So I got an itch to make a Nurgle Army mod

[dexgattaca]

Fishing for ideas. What would a Nurgle army play like?

[dexgattaca]

So i was thinking a map control based faction. The main tool would be infecting tiles and producing effects on the enemy army.

Cities would contaminate surrounding area.
Unit attacks would give plague debuffs.
Unit deaths would contaminate tiles.
Enemy kills would buff plagues & add to unit #s.

Units would be more resilient but slow.
Damage would depend on infesting tiles and units.
A good turtling faction.

[Ashardalon]

tough and slow
with a short range morale debuff and a very small damage aoe passive
many chaff infantry
cheap weak early game flier flies
dont forget the nurgle marines use a melee weapon and a bolter similar to how other marines use melee and bolt pistol

[dexgattaca]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

tough and slow
with a short range morale debuff and a very small damage aoe passive
many chaff infantry
cheap weak early game flier flies
dont forget the nurgle marines use a melee weapon and a bolter similar to how other marines use melee and bolt pistol

Cool!

So I was thinking that Poxwalkers can be done by using smaller Chaos Spawn models. Unit size 8. Spread plague. I was thinking of having the unit size be upgradable and the unit heals when infantry die in adjacent hex. Destroying Poxwalkers makes the tile contaminated.

I was thinking Pox Flies, I can us Psychneuein models. Spreads plague. Contaminates tile upon death.

Lord, Sorcerer and Warp Smith should be interesting to re-do. Warp Smith can have the mechatendrels re-skinned to slimy tentacles.

[Ashardalon]

can use a ork spore mechanic, contamination going away after a while with several upgrades to increase time until permanent
pretty sure you can make techs depend on other techs
not sure how powerful a buff to your units and debuff to enemies contamination its going to be to determine how many upgrades it needs, a hard thing to balance

[Corseth]

Yeah, just add:
<requiredUpgrades>
<upgrade name="PrereqTech"/>
</requiredUpgrades>

To the technology's definition to make it depend on having 'PrereqTech' (obviously you need to have said pre-req tech in as well).

For unit size being upgradable, I tried this. It's wonky. For example, let's say I want an upgrade to make Necron Warrior squads 10 members instead of 5.
Basically, I have yet to find to UPGRADE 5 man squads to 10. That value on the unit does not seem like it can be changed by tech.
HOWEVER, you CAN make a separate 10-man squad, that the tech unlocks. This far I have done (made a "Squad Size Upgrade" that makes larger squads buildable, but does not upgrade old squads to the new size)

A theory - Chaos already has the trait to kill off a unit and replace it with spawns or daemon princes. You might be able to kill off the 5 man squads via a similar mechanism and replace them with the 10 man versions. Only problem is when I look at the trait (ChampionofChaos) there's nothing to edit, so it may be hard-coded in.

[dexgattaca]

Originally posted by Corseth:

Yeah, just add:
<requiredUpgrades>
<upgrade name="PrereqTech"/>
</requiredUpgrades>

To the technology's definition to make it depend on having 'PrereqTech' (obviously you need to have said pre-req tech in as well).

For unit size being upgradable, I tried this. It's wonky. For example, let's say I want an upgrade to make Necron Warrior squads 10 members instead of 5.
Basically, I have yet to find to UPGRADE 5 man squads to 10. That value on the unit does not seem like it can be changed by tech.
HOWEVER, you CAN make a separate 10-man squad, that the tech unlocks. This far I have done (made a "Squad Size Upgrade" that makes larger squads buildable, but does not upgrade old squads to the new size)

A theory - Chaos already has the trait to kill off a unit and replace it with spawns or daemon princes. You might be able to kill off the 5 man squads via a similar mechanism and replace them with the 10 man versions. Only problem is when I look at the trait (ChampionofChaos) there's nothing to edit, so it may be hard-coded in.

You can add Traits effect <groupSizeMax add="#" that change group size of a unit.

Then add this to the unit <traits>
<trait name="namehere" requiredUpgrade="ArmyName/UpgradeName"/>

[Corseth]

Hrm, first time I tried that (as it's the first thing I tried) I could never get it to not crash upon researching the upgrade, not sure why.

[dexgattaca]

Ok, so two big hurdles were terminator re-skins and producing particle spore clouds around models.

I think terminators will look good enough. Lucky Death Guard armor is more rounded.

Turns out you can add the Wire Weed particles to power weapons. I believe it's easy enough to change the color from red to green.

