Plague of Plague Marines

[The West Coast Knight]

I run a whole army of Death Gaurd led by Typhus with 3 10 man squads in rhinos and I can tell you they are not invincable.
Though the armys record stands at 17 wins 0 loss and 1 draw the ames are not a walk in the park.
The way to beat them has been stated in posts above hit them with melta and plasma and they go bye bye.
But one thing people tend to miss is their Initiative is only 3 charging in with some power weapons ( and yes bring a fist of some kind) or with Monstorous Creatures is bad news for the Plague boys.
For you gun line armies like Tau and Gaurd it gets even easier.
Max range for Plagues is only 24" stay back and hit them with lots of shots every turn and don't spread out the shots either concetrate fire on one squad at a time get rid of it then repeat.
If it takes you one turn of shooting to wipe out a 10 man squad you are still removeing close to 300 points worth with upgrades.

The West Coast Knight

[DuskRaider]

What nonsense. I collect Marines, Chaos and Imperial Guard. I have experience playing as Chaos and against Chaos. It is possible for someone to think the Chaos codex is a bit over the top without the implication they're bitter about losing to Chaos.

Sounds like you don't like Plague Marines; sounds like you just can't use them effectively.

I absolutely LOVE my Plague Marines. I've had nothing but success with them, but what I was trying to say is there are setbacks with playing with an army consisting of Plague Marines. I started my Death Guard back in 3rd Edition, when I first got into the hobby. At that point, they weren't as powerful as they are now, but I didn't care. It was the theme and the fun of playing the army. Now they're more powerful... Cool, I'm glad. It's nice playing against Tau and making them waste Railgun shots on a single Plague Marine each round

I must also point out I don't use Mech either. I still play with the idea that Death Guard doesn't use transports or any of the other mechanized pieces. I will draw the line at Vindicators, though... I love those. I do also field around 14 Terminators at any given time, too... So they make up for the lack of Heavy Support.

[Xas]

plague marines are not OP in any way.

for easy comparison we take 10 CSM with 1 icon of chaos glory VS 7 PM (160 vs 161 pts). both can have the same upgrades at same points cost. PM have fearless and pay another 5pts to home-in deamons and CSM have rerollable lds and included home-in for deamons.

the PM take a statistical 126 bolterhits to die and 14 plasma/battlecanon/... hits (4+ cover assumed) while carrying 5 bolters and 2 special weapons.

the CSM take a statistical 60 bolterhits to die and 20 plasma/battlecanon/... hits while carrying 8 bolters and 2 special weapons or 1 spezial and 1 heavy.

PM/CSM:

defense: 2,1 vs small rounds and 0,7 vs spezials.
offense: 0,625 small rounds and 1 spezial.

in my eyes this looks like a well rounded spezialist unit whose job is to survive small arms fire and deliver spezial weapons while beeing more suszeptible to spezial weapons themselfes and haveing allmost no capability to use small arms.

the only thing that makes PM strong is the bias towards small rounds fire the metagame has gone to combat orks (and a lesser degree guard) and will go to combat the february-nids.

if you want to cry out "broken" look at IG veterans:

for 70points you get a unit which takes 30 bolterhits or 20 plasma/battlecanon/... hits (assuming 4+ cover) to die while carrying a boltequivalent (vs t4) of 4,3 and up to 3 spezial weapons.

unit for unit you have a IG-V/CSM:
defense: 0,5 vs small rounds and 1 vs spezials.
offense: 0,542 small rounds and 1,5 spezials.

now calculate that the IG-Vs cost 70/160=0,4375 which means you get numbers that are all above 1.


so all in all PM arent that hot. I'm not telling you jsut theory I'm playing both chaos and IG and I allmost never take PM over normal CSM.

[Crotch Lictor]

I recently had a Planetstrike game where 1 surviving gaunt took out a plague marine with a devourer. Granted the dice gods were on my side that time, but it was still funny. Off topic, but thought I'd share. They can be killed.

[Aceshigh]

well i play PM's and i play them because of their story and the way the models look, but i do agree that they are a really good defensive troops choice and holding objectives they are champs.