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With all the hype surrounding the DA's up coming release their last dex was just meh, and it made me think were the dark angels ever any good?

Thanks

 Gitsmasher wrote:
With all the hype surrounding the DA's up coming release their last dex was just meh, and it made me think were the dark angels ever any good?

Thanks

You mean 3rd Edition BA-Rhino-Rush/Iron-Warriors-HS-cheese or 5th-Edition Long-Fang/Psyfledreads-spam or 7th-Edition-GravCentStar-broken?

I don't think so.


All-Terminator-army used to be a much tougher match-up for some armies than it is today and for a time, only DA could do it.

The 6e dark angels codex was pretty good before the 6e edition space marine codex came out, afterwards they became decent, but now that they are being released after codex space marines they might actually be competitive for a while.

Wonderwolf wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:
With all the hype surrounding the DA's up coming release their last dex was just meh, and it made me think were the dark angels ever any good?

Thanks

You mean 3rd Edition BA-Rhino-Rush/Iron-Warriors-HS-cheese or 5th-Edition Long-Fang/Psyfledreads-spam or 7th-Edition-GravCentStar-broken?

I don't think so.


All-Terminator-army used to be a much tougher match-up for some armies than it is today and for a time, only DA could do it.

So DA's were always mediocre?

 Gitsmasher wrote:

Wonderwolf wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:
With all the hype surrounding the DA's up coming release their last dex was just meh, and it made me think were the dark angels ever any good?

Thanks

You mean 3rd Edition BA-Rhino-Rush/Iron-Warriors-HS-cheese or 5th-Edition Long-Fang/Psyfledreads-spam or 7th-Edition-GravCentStar-broken?

I don't think so.


All-Terminator-army used to be a much tougher match-up for some armies than it is today and for a time, only DA could do it.

So DA's were always mediocre?

pretty much, there was a period between the end of fifth and the start of sixth where we would probably rate "above average" but that quickly came to an end and this is due to the dark Angels curse. Up till now the dark Angels were the guinea pig army, released before a new brb or a radical new brb errata that invalidated or ruined whole chunks of the army and books released after us only got better because they'd learned the mistakes on us.

The curse is now broken, orks fell on the sword for us when 7th edition came around and now the marines are in front of us on the experimenting line. This will probably mean that for a while we will rate above average maybe even very good. But will we measure up to everyone's favourite marine book ? No we will probably just get a much needed break from being instagibed by eldar biker armies, or annihilated by all the cheap ap2..for a while anyway.

Truth be told, I won more games with my DAs during 6th than I did with my orks.

We've never been a "top tier" army. Way back when GW had their tournaments and still cared about the balance of the game more, the differences in power weren't as vast. Though there were still very strong or occasionally op armies/builds (looking at you 3rd ed chaos) the differences weren't as vast as they are with some codes from 5th moving forward.

I tried to write the above without my rose tints on. But I'm pretty sure that should be fairly accurate.

As mentioned above, DA have suffered from test bed syndrome. When our 6th ed codex came out, it was good. Coupled with the chaos codex people thought the game was being reigned in. Unfortunately that was not to be and we were left behind. Now in 7th, it seems as though the blood angels hopped on that grenade for us. They were release earlier during a "reigning in" period, and now we are coming after the vanilla dex and during a power creep.

DA probably won't end up being Eldar/Necron strong. We will probably sit just below the new marine dex as far as power/competitive wise goes. Even still that will put us above average, pretty good even. A state our codex hasn't seen in a long time. Well at least it is looking that way in the rumors form.

 Gitsmasher wrote:


So DA's were always mediocre?

That is being very charitable. Their best codex was "Angels of Death" for 2ed. It's been down hill ever since. There are all kinds of theories and player explanations, but it doesn't excuse the fact that Dark Angels haven't really had anything to make them different from regular Space Marines since 3rd edition when they had a whole bunch of special rules and wargear. These days, anything a Dark Angel army can do, another Space Marine army can do better.

A lot of hopes and dreams (being melodramatic here) are being pinned on the idea that with the Dark Angels coming out after the Space Marine codex, things will change. I'm too jaded to offer an optimistic view, and GW will really have to go over board to make up for the travesty of the 6th Ed Codex. All it would take is a proof reader and editor for that. My bar of expectations has been set very low for this release. As in: I want to see profiles match the unit descriptions (Azrael and Belial's entries get sorted out, Sammael's Sabreclaw clarified, Nephilim jetfighter with Missile Lock, Plasma Talons profile, Veteran Squad... I could go one). All these mistakes were found with a very casual perusal of the Codex. I have no idea how it made it through the approval process for printing- it's like GW didn't/couldn't be bothered to edit their own work before printing.

