Excellence in Pestilence: The Guide to Winning with the Plague Legion

There is a cool storyline in the book Lords Of Silence about a Guardsmen being captured by a Death Guard warband. At first, he resists their maladies, and his heart is full of vigor for the Emperor and hatred for the traitors. Honestly, good for him.

And then, over time, a funny thing happens. As Nurgle’s Rot begins to set in, he starts going from anger, to despair, and eventually acceptance. His body begins to change. More importantly, his mind begins to change. By the end of the novel, he’s being pushed into battle by the Death Guard as a Poxwalker. He went from a flawed human to with a fragile body and heart, to a beautiful carrier of Nurgle’s many gifts. What more could anyone in the 40K timeline want out of life?

The Plague Legion was the last Daemons detachment from Grotmas that I played. I played around 5-10 games with the other Grotmas detachments before my first game with the Plague Legion. And then I finally played a game with the Plague Legion, and it was… okay. I went back to not playing it for a while.

And then for some reason, a while ago I decided to give the Plague Legion another shot. And to my genuine surprise, now that Nurgle’s Rot had been given some time to fester in my heart, I was absolutely hooked. I just kept playing the Plague Legion over and over. I’ve now won my last 5 games with Plague Legion and I literally don’t want to play anything else. I don’t even really care about winning or losing with it, because every game has been aso much fun (although the readers probably care if it actually wins games!). It’s just a really interesting way to play the game, and as soon as you give it a shot you’ll be hooked too.

Nurgle, you win. I’m finally here. It’s time for me to start spreading your gifts. Let’s get this party started.

Welcome to the official Warphammer guide to playing the Plague Legion.

How to Win With Nurgle

Here is the complete seven step plan for winning with the Plague Legion:

1. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points
2. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points
3. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points
4. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points
5. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points
6. REMIND YOUR OPPONENT THAT YOU ARE AN ANCIENT ELDRITCH HORROR AND UNLEASH DEVASTATION UPON THEIR MINDS AND BODIES WHEN THEY TRY TO STOP YOU FROM FARMING POINTS
7. Feel the warmth of our Grandfather’s love while you gently farm points

It’s a simple life, but a good life. The Plague Legion has one of the closest ties between fluff and gameplay of any 40K army. You basically castle up and start creating Nurgle’s Garden on the battlefield, and then prepare to repel any invaders into our Grandfather’s realm. As they push into your garden, their morale falters, and they give up and let you keep farming points.

Nurgle Daemons are a board control/points denial army. What elevates them to the next level are the ability to spam Battleshock tests, and the ability to stack offensive buffs and switch from passive to very deadly if your opponent tries to get aggressive.

How to Deploy

Your army is a wide toolbox and every game is different, but there are a lot of similarities between games. Usually, you’ll send 2 or 3 Plaguebearer units out to get the game going, scoring points and capping objectives. Stretch these units to max coherency to screen and moveblock as much as possible. Stick your units within range of your Droning Shroud GUO, and have your Sloppity Bilepiper with Cankerblight safe but providing aura coverage to where they want to charge. Position your Sloppity Bilepiper with Cankerblight and Daemon Prince with Wings somewhere towards the middle of the board, because they’re two of your key pieces and you want to be able to push them to either flank as the game progresses. Don’t be afraid to position your GUO with Droning Shroud in an open alley but slightly back off the line to keep him safe. You don’t want to spend CP to move him through terrain on your first turn, because you’ll need that CP for Murkblight to zoom a Plaguebearer unit where they need to go.

From there, your opponent has a choice. They can try to do nothing, they can try to skirmish with you, or they can push aggressively. If they do nothing, you win. You’ll start stickying objectives and pushing your high OC onto their objectives. If they skirmish, you win. Plaguebearers can win fights with skirmishers, they’re too durable for chip damage to kill, and you can spam Battleshock tests so their contest plays are very sketchy. If they push aggressively, you can blunt their damage and then countercharge very hard, meaning you win. Obviously it’s not that simple in practice, but more showing that the Plague Legion can be comfortable playing at several different tempos.

On that note, let me give you the single most important tip I can give Plague Legion players: Do not start too much stuff in deepstrike. Do not start your War Dogs off the board. I don’t even start Rotigus off of the board in half of my games if I think there is even a chance my opponent will push into me. I’ll give you a quick rule of thumb to use when deciding how much to deepstrike as the Plague Legion:

• Never deepstrike more than 500 points.
• If you’re thinking about deepstriking more than 250 points, stop and think very hard about how the early turns of the game will go.
• If you’re deepstriking literally 0 points, find either a Plaguebearer or Plague Drone or Beast Of Nurgle unit and stick them in deepstrike just to keep your opponent’s backfield honest. You want their resources staying back, not invading your garden.

