Continuing the discussion began in Part 1.
To continue my justification of my units, we move on to the Troops section.
Plague Marines-
Plague marines have been hailed as the single most worthy Troops choice in the CSM codex, and I am inclined to agree. Though I think they are a bit overcosted currently, Plague Marines have a few notable benefits over their standard CSM brethren:
A) They have increased toughness, as well as Feel No Pain. This makes them tanks to small arms fire.
B) They have access to 2 special weapons per squad, which allows small fire-teams to pack a vicious wallop.
C) They are troop choices, and thus are a scoring unit.
D) They have blight grenades, which allow them to take some of the punch out of units assaulting them.
However, for all these benefits, there are several notable drawbacks to Plague Marines:
A) Feel no Pain is negated by anything AP 1 or 2, or that would cause Instant-death (I.e. force weapons, weapons with double the strength of the model's toughness, etc), and power weapons. With no invulnerable save, this means that Plague Marines are especially vulnerable to high-strength or low AP weapons like Demolisher cannons, Lascannons, and Plasma. Since they cost a lot of points, a few heavy weapons can ruin a squad of Plague Marines. Close combat can also ruin them if they are up against Power Weapon wielders of any type.
B) Without some form of transportation, they are quite slow (as foot-troops are oft to be). With the amount of mechanization in 5th, they really need a transport to get them across the field faster.
C) They lack access to heavy weapons, instead having to rely on shorter-ranged special weapons such as the meltagun and plasmagun. This isn't a severe drawback, but without transports, armies like Tau and IG can outrange them and destroy them before they can close the distance.
Summoned Lesser Daemons-
My list, with the models on hand, was severely lacking in the troops department. I needed something to capture and hold the objectives, so I turned to Summoned Lesser Daemons to fill the gap. They aren't too bad, surprisingly, and can even turn the tide for some objective-based battles! They have a few things going for them:
A) They have a +5 invul save. This means that they can sometimes withstand attacks that would have wiped out whole squads of Plague Marines, such as Demolisher cannons and the like.
B) They are fairly inexpensive compared to other choices in the codex.
C) With personal icons, they can bail out some of your other units with a precision deep-strike. They can also Assault the same turn they arrive, a huge bonus.
The downside to them is that they HAVE to be held in reserve. You don't get a choice. This means that you cannot use them for screening your other units at the start of the game or similar uses. The other downside is that they lack offensive punch, having only regular CCWs and 2 attacks at strength 4, so they are no better in assaults than regular CSMs but they have no shooting attacks either.
Summoned Greater Daemon-
To help fill the heavy anti-tank gap, I put in a Summoned Greater Daemon. This is a hit-or-miss strategy for me. On the plus side, if I successfully summon a Daemon by sacrificing a champion from elsewhere in the list, I get another Monstrous Creature that can chew through tank armor in assaults. Not so great is that I have to sacrifice a perfectly good model on the table to get him, and there is no guarantee of when the Daemon will arrive. Still, an extra MC in this list helps give the opponent another target to split his fire on, helping take some of the heat off the Daemon Princes. During my last game, a Summoned Greater Daemon pinned a squad inside their Chimera by standing at the rear of the vehicle and wrecking it. Only the sergeant had enough room to deploy, and he was quickly killed by lesser daemons backing up the larger Greater Daemon. Use his base size to your advantage.
I will go on to Army tactics and tips in part 3.
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