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I'm pretty sold on using a Librarian in my Blood Angels list, but I can't help feel that I could be getting more out of him. I usually play against my brother's Deff Dread and Battlewagon heavy Ork lists, so I tend to run my librarians as follows:

HQ:
Librarian w/ Epistolary Upgrade, Jump Pack. Powers: Sanguine Sword, Might of Heroes.

For an affordable 175 pts. I tend to Descent of Angels him as close to the offending Dread/Battlewagon as I can get, then jump pack over next turn and, barring any awful rolls, take 3+D3 chops at it at S10.

It works alright most of the time but there's so many ways for it to go wrong - miscasting one or both spells. Perils of the Warp. Not blowing it up and being susceptible to retaliatory instant death dread attacks. Scattering out of my cover and in to the path of an oncoming battlewagon. More often than not, he gets killed by SOMETHING before he's really able to make a huge difference.

What spells would you suggest running my Librarian with, particularly against orks, but any generally effective builds would be appreciated. Secondly, is the Epistolary upgrade worth it?

Try attaching him to a squad with a Power Fist and use Unleash Rage instead. The rerolls combined with the Fist should kill the Dread.

Well I think that while the Librarian build you've got there is pretty good, for 175 points you could also take 5 Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs and Melta Bombs, if you have an FOC slot free. DoA jumping, Heroic Interventions with Melta Bombs should make easy work of any Deff Dread, Killa Kan or Battlewagon. But if you have to take a Librarian, I personally wouldn't dedicate him to taking out things like Battlewagons, I would take a Librarian Furioso for something like that. My £0.02.

Kinda off topic: What about Lance? It sounds like it can kill any tanks outright....

It can, but you can get unlucky 4D6 distance and it only goes like 12 or 14, and any units behind the first get cover.

As for good against orks, I highly recommend shackles and and fear of the darkness for a support libby, or UR and Shield from those deff guns.

Drop epistolary... you don't need it 99% of the time due to when most of the BA spells actually go off. The most effective librarian spell combos are:

Sanguine Sword / Shield of Sanguinus - This one is your standard assault load out. It's great for taking out MCs or for anti-armor in lower point armies.
Unleash Rage / Shield of Sanguinus - This combo is usually used when you want a super-chaplain, but either can't afford the Reclusiarch, or are lacking in psy defense.
Blood Lance / Shield of Sanguinus - Typical shooty librarian. Usually this is the set up you see in mech lists so the lib can be useful at range.
Blood Boil / Shield of SAnguinus - Pretty much the same as the above. It's generally underrated due to its randomness, but can cripple the enemy.

You'll notice they all take shield. This is because of how absolutely amazing it is within the context of the BA codex. We have a bunch of fast units/vehicles that all need to close to at least moderate, if not outright assault, range before they become effective. Shield gives you a mobile 5+ cover save that effects vehicles, which lets you close to that range with at least a little safety.

Some less useful/army specific load outs:

Wings of Sanguinus / Shield of Sanguinus - This is great when you're expecting to have to foot slog a lot of jump infantry. Generally its better to leave wings to the lib dreads though.
Sanguine Sword / Might of Heroes + Epistolary - Used to make the librarian into a cheap MC. Generally you're better off taking Mephiston though.

Shackle Soul - This can be useful in certain situations, but I wouldn't recommend it in a generic army. If you know you're going against an opponent that is going to have a single kill-unit floating around, this can be a viable choice however.
Fear of the Darkness - Same thing as above. Don't take it in a TAC army. If you know you're going against an enemy that has low moral units, or don't mind gambling against an enemy that likes to come in from table edge then it can be viable.

Edit: To answer you on a more specific note... What does the rest of your army look like? Perhaps the solution to your dreadnought issue is not to kitbash the librarian to deal with it, but rather to tweak something else.

Thanks for the replies. I'm definitely going to try out some of those suggested builds for the libby.

As for the rest of my army, I'm still in the experimental phase of figuring out what works and bulking up my forces. As I mentioned, I generally face Orks, so I've taken to using flamers more often than I would in a TAC list. We usually play 1500 points.

My lists currently tend to feature two assault marine squads as my troops, one with meltaguns and a power fist, the other with flamers and a power sword. I'm experimenting with Death Company with mixed results (generally based on how they're deployed, Death Company in a Stormraven is pretty effective, but too expensive to use regularly). Tactical Marine squads occasionally to hold objectives.

The other mainstays of my list are at least one Baal Predator with the assault cannon and a Blood Talon furioso. Occasionally I'll swap them out for a Flamestorm cannon baal pred and/or a Blood Fist/Magna grapple furioso. In the near future I'm investing in some Sanguinary Priests and Honor Guard for sure. The deff dread problem, though, is that it's front AV 12, and when there's a Kustom Force Field involved, the two meltaguns don't cut it. If they don't connect and I get charged, I'm left using grenades and a single power fist. I feel like an anti-tank vanguard vet squad or devastators with multi-meltas would be way too expensive to take in the off-chance I have to blow up dreads.

Against orks, I don't often find myself lacking for anti-tank unless it's a completely mechanized list, but I don't doubt that against more competitive opponents I'd probably need more. When I lose against orks, generally I find that I just can't pump out enough infantry wounds, so the reason I asked was wondering if maybe I could figure out a more effective combo for my librarian or just free up points on him to use elsewhere. The next game I'm going to play I'm thinking I'll probably try running Shackle Soul/Fear of the Darkness, as that does seem to be useful just to tie up units and let my assault marines clean up a squad or two before having to worry about another. I also am intrigued by the shield/UR combo, that seems really effective as well.