Getting The Most Out of Battleshock

For those unfamiliar with the Plague Legion, their detachment rule lets them pick an enemy unit within 9″ of a Nurgle Daemon in each player’s Command Phase. That unit has to take a Battleshock test. Because all Nurgle Daemons give 9″ Shadow Of Chaos auras in Plague Legion, they subtract -1 from the Battleshock test and the opponent takes d3 MW if they fail. Plague Legion also has the stratagem Plague Of Woes to make your opponent take an additional Battleshock test in their Command Phase. That means you’re guaranteed to force your opponent to take 3 Battleshock tests a Battle Round, assuming your armies are close enough together.

This rule doesn’t sound great on paper. In practice, it is really effective. If you get creative, there are so many applications. Here is a long, but not exhaustive, list of ways I like to use Battleshock tests in Plague Legion:

• Force Desperate Escape tests from enemies that want to fall back
  • Very good versus units like a Calgar brick that want to Fall Back/Shoot/Charge every turn.
• Get a free Storm Hostile Objective
  • It’s really fun to draw Secure No Man’s Land and Storm Hostile Objective, and max them both in your Command Phase.
• Deny their Primary
  • Making them OC in their Command Phase to deny them Primary is the most boring application, but still very effective
• Turn off defensive stratagems
  • Preventing a unit from using stratagems to heroically intervene, interrupt in melee, reactively move, fire overwatch, or blunt your damage is great
• Turn off offensive stratagems
• Finish off wounded units to get around not being able to Fall Back and Shoot/Charge
  • If you were in combat with an opponent and they have 3 or fewer wounds left, make them take a Battleshock test to try to inflict mortal wounds and get yourself out of combat.
• Farm model kills with Cankerblight

Forcing a Battleshock test in your opponent’s turn is quite valuable because their unit is Battleshocked through both player’s turns, which makes your life much easier.

Keep in mind that the Plague Legion Battleshocks are not in the Battleshock step of the Command Phase, so your opponent can’t use Insane Bravery to autopass versus them. I promise you that most of your opponents are going to try this, so (gently) don’t let them.

Additional Ways to Force Battleshock Tests

There are additional ways to force Battleshock tests in Plague Legion lists. There are diminishing returns on these, so be careful going too far down this rabbit hole.

The best option is a Sloppity Bilepiper. At the start of each Fight Phase, he forces all enemy units within 6″ (besides Monsters/Vehicles) to take a Battleshock test. This is just a wild ability when you considerhow impactful Battleshock tests can be, and that most similar abilities in the game require you to pick a single unit to take a Battleshock test.

In a melee matchup, where the board can get really messy, your Sloppity can easily force 5+ Battleshock tests a battle round. If your Sloppity is holding Cankerblight, that’s a steady stream of slain models. In a recent game versus Orks (played by a GT winning Ork player), my Sloppity Bilepiper with Cankerblight slayed a Warboss, Makari, and Ghaz. That was in addition to 4 or 5 other models that were slain. Nurgle was hungry, and nothing tastes better than sentient fungus.

The best part is that the Sloppity’s ability can be triggered while doing actions. I played a game versus World Eaters where I drew Area Denial/Locus. My Plaguebearer unit with the Cankerblight Sloppity used Murkblight to move 11″ forward, score both secondaries, and then killed 2 Eightbound models from units that were staging behind a midfield wall. The fact that Sloppity Bilepipers are “indirect fire” that works while doing actions is just nuts.

The Fever Vision stratagem to force a Battleshock test after an enemy unit is attacked is great value too.

You Do NOT Want to Just Be Battleshock: The Army

You’re a very weird 40K army, but you are still a 40K army. Do not just lean all-in on Battleshocks and bringing 3 Sloppity Bilepipers, 3 Poxbringers, and 3 Skull Cannons, and 3 Changecasters to force additional battleshock tests.

The most important thing is to not slip below the line where your opponent can say, “Oh wait, this Nurgle list has no damage, we’re just going to rush all of our damage dealers forward and try to table them”. I’ve tried writing lists that bring other Daemon sources of Battleshock like Skull Cannons and Changecasters, and found that I very quickly slipped below that line.

Sloppity Bilepiper

I already said everything I wanted to say about him above, so I just wanted to talk about how funny it is that most armies in 40K bring very advanced sci-fi weaponry to battles. We bring a guy playing his pipes. I love Daemons.

Where Does Your Damage Come From?

This is the fundamental question that players of armies like Nurgle Daemons have to ask themselves, so let’s talk about it.

