Guide for Nurgle (V. 3.0.0, Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs)

A relatively superficial guide to playing Nurgle in Total Warhammer 3. Includes faction strengths/weaknesses, faction mechanics, opinions on unit roster and future suggestions.

Introduction

I have been wanting to write a piece on Nurgle in Total War: Warhammer 3 (TW3) for some time now. The best format for this then, seems to be a guide, or at least an opinion piece masquerading as a guide. As of writing, I am not overly familiar with TW3, beyond the basics. Similarly, my perspective will exclusively be from the perspective of single player, specifically Immortal Empires. This is because I have never played multiplayer, so my judgement on unit balance and strategy will convey this. The reason I choose Nurgle, is in part because I think that Nurgle has very interesting lore in the Warhammer universe, and I think that this has been brought to life in TW3 in a unique manner. Nurgle isn't the strongest faction, but he arguably has a very strong faction identity, and it is my hope that I can give some explanation as to why.

Finally I wish to thank the reader in advance for taking the time to read, or at least skim through this text. It is perhaps longer than it needs to be, and I realize that it may not be as interesting to everyone as it has become to me. I do also see the irony in making a guide on Nurgle, which is already a saturated field, a few months before a faction update. The guide is written for patch 3.0.0 (Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs)

Faction identity

Nurgle is one of the Chaos monogod factions introduced during the launch of TW3. Each monogod faction suffers and benefits from being extremely specialized, with a limited unit roster largely dedicated to a single role. Nurgle's army has the following traits one may want to consider when judging whether to play them.

1) Beginner-friendly in combat
Nurgle's roster is slow and tough. Your armies are generally less reliant on micro to perform to the best of their ability and, with a few exceptions, require very little babysitting. Because the whole army is so slow, your tactical options tend to be limited to taking and holding a spot and letting the opponent grind themselves down on your troops. No fancy charges, very little flanking, and no chariots requiring heavy micro.

2) Powerful magic
Nurgle has access to the lore of death and the lore of Nurgle. The lore of Death is fine, and as I will reiterate later, I believe that the lore of Nurgle has very good synergy with the faction.

3) Strategically powerful
Nurgle has a lot of power on the campaign map, in that he tends to have good map-awareness, ample opportunities to scout, and a number of tools to reduce the movement of enemy armies near him. This makes it easier for the faction to engage on their own terms. The faction also has universally good replenishment, so you will recover very quickly in between battles.

4) Poor infrastructure
Nurgle's economy is terrible, and your main way of getting money will be sacking enemy settlements. The summoning system is cool, but mechanically it is a disadvantage, even if it is thematically very interesting. Summoned units are expensive, start with low health, and your summoning pool cannot readily adapt to new situations as they occur. Nurgle is the only faction I can think of, where if you lose an army of high-tier units, there is a good chance that you simply cannot get these units back for a good long while, because your summoning pool just hasn't gotten them yet. Your buildings are also very expensive, and your garrisons are some of the worst in the game.

5) Terrible diplomacy
Nurgle's biggest weakness is his diplomacy. Nearly anyone has a justified aversion to you, and you have very few diplomatic tools to mitigate this. It is very easy for a Nurgle campaign to spiral into a situation where you end up in multiple wars, which is something Nurgle really suffers from because of their poor infrastructure listed above. The poor infrastructure also results in fewer armies, which results in lower strength rating, which results in more war declarations. It is worth mentioning that patch 3.0.0 improved this situation a little, by adding the Legion of Azgorh to the north, who do not hate you, and I would argue are your natural ally. You want nothing they have, as expanding into The Dark Lands is asking for trouble.

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Based on the above, one can see that Nurgle's faction identity a bit odd - Popular sentiment seems to be that it is a slow, defensive turtling faction. There is some truth to this, but it also varies on the tactical (battle) and strategic (map) level. A challenge that the faction faces is that the tactical level and the strategic level are polar opposites. Tactically, Nurgle plays defensively, but on the map, you need to play offensively, both to make money, and to avoid your expensive settlements getting attacked, because they are virtually undefended.

On the battlefield, I would say that Nurgle is a hero/Monster faction. The best units in the roster are exclusively monsters and heroes, but unfortunately most of your technologies and lord bonuses focus on Plaguebearers and Nurglings. This ultimately just means that Nurgle's technology tree isn't very good, because it doesn't give you a lot of what you need. Luckily this also means that you can largely ignore technology and research, as the only things you need from the tree are your army abilities, your plague symptoms, and eventually the technologies that unlock bound spells for your Great Unclean Ones.

Tactics

Nurgle tactics on the battle map are fairly simple. Lord Mandalore over on YouTube has described the faction as a mudball-faction and it is my opinion that this is largely correct. Your overall goal in a battle is to create a big moshpit that sucks your enemies into close combat where you kill them with magic and monsters. You are not very mobile, so setting up your moshpit properly is important. Luckily you have some tools that makes it so you can reliably force the AI to engage your moshpit, those tools being Ku’Gath early on, and Soul Grinders later.

This is also why I characterize Nurgle as a monster-faction, because monsters make mightier moshpits. You can fit more hostile troops around a single big entity than you can around a unit of infantry, and monsters are also largely indifferent to the friendly fire you will incur when throwing magic into the moshpit. You want to minimize damage to your own units and maximize the damage incurred by the enemy, that is all fairly logical. Finally, because they are a single big entity, healing magic works better on them. Since healing is one of Nurgle's greatest strengths, this is important.

In my experience, there are two types of moshpits that you want to create.

The offensive moshpit is when you use the Crumbling Ague to give your whole army vanguard deployment, and then put your moshpit right up in your opponent’s face. This can be useful because it makes for shorter battles, and you will generally want to use it against ranged-heavy factions because you really don’t want to give them any more time to shoot at you than you have to.

The defensive moshpit is when you put your moshpit in a corner, or otherwise in a position where the terrain favours you. It offers the advantage of letting you pick your formation and limit the avenues for the opponent to get to you. The biggest weakness of this type of moshpit is that if the opponent has better ranged options than you, you will need to account for that. This can mean smashing their artillery with flying units – You will generally not be outshot by enemy archers, because soul grinders are very potent against them. The second weakness is that it just takes a long time. I often use the defensive moshpit when fighting 4 enemy armies, because the control it affords me is quite important. But it does take a long time to wait for the AI to gather their forces and then chew through it. Expect to lay 15-20 minutes down on a battle if you use this.

Strategy

On the world map, Nurgle is an offensive faction, and what one needs to bear in mind is that Nurgle settlements are a big investment to grow, and your garrisons are horrible. Why are they horrible? Because they consist of all the units you don’t want to use. That is, Plaguebearers and Nurglings with no magic support. Nurgle towers are supposedly quite good, but my rule of thumb is that you should never fight defensive sieges if you can help it. Keep the settlements you care about far away from anyone you intend to fight, and try to create a “dead zone” of settlements that you own, but do not care about between your actual empire and your enemies. This isn’t always viable, and your starting location makes it a difficult thing to pull off, because your starting region is surrounded by water. I will talk a bit more about the starting location further down, but as a rule of thumb, you need to attempt to create a defense in depth, and limit your battles to the opponent's territory. Nurgle's bad diplomacy really hurts the faction there, but you do have a few tools to help with this. While Nurgle isn't especially fast on the map, they have two major ways to slow down enemy armies. One is the Crumbling Ague, which lowers enemy campaign movement range by 25%. Another is the commandment Plague God’s Nursery, which lowers movement by 20% for enemy armies starting in the region. You won’t always have both available, but it generally means that if you have enemy armies romping around your dead zone, you will catch them and kill them. This also makes any faction with access to the underway a priority for you to defeat, because they have more tools available to outmanoeuvre you.

