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So I'm relatively new. I've been researching the past fees days and decided blood angels would be my first starting army. The only thing is, I don't know where to start. It seems like the more I read the more confused I get. I love the jump army with maybe some possible heavy support sitting back. Don't really like the vehicles tho. So here are my questions:

HQ : seems as tho I would be doing a librarian with a jump pack. No idea on what upgrades would work or what they do.
Elites : I've read that the priests are very good for a more close combat army. Is this true? Is there something else that's better?
Troops : of course there will be assault troops. But how many? Meltaguns? Power weapons? Are tactical a even worth it?
Heavy Support : biggest concerns. There seems to be a lot of discrepancies in this. I originally thought a few squads of devestators would be up my alley, but now, I don't know. I'm not into the vehicles. So devestators? And what is it with missle launchers with these? Are they that different? Vets? Terminators?... O boy

I want a more assault oriented army, but with a nice support to back them up. Points? Lets leave that for later. I just want a personal guideline to go by.

death company

To try and answer your FoC points:

HQ- Librarians are a very good shout, the other decent HQ's (depending on army theme are Astorath for a Death Company heavy army and Dante for Sanguinary guard as troops)
Elites- Priests are indeed very good, they provide a Feel No Pain bubble to units, a must have IMHO, unless you are going for Death Company, in which case consider chaplains for the additional benefit they convey to DC. Other elite choices worth a look into are furioso dread and libby furiosos.
Troops- IMHO assault troop are the way BA should go. whether that be DC or standard BA marines would be your preference, DC will deal more damage but remember you need astrorath in HQ to get multiple units and DC are NOT scoring, so objective games become a case of trying to table your enemy to win (i personally enjoy this aspect).
Fast Attack- not listed by yourself, maybe because you don't like the look of any of it.
Heavy Support- Not into vehicles at all........... interesting. do you count flyers in that as well? because frankly stormravens are fantastic and would be a fast support option for an assault based army. NO VEHICLES. BA vehicles are the fastest available due to them all being fast vehicles or the fact you can deep strike land raiders.

In that case i would suggest looking at Jump pack marines/DC and load up on sang priests, bring as many bodies to the table as possible.

things like vets/termies/tac squads really do need their vehicles to reach full potential.

I was exactly the same! I got into Blood Angels about 6 months ago, I loved the whole "death from above" idea of the Flesh Tearers successor chapter but assault troops aren't as good as they sounded in my head lol, unless you have lots, try and get a librarian with a jump pack, some of the blood angel psychic powers are good (sanguinary sword, and the shield) and take two squad of 10 with priests, quite a tasty units.

Baal predators are good too coz they're fast attack

I couldn't make assault troops work. I'm still trying to figure them out but I think assault is dead for 6th edition

i played when i was a younger kid; mostly I was just interested in building the models. now that I'm older, I want to experience the whole aspect of the game. This includes building a nice competitive army. so I might have to change my mind about the vehicles I guess.

I've read in other places tho of armies with basically 3 squads of 10 assault marines, with various upgrades and such, and then being supported by like 3 squads of devestators. it sounded interesting to me, but I have no idea what works and what doesn't.

In order to make Assault blood angels work you need to have Sang Priests and chaplains and you need to choose your fights carefully.

Assault has been down graded a little in the latest edition which as a Fleshtearer player is quite annoying.

That said, blood angel devi's are cheap, they can have a ton of predators and if you want to be really unpleasant, you could run deathcompany assault troops, BA Assault squads and bikers for a whole lot of quick assault heavy sillyness!

RickS1169 wrote:
i played when i was a younger kid; mostly I was just interested in building the models. now that I'm older, I want to experience the whole aspect of the game. This includes building a nice competitive army. so I might have to change my mind about the vehicles I guess.

I've read in other places tho of armies with basically 3 squads of 10 assault marines, with various upgrades and such, and then being supported by like 3 squads of devestators. it sounded interesting to me, but I have no idea what works and what doesn't.

Welcome to my world aha

I buy stuff because it looks cool and would be awesome to paint, which is an absolute no-no when it comes to being competitive apparently. I played a few games against people who'd been into the hobby for 10 years or longer, when I first started, the rules are still a minefield of mistakes waiting to happen. The amount of times I forgot to use my Shield of Sanguinius is insane. The idea of tactics doesn't come into it right away, at least it didn't for me. I didn't know how to use Assault Troops, or Predators, and whatever other synergy went on.

I think you'll only start learning what works/what doesn't by playing, I've found that with my Blood Angels, and I've transferred a lot of knowledge to my Dark Angels battles now.