We’re Very Durable

The first thing I want to point out is that Nurgle blunts opponent’s damage well, so it goes both ways. With the Droning Shroud, you’re tricky for shooting armies to interact with. With all of your Battleshock tests and screens and a Sloppity Bilepiper, you’re tricky for melee armies to interact with.

Our profiles are also literally all durable for their points. Take our basic Plaguebearer unit. For 110 points, you get 20 T5 wounds. That’s really good! The fact that they’re T5 and 2 wounds is such an odd damage profile. They’re too durable to chew through with bolters, but too cheap to chew through with anti-tank weapons.

If your opponent has the exact right damage profiles to chew through Plaguebearers (mass 2 damage with medium strength), then keep them by your Great Unclean One for a 6+++ Feel-No-Pain and break the math on 2 damage weapons into your 2 wound unit.

But anyway, to answer the actual question of where our damage comes from, let’s move on.

Our Grandfather’s Buffs Are Beautiful

Here is the list of ways that the Plague Legion can buff their damage output:

• +1 Damage (Rotigus)
• Critical Hits on a 5+ (Stratagem or Leader)
• Lethal Hits nearly across the board, with some options for Sustained Hits (Datasheets or Leaders)
• -1 Toughness to a unit which can stack (Great Unclean One)
• Full wound rerolls for your entire army for a turn versus a target (Plague Drones)
• Battleshock tests to reduce your enemy’s defensive buffs (many sources)
• Battleshock tests to do mortal wounds or remove models (many sources, Cankerblight)
• +1 AP (Font Of Spores)

Plaguebearers with the equivalent of chainswords with Lethal Hits are not scary. Plaguebearers with all of the above buffs are very, very scary. Those buffs reach incredible levels when stacked on datasheets are are innately killy, like Winged Daemon Princes.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room: These buffs can’t be everywhere, and most of them require some level of resources to apply.

This is where the main level of skill expression in Plague Legion comes in. You don’t have high damage everywhere, but you can have extremely high damage anywhere, so you have to have a very good understanding of the matchup and understand how many resources to expend in any given fight. You also want to have redundancies built into your gameplan.

That’s why it is so important to plan out your turn in the Command Phase. Every turn is a new puzzle to solve. Maybe you were going to go with one gameplan, but then a key opponent’s unit on an objective failed their Battleshock test, so now they are more vulnerable so you’re going to move and deliver your damage there. It also works in reverse. Maybe their unit failed their Battleshock test so they are less essential to kill, so you redirect your damage elsewhere.

Using the Enhancements

These enhancements are absolutely incredible. The only downside is that there are 3 elite enhancements, and one okay one, so you end up taking the same exact 3 enhancements in every list.

Font Of Spores (7/7)

Effect: +1 AP to all Nurgle Daemon units within 6″

This is just nuts. It works in every phase. It works on both shooting attacks and melee attacks. It works on every type Nurgle unit. It works on units within 6″, not models within 6″, so it’s easy to apply.

Imagine if you could take this in literally any other army in the game besides Nurgle Daemons! As it is, the Font Of Spores is extremely good, and an essential part of getting your damage output over the line to the point where you can actually punish aggressive opponents.

The great part of putting the Font Of Spores on your Winged Daemon Prince is he can buff his friends early, and then once the board gets messy and he can’t stick around to buff his friends, he’s still just a Daemon Prince with +1 AP on his own attacks.

Droning Shroud (7/7)

Effect: Aura of 18″ Lone Op

The Droning Shroud has excellent synergy with Nurglings and fast Plaguebearers. Look for opportunities to moveblock the places they can place their big guns to keep them outside of 18″ of key units, or conversely look for chances to set up counterchargers versus key shooting units they place within 18″.

Cankerblight (7/7)

Effect: You can tell your opponent to delete a non-Monster/Vehicle model in a unit when it fails Battle-shock instead of inflicting MW

A Sloppity Bilepiper with Cankerblight is the best 70 points you can spend in Daemons. Just start all of your Plague Legion lists with a Sloppity Bilepiper with Cankerblight and fill in the remaining 1930 points from there.

Maggot Maws (4/7)

Effect: An enemy unit in your Shooting Phase has to take a Battleshock test, taking d3 MW on a 3+ if they fail

Maggot Maws is pretty cool, but is the most mediocre option. In theory, it would stack incredibly well with Cankerblight. You can trigger both the d3 MW on a 3+ and the slain model from Cankerblight. In practice, there just is 0 space to stick this. If you really want to bring Maggot Maws, I would stick it on a Winged Daemon Prince to help him counter-charge more effectively.

