After an initial release with some “get you by” rules in the new Kill Team starter set, Games Workshop dropped the full rules for the Plague Marines Kill Team this week, giving us our latest elite team. In this article we’re going to look at the team’s full rules, talk about how they play, and what you need to know about facing them on the table.
Team Overview
Plague Marine Kill teams give us another incredibly elite team to the mix, trading off speed – they have a 5” Move characteristic – for durability and poisoned weapons. They have a mix of incredibly powerful Ploys they can make use of, and while they lack strong long-ranged shooting, they can make up for it with some potent psychic attacks and short-ranged muscle. That said, Plague Marines do tend to lack a medic and a comms option (though Plaguecasters can fill in some of the medic role in a pinch), and so will have to make do with a more limited – but very powerful – set of operatives.
They have Security and Seek and Destroy for Archetypes. Security looks particularly strong for them as they’re difficult to shift, making objectives like Secure Structure easy to achieve.
The Video Version
Interested in a video overview of this team? Here’s one courtesy of Can You Roll a Crit?
Abilities
Plague Marine Kill Teams have three notable abilities:
Astartes
As with other marine kill teams, Plague Marines can opt to Shoot or Fight twice during their activation, provided they shoot with a bolt weapon or PSYCHIC weapon when double shooting, but they can’t shoot the same Psychic weapon more than once. They can also counteract regardless of their order. It’s worth noting that there aren’t many bolt weapons in the team – only the Grenadier, Warrior, and Icon have them – so more often you’ll be using this to fight twice or fire off two Psychic attacks with the Plaguecaster.
Poison
A number of Plague Marine weapons have the Poison rule. When you inflict damage on an enemy operative with a poison weapon, they gain a Poison token, if they didn’t already have one. When a poisoned operative activates, they take 1 damage.
In addition to the Poison rule, many Plague Marine weapons have the Toxic rule, which keys off of poison – when a Toxic weapon hits a Poisoned enemy operative, they get +1 damage to both of their Dmg stats. This can quickly add up to some real damage when plague swords become 5/6 or bolters become 4/5.
Note that, as worded, it’s not super clear when Poison actually gives you the token – as worded it gives you the tokens in the Resolve Attack Dice step, and not after, which suggests that multiple attacks resolved sequentially might still give you a token and proc effects like Toxic afterward. It seems like when you fight in melee you’d benefit from poison on subsequent attacks in the same sequence, but those also all seem to be part of the same Resolve Attack Dice Step, which may preclude you from doing extra damage or proc’ing additional poison effects like Grandfather’s Blessing. And that definitely wouldn’t be the case with Ranged attacks either way, where hits are all resolved at the same time.This is something that needs clarification but as it is, we’re leaning toward the intent being that you can’t get the benefits of Poison tokens from the same ranged or melee sequence in which you give someone a token.
Disgustingly Resilient
When an attack inflicts 3+ damage on a Plague Marine operative, roll a D6; on a 4+ reduce that damage by 1. This is some nice protection against bigger attacks, and an OK compromise from the old 5+ feel no pain rule. It doesn’t feel quite as oppressive, but still helps a great deal when opponents bring heavier firepower to bear on your operatives.
Operatives
Plague Marine Kill teams consist of six operatives – one Champion and another five chosen from a list of six options, and each can only be chosen once – including the Warrior option. Plague Marine Kill Teams have the Security and Seek & Destroy Archetypes.
Plague Marine Champion
The Plague Marine Champion comes with a Plasma Pistol and a Plague Sword. The pistol is pretty standard, rocking an 8” range with Piercing 1 and the option to supercharge for extra base damage, Lethal 5+ and Hot, while the sword comes with the Toxic rule. While you’d generally prefer to have a toxic ranged weapon on the Champion those just aren’t available as pistols for the team and so you’ll need to pair him with ranged shooting from a Warrior or Grenadier to get the most out of him, but if you don’t he’ll create his own poison with the first hit to proc on subsequent melee strikes.
