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A regular opponent of mine uses several small units of Jump marines - they are brutal.

Put them with a priest for FNP - chuck in a melta and you have a unit that can DS in (only scatter 6") - take a lot of punishment and get a nice accurate strike on a target of your own choosing.

Multiply that by 4 or 5 units and it is very nasty.

I'm thinking its time to put m assault marines I the freezer, crack off their jump packs and give them regular backpacks and a discounted transport.

I'll leave the jumping to Sanguinary guard, if I use them.

The impact of loosing +1 initiative has been quite devastating. I have tried to capitalize on mobility on the battle field. However, this will only go so far against experienced opponents.

I am not even considering the 'Helldrake does what helldrake wants' factor.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't think BA support is really any better than vanilla, either. There's nothing really that special in the scheme of the game about Furiosos or Baals.

Vanilla marines have better HQ choices, a higher body count, and combat tactics. Those are all pretty significant in 6th edition. They don't get divination, but divination is not worth having all your other HQ choices basically suck. Which they do for BA.

Vanilla don't actually have a higher body count, though. If we just take tacticals, we are priced exactly the same as they are. We trade the excellent combat tactics for the crummy red thirst, of course, but it's still 170 points for 10 marines.

As far as HQ choices go, yes, they have Vulkan, but if I was playing vanillas I'd just be taking a librarian anyway. So, we compare our libby to theirs and bother are pretty close. They get Null Zone, but we get Shield of Sanguinius, which is worse, but is quite useful for Razorback lists. Plus the option of taking Divination and I don't think a vanilla librarian is really any better than ours. If you compare Vulkan to our special characters, or a captain to a BA captain, we are far behind, but that doesn't really matter for the lists I'd be choosing anyway.

So, when we compare the support units, we compare what we have alone (Furioso, Baal, fast rhino chassis across the board) to what they have (TFC, Stormtalon, Mortis Contemptor). I'm going to set aside the Mortis for now, because I've never used one, nor have I seen one in use. Because I think AV13 is in a good spot right now of being relatively survivable, I think the BAs having good AV13 options in Elite, Fast, and Heavy gives us a serious advantage. TFCs are very good, but they can be charged and, as long as there's one AP2 weapon charging them, the TFC is gone. As for the Stormtalon, the lower AV and hull point doesn't matter compared to a Raven because it's still 60-90 points cheaper. If they could be squadroned, that would be amazing, but probably too good. However, BAs also have access to Vendettas, which cures a lot of our problems all at once.

So, yeah, the mass of GOOD AV13 that Blood Angels have access to is what keeps us above water, and our weaknesses can be covered by either using IG allies or, possibly, tac marines. In fact, I think Blood Angels gain a lot more from IG than Vanillas do, but that might be too far off topic to get into.

if you're looking at Contemptors then do what my friedn has done.

take the Blood Angels Contemptor rules (Apoc second Ed i think) and prices - then add on the price addition and rules for a Death company dread from the BA codex.

And you get......

Death Company Furioso Contemptor Dread.

Rage, Furious Charge, Blood Talons.
something like 7 S8, AP3 attacks on the charge. Every successful wound causes another auto wound, ad infinitum.
AV13 on the front with an invul save.

It will blend its way through anything less than a terminator squad, usually in one round of combat (last game I played it took out a 20 man necron warrior squad in 1 round. 3's to hit, 2's to wound, no armour save.

Ouch is not even the word.

I player a 1k casual game the other day against DA foot spam with ML and PC en masse. I was actually surprised how long the two rhinos I had lasted. I think I will have to revisit rhino/razo lists with my BA.

Razor/rhinos are not as bad as many say, because ML and plasma are not particularly effective against them. I can't wait for BA to get the cheap tri-las preds. I love me some lascannons.

Might be waiting a while. Honestly I think I am going to write my own FAQ to fix some of their issues for my in house play.

I don't mind being on the bottom really, but the BA in no way can execute their fluff now.

Give up on assault marines? HERESY *blam*

But actually, have you tried running them as a Khorne Horde?

Barrywise wrote:
Give up on assault marines? HERESY *blam*

But actually, have you tried running them as a Khorne Horde?

Now that is heresy!

Given the rate the codices are being pumped out right now, I expect we'll get a new book not later than Q2 2015...still, that's as many as two years we're waiting.

Until then, we have to work hard to exploit the inefficiencies of other people's lists. AV13 is very good if people aren't ready, and Razorbacks are better than their reputation.

I think blood angels do tactical marines very well actually. As people mentioned earlier our libby is very good, and our marines are the same cost. We also get cheaper devastators by a country mile, and the force multiplier of sanguinary priests.

