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Is Astorath the Grim a good HQ for blood angels, or what is the best?

Mephiston.

Depends on what you want to do?

Astorath works fine if you wanna exploit his army-wide effects and throw more Death Company at your opponent. For Mech-Angels though, Astorath is obviously wasted.

For hard-core competitive, a psychic hood is probably the best thing to purchase in HQ, which you will get with a Librarian or with Mephiston (who, unlike other Librarian, is tough enough to work without a pricy baby-sit-unit).

I was looking for going an all out close combat army.

Mephiston is calling to you strongly.

For all-out assault, Astorath will serve you well. The Sanguinor will also be a HQ you might want to look at.

Mephiston, despite some good stats, doesn't quite work at the heart of a massive assault wave. He's better played harrassing smaller fish and/or staying alive until later in the game, so you can use his Hood. He still makes for 3-times the utility of any "regular" Librarian because he actually can do useful things outside psychic abilities, and isn't insta-gibbed by Powerfists/Lascannons/whatever. But I wouldn't strategically "trade" Mephiston for taking out a key-part of the enemies army like you would with straight-up CC-monsters until very late in the game.

Astroth if you want to incorporate more then 1 squad of DC, and an army thats heavily fearless and has furious charge is good for CC. Even though I like Mephiston, he has no invulnerable save, so a cringe a little every time I see an enemy with alot of power weapons/lascannons/ meltas and all that stuff. The Sanguinor is good as a hero sniper/ support unit, Aura of Fervour giving anyone 6" to him 1+ attack, his blessing making your sergeant better, and letting you re-roll all hits and wounds against an enemy hero of choice is great with 5 attacks and WS8. His 3+ invulnerable save means that he's not going down easy to much, but I use both him and Astroth in my army, but its going to be 2.5k so, I have room

I always take at least one librarian the Reclusiarchs and Captains just do not match up to them.

Thanks for the help everyone it has got me thinking.

I take a Reclusiarch, who I find is more effective then the librarian. Sure, your librarian has the hood and two powers, but I prefer the reclusiarch's unit buffs to the librarians powers, and people underestimate a Reclusiarch. I run a librarian-dreadnought to cover my psychic needs. If you want brute CC power, a Reclusiarch will serve you well. Mephistan is good, but he needs a little more work because he is able to be insta-killed.

Happygrunt wrote:I take a Reclusiarch, who I find is more effective then the librarian. Sure, your librarian has the hood and two powers, but I prefer the reclusiarch's unit buffs to the librarians powers, and people underestimate a Reclusiarch. I run a librarian-dreadnought to cover my psychic needs. If you want brute CC power, a Reclusiarch will serve you well. Mephistan is good, but he needs a little more work because he is able to be insta-killed.

The Librarian can do everything the Reclusiarch can do, but the Librarian does it better.

The Reclusiarch has an ability that lets you re-roll your to hit on the turn you assault into combat, the Librarian can use a Psychic power to re-roll your to hit every assault phase, including the opponents.

the Librarians Unit buffs are way better than the Reclusiarch's

DeathReaper wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:I take a Reclusiarch, who I find is more effective then the librarian. Sure, your librarian has the hood and two powers, but I prefer the reclusiarch's unit buffs to the librarians powers, and people underestimate a Reclusiarch. I run a librarian-dreadnought to cover my psychic needs. If you want brute CC power, a Reclusiarch will serve you well. Mephistan is good, but he needs a little more work because he is able to be insta-killed.

The Librarian can do everything the Reclusiarch can do, but the Librarian does it better.

The Reclusiarch has an ability that lets you re-roll your to hit on the turn you assault into combat, the Librarian can use a Psychic power to re-roll your to hit every assault phase, including the opponents.

the Librarians Unit buffs are way better than the Reclusiarch's

Psychic Hood. The same reason everyone takes a librarian. The Librarian's powers can be shut down, the Reclusiarch's can not. But that is just my taste. You can take either one and have it work.