First Strike Plague Marine Data Sheet Revealed

It seems the height of hypocrisy to follow up yesterdays post with an image taken from Faeit212 again, but I think I can still add a little value to what's been posted there.

Here's the data sheet for the First Strike Plague Marines as taken from Faeit 212:

death guard plague marine datasheet first strike warhammer 40k
Note the coloured sprue at the top? That's how you know it's First Strike
I mentioned First Strike being a really good buy if only for the tiny three man Intercessor squad data sheet, but on further inspection, that's not even the best part of the set!

First up, as noted by Faeit212, the Blight Launcher looks very menacing. I'm not sure how much of a reveal it is, as I'm almost certain I've seen the rules for it listed elsewhere... or at least on Battlescribe, and I couldn't even begin to work out where they got the information from.

It is fairly beastly though. Not only is it a Plague Weapon that lets you re-roll 1s to wound, it's also:

  • Assault 2, meaning you can advance and shoot
  • Strength 6, meaning it's wounding nearly everything 1/3 of the time at least
  • AP -2
  • D3 wounds, meaning you can actually do some real damage to bigger targets.
But that's not what caught my eye. Look at the Champion load out...power fist and a plasma GUN. Not pistol. Gun.

That can't be right... let's check the Games Workshop images...


warhammer 40k death guard first strike plague marines
Blight Launcher, tentacles, power fist, maggots... no Plasma gun
Now thinking about yesterday's post, I've already gone way beyond most bloggers in terms of reporting rigour... but I'm still not satisfied. Let's check the sprue itself:

warhammer 40k death guard first strike plague marines
Check the back pack...
Well look at that! The champion genuinely carries a plasma gun!

Why is that exciting? Well, you have a three man unit, two of which are special weapon equipped, both which have comparable ranges, both on Toughness 5, Feel no Pain, Power armoured platforms, and they also have a Disgustingly resilient ablative wound in the unit... which can throw a blight grenade if he's not dead by the time they get to the enemy.

And it comes out to about 4 Power levels, or 110 points. That's really good for a troops choice, and way better than the equivalent Primaris Marines... and that's just shooting. Then the enemy has to deal with a power fist and Ebola dripping knives to the face!

The Death Guard are shaping up to be a really competitive army, and in the games I've played have been more than a match for the Primaris Space Marines in Dark Imperium. 

And competitive armies are on my mind lately, as the rules for next year's School's League have just come down the line. Which I'll talk about tomorrow.

Until next time!



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