The Grandfather’s Blessing rule is one way to mitigate the lack of a Medic on your team. Each time an enemy operative with a poison token loses a wound within 7” of the champion, he regains 1 lost wound, to a max of 3 per turning point. This is really solid when you go up against a poisoned target, or if it turns out you can poison a target on the first hit then proc toxic on the second – a Plague Champion getting in two hits in melee will poison a target with the first, then heal back 3 wounds with the second. And with Disgustingly Resilient and 15 wounds, odds are good you can tank one hit to get your heal. Also note that this isn’t limited to melee, so if you pop your plasma pistol into someone within 7” who had a token you can collect 3 wounds back that way too.
Malignant Plaguecaster
The team’s Psyker, Malignant Plaguecasters come with a gross stick and some gnarly mind bullets, plus the ability to shoot both every turn with the ASTARTES ability. Their two guns come in short range flavor – Entropy – and long range – Plague Wind. Entropy gives you a 7” 4-attack psychic weapon with 3/7 dmg and Saturate, Severe, and Poison, making for a particularly nasty attack that’s likely to hit for 7 when it goes off. Plague Wind on the other hand has much longer range but at lower damage – 2/3 – but with 6 shots and Torrent 1”, giving you the ability to hit multiple targets at once from a distance. The plaguecaster’s staff is fine – it’s another poison weapon to work with, at least.
On top of these psychic attacks the Plaguecaster comes with two Psychic abilities, one for extra damage and the other which allows him to act as a stand-in for a medic. Poisonous Miasma lets you pick an enemy operative within 7” to gain a Poison token or, if they already has one, just does 3 damage. This is just very nasty and helps give you an extra Poison combo piece. Putrescent Vitality on the other hand lets you pick a visible friendly operative within 3” and roll 2D6; on a 7 they regain 7 wounds, otherwise they regain wounds equal to the highest D6 result. THis is very solid and likely to often be either 7 or 4+ wounds regained.
Plague Marine Bombardier
What if someone could throw Blight Grenades every turn and they gave them +1 to hit and the Toxic rule as well? While you only get one grenade a turn you have a bolter for long range shooting and can give it Poison and Severe with the Plague Rounds equipment. This means you can bolter twice, or bolter plus grenade. Your blight grenades can become 3/5 with Toxic, and come with Saturate and Severe as standard, so you are guaranteed at least one critical, and Blast 2” makes them great for cleaning up hordes on objectives.
Plague Marine Fighter
This guy is an absolute monster and the only thing stopping him is that he’s slow. He has just one weapon, the Flail of Corruption – a 5-attack, 4/5 dmg weapon with Brutal, Severe, Shock, and Poison. And if that weren’t enough, he has the Flail ability, which for 1 AP lets you give up a Fight action (i.e. you can’t fight twice and use this), in order to just do D3+2 damage on each visible operative within 2”, friend or foe. Enemy operatives get a Poison token if the D3 roll is a 3.
Oh by the way, if you somehow manage to not kill everything around you? You can double fight. We call this move “the friend-maker”.
Plague Marine Heavy Gunner
It’s a Plague Marine with a bizarro power washer, making everything grimier and more unpleasant. It’s a range 7” Torrent 2” weapon with Poison and Severe which rolls 5 dice on a 2+ and does 3/3 damage. It’s almost guaranteed to get some damage through, and Saturate means the defenders can’t retain cover saves. Great for finding a clump of enemy models and giving them all Poison markers, but also just really good as a flamer for chipping away at elites or just flat out murdering chaff.
Plague Marine Icon Bearer
Do you fancy getting the really good Contagion Strategic ploy every turn for free (saving you 4CP if this operative survives to the end of the game)? Otherwise it’s a plague marine with a bolt pistol and slightly better plague knife (5 dice vs 4 on the warrior). Plague Rounds make them more useful, but saving you 4CP on a team that is fairly CP hungry means it’ll be on the table a lot.
Plague Marine Warrior
Mr Was Also Appearing In This Kill Team, but left on the cutting room floor. In any other elite kill team an operative this good would be an auto include, and the fact you’ll hardly ever see this guy is proof of how incredibly strong the rest of the operatives are. It’s just possible that you’d want him on BD, where you might want another model who can reach beyond pistol range.
With Plague Rounds he has a 4/5 bolter on a poisoned target that automatically gets a crit if you fail to roll one, or can poison a target on the first attack dice to resolve and then add +1 damage on each subsequent dice. Repulsive Fortitude means on a 5+ defence dice are a critical success, and he’s got Disgustingly Resilient, 3+ save and 14 wounds anyway.