Just a couple bare bones priests make our marines very resilient, and FC does make the tacs better as a counter charge unit. In general I find that the best BA armies are actually shooty, because we still shoot like other marines but when the enemy gets to assault we are still blood angels, FNP FC marines with divination support.

Assault marines aren't that good at holding objectives. I would just take tactical squads because, they are quite robust and are hard to kill.

BA devastators are THAT much cheaper. And they are still devastators. I don't use them very often.

Unfortunately, it's just impossible to dance around the fact that BA ASM can't win the combats they used to. Their price hasn't changed. That's kind of case closed on the story of the BA ASM. They still score, but this looks at lot less sexy when you can't take the objective to begin with.

Martel732 wrote:
BA devastators are THAT much cheaper. And they are still devastators. I don't use them very often.

Unfortunately, it's just impossible to dance around the fact that BA ASM can't win the combats they used to. Their price hasn't changed. That's kind of case closed on the story of the BA ASM. They still score, but this looks at lot less sexy when you can't take the objective to begin with.

Then don't use them that way anymore. I use them to tie up the enemy, not to win fights.

Assaults in 6th ed took a beating from the nerf rod in every codex. The BA had some nice special rules that are not-so-nice now, but at least you still have those.

If you look at the direction the game is taking, this entire edition is all about shooty-dakka. Overwatch by itself is no a game-changer for CC lists, but when you couple it with the fact that you to (in order) declare charge, eat overwatch, roll charge distance, potentially fail, try again next turn... and the fact that no unit arriving from reserves may assault in the turn it arrives, and the already existing uselessness of the rules regarding assaulting out of vehicles...

If you are playing the game correctly by the rules, a given assault squad of anything other than termis is not likely to reach it's target with a full head count. And even CC termis are getting nerfed in that regard since power weapons all now have AP values and many new codices have loads of AP 1 & 2 ranged weapons.

The bottom line is that 6th ed heavily favors shooty armies with the singular exception being DE

BA ASM are too expensive to just be tie up units. I have learned this particular piece of cost/benefit analysis from Heroclix. Heroclix has some magnificent tie up pieces, but you can't overpay, you won't have enough points left over to actually WIN.

That's the problem with using BA ASM in the manner you describe. ASM are not cheap to begin with, and by the the time you add in SP support, they need to be able to make hay. And they just can't. There's nothing to really be done.

They make the hay by denying units the ability to shoot other targets. ^.^

Doesn't seem like a winning plan when you are almost always out numbered. You can't tie everything up. And while acting as a tie up unit, they can't claim objectives, either.

So what are we taking instead of Assault units (i'm talking to you BA players)? What is our new staple unit?

Sure BA got hit with the nerf bat this edition but they can still be viable. AV13 is still alive and BA have that in spades. Assault marines are no longer much good in CC though, I agree. I tend to use their mobility more than anything else. They can get around pretty quick these days. Chuck in a priest and you have a fairly durable scoring unit.

I have been using one assault squad (2 x MG, LC, SS) as an anti tank / distraction unit for enemy HQ. They also work well as mobile tank bubble wrap.

Staple unit? I don't really have one. I often run one tactical in a razor, one 10 man ASM w/jump pack, and two 5 man ASM in razors. It works... sorta.

To be honest, sounds like the best thing to do is mix and match. I don't run BA, as I run my Lamentors as Nilla Marines, but I know the codex pretty well. I have done well with my Assault squads in a heavy DS list (no pods) and I have found the best option is to land them away from your opponent to be out of LoS and then move and Assault next turn. Worse comes to worse, try to get a cover save or force stuff like plasma to single shots instead of rapid fire.

But for BAs, I can see a mix of half and half... run two Tactical or Scout units and then run a single Combat squaded Assault squad or two full ones. Being able to DS in and threaten a backfield is huge with a scoring unit, much less the chance of getting the line breaker point.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I think the OP should clarify in his title that he's talking about BA assault marines, not vanilla, which have always been all kinds of useless as far back as I can see...

He does mention they're BA marines, right? it says it at least twice aha

Also, to the OP, I gave up on BA assault marines. I LOVED the idea of squads of marines closing a table and meeting the enemy face on, but in reality that doesn't work at all haha

This is the way I play my nilla marine. I focus on mid field control, I use 2 or 3 TAC squads maybe in rhinos single assault squad as a counter assault unit often times with my chaplain warlord. And I usually have an ap2 Axe on my sarge. Yeah one squad of marines isn't going to win. But what about 20 hitting like 40. With a warlord. And if that doesn't work. Leave hit with all my units at once. I would try tactics like that if i used BA