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So I'm a newbie Blood Angels player and I was looking into building a DoA army. I feel that in a DoA list flamers are necessary to deal with hordes like Orks. I know that at tournies at my FLGS people run Kan Wall, Nids, etc so I'm going to be going up against hordes on a pretty consistent basis. Now here's my question how should I split up the flamers into my army? For instance is it better to have 2 squads like this?

Option A:
10 AM Squad - Sgt. + PF, 1 melta, 1 flamer
10 AM Squad - Sgt. + PF, 1 melta, 1 flamer

or Option B:
10 AM Squad - Sgt. + PF, 2 melta
10 AM Squad - Sgt. + PF, 2 flamer

Personally I feel option B is better since one squad is more effective at horde than the other and it can be placed where its needed on the board, but I'm not sure since I have barely played and I'm still just assembling/ painting pieces at this point. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks.

if you run into horde consistantly, i would run 1 Meltagun, 1 flamer, and give the sergeant a handflamer.

having 1 squad with 2 flamers and 1 with 2 Meltas can be bad if you don't get the squad you want where you want it.


the handflamer is nice, even with only Str3.

I'd tend towards option B myself, although I'm only a guard player.

Grey Templar wrote:if you run into horde consistantly, i would run 1 Meltagun, 1 flamer, and give the sergeant a handflamer.

having 1 squad with 2 flamers and 1 with 2 Meltas can be bad if you don't get the squad you want where you want it.


the handflamer is nice, even with only Str3.

That's not a bad idea, but I feel that's less effective than just having 1 of each in the squad since a hand flamer isn't as good as a flamer. I'll still try it before I completely say its not good.

Brunius wrote:I'd tend towards option B myself, although I'm only a guard player.

I would imagine that having weapons spread around in an army work the same in any army no matter what.

I personally would skip the flamers for melta. You need the melta to krak open transports, you don't need the flamers to deal with orks. Against orks you can either DS father away or not DS at all and your superior movement will allow you to get the charge almost all the time. An assault marine charge should be enough to brutally cripple the ork unit.

But then against guard or other mech armies, if you can't bust them out of the transports with shooting then it will be turn 4 before you have any chance of assaulting the guys inside.

You really need melta against lots of armies, even horde armies you don't really need flamers.

I do suppose that 10 assault marines, with FnP and FC, can deal with a mob of 30 boyz quite easily.

aside from PKs, the orks have little chance of killing more then a couple of marines.


lets see.

10 marines(in range of Sang priest and Sarg has PF) vs 30 boyz with PK.

the marines fire 8 bolt pistols and 2 melta guns.

7 bolt hits, 1 melta gun hit. 4 bolt wounds, 1 meta wounds. 5 orks dead.

marines charge.

9 marines. 7 have 3 attacks each, 2 have 2(melta gunners)

25 attacks at Str5. about 17 hits.

Str5 vs T4. about 11 wounds.

about 2 armor saves from the orks. 9 orks die.

15 ork boyz swing.

3 attacks each. 45 attacks

about 23 hits.

about 8 wounds.

3 failed armor saves.

about 2 failed FnP. 2 marines die.

Sergeant and Nob swing at same I.

Sergeant. 3 attacks. 2 hits. 2 wounds, 2 dead orks.

Nob. 2 attacks. 1 hit, 1 wound, 1 dead marine.


final tally. 16 dead orks, 3 dead marines.

14 remaining orks take 13 No Retreat wounds.

11 more orks die. next round the orks will die before swinging.

ArtfcllyFlvrd you bring up a good point which is why in my army I was planning on having 3 squads of 10 Man Assault Marines with 2 out of the 3 relying heavily on melta and the last 10 man squad relying on flamers. This of course doesn't include the Honor Guard that I was gonna beef up with more meltas. I see what you are getting at though since orks and other horde armies will lose an entire squad simply because the Marines are a better unit.

Grey templay while that scenario has happened before I've shot, charged and lost quite a few times. On paper the marines should win every time, but they don't necessarily always win. I'm trying to ensure my army covers all of the bases it has to cover in order to ensure a swift victory.