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Hey folks!

So I have a series of games coming up next Thursday going over the next 3 months and I'm expecting a decent number of Plague Marines to be hitting the table in each teir (500/850/1250 pt games)

Thankfully Air is banned (no hell turkeys!) and early on vehicle armor is reduced. But Plague Marines will likely, for obvious reasons, make a real standout for the Chaos players coming and as I'm running Tau I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on best methods to consistently put down plague marines in the Tau Codex.

Right now my weaponry for the matches (at least early on) will consist of the riptide's ion gun, SMS, Missile Pods, HYMP from a Broadside, and Firewarrior pulse rifles. It will have kroot as well once those models are done (painting is required, so stuck without my bubble wrap at first if I want to get my stratagem which I definitely want) Wondering if that should be enough at least at the 500 pt level, and as we level up what in the codex tends to be best for taking out these uber resilient troops.

Thanks!

Grey

Honestly? Pulse rifles. Tau are the best army for taking out Plague Marines in particular because your basic fire still wounds them on a 4+. They still only have a 3+ save so they will fail saves if you pour enough shots at them, which cheap rapid-firing Troops units have nailed.

You don't really want to waste special weapon shots on them unless you have no better targets, because the higher Strength/AP weapons tend to be one-shots. Feel free to throw blasts their way, though.

Ok that's good to hear. It looks like I'm bringing 2 squads of FW, 12 and 6 models strong (6 models will either picket in front 5.9" if expecting a rush or be moved to the side to form a uniform gunline with a 5.9" space between them.) and the 12 squad will have my Fireblade Cadre leader in it so I should be able to dish out a butt-ton of pulse rifle shots. My Riptide has EWO to help deal with drop pod shenanigans. And I suppose I have the Broadside as a last resort when they get too close.

I was worried FW wouldn't be able to do enough at that low a model count to stop 1-2 squads of Plague Marines from getting in and causing serious trouble.

You might be wounding on 4's but they still get that 3 +and FnP save.

 minigun762 wrote:
You might be wounding on 4's but they still get that 3 +and FnP save.

That's a failed wound every six wounds or so. Not awesome, but doable for tau if they put out enough dakka (which they oft do)

And most people who use plague marines only use 5 man squads so it's easier to wipe them out entirely.

Don't forget that they have two weapons in assault and poison attacks.

Hashbeth wrote:

 minigun762 wrote:
You might be wounding on 4's but they still get that 3 +and FnP save.

That's a failed wound every six wounds or so. Not awesome, but doable for tau if they put out enough dakka (which they oft do)

minigun762 wrote:And most people who use plague marines only use 5 man squads so it's easier to wipe them out entirely.

Don't forget that they have two weapons in assault and poison attacks.

Strangely enough I don't have an issue from FW torrent of fire, it's Broadsides and missile drones that get me... Over the past 8 games or so, my plague marines have had a member of their unit weather 8 wounds before dying, statistically high save % but all the advice in here is sound. Just pour shots into them, the more saves they have to take the better chance you have of killing them.

Alf, you'd suggest letting the FW priority fire on them first then if the threat remains dumping back to my Broadside and Riptide for further fire support?

They're capping AV at 12 at the 500pt teir, so I'm expecting my single HYMP Broadside and my Riptide with Ion to be able to handle any transports, bikes, or tank types or at least gimp them severely before they get to me. IG I'm expecting my Riptide can sitback and just lob pieplates in and my HYMP can sit on the edge of range and send various bombardments in with my FW squads either securing objectives or marching in to help with cleanup (holding their gunline through turn 1 most likely)

Thoughts? I think I may have some downsides/threats when it comes to bikes, but my guard line should in 1/2 range and on overwatch be able to pump out 51 shots. I'd hope that's enough to deal with incoming bikes. More if I can manage to keep coherency with the riptide and Broadside for further overwatch/supporting fire shenanigans

Allied demolisher cannons should wreck them.

You will be suprised what a single HYM Broadside can do, still use your firewarriors first, then check if the threat left is worth using your other weapons on.

If they are within rapid fire range, make sure they are dead first and then shoot at something else.

Missilsides would do work on them through weight of dice being thrown at a 3+ and FNP. Pretty much throwing as many dice at the Plague Marines is your best bet. Get Cadre Fireblade or whatever his name is for extra shots.

 Wingeds wrote:
Missilsides would do work on them through weight of dice being thrown at a 3+ and FNP. Pretty much throwing as many dice at the Plague Marines is your best bet. Get Cadre Fireblade or whatever his name is for extra shots.

The problem with throwing autocannon equivalent shots at Plague Marines is that they, like all marines, are built to minimize that kind of firepower.
Yes you're wounding on 2's but that 3+ save is going really limit your firepower compared to firing those shots at a rhino for example.

I'm not saying you can't make it work, just that when possible, I'd try to utilize some kind of plasma weapon, even with Plague Marines.

That said, if they're buried in cover, then it really doesn't matter as the cover save will mitigate the damage from plasma in a similar fashion as the armor save does for autocannon-type shots.