It cannot be overstated how important it is to keep your important settlements safe. Nurgle has a shockingly poor economy aside from sacking, but this also synergizes well with the goal listed above. As Nurgle, what you will generally want to do is to sack, and then occupy any settlement you encounter. This gradually creates a dead zone naturally, while funnelling money back into the settlements you care about.

As Nurgle, one of your most important tools is map awareness, although this really holds true for any faction. You will benefit from seeing where enemies are coming from, and heroes play a key role in this, most notably the Plague Cultist. Try to make a habit of scouting ahead of your armies with Plague Cultists and remember two things.

1) You can summon a Plague cultist once per turn, and he makes for a decent and expendable scout, even if you do not plan to use him to spread a plague this turn, but also...

2) After researching Plague Sight in the second technology cluster, you will gain LOS in any region you spread a plague to this turn. You can sacrifice your plague cultist to achieve this by spreading his plague.

Scouting is doubly important for Nurgle, because Nurgle really cannot handle losing armies. As mentioned earlier, their recruitment is tied into the cycling system, and this means that you generally have plenty of nurglings available, but very little else. The mainstay of your late-game armies tend to become Great Unclean Ones, and a single province at tier 5 can provide one Great Unclean One every 21 turns (16 turns with the technology Rot incubation). If you lose an army’s worth of these, you are not getting them back for a while. Finally, while scouting is important, you really need to bear in mind how much you scout, because the best way to avoid getting punished by Nurgle's bad reputation, is to simply stay hidden for as long as you can. The fewer people know about you, the fewer wars you will have to deal with.

Magic

Nurgle’s magic is strong enough to warrant its own section in the guide. I wouldn't argue that it is the strongest lore of magic in the game full stop, but I would say that it is perhaps the best lore in the game for Nurgle. The lore has the distinction that almost all the spells synergize very well with your playstyle, and this is another reason that I characterize Nurgle as a monster faction. It bears repeating that Nurgle has a number of ways, both magic and mundane, that helps them restore HP to their units. They do not however, have any way to bring back lost entities, which by definition makes any multi-entity units less useful. You want your HP-pool in one place, instead of split between multiple entities, because if you focus on your multiple entities, your units will gradually attrit down to nothing due to loss of entities. Monsters sidestep this problem, and it is not uncommon for Nurgle to gain HP in smaller fights. As mentioned earlier, you will also incur friendly fire with Nurgle’s magic, and this is less of an issue with monsters, as they are largely indifferent to the big AoE spells Nurgle favours.

Nurgle has access to the following spells:


Passive: Children of Nurgle

Heals 0.20% HP/s for 5 seconds (1% total) on all units mapwide.

Nothing fancy but mentioned for the sake of completionism. This will work for you quietly in the background, and you will likely never notice. It heals 113 HP on a Great Unclean One, to put it in context.


1, Miasma of Pestilence

Cost 4(8), Duration 21 seconds, Cooldown 28 seconds, range 200 meters.

Lowers melee attack by 24 and Charge bonus by 40% for 21 seconds, can be overcast for a radius of 35 meters.

A simple debuff spell. I use it in my moshpit to reduce the damage my units take. With the duration and cooldown so close together, the downtime is only 7 seconds, which raises the effective HP of your units by quite a bit. It synergizes well with Soulblight from the lore of Death, and I generally cast both together. Ideally you will want to cast this on the enemy charge, but micro is hard. You can do this if you want to.


2, Stream of Corruption

Cost 5(8), Duration 3 seconds, Cooldown 29 seconds, range 100 meters.

Tear-shaped AoE attack, hitting all targets for 24(48) AP-damage, inflicts poison.

I sleep on this spell. Most YouTubers claim that Stream of Corruption is very good, and I suspect that they are right. Aiming this spell can be a little tricky, as the targeting reticule doesn’t inform you of just how far the spell goes. It is worth noting that Children of Nurgle will outheal the damage Stream of Corruption does to your single entities, so you can use this spell in your moshpit and not worry too much about friendly fire. It will eat into your healing cap over time though, so bear that in mind. I have no idea how the poison from this spell is calculated – If it only inflicts poison for 3 seconds, that sounds like something you can ignore.

Bear in mind that the 100-meter range means that you have to be reasonably close to what you want to hit. This is fine for the moshpit, but makes the spell less useful against archers, but of course it is quite good against them if you can catch them out in it, since they tend to stand in a line. In that situation, Stream of Corruption will generally hit all of them if you aim it well.


3, Curse of the Leper

Cost 7(10), Duration 18 seconds, Cooldown 43 seconds, range 200 meters.

Buffs one of your own units with +30(60) Armour and +14(28) melee damage reflection.

Curse of the Leper is not a spell I use often, largely because it is expensive. +30 armour isn’t a great deal, and 18 seconds generally allows for 4 enemy attacks against the target, assuming a 4 second cooldown between attacks. That translates to 56(112) damage per enemy entity that hits the target. However, Nurgle has very high melee defense across the roster, so unless melee damage reflection takes effect on missed attacks, there is an anti-synergy there. That said, it may get some value if you have a big monster getting hit by an infantry-unit, since the damage would be calculated per entity. I am not certain how damage-reflection works, so I sleep on this. I still cast it as a bound spell though, since Great Unclean Ones get it for free. Just put it on something your opponent is attacking, and it will take longer to die - Very easy to use.


4, Rancid Visitations

Cost 16(24), Duration 10(20), Cooldown 43 seconds, range 100 meters.

Strikes one entity for 66-133 dps for 10(20) seconds, total damage being 660-1330 (1320-2660) damage total.

I use Rancid Visitations quite a lot as a bound spell. It is very expensive for what it does, but it also behaves like Spirit Leech on steroids. If you have an enemy character or monster that you don’t want around, you cast Rancid Visitations to make it go away. This spell is a big reason for Great Unclean Ones being a menace, as they get 2 uses of this per unit. This allows you to lord-snipe very effectively and gives you an effective counterplay to powerful enemy single entities, which is something Nurgle can otherwise struggle with.


5, Blight Boil

Cost 13(18), duration 7 seconds, Cooldown 49 seconds, range 200 meters.

Strikes a 20-meter radius for 48(72) damage, 33% armour piercing.

Blight boil is one of your main sources of damage in the moshpit. You put it under enemy infantry, and it will cause a significant amount of damage to them, as well as anything else in the vicinity. Significant is relative of course. While it will heavily damage large infantry units, the spells usefulness goes down with unit number, culminating in dealing 48(72) damage to your own single entities, most of which is blocked by armour. This again means that you can cast it in your own formation, as your big single entities won’t care, and enemy infantry will.

