Plague Marines
SWORD: what Plague Marines kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 175 pts kill ~117 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100
Best against line infantry, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· melee units
SHIELD: how hard Plague Marines is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 175 pts take ~570 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· melee units
What reviewers say
4 reviewers- Core battleline that holds and flips objectives 3 of 4
- Tough for their points 2 of 4
- Cheaper, and every model has a knife 2 of 4
- Best sitting on an objective 1 of 4
- Terrible at shooting without a Plaguecaster 1 of 4
- Maybe skip the characters and buy bodies 1 of 4
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plague Marines175 pts | S | Top 29% | Top 41% | 57of 119 |
| Plaguebearers115 pts | S | Bottom 7% | Top 18% | 7of 119 |
| Daemon Prince of Nurgle185 pts | A | Bottom 19% | Top 33% | 45of 119 |
With a leader
| Solo | Led | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 90 | 101 |
| SHIELD | 326 | 326 |
| Solo | Led | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 90 | 96 |
| SHIELD | 326 | 326 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then with the leader joined.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Plague Marines, 10 models, 175 pts, with 2 Blight launcher, 3 Heavy plague weapon, 9 Plague knives, 2 Plague spewer, 1 Power fist, 3 Plasma gun - standard, 3 Plasma gun - supercharge. On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras.
SWORD
Enemy points it kills in one activation, per 100 pts of its own, against a mix of targets weighted like top tournament lists.
175 pts → kills ~117 pts → 67 per 100SHIELD
Enemy points it takes to kill it, per 100 pts of its own: the points of the cheapest units from top lists that kill it 80% of the time. It's per point, so a costly unit has to be much tougher to score the same.
~570 pts → 326 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 571 melee units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 7 reviewers' newest Death Guard tier lists: The Disgustingly Resilient Podcast (October board) (6 Oct), The Disgustingly Resilient Podcast (July board, daemon allies only) (28 Jul), Goonhammer (Tabletop Battles), faction review and September update (30 Sep), GeneralJannis (1 Oct), Grimdark Breakdown (10 Jul), Zeeto (14 Jun), The Yucky OutBack (three list videos) (3 Aug). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
119 public Death Guard tournament lists, September – November 2026, from grimstat-corpus (CC BY 4.0). Also from Listhammer. Organisers and players: ask us and we'll take a list or an event down. Numbers run 4 Nov.