Plasma means maybe 4-8 rapid fire plasma shots at BS4 we'll assume. Some will miss, some will fail to wound, and then you might have to deal with cover saves and then still have FNP to get through.

If you just throw 30 wounds on the unit though through sheer weight of fire, you're much more likely to take the unit out.

Broadsides with all the missile upgrades are all sorts of awesome now. Give them pathfinder support because why wouldn't you and you're throwing quite a few handfuls of dice at them.

Yeah, a couple of markerlights make those firewarriors BS5. At 15" (so, still likely out of charge range if you're in cover), ten firewarriors kill 3 plague marines. With really any amount of help from the rest of your army, you can put down a 5-man squad without much hassle. In that case, of course, your threat range is actually 21" (because if they're dead, then you don't need to worry about them charging). Even if something does survive to get into close combat, they get to eat your armywide overwatch. That's enough to handle them.

Remember, against pulse rifles, a squad of 5 plague marines is easier to kill than a squad of 10 regular CSM at roughly the same price. Just think of a 5-man squad of PMs as if it were a 10-man squad of SM, except that plasma doesn't work as well against them.

If you can handle regular power armored units, you can handle plague marines.

Take some pathfinders too.
10 FW with a fireblade is one thing... 10 BS10 fire warriors with a fireblade is quite another

I got something like 20 wounds on the squad. I somehow only manged to kill two marines with that one though, but it was so much fun

Hmm not a bad suggestion Dakka.

Right now my 10Kroot and 1 hound (second troop choice, to handle a potential MC or to bubble wrap from hordes seeing as how this is 500pt level) are likely to not be ready for play (boo!) on time, so I was thinking either a second FW squad of a small size to make up for them and use them as a speed bump in front of the full squad with Fireblade.

But I COULD feasibly go with a pathfinder squad for that point value right? It would be minimal in size, but possible.. I do have a fast attack slot open currently. Just worried because after doing that I'm then left with only my riptide, 1 HYMP Broadside, and 1 full FW team with Fireblade for my damage output. Thoughts?

 Alfndrate wrote:
Strangely enough I don't have an issue from FW torrent of fire, it's Broadsides and missile drones that get me... Over the past 8 games or so, my plague marines have had a member of their unit weather 8 wounds before dying, statistically high save % but all the advice in here is sound. Just pour shots into them, the more saves they have to take the better chance you have of killing them.

PMs pay a premium for the 5 toughness. Any weapon that wounds them on a 2+ (STR 7 or greater) really lowers their value.

Get rid of the riptide for the 500pt match and just add him in when you go up a tier. The riptide is roughly 200 pts. Enough to buy you another squad of FW and another missleside, or crisis team, or a of FW and a kitted PF team get 7(3 special weapons).

Its just my opinion, since its kind of an 'auto-take' but at 500pts the riptide is overkill will probably dominate and make the game less fun lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Heck for 200pts you can get a mark'o if you're worried about MLs at all, no they arent necessary but ive NEVER regreted having them! Give him some missles and a Target lock so he can kill things while giving you 4 bs5 markers. Worried about cover? get rid of it. Worried you wont hit enough? Bs5 pulse rifles or missles from your missleside. Your damn near guaranteed to have them all hit when you've got 8 twinLed missles firing at bs5. Granted, he always have his save and fp no matter what you fire at him so maybe 2 more bigger squads of FW and maybe even switching the fireblade to an etheral might be the smarter choice to really torrent him down.

Or check it out, Mark'o plus ethereal, run(like run move if you have to) out of charge range(but stay in rapidfire) and fire at normal bs due to mark'o hits.

my 500 pt list has a mark'o 2 fw squads a missle side and a stealth squad and it just ran through some plague marines the other day. though i am thinking of taking out the stealths for a big squad of warriors but idk yet as i have a special place in my army always for my xv25s lol

just some ideas hope ANY of it was maybe a little helpful

Wolfnid420 wrote:
Get rid of the riptide for the 500pt match and just add him in when you go up a tier. The riptide is roughly 200 pts. Enough to buy you another squad of FW and another missleside, or crisis team, or a of FW and a kitted PF team get 7(3 special weapons).

Its just my opinion, since its kind of an 'auto-take' but at 500pts the riptide is overkill will probably dominate and make the game less fun lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Heck for 200pts you can get a mark'o if you're worried about MLs at all, no they arent necessary but ive NEVER regreted having them! Give him some missles and a Target lock so he can kill things while giving you 4 bs5 markers. Worried about cover? get rid of it. Worried you wont hit enough? Bs5 pulse rifles or missles from your missleside. Your damn near guaranteed to have them all hit when you've got 8 twinLed missles firing at bs5. Granted, he always have his save and fp no matter what you fire at him so maybe 2 more bigger squads of FW and maybe even switching the fireblade to an etheral might be the smarter choice to really torrent him down.

