Are Plague Marines Competetive?

[Panzer]

I don't want anyone to take my post personal... it's not my intent, and I don't normally post from a very personal perspective typically but since this topic is centered around something that very much bothers me about 8th.....

 

 

 

Very true. I think people get confused because they have so many modeling options now "That you must be able to kit them out to handle any situation!"

 

 

 

 

Sadly this is not the case. Their wargear is mostly for a model/narrative enthusiast (which I am!). Putting 2 melta guns on a msu PM squad in a rhino probably does not mean that the unit is going to blow up an enemy predator.

 

I disagree. Inexorable Advance makes them much more dangerous than at first glance. A couple Plague Marines motivated by a noxious Blightbringer can sprint from the mid-field to a target to kill it with special weapons and assault it in the following turn. For example, a minimum sized squad of Plague Marines armed with Blight Launchers and close combat weapons fulfills both roles as a lethal shooting and close combat unit. Support that squad with psychic powers, stratagems, and the Arch Contaminator warlord trait and they become much more dangerous than they appear.

 

I think the point about the Rhino, the 2 D6 highest advance, the options available, etc... are all great points.  Sure Plague Marines can be 'dangerous'.

 

How competitive are we talking here? Let me be 100% honest, I really do love Plague Marines. I enjoy all marines and have a zillion armies to prove it. And my troops are usually excessively tacticals/Plague Marines/Intercessors, etc.

 

But let's say you challenged me to a game, and the loser has his hand cut off. The amount of Plague Marines I'm bringing to that game is zero.

 

This is my current beef with marines in general, and it's a point people like to argue with me all the time. They are not competitive. Not if you are playing strictly to win.

 

The ideas in this thread largely fall along with my own, and I try to be competitive in semi-competitive to competitive environments. And yea, they do alright in those situations.

 

Back to my beef; Obsec isn't enough to validate the tax. Plague Marines are still a tax. Plain and simple. Cheap crap that gets you command points, and bodies, and a massive footprint will win more games given two people of equal play skill.

 

I could pull example after example out, but I'll just use today's 1st and 2nd place winner of Adepticon 2018:

 

Flyrant spam with tons of garbage troops for CP's, psykery, and footprint/area denial.

 

Chaos soupish; Black Poxwalker farm. Abaddon/Ahriman/Typhus + Cultist and Pox spam for... you guessed it, lots of CP's, and a massive footprint of garbage that can grow, or be replaced. 

 

If you go back to LVO's top lists of nearly identical Eldar armies, we can see that although Reapers are a problem in 40K it really still needs Guardian bubbles to work. It's just more of the same.

 

Normally I don't post this personal side of my 40K experiences, but I guess you could say this gets me going because I have been harping on it since the first 10 minutes of 8th edition: Cheap crap and spam is far too potent in our current 40K. I realized this playing 180+ Ork index lists in the opening minutes of 8th edition. 

 

For a minute I thought that GW was on to something with Custodes Bikes whipping around with Hurricane Bolters. I loved it... people complained, but I loved the idea of 6 of these floating around on shield captains.... VERY potent except it doesn't quite work because the spammable units are just insanely high. It doesn't even matter what you do with these clouds of chaff... they simply exist to create barriers and own real estate.... *yarwn*.

 

Where I'm going with my personal rant (and while I recognize this is and has been my personal rant with 8th ed since inception (because it's VERY fixable) I promise I will not bring it up again....is that if you think Plague Marines are excluded from this undeniable 'competitive truth', I really think you're wrong. I think at this point in our journey with 8th, every one can see this plain as day by now.

 

But by 'competitive' if we mean; My buddy is playing with his gamey Genestealer list again.. then yea, Plague Marines can be turned up a notch.

 

That said.... the beauty of 8th is this can change very easily. Codexes used to magic bullet each other all the time. (hence my Custodes comment which didn't come to fruition).

110% agreed. And don't worry, you may feel strongly about it but it's a rather objective observation imo.

 

One of the main problems about the horde/elite balance is imo that the more elite your army is, the more you need to rely on CP but also the more elite your army is, the less CP you have.