It cannot be overstated how important it is to hold the enemy in place for this spell. The casting time is 5 seconds, and the duration of 7 seconds is the windup. From the moment you press the button, the enemy has a 12-second window to move out of the way. Think of Blight Boil as artillery and use it accordingly. The 200-meter cast range reinforces this philosophy, and the spell is equally useful against enemy archers, who likewise tend to bunch up. Of course, Great Unclean Ones come with 2 uses of this spell as well, which dramatically reinforces their effectiveness.


6, Fleshy Abundance

Cost 16(28), duration 20 seconds, Cooldown 54 seconds, range 200 meters.

Heals 1 friendly unit (all friendly units in a 35-meter area) for 1.6%HP/second for 20 seconds.

Fleshy Abundance is one of your main sources of sustainability. As has become a trend, Great Unclean Ones have this, and it makes them very useful to have in your army, as they will heal any damaged unit you have by 32% HP twice per battle. The overcast version is insanely expensive, but you get what you pay for, as you can squish your whole army into the 35-meter cast radius. This spell’s only real limitation is that it will not bring dead entities back to life, which makes it less useful for infantry and more useful for monsters. Again, Nurgle is a monster-faction.

Plagues

I have read the opinion that the Nurgle plague system is poorly implemented. I partially agree, but my position is more that it is good, but it could be better.

To start with, Plagues have a spread limit of four. This only applies to Nurgle, and the game doesn’t tell you this. This is not ideal, because the player needs accurate information to make good decisions. It does however also present an advantage, because of how diplomacy works in TW3.

What I mean by this is that the technology Plague Sight gives you vision over a region when you spread a plague to this region. That means that if you released a plague into Shattered Stone Bay, and spread limit was not implemented, that Plague would travel overland through the Dark Lands, over the World’s Edge Mountains and into the Empire. This would be both cool and thematic, but it would also mean that you would quickly discover every faction on your continent. With Nurgle's bad diplomacy, that would quickly make your campaign devolve into an actual Total War campaign, where you are at war with everyone.

As a second advantage, the spread limit also gives you control of your plagues. If you release the Green Pox in your homeland, that plague won’t sneak up to your front and infect your armies who you want to have other plagues. So, while I don’t personally like the system (I would like plagues that can spread across the world) I can admit that the spread limit brings some advantages to the faction. In addendum, plagues will not spread across water.

Finally, armies can spread plagues between each other if they share units and to settlements that they end their turn in, and settlements can spread plagues to adjacent settlements overland, but not to adjacent armies in the same region. A plague can however spread from a settlement to a garrisoning army. You can therefore share units between armies to unlock symptoms quicker, though again, only up to the spread limit of 4.


The Crumbling Ague

Infections +5 when plague is spread

Nurgle corruption +6 (local province)

Plague duration: 12 turns


Effect on Nurgle armies:

Vanguard Deployment

Experience per turn: +100

Casualty Replenishment rate: +35%


Effect on non-Nurgle armies:

All units suffer attrition

Campaign movement range –25%

Attrition +35% when under siege


Crumbling Ague is your most versatile plague by a fair margin. It doesn’t help your army directly, but it enables the offensive moshpit with vanguard deployment, and helps you set up your defensive moshpit better, since you can pick and choose terrain features you think will help funnel your opponent. The character experience per turn is helpful, doubly so since Nurgle relies heavily on high-level heroes. Furthermore, the added casualty replenishment is quite powerful early in your game, when you haven’t yet unlocked all your healing, and replenishment is (relatively) low.

On an enemy, Crumbling Ague doesn’t hurt their army directly. It does however give them attrition, – 5% per turn I think is the cap for the AI. This may not sound like a lot, but attrition is actually pretty good regardless, because it blocks replenishment. An AI army hit with the Crumbling Ague will be unable to replenish for 12 turns, which translates to 60% attrition total, but also makes them an easier fight when you catch them. And you will catch them, because Crumbling Ague also lowers movement by 25%. Your ideal battlefront has all enemy lords inflicted with Crumbling Ague, because it gives you the initiative. If you see a fight you don’t like, you can retreat out of range and they cannot catch you. If they try to do the same to you, you can run them down. Crumbling Ague is your main strategic tool in the campaign, and it is one of the few tools Nurgle has on the strategy map to shape engagements in your favour.


The Black Plague

Infections +5 when plague is spread

Nurgle corruption +6 (local province)

Plague duration: 12 turns


Effect on Nurgle armies:

Income from sacking and looting settlements +100% (local province)


Effect on non-Nurgle armies:

Casualty replenishment rate –7%

Attrition +35% when under siege


The Black Plague is your main economy tool. The double sack/loot value is a big boost to an otherwise poor faction, and it ties in well with the strategy listed above. Keeping a dead-zone of sacked settlements around the perimeter of your actual empire is pretty natural when you are paid so well for sacking. Sacking a tier 5 settlement will generally net you between 30.000 and 60.000 favour, which allows you to build nearly all the buildings from tier 1-5 in a province with pleasant climate. You can then funnel the wealth from that settlement back into the dead zone later, when that region feels safe to invest in. It really all feels very natural. Just don’t use this Plague unless you are actually going to be looting a lot of settlements in the near future. Tactically speaking, it does nothing for you that the Crumbling Ague doesn’t do better.


The Green Pox

Infections +5 when plague is spread

Nurgle corruption +6 (local province)

Plague duration: 12 turns


Effect on Nurgle settlements:

Cycle time –1 for infrastructure buildings

Growth +75


Effect on non-Nurgle settlements:

Local recruitment capacity: -2


Effect on non-Nurgle armies:

Base weapon damage –15%


The Green Pox is used in your own settlements to boost growth. It is of no use in a battle, and the –2 local recruitment doesn’t really matter to the AI. The +75 growth is per settlement, so if you have a 4-settlement province, of which all have the Green Pox, you are looking for + 300 growth/turn. That is even better than your unholy manifestation Exponential Growth, but there is no reason you can’t use both.


The Grim Shakes

Infections +5 when plague is spread

Nurgle corruption +6 (local province)

Plague duration: 12 turns


Effect on Nurgle settlements:

Control +6


Effect on non-Nurgle settlements:

Control: -6


Effect on non-Nurgle armies:

Melee attack: –4

Armour –40%

Spell resistance: -50%


The Grim Shakes is one of your battle-plagues, and it is primarily offensive. Nurgle’s lore is quite potent and –50% spell resistance is a rough malus to fight against. The armour and melee-damage reduction is also welcome, and Grim Shakes is almost tailor-made to fight against Dwarfs. The Grim Shakes don’t help you in any noteworthy way with anything else, so think of it as a damage-boost for your army and use it accordingly.



Nurgle’s Rot:

+1 Nurgling unit to summoning pool when plague is spread

Infections +5 when plague is spread

Nurgle corruption +6 (local province)

Plague duration: 12 turns



Plague effect on Nurgle armies:

Army ability: Summoned from beyond (2 uses)

Physical resistance +20%



Plague effect on non-Nurgle armies:

-10% speed for infantry


Nurgle’s Rot is the defensive counterpart to The Grim Shakes, and it is generally the inferior of the two. You pick this plague for the +20% physical resistance, which is very potent against some armies, and wholly useless against others - Daemons for instance will completely ignore this. I generally use Nurgle’s Rot when I am facing other monster-armies, where there tends to be a great deal of physical damage flying around. The plague also excels in protracted engagements, where you cannot realistically destroy the enemy army in short order, and thus have to hunker down. In this case, it allows your units to be better at outlasting the opponent. This is not a bad plague, but it has a narrower range of application than the other four.

