Plague Marine Squads

[Verbal Underbelly]

Good morning chaps, I'm currently replacing my old Death Guard army (played since 4th edition but did own the 3.5 codex) and I'm enjoying building the latest plague marine plastics. I'm not really sticking to the instructions as such, because the configurations therein are a little limited. I guess I'm a traditionalist in how I see my plague marines - bolters, plague knives and a few special weapons. 

 

I wanted to know about people's experience in using plague marines squads with fairly basic load-outs. 

 

I'm considering filling a battalion with the following:

 

10 plague marines: 2 melta guns, plague spewer, power fist, 7 bolters (strike squad)

10 plague marines: 3 plasma guns, blight launcher, 6 bolters (mid-field squad)

5 plague marines: power fist, 5 bolters (goal keeper squad)

 

Not intended to be a full army list, but the basic core around which to build one. Are the squads listed above viable or do successful plague marine squads require those "new" close combat weapons to function in 9th edition?

 

I've used trench fighters and virulent rounds in the limited amount of games I've played and enjoyed both strats. 

Edited January 16, 2022 by Verbal Underbelly

[Special Officer Doofy]

This is all my opinion, but it is coming from someone who avoids poxwalkers and still tries to play competitively (so I often bring 3 squads of plague marines).

 

Plague marines biggest fault right now is their weapon costs and new weapon restrictions (that and poxwalkers are so much cheaper and the better option most of the time). The marines are 21pts and the special weapons are 10pts a peice (look at Blightlord terminators, they are only 5pts for each weapon). I'm hoping for a point reduction in chapter approved.

 

Me personally, I only take blight launchers for ranged and flails for melee. Champion gets a free sword. Everything else to me seems like a waste of points. Plasma is not good unless you have a baby sitter for rerolling ones, otherwise you're killing off your own 31pts model with each 1. Meltas might be good with a transport, but I've never had luck with transports. My group has a no Forgeworld policy and rhino's scream "shoot me with all your 2D guns because I don't have DR" and often don't get mileage for me.

 

You have to build the list to how you play, what mission types and how much terrain. I will usually have 2 5 man squads for sitting on back objectives, they never get to melee so I wouldn't spend points upgrading it for that. They might get a blight launcher, that's it. If I have a big 10 man unit moving up the center I might spend points on flails and launchers (can still shoot the launchers after advancing).

 

I made that thread about DG bumming me out recently. Plague Marines are part of the problem. Their wargear needs to be cheaper. They don't have the same (good) strat support the terminators have (1CP for +1 to hit is sooo nice) unless it involves one of the elite characters. Most people spam poxwalkers and terminators. I keep trying to make plague marines work, but it's hard. I'm hoping with the next codex they make the champions powerfists into the same fist weapon the lord of Virulence has (has the plague keyword).

 

Sorry if that didn't help at all. Plague marines are beautiful models and are supposed to be the core of our army. We have 28 different sculpts. 7 from DI, 7 from the PM kit, 3 from the easy to build, 3 from the reinforcements, 6 from space marines heroes 3, and the 2 standalones: the champion and standard bearer. I have those 28 plus a second set of 7 DI, I'm about the only DG player I know that has 35 plague marines. I even bought extra blight launcher and flail bits in the beginning of 8th edition when box splitters were still selling them. I try so hard to make them work.

[Wolf Lord Loki]

I've been using 3 squads of ten plague marines.

 

Anti armour - fist, 2 meltas, 2 cleavers, occasional maces. (We often play power levels so I can afford to town on equipment)

 

Ranged squad - 3 plasma, 2 blight launcher. Unless I'm desperate then I don't overcharge the plasma

 

Close combat - 2 flails, 2 axes, 2 spewers

 

I converted most of the extra weapons as due to budget I have to work with what I can get

 

So now you know another plague marine owner- Putrid Choir

[Special Officer Doofy]

Well it's nice to know another one! Haha. I forgot to ask them if their question was based on points or powerlevel. My group ONLY plays matched play and points, and maybe my ignorance made me jump to conclusions that others do that too. Because with powerlevel and not paying for wargear, you should really pimp the heck out of your plague marines haha.