Using the Stratagems

Seeping Virulence (5/7)

Effect: Critical Hits on a 5+ in melee

This is most effective on a Winged Daemon Prince, who can choose between Sustained Hits and Lethal Hits every time they fight. If you’re set up a go-turn for your Daemon Prince by shooting his charge target first with Plague Drones, pop Seeping Virulence and select Sustained Hits to maximize the amount of dice you’re rolling. I use this 1-2 times per game.

Fever Visions (7/7)

Effect: +1 to Hit and make one enemy you target take a Battleshock test

Our Grandfather is so good to us. We get not only one, but TWO great effects with this stratagem! +1 to Hit is amazing on a Horticulus Slimux and Beasts of Nurgle bomb, as well as on Soul Grinders. The fact you make them take a Battleshock test afterwards is so clutch.

Ready to blow your opponent’s mind? You can trigger this off a Soul Grinder’s indirect fire gun. It’s incredibly fun shooting a hidden unit within 6″ of your Cankerblight holder and forcing them to lose an extra model. I use this 1-3 times per game.

Foetid Resurgence (4/7)

Effect: You can return 1 destroyed model, return d3 detroyed Battleline models, or heal d3+1 wounds to a Monster

Cool effect, but 2CP is just too pricey. You have so many other amazing stratagems in the Plague Legion. I have used this literally 1 time out of ~10 Plague Legion games and might not ever use it again.

That being said, this does have some sauce. You should mainly use this if you’re running Beasts Of Nurgle. If you have a unit of 2 Beasts, the fact that you are guaranteed to heal your entire unit to full health* if they don’t completely wipe them is hilarious. It’s also useful for holding objectives out in the open. Put 1 Plaguebearer model on the point and the other 9 Plaguebearers behind a wall. They’ll shoot your Plaguebearers but often can’t wipe out all 10 models in a single activation so you just pull the visible model and they can’t shoot it with a second unit. In your Command Phase, resurrect a Plaguebearer back onto the point and now you hold the objective.

* For those unfamiliar, Beast models heal to full health at the end of every phase. If you have a unit of 2 Beasts, and you’re down to 1 model with 1 wound at the end of your opponent’s turn, that 1 wound model will heal to full health for free and you can use Foetid Resurgence to resurrect the second model at full health.

Rot And Renewal (6/7)

Effect: A Nurgle unit can move through terrain in your Movement or Charge Phase.

This is pure value on a Winged Daemon Prince or Plague Drones. It can be extremely useful on GUOs or Soul Grinders, but if you’re intending to move them through walls you have to premeasure a turn ahead. They’re so large and move so slowly that unless you’re close to a wall, you might not be able to fit wholly through the wall. I mostly use this if there is a terrain piece partially blocking the movement of my GUO or Soul Grinders and want to move in a straight line instead of paying to move in a zig zag. I use this around once per game.

Murkshadows (7/7)

Effect: A Nurgle Infantry unit adds 5″ to its Movement Characteristic when making a Normal Move.

This stratagem is absolutely wild, and it elevates Plague Legion to the next level. It can only be used on Plaguebearers and their leaders, but simply moving 1 Plaguebearer unit each turn 10″ is very powerful. Keep in mind that this stacks with the Sloppity Bilepiper buff, so that unit moves 11″. I use this 2-3 times every game.

Plague Of Woes (6/7)

Effect: In your opponent’s Command Phase, they have to take an additional Battleshock test on another unit.

This truly feels like spreading plagues, and is really fun (and powerful) to use. I use this 3-4 times every game.

Recommended Units

Winged Daemon Prince: Winged Daemon Princes are the best unit in Plague Legion. I run only one currently, but could easily see myself adding a second because they’re the best carriers of both the Font Of Spores and Droning Shroud. They use their innate mobility to reach opponents your slower units can’t, and hit so much harder than you’d expect with all of the Nurgle synergies available. They’re also weirdly durable with +1 toughness compared to other God’s Daemon Princes. That T9 -> T10 breakpoint might be the best breakpoint in the entire game.

Rotigus: Rotigus is absolutely incredible. His datasheet just provides so much value for 230 points. His Virulent Blessing ability to give your melee attacks +1 Damage versus an enemy unit is a key part of the Nurgle gameplan, and I would never write a Plague Legion list without him.

Plaguebearers: Plaguebearers are your workhorses. They are what makes your whole list function. Their combination of durability per point, high OC, and sticky objectives rule means they are the masters of Primary scoring/denial.

Nurglings: How can you not love our Little Lords? They synergize so well with so much of what this detachment wants to do.

