Editing Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Nurgle (section)

==Multiplayer Strategies==
You are designed to pretty much out last everyone you fight against, as your Nurglings and Plaguebearers hold the line so your monsters and army abilities give the enemy a slow death. Poison and debuffs are aplenty in your army as you drown the enemies in their own sickness. However, you had best pray your enemies are Anti Vaxxers because if they practice social distancing, it'll be hard for you to do your job. The fastest thing in your army are toad monsters and fat bugs, so yeah you're not exactly a speed demon. Combine that with your lack of ranged units and kiting builds in particular are a big problem for you. Still, if you are able to get into melee, expect the plagues to slowly melt them down. Now go out there and make Papa Nurgle proud!

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Beastmen| Beastmen]]''': Beastmen are lousy in a war of attrition, which is where you excel. They rely on getting off their strong charge bonus and overwhelming you before their low leadership and armor causes them to buckle. Bring the Lore of Death and its leadership debuffs to help speed up their collapse. Big blobs of Plaguebearers and Nurglings will probably outlast their infantry. The main thing you need to worry about are their big monsters, especially Jabberslythes.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia| Bretonnia]]''': Bretonnia struggles against large monsters and you've got plenty of those. You won't need much to win the infantry fight, so bring a bunch of nurglings and back them up with Beasts of Nurgle, Soul Grinders, Chaos Spawn, ore maybe even Great Unclean ones. Maybe grab a couple of Furies to swamp their archers as well. Watch as the knights charge into you again and again and you just heal the damage right back up. Eventually you'll wipe the floor with their peasants and then it's just a question of who outlasts who -- exactly the kind of engagement you like.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos Dwarfs| Chaos Dwarfs]]''': Be prepared for a world of hurt. They are tanky, long range and have no shortage of fire based weapons to ruin your day with.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Daemons of Chaos| Daemons of Chaos]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Warriors of Chaos| Warriors of Chaos]]''': The good thing is that you can easily swarm and drag down the Chaos Warriors and Chosen and send the Marauders packing off the field. The bad thing is that Dragon Ogres and Shaggoths are very hard for you to counter and the Hellcannon is extremely difficult to shut down because its crew is only there for show and the unit itself is unbreakable. The other bad thing is that they have access to the Lore of Fire. However, Chaos Warriors are bad at range and while they do have Chaos Dragon mounts for their lords as well as feral manticores; your plague drones and rotflies can still win the skies and set up rear attacks against them. Dragon Ogres and Shaggoths are doubtlessly a huge problem for you, but they are very expensive and prime targets for the lore of death. A Chaos Sorcerer Lord of Fire on a Chaos Dragon mount is quite the conundrum for you to deal with and you're the rare army where that would be a decent pick. Archaon is also an extremely nasty enemy for you to deal with as he brings tons of flaming damage and you don't have anything that can safely target him, try to cripple him with debuffs and don't give him good targets for his big damage spells.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dark Elves| Dark Elves]]''': Dark Elves are another army that relies of winning the fight quickly. If their Murderous Prowess wears off before they've won a definitive advantage their low model count and slightly sub-par defensive stats will cause them trouble. This is perfect for you since you're ''the'' army for just wearing the other guy down. Another major advantage you have is your ''lack'' of armor. Many Dark Elf units are heavily specialized to deal AP damage, a metric utterly wasted on your army of bubbling, rotting flesh. The biggest thing you probably have to worry about are Hydras and the Lore of Fire. Hydras mulch infantry and fire damage of any kind will do extra damage to your regenerating units while debuffing any healing. Be sure to bring some Furies or Rot Flies to flank and take out their bolt throwers and crossbows. Scourgerunner Chariots and Dark Riders are going to be a big pain, try to just keep them occupied while you reduce the rest of their army to a pile of goo.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dwarfs| Dwarfs]]''': Ku'gath's traditional nemesis and for good reason. They might be as slow as you are but they have a ton of range and easy access to fire damage. Make good use of your Rotflies, Furies, Pox Riders, and Forsaken because you need to close the distance as fast as possible, otherwise Dwarf cannons will turn your army into bubbling puddles of green paste. Do not under any circumstances, take Great Unclean Ones to this match up. They will die faster than you can blink between Slayers and the sheer ranged firepower of the bearded manlets.