It depends who you play, too. I played Necrons and was tabled after 2 turns, it was horrific haha

Hoard armies you want a large number or shots/template weapons, more the better. You want redundancy built it. I briefly played Tau (right before I stopped playing for a bit over Autumn/winter) and if my Hammerheads missed, I had nothing else to take down tanks etc it was really depressing but I learned a lot!

Some of the dudes on here are like Yoda, the crap they know is immense!

ive been reading around and im thinking of doing this:

HQ :
Librarian w/ jump pack and shield of sanguinius
Elite :
2 x Sanguinary Priests w/ jump pack and power weapons
(possibly only one like this with other w/o JP covering devastators, havent made up my mind)
Troops :
2 x 10 Assault Troops w/ PF and 2 Melta guns
5 Death Company w/ chaplain, JP, and PF
Heavy Support :
? x 5 Devestators w/ various long range support weapons

the idea is starting to shape in my head. how does this look?

Tell you what ill give you the list i run which i think you might like as it does have a lib (mephiston king of all that is OP)
and still has a few Assaulting things with some fire power behind it to back you up.

It is a 1750 list as thats what i mainly play. People will say scouts are not worth the points but in my opinion its down to your own taste.
and a great many times have i had scouts thanks to the new 6th ed rule been able to make my assault dudes win a combat thanks to rolling
6's to hit and getting to choose who takes the wound, Seriously it's underated. scouts picking off a sgt with a power fist or thunderhammer will mean your character
can swing freely and make them fall back alot easier!

Scouts are awesome! I've got 8 in my 400 point DA list, 7 with sniper rifles + one with a missile launcher, and all with camo cloaks.

If they get assaulted they're screwed but 36" range, that on a 6 to hit means you get a precision shot, and then to wound if you get a 6 again, that's an AP2 automatic wound (if I remember rightly) - if you're facing vehicles if you get a 6 to wound, that's added to Strength 3, so 9 in total and then you get to roll a D3, so if you get a 3, you've penetrated a 10/11 strength hull

The dice gods have to be kind, but having 8 is a nice number in my experience. I played a 400 point game and they wiped out a squad of dire avengers, another game they helped whittle down a Chaos Marine squad.

Just keep scouts within 36" in cover, ideally a high terrain piece, so you don't get any of this "you're shooting through a tree, that's a cover save for me" crap because you'd be above it, and you'll do fine =]

how about this?HQ:
Librarian (175 points)
- Jump Pack
- Unleash Rage
- Shield of Sanguinius

Elite:
Sanguinary Priest (90 points)
- Jump Pack
- Power Sword

Sanguinary Priest (90 points)
- Jump Pack
- Power Sword

Troops:
10 Assault Marines (240 points)
- Sergeant: Power Fist & Combat Shield
- 2 Melta Guns

10 Assault Marines (240 points)
- Sergeant: Power Fist & Combat Shield
- 2 Melta Guns

10 Death Company (375 points) & Chaplain (140 points)
- Jump Packs
- Power Fist

Heavy Support:

10 Devestator Marines (240 points)
- 2 Lascannons
- 2 Missle Launchers

10 Devestator Marines (240 points)
- 2 Lascannons
- 2 Missle Launchers

would this be enough assault w/o having any mechs? or should i go for 1 squad devs with a pred and remove the DC for more assaults?

well what you could do is preist with jet pack with divition rules with a melta bomb into your main kill squad ( if its not terminators, if terminators then give it termi armor insted )

elites preists are epic, thats kinda what makes ba so good because they all have fnp and fc and they all have jump packs

troops assult troops with metlas or flamers with a power weapon and metla bombs

fast attack storm raven, i prefer the tl mm tl assult canon and x2 hurricane bolters

heavy support would be devistatros in my opinon with x4 missiles and the sargent with bs 5 fireing a agis def line with more devistators supporting him or somthing that shoots alot

Someone needs to lay this out here: the BA are *not* a good list in 6th edition. They are not even middle-tier. The people claiming that they are don't really understand how all the nerfs from 5th sneak up on the BA. Obviously, if you don't care about winning, ignore this post.

BA HQs are all terrible *for the price* except the generic libby and maybe Tycho. That's it. All the rest should be dust collectors for 6th. The libby gets divination as a force multiplier, or maybe book powers for a mech list. Done. We can't afford the pricey HQs because they suck and reduce our body count.

BA Troops: Tactical squads got better, ASM got worse. Which is the exact opposite of what is good for us, since we don't get combat tactics on our tac squads like the vanilla dex. ASM, without init 5, have all kinds of trouble now beating other meqs in combat. Or winning in a way that doesn't cripple the squad. If it's Space Wolves, the ASMs are basically hosed. Scouts are okay, but a single heavy flamer away from disaster. They lose a lot of utility with the rise of the Helldrake.