Or check it out, Mark'o plus ethereal, run(like run move if you have to) out of charge range(but stay in rapidfire) and fire at normal bs due to mark'o hits.

my 500 pt list has a mark'o 2 fw squads a missle side and a stealth squad and it just ran through some plague marines the other day. though i am thinking of taking out the stealths for a big squad of warriors but idk yet as i have a special place in my army always for my xv25s lol

just some ideas hope ANY of it was maybe a little helpful

I think these are some great suggestions Wolf!

I'm in a funny spot because almost all of the players are very competitive. Should be about 20-40 players, and probably 80% of them are tournament players from the east coast so I want to put in a strong showing.

The rules of the summer league are escalation style, and in the first month (500pts) vehicle AV is capped at 12, and there are no flyers, named characters, or fortifications. Progressively these things come in as the league plays on. No Wounds/Toughness limitations though otherwise.

So I'm thinking the Riptide is probably my best option to bring in a juggernaut which will be very unlikely to die (unless I commit a major accident and let him get caught up in a bad melee charge) and can use his ion accelerator to pop any transports and (when smart) lay down pie plates of doom.

Now if I pull him my fire base is 12 FW and a HYMP.. so I'd need a LOT of firepower to replace it for that 200 pts. My gut would be a piranha squadron and a commander, drop the gun drones to him for a very mobile pinning BS5 firebase.. but honestly that's putting a LOT of eggs in the S5 basket.

I figure I likely get a bit more bang for my buck with the Riptide, who is bringing the ion, TL SMS, Early Warning Overdrive (HYMP has it also, that's my drop pod defense) and Counter Fire Defense system to further buff my overwatch.

An ideal round of shooting, most likely, has my FWs shoot first. Cadre targets something else with his ML. Then that ML is used to buff the 6man PF squad to light up the next major target of the Riptide who can nova/overcharge and (ideally) buff his BS to 6+ so he can re-roll an overheat roll of 1 and get that pie plate out with no scatter. HYMP has cleanup duty on anything in range at that point, with AV capped at 12 he turns into a pretty solid choice for anti-transport as well if something gets too close, but likely bikes and MEQ/TEQ are where he'll be focusing, that or just crowd control.

That's the gameplan.. at least it's what I'm thinking. Scrapping the kroots as suggested and replacing them with the 6man PF squad made sense when an earlier poster suggested it. I like your idea of stealths also and have 2 squads all painted up.. argh 500 points makes you take the tough decisions

Grey

Just wanted to let you guys know the first week's matchups went great! and these were against 3 VERY fast moving armies. 1 Dark Eldar army which was unfortunate enough to not get within charge range of my firing line due to moving through ruins and 2 chaos daemon armies. The one with a herald + flesh hounds was the most challenging as with their scout move they were able to charge turn 1. Which I'm now finding is actually not allowed, but all told it was still a pretty close match. Ended up having to table him with the riptide/HYMP/Pathfinders after his mounted Herald survived overwatch and tied down my FW for 3 turns in assault (eventually killing them all)

Looking forward to further matchups! Thanks for the great suggestions guys, so far no Chaos Space Marines, but I know there are 3-4 armies of them in the field so I expect I'll have a report on how that goes soon enough.

Sounds good. I remember the main complaint about plague marines in earlier editions is that they are slow. Just drown them in pulse rifle shots while they try to get across the board to you and you should be fine. Save your heavy weapons to target faster stuff until there's nothing else that can make it to you.

Edit:

my "go to" 1500 pt list is etherial/commander. My commander has: drone controller, target lock, fusion blaster, early warning override, system jammer. He sits in a squad of 8 marker drones (When I want something markerlighted I want it glowing!).

8 drones at BS 5 is enough to give me 6 markerlights with a little margin, which lets me shoot my 3 firewariror squads at bs 5. With an ethereal that can be a lot of pain (three 9 man squads = 81 pulse rifle shots -> 67.5 hits on average. Admittedly I've never actually done that, but I think the results would be very amusing).

I also have 2 pathfinder squads of 6 with pulse accelerator drones. I can either marker them to give my broadsides or riptide extra support, or just shoot them for even more pulse rifles!

I can't see the point of the cadre fireblade. He just seems overcosted for what he does compared to the etherial. I would run fireblade/ethereal if that marker/"get off my lawn" commander wasn't so awesome.

Agreed on the Fireblade normally Demented. Right now the point level is at 500 though and since I'm only running 1 FW squad for this the Cadre actually is better all around since he adds a shot at all ranges, is harder to kill, comes with a spare markerlight in a pinch or adds 2-3 more shots to the group. Also nice to have the Leadership and Initiative buff at times, although that's minor.

Once it grows to more than 1 FW squad I'll jump up to an Ethereal.

Small arms fire and lots of it

As somebody who uses about 30 plague marines in every chaos list I play I can say that the plague marines are tar pits. Theyre meant to scare you into forcing stronger troops and heavy weapons to focus on them while draining small arms fire so real threats can attacks you. Plague marines are very meh offensively. Most will care a special weapon or two but no more damage than a regular tac marine squad. Focus on the other things in the chaos army and kill the plague marines only when you have to. Use the same weapons you would use for killing MEQs itll just take a bit longer.