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Empire| Empire]]''': If you can reach the Empire's main lines you will roll over their infantry in good time and make use of your general air superiority to bully their artillery. The problem is getting there and the fact that you are very vulnerable to the lore of Fire and Light, and to a lesser degree Heavens. While on their own Imperial infantry are no match for yours, with proper magical and lord and hero support they can be shockingly sticky and even outright defeat yours; especially with good magic or priests behind them. The Artillery is very unpleasant to deal with, particularly the Hellstorm rockets which love your unarmoured slow moving blobs and the Hammer of Witches whose magic damage projectiles will make your Great Unclean Ones regret existing; but you should be able to use Nurglings and Rotflies to silence them long enough to meet the grind. That being said, the cavalry is one of your greatest conCerns. Demigryphs with Halberds and Knights of the Blazing Sun are particularly bad news for you and need to be focused down as fast as possible; preferably with slowing debuffs, because if allowed to run riot you will regret it. Huntsmen archers are also basically made to punish you, as your poorly armoured monsters are literally their ideal target. Grenade Outriders are also a huge pain fo you to deal with due to lacking anything to reliably catch them and with a flaming sword of rhuin will absolutely spoil your entire day.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Grand Cathay| Grand Cathay]]''': Everything you hate about the dwarfs except they have actual cavalry, fliers, more mobile lords, monsters, and flaming cannons. Also their scary melee legendary lords are much too fast for you to disengage from. Them lacking the lore of fire per se is cold comfort when the Lore of Yang does everything you hate about the lore of Fire and Long Ma will shred any of your fliers with ease (nevermind Miao Ying or worse; Zhao Ming), leaving Sky Junks free to rain point blank rockets down on your troops. To have a chance of coming out on top you're going to have to play in a rather Un-nurgle way. Which is to say you're going to be relying on Plague Toads, Rotfliers, Furies, Chaos Spawn and variants thereof and leave the plaguebearers, nurglings, and unclean ones at home. Anything that doesn't have a speed of at least 50 is artillery fodder and is honestly not worth taking. Trying to out-grind Cathay is while doable, very much not-optimal because they are built to last long enough for their heavy hitters to land the killing blow and you simply cannot break them fast enough; you need to blitz them.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Greenskins| Greenskins]]''': Finally, someone without fire damage out the ass and whose mechanics encourage getting stuck in. The main things to watch out for are the Greenskins' own monsters who can be difficult to deal with, especially Rogue Idols who you can only excruciatingly slowly chip away at, as well as Greenskin skirmishing and artillery. Do not underestimate Greenskin artillery, take out doomdivers as soon as you see them and take full advantage of your air superiority. Greenskins generally have leadership issues, so the best way to win the infantry shoving contest without waiting to see if your Debuffs can out-last their endless WAAAGHs is to quickly bring in fliers and cavalry to break them. Anything that causes terror in particular is useful and since you lack armour; Black Orcs are thankfully somewhat wasted on you (though still more than enough to kill literally any of your infantry handily). This is a match-up you have many good advantages in and is generally in your favour, but the Greenskin roster is enormous and full of all kinds of tricks; underestimate the Waaagh at your own peril.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/High Elves| High Elves]]''': Ugh. You might as well forfeit this one. High elves excel in everything you hate. The most cost efficient archers in the game. Plentiful access to flaming attacks. Mobile mages that can root your fliers, root your few fast movers, or torch them with burning head depending on exactly how your opponent wants to ruin your day. Leave the bigbois at home and go heavy on nurglings and plague toads. You need someone capable of running down archers to keep your 20 movement speed army from getting shot to death and rotflies will just get snared + swatted out of the skies by Alarielle and her flying goon squad of dragons/phoenixes. A Soul Grinder is a must bring as that is the best answer in your army to archers. That'll probably just be delaying the inevitable though, Soul Grinders give you the ability to respond at range but they're not going to outshoot an entire high elf ranged line by themselves. Pray that the chaos gods give you a better matchup next time.