Warhammer 40K: Feculent Gnarlmaw aka Nurgle’s Nasty Trees… Stink
Goatboy here with a hot mess that just doesn’t work right now in 40K. The Feculent Gnarlmaw really needs some of Grandfather Nurgle’s love.
The Feculent Gnarlmaw was a weird kit that just didn’t quite fit into the 40K universe of things even though I think it could have its place. It is a neat kit, looks cool, and works as a neat display board piece. I think it wouldn’t take much to make it actually cool on the table top. Let’s pull up a stool, put our thinking caps on, and figure out a way this could actually be a much needed model for your army.
It’s frustrating to have models that are kinda neat and unique not do cool things for your team of plastic monsters. It feels like just a waste of space when this could be something cool and different for your army. The idea of a mutated tree just sounds weird and demonic which has me thinking – what if we actually made it useful? What if it became an important piece of your Nurgle Daemon army? What if it was actually good?
What Is the Feculant Gnarlmaw’s Purpose?
First in order to make it good I think we need to think of a way to make a pure Nurgle army work. This means a Detachment at the start full of Nurgle goodness and bonuses. I would probably make it have a few bespoke rules that act kinda like shadows of chaos but instead will call it the Garden Of Nurgle. It would almost work the same but instead of the push and pull with objectives, zones, etc will instead make it become like growing points of the army. Just like seeding the rot out into the world.
With the seeding thoughts we’ll again push the nasty tree in a “garden-style” direction where you could either have a Stratagem based system for “growing a tree”. The Garden character growing a tree. Or just some other method in order to spread your ick all thru the garden that isn’t the tabletop of 40K. I love the idea of creating little bubbles of units that isn’t just making an objective sticky and instead make this zone icky.
What Should the Feculant Gnarlmaw’s Do?
The first is we could set up these Gnawlmaws to do three things. We have it as a bonus option to your Nurgle stuff, a hamper to your enemies non Nurgle stuff, and a way to spread your influence to actually win the game. These are three easy things and we just need to make sure they are good enough to be useful but not broken enough to be a problem. Heck we could tweak it where you choose what kind of “gift” the Garden of Nurgle bestows during a turn and thus not letting things get too stack heavy and instead leave the power and control in the hands of the player.
The easy way to do Bonus to the army is to do something like Bounty of Nurgle. This would do something like +1 to movement, +1 to hit, and +1 to attack to all Nurgle units within an Aura effect of the army. The idea is to push the army into a much more effective punching option and be a powerful choice for your go turn.
The change to the Nurgle’s Rot would be something to hurt the enemy. It could be just as easy as every enemy unit within an aura range of the trees has any weapon hitting them gain an extra Pip of AP to showcase the rotting nature. You could even add in something like the units having a -1 to hit due to the buzzing cloud of flies chanting their name. I like the idea of not just having one benefit but a whole slew of “infections” that you activate to hum thru your army of trees.
Finally you have the Sowing of Nurgle ability to spread your influence in something like you turn off you other benefits in order to “grow” your garden. You can add another Feculant Gnarlmaw or something else into your list and let you pick influence over any kind of actual push into the game. This would give you a whole slew of interesting options to try and help your army out, buy a bunch of gross trees, and make the table top look creepy and cool?
Would these things be too powerful? Would this add too much to the game and a pseudo book keeping? You would make these trees have Wounds and a Toughness so you could “remove” them if they become too much. Is creating free units too powerful even though they can’t move and just stink up the tabletop?
