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Obviously we're all abuzz about the new DA. Not all of us are DA players, nor are we going to spring the cash for the new codex any time soon. We already have a couple of threads about the new DA, but they all assume that you've got a codex sitting in front of you.

So, I wanted to know, for non-DA players, what is actually new and different? In simple terms?

In a nut shell:

Flakk missiles for tactical marines and scouts
Named IC's got a little better
Bikes are more or less the same
Termies got split fire
Shroud speeder is support (FA)
Plasma speeder is death (Hvy)
The only gun on either of the fliers that can effectively hurt other fliers is a TL lascannon
Banners are fun, but prone to precision shots/hits
VENERABLE LANDRAIDERS
No slot needed command squads
Cheap as chips libbys

Brief summary of what's new.

Librarians are available cheap!!! And can take displacer fields or conversion fields from a wargear selection. So librarian with invulnerable save for cheaper than most codex librarians start at (try 25-35 points cheaper).

Azrael unlocks both Deathwing and ravenwing as troops choices.

Tac squads are cheap and can take a special or heavy weapon at 5 man size. Can also purchase get Srg to get of 9 instead of 8.

Deathwing knights - über Deathwing all close combat maces that can make a smash attack once per game at str 10 ap1.

Deathwing - can take plasma cannon.

Ravenwing black knights - ravenwing that get twin linked plasma talons (18 range) on their bikes, and Corvus hammers (+1 str, rending, no ap)

New speeders, one with plasma cannon with 2 modes of fire. One gives shrouded to all friendliest within 6.

New fighters. Too expensive to take seriously. Storm talon is better at anti air. Other than cool looks factor on the Nephlim, not worh their price tag and points cost.

I played a game last night against Deathwing. The thing I seemed to come away from it was. "Not that killy, all told. But incredibly hard to actually kill."

Also, fearless terminators are a pain in the rear end. You just get sucked into combats forever.

The codex seems themed to using raven wing black knights, who all have teleport homers and skilled rider rule, move deep into enemy lines and then bringing the Deathwing down. Belial and his squad do not scatter on deep strike and he makes all their weapons twin linked on the turn they arrive.

Deathwing Assault is quite lethal. Bring in your termies in a specific turn (has to be turn 1 or turn 2) and then lay waste with twin-linked bolter fire.

This allows the Ravenwing time to get into position to guarantee a pin point attack.

What I learned from the browse through the book is that I'm getting a 2nd executioner; that, and 2 devil dogs.

-Matt

That is an interesting concept. The deadliest army to a Dark Angels force now, seems to be another Dark Angels force...

Or a plasma heavy Guard army

1- Cheap, useful troops. 10 marines with a special and a heavy come in the approximately 160-175 point range. 5 marines with a special or a heavy is about 85.

2- Efficient bikes. 100 pts for 3 bikes with 2 meltaguns. Can be scoring depending on HQ.

3- Effective bikes. Black Knights cannot be troops and cost about 45 pts per model, but each one packs an assault 2, 18" TL plasma weapon and a +1Str rending CCW and has skilled rider. With four attacks on the charge, even small units can do some damage, especially since they have access to debuff grenades.

4- Bubbles galore. Banners and characters with LOTS of bubble effects, including morale bonuses, WS improvement, stealth, and the much talked about Banner of Bullet Hosing. 4 shot bolters are scary, but watch for bike and speeder armies abusing stealth. A Darkshroud can stay alive pretty easily with 2+ cover from flat out and shroud, and bikes don't fear plasma nearly as much when they get a similar save from it's stealth bubble, Jink, and possibly Skilled Rider as well. Turboboosting Black Knights in stealth range have a 2+ cover save.

5- Scary Assault Termies. Deathwing Knights are nasty with Storm Shields and power mauls all around, and once per game they can pretend their power mauls are thunder hammers that still swing at initiative. As long as they stay packed together, they get +1 toughness.

