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Are BA better than Vanilla marines overall?

Can someone do a pro's/con's for each army for a beginner to learn from?

Thematically I'm still doing Red Hunters, but if the rules for BA would be better then I'll use them.

BA are better.

Pros -
Sanguinary Priests giving FNP + FC to whole army
Fast Vehicles mean moving and firing
Cheaper Devastators
DoA makes deepstriking armies viable
Mephiston is a beast
Furioso Dreadnoughts
Possible furious charge + fearless on units

Cons -
Vehicles more expensive
Terminators slightly more expensive.
Loss of combat tactics

The power difference between the two books is an unfortunate side effect of the BA book being costed under a slightly cheaper point cost model to the vanilla book. The only edge the Vanilla book has over the BA book is with special characters like Vulcan and Lysander.

So then what should I take as HQ and what are the "must have" units for BA?

I like sternguard so I'll still be taking a unit of them, but everything else I'm open to suggestions.

Baal Preditors are a cheap way of taking out light armour and mowing down medium/light infantry.
And since they have "Fast" you can nearly always make sure you have cover from most threats while still firing all weapons.

Well it really depends on what kind of list you are running.

But either Mephiston, or if you do not like his cost, a Librarian in Terminator armor with a stormshield are good choices for HQ.

Troops should be Assault squads mostly either for DoA, or in razorbacks (I use a 5 man squad of scouts with sniper rifles for capping objectives in my deployment zone).

Fast attack Baal Predators.

Elite TH/SS terminators, Furioso dreadnoughts with blood talons.

Heavy Devistator squad with 4 Missile Launchers, Autocannon/Lascannon Sponson predators. I use a Stormraven to shuttle my TH/SS terminators to where I need them, and the dreadnought as well.

Sternguard are not bad, but they are not great in a BA list.

They are amazingly better than Vanilla marines.

Ogryn wrote:They are amazingly better than Vanilla marines.

Well, I wouldn't go as far as saying 'amazingly better', but yes, BA is overall a stronger codex. Fast vehicles, assault squads as troops, FnP and Furious charge everywhere, sweet dreads, and solid psychic powers with a strong selection of characters makes for an overall improvement over C:SM.

Mmm...I wouldn't say "overall".
As said above, not possible to get characters like Calgar, Lysander, Vulkan, Shrike, or Kantor. All characters who can really buff up an army.

Horst wrote:BA are better.

Pros -
Sanguinary Priests giving FNP + FC to whole army
Fast Vehicles mean moving and firing
Cheaper Devastators
DoA makes deepstriking armies viable
Mephiston is a beast
Furioso Dreadnoughts
Possible furious charge + fearless on units

Cons -
Vehicles more expensive
Terminators slightly more expensive.
Loss of combat tactics

more pros-
10pts cheaper vanguards
Better command squad variant for same cost which doesn't need captain(if you like to use that)
Deepstriking landraiders (can give you the edge sometimes)
Better psychic powers
Chaplain HQ version is also lot better
Assault marines as troops with access to all dedicated transports
Landraiders can be taken as transport to everyone
Razorbacks get heavyflamers for free unlike Vanilla marines

Cons-
They're not Grey Knights

Thunder555 wrote:

Horst wrote:BA are better.

Pros -
Sanguinary Priests giving FNP + FC to whole army
Fast Vehicles mean moving and firing
Cheaper Devastators
DoA makes deepstriking armies viable
Mephiston is a beast
Furioso Dreadnoughts
Possible furious charge + fearless on units

Cons -
Vehicles more expensive
Terminators slightly more expensive.
Loss of combat tactics

more pros-
10pts cheaper vanguards
Better command squad variant for same cost which doesn't need captain(if you like to use that)
Deepstriking landraiders (can give you the edge sometimes)
Better psychic powers
Chaplain HQ version is also lot better
Assault marines as troops with access to all dedicated transports
Landraiders can be taken as transport to everyone
Razorbacks get heavyflamers for free unlike Vanilla marines

Cons-
They're not Grey Knights

More pros -
Assault Marines can carry two special weapons, however unlike Vanilla Marine, those can be meltaguns... in the current metagame, this is a HUGE advantage.

