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Hey Dakka!

Thinking about changing to Blood Angels from Eldar, as besides 'nids they are the only other army that really appeals to me.
So I know they used to be quite silly with some lists, especially mechspam, but how are they fairing now?

I don't want them because I think they will be OP, I don't need that in my FLGS, but are they still 'good'? I will mostly fight Tau, Marines, Dark Angels, Orks and DEldar.

And most importantly, are they fun? I'm a fan of predators and dreadnoughts and psychic shenanagins.


Thanks for any help

Von Chogg

I'm having a lot more fun having gone from Blood Angels back to Eldar with the new codex for what it's worth.

Blood Angels are in a pretty static and boring place right now.

I play alot of BA, and I've found that if you play them as BA were intended to be played (as in with death company, lots of assault marines etc) they are pretty weak at the moment. Alot of things in the book are over priced, especally in the HQ section. Even other things such as scouts and whirlwinds costing appx. 30-35 more points than the same unit in the DA book.

I've had a modicum of sucess with them in this edition, but that's because I pretty much play them as regular marines that have the red thirst. I make alot of shooty lists and do pretty well against my gaming group. (mostly Tau, eldar and some orks). When I brought them to a tourney I went 0-2-1. So they aren't competitive right now, but if you are playing for fun, I think they have some of the coolest special units of any of the marine chapters, just be ready to pay alot of points to use them.

Blood Angels, like every MEQ heavy army, are pretty bad right now. They get it worse than the rest because the Blood Angels lack the tools to be an effective assault army and pay too much for their firepower elements to be an effective shooting army.

It kind of bugs me, but I'm pretty sure that come September, my Blood Angels will temporarily be generic Space Marines. They'll fight just as well and probably throw down a lot more killing power with no real loss of maneuverability.

Edit: On a positive note, I'm having a blast playing a double Stormraven, triple Furioso Librarian griefing list with Mephiston, a level 2 Librarian, and 20 assault marines. Nothing ruins a Daemon Cav player's day quite like tarpitting 60 Flesh Hounds on Turn 1 by assaulting them with AV13 dreadnoughts. The daemons couldn't run, couldn't hurt the AV13 dread, and each one doubled out 1 or 2 flesh hounds per turn. Plus, the flesh hounds bases were so big that nothing else could get into base to base contact with the dreads so nothing that might bail them out of combat could join the assault.

Against other things, you load on Telepathy powers and Fear the Darkness and try to Terrify and Puppetmaster and Shriek and Fear the Darkness your opponent into oblivion. Mephiston is still terrible against anyone who's actually good in combat but is great for picking on units that can't fight.

But in reality, Death Company and Baal Predators are the only things in the army that got better with the coming of 6th edition. Everything else just flat out lacks the survivability, and none of it has the option to reroll assault distances, which is the thing that really cripples the army.

Yeah, if you want to use BA, it's because you want to play more mobile marines that can have FnP and make use of fast vehicles. That, or Death Company, Sanguinary guard, and cool dreadnaughts appeal to you.

The BA units themselves aren't necessarily the problem...it's the fact the new codecies have cheaper comparible units that's getting hard to swallow.

Fast vehicles in the hands of sm are a pita.

Vindicators that go 12" and shoot are evil. Predator Annihilators that can go 6" and still fire everything or 12" and fire a gun are annoying (but about 40pts more iirc) BA also still get the best Storm Ravens.

Its all more expensive in points, but I've found it to be far more effective against my eldar than a slower vanilla list.

If you like red death go BA. If points cost bothers you, go Vanilla.

No, the units themselves are the problem. Changes to Furious Charge, Feel No Pain, Multiassaulting, and the addition of Random Charge Length all helped reduce the survivability of MEQ assault units.

The changes to shooting have meant you are taking more fire on the way into combat. The removal of the option to assault out of a Rhino only compounds the damage you must take crossing the board. Changes to Feel No Pain and Furious Charge mean you're taking more wounds while you're in combat, and the changes to Multi-assaulting and Defensive Grenades mean you are also dealing fewer wounds while you're in combat.

On the off hand chance that you do manage to win combat, broken units you fail to catch are free to rally and shoot you in the face.

It's not Codex Creep. The comparable units in new codexes suck, too. The only Jump Infantry you'll see on the table are Wraiths and Wraithknights. One is a shooty unit and the other are multiwound models with a 3++, and S6 rending attacks who can be led by an IC who gives them Preferred Enemy against everything.

Raptors and DA Assault Marines and Warp Talons are all but non-existant on the table because they flat out can't do the things the units are supposed to do.

I found vindicators of limited value in many games. I find they are really devastating against lists that I could already handle with some melta and plasma shooting. But against blobs going to ground, they are less than impressive. They are pretty bad against things like Wave Serpents as well. Sure, the can move 12" and fire, and then on the next turn get fragged when something exploits their AV 11 side.

