Tactical_Genius wrote:
pretre wrote:
What're you looking for? A doctoral thesis on the state of Blood Angels in todays metagame?
I agree, there was nothing in that post that required the sarcasm.
Indeed. I'll go through it though just to try to clear things up... As a note, I don't play Blood Angels myself, but one of my regular opponents does and so I understand the army pretty well and know how to dismantle it... something which has become distressingly easier since 6th edition hit.
In 5th edition, Blood Angels were popular, but still considered a 2nd-tier army. With 4+
FNP everywhere and fast-moving S5 I5 troops they could slap around most of the Marine books in assault, which was key since most of the popular and most powerful books at the time were Marines. Assault Marines struggled versus dedicated assault units (Terminators) and armies (Daemons) since their damage output relied on getting an alpha strike on the enemy to mitigate return damage, but in general they were a fairly solid army. They could also spam massive numbers of Razorbacks and not even have to disembark from them half the time. Then there were irritating and brutal
HQ units such as Dante and Mephiston (the latter of which was a bit one-dimensional, but irritating to those who didn't know how to deal with him, or lacked the weapons to make him mince-meat). Gunlines were basically screwed by Blood Angels armies because models would reach the other side of the board very quickly and then destroy the enemy in assault.
Come 6th edition, suddenly Blood Angels were hit by a smattering of nerfs. The most deadly of these was the change to Furious Charge - by losing +1I on the charge, Blood Angels now strike at the same time as most of their opponents. Whereas before my Grey Hunters would tend to get decimated by Assault Marines on the charge and be only able to cause a couple casualties in return, now I'm typically causing as much or more damage than the Assault Marines which are charging me. The loss of +1I made
BA Assault Marines lose a fair bit of survivability. Another nerf was making
FNP a 5+ instead of 4+. Yes, there are less restrictions on the
FNP save now, but in general it's worse than it was before - again, lower survivability. Then there's other potential problems - overwatch, closest-to-furthest wound allocation, random charge distances, etc which make getting into combat and mitigating casualties more difficult than it was previously. The one seemingly positive trade-off for all of this was that at least Assault Marines were getting Hammer of Wrath for free which would increase their damage output (I did the mathhammer when 6th ed hit, and a full squad of Assault Marines would get a kill or 2 more on the charge vs
MEQ). However, this benefit doesn't really pan out in practice - more often than not,
BA players will trade a dead
MEQ or 2 for 12" movement and then assault rather than only getting 6" movement. The risk required to actually get Hammer of Wrath on the charge just isn't worth it, and so it's an extremely situational "benefit" which doesn't make up for the other assault nerfs they've sustained.
Ok well at least Blood Angels can be a shooty army instead, right? Potentially, but not at a level that would make them competitive anyway. 5th ed's favourite shooty
BA tactic, Razorspam, has gone by the wayside this edition as Razorbacks are expensive and fragile with the addition of hull points.
BA's core troop, Assault Marines, also suffer in this department because they only have pistols and
CCWs (plus 2 special weapons). As a result, they can come down in a Drop Pod if they want to, but they're going to do about half as much damage as Podding Tactical Squads or Grey Hunters would. At this point,
BA Tactical Squads are pretty much the way to go in a shooty list (and with the release of the
SM Codex, they'll be the most expensive Tactical Squads left in the game).
In terms of
HQs,
BA also suffered some pretty serious knocks. I'm not even going to go into models which were always awful here either (eg, Sanguinor or
BA Captains). A lot of them are overprice by 6th edition standards (eg, Dante's the same price as freaking Skarbrand). The changes to power weapons were a serious problem because now Astorath and Dante (who is I6) strike at I1 and Mephiston is notoriously AP3, making him a sitting duck versus anything with a 2+ save. The more generic
HQs are just overpriced compared to
DA (and inevitably C:
SM) and don't have any special abilities to make up for it (like the
SW do). Beyond all of this,
BA just aren't keeping up with new Codices, hence why they're one of the worst at the moment.
DA have significantly cheaper options than
BA do. Heldrakes don't care how many points your Assault Marines are. Daemons were already probably the worst match-up for
BA. Tau used to get decimated by
BA, but now they wipe them out without even seeing assault. Eldar firepower makes a mockery out of Marine armour. At the onset of 6th edition,
BA were mid-to-low tier because there were still
CSM,
DA, Tau, Eldar and
BT to point and laugh at. Now that all the weaker Codices have been updated, they're at least in the bottom 3 (if not the absolute bottom).
That said,
BA still have some good things (Fragnaughts, Baal Predators, Bikes) and some things got better with 6th ed (Corbulo, Death Company, Tactical Squads, Storm Ravens, Sanguinary Guard). If you know what your opponent's army is then they can compensate (eg, Sanguinary Guard are potentially good, but not if your opponent runs lots of AP2), but in a
TAC setting
BA struggle quite a bit to compete. Does that help clear some things up? I know it sounds like a lot of negativity, but I have found that
BA can't keep up in a
TAC environment.
19th Krieg Siege Army 7500pts.
40k/HH Night Lords 5000pts.
Orks Waaaghmacht Spearhead 2500pts.
"Put your 1st best against you opponents 2nd best, your 2nd best against their 3rd best, and your 3rd best against their 1st best"-Sun Tzu's Art of War 
10k
2k
500 
Order of the Righteous Armour - 542 points so far.