plague marines

Why play the Death Guard? Aside from easy, characterful conversion opportunities, and extensive fluff and information available on Mortarion’s Legion, Plague Marines are a very intriguing animal in our new Chaos Space Marine codex. Point for point, a Plague Marine will outperform a Chaos Space Marine with a Nurgle Icon. The intriguing thing is not the outperformance itself, but how they outperform them. Outperformance, as mentioned above, is nothing new with Cult Troops. All Cult Troops are specialists at first glance, and a look at their wargear and statistics can usually determine what the purpose of the model is. Khorne Berserkers, with 4 attacks on the charge, WS5, and Strength and Initiative of 5 on the charge, no ability to take rapid fire weapons, and nothing besides pistols, and close combat weapons, you don’t have to be a genius to understand that this unit wants to make it into close combat. No-brainer. Noise Marines are somewhat peculiar. They offer speed, but they quickly become expensive with all their sonic weaponry. The idea one gets when they look at a Noise Marine unit is that they are a group of Marines who want to walk forward, laying down loads and loads of assault weaponry firepower, and finish off the survivors in CC with I5. Thousand Sons are Marine killers, and a seemingly dying breed in 5th Edition. Slow and Purposeful means they shoot their full 24 inches on the move, but unreliable movement means you can never depend on them to be exactly where they need to be to deny cover. This means reliance on mechanized transport becomes mandatory, and they run into the very real problem of ‘overcooking’ a target and becoming stranded. Basically, a Rhino- mounted squad of Sons will drive up , leap out, and rapid-fire with AP3 bolter rounds. They will likely liquefy whatever they shot at, leaving them utterly stranded and vulnerable to a foe’s counterattack. While the 4++ helps versus lascannons, melta, and plasma, a smart foe won’t waste them on a Son. Bolters kill ‘em like regular Marines, and at 23 points per model, a failed 3+ save against a Tactical Squad’s bolterfire hurts. So, as you can see, Cult troops seem to be specialists. They are there to pretend they’re Eldar, doing one thing ve ry well to the exclusion of all else. Howev er, without the tricksy defensive psychic powers and reliable, super-quick transportation the Eldar use to support said units, a high reliance on Cult troops quickly reduces an army’s model count, and you begin to see lists suffer from a bad case of Elite-itis. This is why Cult based armies tend to fail in the face of fluffless, combination armies of min-max Chaos labeled ‘Black Legion’ to excuse the use of nine Obliterators, and a pair of Lash of Submission users. Lash means the Cult armies can never get close enough to bring their skills to bear. The obvious answer, then, is Ch aos Space Marines, right? The bare-bones CSM has more, and better equipment than a Tactical marine, and a lack of the ability to form combat squads is actually a blessing, as a more specialized role can be defined in a larger squad of Marines, who are better at both close combat, and mobile firepower, than a Tac.

plague marines

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