Not to be a jerk, but getting the best Storm Raven is like getting the best college QB in an NFL game. The Stormraven is considerably more underpowered than the primary two fliers, Vendetta and helldrake. One could argue that those two fliers are underpriced, but it really doesn't matter to me. For the points, the Stormraven doesn't even really come close to being worth it. Especially after the Tau and Eldar codices have dropped. For the price, AV 12 HP 3 is almost criminally fragile. No demonic save, no regen of HP, no skyfire lascannons for 2/3 the price. Note that these are the only two other fliers I ever see consistently. So in my experience pool, the Stormraven is actually the worst flier in the game, because the other fliers may as well not exist.

I really can't imagine what people are fielding from the BA list to challenge the Eldar based off the Eldar lists I've seen. I'm getting shot off the table pretty trivially at this point due to the synergy of BS 4/ scatter lasers TLing more potent weapons/ Super duper psyker buffs. My last game we called after turn 2 and decided it was a better use of our time to get some hamburgers. I had just taken that many casualties in two turn of Eldar fire that there was no question what the outcome would be.

I've seen raptors and jump pack assualt marines in every game I've played against marines in 6th. They are still great distraction/deep strike units. Deep strike in, get a little luck and melta something every turn until your opponant is forced to deal with them. Any shooting they take is shooting that I want to use on something else.

The FnP change isn't a nerf - its swings and roundabouts. You only get it on a 5+, but you get it against everything now (bar double strength/toughness) AP1+2 used to negate it. I see furious charge as the main change for you guys.And my banshees agree with the rest of your points though. Except we don't get assault transports either

In my last game, Corbulo in the BA (with his 2+ FNP)single handedly stopped a flank attack from me consisting of a wave serpent with 10 Dire avengers, 6 spiders with an exarch and an autarch with a melta and 12 Jetbikes.
Semi rending on a 6 means nothing. it can't cut through corbulos 2+ FNP. Then he just los'd anything that would outright kill corbulo.

The army I fought was a vindicator, a pred annihilator, a tac squad and a libby, a tac squad with corbulo, an assault squad with a libby, sternguard in a pod with 4 or 5 meltas and a dread in a pod with a heavy flamer and a fist with a melta. Oh and a Baal pred with a flamestorm cannon.
In an army which relies on cover saves like the eldar, Baals are the heldrakes of the sm's.
I got first turn, we had an objective each. He put his as close to mine as possible, then attacked with everything all at once.
Turn one, drop pod with sternguard appears and he scout moved his Baal, turn two the dread came down. This worked really well in conjunction with his asms moving as forwards as fast as they could.
Eldar speed doesn't matter if drop pods appear with meltas behind wave serpents, negating the serpent field..
He'd no tanks left by turn two, but then I discovered my flank attack was utterly pointless due to corbulo and he killed me piecemeal.

BA can still be effective in 6th - the best part is now people think your army is the worst in the game you can win and leave people going 'wtf just happened???'
And if you lose, you're handicapped by using the BA

@the OP - if you want them, get them. At the rate we're going, all the codex's will be sorted soon anyway. Pack a load of podding flamers and watch eldar cry.

I can't justify using a Baal with a flamestorm when Necrons can load all their troops in fliers, making them immune. Maybe I'll rethink it, but I'm not sure I can justify such a fragile model for a TAC list.

For the points ASMs cost, they need to do more than distract. That's the problem.

Yeah, against Necrons it'd be pretty pointless. Outflanking against anyone with an aegis it's lol time - most people bring the quad gun, so they can only hope to roll 6's for hull points before they get burned with cover ignoring fire.
It didn't get to me in my game, I killed it before it could fire a shot and I got first blood. It took too much firepower to kill and left me short on shooting to kill other units.

ASM's are the least of the threats if you attack with Baals and pods first, so they get ignored cos everyone know they're bad. Then you end up with a squad beating your dark reapers up.

You can also use av13 dreads to comedy effect. Drop pod them in, take interceptor on your front armour. Then use the free pivot in your shooting phase to kill whatever you like.

The Eldar lists I have seen have no trouble killing a Baal and an ASM squad and a furioso in a single turn. But that's my experience.

I'm a bit confused how an Eldar army has any trouble with Blood Angels. Even one with a lot of Banshees.

And yes, the Feel No Pain change is quite severely a nerf. As the meta has shifted from quality of fire to quantitiy of fire, most infantry die to something they got an armor save against, rather than to things that ignore their save. What is needed is something to slog through the hail of shuricat, pulse rifle, and lasgun fire.

