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Life long Ork player just picked up the Nurgle Demon Start Collecting box for AoS for Christmas.

Also just bought a used Nurgle Demon Army.

Here's what I got:

Great Unclean One
Demon Prince
Epidemius
40 Plaguebears with 3 each of Icon, Instrument, and Plagueridden
1 Herald Of Nurgle

The unassembled box contains 10 Plaguebearers, 3 Drones (from everything I've read I'm planning on converting all three to Nurgle Demon Princes), Herald, and Nurglings.

I need advice as how to use these guys as either a stand alone 40K army and/or as an allied detachment with my Orks.

Can I count on being able to Summon Demon Princes?
Are Baleswords and Plague Flails worth it?
Does sticking 3-4 Heralds in a 20 strong unit of Plaguebearers make sense?

Thanks for any and all advice!

Pipealley

Baleswords are absolutely amazing, the best generic melee weapon in the game when on a monstrous creature, instant death, poison 4+ (allows most monsters to reroll to wound) absolutely incredible weapon.

 PipeAlley wrote:
Life long Ork player just picked up the Nurgle Demon Start Collecting box for AoS for Christmas.

Also just bought a used Nurgle Demon Army.

Here's what I got:

Great Unclean One
Demon Prince
Epidemius
40 Plaguebears with 3 each of Icon, Instrument, and Plagueridden
1 Herald Of Nurgle

The unassembled box contains 10 Plaguebearers, 3 Drones (from everything I've read I'm planning on converting all three to Nurgle Demon Princes), Herald, and Nurglings.

I need advice as how to use these guys as either a stand alone 40K army and/or as an allied detachment with my Orks.

Can I count on being able to Summon Demon Princes?
Are Baleswords and Plague Flails worth it?
Does sticking 3-4 Heralds in a 20 strong unit of Plaguebearers make sense?

Thanks for any and all advice!

Pipealley

I'd highly recommend keeping your Plague Drones as is. They are a great unit and unlike Daemon Princes, you can summon them (they also happen to be one of the best summons on the Malefic Tree). They can also be built up into a Death star that's amazing at bullying mid field. Take 6 of them, 2 ML2 Heralds with Greater Rewards, one with Locus that gives unit FNP and the other with Grotti the Nurgling (reduces T of all non Nurgle Daemon models within 6") and you've got a unit that can take on just about anything.

Even if you don't use them as a Death star a unit of 3 makes for a good tough harassment unit to tie down enemy shooting or bully a weak objective holder. They're speed in an otherwise slow army (assuming you're going mono Nurgle) also makes them ideal candidates for holding icons in order to precision deep strike other units (this for instance is pretty much the only way to get any mileage out of a GUO). With 12" movement and 2D6" jet pack move in the assault phase they're guaranteed to be almost anywhere you need them by turn 2.

As mentioned Nurgle Princes are good (you can't summon them however) and the Balesword is a nasty weapon. They are however a "go big or go home" type of unit. Always go for ML3 , 2 Greaters (frequently swapping one for Balesword) and 1 lesser (frequently swapping for Plague Flail as even if you don't use its profile it's another specialist weapon giving you +1 A).

You don't really need more than 2 heralds in a single unit. Each one could give a unit FNP if needed, for really cheap (only 25 points). The big bonus of the heralds is psychic bonuses. Rolling either on the Nurgle table or on Biomancy will make a squad REALLY durable, and usually I would recommend making that squad a nice big unit of plague drones. With poison and touch of rust, those dudes can kill anything, are really fast and super durable, again buffed to near unkillable levels with some heralds.

Make sure you give the heralds an AP 2 weapon and you're good to kill. Nurgle Daemon princes are fine. They can jink all day for good cover and kill most things in close combat.

Thanks told he tips.

How do the Heralds keep pace with the Plague Drones?

They do slow you down but you just use the large base size of the drones spaced to max coherency to slingshot the whole unit into combat.

If your Drone unit has enough models, they are not slowed at all by the herald (except the loss of re-rolling their assault move).
As long as 2-3 models trail back in a conga line to maintain coherency with the Herald, there is no reason that the other Drones can't move their full 12".
It not only give the Drone FNP, but it sling-shots the Herald into combat

Ah Conga Line, well Ork players all know that one

Do people have issues with Ignores Cover/Psychic tests using Drones? Seems like Tau and Eldar would have little issue taking these guys out.

 PipeAlley wrote:
Ah Conga Line, well Ork players all know that one

Do people have issues with Ignores Cover/Psychic tests using Drones? Seems like Tau and Eldar would have little issue taking these guys out.

They are still T5 with a 5++.
Get another Herald with an Exalted reward for Grimoire and you can bump them to 3++ if you are really worried about Ignores Cover
And you should be able to deny Psychic tests that targer the Drones on 5+ since your Herald will be a Psyker

 Galef wrote:

 PipeAlley wrote:
Ah Conga Line, well Ork players all know that one

Do people have issues with Ignores Cover/Psychic tests using Drones? Seems like Tau and Eldar would have little issue taking these guys out.

They are still T5 with a 5++.
Get another Herald with an Exalted reward for Grimoire and you can bump them to 3++ if you are really worried about Ignores Cover
And you should be able to deny Psychic tests that targer the Drones on 5+ since your Herald will be a Psyker

Sounds good, thank you!