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I like to run a xiphon interceptor from time to time, it's effective against any vehicles on ground and even better against FLY units.

For those who frequent this thread, what's a good number of SG to run. I also dropped DC/lemartes because they weren't worth the effort to get into combat so I'm not sure what to replace them with. I have inceptors painted and read but I'm not sure they're my choice either. could use some direction.

I'm also thinking about dropping DC. They are good damage dealers for sure, but I they just die.
How good are those SG? I feel like they need a lots of character support to make work. (Sanguinor, Banner, Libby)

 lash92 wrote:
I'm also thinking about dropping DC. They are good damage dealers for sure, but I they just die.
How good are those SG? I feel like they need a lots of character support to make work. (Sanguinor, Banner, Libby)

I was thinking on this. Isn't it true of every power armor space marine, and even most primaries? "They just die". I don't think there is a better replacement for DC due to the stratagem. But vanguars vets are really close. You could bring them with 5pt storm shields and really scare some units. But the will die to mass bolter fire anyways.

I was wondering why people dont take power axes on DC. Seems way better then chainswords( lost a combat to tau fire warriors once because my chainswords could not pen that 4+armor.)

SG should be a lot tougher. 2 wounds per model with a +2SV and a +5 FnP from the banner.

2x 6-8ish dc + power swords + lemartes are t2 drops that clear your enemys front lines and if they survive for t3 its a bonus. A valid choice yes but they are less effective tool now they cant t1 charge and the rest of the upgrades are just not worth it. Unless your lucky and the enemies coming to you

SG+ terminators + FNP banner are certainly more survivable but will struggle to make there pts back and are very vulnerable to high AP (which is more common now) and also struggle with not hitting the board till t2 (T3) if you fail the charge.

So what should you do

Decide do you want

BA CPT x2 +scout x3
Or ba cptx2 +mephiston

Then invest in your other faction

Since I'm running BA mostly as allies for my Admech (stygies) force that's the question I'm asking myself at the moment.

What's everyone's opinion on Mephiston ? Worth an inclusion?
Also since I'm taking 2 smash Cpts what about adding a small dev unit with hb & RL which the second Cpt can babysit for 1-2 turn for some nice MW spam?

Mephy is okay. He's got two denies, and outperforms other libbies in CC by a lot.

The devs are solid idea.

I suppose you give him Unleash Rage, Quickening and Wings?

Or boil blood. Depending on the list.

Martel732 wrote:
Or boil blood. Depending on the list.

I've always just ran the standard wings-quickening-unleash rage. What instances would you use blood boil?

In my last game, 6 player 1k lists 3v3, BA, SW, IK vs. DG, necrons, Nightlords..

Mephy with wings managed to swoop inside a screen circle and kill a warlord. My 6man SG squad with banner was the most valuable unit our opponents said, in cover (stole an objective swarmed by enemy) they were bad ass.

We played 6 open objective cards, with both sides able to score and you could discard one after scoring before the opponent drew it back to 6.

We were winning with points (18 v 4 something), but the the enemy had like 60% of the models on the table and on T5 my lone Slam captain had used upon wings of fire to redeploy inside a building and hiding in the armoury building behind a predator (terrain) with only 1 wound left. And then poxwalkers charged it, after rolls.. I had to make two 3+ saves without chance for rerolls.. 10h game ended in such a climax, it was epic. We win with points if I make those rolls or enemy tables us.

Have to say the necron croisant is tough.. IK can shoot, but are terrible against flyers.. My devs with HB&ML were quite situational. Was my first time to play on a 1,8 x 2,4m table, we even had quite dense terrain.

 lash92 wrote:
How good are those SG? I feel like they need a lots of character support to make work. (Sanguinor, Banner, Libby)

They are good but rather all-eggs-in-one basket. I think 8-10 with an even mix of swords and fists is best. The Banner is pretty much essential for the 5+FNP and a Sanguinary Novitiate/Priest with JP (Index option) to heal or resurrect them will keep them in the fight longer. Sanguinor is definitely a big boost for them. Libby is nice to have rather than essential.

One nifty trick if you want to make sure they always benefit from their "Heirs of Azkellon" rule is to make one of the Sanguinary Guard your Warlord! You lose out on the Warlord Trait which sucks slightly but is does make sure that the squad always gets full rerolls. No more worrying about whether your WL will make the charge or other problems.

I think if/when smash captains are nerfed to 1 per detachment or something mephy will get more popular as he is good, just not quite as good as another captain.

Why should they nerf the only decent choice of our poor codex? How about doing something for those overpowered xenos?

fatbudda319 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Or boil blood. Depending on the list.

