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I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

 mokoshkana wrote:
I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

It's a special rule for plague marines only called "Vectors of Disease". They had this before, but it was limited to dual knives, knife/axe and mace/axe. It now simply got extended to all weapon combinations, probably because both the fist and the plague cleaver were nigh useless because of the low number of attacks the marines had. -1 to hit on 10 point upgrades and 2 attacks doesn't work well.

It's there - Vectors of Death. Right at the bottom of the page. I fully intend a faq to address this however, as I don't think it's RAI.

 Jidmah wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
I've seen people talking about Flails getting three attacks because they also have a plague knife (e.g. two close combat weapons for an extra attack), but when I looked through the 9 ed rulebook last night, I couldn't find any mention of that rule this edition. Am I overlooking it somewhere or are those folks wrong as that rule did not translate to 9th?

It's a special rule for plague marines only called "Vectors of Disease". They had this before, but it was limited to dual knives, knife/axe and mace/axe. It now simply got extended to all weapon combinations, probably because both the fist and the plague cleaver were nigh useless because of the low number of attacks the marines had. -1 to hit on 10 point upgrades and 2 attacks doesn't work well.

 lare2 wrote:
It's there - Vectors of Death. Right at the bottom of the page. I fully intend a faq to address this however, as I don't think it's RAI.

Thanks!

Welll RAW is quite straight, two plague weapons = +1 attack. PM loadout knife + boltgun = swap boltgun for flail/cleaver.

Back to my initial post.. How are you planning on running your plague marines? I now have a ton of excess dual knife plague marines.. I've used to run them as 7man squads with dual special plasma for shooty squads and dual flail and power fist for melee.

Bubotic axe, mace route seems.. way too many profiles in one squad.. so maybe is just wise to skip the whole idea for fully melee kit, a boltgun guy gives 2 knife attacks anyway..

Maybe 7man cleaver, flail, dual knife, 3 boltgun and power fist.
Or skip the fluff for 10man unit and double those, but still 3 boltguns?

2nd OR does anyone see point for mixing between shooty and melee? I'll run atleast two rhino's in my army.

Anyone's own thought process on how to approach this problem is more than welcome.

I'm actually not gonna stress it too much with my plague marine loadouts. I think GW have done much better at internally balancing the options in the codex this time round so I'm going to fully embrace GWs intentions for us to take whatever the models come with!

I think the need to specialise units is a little less with the new codex, I think I'll be footslogging marines much more due to the limitations of rhinos. I think I'd rather take another 3 or 4 marines than a rhino.

Blightlaunchers and Plasma don't completely not compliment each other, both with 24" range and the nature of 9th means your units need to move more anyway. Even a PM unit geared for shooting still has a pretty respectable amount of melee and hopefully the resilience to stand up against most stuff out charges but can't finish off.

So I'll be going units of 7, blight launcher and one or two plasma, probably a flail in every squad then a mix of bolters, axes, even cleavers to round out the unit. Be nice to dust off don't of the models I haven't used since I painted them too!

For PM's I used to run 5s with either 3 plasma or 2 blight. I'll now be running 5 PM's but with only 1 blight in each. Can't see me risking plasma anymore, especially with the limitations on Lords. I'm basically seeing the new restrictions as a nerf to my PM damage capability... obviously not an overall nerf, however. Besides, there's not a massive difference between 1 and 2 blight.

BLT's however... I used to run a unit of 5 with 3x melta, 1 flail and 1 blight, and another with 3x plasma, 1 flail and 1 blight. They've been hit hard.

Concerning the PMs loadout, my plan is very simple: I'll equip them with bolters + PF on the champion.

Hear me out. In my opinion, all other options are very attractive, but the basic loadout is very cost-effective.

With a biologus nearby, all PMs with knives do MWs on 6. And with trench fighters, all add +1 attack. If needed, you can stack on it many more strats, as knives are plague weapons. Arch contaminator will go a long way here.

But what it's really interesting is the new blight bombardment strat. For 1 CP, even a 5 man PMs squad can make 18 plague attacks. If the biologus is nearby, they are 18, s4, re-roll 1, 2 dmg attacks. For 1 CP, on 5 basic PMs.

And you can always combo that with overwhelming generosity, for 2 CP you have 18, 12'', plague attacks, -1 AP, 2 dmg. Again, with minimal setup.