Unholy manifestations

I have very little to say about unholy manifestations. There is one good one, and three that I do not use.

The good one is Exponential Growth, which requires 2000 global Nurgle corruption. Assuming that you are the only Nurgle faction in the game, that means 20 ssettlements with 100% Nurgle corruption, which will happen naturally over time, but also locks it out of the early-game where I feel that it would be the most useful. More’s the pity, but I digress.


Exponential Growth

Increases Growth by 200/300 per turn for 3 turns.

Decreases recruitment cost by 20%/35% for target army for 3 turns.

Cooldown: 15 turns

The higher values are if Nurgle is ascendant in the Great Game. This is random, but you can bear it in mind if you have it on cooldown while Nurgle is ascendant.


For the sake of completion, I will offer a quick word about the other three manifestations.

Pestilent Growth is available to you from the start of the game, and increases Casualty replenishment by 20% for 2 turns, while immobilizing the army for the same duration. Cooldown is 15 turns, and I have never found a situation where I needed it. Replenishment is capped at 50% and Crumbling Ague and some heroes will get you there without turning your movement off.

Blessing of Nurgle becomes available at 1000 corruption and increases chance of a plague spreading by 30% for 3 turns, while immobilizing the army for the same duration. Plagues already spread just fine, so in similar vein to the above, I have never been in a situation where I needed it.

Nurgle’s visitation has excellent flavour text, becomes available at 3000 corruption, and inflicts a random plague on every settlement and army in the province after 3 turns of immobilizing the army. This one gives you a random result, and as I’ve written above, each plague has an intended purpose. Different people will weigh this differently, but I’ve never found investing in a random effect especially appealing, so I have never been in a situation where I needed this.

More than this, the general problem with these manifestations is that you immobilize your army for 2/3 turns. An army costs upkeep, and a Nurgle monster-army costs some 8000 favour in upkeep. So you pay 16.000/24.000 favour to invoke these Unholy Manifestations, assuming you are using a full army. Alternatively, you can use a single lord to invoke your manifestations, but such a lord would be vulnerable to getting sniped by an enemy army, and I still cannot think of a situation where any of these manifestations would be useful or attractive.

Legendary Lord

Ku'Gath Plaguefather

Faction effects:

Infection cost -50% (Lord's army

Nurgle Corruption +2 (Local province)

Chance of a plague spreading +15% (Lord's army)

Growth +10 (factionwide)

Recruitment cost -35% for Nurglings (Lord's army)

Recruitment health +40% for Nurglings (Lord's army)

Ku'Gath is a strange LL. Most of what he offers your faction is conventionally not very good. In fact, the only thing he offers your faction is +10 Growth. Instead, Ku'Gath is all about the Nurglings, and that is actually fine. Nurglings are not very powerful units, but they are more or less all you have in the early game, and they are very cost-effective against most enemies, at least in Ku'gath's army. Ku'gath himself is an oppressive presence on the battlefield, and he essentially works like a very slow-moving Soul Grinder, in that he has excellent range, high ranged damage, but also has very high HP and respectable melee stats. Ku'Gath's faction buffs are minor, but Ku'Gath the artillery monster will carry you hard through the early game. As the game progresses, you will likely stop using Nurglings in Ku'Gath's army, but his skill tree is flexible enough that you can run him with Soul Grinders and Great Unclean Ones without issue as well later on. Notably his Lord of Stench talent decreases upkeep for all Great Unclean Ones factionwide by 15%. On the battlefield, the main danger to Ku'Gath is missiles, so pick up the Bloated Carcass for 10% missile resistance as soon as you can. If you can get an ironcurse icon early as a random drop, even better. It is worth mentioning that Ku'Gath is a bit unusual for a ranged unit, in that he can use his ranged attack while in close combat. So if you have him in melee combat with one enemy unit, you can actually have him shoot into another nearby enemy unit, because he is tall enough to shoot over all the troops attacking him. This isn't a bad time to do this either, since you are shooting at point-blank, and Ku'Gath's ranged attack hits very hard.

I will comment here that I seldom spec into magic on Ku'Gath, for the simple reason that he is not a better caster than a generic Nurgle-magic user. I feel that it is generally better to use those skill points for other things, and leave the casting to your Plagueridden, who tend to have more skill points than you'll know what to do with. Ku'Gath also starts with Stream of Corruption, so it isn't like you are missing out by not investing further - He is already fine.

Lords

Note that the Herald of Nurgle and the Sorcerer Lord of Nurgle ascends into the Great Unclean One and the Daemon prince respectively. It is also worth mentioning that, in similar vein to Ku'Gath, I seldom use Lords for magic. The Heroes do it just as well in my opinion, and in the case of the Daemon prince, he gets a strange mixed lore of magic that combines Lore of Death and Lore of Nurgle, while missing key spells from both. Not ideal.


Herald of Nurgle:

Heralds of Nurgle are your standard early-game Lord, and without the Champions of Chaos they are your only Lord. If this is your situation, I am sorry. They are objectively not a very good Lord, and the reason for this is relatively low health, slow speed, low armour and crumbling. It cannot be overstated how vulnerable they are on the battlefield, and when they break, they crumble. There are many things to be said about crumbling, and none of them are very nice. In my experience it will always kill your lord, but my sample size is quite small on this, so your mileage may very. Because of this, I cannot recommend using a Herald of Nurgle unless you have no other option. It does however bear mentioning, that the Herald eventually gets access to a rot fly, so if you want a flying lord that isn't a Daemon Prince, this is your option.


Sorcerer Lord of Nurgle:

The Sorcerer Lord is the stronger of your starting Lords. A horse at lvl 4, 80 armour and the good sense to know when to run away does wonders for survivability, and these will be far more reliable Lords for leading your armies and surviving long enough to ascend to Daemonhood. It is worth mentioning that neither the Sorcerer or the Herald are exceptional fighters, so keeping them out of harm's way is generally a good idea. The Herald is the better fighter of the two, but if you take an engagement on a Herald and it doesn't go your way, your Herald dies. By contrast, the Sorcerer generally just... Leaves, and you get to keep your Lord. Really it isn't even a contest in my eyes. Maybe that says more about my judgment of what is a good engagement and less about how good the respective Lords actually are, but I digress.


Exalted Great Unclean One (EGUO):

The EGUO is an ascended Herald, and he makes for a respectable fighter. Decent melee attack and defense, 20% physical resistance and 50 armour makes him pretty tough to shift. He is a huge arrow-magnet, but that is sort of just the Nurgle experience. Ideally your Soul Grinders will blow hostile archers up anyway, so it isn't too much to worry about. The EGUO does his best work in the moshpit, where his damaging aura (Pestilent Decay) makes life unpleasant for the opponent. Like the Herald, he will die if you take an engagement and lose, but unlike the Herald, he is an actual monster, so losing an engagement with an EGUO takes some doing, especially when or if you bring him with other GUOs.

