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Blood Angel Successor Space Marine Army
"Task Force Sandalphon"
Head Quarters
Company Captain "Brother-Lieutenant Sandalphon"
w/Terminator Armour, Storm Bolter

Librarian "Brother-Librarian Lucretius"
/Melta Bombs

Elites
Terminator Squad Alpha
-Sergeant
w/Power Weapon
-Four Terminators
w/Heavy Flamethrower (1), Power Fists (3), Chain Fist (1)

Scout Squad Rho
-Sergeant
w/Power Weapon, Melta Bombs
-Four Battle Brothers
w/Bolters (2), Shotgun (1), Heavy Bolter (1)

Furioso Dreadnought
w/Heavy Flamethrower, Extra Armour

Forlorn Hope Squad Omega
-Four Death Company
w/Bolters

Troops
Tactical Squad Beta
-Sergeant
w/Plasma Pistol
-Nine Battle Brothers
w/Flamethrower (1), Lascannon (1)
-Razor Back
w/Extra Armour

Tactical Squad Gamma
-Sergeant
w/Power Weapon
-Nine Battle Brothers
w/Melta Gun (1), Heavy Bolter (1)
-Rhino
w/Extra Armour

Heavy Support
Devastator Squad Delta
-Sergeant
-Nine Battle-Brothers
w/Heavy Bolters (2), Multi-Melta (2)

Options
Substitute Rho for:

-Whirlwind
w/Extra Armour

And upgrade Sergeant Beta with a Power Weapon.

Substitute Delta for:

-Land Raider
w/Extra Armour

And downgrade Sergeant Beta to a Bolt Pistol, lose one member of Omega

The idea is to have an all-rounder 1500 point list that can hit the enemy from all angles, and using primarily firepower and mobility. Beta and Delta breaks into combat squads, with the Lascannon-toting squad supporting from backfield, and the Delta combat squads sprinting to take up positions in midfield. Lucretius and Omega advance. Then, depending on whether the enemy is a horde, and elite, and whether it is advancing or camping, Rho, Furioso, Beta's Flamethrower squad and Razorback, and Gamma either set up to advance, or to counter-charge.

When you start using military call signs like they are going out of style...

If you are going to run tactical squads, you should probably run 3 Whirlwinds to terrify the enemy into killing them.

I don't understand many of the choices you've made.

Shotgun + Heavy bolter on scouts?

One of just about everything in the book does not a good army make.

One dread, one land raider, one razorback, one whirlwind, one lascannon, one scout squad, one dev squad, one termie squad...there's no redundancy or backup in these units so losing any of them creates single points of failure in every part of your army.

Why on earth your death company have bolters is beyond me.

This is like the antithesis of effective list design.

There's actually very little of the phonetic alphabet I was taught years ago in his list. However, that does not negate, nor even scratch, your point, stelek.

Nurglitch, I'm real curious to see how this list does. Have you built it already, or is it still in the thought process stage? Let us know how it does? I'll be honest, the list seems a very odd way to run BA to me, but I have run jump pack heavy forces with BA for a long time. I could very easily be suffering from calcified thinking in that regard. I will admit, I whipped the crap out of another BA force the other night with my jumppack force.

True. Looks like the Greek number system.

Whole thing looks like greek to me.

This is a list you might see in a WD Battle Report, aka "Oh crap, what do we have painted?"

grizgrin:

I can assemble this army list using models from my collection; it's been cut-to-size from my usual 2000pt Blood Angels List that I've been successful with during 4th, the rumoured 5th, and the real 5th edition rules.

In part it's built like this because I like to field a Chaos Space Marine army using most of the same models, except instead of Scouts I use Chosen, as well as Daemons and Spawn. But it's mainly built on a doctrine of balancing three principles:

1. Synergy

2. Redundancy

3. Complementarity

It occurs to me that because I'm not taking multiples of various units that it might be difficult for some people to perceive the redundancy in this list. Since 1500pts is rather short on space, I've gone with redundancy in properties rather than in units, and it's why I'm considering the options I've listed.

If I take both options, then the list has five vehicles, one of which will have AV14, with a slight loss of firepower balanced out by increased flexibility in its application. The redundancy of armour will weigh against the redundancy of troops though (42-15=27).

Perhaps the principle of redundancy can be seen more easily if one considers the Dreadnought to be a cheap Terminator squad, the Lascannon-armed combat squad to be a cheap Devastator squad, the symmetry of the Devastator squad, and the

Obviously I haven't gone overboard on redundancy since I'm balancing it against synergy and complementarity.

The direct synergy comes from the Captain and the Librarian, providing Leadership and Psychic defense, respectively. The indirect synergy comes from the Scout, Terminator, and Tactical Squads being able to infiltrate/flank, deep strike, and move fast to engage, isolate, and destroy fragments of the enemy force in a piecemeal fashion.

The Scouts either establish a position in the middle of the board or flank, depending on the disposition of the enemy force. If the enemy will be assaulting me, then the Scouts will have a nice forward position for their heavy bolter and grenades. If I need to assault the enemy, then they can come in on a flank and either assault or set up a firing position. That's one reason they're in the list, rather than being an option: their positional flexibility is a strategic advantage against enemy scouts, infiltrators, and heavy weapon squads.

The Terminators are the firemen of the army. They come down around where I need their firepower that turn, or their hand to hand ability in the next turn. Strategically they act as a threat to the other player, saying: "Are you sure you want to risk that?" They're something of a redundancy for the Scouts, since they can also drop in the enemy backfield, or flanks, and deal with trouble-makers there.

Stelek wrote:True. Looks like the Greek number system.

Whole thing looks like greek to me.

It's actually the greek alphabet. Alpha, beta, cappa, delta gamma epsilon etc

As for the list. BA is a heavy assault army or should be. One of the main strengths for BA is being able to take assault squads as troops. Another is the versatile veteran assault squad. You should use both whenever possible. Also using Dante isn't a bad idea, couple him with corbulo or even grab lemartes to control your DC. Put some melta guns in those assault squads and maybe a Thunder hammer and some other nasties in the vet assault and you should have a good start.

Once the new SM codex comes out I'll probably switch over to vanilla for new fun stuff it has to offer.

I run heavily toward agreeing with chaosdaves concept on a list, however I am very much against taking accepted wisdom at face value. I have found that if you question enough of the foundations of nything, you find a loose stone somehwere in that foundation. If he can run this list and be successful with it, then kudos. Also, this variation list, depending upon playability and success in individual areas, will prevent every BA list form becoming the same. THere is precious little variety in how people run that lis thtese days.