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If you wanted to run an infantry based force, who has better staying power?

It will depend entirely on the new price point of Plague Marines. Only then can we calculate which is tougher.

As is though, for the price point, no way in hell are Plague Marines more powerful in terms of offense.

Yeah, new point costs are going to make or break Death Guard toughness, but they'll still likely have a hard time with firepower as well as taking objectives (and a lot of secondaries).

Necrons have a lot more ways to be in your face AND tear it off right now. [Which doesn't necessarily make them top of the charts, just that they can compete in ways DG currently can't]

Currently, Necrons have more staying power. A fair comparison would be immortals and marines. A 5+ FNP is compatible to the 5+ reanimation protocols but reanimation protocols has 2 key advantages:

It’s more effective against multiple damage weapons. A 2 damage weapon only has a 1/6 chance of being ignored by disgustingly resilient whereas multiple damage weapons do not affect RP which has a 2/6 chance to recover a model. This is also quite likely given that most armies cater themselves to fight marines.

Whereas DR can get access to a re-roll of 1, RP can get access to a +1 as well as a re-roll. Immortals can also access a 5++

Beyond that, both are T5, both have 1 wound and both have a 3+ save.

Standard weapons - Immortals have a superior weapon IMO however DG can access special weapons. This increases the points a fair bit kind and the marines are already more expensive. I mention this in terms of staying power as the best way to survive is kill more. DG can counter this with more attacks in assault but that’s just not as good.

This is all as it stands now of course. Plague Marines may get +1 wound, or a points reduction but model for model - it would take a fair bit to outperform those Immortals which are excellent.

As others have said, probably Necrons if you stick to more basic units.

See, Reanimation Protocols (RP) heavily favour single wound models, as you can only return a model to play if you have enough RP to replace all their wounds. But, they allow you tank multi-wound hits better, because those don’t do Splash Damage (if you knack a W1 model with a D3 weapon, it’s still just that one model going squish)

Plague Marine armies have kinda the opposite problem. Their higher wound count models have it better than their Necron equivalents. But their basic stuff (even with W2) have it tougher for the reasons already given.

Given many missions tend to favour a solid showing of objective holders, I’d wager Necrons are the trickier foe.

Worth mentioning that Plague marines are likely going up to 2 wounds apiece and the DR saves are likely dropping to 6+++.

We'll have to see when the codex drops.

Likely? It was CONFIRMED that CSM and equivalents were getting two wounds.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Worth mentioning that Plague marines are likely going up to 2 wounds apiece and the DR saves are likely dropping to 6+++.

We'll have to see when the codex drops.

W all expected the Plague Marines are going up to 2W and those Terminators going up to 3W. But I really don't think the DR won't stay at 5+++, on the other hand I expect this would be compensated by raising the points of Plague Marine up to 25 points or so, and Terminators are also raising in a similar margin.

By then, Death Guard would definitely be more resilient than Necrons.

Well, do the Death Guard get to get back up after they're killed?

The other night my friend killed the same warriors 4 turns running....
Ok, each time there were fewer of them the the round before. But had I been playing DG I'd have long run out of models.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Worth mentioning that Plague marines are likely going up to 2 wounds apiece and the DR saves are likely dropping to 6+++.

We'll have to see when the codex drops.

W all expected the Plague Marines are going up to 2W and those Terminators going up to 3W. But I really don't think the DR won't stay at 5+++, on the other hand I expect this would be compensated by raising the points of Plague Marine up to 25 points or so, and Terminators are also raising in a similar margin.

By then, Death Guard would definitely be more resilient than Necrons.

Even with DR at 5+, I think I can honestly say 25 points for a Plague Marine is too much. Yes they are durable but outside of special weapons their offensive output is laughable. I expect, DR staying the same, a 2W Plague Marine will be 21 to 23 points if GW is halfway sensible. A 10 man Squad of Blightlord Terminators is already pushing 450-ish+ points depending on upgrades atm, make them much more expensive and they will be unusable. Toughness only gets you so far, and DG output is nowhere near SM levels at the moment.