Ploys
The options you have here are pretty bonkers good. Many key off being poisoned or poisoning an enemy operative.
Strategy Ploys
- Contagion – Subtracts 2” from the move stat of enemy operatives and worsen their hit stat by 1 while they’re within control range of a plague marine operative, or 3” if they have a poison token, or visible and within 3” of an icon bearer. This is very nasty and good to throw up when you’re expecting charges.
- Lumbering Death – While a plague marine operative is shooting or fight in an activation when it hasn’t moved 3+”, or if it’s retaliating, its weapons gain Ceaseless.
- Cloud of Flies – Place a cloud marker in the Killzone. Whenever an operative shoots a friendly plague marine more than 3” away, if the plague marine is wholly within 3” of that marker, they count as obscured. Remove the token in the Ready step of the next Strategy Phase. This is big, giving operatives a safe way to hide as they try and cross larger open areas at slow speeds.
- Nurglings – Pick an enemy op within 3” of a plague marine op, or one enemy op within 7” if they’re poisoned. Until the end of that operative’s next activation, they get -1 APL. Nasty for 2APL operatives in melee, who won’t be able to fall back.
Firefight Ploys
- Virulent Poison lets you give an enemy within 3” a poison counter, and maybe another to someone within 3” of them if you can roll a 7+.
- Poisonous Demise – Allows you to explode one of your dying plague marines to give poison tokens to operatives within 3”, or deal them 1 damage if they’re poisoned already.
- Sickening Resilience – Used when an attack does damage on a plague marine. You automatically pass rolls to reduce damage for the duration of the activation.
- Curse of Rot – When fighting or shooting an enemy within 3” (or 7” if they’re poisoned) any 3s they roll for attack or defence dice count as failures, can’t be rerolled and inflict 1 damage on them. Potentially useful vs elites, especially as you haven’t got much AP.
Equipment
Plague Bells
Ignore any changes to your stats from being injured. This is probably something you want to take a lot as going down to a 3” move for an injured operative could be really limiting.
Blight Grenades
Frag grenades, but with Severe and Poison, these are excellent. Your operatives mostly have quite limited ranged options, or none in the case of the fighter, so these will be popular. Another way to apply poison is also great.
Plague Rounds
Boltguns and bolt pistols gain Severe and Poison. This is very nice, but again only three of your operatives have bolt weapons and you’re only likely to field two of them. It would be especially cool for your Warrior, who could apply poison with his first shot and benefit from Toxic on the second, but it’s still hard to imagine when you’d field him.
Poison Vents
Any model with a poison marker activating within 3” of a friendly plague marine operative takes D3 damage instead of 1. Imagine this when fighting a melee focussed enemy warband, or a warband with 8 wound models. You could even, as a last action on a model, move them to within 3” of an unactivated enemy operative/s specifically to trigger this like a lethal stink bomb.
How They’ll Play
The basic plan is to lumber forward as aggressively as you can, probably using cloud of flies to cover your approach to the central objective, daring your opponent to come anywhere near you. You have a little long range shooting from the Plaguecaster, Bombardier, and Warrior, but you’re not really going to be doing much at range – your plan is to get in quickly and become a problem for the opponent. The good news is that once you’re in it’s going to be a nasty, poison-tinged blender. You’ll rarely want the warrior on your team – his only real value is adding ranged poison, but you can get that from other sources.
The real enemy of Plague Marine teams is going to be Razor Wire – with only 5” of movement crossing razor wire is going to bog you down substantially, especially if you have other challenges to contend with like doors, barricades, or vertical movement. And really that’s the rub: the only thing that can stop your team is a slow Movement characteristic. Want to beat Plague Marines? Keep them out of 7″ range.
Final Thoughts
In a meta that’s already skewed toward elite teams, Plague Marines seem like an even rougher version of that, poised to cause some real problems. Even if they don’t compete well with other elite teams – and we think they’ll do fine – they absolutely shred horde teams, to the point that’s almost comical. Despite slow movement and a lack of options, Plague Marine teams bring a lot to the table, with the ability to dole out devastating punishment to an opponent making any mistakes.
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