Plague Drones: Plague Drones are the most underrated units in the Nurgle Roster. Giving your entire Nurgle army full wound re-rolls versus a key enemy unit for the entire rest of the turn is pretty nuts.

Soul Grinders: Their guns become very real with +1 AP from Font Of Spores, and their high strength/damage melee helps cover up for some of Nurgle’s innate weaknesses.

War Dogs: War Dogs have three main benefits in the Plague Legion. The first is that they do damage without requiring any additional resources or synergy, which lets your spend your buffs on the units that need it most. The second is that they have high OC, which helps support your gameplan. The third is that they’re fast and operate independently. Nurgle doesn’t really have anything that can push a flank by itself. A War Dog Huntsman can. A War Dog Brigand can. A War Dog Karnivore can. A War Dog Executioner can’t do anything, but that’s not an issue for Nurgle Daemons to solve.

Daemon Damage Dealers Like Shalaxi: You want to punish your opponent for getting too aggressive. A unit like Shalaxi lurking behind a midfield terrain piece or prepared to Rapid Ingress to support a flank is a great way to ask your opponent if they actually want to enter Nurgle’s Garden.

The Blue Scribes: I actually really like the Blue Scribes in a Nurgle list! Their AOE mortal wounds lean into your AOE mortal wound theme, they’re a fast piece to help early scoring, and they actually have an amazing -1 to wound for Psychic weapons aura to blunt armies like Grey Knights or Thousand Sons. They’re not mandatory, but they’re one of my favorite non-Nurgle units to include.

Not Recommend Units

Daemon Princes on Foot: Nurgle is the worst mark for them and I’d rather use any of our synergies or buffs elsewhere.

Too Many GUOs: I like 1 GUO with the Droning Shroud and Rotigus. The issue with running more GUOs than that is you run into movement issues, and you start running out of points for other things you need. They’re just so inept offensively. The first GUO and Rotigus are really good, but you quickly run into diminishing returns.

If you want to run the 4 GUO list (3 GUOs and Rotigus), I recommend playing Daemonic Incursion instead of Plague Legion. That list is really good and really fun, it just fits better with the extra mobility tricks of Daemonic Incursion.

Plaguebearer Leaders (Poxbringers, Spoilpox Scriveners, Epidemius): Keep reading, because they’re actually all good and recommended, just with a lot of caveats.

Seriously, they’re all good! They’re also pretty cheap and effective. Epidemius’s unit hits like an absolute truck. I like all 3 of these datasheets.

I just really, really, really want to caution against bringing too many leaders for your Plaguebearers. They’re a durable unit that racks up points efficiently at 110 points. They’re not a great 165+ point unit, because then your opponent can start efficiently putting damage into them.

If you’re like “I brought 6 units of Plaguebearers, and brought a Sloppity with Cankerblight and Epidemius”, I would think that is a really strong play. If you brought 6 units of Plaguebearers and had more than 2 or 3 leaders total, I’d say you are heading down the wrong path.

Non-Nurgle Battleshock Sources Like Skull Cannons, Changecaster, Knight Abominants, etc: As said in an earlier section, you do not just want to be Battleshock: The Army. Lean into Battleshock, but leave yourself other ways to win the game too.

My Plague Legion List

This is my current Plague Legion list. I’ve won the last 5 games I’ve won with it and have stopped tweaking it. That doesn’t mean I won’t tweak it again in the future, just that I think this list is incredibly strong and where I would recommend starting your own Plague Legion testing if you don’t know where you want to start.

• Rotigus
• Great Unclean One: Flail, Sword, Enhancement: Droning Shroud
• Winged Daemon Prince: Enhancement: Font Of Spores
• Sloppity Bilepiper: Enhancement: Cankerblight
• Plaguebearers
• Plaguebearers
• Plaguebearers
• Plaguebearers
• Plaguebearers
• Plaguebearers
• 6 Nurglings
• 3 Plague Drones
• 3 Plague Drones
• War Dog Huntsman
• War Dog Huntsman

Final Thoughts

Here is the true beauty of Nurgle’s gifts: Nurgle is not flashy like Slaanesh. He doesn’t demand your attention. Grandfather Nurgle knows that all he has to do is wait, keep quietly spreading his gifts, and you will eventually come to him.

If you haven’t played the Plague Legion yet, give it a shot. It’s one of the most unique and interesting ways to play Warhammer that you’ll find in 10th Edition, and will give you new ways to think about game mechanics and grow your skill as a player.

Interested in talking more about the Plague Legion or Chaos armies in general with the most knowledgable and friendly Warhammer community I’ve seen? Come join the Warphammer discord today! https://discord.gg/fx2GwcAT

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!