Looking for good Nurgle resources/advice

[Smeborg]

I play in a long perpetual league with my nurgle. There the 3 RRs is a nobrainer. Losing 1 WAR for reliability is no biggie at all, whilst RRs give me SPPs and winnings gold. And a new War is only 110k, reroll 140k. You only ever need the first warr, after that you need money for pestigors.. But the benefit compared to rotters is very miniscule before you get them to their 2nd skill.

Have to disagree with just about everything that you say here.

1) the loss of a warrior is huge - the lack of Stength can lead to more 2D blocks for your opponent which can lead to more casualties.

2) the lack of DP can lead to more passing for your opponent which leads to losing (and less money for you)

3) Warriors are a huge benefit over rotters in so many ways.

4) Warriors tend to skill up slowly so I would rather have them on the team as early as possible to start earning SPPs

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Spazz Fist. I have tried both types of starting roster several times each, and have found the 2RR roster with 5 lumps (Beast + 4 Warriors) to be superior in every respect. This is not what I expected when I started. Carnis - have you tried the 2RR, 5 lumps roster in practice?

All the best.

[Carnis]

No, I believe it's the best roster for tournaments, but I would never play tournaments with nurgle anyway.

[mattgslater]

See, as a league player, I think maxing out on +ST pieces is also a great way to start your league. In my first three games, I got two MVPs on Warriors: if I'd only taken three Warriors, one of those MVPs might well have gone to a Rotter. The lost RR really hurts for a couple games, but starting with your toughest positionals is always a good plan.

[Smeborg]

No, I believe it's the best roster for tournaments, but I would never play tournaments with nurgle anyway.

Spazz Fist and I have decent tournament records with Nurgle, although the overall tournament record in LRB5/6 puts Nurgle at something like 19th out of 24 teams (Doubleskulls stats). I think this just shows that Nurgle are not what they seem at first glance, and take time, patience and lack of prejudice to learn to play. If you play them according to what you have learnt from playing other teams, you are likely to fare badly, whether in a tournament or a league. I did quite badly in my first tournament with them. A lot of coaches in the NAF tournament record seem to have played Nurgle once and given up.

The main negative (I find) with Nurgle in a tournament is that they are hard work - you have to play every turn with great accuracy and will be more tired and less relaxed than when playing with most other teams. A secondary issue is that Nurgle are one of the more expensive teams, therefore different house rules will favour or hinder them quite a bit. Apart from these important provisos, I would recommend them to any regular tournament player who is prepared to persist with them for more than one tournament. I certainly find them competitive.

[Blammaham]

At the spike 2009 I went 2 wins 3 ties and a loss without taking a single block skill, (one skill after every match) not that I would recomend that to anyone but that was one of the handicaps I gave myself going in. Came in 11th over all. I was pretty happy with that.S.

[Carnis]

By the way I feel the biggest mistake I see nurgle players do is pickup too many ballcarrying increasing mutations. Sure Hands beats almost all of them hands down due to it's dualrole in cancelling strip ball + providing reliability to backfield-pickups/pickups in TZs. Adding X-arms+Bighand to the same player is a nerf, not a boost (like Block, etc would be).

[Craigtw]

At the spike 2009 I went 2 wins 3 ties and a loss without taking a single block skill, (one skill after every match) not that I would recomend that to anyone but that was one of the handicaps I gave myself going in. Came in 11th over all. I was pretty happy with that.S.

Wonder how well you could have done if you had taken some Block!

Out of curiosity, what skill did you take?

[Smeborg]

By the way I feel the biggest mistake I see nurgle players do is pickup too many ballcarrying increasing mutations. Sure Hands beats almost all of them hands down due to it's dualrole in cancelling strip ball + providing reliability to backfield-pickups/pickups in TZs. Adding X-arms+Bighand to the same player is a nerf, not a boost (like Block, etc would be).

Carnis - I agree with you. Sure Hands is by far the best first normal skill on one Pestigor. I only develop one Pestigor as a specialist ball handler, as I believe developing more than one is a waste, when you aim to run (or rather walk) the ball into the end zone.

However, depending on the way the Runner Pestigor develops (for example, in the absence of stat increases and/or doubles), I find that skills such as Kick-off Return and Extra Arms are good subsequent skills, since they improve the speed and reliability of the otherwise weak Nurgle offense. One ball-handling mutation is sufficient for the team, IMO.

I like to develop Rotters along the lines Block/Fend/Foul Appearance (not that any have got that far yet!). This makes them decent ball holders in case of need, especially in an end-of-half scramble. It leaves the 3 other Pestigors to develop for what they do best (blitzing).

[Blammaham]

At the spike 2009 I went 2 wins 3 ties and a loss without taking a single block skill, (one skill after every match) not that I would recomend that to anyone but that was one of the handicaps I gave myself going in. Came in 11th over all. I was pretty happy with that.S.

Wonder how well you could have done if you had taken some Block!

Out of curiosity, what skill did you take?

I took all mutations except one frenzy on my pestigor. One Horn on one of my Warriors, not because it is tacticly sound but just because it is my favorate model and I really wanted to use him on the 40 mil boards we play on in the Spike! I also took a couple of claws on my warriors.

If I play these guys in a leauge setting I would seroiusly concider the Horns on the Warrior again, it proved to be great VS bash teams and I think you really need a frenzy or two on the Pestigors to keep your opponent honest on D. S.

[ShriekBob]

just as an update, in the league as of the moment, I'm 2 wins, 1 draw, 0 losses.