[Tokugawa]

Fact: the cheapest plague marine unit(105pts) cost higher than max poxwalker unit(100pts).

 

Think! Think about it! Plague marines really can't afford these "luxury" wargears now.

[WrathOfTheLion]

I think I have all the Plague Marine sculpts except for the Champion. I tend to take a squad or two in more casual games.

 

As for those squads, I've used the PF/5 bolter combo, that works fine. It did some work, and it's just really hard to shift off of an objective without putting dedicated weapons into them.

Edited January 17, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Plaguecaster]

Alot of our stuff is over priced has limited options and we have even less options than other marine armies. Our elite section is so bloated we should of got more hq options especially with the Lord limit, give me back my warpsmiths dammit gw especially after taunting that new LOV somehow buffed vehicles only to do absolutely nothing for them

 

But yeah plague marines are too expensive suffer from stupid restrictions on being unable to take much of our only actual DG unique weapons, we have no chosen or havoc since apparently we refuse to have dedicated anit Infantry or anti tank squads which is rather stupid, a havoc style plague marine sqaud would be amazing with multiple blight launchers or Spewers. Plague marines are our only actual marine troop as why can't they be the most generalist squad able to be completely unique in weapon load outs.

I'd tend to run 2-3 seven man squads (just feels wrong not to include nurgles lucky number) with blight launchers and 2 plasma guns (one from champion) with icon and champ with powerfist usually back up by a contemptor but whilst somewhat good at holding onjectives felt very lack luster, maybe if the chapter approved makes them alot cheaper I may try and get more games this year with more plague marine oriented lists as I always preferred power armored armies backed up by walkers

Edited January 17, 2022 by Plaguecaster

[Closet Skeleton]

Plague Marines are basically DG Havocs at 10 man now and fully kitted out melee plague marines might as well be melee chosen. DG fluff has always been that they don't use infantry heavy weapons that would slow them down on the advance. The dedicated DG anti-tank are supposed to be the Blight Haulers.

 

Plague marines aren't overcosted enough to matter as long as Intercessors stay at 20 points and tacticals at 18. That's the problem with being a marine codex, you get priced as marines. Across marine factions its actually the Blightlords that are undercosted.

[Wolf Lord Loki]

Plague Marines are basically DG Havocs at 10 man now and fully kitted out melee plague marines might as well be melee chosen. DG fluff has always been that they don't use infantry heavy weapons that would slow them down on the advance. The dedicated DG anti-tank are supposed to be the Blight Haulers.

 

Plague marines aren't overcosted enough to matter as long as Intercessors stay at 20 points and tacticals at 18. That's the problem with being a marine codex, you get priced as marines. Across marine factions its actually the Blightlords that are undercosted.

I think the Blight Hawlers could probably do with more weapon options to act as a heavy support platform.

[Verbal Underbelly]

Really interesting discussion so far everyone, thank you.

 

@Putrid Choir I did read your thread and felt bad for you - it's hard when the faction you love doesn't play the game the way you'd wish it to. I've only actually had four games of 9th edition and I've played as Death Guard twice (and won both times) and vanilla Chaos Marines twice (and lost both times). I feel similarly about regular CSM playing on one wound. I can't even bring myself to watch a battle report featuring CSM despite being my favourite faction. It really just feels like I'm playing a different game to my oponent when using an 8th edition codex. Really bums me out so I know exactly how you feel. 

 

I do feel like Death Guard should have a solid core of power armoured bodies. The 7th edition traitor legion supplement was pretty good. I never lost a game of 7th with it (playing as Death Guard).

@WrathOfTheLion thank you for your insight. I quite like the idea of bring bare bones plague marines. It just has a really good visual appeal for me, I think because I'm an older gamer I grew up on them mainly using bolters. Conversely, the newer close combat weapons seem visually jarring to me - and that's before you add the arbitrary restrictions on the kit (which I assume is to discourage after market bits sellers).

