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Got slaughtered by a Nurgle army of one of my friend after I won an epic victory against a Khorne army in the final game of a campaign yesterday. The core in his army is 3 units of 5 nurgle spawn, and 2 Maulerfiends, supported by 1 Vindicator, the rest of his army are bike lord, two plague marine squads in two rhinos, and cultist. That is 45 T6 non MC wounds need to chew through, while average 60 attacks in close combat. Plus 2 AV12 strong combat walker. All moving extreme fast as a ground army, ignore difficult terrain in movement.

I found that as Ultrmarine, we lack the solid asernal to kill that many T6, bolters are near useless as we need 45 sixes in the to wound rolls, LC and ML will wound them on 2+, but not have mutiple shots, the Sternguard maybe ok as the hellfire rounds are poison 2+, but to reliable chew through that many wounds in a unit the sternguard squad must be much more expensive than the unit they are going to kill (e.g , a 10men sternguard firing at 5 nurgle spawn at 12 inch, will average 13 hits, (in best scenario, 16 hits with Ultrmarine tactical doctrine), and 11 or 14 wounds rolled, that is just barely not enough to kill one squad of 5 spawns, and will defintely die to other spawn units converging to them.

I used pesudo smashfucker chapter master in that game. But the whole unit just cannot hold for two rounds of combat against two maulerfiend and 15 spawn, what multiplied the misery is Invisibilty cast from a Libby 24 inch away got denied by the only 3 warp dices from my friend . That resulted in the CM just failed enough saves to get killed in my turn, the smashfucker himself only manage to kill one spawn before died, while the command squad killed another with a lucky triple sixes. Then what he need to do is just mopping up with almost no further causaulty.

I understand that maybe Tau or Eldar do not fear spawn, with probably 30+ S6 or S7 shots each turn, and can be much more mobile than marine to run away from the approaching spawns. But codex marines lack that many high strength shots. So what is the best way to handle them on tabletop battles? Looking forwards to any advices . Of course, flipping the table or refuse to play or anything equvilent to that do not count

Nurgle spawn are hard to kill. very hard.

But two things to remember when facing spawn and nurgle in general-what they bring in being unkillable, they give up in having unimpressive ability to actually kill anything in return, costs compared.

Spawns attack quite a bit, but attack poorly. WS3 S5 at I3 and no AP, with random attacks. you want to have many wounds around, so they cant chew through, and remember that any AP above 4 is wasted, and against spawn often AP- is enough. autocannons are your friends, as are power mauls.

Smashfucker is lovely, but against spawn its just not his matchup, he has too many saves to roll rather than fewer quality attacks, and he himself poses a small number of high quality attacks, rather than a large number of poor quality.

Mid-high S (or poison) and not spending points on AP is the way to go. TFC will land enough hits to matter, snipers will cause them grief with good shooting attack (against them) and cheap enough to bother the spawn while being nearly as good as marines in CC against them, and power mauls. do NOT underestimate power mauls striking at I4.

I'm not sure what points level you are playing at, but with that much spawn and two maulerfiends it sounds like his troop selections are low. Two squads of plague marines and cultist?

I assume you don't want to tailor a list specifically for him, so I will try and help based off of experience with UM .vs. nurgle in the past.

I think the number one thing to remember is the small damage output from the spawn and generally nurgle builds at times, they tend to be built for durability and not damage output, which is actually a perfect matchup for UM if you bring calgar. Focus on killing his troops, and having more marines than he can take out. That way you have OS units towards the later turns of the games and he does not.

A solid choice would be to bring two squads of 8-10 stern guard in a pod. While that may seem expensive, it is a great build and does not require tailoring against your nurgle opponent, because they are so mutli Talented. Spawn only have an armor save 1/3 of the time they roll on their chart. Which means 16 or so stern guard firing 2+ poisoned weapons and re rolling missed hits (UM doctrine) are absolutely taking out spawn like clock work. On the turn they roll armor, ifnore them is possible. Sounds like your worried about your sternguard being charged after they fire, and not killing their points back. An effective tactic I used in a similar game when I was running an all drop pod Calgar list. Was to drop the stern guard and pod in another plain tac squad near them. Run the tact squad so they bubble wrap the stern guard and thus the sterns can't be charged that turn, assuming you place correctly. Having a bike squad does this tactic much much better, with a potential to go 24" and wrap the stern guard perfectly.

