Chosen Plague Marines.

[Daddy]

What are Chosen Plague Marines good for?

They are terrible slow to get into combat, with no charge.

Heretics outperform them in terms of counter initiation(with doomblast), mobility, cost, utility.

They seem to lose to most melee dedicated units. Or they take too long to cause effective damage.

In what scenarios would chosen plague marines be a sensible purchase?

[Batpimp]

counter initiation.

lets say you are facing ASM or Stormboyz Or tanky heroes in your engagements.

then the speed of them doesn't matter. Because they are there to deter those units.

while they don't perform the in instant suppression of tics, They have
WAY better regen in combat
dmg over time of their swords (which stack on even vehicles)
their aura negates healing regen effects
create zombies ( Sometimes without losing a model.)

especially if they are being worshipped, healed by PC or given other globals buffs to help them out. Like the cloud or explosion.

Since their dmg stacks over time it is best consider the long term fight and the synergy they work with the PC.

I once had the PC have his fist, suppression armor and healing burst with the chosen and they beat a full upgraded nob squad.

imagine if they were near a shrine defending a point, used a global, had tics worship healing them or any other PC weapon.

For example:
PC bile spewer, plague fist, Plague sword all work well with them. As does his healing and snare from his armor wargears.

You can argue that they don't do enough dmg in time but they are not the main damage dealers. That's what BC, Tzeentch marines, Khorne marines, Blood letters are for, upfront dmg.

[Batpimp]

heres a guide from raffa on the PC in general too

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=976

[Batpimp]

more thoughts on plague marines

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=977

[Cyris]

Eyeballing their codex stats since I rarely use this unit. A couple of things jumped out:

They don't have Melee Resists. Is this correct?
10 upkeep per model with 5 pop (2 req/pop). This is very low! 2.5 upkeep per population is generally baseline.
I don't see stats for their melee DOT. They do have one, right? (edit: 5 heavy melee damage listed in the summon tooltip, but not the weapon entry. Is this 5 total, or 5/sec for ??? seconds?)
23 plasma FOTM ranged damage (16 inf, 34 heavy) is not half bad
4 hp/sec on 3 models - 12 hp/s for the squad - Solid!
Don't forget the 20% melee slow aura on them

The one thing is that makes me hesitate is the 175 Red cost on top of 480/30. I swim in power as Chaos, and want to use my Red as PC on Obnoxious and ToN, or even save for termies. Hard to justify that much red when I could just MoK a CSM or relay on the AC CSM?

[Wise Windu]

They don't have Melee Resists. Is this correct?

Correct

I don't see stats for their melee DOT. They do have one, right? (edit: 5 heavy melee damage listed in the summon tooltip, but not the weapon entry. Is this 5 total, or 5/sec for ??? seconds?)

5 heavy melee every second for 5 seconds.

[Cyris]

Thanks Wise!

How do I find the DoT damage in the codex? Same for the normal PM's.

Also, does that DoT stack with itself? Same question for PM and Stern dot.

[Wise Windu]

The DoT for PMs isn't in there unfortunately. I'll need to find a place to add them in, maybe just do a placeholder in the abilities until there's a better way to add it.

They all stack

[Daddy]

Much thanks for the tips and the links!

[Myrdal]

They don't have Melee Resists. Is this correct?

Correct

Oops