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Hello dakka people's. I recently bought some plague marines and I am wondering something about them. Are they viable in a 700 point game? I realise the forums are filled with threads about whether any unit is effective, however they seem to suggest plague marines are only viable after 1k points. Is this the case?

I also appear to have made 2 threads... Hmmmm

Id say probably not. Not saying you wont win with them in a smaller game, but the part that sucks with them, is their army is small in number, at 1500, so imagine that at half the points. At 700 I can have 90 Orks on the table.....you simply cannot beat that. So if Im playing against a CSM player under 1k and I know hes taking plague marines....Ill just horde him, itll pretty much be an auto win for me

It entirely depends on how you use them. 40k is, above all, a game of strategy and tactics. If you dont deploy them right they are wasted. They can be quite effective at tying up heavier units allowing other marines etc to pick off the weaker ones. But again, only if used right.

Which again is pretty hard to do when your army is like 10 marines strong

Its possible, but a squad of 7 with champ w/PF will run you 231 with 2 plasma guns. So you could fit 2 in and a DP with MofN with wings and Warptime in at around 637 so you could rhino them up at 697. But as stated you will be outnumbered. If you want to attempt it I'd recommend taking as stated and use the rhinos to bottle neck your opponent if you are fighting said 90 Orks they won't be able to pile through the gap while being rapid fired at. Competitive no but who plays 700 competitively? As far as objective taking tho no not going to go well.

I was gunna have one 8 troop of khorne beserkers as well as 7 PM.

PMs are durable; which helps in smaller games.

It really depends on what your opponent fields. It's hard to get a well-rounded force in a small game with expensive troops like cult chaos marines.

Hard, but do-able. Nurgle's Rot utterly destroys hordes, especially mounted on a Daemon Prince for the extra base range.

Don't underestimate your average CSM. LD10, 2 CCW's and 2 special weapons for 15ppm is not too shabby.

Once I got into a 750 pts tournament and my army list was 2 squads of 6 plagues with 2 plasmaguns and a personal icon on a rhino, one nurgle daemon prince with wings and warptime and 3 termies with 2 combi melta and one heavy flamer and I made second

The thing about them is that even if they are expensive point wise they are really tough and they will last a lot (the nastiest thing that happened was that a 20 man squad of necron warriors rapidfire'd one of my 6 man plagues squads and none of them died )

They are fun to play because each guy costs a lot, so you have to think more to use them the best you can

in 600pts games their a pain in the neck -_- they take a feth ton of fire that you cant really spare in a game that small. they make really good defence units and can camp OBJs without being too threatened and 2 spec weapons just make matters worse for your opponent.

I would roll 2 squads of 5 with 2 melters in a rhino as standard in any small game. add some zerkers to the mix along with a lash prince and you have a pretty meen army

Jihallah wrote:Don't underestimate your average CSM. LD10, 2 CCW's and 2 special weapons for 15ppm is not too shabby.

Agreed completely. My son took a 20blob of CSM the other day, with a champ w/pw. I just couldnt kill the damn unit, they were to many and just soaked up the wounds I did cause. Id say in a smaller game, stick to the basic marines, they are pretty damn hard all their own

What exactly can the Plague Marines do? Some of the gamers here said you can use them for meat shilelds .

Feel no pain and toughness 5 is no joke. I posted this in the other thread you started. I won a local tourni with 700pts of nurgle.

2x5plauge marines each with meltagun, plasmagun and fist
rhino with havok
dread with ML
Demon prince with wings, mark of nurgle and warp time.

I faced DE, Demons, Vanilla marines, White scars and Bloodangles. The DE i won on Victory points as did i on both vanilla and whitescars, tabled the Bloodangels by turn 3, and got tabled by the demons. 33 demonet and the keeper of secrets = nasty.

nemotgr wrote:What exactly can the Plague Marines do? Some of the gamers here said you can use them for meat shilelds .

They're extremely hard to kill, they can take two special weapons in small squads, and the Champion can have a power fist to make them strong in combat. Plague Marines are probably the best Troops unit in the game.

KingCracker wrote:At 700 I can have 90 Orks on the table.....you simply cannot beat that.

Plague marines are annoyingly resistant to orks. For the same cost of 30 boys with a PK nob you can field 7 plague marines with 2 MG and 1 PF.

The problem is that plague marines have blight gernades, T4(5), and FNP. When not charging a normal ork attack has 1/72 chance of killing a plague marine. STR 3 just fails vs that. Your only hope is the PK nob, but event that is not a guarantee'ed success.

KingCracker wrote:Id say probably not. Not saying you wont win with them in a smaller game, but the part that sucks with them, is their army is small in number, at 1500, so imagine that at half the points. At 700 I can have 90 Orks on the table.....you simply cannot beat that. So if Im playing against a CSM player under 1k and I know hes taking plague marines....Ill just horde him, itll pretty much be an auto win for me

ORLY?

I think I'd just lash your ork units so that they make giant conga-lines, with a fat blob in the front and string it waaaaay out the back so the nob is off somewhere in never-never land. You know - never, never get into combat?

I'll bring an obliterator and have him twin-linked flamer the glob of orks, then charge it with the plaguemarines. You wound on 6's, I get 3+ 4+....yeah it's just nasty. While that combat is going on, I'll be busy lashing the other two ork units away, so I can get ready to do the same thing.

Of course then you could bring killakans as well, and then I could bring a daemon prince, and then you could bring lootas, and I could bring a bucket for my tears because orks are a better codex with more options.... you know we could go all day. Point is, 90 orks vs plaguemarines in small games is not an auto-win.

Personally I think a small squad of PM in a 700 point game is a great idea. You are far less likely to run into much of what kills them reliably and instead your opponent will have to use standard attacks and small arms fire, which is where PM really shine.

Something like 5xPM with 2 Melta Guns in a rhino, with 10CSM in a rhino, Nurgle Prince and a Dread or Greater Daemon sounds like it could work out pretty well.

Avoid that greater daemon - there may be a single grey knight model in the enemy army....

I would say that 700pts is a bit low for plague marines, which is up there in costs even for cult marines. Of course, it depends what armies you're up against.

For special awesomeness, take a GK 700pt army, if that's even possible,

carbonpillow wrote:I would say that 700pts is a bit low for plague marines, which is up there in costs even for cult marines. Of course, it depends what armies you're up against.

For special awesomeness, take a GK 700pt army, if that's even possible,

Not only possible, but can be very effective.

Sooo hard to kill and kick some xeons, nice! I may use few of them in my army.