If you can fit Calgar in with one of the stern guard pods he will do two incredibly important things for you. (Besides being a baddass)

Most importantly he'll make all your UM's even better than fearless, so his spawn will literally have to kill everyone of your troops or you'll just choose to fail morale in the final turn, and run to claim the objective for the win. Secondly if he comes down with the stern guard, they are no longer a unit to take lightly in combat. Especially for his maulerfiends that are probably charging you right next to his spawn. They strike at I1 if I'm not mistaken. That's a lot of crack grenades coming before the thing strikes, and you'll get to have Calgar pile in base to base with the maulerfiends, therefor you can choose to take his AP2 attacks on Calgar, at most I think that's 4 wounds with a 4++ save. Point being your stern guard have a better chance at survival and than Calgar literally punches the thing in the faces and more likely than not explodes it. If he doesn't, when his turn ends just fail morale and fall back. Shoot the gak out of his spawn again and drop the melta squads who you've kept in reserve to bring the pain on those fiends.

To summarize, kill his troops first, bring stern guard in pods. And if you want to test Calgar and your game is 1500 or higher he will do alot of good for you against the nurgle builds. Because you can play more of the outlasting game than actually trying to kill his spawn. Plus 4+ OS drop pods are a pain in the ass for him to deal with, good luck spawn.

Hope this was helpful

Hey Neo, I fell your pain - I have lost to the same nurgle spawn with SM before and was almost tabled (think I had a rhino and a DP left?).

Out of interest, what was the list you took into the game? Sternguard are a good option, but when I went up against it first time I only had 5 and made the mistake of dropping straight in front of them. Only killed one with 10 hellfire rounds, then they charged me and wiped me out next turn. Second time I went up against it I ignored the spawn for the first two turns and concentrated on his troops holding objectives. Faired slightly better, and the game was closer but in the end the spawn made it into a couple of key combats and I lost them hands down.

Volume of fire is your friend, and a full sternguard squad might achieve it and live to tell the tale, but its an expensive risk. I guess if you combat squad them you will only loose one if they charge the following turn? And you still get hellfire overwatch, right?

I would say ally into grey knights, get their termies. Bring them yummy halberds, with hammer hand and force. Enjoy insta killed fried nurgle nuggets. Yum yum

KC, while it is a solid answer, the idea was to get it to work within codex marines, spesifically ultras, as that's his army of choice.

Spawns are afraid of sternguard with 2+ poisoned ammo as they have no armor. Especially since the droppod allows to avoid a tanking lord/sorc.

They can't hurt dreads if there's no PF/MB character.

TFC will pull a number of wounds. I often run lobbas and find s5 multipple barrage quite effective against nurgle spawns. TFC is s6. Not as accurate as lobbas, though.

ID works. Force axe/mace librarian can be deadly. Especially if he rolls on biomancy. He might even fare well against his characters but that's a gamble.

But what units are avaliable for a SM player?

 BoomWolf wrote:
Nurgle spawn are hard to kill. very hard.

But two things to remember when facing spawn and nurgle in general-what they bring in being unkillable, they give up in having unimpressive ability to actually kill anything in return, costs compared.

Spawns attack quite a bit, but attack poorly. WS3 S5 at I3 and no AP, with random attacks. you want to have many wounds around, so they cant chew through, and remember that any AP above 4 is wasted, and against spawn often AP- is enough. autocannons are your friends, as are power mauls.

Smashfucker is lovely, but against spawn its just not his matchup, he has too many saves to roll rather than fewer quality attacks, and he himself poses a small number of high quality attacks, rather than a large number of poor quality.

Mid-high S (or poison) and not spending points on AP is the way to go. TFC will land enough hits to matter, snipers will cause them grief with good shooting attack (against them) and cheap enough to bother the spawn while being nearly as good as marines in CC against them, and power mauls. do NOT underestimate power mauls striking at I4.

Thanks for the idea, I agree that poison weapons are the bane to Nurgle spawns, just unluckly that for the game I used a list wthout Sternguard, I drew a spawn army as opponent . Looks like luck was not on my side in that last game. Besides, for bringing the mid-strength weapons, how about assualt cannon Razorbacks? I haven't used them yet, would they be good in their points?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kittens14 wrote:
I'm not sure what points level you are playing at, but with that much spawn and two maulerfiends it sounds like his troop selections are low. Two squads of plague marines and cultist?

I assume you don't want to tailor a list specifically for him, so I will try and help based off of experience with UM .vs. nurgle in the past.

I think the number one thing to remember is the small damage output from the spawn and generally nurgle builds at times, they tend to be built for durability and not damage output, which is actually a perfect matchup for UM if you bring calgar. Focus on killing his troops, and having more marines than he can take out. That way you have OS units towards the later turns of the games and he does not.