Would I be better served using another HQ maybe? Should I bite the bullet and just add more anti-tank weaponry throughout the list? I shudder to think of using a captain or reclusiarch, but orks seem to be a pretty good counter to most BA powers simply because of their disposability, the fact that they're fearless most of the time, and that their guns are just massed peashooters.

You might want to consider something like a 4x ML devastator squad or a vindicator. The 4x ML squad will put some serious hurt on anything you fire it at, and with two different missiles to choose from you can either fire the single target one to punch trucks, or drop the blasts on his boyz.

The vindicator, however, is probably how I'd run it if you can manage to find the points for it. The demolisher cannon is pretty much point and gib vs. orks.

As far as the HQ choice, you really don't get the benefit of a reclusiarch unless he's being run with DC. You're generally better off with an unleash rage/shield lib in any other squad since unleash rage is basically the chaplain power but happens on every assault phase and not just on the charge.

The other potential idea is to take that blood talon dread and give it a frag cannon instead. It's still going to be iffy on that tank, but being rending, and a template weapon you will automatically pen armor 12 on a 6 and ignore his cover save. It's not a perfect solution, but it might be worth considering if you're tight on points. Plus, you can always turn the frag cannon around and start popping boyz with it.

Thanks for the tips. That devastator squad sounds perfect for orks, and I think I actually have four ML tactical marines somewhere to give it a shot. I'll for sure give the vindicator a shot as well.

Is there any particular advantage that I'm not seeing to using a Reclusiarch over a normal Chaplain? Aside from the improved statline and filling an HQ slot instead of a much coveted elites slot, of course. I've run a jump pack chaplain with my DC a few times with good results, so if it can be even better...

I always run mine with Shield and Rage, and I take two of them. My army is all DoA and they need the Shield badly, the lower model count makes the Rage an easy second choice so my charges hit home the way I need them to. Combining the 2 Libbies with 2 Priests and my entire army is inside the happy bubble of FNP/FC/Shield. It is all very dependent on the rest of the list though. Having two hoods in the psyker heavy meta is also a big help.

bruno.sardine wrote:Thanks for the tips. That devastator squad sounds perfect for orks, and I think I actually have four ML tactical marines somewhere to give it a shot. I'll for sure give the vindicator a shot as well.

Is there any particular advantage that I'm not seeing to using a Reclusiarch over a normal Chaplain? Aside from the improved statline and filling an HQ slot instead of a much coveted elites slot, of course. I've run a jump pack chaplain with my DC a few times with good results, so if it can be even better...

Other than the better statline and the HQ slot, no.

However, there is a distinct difference between a chaplain/recluisarch and a rage librarian. The biggest one being how the two units provide re-rolls to hit. The librarian uses unleash rage on each assault phase in order to provide the unit with preferred enemy. While this gives them re-rolls to hit in every assault phase (both yours and your opponents), it does not function when fighting things without a weapon score. Also, the librarian has a second psychic power (usually shield in this setup) that provides some extra protection to the unit. The chaplain's liturgies of blood, however, only provides this re-roll to hit when that unit charges, but when a chaplain is in a unit of Death Company they get to re-roll failed to wound checks as well.

This is what i meant by saying you're better off with a rage/shield librarian in any unit that is not DC over the reclusiarch. That's not to say that the reclusiarch is bad, but the one extra wound does not make up for the 6in 5+ cover bubble from the librarian. However, if you're running your HQ with a DC unit the re-roll to wound and the extra wound on the reclusiarch can outweigh the cover bonus and continued re-rolls to hit from the librarian, especially if the unit has some other defensive ability (FNP from a Sanguinary Priest for example).

1st power should always be shield in an all comers list. Due to typical ork shooting it's not much use at all against orks because so little of it is AP3, and a 5+ cover doesn't do much to protect transports versus loota based overkill (They tend to either wiff on their own or inflict 6 or more pens all at once). Against every other army shield is going to be your most needed power. It makes your vehicles 33% tougher, and it gives jump pack assault marines cover that doesn't kill them through dangerous terrain tests. Most importantly a regular level 1 psyker can use 1 power on your turn and 1 power on your opponents turn, so shield is used on your opponent's turn while the 2nd power is used on yours. Bottom line is your 1st power should always be shield.

I'm not a fan of blood lance. It's a good short range psychic power, but BA don't need it because the army is loaded with fast melta coming out of the wazoo. It does what the rest of the army already does well, thus it doesn't fill a needed role.

Unleash rage is my favorite #2 because it's a force multiplier. It's a nasty force multiplier, especially against orks. 25 S5 regular attacks from a 2 melta gun 10 man assault squad (not including the pfist) are scary when they hit the boys, S5 regular attacks with rerolls to hit are downright frightening. Against deff dreads it would allow the Pfist to reroll to hits on it's 3S9 Pfist attacks which is good, but the primary way to take out walkers should be with melta guns.

Sanguine Sword is the other useful power. When it comes to anti walker/MC/vehicle killing power 4 additional attacks at S10 from the librarian>Rerolls to hit on the 3 S9 attacks that the Pfist already has. On the other hand when it comes to anti infantry killing power/anti horde killing power rerolls to hit on 25S5regular+3S9pfist+4S5force weapon attacks>having the librarians 4 attacks go from S5 to S10.

I usually choose unleash rage over sword. The reason why is I have faith in my melta guns to take care of walkers for me. If you don't entirely trust your melta guns then sword is an excellent choice.

Now I'm using Shield/Fear of darkness combo in my tournament list. Fear can be very usefull against devastators, lootas and such that are sitting in the backfield and shooting. Forced LD check with -2 mod is a killer. I've tried lance but it's basicly another melta which I have plenty. Rage is quite good, but combat squading takes away its potential.

Well, a Librarian is mainly a support character and should not go out for a suicide mission - like taking on an Ork Battletank.