As it stands, Nurgle is currently the only Chaos God with any kind of representation on the Blood Bowl field, which is a shame if you ask me as I’d love to see the other three in the game (although we did get a Khorne team in Blood Bowl 1, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since!)

However, if you want a team that controls the pitch and loves to frustrate and slows down their opponents, it’s hard to go wrong with the Nurgle team. They’ve got a fun mix of units with their Bloaters who can take hits and deal it straight back out, then the slightly faster Pestigors act as ball carriers and blitzers. The Rotters are then cheap markers who are surprisingly resilient, at least until they get injured, but no matter as they’re easy to replace with gold or by killing your opponent’s players. Then there’s the best big guy in the game (entirely subjective here, please don’t shout at me!) in the Rotspawn, previously known as the Beast of Nurgle. The reason he’s the best is that it has some hilarious lore (he’s just a big, decaying puppy who wants to give you a lethal hug!) and that you don’t actually have to activate him to be useful thanks to Tentacles.

As per most of the teams in Blood Bowl 2, there have been some cost changes to this team as well, which I’ll go through here instead of in the builds:

Rotters are down 5k
Pesitgors are down 5k
Bloaters are up 5k
Rotspawn is the same

So with that info out of the way, let’s get into the Nurgle Starting Rosters!

Nurgle’s Rot Rot Rot!, 2 ReRolls | TV1000 Nurgle Starting Rosters:

This would be the Nurgle Starting Roster than I would personally start with. This gives you a good base of 11 players, plenty of Rotters to throw into the fight while the Bloaters create space and your Pestigor does most of your ball handling. There’s also a Dedicated fan added to bring you up the the full 1000k giving you some assistance in gold generation for your first few games.

All four Bloaters are essential in my book, as it gets you the Foul Appearance and Disturbing Presence you need to control the pitch, plus as they’re pretty slow to level up getting them, to begin with, maximises their chances of getting SPP over the course of a season. You’ve then got the single Pesitgor to do you ball carrying and really he’s going to be the one scoring with the only MV6 and AG3+ on the team.

Of course, you also start with the Rostpaw, he’s too glorious not to! Importantly he’s the anchor of your team and gives you those ever so useful Tentacles at the beginning. Stick him next to a couple of Strength 3 Elves and watch them cry as they can’t break free.

Only 2 ReRolls is pretty low considering you have no Block, Sure Hands or Dodge from the start, so you’ll need to play carefully and consider when and when not to use them. Avoid Rushes in the first lot of games unless you absolutely have to make them. Honestly, this is why the Rotspawn is so good because he doesn’t actually need to make an action to be useful, meaning it’s less likely he’s going to fail something and thus your ReRolls can be used elsewhere (not that you should be using them on him anyway with Loner 4+). Going forward you’ll want to try and get the 3rd as soon as you can but it might take a while as Nurgle ReRolls are expensive, so expensive that you could buy 4 Rotters for the same price!

If you’re single Pestigor dies before then, you’ll need to replace him. It may be tempting to grab him before the ReRoll as well and it won’t take too long to do so as he’s not too costly. The issue is Nurgle don’t score much so you’re probably only going to be getting 10k from Touchdowns most of the time, making the journey a lot longer compared to other teams.

Rot in Peace, 3 ReRolls | TV1000 Nurgle Starting Rosters:

For those that want a little bit more reliability with the 3rd ReRoll, this might be the Nurgle Starting roster for you! It does mean dropping the Rotpsawn (Boooo!) but with the new prices, you can fit a second Pesitgor into this list which does make it very tempting!

Having both Pestigors to start with and 3 ReRolls suddenly makes for a slightly more offensive threatening team in comparison to the previous build. I’d maybe be tempted to take this if there are some fast teams like Elves or Skaven knocking around, as you still have the Disturbing Presence to stop the passing and you’ll have 2 lots of MV6 who can react and reposition much better than your Rotters ever could. No Tentacles obviously is a shame but a good coach will be aiming to avoid those anyway, so having some slightly faster players on the pitch could be critical. It also means that you’ll be levelling up 2 Pesitgors from the beginning as opposed to one, giving you a bit more flexibility as you get through the league.

The Rotspawn is cheaper to buy anyway in comparison to a ReRoll later down the line, so you’ll be getting him sooner rather than later anyway, from there you can choose if you need more Pestigors.

Nurgle Starting Rosters, Conclusion:

We’ve made it to the end! 2020 has been the year of Nurgles Rot so it may be tempting to take this team on your next Blood Bowl adventure if you’re feeling particularly meta right now. They’re a bit challenging for a newer player with their poor ball handling and very few starting skills but in the right hands and after a few level ups they can be very difficult to beat. One of our Season 3 Nurgle teams actually managed a Casualty per game rate of 3.1, which a total 129 Casualties caused in their history!

You’re not going to be scoring much but you’re also great at preventing touchdowns yourselves, particularly against those pesky throwing teams. Honestly, Nurgle could be great in this new edition with the Passing changes shaking things up a bit, it’ll be worth keeping an eye on them for sure. They also have some disgusting minis if you’re a tabletop player…. disgusting being a compliment in Nurgle’s eyes!

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this look at the Nurgle Starting Rosters, we’re nearly done with our 2020 guides, so check them out, if you haven’t already. This marks the completion of all the teams we know about in Blood Bowl 3 (at the time of writing) as well!