awesome, but then I know I'd ruin the great sculpts with my mediocre painting skills (while other stuff slightly restricts my greenstuffing, but isn't so easy to ruin with poor painting).

Honestly, though, I'm going to stick with my original point. People like nurgle more in spite of the visual appeal than because of it. They like how it plays on the table or they like the fluff.

Because, let's be honest, people who are drawn to a chaos god based on visual aesthetic pick khorne.

I was intoPlague Marines in their old (3.5?) codex, back when they didn't have their Feel no Pain, and were just Tough (In brackets) and Fearless. I fell in love with Mortarions teachings and everything about the Death Guard. Bought up 3 brand new boxes of metal Plague Marines (Wowee, and only 7 in a box!) from the FLGS, and painted them up.

Then 8 or 9 Years later, 6th Edition just drops and Chaos gets the first new codex. This is when I started playing the game. The codex of Nurgle? That sounds just awesome to me. A better Typhus? Cheap disposable Fearless troops? Even better Plague Marines? Gotta say I'm pretty happy I picked em out so many years ago.

And now with the paints and washes and technicals available its even easier to paint up Nurgly goodness.

And I almost went Slaanesh instead...

@Ailros
Lol, no. Those are the people that like the color red.

Honestly I am a die hard nurgle player with far too many copies of "useless" nurgle models (36 nurgling bases). So I am pretty much the exact counter to your point.

Though I will be honest. The best looking CSM armies I ever saw were an alpha legion and a slaanesh army. The slaanesh was especially striking with glass cathedral window style heldrake. Awesome.


As I said before there are a significant number of people who like the zombie/undead style army. There is even proof in the fact that there are not one but two undead fantasy armies and entire lines of zombie models with no games attached. It is a I like horror movies vs action movies sort of thing. Some people just prefer their evil super villians to be creepy and/or disgusting as well and some prefer them to look like comic book supervillians (which is what khorne looks like to me).

I just like rotty and pus-laden Love the models, love the fluff, love the color scheme.

Call me warped if you like.

I also play animate psychotic mushrooms and Sadistic emo-elves with spikes on.

What this says about my psyche i don't know, but to me it's more interesting than playing neutered supermen in tech-plate armour working for a wasteful, inefficient and brutal totalitarian state

Different strokes and all that...

Realistically nurgle is not the best for winning by a long shot. If you really want to win then you want CD primary with cultists, heldrake, and either a slaanesh/Tz DP or MoK juggerlord w/ spawn. Notice none of those are MoN.

But oblits are always mon . It is impossible to find an oblit being played without MoN .

Right, other gods have certain high-power units (like the AoBF lord), but you only get the strongest combination by chaining those best units from the different gods together. If you're going mono-god, though, for most people it inevitably winds up being nurgle.

Oddly enough, I think one of the reasons that nurgle is popular is because nurgle is popular. A new player going to a forum and asking "how should I run bikes?" or "how should I run obliterators?" or "which elites-choice-as-troops should I take?" and you'll get a loud, bombastic blast of people shouting to take nurgle stuff, so there is another person who picks up nurgle, and adds his voice to the chorus the next time.

And saying that people only pick khorne because they like red is like saying that people only pick nurgle because they like green, silly.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I personally hate chaos in every way. Nothing about it appeals to me. But Nurgle is by far the worst for me to look at. I will tolerate crazy bright demons but if I see nurgle forces it just fuels me to kill better.

I dont like corpses that look like they have been in water for too long and somehow turned green. Its not like they even look anything like sickly diseased people. They look like snot with attitude.

I like the look because it is gory and gruesome, and coveys the idea of having to fight something that cannot die. I don't play them at the moment, but I would like to model and paint up a squad at some point and I really enjoy looking at the models people have made and/or painted.

I also want to know why people like the look beyond rules or fluff.

People like things you don't like, it happens.

Each trooper taking about 10 hits to kill them and an army that looks seriously grim dark was what I thought.

Mr Nobody wrote:Some people want to shoot the zombie, and some people want to be the zombie.

thepowerfulwill wrote: Once again. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE RULES OR THE FLUFF I talking purely visually.

I didn't want to say it, but maybe it's to let them feel like they've put themself in command of their army? The stereotypical wargamer is overweight, smelly and gets grease all over their models and books, after all.

Makumba wrote:

Realistically nurgle is not the best for winning by a long shot. If you really want to win then you want CD primary with cultists, heldrake, and either a slaanesh/Tz DP or MoK juggerlord w/ spawn. Notice none of those are MoN.

But oblits are always mon . It is impossible to find an oblit being played without MoN .

My Tzeentch Terminator Sorcerer Counts-as-Obliterators say 'hi'.

Furyou Miko wrote:maybe it's to let them feel like they've put themself in command of their army? The stereotypical wargamer is overweight, smelly and gets grease all over their models and books, after all.]

Lol.

Wait, what does that say about me being a guard commander? That I consider myself incompetent and expendable? Hmm...

I've never seen the appeal of having an army that looks like a rolling ball of snot on the table, though I'll concede I've seen some artistic and well painted rolling balls of snot.

As everyone has said Ad Naueseam, the first reason is probably that they're the go-to Chaos God, and people herd to the powerful armies like sheep, just look at how little of Iron Hands were seen in 5th and how often they're seen now. Noone used to care, their fluff was a complete turn off for most people because it frankly sucked, but then they got a passive 6+ FNP, and suddenly they're one of the most favoured chapters.

The second reason is probably the conversion and counts as potential. E.g using skeletal WHFB VC whas-names as Helldrakes and WHFB zombies as plague zombies.

I sure love klomp'in me some nurgle.


I don't play Chaos, but I would think they are easier to paint in a way. Kind of how everytime I mess up an ork I decide I meant to do that, nurgle seems way easier to paint and as such, more appealing than the other chaos gods.

I've loved Nurgle ever since seeing the artwork used on the cover of the second Realm of Chaos book, Lost and the Damned. I don't care so much for the bright colours of tzeentch or Slaanesh, and Khorne is more traditional demons and lots of blood and axes. Slaanesh seem the least well portrayed, some people think it's all about tits and sex like that person that modelled a soulgrinder with a massive cock on it.