Proof of concept screen shot: https://ibb.co/1z75tD8

[dexgattaca]

Ok, so a big thing I'd like to do is a Plague Economy. I like the idea of having contaminating units and tiles being a main feature of gameplay for the Death Guard faction.

Looking for idea there.

[Brother Severus]

A nurgle army as other posted are slower than average CSM but toxic.
The thing is that Deathguards rely on poxwalkers and nurglings as minions.
You should also remade the demon princes because the ones that comes with the Deathguards from Nurgle are totally different.

[Brother Severus]

I don’t know what do you have in mind but to do the Deathguard a simple resking of the models won’t suffice.
I play them on the tabletop from the 8th edition and painted and gathered a small 1500 points army.
These are my men,and you can see the models are totally different from the average CSM.
To do the Death Guards properly in game for Gladius it would take a high skill in 3d modellng and completely rewrite their mechanics.
Unless you wanna do like Emistro to rip off the files and work of someone else from some other games and paste them.

https://imgur.com/a/CKu7Ftl

[Corseth]

Originally posted by dexgattaca:

Ok, so a big thing I'd like to do is a Plague Economy. I like the idea of having contaminating units and tiles being a main feature of gameplay for the Death Guard faction.

Looking for idea there.

Hrm, a faction malus to resources (like, their resource buildings harvest fewer resources normally), but have the plague effect boost the resources of tiles to compensate, so that unplagued tiles are of low value to them?
Though I'm actually not sure how well that would work gameplay-wise, as it would just become another thing you build on top of building structures... though it could be used to incentivize founding cities where plague has occurred by other means if it is NOT buildable?

Or you could make a proxy of the Space Marine fortress of redemption mechanic, and use a forward 'plague' structure to harvest outposts?

A lot of it probably depends on how much you want the Nurgle player to be able to plan out and control plagued areas, vs having them 'happen' by a not as easily controlled means and the Nurgle player needing to respond (proactive, or reactive?). How can the enemy contest 'plague' or should the enemy focus on the units not the plague - is it the primary enabler the enemy needs to prioritize (like denying webway gates within your territory to an enemy Eldar), or a passive thing that makes life tougher but not worth prioritizing (like enemy orks healing on orkoid fungus)?

[Swansonhart]

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

I don’t know what do you have in mind but to do the Deathguard a simple resking of the models won’t suffice.

If you read all previous posts, you'd understand that dexgattaca is aiming for something more than a reskin. Why state the obvious?

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

I play them on the tabletop from the 8th edition and painted and gathered a small 1500 points army.

Weird flex, has nothing to do with a mod design.

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

These are my men,and you can see the models are totally different from the average CSM.
To do the Death Guards properly in game for Gladius it would take a high skill in 3d modellng and completely rewrite their mechanics.
Unless you wanna do like Emistro to rip off the files and work of someone else from some other games and paste them.

Bruh, I'm sure dexgattaca already knows all of that. Why would you write that? Also ripping files from Dawn of War and then fixing them is quite a hustle and not as easy as you think, especially for a first timer.

[dexgattaca]

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

A nurgle army as other posted are slower than average CSM but toxic.
The thing is that Deathguards rely on poxwalkers and nurglings as minions.
You should also remade the demon princes because the ones that comes with the Deathguards from Nurgle are totally different.

Hey Severus, I agree with all that. So I think the main take away here is that we probably shouldn't be call this "Death Guard" since we don't have the tool to achieve the full aesthetic of that legion. Which is honestly fine with me since I never quite liked the disgustingly warped look of nurgle. Plus there are some units that I'm not sure I'm are ready to give up like Havocs and Heldrakes. I'll give a a shot and see what I can do.

[Swansonhart]

Originally posted by dexgattaca:

Hey Severus, I agree with all that. So I think the main take away here is that we probably shouldn't be call this "Death Guard" since we don't have the tool to achieve the full aesthetic of that legion. Which is honestly fine with me since I never quite liked the disgustingly warped look of nurgle. Plus there are some units that I'm not sure I'm are ready to give up like Havocs and Heldrakes. I'll give a a shot and see what I can do.

Don't let him dissuade you from making the mod the way you want to make it. If you implement even half of all the ideas in this discussion, your mod is going to be the closest thing to Death Guard there is, and imho would deserve to be called a Death Guard mod. Aesthetics aside, your gameplay ideas is what truly matters and defines the mod (you know it better than me). That's why your Iron Hands mod is great!