Looking for good Nurgle resources/advice

[greymurphy42]

My stymie Nurgle are now in their fifth season in the UKBBL in the Cyanide game, and my next match is against an experienced Khorne team (I'm giving away 140k of inducements as is) I was just wondering if anyone has any sage advice, as Khorne seems to me to be the perfect counter for a stymie team. The teams are as follows...

M.L.S. All-Stars
Beast - Block, Guard, Stand Firm
Warrior - Block, Stand Firm, +ST
Warrior - Block, Guard, Stand Firm, -AV
Warrior - Block, Stand Firm
Warrior - Block, Stand Firm, Guard, Strip Ball (don't ask )
Pestigor - Wrestle, Fend
Pestigor - Sure Hands, +AG, Block, KOR, Fend
Pestigor
Pestigor - Wrestle, Fend, -AV
Rotter
Rotter - Block
Rotter - Block, Guard
Rotter - Block, Fend, -AV
Rotter

3 rerolls, FF is 11

In The Name of Khorne
Bloodthirster - Mighty Blow, Block, Guard, Stand Firm, Break Tackle, Niggle
Bloodletter - Sidestep
Bloodletter - Block, +ST
Bloodletter - Dodge, Mighty Blow, Block, Guard, Piling On, Niggle
Bloodletter - Sure Hands, Block, Dodge, +AV, +AG
Herald
Pit Fighter MNG
Pit Fighter - Block, Tackle, Mighty Blow, Guard, Leader, -AG, Niggle
Pit Fighter - Block, Tackle, Pro
Pit Fighter - Guard, -MV
Pit Fighter
Pit Fighter
Pit Fighter - MNG
Pit Fighter - -AV

3 RR, Apo, FF is 8

[Smeborg]

greymurphy - you have a significant strength and armour advantage, and your opponent has no ball movement skills. Juggernaut+Frenzy is good against Nurgle, but can only be used on one blitz per turn. Your offense is way better than your opponent's. I suggest you play to limit the amount of blocks that can be taken by the M-Blow players, especially the Bloodthirster (e.g. by knocking them down or pushing them out of contact), and make it hard for the Bloodhirster to take a blitz on the ball carrier with his B-Tackle (e.g double screen or screen plus semi-screen). The Bloodthirster is often out of position, he can make a good foul target (as can the other Niggle players). You have nothing to fear from inducements, the only can-opener is the Bloodthirster.

As a worst case, if we assume that you are forced to score early, and therefore that the game becomes one of relatively short drives, you ought to be able to outscore your opponent, while closing down your opponent's drives easily with your superior strength and D-Pres. Forcing your opponent to move the ball (hand-off or pass) when he has no ball movement skills should pay dividends. In these circumstances you do not need to stall unless you can do so comfortably. I suggest your defense can be trusted to do very well in this match-up.

Hope that helps. Let us know how you get on.

[crimsonsun]

Frenzy Guard traps are the play of the day against Khorne, as long as nuffles alright you will be fine.

[Stig]

So I took my "Infestation Nation" to the NAF Champs in Nottingham, and got a record of 2-2-2. It's a 1.1m roster, with 3 normal skills on day 1, and 2 normal+ a double on day 2. I took block on 2 warriors and sure hands on a pesti. All skills were terrific. Day 2 I took guard on 2 warriors (probably a mistake) and block on the beast.

I had a blast on day 1 getting the beast in the middle of 4 halflings. With rooted trees the game was made much easier.

I was 1-0 up against gobbos in the last game, he had no secret weapons left, I was players up and had the ball in a cage. There was no way this could go wrong. However..

4 ordinary gobbos scuttle up to 5 Rogers and a pesti, who has the ball. They stunty into the cage, and get double pow uphill. I get the ball back, then they double pow again! I get the ball back a THIRD time, and AGAIN the gobbo double pows! That would have been 3-1-2, which would have been super.

So.. What skills do you reckon would have been good? Both my losses and one draw were against lizardmen. What do you do against them if they just protect their skins behind 6x saurus with block?

Needless to say, I made my pieces smell like Nurgle, and the results got worse when I removed the stench on day 2.

I know this is technically a "tournament" post and might be in the wrong thread, but this feels like the Nurgle home.

[Jimmy Fantastic]

You have to play well and hope that your opponent is a bad player and/or he has really bad luck and you have really good luck.
Grats on 2-2-2 that is pretty good with Nurgz!

[Smeborg]

Stig - I find Lizzies to be very difficult tourney opponents for Nurgle (or Chaos), to the point that I would be very happy to get away with a draw. The Skinks can dodge to provide assists, giving the Lizzy player 7 players with ST4+ to comprehensively outblock Nurgle (or Chaos). You need to block and/or mark the Skinks at every opportunity, if you can reduce the Lizzies to 1 or 2 Skinks on the board, play becomes more difficult for them. But as this strategy is easy to counter, you are essentially hoping for good fortune (a failed dodge, for example). The Nurgle offense against Lizzies is weak. So I don't have a good answer for you.