For the same reason, I'll go with a simple PFs on the champion. It does add 1 attack for the PMs special rule, it adds a nice punch, and it is in addition, so you don't have to sacrifice the knife or the bolter.

Keeping the bolter is also worthwhile. The sigil is a nice automatic buff, and there are many other synergies if needed.

Of course, this is all theory for now, but rather than starting with all the options and then cut them progressively, I think that there is a strong argument to be made to just do the opposite: start with the vanilla unit and then add options if you think you are lacking them.

most competitive builds are geared with mass of BL instead mass of PM, they use 1 or 2 small squads+poxwalkers like obj grabber. There is nothing that PM do better than BL, just obj sec. Anyway personally i like PM and i play usually 2x10 men, with bolters and 2 flails, or i mix, one full melee with flails and maces and another full ranged.

@sataneatseitan

The extra attack for plague marines is only if you have 2 melee plague weapons (which the fist is not) and it specifically states the marine gains an attack characteristic of 3 (which he already has anyway)

Sprugly

@sprungly

Upon re-reading the rule I think you are right about the additional champ attack with PF

What do people think about plague marines compared to blightlords?

One is obsec but more "fragile" while the other is super tough but not obsec. Theoratically, we can go cheap by using blightlords or deathshrouds plus pox walkers instead of mostly plague marines plus some deathshrouds/blightlords.

So like for example. Say you have 6 basic squads of 5 plague marines. So, now you have 630 points of obsec split into 6 units. This is pretty resilient still because that's 60 wounds of T5 with DR.

Or you could instead have like 3 units of poxwalkers (150 points) and then 3 units of blightlords, oh but this would cause this to be far more than 630 points...

A unit of blightlords or deathshroud is far more expensive than a unit of plague marines. Not saying they aren't great. But we could go main PM and still have points for some deathguard Termis. While trying to go heavy on deathguard terminators will really start to eat up a ton of points.

Ok, So I calculated. A closer comparision would be

3 squads of 5 poxwalkers plus 3 squads of blightlords = 750 points (with 30 points for extras)

6 squads of PM plus 1 squad of deathshroud = 780 points

Would this be a fairer comparision? because closer to equal amount of points.


What do you all think about Plague marines vs blightlords ?

Why not both? Terminators to deep strike and attack the opposition’s objectives, while Plague Marines protect the home side of the board. Vehicles seem to have taken a hit, so it might be best to stick with infantry?

 mokoshkana wrote:
Why not both? Terminators to deep strike and attack the opposition’s objectives, while Plague Marines protect the home side of the board. Vehicles seem to have taken a hit, so it might be best to stick with infantry?

Well, taken to the extreme, you just know someone will come up with a list with just PM and characters while someone else will come up with a list with just DG terminators and characters lol.

 blackmage wrote:
most competitive builds are geared with mass of BL instead mass of PM, they use 1 or 2 small squads+poxwalkers like obj grabber. There is nothing that PM do better than BL, just obj sec. Anyway personally i like PM and i play usually 2x10 men, with bolters and 2 flails, or i mix, one full melee with flails and maces and another full ranged.

I want to try out these combinations:
1. Ten man ranged unit with two launchers, three plasma guns and Sigil of Decay joined by Tallyman with Tollkeeper.

2. Ten man unit with two flails and two cleavers and Icon of Despair backed with Putrifier. I don't know if the full melee unit is good idea. They can't fit into a rhino with the putrifier and I feel they miss out the action footslogging. I could just take 10 chaos spawn for the same cost. But I sure love the idea of using Haze of pestilence and slicing three primaris marines with one cleaver attack.

If people are thinking of full melee PM squads would units of possessed not be an option instead? Only a few more points and whilst it doesn't have the special CC weapons, it's general CC output is still very good. As well as having a 5++. Also faster so can do without the rhino.
Obviously it's swings and roundabouts, losing obsec and taking up a valuable elite slot.

Also, has anyone done the math? In a shootout, how would 3 entropy cannon PBCs fare vs 3 Redemptor dreadnaughts with support?

Assume the PBCs don't have any extra character support but we can use strategems.

IMO the stratagem alone is reason to always bring 1 PBC.

Not too sure of the comparisons to redemptors but pretty certain I'll be bringing 3 entropy with me for most games.