I've always just ran the standard wings-quickening-unleash rage. What instances would you use blood boil?

A t3 opponent. Or if like me you don't use any cc squads.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spado wrote:
Why should they nerf the only decent choice of our poor codex? How about doing something for those overpowered xenos?

Because he's EVERYWHERE. People like my buddy won't help. He's taking 3x capt smash, 3x biker capt every gsme.

See thats not strong because you cant optimise strategems fir that many. 2 works 2+ mephiston works because he can operate without if need be.

U02dah4 wrote:
See thats not strong because you cant optimise strategems fir that many. 2 works 2+ mephiston works because he can operate without if need be.

And you typically need guard around to have enough CP to make it work for 2+ captains.

That being said, I think they are actually more a result of the meta than an actual problem.

Knights, particularly a single knight with access to a 3++ save, and eldar with -1 to -3 to hit, and infantry hordes with too many cheap wounds really shut down most of the shooting in the game. Blood angels captains just happen to have everything they need to exploit the weaknesses of those units, and guard CP batteries let you use their full combo every turn.

However, I don't think those things are going away, so I don't think limiting captains and other spammy HQs to 1 per detachment is a terrible idea. Especially when you remember in previous editions you could only have 2 HQs total.

Side note. Faced rather interesting BA/knight list on the casual themed tournament that ended up 2nd going 14-6(biel-tan aspect warrior host), 20-0(vs my ork horde) and 9-11(vs tounament winner and his what looked tzeentch chaos)

TOTAL POINTS: 1498
COMMAND POINTS: 8
DROPS: 11

<BLOOD ANGELS> BATTALION DETACHMENT +5CP

HQ1: Primaris Captain in Gravis Armor(102): Master-crafted power sword(10), Boltstorm gauntlet(22). [134] Warlord: Selfless Valour
HQ2: Primaris Lieutenant(70): Power sword(4). [74]
TROOP1: Intercessor squad[90]
TROOP2: Intercessor squad[90]
TROOP3: Scout squad(55): Heavy bolter(10). [65]
ELITE1: Primaris Ancient[69] Relic: Standard of Sacrifice
ELITE2: Reiver Squad(90): combat knives(0), 5xgrav-chutes(5x2). [100]
FA1: Inceptor squad(75): 6xAssault bolter(6x10). [135]
HS1: Hellblaster squad(90): 5xPlasma incinerator(5x15). [165]
HS2: Hellblaster squad(90): 5xPlasma incinerator(5x15). [165]

<HOUSE TARANIS> SUPER-HEAVY AUXILIARY DETACHMENT

LOW1: Knight Errant(285): Thermal cannon(76), heavy stubber(4), reaper chainsword(30), ironstorm missile pod(16). [411]

So that's shooty BA out of all things O_o. Scenario was rather unkind for my 243 model ork horde as it had kill points among other things which gave him tons of potentials for KP's(it was tight victory for him before kill points were added). That shooting made hard to get to his DZ especially with knight as gate keeper killing tons of boyz. Albeit I screwed up big time forgetting he can heroic intervene which gave him free round of stomps and charge into boyz mob that was along with another and warboss preparing to charge. Also lost one of my weirdboys to stupid deployment mistake. He shouldn't have been able to put inceptors to my rear.

I don't like the list because it doesn't uses the strengths of BA, which is strong melee. It could be better played as Raven Guard for example.

Descent of angels can be handy and gave nice counterpunch. But yeah it's not rock hard minmaxed list. Tournament wasn'' intended for those.

But i like it. Way closer to fluff than all h2h ba

Descent of angels on what, that min size Inceptor squad? Those 6 attacks are supposed to pack a punch?

Anyway, I’m bitter as usual because our book is a one trick pony and our fun stuff needs way too many babysitters to work. I’m having a hell of a time figuring out proper support fire while balancing having enough CC to actually achieve something meaningful lol.

You really can't, at the current point levels of marines vs the current point levels of Xenos and IG.

Death Company hit nice and hard in CC with just Lemartes for support. Use DOA on them and leave one trailing behind to keep Lemmy in the bubble. Lemmy also counts as a DC model so will benefit from his own rerolls to charge and hit which is handy.

I prefer DC to SG as they require less support and are a lot cheaper. They are more fragile so I tend to treat them like a guided missile. I throw them at a particularly dangerous unit that needs to die or into the heart of the enemy army. They rarely survive but the damage they cause is usually decisive which is as it should be.

SG are pretty easy to support; sanguinary ancient warlord.