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Khorne|Khorne]]''': Khorne is one of your easier matchups since Hellblade demands that his forces get into prolonged mosh pits if they want to function at their best and his shooting is okay at best while surprisingly for a god associated with fire; has little access to flaming damage. Khornate lists can still pulverise you if you take it too easy, but they have few ways to not play your game. You should definitely avoid Nurglings as Khorne's mechanics absolutely will punish you for bringing fodder. While if you just let it play out you absolutely will lose the infantry grind, you have the means to intervene in that grind to break apart the Khornate line of battle while Khorne's magic-hating ass has limited options beyond just fighting harder. The units to watch out for are skull cannons, blood/skullcrushers, khornbull minotaurs, and of course bloodthirsters. Skull Cannons at least have very limited ammo before they have to get into melee to get more, and you're quite good at stopping them from pulling out back to gun range, but they can do flaming damage and are able to do sizeable damage to your shambling lords and heroes; Plague Drones or Toads are best suited here. Blood/Skullcrushers and Minotaurs need to be prevented from getting proper charges at any cost, so quickly gumming them up with Vanguard units and slowing debuffs is a must. Bloodthirsters and especially Skarbrand though, are an absolute nightmare to deal with.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Kislev|Kislev]]''': "Surely the ice faction doesn't have fire damage!" you say like the fool you are while Ra-Ra-Rasputin dances on your burnt corpse. And you will learn to absolutely hate the frostbite effect as Kislev makes you go from slow to more or less stationary, and your lack of armour makes you hideously vulnerable to Kislev's various AoE spells as well as the humble kossar. Catching Kislevite horse archers or war sleds is an exercise in futility and its much more efficient to just try and ignore the damage and focus on winning the fight. And Kislev's units are surprisingly sticky due to By our Blood as well as some of the best average leadership of any of the human factions. And with their combination of ranged firepower and superior speed as well as innumerable ways to slow you down, Kislev can keep on pulling out of unfavourable engagements and whittle you down with more and more firepower. And what's worse is that basically all of Kislev's ranged units can handle themselves in melee so you'll need something meatier than Nurglings or Furies to genuinely slow them down. This is another match-up where you don't want to bring Great Unclean Ones unless you want to give Streltsi and Ice Guard target practice. As for War-Bear riders; I'm sorry to inform you that you don't really have any good options against those. Just pray the polar bears have a stomach ache after eating you or something.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Lizardmen| Lizardmen]]''': This matchup is going to suck. Your complete lack of anti-large becomes painfully obvious when the dinosaurs are unleashed and you will ''never'' be able to catch Skink Skirmishers as they dance around you at nearly twice your movement speed. Saurus are just as immovable in a grind fest as you are and they have access to plentiful healing courtesy of Life Slann, Skink Oracles (who will eviscerate your large entities) and Revivification Bastilodons. Then there's the fire. Solar Engines Bastilodons, Salamander Hunting Packs, Ancient Salamanders, Fireleech Bolas Terradon Riders and Fire Slann can incinerate vast swathes of your forces well before you can make it to the grind fest. The best thing you can do is to get some Plague Toads and Plague Drones to eek out an advantage in the infantry fight. Nurglings can be vanguard deployed to buy you some time to get the rest of your army as far up field as possible. Lastly, a Soul Grinder or two wouldn't hurt as aside their skirmishers and artillery, Lizardmen have a relative dearth of ranged options. Otherwise, buckle up. It's gonna be a rough one.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Norsca| Norsca]]''': Most diseases don't survive well in cold environments, and the Norscans are out to prove it. This is a deceptively difficult matchup for you. The good thing is that Norscan infantry relies on the berserk ability to be surprisingly tanky, and then using their speed to break away while it's on cooldown. However, you can grind their infantry all day long and berserk is basically worthless because you're a daemon faction that deals magic damage. Plus, your physical resist is going to be super useful here, since Norsca has pretty limited sources of magic damage. What you'll have to worry about though is their monsters and anti-large. Plague drones and furies can be useful to zone out any javelins (although to be honest, you probably don't have a prayer of catching marauder horsemen), but skin wolves and ice wolves with their anti-large and terrific speed will spell doom for your big monsters like plague toads and Great Unclean Ones. However, it's the monsters that will really be a headache. Mammoths have the mass to push through your infantry formations easily, so tarpitting them is difficult. Plus, your army has never even heard the word "anti-large" before, so you're basically reduced to sniping them out with magic and trying to take advantage of their relatively lower leadership to cause a quick route, which is definitely not the ideal way to deal with them. And to top it all off, Norsca has access to the lore of fire, which means you can't deal with them like you would with similar factions (i.e. beastmen) by just blobbing and watching everything die around you. Soul Grinders might be ok to apply some pressure at range, but to be honest, it's going to take some good micro to keep the Norscans from getting their hands (or claws, or tentacles or whatever) into the cookie jar with their fast movers.