Reducing the effectiveness of FnP against massed small arms fire and massed AP- close combat attacks was extremely adverse for Blood Angels since those are the overwhelming majority of what is going to target your infantry.

Have you got any sample eldar lists? I'd be interested to see them.
I had an aegis with reapers and a farseer, 2 wave serpents with 10 Da in, 12 jetbikes with 4 shuriken cannons, 10 warp spiders led by an autarch with a melts (only cos I wanted to try them)and 2 nightwings. Vehicles weren't a problem, but corbulo made the one squad at the back immune to st7 or less. Which meant none of my fast units could kill them at all. The fnp 'nerf' also stopped ap1 and 2 from negating fnp which means only st 8 or above can hurt that squad cos've corbulo.
He's even able to gimp heldrake shooting. If you see one coming, put him at the back of the squad. Vector strike is randomly allocated so you can't stop it, but the flamer hits the nearest model so corb tanks the lot. If the csm player stops at the front and flames, then you've saved 2 to 4 men from that vector strike.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
I'm a bit confused how an Eldar army has any trouble with Blood Angels. Even one with a lot of Banshees.

And yes, the Feel No Pain change is quite severely a nerf. As the meta has shifted from quality of fire to quantitiy of fire, most infantry die to something they got an armor save against, rather than to things that ignore their save. What is needed is something to slog through the hail of shuricat, pulse rifle, and lasgun fire.

Reducing the effectiveness of FnP against massed small arms fire and massed AP- close combat attacks was extremely adverse for Blood Angels since those are the overwhelming majority of what is going to target your infantry.

How would you win with banshees?

you still get fnp against small arms fire. It went from 4+ to 5+. Now you get it against rending and ap1 and 2 weapons. Its a change that's all. It means when you fire shuriken weaponry against a squad and I roll 6's, you get fnp where before you wouldn't.

Well I can tell you it had a fire prism, guardian blob with avatar, war walkers, and fire dragons and a Wraithknight. Unfortunately, I was playing my jumper/drop pod list and the terrain was such that his fire dragons in a wave serpent could trivially zorf the contents of one drop pod. He chose to fry my furioso while using the fire prism (bubble wrapped so I couldn't melta it) and guardians against my sternguards.

Unfortunately, Corbulo is on foot and can't magically be in every squad. He might mitigate one helldrake, but he costs 60% of one and doesn't stop the other two helldrakes at all. That's why they bring triple helldrake.

Spiritseer with Spear of Teuthlas 85
4 * 5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpents with Cannons 760
2 * 10 Guardians in Wave Serpents with Cannons 430
3 Fire Prisms 375
2 units of 6 Swooping Hawks 192

How's that for an Eldar 1850 list? Grab a Warlord trait from the Eldar Codex list and call it a day. Deploy everything, Skyleaping the Hawks on the first turn so they're guaranteed to arrive on the second turn. 3 Fire Prisms will handle hard targets, and for infantry you've got 6 Wave Serpents and 80 bladestorm shots from your Fleet Infantry, plus the damage your Hawks do with a large blast and 18 lasblaster shots each.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for winning with Banshees, I'd take a squad of five of them and keep them behind my Wraithlords and Wraithblades. On the turn that the wraith units hit combat, multiassault as many engaged units as possible with the banshees, spreading around the -5 Initiative to get your wraithlords swinging first and your axes swinging simultaneously with your targets.

Banshees are a neat idea as a support unit, but they lack the punch to be first sharp edge of the blade.

The only way I have found to run BA competitivly or even have a reasonable chance at winning vs friendly lists is to run allies. I use the good choppy bits of the BA codex that I like as an assult element or counter assault element and ally the rest. Death company being troops makes this an easy proposition. BA still has good units but the army as a whole is weak for many of the reasons already stated.

Now if you are the type that hates allies (it is my favorite part of 6th) it will make you have a rather uphill battle to make an even semi competitive army. Either way I would suggest devising your own chapter, colors, and heraldry.Then you can play whichever book appels to your play style. That is what I have done and while BA codex has many faults I still use it nearly exclusivly for the SM section of my lists.

 Von Chogg wrote:
And most importantly, are they fun? I'm a fan of predators and dreadnoughts and psychic shenanagins.

Von Chogg

If you like predators and dreadnoughts, yes, I'd say BA's are fun. In one force org chart you can have 8 dreads and 6 preds, which I'm pretty sure is more than anybody else by a lot. And honestly, you have zero scoring units if you go maximum overload like this (except in Big Guns and The Scouring, I guess) but that much AV13 would be pretty dangerous for your enemies. Plus, of course, our dreads & preds are better than anybody else's, which is one of the few legitimate benefits we have over other marines.