6- Modified Deathwing Assault rule. DA players now nominate any termy units they wish during deployment to participate in a Deathwing assault. They then nominate either turn one or turn two by whatever secretive method your gaming group prefers. On the selected turn all nominated DW assault units arrive via deepstrike. In other words, DW will almost always try to go second then pull drop pod army style shenanigans, with the added bonus of being able to bring ALL of their termy units into play at the same time and on the turn of their choosing. With teleport homers on all biker units, this can be pretty nasty.


There are many other changes, but these ones seem to be the most relevant. Add them to the list of "crap that people may throw at me" that you keep in mind when building lists and you shouldn't be caught too horribly off guard by any new DA builds you run into.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:

Deathwing knights - über Deathwing all close combat maces that can make a smash attack once per game at str 10 ap1.

AP2. They only go AP1 against C:CSM.

 Tuagh wrote:
Black Knights cannot be troops and cost about 45 pts per model, but each one packs an assault 2, 18" TL plasma weapon.

It's not assault 2, it's only one shot T-L and gets hot.

@Emp.

It's rapid fire, but yeah, mostly 1-shot.

Seriously, 2 Executioners and 1 Colossus.
The deep striking terminators don't have a prayer against AV14 and aren't going to do much if anything to side armor 13.

The colossus does wonders against that annoying banner of shrouding. Super Bikes with a 2+ cover save... sounds good, but not vs S6 AP3 no cover. Then sprinkle in a fist-full of plasma and melta.

I am thinking that an allied librarian with powerfield to stand behind my tanks sounds awesome! I think the best thing in the DA book may be giving 3 of my tanks a 4+ invul.

-Matt

Yeah, depending on how the meta goes, I can see the colossus start really earning it's keep as one of the few low-AP, ignore-cover weapons. Even its str6 ordinance can easily crumple the paperthin deathshroud/vengence speeder, which is only AV10 2HP.

Might be hard to keep alive long enough vs no-scatter ternimators glancing the hell out of it's sides/rear with TL bolters and whatever heavy weapons they bring (two assualt cannons)

Has anyone playing Chaos Space Marines run against DA? Do they have a huge advantage over CSM, like GK does over Daemons?

Cruz wrote:
Has anyone playing Chaos Space Marines run against DA? Do they have a huge advantage over CSM, like GK does over Daemons?

I will be testing it out tomorrow , will be playing a GK and DA player.

The Imperium of Man has banned assault weapons as of Codex: Dark Angels.

-NM

Cruz wrote:
Has anyone playing Chaos Space Marines run against DA? Do they have a huge advantage over CSM, like GK does over Daemons?

Just from what my friend has told me, yeah they are going to go in dry against Chaos Space Marines.

The Deathwing Knights are WS5 Str6 AP3 against Chaos which is pretty horrific in and of itself. And they have a once-per game smite so that if you hit them with Terminators, they hit you with a freakin' Str10 AP1 attacks. Pretty stupid.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
they are going to go in dry against Chaos Space Marines.

 McGibs wrote:
Yeah, depending on how the meta goes, I can see the colossus start really earning it's keep as one of the few low-AP, ignore-cover weapons. Even its str6 ordinance can easily crumple the paperthin deathshroud/vengence speeder, which is only AV10 2HP.

Might be hard to keep alive long enough vs no-scatter ternimators glancing the hell out of it's sides/rear with TL bolters and whatever heavy weapons they bring (two assualt cannons)

I'm planning on parking it between my Russes and Devil Dogs, and bubble wrapping with lots of plasma vets.
All the "bubble" effects in new DA are just screaming, "Template Me!!!"
Do you really want to deep strike terminators in a tight cluster near 6 Plasma Blasts?
I'll gladly trade the colossus for that.

-Matt

As a chaos player, i'll just shoot the DW Knights up with plasma... and bolters they are still just terminators outside of combat... They also will be striking at the same I as me on the charge or slower (they do not have grenades) and i promise i'll be in terrain.

What i am worried about aren't the anti chaos rules but the small arms firepower multiplication and crazy cover saves that can be gotten, night vision, and the sort of stuff like that. Everything else is the same as the rest of the SM codex and heldrakes will still cook them alive.

They're space marines with some tricks essentially, I haven't noticed anything that would make my armies change tactics.