I find that when using EGUOs, the biggest barrier to entry is getting them in the first place, because you need to babysit a herald for 15 levels before you can make him a EGUO. For what you get, it is debatable whether he is worth it over the Daemon Prince, and that is a shame, because I adore the EGUO, and their voicelines are amazing. I recommend getting at least one, solely to for the nightmare fuel of listening to them speak. Good stuff.


Daemon Prince:

The Daemon Prince fills a slightly different niche than the EGUO, in that he works well (but not as well) as the EGUO in the moshpit, but can also fly around and harrass the opponent. This offers the Daemon Prince a great deal of tactical flexibility, and I find that I often prefer using the Daemon Prince in combat as part of an air-squad with some Plagueridden stuck in. This isn't always what you want to do, but it can be very helpful on occasion, especially in sieges. I suspect that the Daemon Prince may also have better combat animations than the EGUO, as whenever he fights in the moshpit, he takes less damage than his raw stats would suggest. Ultimately the comparison between the Daemon Prince and the EGUO is a lot closer than between the Sorcerer and the Herald, but I find that I personally prefer the Daemon Prince, simply because they are easier to get, and because they tend to overperform relative to my expectations, whereas the EGUO often is a bit more awkward to get, and relatively to the difficulty in obtaining him, he somehow lacks that little extra oomph that really sells him for me.

Heroes

Plagueridden:

I hate these guys with a bright and burning passion. Why? Because they share the Herald's problem. They crumble, and they die, and they are so fragile. But, unlike the Herald, you also really need these guys, because unless you want your lords handling the magic, which in my opinion you don't, these are your wizards. Treat them as such, and they will generally not disappoint you too much. Probably.

With that out of the way, the Plagueridden actually grows into a fairly robust little unit. You will want to get him on a Rot Fly (lvl 15) as soon as you can, because it allows him to run away. The thing is, Plagueridden get really good if you can keep them alive. Outside of their magic line, they have a focused combat line, and as you keep them around, they gradually grow pretty decent in combat as well. High-level Plagueridden are a lynchpin in your army, and they are extremely versatile in their utility. Unlike the actual Rot Fly units, they are also a single entity, which means that if you do get them stuck into an enemy unit, your odds are better that they can actually get out again, since you don't have to fiddle with multiple entities getting stuck. As if that wasn't enough, they also get 3 "Locus" skills, which are respectively

Locus of Contagion:
Deals 5 dps/second for 11 seconds (55 total damage) to a maximum of 25 entitities in a 35-meter radius with a 90-second cooldown.

I haven't used Contagion much, but it is essentially an 11-second damaging aura on a cooldown. It isn't bad at all - It piles a little bit of damage on the opponent, and you can use it to increase damage taken by the opponent in your moshpit, or alternatively as a bombing maneuver. It is quite versatile, and will generally serve you well.

Locus of Fecundity:
Heals 0.8% HP/second for 11 seconds (8.8% HP total) to all friendly entities in a 35-meter radius with a 90-second cooldown, 3 uses.

I lean heavily on Fecundity, especially in the early game where healing is relatively rare. Like contagion, it is very versatile, but it grows less useful as your magic grows more powerful, since it essentially works like a poor man's fleshy abundance. The Plagueridden also shares this skill with the Exalted Hero, which encourages you to take Contagion instead. Despite this, I still end up picking Fecundity more often than not, as I find that Nurgle is sort of just this black hole of giant HP pools that you can always pour that extra little bit of healing magic into. You will almost never go wrong with taking Fecundity.

Locus of Virulence:
Increases Melee Attack by +24, and Armour Piercing by x1,25 of base for 21 seconds in a-35 meter radius with a 90-second cooldown.

I have never taken this. Not because I think it is bad, but because the other abilities have always felt more impactful. I think it's intended use is either to buff melee attack in your moshpit, or with your goonsquad hunting enemy lords. Either way, I suspect that I sleep on it. It is probably really good, and I just don't know about it. If anyone can tell me if it is or isn't, by all means.

So to summarize. The Plagueridden are very important to your overall battleplan, and I generally include four in each army, with some Locus configuration. They make for an oppressive airforce when supported by a Daemon Prince, and I suspect that the fact that Plagueridden are so powerful has something to do with why I prefer the Daemon Prince over the EGUO. The synergy is just too much to turn down. Of note is that to my knowledge, you never want these guys on a Nurgling Palanquin. I am not sure what the point of this mount is, and if anyone could tell me it would be appreciated.


Exalted Hero of Nurgle:

Unlike Plagueridden, I absolutely adore Exalted Heroes of Nurgle. 100 armour, high base weapon damage and respectable melee stats make these heroes very oppressive to fight. You will lean on them heavily in the early game, since they are your only units that deal consistent high AP damage to anything you point them at. They get a horse at lvl 4, and it is encouraged that you use them on horseback, as this removes their only real weakness, and allows you to chase anything down without having to invest in Warhounds. Unlike Plagueridden, these guys start out strong and weaken a bit over time. You will likely never not want them in your army, but by lategame you will need to give them a bit more attention than before, and possibly take them off their horses if you just want them fighting in the moshpit. As mentioned above, you can give them Locus of Fecundity through their Plague Feeder talent, should you wish to do so for extra healing. I usually do, but Toxic Trooper is also very good, since the -10 armour (local province) stacks. So if you have 10 of these guys in the same province, no one except for the Dwarfs have any armour worth noticing. An interesting idea, though perhaps not a practical one.

It is also worth mentioning that Exalted Heroes will likely also be your main agents on the map, since they come with Assassinate and can spawn with a trait that raises their Assassination chance even higher (Unholy Strike). If you see an Exalted Hero with that trait, consider using him as a hero-sniper, as he will likely be your best option for it.


Cultist of Nurgle:

The cultist of Nurgle is unfortunately not exceptional, compared to the two heroes above. I tend to bring one in every army for his Increased Mobility skill. Put him on a Warshrine, and he will heal your units in the moshpit as opponents die near him. This also makes him a magnet for ranged fire, and he really cannot take it, so he needs some babysitting in that regard. He bizarrely has armour sundering, which lowers the armour of anything he hits by 30 for 10 seconds. This is entirely fine, and will help him and everyone else deal a bit more damage to what you are fighting. He also regenerates, which is nice.

Gate of Nurgle and Greater Gate of Nurgle are his signature skills, and they allow you to summon Plaguebearers and a GUO into battle. Unfortunately, they start on cooldown, and the cooldown only ticks down if the cultist has less than 75% HP. This is an anti-synergy in the Nurgle faction, where healing is constantly flying around, not to mention that this guy has regeneration. So if he is below 75% HP, something has gone very wrong. It is still useful, don't get me wrong. Just for all the wrong reasons.


Plague Cultist:

This is less of a hero and more of a guided missile. I've covered the Plague Cultist in the Plagues section, and he really just spreads one plague of your choosing and then dies. But, he makes for a good scout in a pinch, and there is no maximum capacity for Plague cultists that I know of.

Monsters

Great Unclean Ones

Great Unclean Ones are well... great, and they are in my opinion one of the best monsters in the game. Their stats are excellent, with the only low stat being their speed at 40, which is honestly still quite fast for Nurgle. They have some 11352 HP per model, a weapon strength of 500, of which 350 is armour piercing and all is magical damage, so they are exceptionally good at holding the line. While this is all good, it isn’t what makes Great Unclean Ones great.