Cons-
Red is harder to paint than blue...

Perhaps, I am immune to sarcasm, but aren't they pretty even? The Vanilla space marines are noticeably cheaper when every little point counts. BA have their strengths which is getting into the enemies face fast, but if you play a more defensive style I can just see the BA army acting poorly. Vanilla space marines by far manage to out shoot BA armies.

It depends on your play style in my opinion.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:Perhaps, I am immune to sarcasm, but aren't they pretty even? The Vanilla space marines are noticeably cheaper when every little point counts. BA have their strengths which is getting into the enemies face fast, but if you play a more defensive style I can just see the BA army acting poorly. Vanilla space marines by far manage to out shoot BA armies.

It depends on your play style in my opinion.

only rhino chassis vehicles are cheaper for vanilla marines since BA vehicles pay 15pts for being fast. But as for razorback spam, BA does it cheaper and they're fast. Other than that, BA units are equal cost or cheaper.
As for defensive playing.. they have same options available (thunderfire cannon excluded). Cheaper heavyweapons and twinlink las razorbacks make them better even in defensive game.

Vanilla does Bike lists better and, as has been stated, has all the special characters like Kantor, Vulkan and Lysander.

forruner_mercy wrote:Mmm...I wouldn't say "overall".
As said above, not possible to get characters like Calgar, Lysander, Vulkan, Shrike, Khan , or Kantor. All characters who can really buff up an army.

How can you forget Kor'Sarro?

I also did not put Sicarius, Tigurius, or Cassius.
I did not mean to make those Characters better, they were just examples.

Virtually all non-vanilla marines are better than vanilla marines unfortunately and has been pretty much since 3rd ed. If you want bike lists play vanilla marines, other than that I can't see much of a reason unless you have a painted army of a particular chapter

Kirasu wrote:Virtually all non-vanilla marines are better than vanilla marines unfortunately and has been pretty much since 3rd ed. If you want bike lists play vanilla marines, other than that I can't see much of a reason unless you have a painted army of a particular chapter

I'm painting my blood angels green to match my codex chapter.

Playing non-vanilla marines is always the win, who doesn't love denying their spiritual liege.

Non-mechanical reasons why BA is just better
Most experienced commander in the galaxy, even papasmurf bows to you.
Demi-primarch Librarian (Mephiston)
Is both incredibly civilized and and frothing mad berzerkers.

Ultramarines = Vanilla
Dark Angels = Pistachio
Blood Angels = Strawberry
Black Templar = Chocolate
Space Wolves = ??
Grey Knights = ??

Anyone have any ideas for finishing this?

Space wolves- Dog Food
Grey Knights - Aged Limberger..
Dark Angels - Secret Flavour (tastes like bubblegum though...)
Salamanders- Tabasco


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Black Templars are dark Chocolate for me.. No wonder i like them so much

The way I look at the 2 codex is: The Blood Angels codex lets you build more or less one or 2 styles of armies, both better then C:SM. However, C:SM allows for you to build a number of different play style armies via special characters, some of which are comparable to C:BA.

"Dark Angels - Secret Flavour " That is the nerdiest thing I have laughed out loud from in a while.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:Perhaps, I am immune to sarcasm, but aren't they pretty even? The Vanilla space marines are noticeably cheaper when every little point counts. BA have their strengths which is getting into the enemies face fast, but if you play a more defensive style I can just see the BA army acting poorly. Vanilla space marines by far manage to out shoot BA armies.

It depends on your play style in my opinion.

Funny, one would think vanilla sm would outshoot ba, but actually, ba and sm are pretty much equal in shooting.
It's just that ba have more cc options.

Blood Angels pay more for storm shields. GW possibly didn't realise how good 3++ was when pricing the Marines. By the time they got to Space Wolves they'd learned, oh boy they'd learned.

But they'd apparently forgotten how expensive Missile Launchers ought to be