I do love that the land speeder vengeance is able to glance itself to death with its own weapons, 2 HP and 3 gets hot shots

I still think SW wont have a problem with em. just going to be fielding more plasma guns

I played two games against DA with chaos marines and won both. My list is kinda atypical (many tanks and termies, zero PA marines unless on bikes) but i did crush them.

Big things to keep in mind is everything cool outside of troops is 45ppm (roughly, some above and some below) meaning there are not many guys. Things like ecto fiends, vindi's, and drakes are awesome. Always take a brand to counter their 3+ cover save bikes.
I didn't find their termies to be great. They landed, wiped a cult squad, and got wiped in turn by the ectofiend and vindi. Second game he tried the robed ones with maces. They lasted two turns but eventually 2 of them went down to 20 cultists (which pays for my cultists ).
The scariest thing in the list are troops and those bikers if you are not chaos. 3+ cover save bikes with plasma and decent CC are pretty destructive if they reach you. Those troops are crazy cheap and pack decent fire power, though i doubt you will see many flakk ML's due to cost.
If you love tanks, get ready to hate the dirt cheap LC's thet get on devs.

What should the friendly neighborhood warboss look out for? Anything that is particularly bad for the Waaagh!?

 loota boy wrote:
What should the friendly neighborhood warboss look out for? Anything that is particularly bad for the Waaagh!?

Deathwing Knights can use their pseudo-smash attack to convert all of their attacks for the turn into S10 AP2. That will ID a warboss in CC. They also pack a ton of plasma, and look to be on the shootier side for marines, so ablative wounds, and lots of attacks to get through that 2+ save. As a note, Lootas are still great against them, but between Deathwing Assault and Ravenwing Bikers, you really need to bubble-wrap them against DA.

I've now had a chance to look through the codex, and overall, it strikes me, much like the Chaos dex, as being fairly balanced.

I can't say I like the thematic direction; it really is a Raven/Deathwing codex, so there really isn't much love for the other 8 companies of Dark Angels, or their successors, but the actual mechanics seem solid and interesting.

There's a lot of obvious synergy between unit types, and the wargear options are exhaustive, interesting, and don't seem overpowering. They've also made a lot of normal Marine units more viable; cheap as chips Librarians seem great, as Librarians really are lackluster for vanilla marines at the moment.

In short, the weaker units are better, Deathwing and Ravenwing are awesome, Greenwing isn't bad, but nowhere near as good as the 'wings. The only thing that'll suck is facing a Deathwing army with Chaos Space Marines. It makes thematic sense, much like how Grey Knights bend Daemons over, but I can't imagine it'd be terribly fun for a Chaos player to endure, but time will tell on that front.

As for myself, there's some changes which I hope my vanilla Marines benefit from in some capacity, but I don't think my Guard has much to worry about from Dark Angels. In particular, the codex seems to lack much in the way of reliable anti-armour, at least that most people will bring. Short of assaulting with terminators, there's a distinct lack of melta, lascannons and other shooting attacks which can defeat AV14. I suppose that makes some sense, as the focus of the army really seems to be killing elite infantry armies, given the wargear and statline for most of their units.

I'd be very curious to see how they survive versus a tank-heavy list, and a horde army.

Actually, a lot of the good anti armor fire, such as melta comes from the Land Speeders, Bikes, and Dreadnoughts. Since the DA Ven Dread is cheaper then the Vanilla Dread.

Speeders are delightfully fragile, and while outflanking they can occasionally knock off tanks, they aren't really to be relied upon. I discarded speeders in my marine army, and I find them very easy targets for my Russes in the rare events I ever encounter them; good looking models, make total sense from a fluff perspective, but don't perform very well on the table, and ravenwing speeders don't look any different.

Throw in the DJ speeder for that stealth bonus, and we're getting somewhere, but then you have to endure building and painting one feth-ugly model.

Umm how bout this, im not competitive so most of my stuff is just for fun. Drop Pod Dreads with Landing Beacons. Azzy, and warlord trait for 2+ reserves, MultiMelta landspeeders. And that new Dark shroud. Just a thought.

With the change to Vector Strike, Heldrakes will utterly destroy Ravenwing...