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Good Morning,
Returning player that's been gone for a long while. Starting my excursion into 9th with Deathguard. I have a portion of my models and more arriving later in the week but have not picked up my codex yet. I'm not looking for any info contained in the codex, just general advice for loadouts on my plague marines since there are more options than I expected in the boxes! Over time I will surely pick up more models but for now I have 14 plague marines and am probably looking for something general purpose while I learn the new edition of the game? I can cross the competitive bridge if and when I get there.

For plague marines, you should specialize. Either make them ranged experts with blight launchers and plasma guns or melee experts with as many melee weapons as you can.

Third option is to just build all the special weapons from the box you can and try to hunt down some of the many discontinued easy-to-build plague marines on the secondary market for cheap bolter marines. This is the most future proof variant as rules keep changing and today's hot stuff might be tomorrows waste of plastic.

+1 to Jidmah. For melee marines focus on the flails and great cleavers, the other options aren't really worth it.

I agree with the other posts.
However I run at least 1 flail even in my dakka squads as it's fantastic output wise and has given me the edge in a lot cheap troop vs. troop battles that tend to take forever otherwise.
Got a little worse with AoC but they work still perfect against many targets.

Sure that's a lot of points if you play PM heavy and will not always come to play but it's a nice backup plan to have.
I had 2 flails with full buffs who deleted a squad of 20 Necron warriors with the excess damage strat all by themselves.

Thanks for the replies! I appreciate the feedback.