Skill-wise, I would have taken:

Day 1: S-Hands (Pest), Block (Warrior), Block (Warrior) - same as yourself

Day 2: Block (Beast), Wrestle (Pest), Wrestle (Pest)

Wrestle is never wasted in a tourney, it works against the Blodge teams, and is outstanding against teams with ball-carriers with Block+S-Hands (e.g. Orcs, Dwarfs, Humies).

Hope that helps.

[Stig]

Smeborg

Thanks for this - it was your podcast on 3db after all that inspired me to go Nurgle in the first place anyway! I got to meet Chance in the flesh, as he flew all the way over. We thought you'd go wrestle on the pestis.

I thought as much with the lizardmen - the game I drew he ran a skink into my backfield, so I 3dblitzed him, and he was off. The other two lizard players were really good and kept their skinks well hidden. Had the beast not failed a gfi I could have tentacled a skink with the ball, and maybe got a draw. In the two losses it just felt hopeless almost all the way through. In those games I was thinking "if only I could tentacle those skinks!"

Question for Smeborg- I only had 2 pestis, would you have them with sure hands and wrestle, but put the other skill as block on the 4th warrior?

Thanks for the kind words Jimmy, I feel I did the Nurgle proud!

[Sandwich]

Stig,
certainly against me I thought the skill picks you'd got were good. Guard is risky on players without block but it kept a nice scrum in the middle of the pitch for most of the game and let you feed goblins to the beast nicely. I would also have thought it would have helped against the lizards too... though I'd guess its the speed that did you more than the strength?

I don't know if you could have got more pestigors in (maybe drop 2 rotters for 1 pest, you did have 12 mens if I remember correctly?) but that certainly didn't cost you against me... that was the sure hands guy being KOd and refusing to come back (maybe he didn't realise the leaping saw of death had been sent off )

[Smeborg]

Stig - I always take 3 Pestigors, even if that means I field only 3 Warriors. I find that with less than 3 Pests, the team lacks too much movement and dynamism, whether in defense (attacking the ball) or in attack (moving the ball).

[Stig]

I loved the leaping saw of death! Such great fun. Thanks for the game Sandwich, really brightened up my weekend have played 3 competitive lizard coaches out of 5 games. Served me right for trying to stall. That was the only game where guard was really useful, and yes it did help the scrum.

The problem I had with lizards was that there was no way through 6 saurus + 1 Krox on attack, with added block skills; and I could never even reach the skinks to hit them, they were too well hidden. I only succumbed to speed when they tried to stall.

Indeed I could have removed the reserve rotter and upgraded one rotter to a pesti, but what's better? A 12 man roster with 2 pestis or 11 man roster with 3 pestis? Or 12 man roster with 3 warriors and 3 pestis? With hindsight, I found 2 pestis not that much of a problem. Apart from when the sure hands one spends the match in the KO box!

[Smeborg]

Question for Smeborg- I only had 2 pestis, would you have them with sure hands and wrestle, but put the other skill as block on the 4th warrior?

Of course the answer to that is yes.

[20phoenix]

I've ended up taking Nurgle in OFL and am now trying to sketch out some sort of development path for the team.

For those that don't know the OFL it is a Cyanide based league played through direct IP which allows access to all races and full star players. It is based on the NFL structure so teams are in 4 team divisions and conferences of 16. Each season is 16 games long and you play your divisional opponents twice each season with a random schedule of 10 of the remaining 12 teams. Top divisional teams go into the playoffs plus two wildcards with the best record. My conference - LFC - drafted these races:

2x Pact
2x Pro
1x Chaos
1x Circus
1x Helf
1x Welf
1x Orc
1x Skaven
1x Lizard
1x Khorne
1x Delf
1x Chorf
1x Fling

Plenty of elfy/ratty types there and only four teams with access to multiple claw pieces. As the divisions are seeded on a "bash index" its highly likely that myself, the Chaos, Orcs and Chorfs will be in separate divisions. Due to the likely nature of the schedule i'm looking to create the team to be a bastard to play against rather than killy so i'm looking at a stymie roster or variation of.