What makes Great Unclean Ones great rather, are their bound spells. When fully upgraded, you get 2 uses of every spell in the lore of Nurgle, and this makes them some of the most versatile monsters that I have encountered. Great Unclean Ones are not really designed for fighting Lords and Heroes, but if you have a few of them chain-casting rancid visitations on the enemy lord, he will often die without having had any impact on the battle. Blight Boil gives them a means to contest enemy ranged units, and Fleshy Abundance allows them to heal themselves or an ally when needed. This last part is important, because it allows the Great Unclean Ones to help your heroes in healing up your army during battles, thus lowering the magic strain in a very magic-heavy faction. It all just ties together very well to make the army function better, and later in the game, you really need a few Great Unclean Ones to tie your army together. While they are very expensive (500 upkeep is no joke), you do get what you pay for with them, and their versatility, much like the Soul Grinder, is what makes them such an oppressive unit.


Soul Grinders:

Soul Grinders in my opinion, are your best unit. This isn’t because they are especially good at anything. Their melee stats are middling, they don’t hit very hard for a monster, and they aren’t all that tough. So why?

Well, their main selling point is their ranged attack. They shoot a volley of three shots with each shot being a magical attack dealing 100 damage, of which 70 is armour piercing. Because it is a volley, the shots disperse over a large area, and a single Soul Grinder is very effective against large groups of infantry or archers. Their range is 360 meters, making them essentially short-ranged artillery in a faction with very few ranged options. They remind me a bit of the Dwarfen flame cannon in how they operate, but unlike the flame cannon, there is more. For one, the Soul Grinder is fast for a Nurgle unit, with a speed of 75 – Easily the highest speed in the roster aside from flyers. Their shooting animation is also pretty spry, and with micro, it becomes possible to shoot, quickly scuttle to a new position and shoot again. If the opponent doesn’t have any high-speed options or artillery, there is very little they can do to contest you.

But say they do catch you? Well, as I mentioned above, the Soul Grinder isn’t especially good for a monster, but it is still a monster. Soul Grinders have decent attack animations and hit a wide area, plus they come with 90 armour, which is unusual for Nurgle. If you try to run them down with light cavalry, your light cavalry is going to lose that engagement.

All taken together, this makes for a unit with a very wide range of utility. The main role of the Soul Grinder is light artillery, but they are manoeuvrable enough to kite and reposition as the situation demands, and capable enough in melee to permit them to huddle in your moshpit along with the other monsters, if scuttling around on the flanks becomes too hazardous for them.

Perhaps most importantly, while Soul Grinders are expensive they are not as hard-hit by Nurgle’s recruitment system. Soul Grinders are available from the Rancid Aloe line of building, which unusually makes them available for recruitment from minor settlement at tier 3. The cycling time is still 21 turns, but you have more options available to you for lowering cycling time than otherwise because the rancid aloe is a basic military building. As soon as you have a few provinces under control, you will start to see Soul Grinders in your recruitment pool quite often, and that makes them the workhorse of Nurgle armies. You just can’t beat their versatility.


Beast of Nurgle:

Beasts of Nurgle are great. They are very sturdy, and you will use them a lot in your moshpit before you get GUOs. Slime trail, cloud of flies and regeneration makes them very difficult to shift, and I honestly have very little bad to say about them. They won't kill anything by themselves, and their actual offensive stats are abysmal. However, put a few of them in your army, and they function like tanks for your other troops, forcing the opponent to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort in killing them, while often dealing more damage than one would expect for them. Beasts of Nurgle are a lynchpin-unit in the early-game Nurgle army, and you will likely lean heavily on them, since with the exception of Ku'Gath, they are the unit in your roster with the most synergy with your intended playstyle. Beasts alone won't win the battle for you, but you won't win the battle without them, at lest until GUOs become available.

Flyers

Rot Flies/Plague Drones/Plague Drones (Death’s Heads)

Rot Flies in any incarnation, are unfortunately not a very good unit. And it really has nothing to do with the unit itself. You look at this unit, and you can clearly see how it is intended to work. The problem is that flying cavalry is not very good in Total Warhammer 3, with no exceptions that I know of. The Charge is janky, and when they connect, often one or two entities will get stuck in the enemy formation. Then the whole unit cohesion comes apart, and you cannot retreat the unit, because in order to maintain cohesion, it has to come back to the entities that are now stuck. And, the they lose their charge bonus over time, then they lose the battle, and then because they are daemons, they crumble, and they die. It is a complete waste of your time.

But, with that out of the way, Rot Flies are occasionally good in very specific circumstances. If you are hunting single characters or monsters, they can do decent work. If you are trying to contest the air, they are fine. You won't beat the High Elves or Bretonnia, but you'll generally be okay. But are they worth bringing over most other units? No.

Plague Drones with Death's Heads are not an exception to this, in no small part because they are very expensive. But it is worth mentioning that their ranged attack is quite powerful, and if you are facing an opponent who cannot contest them, they can take a lot of health off large single entities through shooting at close range. This is a very niche situation, but it makes the plague drones you start your campaign with worth keeping, specifically because you can use them to bully Helman Ghorst when you have to fight him.


Furies of Nurgle:

Furies of Nurgle are not a very good unit, but they can be useful. They are fast, which is a rare thing to find in the Nurgle roster. They have decent MA, and the damage they deal is magical damage, poison and AP so you can use them to take chips off almost anything and have some success. If you have 4-ish units of them, they make for an effective goon squad for smashing archers, artillery, and really anything that can't fight back very well. This trait also makes them decent for chasing down routing units. They are fliers though, so their janky pathing really hurts them there, and if you really want to chase enemies off the map warhounds will serve you better. They are also one of Nurgle's few early-game counters to towers, and Furies generally do a better job at taking towers down than Rot Flies, mostly due to the higher number of entities.

So the bad then? Three things. Low defense, low Leadership, and Daemonic. As soon as they encounter anything that fights back, they are gone. And because they are Daemons, gone means dead. I cannot overstate how often I have looked away for a few seconds, and my furies have just vanished off the roster. Once, they crumbled because they ate a single volley of skink javelins, and that was that. Don't bring them if you are planning to actually fight. They are very specialized, and not a very good unit in a conventional engagement.

Cavalry

Plague Toads/Pox Riders

I struggle with finding a good use for these. They fill an unfortunate role between slow cavalry and monstrous infantry. But, they aren't all bad, and if you are facing pure infantry, you can usually have them hop around near their flank and use them to draw units away from the main battle, because the AI commits units to catching them, which they obviously won't.

In battle, they fight like monstrous infantry, and do their best work surrounded by your other units that can take the damage for them. Their animations are very unhelpful, and seem designed to break formations up. This has some utility for some factions, but Nurgle isn't one of these factions. You want your opponent clustered together as tightly as possible, and Plague Toads don't help with that. Their models are amazing though, and it really hurts me in the soul that I cannot find a good reason to use them more.