A solid choice would be to bring two squads of 8-10 stern guard in a pod. While that may seem expensive, it is a great build and does not require tailoring against your nurgle opponent, because they are so mutli Talented. Spawn only have an armor save 1/3 of the time they roll on their chart. Which means 16 or so stern guard firing 2+ poisoned weapons and re rolling missed hits (UM doctrine) are absolutely taking out spawn like clock work. On the turn they roll armor, ifnore them is possible. Sounds like your worried about your sternguard being charged after they fire, and not killing their points back. An effective tactic I used in a similar game when I was running an all drop pod Calgar list. Was to drop the stern guard and pod in another plain tac squad near them. Run the tact squad so they bubble wrap the stern guard and thus the sterns can't be charged that turn, assuming you place correctly. Having a bike squad does this tactic much much better, with a potential to go 24" and wrap the stern guard perfectly.

If you can fit Calgar in with one of the stern guard pods he will do two incredibly important things for you. (Besides being a baddass)

Most importantly he'll make all your UM's even better than fearless, so his spawn will literally have to kill everyone of your troops or you'll just choose to fail morale in the final turn, and run to claim the objective for the win. Secondly if he comes down with the stern guard, they are no longer a unit to take lightly in combat. Especially for his maulerfiends that are probably charging you right next to his spawn. They strike at I1 if I'm not mistaken. That's a lot of crack grenades coming before the thing strikes, and you'll get to have Calgar pile in base to base with the maulerfiends, therefor you can choose to take his AP2 attacks on Calgar, at most I think that's 4 wounds with a 4++ save. Point being your stern guard have a better chance at survival and than Calgar literally punches the thing in the faces and more likely than not explodes it. If he doesn't, when his turn ends just fail morale and fall back. Shoot the gak out of his spawn again and drop the melta squads who you've kept in reserve to bring the pain on those fiends.

To summarize, kill his troops first, bring stern guard in pods. And if you want to test Calgar and your game is 1500 or higher he will do alot of good for you against the nurgle builds. Because you can play more of the outlasting game than actually trying to kill his spawn. Plus 4+ OS drop pods are a pain in the ass for him to deal with, good luck spawn.

Hope this was helpful

Thanks. I would consider Calgar, but that day's campaign do not welcome bringing special character and relic from any codex (i.e. no Shield Eternal and no Axe of Blind Fury or Black Mace for anyone), so I brought a Level 2 Libby, and a pesudo CM smashfucker with only regular Storm Shield. I like using Sternguard usually, but that day want to try something new and fun, so bringing no sternguard, but unluckily run into spawns. What do you guys think about riflemen dreadnought or razorbacks? Though I don't have the model yet, I am interested in trying some.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iapedus wrote:
Hey Neo, I fell your pain - I have lost to the same nurgle spawn with SM before and was almost tabled (think I had a rhino and a DP left?).

Out of interest, what was the list you took into the game? Sternguard are a good option, but when I went up against it first time I only had 5 and made the mistake of dropping straight in front of them. Only killed one with 10 hellfire rounds, then they charged me and wiped me out next turn. Second time I went up against it I ignored the spawn for the first two turns and concentrated on his troops holding objectives. Faired slightly better, and the game was closer but in the end the spawn made it into a couple of key combats and I lost them hands down.

Volume of fire is your friend, and a full sternguard squad might achieve it and live to tell the tale, but its an expensive risk. I guess if you combat squad them you will only loose one if they charge the following turn? And you still get hellfire overwatch, right?

Thanks for the input . Yeah, Sternguard, how unlucky I hadn't have them in that 1500pts list , while they have a place in the 1250pts list in the same campaign that day which they won me the victory against a Khorne army. I think it may be better to take them alongside multiple Assualt Cannon Razorback, and use the vehicle to limit the Spawns' charge move, making a narrow corridor so maybe everytime only one or two of the spawn can get to swing and all others are 3 inch away from the base contact.

A side note, my list in that 1500pts game consist a CM (Smashfucker built) biker grav command squad with apothercary, which brought over by a Level 2 Libby. Assualt squad, 2 5men Tactical Squads, Ironclad Dreadnought transported by a Stormraven, Devastator with LC and ML, TFC. So got a bad matchup against Nurgle Spawns and Maulerfiends. TFC had not done enough, only pick off two wounds from a Spawn (they spread out) and killed one plague marine before the gunner got torned to pieces by spawns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:
Spawns are afraid of sternguard with 2+ poisoned ammo as they have no armor. Especially since the droppod allows to avoid a tanking lord/sorc.

