8th Ed. Brutalised by Nurgle...

[laribold]

So having played a game last night against Daemons of Nurgle (+ friends) I was utterly routed and it's sticking in my craw.

I'll admit that I didn't play all that well and my opponent did, but I'm still slightly at a loss as to how to deal with near enough whole armies that have -1 to hit. With average to low WS, my combat units just got stuck against his Beasts/Drones/Plaguebearers causing barely any wounds.

So, how do people deal with these sickly, rotting blighters?

 

[rking300]

Monsters for thunderstomp on the plague bearers. Lots of poison and magic. I have a nurgle army too and they are hard to beat. Ussually they only have their general as their lvl 4 so I would try and kill him with poison shots since we normally take the great unclean one with high toughness and lots of wounds, then this takes all his dispell and casting out.
The biggiest key would be as much speed as you can get. they army is SUPER slow so you and run around them and flee when needed also stay back and get a couple rounds of shooting off at them. Flaming banner helps also. Its a hard army to beat though. Those beasts are truely beasts

 

[lifeasalizard]

Lore of light or hand of glory evens that up a bit. Plaguebearers are only ws3, so you're hitting them on 4s modded to 5s. With higher ws you're hitting them on 4s. Lore of light magic missles are quite effective too.

Also, things that hit them without rolling, such as impact hits and thunderstomps are quite effective. (yay stegadons!)

 

[Man0waR]

Those nurgle blocks are tough as hell. Regeneration on 4's only for having a herald inside is sick.

You can try to deal with them in the four phases.

Movement. Try to avoid engaging such units and focus on what you could really kill without effort. If you play his game and keep saurus infantry versus nurgle infantry you are going to lose. Since the purpose of nurgle infantry is to hold targets in place and crush them with a heavy hitter. Focus the heavy hitter and you¡ll be fine.

Magic. You have so much ways to deal but a Wandering Deliverations could work by casting Miasma to lower Weapon Skill (you keep hitting on 5's or 4s') and Iceshard Blizzard (-1 to hit you nurgle'em) will keep the fight on your side.

Shooting. Hit first with terradon firebolas or salamander template. If you can deal a wound you should focus fire of javelins and blowpipes.

Combat: all what you need is banner of the eternal flame, So you have two options, run a Templeguard which will annihilate those pesky demons. Or a BSB with magical banner, I suggest Scarvet on CO with the banner in a unit of saurus warriors with spears or maybe a character COR bus with another saurus hero with OTS.

 

[Scalenex]

Nurgle troops are fairly slow. Hold your Saurus and dinosaurs back as long as possible so you can soften up the Nurgle troops with poison darts and Salamander fire and other shooting.

 

[ElectricPaladin]

Don't forget that a single wound from a flaming attack shuts down a unit's Regeneration for the rest of the turn. Tag your opponent's units with flaming attacks from salamanders, terradon riders, and magic, then follow it up with volleys of Poisoned shots.

 

[Scalenex]

Don't forget that a single wound from a flaming attack shuts down a unit's Regeneration for the rest of the turn. Tag your opponent's units with flaming attacks from salamanders, terradon riders, and magic, then follow it up with volleys of Poisoned shots.

Also don't forget if you negate the 4+ Regneration save, the demons fall back on their 5+ Ward Save

 

[ElectricPaladin]

Don't forget that a single wound from a flaming attack shuts down a unit's Regeneration for the rest of the turn. Tag your opponent's units with flaming attacks from salamanders, terradon riders, and magic, then follow it up with volleys of Poisoned shots.

Also don't forget if you negate the 4+ Regneration save, the demons fall back on their 5+ Ward Save

Yes, true, but...

Remember that you get to make an armor save, a ward save, and a regeneration check. So, a 5+ ward save ain't good for me, it's true, but 4+ Regeneration and 5+ ward is much, much worse.