Warhounds:

Warhounds are good, but don't be fooled into thinking they can fight. Like Furies, Warhounds exist to chase down enemy units after they rout. They are very good at this, and the poison helps them. Unlike furies, they also don't suffer from pathing issues, so unless you are facing towers, I will recommend these over furies every time. Notably they also run away instead of crumbling when their leadership breaks. This is actually very helpful, because their innately low leadership means that as soon as they encounter something that can fight, they will run. Then they rally later, and you can come back for another go.

It is usually worth having one or two units of warhounds in an army early game. You will almost always find something for them to annoy or chase down. Later on, you will need the space for more powerful units, but that just means that they have a very firm early-game niche. Good, solid unit for what they are. Cheap too, which never hurts.

Infantry

Nurglings:

Nurglings are great. I love them. But they are not a very good unit. Which isn’t to say that they aren’t a good unit for what they are, that being tier 0 disposable infantry.

You will be using Nurglings a lot in the early game. It won’t be great, but it also won’t be terrible. They come with vanguard deployment, cloud of flies, magical attacks, 20% physical resistance, poison and a speed of 34, which is faster than the rest of your infantry. Nurglings have an advantage in that they are sort of semi-monstrous infantry. They have 140 health per model, but fewer entities per unit (60 entities on ultra), which means that they can endure a bit more punishment from AoE-attacks than normal infantry. You will be using them a lot in your early-game moshpit because Ku’Gath buffs them quite a bit, and his early-game army tends to be himself, his starting units, as many heroes as you can get your hands on, and other than that? Nurglings.

So what is the problem with Nurglings? Well, in brief, they have bad stats. 24 melee attack and defense won’t keep them alive for long, and while they will almost always damage what they fight (magical attacks and all), they struggle with the killing part. They do an admirable job holding the line, and their high HP helps them here, but 24 melee defense means that they will take a lot of hits, and 0 armour means that they take a lot of damage, and their leadership of 50 means that they will run away fast-

Well no, they won’t. Because Nurglings are Daemons, and that means that when they break, they crumble. This is a major problem for Nurgle infantry in general, in that they will hold until their leadership buckles, and then they die.

This ties into another problem with Nurglings, and that problem is Ku’Gath. Ku’Gath buffs Nurglings by quite a bit, and in Ku’Gath’s army, Nurglings become better. They are still not quality infantry, and truthfully, they aren’t meant to be. The problem is that all of Ku’Gath’s buffs only applies to Ku’Gath’s army. And that means that all your other Lords, and all of your garrisons, will be stuck with basic Nurglings. And those Nurglings are terrible. They synergize well with Ku’Gath, but if you take away their big daddy, they have a hard life, and I cannot recommend them for anything else than Ku’Gath’s army. With that being said, you will also want to move away from them in the mid-game on Ku’Gath, because even if he buffs them, they are still Nurglings. And you will want to start recruiting Great Unclean Ones and Soul Grinders by then.

With that all said, Nurglings are still not a bad unit. Their versatility and low price tag means that you will almost always want them in your early game army, just to have more bodies to throw at the enemy. And also because the rest of your early-game options as Nurgle are worse. Not ideal, but you can usually do worse than Nurglings, and it is one of the few units you have, where you will very rarely not have any in your summoning pool.


Plaguebearers/Exalted Plaguebearers:

Plaguebearers are Nurgle’s line infantry. They are slow, capable melee fighters with 30 melee attack, 32 melee defense and a speed of 27. Their intended function is as lineholders, and Nurgle gets a few technologies to help them out in this role.

My problem with them is that they are melee infantry in a monster army. Nurgle’s magic doesn’t synergize with them very well, and they suffer from the usual problems that plague (hah!) melee infantry, in that they are slow, and very vulnerable to AoE-damage. This isn’t a trait unique to plaguebearers, and for what they are, Plaguebearers are decent enough melee infantry. Someone smarter than me could tell you whether they are cost-effective against saurus warriors or bloodletters, but I suspect that Bloodletters tear right through them, which is... Okay, that is not a fair comparison, Bloodletters tear through almost anything.

Plaguebearers get attritted badly in extended combat and you have no way to regain lost models for them aside from replenishment over the end turn. This is a problem they share with Nurglings, but Nurglings have an easier life because Nurgling are cheap and have higher health per entity. Plaguebearers and Exalted Plaguebearers are very expensive units in a faction that often struggles with economy, so it becomes difficult to make a case for them when you can accomplish most of what they can do with a far cheaper unit. It also really doesn't help that they have a huge health pool, but no armour and no shields. Any sort of ranged unit will whittle away their admittedly very big HP pool at an alarming rate, and they have a hard time doing anything worthwhile outside of very specific engagements. They would benefit hugely from a shield or some sort of armour, even if I will freely admit that the idea of a Plaguebearer using a shield seems a little comical.

Exalted Plaguebearers are identical to Plaguebearers, aside from better stats and a ranged attack. They fulfil the same role and suffer from the same limitations. Of note is their ranged attack, which is quite powerful but has an unfortunate propensity for friendly fire. It isn’t bad as such, but you will want to change their stance to melee before each fight, or they will just stand and fling green goo at the opponent instead of getting stuck in. Their range is also quite low, so it is more of a gap-closer and less of a genuine ranged option. It can however be quite useful if you have an enemy large target near your frontline, as they will all shoot it, and the large number of high-AP magical attacks will whittle single entities down very quickly. Aside from this ranged attack, they also have the distinction of having 49 effective melee defence, which is quite good for line infantry. No armour though, so they somehow still manage to be squishy. A very frustrating unit to use.


Chaos Spawn of Nurgle

Chaos Spawn of Nurgle are monstrous infantry, and are sort of your basic monstrous infantry for Chaos if you can't get trolls. They do their best work when supported by regular infantry, be that Nurglings or Plaguebearers. They are also hilariously squishy (not a Daemon, so no 20% physical resistance), and unbreakable is a double-edged sword, because it lowers their survivability in exchange for them dealing more damage to the enemy. At least they don't crumble. Arrows will also take them down very quickly, so do bear that in mind.

I don't often use Chaos Spawn, but this is also in part because I don't often use a lot of infantry, which is something these guys really need to screen them. I suspect that they are just fine stuck into a blob of Nurglings or Plaguebearers, which is something I don't use often. But if one chooses to do so, the synergy is there.

Mere mortals

I am probably the wrong person to give any advice regarding mortal units for Ku'Gath. Be they Forsaken, Chaos Warriors, Marauders or what have you, I have never really used them much. I suspect that if you want to focus on mortal units as Nurgle, you really should just play as Festus, since he buffs them a lot more. For Ku'Gath, it feels like it is all the unit types you will want to avoid, namely infantry and cavalry. I suspect that Chosen of Nurgle are a better unit than Exalted Plaguebearers, due to the silver shields and higher armour, but I've already mentioned why I am not a big fan of infantry on Ku'Gath. And unlike Exalted Plaguebearers, Chosen has no way to lower their cost for Ku'Gath, so you end up paying nearly as much upkeep for them as you would for a Soul Grinder. And I cannot think of any reason where you wouldn't want a Soul Grinder instead of Chosen. The Warshrines are cool, but... You get those anyway, because the Cultist of Nurgle rides one.