The models themselves keep getting better and better. The Deathwing are pretty much the best looking terminators GW has produced. Wish I could say the same for Ravenwing, but there is only so much you can do for a motorcycle, and I think GW reached that limit a long time ago. The Nephilim Jetfighter is drop dead gorgeous, but the Darktalon not so much. Finally, WTF is the story with the Ravenwing Darkshroud and Landspeeder Vengeance? Wooo! Let's put a three shot Plasma Cannon on a Landspeeder with only 2 Hull Points! Yeah!

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:


So DA's were always mediocre?

That is being very charitable. Their best codex was "Angels of Death" for 2ed. It's been down hill ever since. There are all kinds of theories and player explanations, but it doesn't excuse the fact that Dark Angels haven't really had anything to make them different from regular Space Marines since 3rd edition when they had a whole bunch of special rules and wargear. These days, anything a Dark Angel army can do, another Space Marine army can do better.

A lot of hopes and dreams (being melodramatic here) are being pinned on the idea that with the Dark Angels coming out after the Space Marine codex, things will change. I'm too jaded to offer an optimistic view, and GW will really have to go over board to make up for the travesty of the 6th Ed Codex. All it would take is a proof reader and editor for that. My bar of expectations has been set very low for this release. As in: I want to see profiles match the unit descriptions (Azrael and Belial's entries get sorted out, Sammael's Sabreclaw clarified, Nephilim jetfighter with Missile Lock, Plasma Talons profile, Veteran Squad... I could go one). All these mistakes were found with a very casual perusal of the Codex. I have no idea how it made it through the approval process for printing- it's like GW didn't/couldn't be bothered to edit their own work before printing.

The models themselves keep getting better and better. The Deathwing are pretty much the best looking terminators GW has produced. Wish I could say the same for Ravenwing, but there is only so much you can do for a motorcycle, and I think GW reached that limit a long time ago. The Nephilim Jetfighter is drop dead gorgeous, but the Darktalon not so much. Finally, WTF is the story with the Ravenwing Darkshroud and Landspeeder Vengeance? Wooo! Let's put a three shot Plasma Cannon on a Landspeeder with only 2 Hull Points! Yeah!

to be fair the ravenwing bikes are some of the best fast attack choices in all the imperial armies put together (black knights being the pinnacle) rules wise. and to be fair to our codex it was actually a lot worse back in angels of death than it is today. the problem is for every gain we make other armies have made ten so we seem shrimpy. in reality our book is the strongest its ever been.the army has had a history of rules getting mildly better and really nice looking models and that trend has continued up to today.

what needs to happen for the dark angels is we need to be leveled off again, our army has for the longesty time wobbled and warped units that used to be really novel ideas have been preverted.

and at every turn games workshop has shoved the notion of monowing armies down the armies throat when thats not where its strengths lie at all. monowing dark angel is this holy grail concept that can never be realized as a working army. monobikes and speeders will onkly get you so far. it cant do everything, and mono-terminators backed by raiders and dreads suffers from the same problem it cant get the things it needs done by itself. and our community has held fast to these failing ideals time and time again our community base complains that our monowings suck but then tries nothing to change. time and time again players rush into our army buy mountains of terminators. only to find out they are incredibly hard to play and then they put them on ebay. and everywhere you look our community pushes new players to these two toxic environments of hopeless failure.

so the dark angels suffer from a bad community, and a book thats not growing into a better book fast enough and its starting to get really really ugly for us. from what we have seen of this book its going to be pretty decent as far as army books go. its ot a lot of the feelings and reactions from me i had during the space wolf book so it will probably fit around their power level which is a pretty nice place to be (better than the bottom ). the lions blade is actually incredibly creative and depending on rules could be a lot of fun. and the ravenwing and deathwing detachments might have some good elements to pull out of them but they will probably be god awful for special rules as monowing armies because they traditionally have always sucked.

but the new magic table seems interesting to play with, and the fact that we get gravitic weapons open up some interesting possibilities down the line, maybe we will see some cool combinations with regular marines or grey knights which could potentially be very nice. and some synergy with space wolves would be a cool concept too.

Black knights backed by grav bikers and attack bike sqauds sounds pretty solid, if they all keep scout too that is amazing.

 Formosa wrote:
Black knights backed by grav bikers and attack bike sqauds sounds pretty solid, if they all keep scout too that is amazing.

They getting gravs will probably push them up to relative competitiveness.
Its gona be fun on the bun.

Apologies for intruding here, but the new DA codex is set to drop at the end of this month, right?

As for their whole power level, I'm alright with that. Hell, my other armies are Sisters and pure Scions, so I can't really say I like the big power lists. :p