 

[VampTeddy]

Don't forget that a single wound from a flaming attack shuts down a unit's Regeneration for the rest of the turn. Tag your opponent's units with flaming attacks from salamanders, terradon riders, and magic, then follow it up with volleys of Poisoned shots.

Also don't forget if you negate the 4+ Regneration save, the demons fall back on their 5+ Ward Save

Yes, true, but...

Remember that you get to make an armor save, a ward save, and a regeneration check. So, a 5+ ward save ain't good for me, it's true, but 4+ Regeneration and 5+ ward is much, much worse.

no... he has to choose between either.

if you're giving both a 4+ and a 5+ you cheated yourself quite some

page 74 of the BRB - "if a model has both a ward save and a regeneration save, you must choose which save is used."

 

[ElectricPaladin]

no... he has to choose between either.

if you're giving both a 4+ and a 5+ you cheated yourself quite some

page 74 of the BRB - "if a model has both a ward save and a regeneration save, you must choose which save is used."

Oops! I mistook the relationship between Regeneration and ward with the relationship between Regeneration and armor. My bad. I haven't actually played it wrong.

That said, turning a 4+ into a 5+ is still an advantage.

 

[teufelhund]

I agree wholely with castling up and trying to soften up the units as much as possible. Chaos is one of those armies that is always losing until it gets into close combat so the more turns he wastes out of combat increase your likelihood of victory. Disregarding horrible play or some catastrophe I generally can't manage to beat Chaos outright. I play smarter and basically count points or focus on seizing objective at the oppurtune time.

I would like to pose another interesting question regarding demons. A build I commonly see is a winged demon prince with a purple sun that will just fly into a flank and spam that spell as much is possible. Having a lower initiative with the saurus; I see this as devastating. Given that magic isn't something that can't really be dominant anymore; how do you deal with that? I see a dispell scroll and a cube as a 2 maybe 3 turn solution because you can't even risk it, but it's definitely a major thorn. Any ideas?

 

[olderplayer]

Nurgle daemons are kind of a Rock-paper-scissors army. Against faster armies with impact hits and magic, they really don't do well. The new book left them without a dispell scroll or equivalent option. The way the new book is designed, they really need to run a greater daemon, the great unclean one (GUO) and he can't get a great armour save or regen anymore and has fewer wounds than he used to. Against a high elf army with a white lion BOTWD unit, they almost can't win. Against armies with good cannons, paricularly with flaming, or other war machines and strong offensive magic, they will die, especially against pit of shades, purple sun, and a boosted burning gaze abnd banishment kills that army (banishment makes them re-roll the ward saves and is 3D6 at S4+# of additional light wizards in the army within 12"). I ran daemons and got slaughtered by an empire army (light mage plus bound light spell on plus two cannnons and volley gun), tomb king army with light mages and casket spells plus skull catapult, and a high elf army.
Light works well in boosting I (speed of light) and speed (timewarp ASF plus attack plus double M) and giving you two of the better magic missiles to cast and a strong nerf in the net speed. This also helps to counter the WoC daemon prince (get the +D6 hits on a daemon) and the WoC tzeentch lord with 3+ ward save (can't re-roll a re-roll, so you take away the ability to re-roll 1's on the re-roll of successful wards). I prefer an all-comers magic lore but a Slann with lore of light seems to address a metagame where purpls sun is common and nurgle daemon princies and VC and nurgle armies are common.

Also, a lot of the ways they traditionally had to protect their heralds and lords are taken away or subject to the fickle roll on the table gifts. The only primary way to protect one Nurgle lord or herald iis to take a magic weapon with a greater gift, the fencer's blade, which gives the model WS10, making you hit of 6's if you have WS 4 or less in combat.

Use poison shooting with skinks and skink cohorts to hold up/redirect the beasts and GUO and cut them down.

 

[Mr Phat]

Something I found that works wonders:

ram a

Scar-vet
-Cold One
-Shield
-Sword of Striking
-Glittering Scales
-luckstone

Into their pleaguebeares (if they are not too deep of course)

tables turned.