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Calling them "Top Tier" now, might be a bit much IMO. That said, I feel like they definitely got better. I was listening to "Forge the Narrative" this morning and Paul M. was talking about finally being able to bring a BA army to large tourneys and have them be playable again, and I feel like that's where they're sitting. They got better, can be threatening and put a lot out that you HAVE to deal with, but are probably still better as a soup element for now (assuming we're talking hard-core tourney stuff - if you're talking garage hammer, or more laid back play, Blood of Baal really pumped them up quite a bit IMO).

BA will be more fun for me at any rate. I enjoy the doctrines and how my Ultramarine army played with them and now my BA will be a version of that.

BA will be more fun for me at any rate. I enjoy the doctrines and how my Ultramarine army played with them and now my BA will be a version of that.

QFT -

This update actually has me bringing out my BA for the first time since mid-to-late 5th ed ...

I play mostly BA and can offer that I think they are very strong now. I don't know what tier they are in competitively, whether its tier 1 or tier 2, but I do know that they are strong and offer an interesting mix of stats and abilities to mix throughout the game.

The refusal to die strat is bonkers good on Death Company and is often overlooked, especially if you are mixing in transhuman physiology and the half damage strat to your dreadnoughts throughout your army. It puts BA in a position that we can grab a primary, score up some secondaries with shooting on round 1/2, and then chase them down on 3. Engineers are also really overlooked for a unit of intercessors or scouts hiding out.

I have been testing some kind of off the wall armies, like triple predator, triple Baal predator, and 3 units of sang guard, or trip intercessors, and trip 15 man death company with lemartes and astorath, and a bunch of other list designs, and they have been just belligerent towards my opponents, with my losses typically coming from severe misplays (which ultimately is where you want your losses coming from. If the losses are coming from "i can't kill this thing" that's a design flaw in my mind, but if they are coming from "well I should have shot those scouts turn one" then that's a decision-making problem, and that's a good thing. thats fixable.)

getting access to doctrines is really big for us and it shows. I also want to say that i dont think blood angels are married to slam captains anymore. Most of our characters hit so damn hard, with SOOOO many attacks now (especially with strats) that i dont think we need him.

Whether the list is 3 10 man sanguinary guard with scouts and more scouts for dual badallion, and the sanguinor, or 3 15 man DC squads, or just all of the predators, the army has a distinct feel to it that makes it feel like blood angels again, and while I don't care for spammy lists and am not the authority on ITC play, I enjoy playing Warhammer pretty much any way I can get it and i can say the only lists that are legitimately a problem have been tau 40+ drones and triple riptide. Or triple Hemlocks. No one really runs that anymore, but holy crap, if they do, it SUCKS. (THP is really big here).

I think, ultimately, we can provide a very strong base of fire and unlike most marine armies, we actually have real reasons to move from the devastator doctrine. Savage Echoes on turn 3 is really strong. stronger than people think or give it credit in my experience. On round 3, that's when my last lines are engaging. Things like a gravis captain (don't laugh, 7 wounds and T5 for 118 points isn't the worst thing in the world) or the sanguinor, lemartes, astorath, or even dante (which is a surprisingly powerful beat stick on his own) swinging in with a priest behind them is game ending. When they have whittled you down and your scouts come out attacking and wounding a knight on 4+ with 5 attacks each because they are close to the sanguinor and a priest (i really think that dude is a key. at 130 he is cheaper than a slam captain and pretty damn powerful as a multiplier who also can just wreck stuff). I don't think savage echoes was ever meant to be the superpowerful alpha assault (obv being turn 3) but it is the nail in the coffin many times.

Big winners in the BoB book to me are regular old DC (cause of strats to keep them alive), Sanguinary guard, cause they are cheap as chips now, our chaplains, lesmartes, mephiston, and astorath (mephiston is just the same old mephiston, now with one more wound and his old points cost). I also think Dakka predators are legit AF with us because we still have Kill Shot. Something other space marine chapters don't have, and Baal predators aren't bad with the strats from the marines codex. they are worth playing and worth trying out.

I think we are strong competitively. I don't know how strong, but I feel like we are strong enough now that if we lose, it's because of our mistakes, not becasue our codex is awful.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
BA are one of the absolute strongest factions in the game. Their only competition is a few of the other SM chapters. If anyone is saying otherwise, there's no real point in listening to that.

I think the problem here is that blood angels are space marines, which at the moment means they are automatically stronger than any army that isn't space marines.

Which is kinda why marines are getting a lot of hate right now. They get the most models, they get the most fluff, they get the most releases... and then they also get rules that are significantly stronger than anyone elses.

If I didn't already have an opponent that played as blood angels, I'd probably play them myself.

They are definitely in a better place than non-SM armies now after BoB. However once it's rolled out to all the others we'll still be toward the bottom of the SM factions once it shakes out. Until the other armies are re-done then we'll probably very competitive against them. I can't see mono-BA winning tournaments but as someone said before as part of a soup list? Definitely.