On the other side almost all horde benefits are independent of Stratagem usage but they still get tons of CP easily.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's better to give each Datasheet a CP value they add to the army instead of the Detachments. Super elite and expensive units like Deathshrouds could give 2CP while Cultists and Poxwalker give only 0.5CP or something.

[Wolf Lord Loki]

Not a bad suggestion.

 

I think another factor is hoards are mostly point and click.

Under presure in a tournament you dont want to be having to think about lots of little shenanagens that chain up to more than the sum of their parts

 

I mean do you really want to make sure you charge your Lord of contagon and arch contaminator lord at the same time as 2 other units all within seven inches while summoning blades of putrifcation, Nurgles rotting etc etc

Or would you rather just swamp them in enough bodies they wont kill them all before the end of the game?

[BlackTriton]

While we are comparing cultist to Plague Marine, I played some matHammer.

I was looking for a comparison that would account for more than just point killed by cost. Obviously that is not the point of plague marine.

The question is: are plague marine actually tougher than cultist? 

 

There is not way to boil this down to an easy number that covers all possible situation. So what I did is a direct comparison between Plague marine and Cultist in the following scenario: I have 500 points of cultist facing off 500 points of Plague marine, at what rate are they killing each other? 

the answer is : 55.36% for the cultist!

they kill almost twice as many points of plague marine in a turn than they lose from them! this is explained by the cheer number of shot they get. 

Despair not however, although grim, this is not a representative number.  the moral system, simple as it is, allow the plague marine to inflict "bonus" kills for the sake of representation, I will give them 2 bonus kill from desertion for each 10 kill inflicted.

New and better representative number is: 66.44% for the cultist!

I think the moral mechanic currently is lackluster... but there is another mechanic that can help the plague marine win the fight: cover!

Now accounting for both moral AND cover (both unit in cover) we get : 132.87% ! a drastic difference!  finally the plague marine can win a fight, and they win it by being tough to kill, which is fitting. 

 

At that point, since it seems being hard to kill is the only reason to take plague marine over cultist, lets compare popular chaff clearing weapon against them:

 

first the Twin assault canon: I am assuming 60 shots so that using averages gives a better idea.

Out of cover, Plague marine lose 94% points compared to cultist! this is accounting for moral. so about the same, the difference is negligible.

In cover : Plague marine take 76%, apparently S6 with -1 AP is very good at killing troops, but plague marine are capable of handling it way better.

 

Now the Hurricane bolter:

I am still assuming 60 shots:

Out of cover, Plague marine lose only 47% points compared to cultist! 

In cover : Plague marine take 30%. DAMN now were talking. Unsurprisingly, they performed best when facing S4 AP0. 60 shot barely scraches a 5 man PM squad while it wipes out a squad of cultist.

 

CONCLUSION

Plague marine are good at resisting wounds while being bad at inflicting them. They are only ever worth it when they are in cover, taking hit that would wipe out other infantry. there are weapon designed to kill them, however, they should be overloaded with targets.

Tough objective holder, 85 point of plague marine will hold an objective longer than the same points of cultist. but the cultist will deal more damage while they are on the board. 

 

I see a few barrier to plague marine in competitive play: low number means low damage (bolter sucks for a 17Pt model), they are reliant to cover (hard to play) and troops are seen as a tax to unlock more command point.

Still, It could be interesting to see a list aiming at wasting the opponent anti-chaff weaponry since we are in a horde meta there is bound to be a few in any list.

[Prot]

There's a lot of cover denial out there to be fair. I think your math is a good exercise in selling me snowballs (there's still snow on the ground here)! But I appreciate what you're doing.

 

 

I think it's a niche market. Either you're buying into the special rules (Plague Weapons, Blight Launchers, etc) they bring or don't bother. Just have fun with them. It doesn't always have to be about the math.

[Sheesh Mode]

 

CONCLUSION

Plague marine are good at resisting wounds while being bad at inflicting them. They are only ever worth it when they are in cover, taking hit that would wipe out other infantry. there are weapon designed to kill them, however, they should be overloaded with targets.

Tough objective holder, 85 point of plague marine will hold an objective longer than the same points of cultist. but the cultist will deal more damage while they are on the board. 