*'''Nurgle''': Are you a Slaanesh worshipper? Because you have to be into some kind of masochism if you got '''THIS''' mirror match and didn't immediately back out of the game. There are two ways you can handle this, one being an EGUO Mortis build. Surround your lord with Exalted Plaguebearers and chaff and head right into the meatgrinder to drain your enemy's health. The problem is your enemy is probably going to do the exact same thing, so ultimately this fight would come down who's fat green asshole comes out on top. The harder, but more unexpected and fun way to earn grandpa's attention is, believe it or not, a mobility build. Get Poxriders, Toads and Rotflies to outmaneuver your enemy, pick apart stragglers and run circles around him. Yes, these units are still pretty damn slow but come on, you're in a Nurgle mirror match, at the worst he will only be able to match your speed. It's certainly way more interesting than going with the first option and pray that RNGesus blesses you.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Ogre Kingdoms| Ogre Kingdoms]]''': Presently the single worst match-up you've got in TW:WH3 until immortal empires comes out. You are bad at dealing with large units, Ogres are basically all large. You don't like enemies that can shoot and scoot away from you, all Ogre shooting is on fast moving platforms and most of it hits like a truck. You don't like fire damage, Firebellies are one of the best lore of fire casting heroes in the game, a lot of your damaging spells are best used against large blobs of infantry; there are precisely two units in the entire ogre roster that fill this role and neither of them are terribly important for the ogres, you hate high impact charge that can bowl through your lines; Ogres are basically the juggernaut when it comes to stopping their charges. You really need to do something to prevent them from setting up charges and to keep their shooting units from hitting you for as long as possible. Ogres don't like being bogged down; but they're extremely slippery and surprisingly one of the fastest armies in the entire game on average. Nurglings won't last long, but through dying for the grandfather they can buy you the time you need to pull off a win and plague drones are your best hope of silencing the Ogors' guns just long enough to get to grips with them. Great Unclean Ones are probably not worth it in this matchup as Ironblasters and Leadbelchers are extremely proficient at outright deleting them off the map and if they don't; Ogres are very proficient monster killers in melee anyway. And those two units deserve particularly special mention as they absolutely will decide the entire battle if you're not able to shut them down. Crushers and Mournfangs with great weapons are also units that your nightmares are made out of.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Skaven| Skaven]]''': Another particularly shitty matchup. Skaven have guns and artillery for days. Ratling Guns in particular will make you begin to pray for a quick end due to the suppressing effect they have ''further'' slowing down your already trudging forces while Death Globe Bombadiers and Warpfire Throwers will utterly end whatever they're pointed at. Though it kinda sounds like a broken record at this point, but vanguard deploy some Nurglings to distract the Skaven for as long as possible. Plague Toads will be your best bet to deal with any infantry they have while Rotflies and Plague Drones will give you a decent means to tie down the Skaven Missile units... if they aren't well and truly shot out of the air before they make it in. You'll need to keep an eye out for any Halberd Stormvermin or Moulder Monsters. ''If'' your main army can manage to make it into and pin down the Skaven army, you should win the grind. But when your army is so slow that Ratling Gunners and Warplock Jezzails effectively become skirmishers, you know it's not a matchup in your favor.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Slaanesh| Slaanesh]]''': The fastest army in the game versus the slowest. Finally, something that is ironically in your favor! Slaanesh has even fewer ranged options compared to you and as such will be forced to commit to a grind fest. Considering their specialization against AP, so long as you stay clear from your few armored units, this should not be a problem.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tomb Kings| Tomb Kings]]''': Hey a faction that hates fire damage as much as you do! Unfortunately for you the Tomb Kings are also much better at shooting than you and have much more dangerous monsters. A Necrosphinx will feed a Great Unclean One its own ass in moments while Sepulchral Stalkers can delete any large units you felt like bringing. Your slow, bunched up hordes also give Caskets of Souls dry orgasms as they rain down magic death on their heads. You absolutely need to take down the Tomb King Lord because you can't outgrind the Tomb Kings fast enough to not be crushed by their monsters and chariots or shot to pieces by their numerous and scary means of poking holes in you. While they at least don't have the lore of fire, they have the Lore of Light which you hate only mildly less between it being able to make any given unit fight to the bitter end whenever the caster wants, crank up the speed dial for large sections of the army, zap single entities off the map with Shem's Burning Gaze, root your few precious mobile units in place with the Net of Amyntok, or delete whole sections of your army with banishment.