DC, while "troops" are more like elites. These guys look awesome on paper, but in practice against someone who knows what they do, are actually pretty bad. They must assault to get their goodies, and good players will exploit this. They also suffer from awkward mobilization choices.

BA Elites: Expensive and fragile, in general. These slots are really good way to kill your model count. SG are a better value than DC, but die like slime to plasma. Hey, look! The current meta is plasma! /faceplam. SP are nice for FNP, but furious charge is now basically a joke. It's still unclear to me if SP are really worth it. I still use them, so I guess I'm decided "yes".

BA Fast attack: This is where it gets good. Which is sad for the BA. Bikes and attack bikes were big winners in 6th, since they get jink and we can give them FNP. FNP on a T5 model is hot stuff, since they can shrug off battlecannons, lascannons, dark lances, etc. You need STR 10 tech to deny the FNP. MM attack bikes are probably the scariest thing in the codex now, which is pretty sad if you think about it. Land speeders are garbage compared to bikes. The typhoon ones are okay, but MM goodness trumps it imo. Baals are okay, but have a tendency to get hit on their side AV 11 when moving into position.

BA Heavy Support: This is where it gets weird. Stormraven: overpriced AV 12 flier that is not as good as advertised. Mostly because the Vendetta will make this thing look stupid for the points. It's useless as a transport because of the reserve and crashing rules. Devs: lack of autocannon choice makes these guys super meh. A fast predator is probably a better choice. Autolas preds can keep their butts to the edge of the table and present AV 13 at all costs, unlike their Baal cousins.

Rules of thumb: don't ever use missile launchers. Ever. There is always a better heavy choice, even if it costs a bit more. Both the krak and frag damage stat lines are disasters and versatility means nothing if both modes suck.

Figure whom we can and can't beat in HTH. The list of things that cause us grief is much longer in 6th editoin.

Shoot more. Unfortunately, we are going to have to rely on BS4 like never before. This is bad because other chapters are better at this than we are. Pretty much the biggest advantage we have here are fast vehicles. Cheap devs don't count for much, as they are immobile and easily fragged by things like Helldrakes.

Bottom line: we are a HTH chapter that can't really do HTH. There have been all kinds of attempts to hand wring and justify and rationalize, but that's pretty much the bottom line. 6th edition was death of a 1000 nerfs for the BA. None of the nerfs were huge, but when you add them up, they are crippling. It's a special kind of offensive that our captains can't even get relic blades or artificer armor. Which means vanilla HQs are better at HTH than us.

The codex should be renamed Codex: Trap Units. There are so many units that look great on paper, until you field them and realize that what you paid for them is crippling your model count. And none of them are really paying for extrra resilience. That's the killer. Well constructed opposition will slaughter BA lists with said trap units. Too much overpriced fluffy junk that dies easily on the battlefield.

I agree that ba have been made weaker in the 6th edition, the ruining of stormravens has broken my heart, every sm chapter gets them and also they are just so pointless now, with helldrakes (I have 2).

however if you want a fun, non-competitive list, there still good, I play with my mates mainly, so I'm cool!

hq: librarian, why oh why do people go on about them, they are poor, ok a captain is worse, but every time I have used one, it either got killed by a ap2 high str weapon or it lost its crappy 2 wounds, get yourself a reclusiarch!! 30 points more, and they are sweet! (well only in dc), but they got more attitude.

troops, meh you choose maybe 2x tactical squad or 2x assualt squad, but get some melta, But also get some dc, I love 10dc with bolters NO jump packs- too expensive!, 200 point unit that will kill any other unit for that points (I think) if it gets the charge! get a dc dreadnought aswell with blood talons, bye bye any enemy marines, or anything else for that matter that aint got 2+ armor or an inv.

elites- saguianry priest or close combat terminators with th and ss.

fast attack, meh

heavy support, used to be storm ravens, still is depending who you are playing, but 2x vindicators are AWESOME, fast str 10 ap2 large blasts that have bben upgraded in 6th yes please, possibly my new favourite unit.

Now Im gonna get ripped for my views, but im more than happy to fight my corner, or get convinced Im wrong, (apoligises for bad grammar and spelling- I Like to rant)

Stormravens were overrated before they gave them to other chapters. Actually, the most significant thing about that book is the point deduction of storm talons and them not raising the price of Vendettas.

Martel732 wrote:
Stormravens were overrated before they gave them to other chapters. Actually, the most significant thing about that book is the point deduction of storm talons and them not raising the price of Vendettas.

we get storm talons on ba now?

No, but we can ally and get them. Sadly, there are only fluff reasons to BA over any other chapters at this point. Someone has to be on the bottom, and it might as well be us this edition.