I came to the same conclusion when I wrote this article for FLG. 

 

The Death Guard, as a codex appear to be built to score objectives and that is it. Therefore the strategies and tactics we use when fielding plague marines should reflect this. So, as has been said before: Plague Marines can be played competitively if they are played appropriately. Which means they are used to assault and hold objectives. Nothing else.

[DuskRaider]

What an unimaginably bleak outlook on the army and game itself . What's the point in playing a Chaos Space Marine army if you're not actually willing to field Space Marines? 

[ashc]

What an unimaginably bleak outlook on the army and game itself . What's the point in playing a Chaos Space Marine army if you're not actually willing to field Space Marines?

Based on some of those 'armies' running at adepticon it is all pretty damn sad at the high competition level.

 

I've been following this topic for a while as I'm a big fan of the basic plague marines, but I'm very aware that their best for holding fast and not much else. It's one of the reasons I haven't thrown myself in to building a melee squad of them, I'm not convinced it's playing to their strengths...

[McElMcNinja]

Call me crazy, but I disagree. I believe they can be and are competitive. I have done very well with them against all kinds of list. I lost to a flyrant army at a tournament, but it was really due to my lack of knowledge on the scoring system. I had taken out 5 of his 6 flyrants and most of his carnifex, I received 3 points for them: slay the warlord and first & last round kills. With the right missions I would have gotten 9 more points. And I wasn't going for objectives, again because I didn't understand the point system.

I have another tournament next month and I don't plan on changing my list. I think it has all the elements to control the board and is very resilient. But I guess we will see.

[BlackTriton]

I was actually very happy to find that Plague marine can win a prolonged fight with most other infantry.

And by win I mean they are more point efficient in the long run.

 

also, I was very shy in calculating moral losses. I included only 2 by 10 model slain, it is better than rolling a 1. In game loses would be 10+ 1d6 -7 ~ 6 moral losses. that would favor the plague marine in every engagement.

for example, the original 55% becomes 137%. no cover, only "average" moral losses. 

in cover this becomes 277% you lose 39 (2-3 model) point of plague marine and kill 109 (+/-25 model) point of cultist.

But moral kicks in only if you start to do real damage. 30 plague marine wipes out squads of cultist at a time wile taking very few casualties from them.

The other upside of plague marine as troops is that they don’t mind so much if you give up first turn. they can take a beating. Cultist are wasted point if they are shot first.

 

I’m stating to wonder if there isn’t more to the large plague marine squads.

The real downside is that Command points are directly linked to troops. In the current system we are incentivised to take as many troop choices as possible, and you can fill your requirement twice as fast with cultist than with plague marine. this is a shame really. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

Call me crazy, but I disagree. I believe they can be and are competitive. I have done very well with them against all kinds of list. I lost to a flyrant army at a tournament, but it was really due to my lack of knowledge on the scoring system. I had taken out 5 of his 6 flyrants and most of his carnifex, I received 3 points for them: slay the warlord and first & last round kills. With the right missions I would have gotten 9 more points. And I wasn't going for objectives, again because I didn't understand the point system.

I have another tournament next month and I don't plan on changing my list. I think it has all the elements to control the board and is very resilient. But I guess we will see.

To be fair man, you placed 20 somethingth? While that's not bad, it's also not good to the point where youre competing against the high end meta lists. Yea the guy had flyrants; he also had csrnifexes. Iirc you also played against a rather un aggressive BA list.

 

To add on, I do believe that plague marines can actually output a very respectable amount of damage and can really catch people off guard. But the problem is that in the apex of competitive is that msu needs to be way more points efficient to be considered viable. Reapers output far more damage against elite units and single targets; shield captain bikes crush chaf, can handle multi wound things with the spear and are literally even more resilient than a squad of plague marines; flyrants also have huge shot and melee potential backed up with psychic powers. I also think a contributing factor is that they all have either extreme speed, the ability to deepstrike or both

[Checkmate77]

Many thanks again to Black Triton for laying out the math, much appreciated.

 

I tend to agree with the overall consensus that while the plague marines damage output is lackluster, they excel in survivability. 

