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Hello Community,
So I keep looking at the DA preorders and it is tempting me to start a DA army. What I am curious on is as follows:

1. How is their fluff?
2. Are they a competitive army or more of a "fun to play" army?
3. Are they different enough from vanilla marines enough to feel like their own faction? (The SW feel that way to me)

Does anyone have insight or experience they wish to share?

Thanks all!

Well, due to the fact that there's a new codex coming very soon, I can't really tell. Really, they're like normal marines, but with a distinct bias towards the Termies and Bikes. You can make pure armies of either, or combine them to make a very strong list. The termies are fearless, and have access to a wide arsenal, along with special abilities, as do the bikes. The only remarkable character in the current codex is Sammael, for his fluff. Other than that, Azrael serves as a slight upgrade to company master in some ways, and Belial is simply a terminator company master.

Really, that's it.

1. The DA fluff is all over the place (Which is a good IMO)

2. In my experience DA can be competitive & fun (The new DA codex should continue this trend)

3. Rule wise I feel DA are a mix of Vanilla & SW ( As in not bland but not overly spiced)

All of these questions will have to wait for the book.

3) With the current book, aside from Deathwing and Ravenwing the codex was just like the Vanilla one, but worse. Also, the Vanilla codex does Bike armies better than a pure Ravenwing army does. Which really only left Deathwing as something different than Vanilla.

Deathwing itself also has problems. Only 5 guys in a squad means that it only takes a couple casualities to make the squad ineffective. Of course the ability to mix shooty and melee weapons is awsome. They could also get FnP on some of the squads too.


And with the new codex, even if Ravenwing and Deathwing get much more awsome(which they will), unless they also make their Tac squads and other basic models different from Vanilla its still going to be a case where unless you play Deathwing or Ravenwing you might as well play Vanilla.

The current Fluff for the chapter is that during the Horus Heresy, half of the chapter (the ones they left at their home planet to train new marines) sided with Horus. When the main force got back, all hell broke loose ending up with the planet being exploded, the surviving traitors being spread across time and space and the remaining loyal Dark Angels hiding a very big secret.

Part of their shame is to hunt the fallen until every last one is captured. The higher you reach in the chapter, the more you get to know about the history. Your regular tactical marine would know that the fallen are bad and must be hunted, but not know why they are called the fallen and what they are.

deathwing is all you need to know :-)

In the fluff, they are codex-adherents, save for the Deathwing and Ravenwing, the first two companies.

The new codex will likely make them more divergent, like what happened with Blood Angels, but we'll see on that front.

Of note, as far as my understanding goes, while every successor chapter also operates a Deathwing, the Ravenwing is Legion only. Though not much attention has ever been paid to DA successors, compared to the other legions.

Even the Deathwing and Ravenwing are still Codex adhering. The Deathwing is their first company, but there are members outside of the 1st that are Deathwing.

All 1st company are Deathwing, but not all Deathwing are 1st company. The Ravenwing are the second company.

They are still Codex compliant like normal Marines. The DAs just have the priviledge of being able to, and they prefer to, field the entire 1st company in TDA.

The fluff of the Dark Angels is what drew me to the army. The 1st company is made up of all Terminators and the 2nd company is made up of bikes and speeders. The rest of the companies follow standard codex (vanilla) organization. The Dark Angels can be competitive especially when it comes to shooting. The Dark Angels are not as divergent as the Space Wolves when it comes to following the codex organization.

Kinda need the Codex to release to know how it plays.

they play like this: Roll ones, you lose. don't roll ones, you'll probably win.

The unique elements of DA are DW and RW. A DA army with mostly Tacticals was just like a vanilla SM army. Not sure if this will change.

Dark Angels were the first SM legion

GW is now using this to say they will have more access to plasma technology.

Expect lots of plasma in the new codex and probably a rule to mitigate "gets hot" (4+ ignore from the sounds of it)

Now that the codex is out, what does everyone think? Do they seem to competitive or are they still towards the bottom for SM armies?

Strong but not cheese by the looks of it, maybe be a bit stronger than chaos but 6th is looking like 8th fantasy with more balanced armies.

Competitive. The Deathwing and Ravenwing have extended options which makes them even more playable as standalone armies. They were before, but now even more so. The regular green, PA marines new options moved them from (old, outclassed) to playable and competitive which is a very good thing. They got a couple of flyers, which keeps them in live with the 6th edition in general.

There's a good balance to it all, and they didn't really go over the top with anything in my opinion.

Fluff's good. They basically added to what they already have, rounding it out and making it better without taking any "hard rights" into cheesatude.

I'm really glad to have it and I'll be using it a lot this year. For the release as a whole I wish they'd release more models for it. Updated characters models and all of the chapter banners (they released some, but are missing a few). Wouldn't have minded to see a plasma variant of the predator in the dex just to have a new plastic (and not have to buy the FW one). The kits that they did release for this launch are really golden, lot's of detail, lot's of extra bits to "Angelize" existing stuff.

All and all good launch. Two thumbs up.

A very good 'dex that IMHO has the chance to tackle top-tier armies (Grey Knights, Guard, Necrons) but doesn't look silly overpowered. Actually, one of the best, if not the best codex I've seen in a long time.