Aiming for a footslogger list, this is what I've come up with so far:
Plan is to just use Bubonic Astartes units.

Lord of Virulence & Plaguecaster
Putrifier, Tollkeeper Tallyman, Fugaris Plague Surgeon
3 Deathshroud
10 Blightlords (2 Flails, 2 Blightlauncher)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 BL)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 Axe , 2 double knife, Relic Blade Champ
3 x 5 Plague Marines
Malignifier

Thoughts?
I got myself the Death Guard Heroes and 2 more Boxes PM, so now I need to figure out how to equipp them until they arrive.
Already have 20 PM with 6 BL so far.
I think 4-6 Flails, 2-4 Plasma, 2 double knife, 2 axe, 2 axe / mace, 1 Plasma champ and 1 fist champ- the rest will be bolters.

Alternative for the Malignifier would be to add more PM and gear them up.

 Grotrebel wrote:
Aiming for a footslogger list, this is what I've come up with so far:
Plan is to just use Bubonic Astartes units.

Lord of Virulence & Plaguecaster
Putrifier, Tollkeeper Tallyman, Fugaris Plague Surgeon
3 Deathshroud
10 Blightlords (2 Flails, 2 Blightlauncher)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 BL)
10 Plague Marines (2 Flail, 2 Axe , 2 double knife, Relic Blade Champ
3 x 5 Plague Marines
Malignifier

Thoughts?
I got myself the Death Guard Heroes and 2 more Boxes PM, so now I need to figure out how to equipp them until they arrive.
Already have 20 PM with 6 BL so far.
I think 4-6 Flails, 2-4 Plasma, 2 double knife, 2 axe, 2 axe / mace, 1 Plasma champ and 1 fist champ- the rest will be bolters.

Alternative for the Malignifier would be to add more PM and gear them up.

Looks fine. As long as we avoid stuff like LR and Predators, I am hard pressed to find any other DG unit bad.

I mean, even chaos spawn are good. Fast and hard to kill with DR. 115 points gets you 20 wounds with T6 with the strategem. That's extremely hard to kill for 115 points. I am thinking of using a squad of 5 as a rapid response force.

Anyone see the new Death Guard Chaos Lord data sheet? Can we take a thunder hammer now?

 Malik_Raynor wrote:
Anyone see the new Death Guard Chaos Lord data sheet? Can we take a thunder hammer now?

Nope we can't.

I'm having couple test games in the up coming weekend against melee focused Blood Angels and I've tried to sketch something without Mortarion which seems make no friends option.

I've troubled between the two:

The latter seems valid too, but the problem is the movement of the elite characters now that they can't fit in the transport unless I give them one of them and footslog the shooty PM squad.

If you're not desperate for the speed, looking to use rhinos to protect plague marines doesn't seem worth it anymore. For the price you can have an extra 4 PMs, 8 wounds T5 disgustingly resilient and can be protected by the plague surgeon

A noxius blightbringer might even be better for speed than a rhino.

Been thinking about a kind of rapid response unit for DG. Toying with a unit of 5 spawn. But not sure, do you think anything else might be suitable?

A unit of 5 spawn is durable and hard to beat in cost. Just 115 points only. Closest other unit equivalent I can think of is a bloat drone.

The greater drone is 125pts and has a 14" move and an 18" assault Spewer. Can't get much more rapid response than that.

Durability:
20w T5 5+ Vs 9w T7 3+ 5++ and DR
Think probably the drone is tougher?

Spawn will do more damage tho

So, now that poxmongers company got nerfed somewhat. What do you all think about a daemon engine themed army list?

So, PBCs, hellbrutes, bloat drones or Blighthaulers. Everything has -1 damage. So its a pretty resilient vehicle army. And with points left for troops and characters too.

I know DG aren't the most "shooty" army. But 3 entropy cannon PBC, 3 blightlauncher bloat drones and 3 Hellbrutes with twin lascannons pack a pretty solid long range punch, with the survivability to boot too.

With some points left for 2 characters and some troop units.

personal opinion...i would go for PBC and FBD only. The strenght of DG is, termies, characters and Mortarion (until nerfed).

I agree with blackmage.

What about FBD? The fleshmowner is great, but what are your thoughts on the other two variants?