[CastellanDeMolay]

Plague Marines are basically DG Havocs at 10 man now and fully kitted out melee plague marines might as well be melee chosen. DG fluff has always been that they don't use infantry heavy weapons that would slow them down on the advance. The dedicated DG anti-tank are supposed to be the Blight Haulers.

 

Plague marines aren't overcosted enough to matter as long as Intercessors stay at 20 points and tacticals at 18. That's the problem with being a marine codex, you get priced as marines. Across marine factions its actually the Blightlords that are undercosted.

I think you're making the mistake of falsely equivocating the relative value of the stats/rules of marines from different codices, much like GW does. The value of PM shouldn't be calculated in a vacuum, they should be considered in the context of the rest of their codex, and in an ideal world the rest of the whole 40k ecosystem. (alas GW's product release cycle and atomised writing process makes this impossible) 

 

Consider vanilla SM, they have the same profile across the army, so they can achieve a degree of mono-profile target saturation that DG cannot, while filling every possible battlefield role. As such, an all-comers list will probably have an easier time optimising the use of their varied weapon profiles against the different units in a DG army than it would against a SM army. I don't know if I would say the current version of DR, and its 1PPM cost was worth that trade-off. Blightlord Terminators cannot optimise against a particular target profile (outside of things that power weapons and bolters are good against), as they're restricted to loadouts that are possible from a single kit, which means that you'll probably just be running a bunch of Combi-Bolters and one or two Flails of Corruption. They have nothing that can legitimately threaten heavy armour. They do have great resilience and can grind down superior numbers, but they're not going to hit above their weight without a lot of Character/Psychic/Strat support. Given the trade-off that they make, I don't think I would agree that they're (were) undercosted for an elite unit. They really just feel like PM+ in terms of their usage on the table, which I think is why they keep being taken to unlock PWs, rather than PMs. 

 

That said, I am pretty happy with MBH as DG's equivalent of Havoks. I like to think of them as the last three guys in a unit of PM, all rolled into a single model, in the same way that some units have a dedicated heavy-weapons team on a larger base. It's just a shame that GW wasted a lot of tooling on random PM models that are unplayable in the denominations in which they're sold, rather than expanding kits like the MBH to have more weapon options, or creating additional Independent Characters for the HQ slot. (I want to live in the world where GW writes all the rules ahead of time and considers their product development in the context of what they need to make the army work, and doesn't shoehorn in a rule [like Lords] that was clearly designed for CSM without considering how much of a straight-jacket it becomes in a book with a much less diverse HQ selection)

 

DG have a problem with their lack of units that really excel in particular roles, like Assault and Heavy Support, they're mostly an army of generalists that rely on their resilience to grind out a victory against targets against whom they cannot optimise. In order to be that army, they need enough bodies, or enough ways to mitigate damage, to make up for the lack of extremely powerful weapons, or extremely effective Assault units, or great mobility on scoring units, etc. I think the recent points increases and the lack of movement on PMs indicates that someone at GW is comparing apples and oranges in terms of setting points values. 

[Muskie]

I have more than 35 plague marines. I used to run seven seven man squads or less than that, but now it seems like you go 5 or 10 and I prefer ten. In one edition you could have 20 man plague marine havoc squads, now it seems you can have so many guns, but not bolt pistols or chain swords or combi-weapons...

 

At some point you have to decide if you're going to complain about the rules of the game as written or actually give it some thought and decide if you want to play your army or if you're just going to copy some other person's army off the Internet. I'm back for 9th Edition though busy at work, but I've played six games with the Death Guard codex in 9th Edition and I think I've won half of them. But most importantly I won the last one, the first of our narrative campaign. I'll try out various plague marine squad load outs, but I planted my flag and it is going to be the 7th Plague Company and I'm going to make Plague Flamers work at least in one squad and so far it has, but it takes command points.

 

Nurgle loves all his children, so why should they all be armed identically, each is a unique and beautiful snowflake of pestilence. 

 

Well going to actually do some painting.

