Allow me to coherently put across what is confusing me. On the updated
Field Manual, it shows 5 or 10 plague marines suggesting to me that you can only field in those exact quantities. All info taken from
10E Index
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UNIT COMPOSITION
■ 1 Plague Champion
■ 4-9 Plague Marines
Every model is equipped with: plague boltgun; plague knives.
I interpret this as you explained, a minimum of 1x Champion and 4x Marines. I am unsure on the last part, does this mean as a
default that is what they carry or they all carry this in
addition to chosen weapons, that would be odd as wouldn't that mean you get multiple firing attacks or does that only apply to vehicles?
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■ The Plague Champion’s plague boltgun can be
replaced with one of the following:
◦ 1 plague bolt pistol
◦ 1 plasma gun
◦ 1 plasma pistol
■ The Plague Champion’s plague knives can be
replaced with one of the following:
◦ 1 bubotic weapons
◦ 1 heavy plague weapon
This confuses me because, and I suspect this is due to the set being released during a different edition, but see below on the assembly instructions.
The instructions show a champion with either (I think) a bolt pistol/plasma pistol, and a plague claw/sword. However, on 10th edition melee fall under 3 categories:
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Bubotic weapons [LETHAL HITS]
Heavy plague weapon [LETHAL HITS]
Plague knives [LETHAL HITS]
Now, in 9th edition all the weapons had their own stats, eg, plague claw, mace of contagion etc etc. So it looks like they are now just lumped under either Bubotic or Heavy, but what determines which one is which?
Here are the weapons per the boxset instructions:
image storage
In my mind, a heavy weapon is a 2 hander so 10 & 11. Bubotic weapons I think are the 1h variants 9, 12, 13 (14?), there are some other accessories like a thing with 3 bells on and a rod with a skull on. Not sure why same image is for two, GW could have added the names of the weapons next to the stats in the manual ideally. So regarding the champion, the instructions indicate he can have a plasma gun (2 handed) but also a heavy plague weapon which is also 2 handed which makes no sense, certainly doesn't match with the assembly options but again, this was a previous version when the minis were released.
For the marines:
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For every 5 models in this unit 1 Plague Marine's plague bolt gun can be replace with 1 blight launcher.
For every 5 models in this unit 1 Plague Marine's plague bolt gun can be replace with 1 plague spewer.
For every 5 models in this unit 1 Plague Marine's plague bolt gun can be replace with one of the following:
◦ 1 meltagun
◦ 1 plague belcher
◦ 1 plasma gun
For every 5 models in this unit up to 2 Plague Marine's can have their plague bolt gun replaced with 1 bubotic weapons.
For every 5 models in this unit up to 2 Plague Marine's can have their plague bolt gun replaced with 1 heavy plague weapons.
As the maximum is 10 units total, this suggests that if you have a squad of 5 (1 champ, 4 marines), you can fit all marines with a different ranged weapon. If I had 9 marines, I could have 5 different ranged weapons, and equip 2 further marines with a bubotic weapon and a heavy. So 2 marines would have to stay standard. I guess that gives flexibility to make them either melee focused or ranged.
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