With all that being said, I suspect that I sleep on the mortal units. I would be very curious to hear if anyone has had better results using mortals in Ku'Gath's army. I suspect that Forsaken work quite well stuck in with Nurglings, because you can use the Nurglings to absorb damage for them. If so, that is a strategy that I have been sleeping on, and Forsaken are just a really cool unit in general, so I almost feel bad for not using them, even if the idea of Forsaken of Nurgle strikes me as a bit odd. Nurgle loves all of his children, after all! In the same vein, I'd love to see something like a full army of Marauder Horsemen with throwing axes... But I don't see it working well for Nurgle. His faction just doesn't help them at all.

Starting position

I have little to say on your starting position. The Dragon Isles is one of the richer provinces in the game, but they synergize terribly with Nurgle, because plagues cannot spread over the water between the islands. Furthermore, your first major enemy is Helman Ghorst, who gives you a defeat trait that you cannot use. Your neighbours aren't great, but you are close to Cathay, and if you can take even the southern part of Cathay, you are in a very safe position from where to continue your campaign. Only bad things are to your west, south and north, so I cannot recommend going that way, unless you want to paint the map.

Regarding fighting Ghorst, smarter people than I have made extensive guides on this. My go-to guide would be RadiantAsh over on YouTube, who plays Ku'Gath extensively, and knows the in and outs of the Ku'Gath-Ghorst matchup like the back of their hand. Alternatively, both Legend of TotalWar and MercyTheMad have recently posted guides on how to fight Ghorst as Ku'Gath. Both are excellent, and I have nothing to add to them that wouldn't sound like repetition. I shall instead link to their respective videos below.

RadiantAsh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c3Ujm_khGQ

MercyTheMad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIEHdyZ7Lxo

Legend of TotalWar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2uZyun_NtI


With that in mind, I will mention that patch 3.0.0 added an alternative for Nurgle enjoyers who do not wish to fight Ghorst. Namely the sea lane between the Mouth of Ruin and the Frozen Sea. If you destroy the initial enemy army and recruit all the units you want from your summoning pool (Nurglings and the Beast of Nurgle for me), you can be out at sea by turn 2, and will be able to conquer Karak Vlag or Tribeslaughter by turn 10. At this point, your starting position looks very different, with Archaon to your north, Astragoth to your south, and with Skaven Clan Ferrik as your initial enemy faction. Whether you consider this an easier or harder starting position is up to you, but at least you won't be fighting Lizardmen, Vampire Counts or Tomb Kings for a good long while. You can also make a little bit of money by selling wars to factions you encounter, since the odds of them actually coming all the way over to fight you are very low. I haven't played very far with such a setup, but my guess is that you would want to befriend Astragoth. You probably won't be able to avoid war with Archaon, which is not an easy prospect, but if you enjoy the challenge, he is at least a bit more fun to fight than Ghorst.

Faction suggestions

This is probably the wrong place to put this, but having played Nurgle a bit, I have a few suggestions for improving or changing the faction. I am not a game designer, so I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement any of these, but I felt that they bear mentioning regardless, at the tail end of this guide.

1) This is pretty broken, but this is also a single-player game, so I really don't care that much about balance in that context. I think Nurglings should not be a unit you recruit. Rather, each Nurgle army should have a second army stack, similar to Greenskin armies during WAAAGH. This stack would be entirely composed of Nurglings, and the size of the stack would depend on nurgle corruption (you get 1 Nurgling for every 5 corruption in the province at the start of the turn) and parent stack size (You cannot have more nurglings in the army than you have in the parent stack). If you move outside areas with high nurgle corruption, your Nurglings will take attrition down to the corruption level present (At 20% corruption, the nurglings will attrit down to 20% unit strength). If you go back into areas with high Nurgle corruption, your nurglings will replenish. You could probably put some technologies in there as well, both for buffing the nurglings, for deciding how fast you get them, how quickly they attrit... There are options. In similar vein, Nurgle's garrisons could be buffed by keeping them at the same small size, but giving them a substack of Nurglings as well. Then you get nurglings in your garrison, and the nurglings can be awful without the whole garrison being awful - It seems pretty logical. My main point is that I feel that Nurglings are such a cool little unit, but they aren't very good, and they also don't really fulfil the role they have in the lore, where Nurglings sort of just happen as a consequence of Nurgle corruption. Nurgle's followers are infested by Nurglings, who live on them and inside them, and having them sort of just passively gather around Chaos warbands and forming this diseased sheet of briggly little monsters is just something I'd like to see more of. Preferably with them being completely expendable.

2) Inform the player of the Plague spread limit of 4, and then lock spread limit increases behind technologies. It could be a very cool capstone-technology to have plague spread limit removed, similar to how one of the final technologies in Tzeentch's tech tree removes the WoM cost for teleport stance. At this point, the player will also be consolidated enough that plagues spreading across the world and granting vision won't brick your campaign from being at war with everyone. Maybe. It also seems logical that plagues should be able to spread across water, since they historically (an odd argument to bring into Warhammer) spread a great deal through maritime trade. You could even have them spread through trade, but that might be overdoing it. Plagues are already pretty awful to play against.

3) Give Ghorst a defeat trait that the player can use. Fighting him is unavoidable if you don't migrate, and having to saddle your lord with a defeat trait that gives poison damage when you already have it, seems a bit spiteful. One could alter Ghorst's defeat trait to granting something similar to that "Touch of Corruption" ability that Morghur has, or allow poison to stack with itself, or... Anything really. The current version just doesn't feel good.

4) Give Nurgle some more landmarks. Currently, Nurgle only has a single landmark in Pigbarter (Which is fair, since Pigbarter is the greatest city in the world...), that gives regeneration to Rot Flies, and only Rot Flies. It would be nice to see a few more unique buildings for Nurgle in the Chaos Wastes, or perhaps a unique landmark in Karaz-a-Karak as a nod to Ku'Gath's hatred of the Dawi.

Finally

Thank you, dear reader, for reading or skimming through this. I am grateful for your time, and hope that you have encountered some information that was useful or at least entertaining to you. If you have had any different experiences playing Nurgle, I would be very curious to hear of them. I am quite fond of the faction, and I find that most of the faction mechanics that don't necessarily make the faction strong (The summoning, the cyclical buildings), do at least make the faction very interesting to play. I am not certain if Nurgle is my own favourite faction, but they strike me as a very unique faction in design and execution, and this I feel, is something that TW3 could do with more of.

Thank you for your time, and happy gaming!

[SqkaStxppvh]

armor sundering of the Nurgle Cultist on horseback when you run out of exalted hero cap makes him a good synergy with horse mounted Exalted Heroes especially if chained with the toxic trooper trait and the soulblight spell from lore of death, -30+-30+-10 armor debuff for each toxic trooper trait. Makes your melee damage go up a lot. also recommend bringing shields and knights with nurgles rot against dark elves because of darkshards, and spawns mixed in to prevent cold one/shock cav cycle charge abuse vs your unbraced warriors. rest of this guide is pretty spot on from what I remember. especially agree on daemon prince animations and having him be part of a flying goonsquad with plagueriddens on drones too, casting miasma of pestilence for dirt cheap as they rip apart dragons debuffed to 0 armor and end the battle fully healed is pretty fun and super efficient

[Aztec Dubstep]

I liked this guide. Happy your passionate for the Grandfather. Hope u get everything u want this patch.