The Nurgle defense is......its something I tell you that. Thank you again everyone for all of the advice.

[mattgslater]

By the way I feel the biggest mistake I see nurgle players do is pickup too many ballcarrying increasing mutations. Sure Hands beats almost all of them hands down due to it's dualrole in cancelling strip ball + providing reliability to backfield-pickups/pickups in TZs. Adding X-arms+Bighand to the same player is a nerf, not a boost (like Block, etc would be).

I'm not sure if this holds the same for Nurgle (2xTRR sucks), but on Chaos, Extra Arms and Sure Hands play two different roles. There's the retriever/carrier, on whom Sure Hands, Extra Arms and Big Hand are respectively #2, #3, and #5, after Block, with Stand Firm at #4, barring a doubles roll at any point for Dodge or Side Step (depending on when doubles are rolled). There's also the outlet (or two), on whom Extra Arms is #1 and Sure Hands or Big Hand are merely late options for redundancy, after the player already has Block and maybe Two Heads or Guard or a positioning skill.

On the retriever/carrier, Extra Arms is to a SH pick-up as Block is to a 2d hit without a TRR: you can hang a contingent action on it without feeling too far out on a limb. It also lets him play outlet, smoothing out your other players' progression nicely. That's not better than Block, but it's definitely no nerf.

On the outlets (the #1 and #5 Beastmen to skill), it's a catching skill, and it's there to turn MVPs into rolls. You can also use Extra Arms to pick up with your outlet if you need to get him the 1SPP, or if your butt is really hanging out and you need to get the ball to safety. In fact, in the latter case it's actually better than Sure Hands if you have a TRR, because that's an early action, and 8/9 early in the turn is a big risk, while 5/6 with a TRR is more subject to the relative importance of the action and the number of contingent actions. The Extra Arms player also carries the edge that if you pick up with him, handoff/QP to safety, and leave him in the cage, you can use Extra Arms again to receive a pass or handoff later in the drive.

Big Hand is a vanity selection, unless/until you're always running into 2M teams and never seem to get a clear shot at the ball in the scrum. So it's a really good late skill on one player. But yeah, it's kind of silly that so many people take it early-on.

[Smeborg]

Matt - this seems to be a point of difference between Nurgle and Chaos. Chaos have the luxury of 6 or 7 cheap Beastmen, compared to 4 expensive ones for Nurgle (Regen does not help you on the pitch). On a typical starting roster, the difference is even more stark: 7 Beastmen to 1 Pestigor. Chaos have a lot more AG3 (everyone except the Mino, if taken). Also, as you point out, Chaos typically start with 3 Re-rolls to Nurgle's 2. This all makes rapid and reliable ball movement quite a bit easier for Chaos, even before you take mutations into account.

I have seen Chaos sides successfully developed with 2 or more mutant ball handlers (X-Arms first then perhaps 2-Heads and/or Big Hand). This seems to work fairly well for Chaos coaches who like a style of offense with serious options to hand-off or pass. It can also work well in a scramble for the loose ball. It works because there are still plenty of Beastmen around with blocking and blitzing skills.

However, I don't think Nurgle have the luxury of developing in this way. The 4 Pestigors are overworked from the point of view of skill development. They badly need blocking and blitzing skills for the team to be effective. Pestigors are popular targets - you will often find you only have 1 or 2 left on the pitch. Unless you give most of them blocking skills, that might be 0 or 1.

Hope that helps.

[Craigtw]

Carnis - I agree with you. Sure Hands is by far the best first normal skill on one Pestigor. I only develop one Pestigor as a specialist ball handler, as I believe developing more than one is a waste, when you aim to run (or rather walk) the ball into the end zone.

Have to disagree with you guys on this one. I prefer to go with the Extra Arms on the pestigors first (the first two to skill up), this gives me the ability to cover the backfield more effectively unless I would decide to give them KOR (which would be a later skill). By having two Pestigors with XA, then I am able to cover the backfield to retrieve the ball early and then effectively hand off or pass to the other and thereby move the ball faster to where I want it.

Maybe it is a matter of opinion or playing style, but I would certainly not go so far as to say that it is "by far" the best first skill.

[Carnis]

Maybe you don't face a lot of strip ball elves.

It's almost impossible to cover against strip ball/leap if you didn't come into the game with SH & you play a slow team like nurgle. You don't normally have the luxury of having 5 people for the pickup, and even when you do playing a pure cage against 11 takes a *lot of players*. A blodge/SH ballcarrier saves you the trouble of entirely covering your ballcarrier. He can take 1/2 die blitzes and you're ok with it, it's only 1/36 or at worst (vs Wrackle) 1/4 without a RR that you go down while he is unlikely to get the ball even if you do.

Often just losing the ball is enough to lose the score though. I also have a very anti-ballhandling philosophy. In my current team I got one set of sure hands as my ballhandling-skillset after 250 SPPs. I've thought of X-arms rotters as outlets, but have never seen a 3-skill rotter as of yet.. While my pestigors prefer all the smashy skills over x-arms, and I of course kind of wish I'll roll +AG some day (which covers X-arms, two-heads and parts of VLL too).

[Craigtw]

Maybe you don't face a lot of strip ball elves.

You're right, Ontario tends to be very much a situation of "the art imitating life" as the main threat around here is norse.

But even so, I would not want to build my team around the possibility that I may face an elf team that has Strip Ball. Unless the league I am playing in is in abundance of them of course. In which case I would hope for some inducements and take a chainsaw!