[Special Officer Doofy]

Nurgle loves all his children, so why should they all be armed identically, each is a unique and beautiful snowflake of pestilence.

 

Cause their wargear is overcosted haha.

[Wolf Lord Loki]

I have more than 35 plague marines. I used to run seven seven man squads or less than that, but now it seems like you go 5 or 10 and I prefer ten. In one edition you could have 20 man plague marine havoc squads, now it seems you can have so many guns, but not bolt pistols or chain swords or combi-weapons...

 

At some point you have to decide if you're going to complain about the rules of the game as written or actually give it some thought and decide if you want to play your army or if you're just going to copy some other person's army off the Internet. I'm back for 9th Edition though busy at work, but I've played six games with the Death Guard codex in 9th Edition and I think I've won half of them. But most importantly I won the last one, the first of our narrative campaign. I'll try out various plague marine squad load outs, but I planted my flag and it is going to be the 7th Plague Company and I'm going to make Plague Flamers work at least in one squad and so far it has, but it takes command points.

 

Nurgle loves all his children, so why should they all be armed identically, each is a unique and beautiful snowflake of pestilence.

 

Well going to actually do some painting.

Go for it! Looking forward to hearing how you get on.

 

I've always been a fan of Plaguemarines and they've done alright by me in the past

[Plague _Lord]

I think plague marines would benefit more if we could actually fit a charachter in with them in a rhino - especially the close combat variant and grenade man.

 

But rhinos are also overpriced so...

[Special Officer Doofy]

I think plague marines would benefit more if we could actually fit a charachter in with them in a rhino - especially the close combat variant and grenade man.

 

But rhinos are also overpriced so...

And rhino's can't get DR anymore and just scream "shoot me turn 1 with all your D2 and other multi damage weapons!".

[KingYertle]

I think the DG/40k world collectively agrees that taking away Contaminated Monstrosity less than a year after finally giving it to us was a jerk move, and clearly aimed at preventing Death Guard Rhinos covered with third party conversion bits.

 

That said, every time I take the Rhino, I'm glad I did.  I don't play tournament style, and my opponents know full well they are facing DG and therefore avoid taking D2 weapons when possible.  The Rhino ends up drawing anti-tank firepower away from my daemon engines and protects the squishy plague marines from massed D1 firepower. 

 

On the Plague Marines themselves, in Crusade Play, 2 plasmaguns with their high AP never disappoint.  However I'd likely feel differently if I was paying +20points for them.  I second the thought of dropping Plague Marines to 20 points, as the new DR is easy to gameplan around if you know you are coming up against it.    

 

As an outside thought, Plague Marine Boltguns should just always be Plague Weapons vs having to pay CP to make them such.  Boltguns are not scaring anyone.  Paying 1 CP to make them Plague Weapons is an expensive use of CP to gain reroll 1s to wound on a S4 AP0 weapon.  What we really need is a stratagem to increase their AP.  Imagine if Creeping Blight could be played on Boltguns!  

[Plaguecaster]

It's even more annoying from the tyranid leaks that most gaunt guns like fleshborers will be ap-1

Our whole codex needs a whole upheaval with the stupidity of what has plague weapon access and doesn't, even if no ap at least make our bolters plague bolters just to give them plague weapon then creeping blight and to a lesser degree LOVs would be good

Bolter and knife were always the main image / feel for DG I'm older editions it's annoying it's pretty useless well from the bolters at least knifes are finally amazing especially with trench fighter

It's the same stupidity and annoyance that we have stuff like plague claws that are just powerfists with poisoned weapon yet plague marine Champs and lords can only take normal fists with only one hq actually having them also blightlords not having fists still is a massive sore point

[Special Officer Doofy]

Bolters need ap now. Termagant's and gargoyle's guns are now S5 -1AP. That seems crazy to me. Or at least give plague marine bolt guns the plague weapon rule.

 

I said in the new parasite thread that chaos needs to quit looting imperium gear and start raiding tyranids and tau for their fleshborers and railguns cause imperium technology sucks haha.