 

I wanted to try out a pure PM troop army which I had a chance to do last Sunday (2000 points vs. Orks)  I took 4x7 PM squads, 3 with BLs and a PG on the Champ, and one geared more for closer range (2xflails, 2xPlague Spewer) in a Rhino with a Blightspawn.

 

***I fully realize this was just a friendly game and not a competitive level***

 

While definitely not the champion of the game, they did exactly what they were supposed to, take and hold objectives while surviving withering enemy fire and close combat.

 

I try to play rather balanced armies (to my detriment I know) so supporting my PMs was the following:

 

HQ:

Demon Prince Warlord (Arch Contaminator) with Suppurating Plate, 2xTalons, and wings

Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor w/Bale Sword and Combi-PL

Malignant Plague Caster

 

Elite: 

Foul Blightspawn

6xBlightlord Termies (4xCombi-Plasma, 1xReaper AC, 1xFlail)   (added with the Termi Lord makes 7  )

 

Fast:

2xMBH

1xDrone with Spewers

 

For Setup:

Rhino w/Close Range PMs and Blightspawn set up together with the Drone

Two units of PMs set up supported by the MBHs, DP, and Caster

3rd Unit of PMs sets up on Objective in cover.

Termies and Termi Lord in Deepstrike

 

The Ork army I was going up against was not the Green Horde I was expecting, but instead a more mobile Army with a majority of the Orks in truks and a squad of Nobz in a Morkanaught.  He also had a squad of Lootas and Tank Burstas as well as a Battlewagon with Battlecannon (?) 

He also had one Squad of 16 Boys and a Weirdboy for Da Jump.  Finally, He had a Big Boss, and a Big Mek on bikes supported by a squad of bikes.

 

While I won't go into an entire blow-by-blow of what happened, some key moments I would like to share.

 

The Blight Lords come in on the first round and eliminate almost the entire squad of Ork Bikers, they then survive the shooting of almost the entire Ork Army (minus the Morkanaught) while taking only a single wound. 

 

Orks manage charges against two of my PM Squads with his Boyz, PMs win both combats while taking no more than 2 losses each.

 

the big one however was a squad of 7 PMs being charged by a Morkanaught (at this point at half strength) and a squad of 6 Nobz and losing only 1 PM to their combined CC attacks.

 

Result: An overwhelming win for DG, All PM squads took damage, but all were still on the board at the end.  Lost one Terminator, the Rhino, and one MBH.  Orks had their Warboss left with one wound, a badly damaged Battlewagon, and a Trukk with 1 wound remaining. 

 

If anyone is interested in a more detailed account of the battle I will post it, but for now I wanted to focus on how the PMs did.

 

Conclusions:

1) Squads of 7 is a good number.  Gives the squad good survivability while not being too cumbersome.  Gives enough ablative wounds to protect the special weapons carriers.

2) Blight Launchers are really good, Blight Launcher augmented by a Warlord with Arch Contaminator are awesome!  In two rounds of shooting 4 Blight Launchers did a total of 10 Wounds to the Morkanaught.

3) No sold on the Close Range squad yet.....the two Spewers made short work of one squad of Orks after the Blightspawn blew up their truck, but that was about it.

4) Flails are awesome, both on regular PM Squads and on Blight lords.  Just having one in a unit greatly improves the damage output of a squad, especially against large number on single wound opponents.

5) As BlackTriton said, PMs in Cover are ridiculously hard to kill with low AP weapons.  Good Armor, T5, and DR go a long, long way.

[Wolf Lord Loki]

Anyone tried something completely outlandish like cc weapons and throwing everyone in transports?

 

Everyone expects cultists and footslogers- anyone tried charging in like a raging fever?

[SkimaskMohawk]

Iirc, for points to damage done, theres just better options. You could just take a detachment of alpha legion beserkers and do a better job at killing stuff

[BlackTriton]

They may do a better job at killing, but plague marine are way better at just standing there exchanging hit for 5 turn ;)

[Panzer]

You don't really want to do that tho. The longer it takes to win a fight the more chances your opponent has to do something about it and the less time you have to actually capture objectives.

