Another Nurgley victory!

Praise Papa Nurgle!

The more I play with my Chaos Marines, the better I seem to do, although I can't honestly claim to have won this one by myself. Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, lets start from the ... Start.

Since my last update I've invested in not one but TWO new Rhino tanks, my total vehicle count skyrocketing from 0 to 3 in little over a week. Best of all the total price of these boxes of death is a very reasonable £11.50. Thank the Dark Gods for boxes of old bits and green stuff.

I've been looking at the most popular competitive lists that Chaos players have been running in recent tournaments and making note of the trends. I've no interest in making some over powered cheesy / beardy army, after all I only play casually with friends and the collecting/painting side of things is more my thing anyway. However, it doesn't hurt to know what works for others and if I can strengthen my forces without making the game seem unbalanced / unenjoyable to my friends then so be it.

I'll start off by addressing the whole "2 Helldrakes = broken army" issue that seems to have the power nerds all in a tizzy. From what I hear there are many people out there that would say that the Heldrake is an overpowered piece of kit, and those that field 2 of them are taking advantage. Firstly, I'd point out that just about any army has some kind of cheesy rule exploit that the douche-bags out there will want to use. The only remedy I can suggest is don't play with this kind of person. If a person is only interested in putting together the most poxy, rule exploiting army list to repeatedly win without putting any effort into the tactics, then clearly this person isn't someone you should spend your precious game time with. After all, If it isn't fun, why do it?

For the most part, the most common competitive lists focused specifically around the whole Nurgle theme involves 2 or more squads of Plague Marines in Dedicated Transport. This is a pretty straight forward and obvious choice, with the PM's toughness, Feel No Pain Saves and ability to rock 2 Plasma guns and a Powerfist in a 5 man squad, what's not to love? Durable, great at both mid range and close combat with the Plague Knives poisoning your foes on a 4+ coupled with the speed of a Rhino means they are perfect objective takers. Once you park them on an objective, they can be a real bitch to move, especially in larger squad sizes. (I like to keep mine in medium sized squads of 7 as this is traditionally Papa Nurgle's lucky number and I am something of a superstitious Space Pirate)

The HQ slot is usually a Chaos Lord with the MoN which allows the Plague Marines to be taken as troops (they are normally elites). I found from today's battle experience that you can't get much better than equipping him out with The Black Mace, which is a seriously cool bit of kit and will give most units a good run for their money.

Next up we usually find Obliterators in the Heavy Support slots. I have never fielded these myself, but the do look suitably bad ass from a load-out perspective and quite good for the points cost as well. I seem to be in a minority regarding the actual models themselves as I think they look pretty cool, but the rest of the world seems to really dislike them. 

Finally we will, more often than not, see the infamous Heldrake. Again, I don't have one of these to field (yet ;D) but the Games Workshop haters have all got their torches burning and pitchforks sharpened in protest. From what I hear the combination of the beasts weapon load out (more specifically the "Bale Flamer") combined with the the new 6th edition rules for flyers has apparently made this quite a handy little unit to have. Sadly I don't think it looks very Nurgely, and being the fluff-bunny that I am, I can't get into the idea of fielding one with my otherwise Nurgle-centric army. I know there are plenty of ways to convert them (my favourite is the one made from the fantasy zombie dragon) but I don't have the money or the skill for a project of that magnitude.

So, after all this snooping at other people's lists, I decided to build up a semi-competitive list using all I had learnt combined with only using the models I actually own. After a bit of back and forth I came up with this:

Chaos Lord: The Black Mace; Mark of Nurgle; jump pack; melta bombs

Helbrute: power fist. Heavy Flamer. Multi Melta

7 Plague Marines: combi-flamer; 2× plasma gun
• Chaos Rhino
7 Plague Marines: power fist; combi-bolter; 2× plasma gun
• Chaos Rhino: Havoc launcher.
5 Chaos Space Marines: chainaxe; Mark of Nurgle.

5 Havocs: heavy bolter; 3× missile launcher.

999 points

I must say, this list worked out very nicely for me. The 2 squads of Plague Marines drove to the nearest objectives and camped the crap out of them. One of the units was eventually destroyed by some nasty Necron Hq and his entourage, but both units dished out some real damage so they were worth the points. The 5 normal marines sat on the home objective and kept it safe for the entire game and the Helbrute did a great job of being a human (?) shield for my HQ until he could get close enough to jet pack over to a Tau Hammerhead and Sellotape a Melta Bomb to its hull. The Havoks did what they do best and sat at the back raining Krak Rockets down on anyone silly enough to step out of cover. All in all it was a great game. We won, but that was largely down to it being an objective match and if the game had gone on much longer I have a feeling we would probably have been shot up too badly maintain a good hold on many of the objective markers.

Well, that's all from me tonight. Farewell trusted reader. As always, feel free to comment below and happy gaming.