[Marshal Mittens]

I think the rules need a reset, really. Everything is getting more STR, more AP, and more shots as well in a lot of cases. It's making MEQ and the like very over costed, as T4 (or T5 for DG) and a 3+ means less and less. The game is so incredibly killy, and toughness now is an inv save and - to hit modifiers, yet we still pay a premium for 5T and 3+. Edited March 11, 2022 by Marshall Mittens

[Plague _Lord]

Yeah the problem is deffo that the game is too killy and I'm getting tired of saying it tbh. Every new codex is getting buffed offensively - look at the new nid leaks - warriors and gargoyles are getting boost to AP on damage 1 guns - the bane of our poor plague marines. While mathematically a 20 man squad of gargoyles will only kill around 1 plague marine on average, I'm sure there are ways to buff that unit so it will decimate one of ours in one go ;)

 

I'm in the camp of decreasing the ap of most guns, getting rid of most rerolls (or at least streamlining them) and overall streamlining stratagems so there is less bloat and less buff stacking. Anti infantry guns really shouldn't be going up to -3 ap - it's apsurd that these guns can easily strip a tank of it's armour and space marines feel like they are regular grunts, not walking tanks. If antiinfantry guns were capped at -1 ap it would be great for the game imho.

 

It also wouldn't make bolters feel so useless compared to other guns (though bolters should be ap -1 imho, minirockets and all).

[Relentless]

After months of trying to make PMs work, I've basically settled on 5-man squads with a flail, and if I have the points, a cleaver.  This is from a competitive stand point, so take it with some salt, but I find the 10man squad to be terrible.  By the time you're done equipping it it's 250pts and most likely 300-400 points when you add a transport and/or support character.  That's a quarter of your army for a single unit that 9 times outta 10, will kill one thing (that's probably way cheaper than 250pts) and then immediately get erased by your opponent. Not a good investment.  The problem, as already pointed out, is that the basic intercessor is still about 4-5pts overpriced, which keeps the humble PM at 21ppm.  We are still paying a premium for defensive stats that no longer matter, and if we're being really honest, an intercessor squad is actually more tanky with access to transhuman.

 

5mans are good action monkeys that can hit very hard with flail and cleaver, and you can fit 2 squads in one rhino, which provides more versatility than a single 10man.

[Closet Skeleton]

Bolters need ap now. Termagant's and gargoyle's guns are now S5 -1AP. That seems crazy to me. Or at least give plague marine bolt guns the plague weapon rule.

 

I said in the new parasite thread that chaos needs to quit looting imperium gear and start raiding tyranids and tau for their fleshborers and railguns cause imperium technology sucks haha.

Its not the Imperium's problem, its Chaos' lack of access to Tactical Doctrine and Primaris guns meanwhile Admech have better guns than bolters with better accuracy. Xenos weapons are being balanced against AP-2 Intercessors.

 

If you buff contagion range with spells and stratagems then DG bolters are good until you run into other power armoured stuff in cover.

 

 

 What we really need is a stratagem to increase their AP.  Imagine if Creeping Blight could be played on Boltguns!  

 

Its called Flash Outbreak + Inexorable, I've being doing it every game since the book game out.

 

 

 

I think you're making the mistake of falsely equivocating the relative value of the stats/rules of marines from different codices, much like GW does. The value of PM shouldn't be calculated in a vacuum, they should be considered in the context of the rest of their codex, and in an ideal world the rest of the whole 40k ecosystem. (alas GW's product release cycle and atomised writing process makes this impossible)

 

I've run marine hoard lists abusing 15 point 2W Black Templar crusaders pre-supplement. 15 Point Plague Marines would crush most armies in the game if you took 120 of them with Foetid Vioron support.

 

 

I think the rules need a reset, really. Everything is getting more STR, more AP, and more shots as well in a lot of cases. It's making MEQ and the like very over costed, as T4 (or T5 for DG) and a 3+ means less and less. The game is so incredibly killy, and toughness now is an inv save and - to hit modifiers, yet we still pay a premium for 5T and 3+.