[SkimaskMohawk]

They may do a better job at killing, but plague marine are way better at just standing there exchanging hit for 5 turn

Unfortunately a lot of people forget about just falling back. You can't tarpit units any more, so you really just want to obliterate them in one go

[Checkmate77]

PMs should be doing exactly that, soaking up enemy charges so they don't tie up more important units and then holding them for either your CC Characters to counter-charge, or falling back themselves and allowing your shooty units to engage.

 

PMs are unlikely wipe out an enemy unit in CC in one turn, there are even less likely to be whipped out in one turn themselves.

[SkimaskMohawk]

It really depends. Most people don't run junk like assault marines for melee units. Any good lists with melee units are going to be running genestealers, beserkers, a million boys, bike shield captains, a million hive tyrants, etc..

 

Yea plague marines might stand up to orks, but they'll get slammed by the rest. Poxwalkers or cultists are way better screens, because of the dirt cheap price. Which is the whole point, theres always a more competitive choice for a task.

[BlackTriton]

Scenario time!

If I have 5 plague marine (85point) in cover, on an objective you need, how many quad-flyrant do you send?

What if is was 21 cultist? (84 point)?

 

If I remember corectly, they shoot 20 shot at S5 ap-1 each.

So you send 2 of them, to be sure.

 

40 shot will kill 15 cultist, the rest flee due to moral.

Or they maybe kill 3 plague marine. And you still hold the objective.

Then you commit a 3rd one! And in average he kills 1.5 more... cant even say for sure he gets the job done. The cultist are long gone at that point.

 

This is not same job for less points. Its more work from the same point.

There is no efficien way to kill plague marine. They waste enemy fire.

[McElMcNinja]

They would take Cultists, because that just turned into 40 Poxwalkers. So you better send 4 flyrants and hope Mr. Blightspawn isn't near by.

A nice way to fix that would be to say only Infantry squads (starting with 5 or more models) can hold objectives. Then in the case of a contested objective, it goes to the side whose unit(s) current Power Level is higher (not model count).

[SkimaskMohawk]

You forget they have smite, and charge. You don't need to just shoot; smite, possible warp scream (the nid smite) and then Monstrous Rending claws.

 

Plus the flyrants strength is obviously horde control into single target removal. But between shooting, psychic and melee it should kill down 5 of them

[BlackTriton]

You forget they have smite, and charge. You don't need to just shoot; smite, possible warp scream (the nid smite) and then Monstrous Rending claws.

 

Plus the flyrants strength is obviously horde control into single target removal. But between shooting, psychic and melee it should kill down 5 of them

sigh 

I forget nothing, I am simply demonstrating that for the same point, you can get more value out of plague marine than cultist since being tough has value in its own.

Since I am now at home and I do own a copy of the tyranid codex I can look at the actual break down of the very popular 4x Devourer with brainleech worm

the weapon is assault 6 so 24 shot at S6 AP0 and he replaces all melee weapon for that.

 

1 flyrant will first smite, lets say it kills 1.5 plague marine (DR helps mitigate that)

then he shoots...  and kills 1.19 if they are in cover. (2.37 if they are in the open)

he then charges and kills another 0.62 marine.

total : 3.8 dead or a big 64 points. unimpressive for a 200+ point unit.

This is a terror that warrant being spam in competitive meta. fall flat on its face when facing plague marine (in cover).

 

I am not saying plague marine will soon replace cultist in all list and they are the secret of easy victory... but maybe you should consider replacing a 20 man cultist squad with a 5 man plague marine to hold home objective in cover. you will get your point back in how tough they are.

I feel this deserve some attention, I am comparing toughness with all sorts of other troops and they never let you down. 

Even facing plasma spam you would need 20-30 shot to reliably shift a 5 man squad from its objective. 

[Gnosis]

Hi guys

I think the strength of the plague marines is that they can get 3 plasmaguns in a 5man unit.. and that they can msu.

 

Someone could build a list with 8 x 5man squads with 3 plasmas or blight launchers each. and one rhino for every two squads (1280pts)

 

And then in a 2k point list you have enough points left for hqs support characters drones. etc...

 

move 40 plague marines in the center of the table with 24 rapid firing plasmaguns and have fun...