They can't hurt dreads if there's no PF/MB character.

TFC will pull a number of wounds. I often run lobbas and find s5 multipple barrage quite effective against nurgle spawns. TFC is s6. Not as accurate as lobbas, though.

ID works. Force axe/mace librarian can be deadly. Especially if he rolls on biomancy. He might even fare well against his characters but that's a gamble.

But what units are avaliable for a SM player?

Thanks for providing ideas , looks like sternguard is one of the best answer under these situation, what just troubled me now is even with 20 2+ poisoned shots from a 10 men sternguard squad in rapid fire range under UM tactical doctrine may not be enough to put down 15 wounds from 5 guy Spawns, there is just too much wounds. Anyway, I would try to spam naked Sternguards (keep them cheap), suicide melta command squad in Droppod (to take out the Maulerfiend), and assualt cannon Razorbacks. And use Ironclad Dreadnought to tarpit spawns in combat instead charging the 2 hp remaining Maulerfiend (which I did such silly thing this game, and lost that walker combat very unlukily). If I know I may run into a Spawn list next time.

Assault cannon razorbacks, while technically a good gun profile suffer from three flaws:

1-not too much of a budget unit there, costing 75 for a single model assuming no other upgrades, and it matches well against the spawn-but not much else (AFAIK)

2-relativly short range means you are unlikely to get more than a single shot with it before they get to you, while not packing enough firepower to wipe them out (or even be assured of a single kill really)

3-as a rear 10 tank, spawn will make short work of it in CC, even basic marines will at least fight back.


Ironically, I believe even the HBback will do a better work, as it has better range and budget, even if weaker.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Assault cannon razorbacks, while technically a good gun profile suffer from three flaws:

1-not too much of a budget unit there, costing 75 for a single model assuming no other upgrades, and it matches well against the spawn-but not much else (AFAIK)

2-relativly short range means you are unlikely to get more than a single shot with it before they get to you, while not packing enough firepower to wipe them out (or even be assured of a single kill really)

3-as a rear 10 tank, spawn will make short work of it in CC, even basic marines will at least fight back.


Ironically, I believe even the HBback will do a better work, as it has better range and budget, even if weaker.

Em. In that sense, is riflemen dreadnought better? Although I don't have the model yet.

Hilariously, snipers do quite well against Spawn, Missile Spam works well to due to str 8 and Spawn being T5 / 6 if Nurgle, either way they get wounded on 2s. As stated earlier, anything AV12 Walker will Tie up Spawn indefinitely unless accompanied by a Lord (Which, if your opponent is running 3 squads of 5, at MAX 2 will have a Character, if any) If they have a character with them, your best bet is to Charge in with a Dread, follow through with a squad of Termies and Smashfucker. You'll either win out from the combat or tie them up long enough for your other units to secure objectives.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Assault cannon razorbacks, while technically a good gun profile suffer from three flaws:

1-not too much of a budget unit there, costing 75 for a single model assuming no other upgrades, and it matches well against the spawn-but not much else (AFAIK)

2-relativly short range means you are unlikely to get more than a single shot with it before they get to you, while not packing enough firepower to wipe them out (or even be assured of a single kill really)

3-as a rear 10 tank, spawn will make short work of it in CC, even basic marines will at least fight back.


Ironically, I believe even the HBback will do a better work, as it has better range and budget, even if weaker.

Em. In that sense, is riflemen dreadnought better? Although I don't have the model yet.

Will do wonders. the autocannons will rip through the spawn, and if they hit CC, as stated by Golioth, the spawn themselves will find they lack the strength to cause any damage to an AV12 front, and while the dread wont do MUCH damage with its fists replaced with autocannons, little still beats nothing. and he is eve cheaper then they were anyway if they are a big group, so no gain for them if they decide to just entangle him.

Riflemen dreds might not be the current meta, but they are devastating for spawn.

If your fellow players don't mind Forgeworld, there is always the Sicarian you could add. The accelerator autocannon and three heavy bolters will make short work of the spawns.

Also a Contemptor with two kheres assaultcannons or a Deredeo might help.

for the spawns and biker lord(assuming he is with spawn), have 3 drops and drop 20 sternguard and force feed the unit with 40 hellfire shots(poisoned 2+) eventually give them combi meltas to take care of vindicators and maulerfiends. if he puts spawn in reserve, you feth up his weak troops, maulerfiend and a vindicator in alpha strike. if he bubblewraps, you pour in 40ish poisoned 2+ shots and kill the spawn...
tl;dr 20 sternguard in drops a 3rd drop pod, combi melta and hellfirr rounds...