As far as trying to make BAs competitive, I'd even say that dreads & preds are our best bet. Obviously, to a lesser extent than all that, but AV13, I think is in a good place between having a somewhat low points cost and a somewhat high amount of survivability. I personally have been waffling between going heavy on ASMs in razorbacks, or replacing a few with Baal predators, but either way, tanks (and drop pods) are the only way to deploy Blood Angels at this time, IMO.

I'd say allies is the best answer for BA at this point. Allies I don't own :( Of course, the counter to this is that why not take those same allies and put them with a codex that is already better than BA to get an even *better* list?

That aside, I find it very interesting how many different interpretations of what the best stuff in the actual BA codex is.

Some people insist our fast-moving FNP ASM are the best way to go. Others, like tomjoad, think its AV 13 and forget scoring. Others want to do Stormraven shenangians.

I don't know the answer. I'll be honest. I've tried different compositions of what I consider to be the best units in the codex and my outcomes don't seem to change much.

I can tell you that many of my victories are the same games where I roll above average for FNP rolls. That's really not a good sign because that means my answer is "get lucky". Which is kinda lame, imo.

I don't think anyone who actually plays Blood Angels is arguing that ASM are the best way to go.

But I would agree that no matter what I try, how well the army does hinges on whether I roll above or below average on my Feel No Pains.

No, I have seen a few people argue that the best current BA strategy is to use 50+ FNP ASM and just push people off objectives and win by being hard to kill. I agree with these folks in that there are many lists that will have a hard time killing 50+ FNP ASM. But the list archetype basically doesn't shoot at all.

I'm not arrogant enough to sit here and say they are absolutely wrong when I have nothing demonstrably better to offer.

I've tried it. I played it for a decent chunk of this year. It's a sealclubbing list. It crushes bad armies and bad players and gets face rolled by things like Flying Circus Daemons, Psychic Choir Tyranids, Double and Triple Heldrake, and Wraithwing. It struggles against Stormtalon/Thunderfire Space Marines, and power blobs, and Typhus zombie swarms, and Green Tide will take its' lunch money all day.

But Sisters of Battle, or Black Templars, or Strike Spam GKs, or Trukk Orks, or Saim-Hann Eldar do get pummelled soundly..

Losses to flying circus daemons and a deathwing list where enough for me to flee back into the arms of shooty goodness early in 6th.Granted, daemons are different now, but I don't think the flying MCs are much less potent.

I'd argue that they're far more potent than they used to be, especially now that they can pile on the psychic powers.

I found that Deathwing had enough other flaws that I never saw it fielded but the few times I faced it, I was slapped in the face with how one dimensional DoA is. At least in 5th, DoA was pretty decent at that one dimension.

By the way, if you want a nightmare for Blood Angels, try D-scythe spam Iyanden Mech Eldar.

I've tangled with darkscythes before, and its just straight up ugly. I hear its more manageable with FW, but there's just a limit to how much effort/money I can spare for this.

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
No, the units themselves are the problem. Changes to Furious Charge, Feel No Pain, Multiassaulting, and the addition of Random Charge Length all helped reduce the survivability of MEQ assault units.

More than anything else, what has killed my 5th edition BA is list is that Vehicles can't contest objectives any more. I could at least deal with everything else, but I just don't think I can score or contest objectives with 20 Assault Marines in 4 Razorbacks. In the good old days I also had 8 AV13 hulls that could also contest. (3 regular Preds, 3 Baals, and 2 Furiosos)

Not just that, because now your AV 13 hulls are AV 10 when they get close enough to contest. And they get hit on 3+ and WTF owned by krak grenades.

So, your contesting scheme has been double hosed.

How damning is it that we can't even agree on the biggest nerf because there are so many?

There are a couple good things about blood angels still. One is that their level one librarians are as good as level two librarians. Some of the codex spells are cast in the opposing players turn so that means a level one librarian can cast 2x/game turn.

ASM with FC are boss against wave serpents if you can get in CC with them. The mass S5 attacks, which are automatically against rear armour, rip them apart & the models can easily block the exit hatch to kill what is inside for free.

AV13 wall is good.

Dedicated land raiders are good in a plasma heavy meta.

Assaulting the wave serpent is hard to do, much less blocking the hatch, after a couple turns of Eldar shooting.

I don't like having to use codex powers to make my level one libby as good as a level two libby that other lists get for the same price. Divination is far more game changing than BA codex powers, imo.

AV 13 wall has a tendency to be AV 11 wall because of the way GW draws facing arcs for vehicles.

Just my experience.

Blood Angels are typically one of the tougher matchups that I face. So I think you'll have success using them. there are a few builds that are interesting now. There is a discussion on it here:
http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-do-i-make-blood-angels-work-again.html

As the opponent of Blood angels more times than I can even count, I see a very formidable enemy in front of me when Mephiston and his buddies show up for the party