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tzeentch|Tzeentch]]''': It's a safe bet that this will be a very unpleasant matchup for you. Tzeentch will control the skies, your fliers are no match for his even if he doesn't bring a flying lord of change. The plodding movement of most of your army means you won't be able to chase down Tzeentch's speedier units and keep them from abusing barrier regeneration with hit + run attacks. Worst of all, your enemy has access to an absurd amount of fire damage, so kiss goodbye to regeneration. Best advice is to suicide screen your army with nurglings and bring plague toads/pox riders to trap cycle chargers. Minimize losses by blocking with fodder, spreading out to reduce units hit by breath/vortex spells, camping in forests, and spamming fleshy abundance heals from the Lore of Nurgle. Winds of magic are a finite resource and Tzeentch's ranged units don't have much ammo so eventually he will have to close to melee and fight you in your element. You should have the game in the bag if you keep enough of your army alive.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Coast| Vampire Coast]]''': The good news is that you do have tools against blobbed up infantry. The bad news is that you are target practice for the largest pile of guns you've ever seen and your unarmoured and agonizingly slow hordes will have the zombies manning Queen Bess salivating. You'll probably win the grind against the Zombies barring dumping a ton of magic or them hitting you with one of their big AoE spells, but this doesn't matter at all unless you win fast enough to get to the gunlines which is a huge ask for Nurgle. The Vampire Coast also has extremely powerful monsters and you are terrible at dealing with monsters and the only reason you might not see the RoR Necrofex in this match up is that the points limit is too small to fit both it and the Queen Bess. If you do see both, you are going to suffer. And the Coast sadly has enough of an airgame as well as sufficient dakka to pound your own fliers out of the sky. Like their landlubber counterparts, you have to watch out closely for Wind and Vortex spells; especially the Wind of Death which can instantly decide a melee fight and you're too slow to dodge reliably. Harkon on his pet bat are an absolute pain in the ass and you don't really have any answers to him.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts| Vampire Counts]]''': Ah, a faction with fewer ranged options than you! A majority of their units exist to bog you down, something you're not entirely opposed to humoring them on. Just don't clump up for their casters to lay down a Winds of Death. This is generally a match up revolving around who can make better use of their hammer units in armies mostly comprised of anvils and who has better sense for when to use healing effects. Mortis engines and corpse carts should generally be your priority, as the Undead can come back from being knocked down and their ability to spread healing and buffs for their troops and cripple yours is nothing to scoff at. Ganking the Vampire Lord is generally a big ask due to lacking strong enough fliers to take on a zombie dragon or the terrorgheists and vargheists that usually accompany them, but it isn't impossible if you have the winds to spare for spirit leeches although this is probably a waste of WoMs. Don't even try to gank the Red Duke or a Blood Dragon lord though, your air units will only die tired. This is a match-up where the Great Unclean Ones come in handy due to the lack of reliable anti-large from the vampires and their lack of shooting.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves| Wood Elves]]''': Yeah... good luck ever catching these guys. Kite builds counter Nurgle hard and this is the best kiting army in the game. Nurglings might actually be a must bring in this match up as their vanguard will allow them to ambush any archer unit and tie them up for Furies to finish them off. Rot Flies and Plague Drones may prove useful as their speed will let them catch up to any running units, though they will be an easy target for missiles. Another must bring might be the Soul Grinder, as Waywatchers get shut down by artillery and it will be able to defend itself against any cavalry that might come its way. Plague Toads are another potential option, but they'll have trouble catching the more slippery elf units since they run slower than heavy cav with 59 speed. This might end up being one of those "Avoid at all costs" match ups.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}