 

I've only had one game of 9th ed DG vs new Tau but nothing has torn through my DG like an 8th ed Imperial Guard army so I just can't agree that 9th ed is inherently more killy than 8th, especially not pre-rule of 3 8th.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Closet Skeleton

[Plague _Lord]

 

Bolters need ap now. Termagant's and gargoyle's guns are now S5 -1AP. That seems crazy to me. Or at least give plague marine bolt guns the plague weapon rule.

 

I said in the new parasite thread that chaos needs to quit looting imperium gear and start raiding tyranids and tau for their fleshborers and railguns cause imperium technology sucks haha.

Its not the Imperium's problem, its Chaos' lack of access to Tactical Doctrine and Primaris guns meanwhile Admech have better guns than bolters with better accuracy. Xenos weapons are being balanced against AP-2 Intercessors.

 

If you buff contagion range with spells and stratagems then DG bolters are good until you run into other power armoured stuff in cover.

 

 

 What we really need is a stratagem to increase their AP.  Imagine if Creeping Blight could be played on Boltguns!  

 

Its called Flash Outbreak + Inexorable, I've being doing it every game since the book game out.

 

 

 

I think you're making the mistake of falsely equivocating the relative value of the stats/rules of marines from different codices, much like GW does. The value of PM shouldn't be calculated in a vacuum, they should be considered in the context of the rest of their codex, and in an ideal world the rest of the whole 40k ecosystem. (alas GW's product release cycle and atomised writing process makes this impossible)

 

I've run marine hoard lists abusing 15 point 2W Black Templar crusaders pre-supplement. 15 Point Plague Marines would crush most armies in the game if you took 120 of them with Foetid Vioron support.

 

 

Ad 1. A full plague marine squad with all possible buffs (both from charachters and strats - our spells don't buff bolters in any way) will on average barely kill a 5 man space marine squad outside of cover. That's 210pts of plague marines, 275pts of supporting chars and 4CP, while also in contagion range (inexorable). DG bolters are far from good.

 

Ad 2. Flash outbreak is a pretty bad strat. It has a range requirement and on top of that it costs 2CP!! While blocking rerolls can be very good vs certain armies, I'm pretty sure that's the only plague company I would use it with. I have never used the strat because I never had the CP for it tbh. I think +1 to wound is way more usefull than ap -1 for 2CP.

 

Ad3. 15 point plague marines game breaking? Are you sure? It would make us pretty effective with troops that can actually perform but plague marine hordes would be far from OP. Anyway you are talking about extremes, I think everyone here agrees that plague marines at least need a few points decreases in both base points and wargear costs. The other problem is that the bolter is literally the 2nd worst gun in the game at the moment after the lasgun and the only thing that can help is a change of stats...

[Muskie]

In my campaign I generally prefer the 10 model squad over the 5 model squad. I don't have to pay points for upgrades but I have to paint and convert them. I do like the 5 man squad, I've ran five guys with a bolter before and sometimes I give the champ an upgrade, rule of cool and all. I had so much luck with my champion last game I wonder about plague marine squads as champion delivery devices...

 

One thing I seem to like that is unpopular is Sigil of Decay, that with my Chaos Lord is a lot of dice rolls and re-rolls sure it is only strength 4 and zero AP but it is intimidating. I also am a fan of Trench Fighters and the Blightening. Rolling lots of dice panics the opponent sometimes. I also often setup to take the charge and then Overwatch and flame. My faith in flamers as a counter for gimmicks goes back to second edition. I don't know if I'll ever get my dream army on the table and maybe my dream army is illegal in this edition or hard to field, but I think Plague Marines are pretty good, but you need to take fire, so dice running cold on armor saves or facing too many wonder weapons can be a pain, but for many editions of the game, it seems like you have to take a lot of fire in early turns to close and try to pull out a victory late. 

 

So if you want an alpha strike army or a highly mobile one, Plague Marines ain't it, but if you can crawl forward and don't mind putting your carefully painted models away in their cases as they die doing little, sometimes you can pull out a victory. It is definitely a fluffy way to play rather than an optimal way to play.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Muskie