 

I wonder if someone has used such a list in a competitive tournament and what kind of results they got.

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

You forget they have smite, and charge. You don't need to just shoot; smite, possible warp scream (the nid smite) and then Monstrous Rending claws.

 

Plus the flyrants strength is obviously horde control into single target removal. But between shooting, psychic and melee it should kill down 5 of them

sigh

I forget nothing, I am simply demonstrating that for the same point, you can get more value out of plague marine than cultist since being tough has value in its own.

Since I am now at home and I do own a copy of the tyranid codex I can look at the actual break down of the very popular 4x Devourer with brainleech worm

the weapon is assault 6 so 24 shot at S6 AP0 and he replaces all melee weapon for that.

 

1 flyrant will first smite, lets say it kills 1.5 plague marine (DR helps mitigate that)

then he shoots... and kills 1.19 if they are in cover. (2.37 if they are in the open)

he then charges and kills another 0.62 marine.

total : 3.8 dead or a big 64 points. unimpressive for a 200+ point unit.

This is a terror that warrant being spam in competitive meta. fall flat on its face when facing plague marine (in cover).

 

I am not saying plague marine will soon replace cultist in all list and they are the secret of easy victory... but maybe you should consider replacing a 20 man cultist squad with a 5 man plague marine to hold home objective in cover. you will get your point back in how tough they are.

I feel this deserve some attention, I am comparing toughness with all sorts of other troops and they never let you down.

Even facing plasma spam you would need 20-30 shot to reliably shift a 5 man squad from its objective.

The competitive load out is 2 guns and monster Rending claws. So yea the guns will halve effectiveness, but you'll smash them in melee as a result. You do 1.1 from shooting in the open (most of the time units are in the open since cover is largely irrelevant and blight haulers aren't really taken in top tier competition), on average 1.32 from smite, and then (math might be a touch off when calculating flat 3 damage vs d3 ) 3.63 unsaved wounds from claws and .23 from the tail for a total of 6.37 unsaved. So yea you've wiped the 5 man.

 

You do a total of 11.2 unsaved to the cultists from the same competitive build. Thats close enough to 45 points. But the plague marines cost 85 stock, so there we go.

 

Cultists also take up way more space to deny alpha strike and to bubble wrap better, as well as score better due to more guys (as I'm sure has been said), so yea unfortunately cultists are always better than plague marines in pure competition

[BlackTriton]

 

The competitive load out is 2 guns and monster Rending claws. So yea the guns will halve effectiveness, but you'll smash them in melee as a result. You do 1.1 from shooting in the open (most of the time units are in the open since cover is largely irrelevant and blight haulers aren't really taken in top tier competition), on average 1.32 from smite, and then (math might be a touch off when calculating flat 3 damage vs d3 ) 3.63 unsaved wounds from claws and .23 from the tail for a total of 6.37 unsaved. So yea you've wiped the 5 man.

 

You do a total of 11.2 unsaved to the cultists from the same competitive build. Thats close enough to 45 points. But the plague marines cost 85 stock, so there we go.

 

Cultists also take up way more space to deny alpha strike and to bubble wrap better, as well as score better due to more guys (as I'm sure has been said), so yea unfortunately cultists are always better than plague marines in pure competition

 

Do not forget that losing so much cultist in a turn will wipe the unit from moral. 11 + 3.5 - 6 = 8.5 loss to moral for a total 19.5

its also easy to add a few shooting wound from other unit to round it out and secure the kill, freeing the charge for a scarier target.

 

I dont quite get the same result on the rending claw, but even then we are discussing a 180+ point highly competitive model being on average barely able to wipe a 85 point msu troop choices if he dedicate himself to the task, cast smite and make the charge. those are things the enemy player need to deal with the rest of the list. 

so comes the question, wiping a plague marine from the board requires you to dedicate quality weapons, and those are tools you will be missing to deal with the "good" unit. isn't there value in that? 

 

otherwise, yea... I cant possibly say cultist are a bad choices in any circumstance. There are a lot of advantages to big chaff unit that are not represented in their point cost (area denial and command point taxes) and those thing add up to make them a go to.