The OFL has a free agent system where you can sign players from other peoples old teams up to a maximum value which is set by your draft position and subsequent trading during the draft. I have 450k to play with and have my eye on a ST6 grab/guard/BT beast which is 3SPP away from superstar (stand firm!) and a blodge/guard/SF warrior who is 1 SPP away from superstar. If I get those my starting roster will be:

Beast
3 x Warriors
1 x Pest
6 x Rotters
2 x Rerolls

Will be slow going initially I think but worth it in the long run if those two stay alive. Whats giving me a headache is trying to shoehorn the skills I want into the roster. The progression paths for the positional paths i've drafted out so far are:

Beast: +ST/guard/grab/BT/SF
NW #1: Block/Dodge/Guard/SF/MB/Tents
NW #2: Block/Guard/SF/MB/Claw/Tents
NW #3: Block/MB/Guard/SF/Tents/Tackle
NW #4: Block/MB/Guard/SF/Claw/Tents
Pest #1: Sure Hands/Block/Extra Arms/Two Heads/????
Pest #2: Block/MB/Claw/Piling On/Tackle/Frenzy
Pest #3: Block/MB/Tackle/Extra Arms/Two Heads/Claw
Pest #4: Wrestle/Tackle/Strip Ball/Two Heads/MB/Fend

The order of some of these is bothering me though. I've taken MB second on the 3rd and 4th warriors to try and help them catch up to the first two. I want to try tents on all the warriors but I struggle to shoe horn it in any lower than pick #5 on them. Could be talked out of that one though as I love the idea but not entirely convinced of its effectiveness. Would really love to fit some tackle/tail in there somewhere but not sure where. I've put extra arms on the utility pest as I dont like being overly reliant on one player to provide the TDs as it makes them easy to target.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[Fassbinder75]

I've trawled through some of the 100+ pages of this massive thread and I noted the discussion about applying personal vs team skills to Rotters. My own perspective is that team skills are likely to provide more overall benefit than personal ones. Notably, I rolled a double on my first Rotter skill-up and subsequently took Leader.

I started with the max ST & F-APP/DP build which leaves only two re-rolls. Having a Leader effectively cuts my TV by 40k and limits the need to outlay 140k on a third re-roll so that I can concentrate on filling out the roster with Pestigors. Its not a slam dunk choice, if I was at a higher TV with more re-rolls I'd probably have gone with Guard, or even Sneaky Git but I think for a new roster its hard to go past that extra, cheap re-roll - until he carks it course!

All in all, I love the team. I've always been a conservative man-marking/bend-but-don't break type of coach and this team feels like the perfect instrument for that strategy. You can go 15 turns without F-APP doing anything, and then it suddenly flares up and wrecks the opposition's plans. Great stuff!

[Smeborg]

20phoenix - good luck in your league, it looks like you have a good set-up there. Playing Nurgle against a wide variety of races is a lot of fun.

I think the main choices you face are (a) how bashy do you want the team to be? and (b) how specialised do you want the builds to be? As you probably know, I favour stymie over bash (especially given the teams you face), and I also prefer simple generalised builds for this team.

For the Warriors, I suggest you consider going Block/S-Firm/Guard on all of them. With early S-Firm, they are better at confounding the fast and agile races. They will also get more blocks against bash teams, as they cannot easily get pushed away.

For the ball-carrying Pest, I suggest: S-Hands, Block, K-Ret, X-Arms. Early S-Hands is a good remedy for 2 RRs. K-Ret reasonably early helps you to form the cage futher upfield, meaning it has fewer squares to travel to reach the end zone (average cage speed is just 1 1/2 squares per turn in my experience).

For the othe Pests, I suggest 1 slayer Pest is enough (presumably starting with Block+TacklePOMB, given your opponents). I find you need a minimum of 2 ball-hunting Pests (starting with Wrestle). These ball-hunters are particularly important against Blodge teams. My preferred skill order is: Wrestle/Fend/Tackle/2-Heads. They also operate as Receivers.

You have not mentioned the Rotters, but I think they are the best candidates in the team for a very standardised build (because of their short but happy life expectancy). I like Block/Fend/F-App (Guard on doubles), but I am open to Block/F-App/Fend instead.

Hope that helps. Dont' forget to let us know how you get on!

[20phoenix]

Thanks for the response Smeborg. You seem to be thinking along similar sort of lines as I am. Small update to the starting team as the free agents I wanted didn't appear sadly so this is how the team goes into their first season:

Beast: Block/Guard/Stand Firm/Grab
NW#1: Block/Guard/Stand Firm/Mighty Blow
2 more warriors
2 pests
5 rotters
2 rerolls

I've amended the development plan slightly too:

Beast: Block/guard/grab/SF/Break TackleNW #1:
NW #1: Block/Guard/SF/MB/Claw/Tents
NW #2: Block/Guard/SF/Tackle/Tents/Tail
NW #3: Block/MB/Guard/SF/Tents/Tackle
NW #4: Block/MB/Guard/SF/Claw/Tents
Pest #1: Sure Hands/Block/KOR/Extra Arms/Two Heads/Fend
Pest #2: Block/MB/Tackle/Extra Arms/Two Heads/Claw
Pest #3: Block/MB/Claw/Piling On/Tackle/Frenzy
Pest #4: Wrestle/Tackle/Strip Ball/Two Heads/MB/Fend

I didn't bother with the rotters as you rightly point out they will be very generic with the exception of a DP and in my experience they dont live long enough to make a plan for anyway. Will keep you posted!