The issue is that they have two diametrically opposed jobs and are both fragile for their points.

I find Death Company overrated. They can toss out a ton of attacks but they are still 20 points so need to kill an absolute boatload of chaff because next turn they’re cut to ribbons like Tac Marines. With hammers for hunting big stuff they are basically SG price. DC are almost always more expensive than what you’re using them to kill. They are a poor value.

SG don’t hit hard enough because of their D3 damage. I’d like them more if they did 3. Even a flat 2 (I know, I know, averages and all that but the fewer dice I need to roll the better, the game already involves too much rolling and re rolling). SG are only reasonable with an SGA relic banner warlord, and to a lesser extent a JP Librarian warlord. The problem with the librarian is our discipline has one good spell, two decent ones, 3 bad ones and most of our warp charges are too high. SoS giving 5++ instead of 4++ puts it firmly in the crap pile. It would be better if it were either a +1 to armour save or a -1 to hit (maybe the shield is a giant golden glow that blinds the enemy lol).

SG are my dedicated heavy melee unit but the amount of babysitting and buffing they need to be able to accomplish anything is pretty sad. GW didn’t do us any favours by giving us poor unit specific strats either. Instead of increasing their potential utility we got trash like Behold the Golden Host and Strike of the Archangels. Neither is worth a CP. Don’t get me started on how trashy Forlorn Fury is. That has 1CP written all over it.

At this point I’m sticking with SG, Intercessors, Slam Capfsin, Priest, and working on figuring out what the fire support element of my list ought to be. Mostly Devs I guess because Preds and dreads die too fast. Razors with heavy Tac squads could maybe be reasonable.

So played my first game of 40k since December and brought out my Blood Angels army. Played 2K against a Chaos Soup Army. Consisting of Black Legion, Deamons(Khorne), and a Renegade Knight. Was a great game but feel like I was doing something wrong. I won by turn 3 (we played the Relic and I had control of it with no way for him to get to it.

I brought 2 Battalions

1 with:
Smash Captain (w/hammer and made him Death Company)
Smash Captain with the Jump Pack relic

1 Unit 5 Sniper Scouts
2 Units 5 Tacts with Combi Flamer and Heavy Flamer

10 Death Company (2 with Fist, 2 With Sword, Rest basic)

5 Man Dev Squad w/ 4 Heavy Flamer

1 Razor Back w/ Heavy Flamer

2nd Battalion

Mephiston
Librarian Dread

1 unit 5 sniper scouts
2 units 5 tacts w/ Combi flamer and Heavy flamer

3 Scout bikes

1 storm raven

So just to highlight the Librarian Dread is awesome! Was embarked on the Stormraven - First turn deployed out 3in moved 8 Then cast Wings and jumped 12 (over a unit of Beserkers and Fought his Knight. (The Bersekers used a strat to set up forward a bit so made it possible to jump over. Cleared out a unit of Bloodletters with mass shooting from the Storm Raven.) The Libi Dread took out the knight in one combat, Dying in the process. But it was a trade I will take. With Quickening and Red Rampage it took out half the Knights wounds on the charge and then died. Attacking with the start after it died took the second half of wounds off. It was a great trade!!

Mephiston in combat is crazy good with Feel no pain.

I was facing a very heavy close combat army so the heavy flamers were amazing. The Devs in the razor back were pretty much ignored with the threat of the Dread and DeathCompany as well as the Two Smash Captains. Turn two they were in range and flaming his army hiding in a building. I did lose both my Smash Captains to Argron (the Khorne Deamon Prince Character guy) But Mephiston was able to finish him off.

The Scout bikes did little more than clear out cultist. And Sniper Scouts harassed his Havocs. They filler a role but did not do much else.

The Death Company were a great. threat that took the relic and ran. I felt wrong running them away with the relic, but it was a dangerous unit to come and fight for the relic. (That was the mission)

So any idea where this list could be optimized?

Give the DC hammers instead of fists. I'd ditch the Stormraven. I really don't like them.

Looks like it has the character heavy/min chaff design down pat.

If I started taking multiple smash captains I’d never hear the end of it. The fact that every soup player uses them has me leaning on only taking one because I’m confident they’ll be nerfed to hell soon.

It sounds like you just had a reasonable game; you’ll have plenty of games where you’ll want to throw the librarian dreadnought in the garbage because he’s an overpriced paperweight who can’t cast a spell worth a damn lol.

I think your list will severely struggle against anything that can shoot half decently. Those flamers are going to bite you in the ass eventually.

Libby dread is another way to get +D3 attacks if the capt has already soaked up the strat.