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Both Space Wolves and Blood Angels are somewhat over the top. Thunderwolf cav and rule breaking individually targeting heavy weapon teams is bad enough with the wolves, but with the blood angels it just veers all the way off the road into ludicrous concepts of childish nonsense. It was like Matt Ward had a vision and in it Blood Angels were the spartans in 300 and the rest of us get to be the bad guys they slay in their thousands.

It would have been entirely appropriate to limit the BA to only getting Sang Guard as veterans, instead they have Sang Guard, Sternguard, Vanguard... and yet in their fluff they are suffering crippling loses to the red thirst?... Even by Johnson's mantra that background and fluff should hold a good deal of sway, that makes no bloody sense.

Fast vindicators, throwing millennia old venerated tanks out of aircraft, making friends with necrons, having greater daemon level characters on little bases sneaking about and shanking hive tyrants for pocket money... and flying psychic dreadnoughts...

Also as mentioned earlier, just WTF is the point of folks playing codex marines any more?

Why do Blood Angels, a blatantly assault based army, pay LESS for a lascannon equipped heavy weapon trooper than an Imperial Fist?

If they have to do variant chapter/legion lists for these noncodex Asstartes, then they should have made them different, not better in every way.

I still think they should scrap the extra marine codices, make one codex for all SMs and just charge £20 for it.

MGS I thought the Wolves have had split fire Heavy Weapons teams since 3rd ED.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
If they have to do variant chapter/legion lists for these noncodex Asstartes, then they should have made them different, not better in every way.

They're not better in every way, though. That's the thing. They may seem like it, but they aren't.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:Thunderwolf cav and rule breaking individually targeting heavy weapon teams is bad enough with the wolves, but with the blood angels it just veers all the way off the road into ludicrous concepts of childish nonsense.

The problem with the Long Fangs isn't that they break the rule about everyone shooting the same target, it's that everybody else doesn't. The inability to tell the anti-tank guy to shoot the tank while the anti-infantry guys shoot the infantry is, quite frankly, stupid.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
It would have been entirely appropriate to limit the BA to only getting Sang Guard as veterans, instead they have Sang Guard, Sternguard, Vanguard...

Agree on the sternguard. They're really unnecessary. The vanguard in the C:SM, however, were derived from the veteran assault marines that were in the BA PDF codex so I think it's entirely appropriate that the BA were able to keep them.

Why do Blood Angels, a blatantly assault based army, pay LESS for a lascannon equipped heavy weapon trooper than an Imperial Fist?

That's got nothing to do with how special the BA are. Devastators were overpriced in the SM codex. GW recognized and fixed it. Future SM codices should see the same change.

I think the issue is that the BA codex is better than the C:SM is almost every way. In fact, other than a bike army, I cannot think of anything that a vanilla marine list can do that a BA one cannot. They even do a dread army better than vanilla marines. I suppose if you are really attached to land speeder storms or thunderfire cannons you cannot go with the BA codex but that seems to be about it.

For me, the really big issue is the Sanguinary Priests. A 6" Feel No Pain and Furious Charge bubble for roughly 75pts? Really? Who thought that out? The Storm Raven deserves a special mention as well. I have no issue with its rules (although the move 24" and use POTMS to fire a multi-melta is a bit nutty) rather, I don't understand why only BA should have it. It is patently absurd that only the Blood Angels are able to see the utility of a small assault transport able to carry a unit of assault troops and a dreadnought at the same time. This is rather like when the Land Raider Crusader was only available to Black Templars in that, regardless of the hair brained fluff reason behind it, the idea that no chapter other than the BA would find the Storm Raven useful is just plain silly. Similarly, the "we are going to keep the plans for out upgraded tank engines secret because we are protective of them!" fluff reason for BA having exclusive access to fast tanks is just stupid. Even in a game with over the top fluff the BA codex takes it to a whole new level. They may not be riding giant wolves but they really aren't that far off. The stealth demon prince and claws of unending close combat are just icing on the cake.

Shhh! Don't talk like that!

They might give all marine armies fast tanks and storm ravens!

Well, I'll admit I have not read much BA fluff this edition. I have a few questions.

1) What's this about being "close" to necrons? Necrons are soulless machines - how do you get close to that?

2) What's this about a Daemon Prince?

Also, on a tangent about dropping heavy vehicles with crew inside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMD-1#Air-drop_techniques

Driver and gunner in as it drops. Yeah it's Wiki but it's the short version of what I already know.

M.

1. One of the sections has a short story where the Necrons and BA are fighting, but all of a sudden there are Tyranids. Then the BA and Necrons fight the Tyranids. Then when the Nids are gone they decide to not fight each other and just leave instead. Thus they are seen as the Necrons BFF.

2. That's a reference to Mephiston's crazy statline.

The Land Raider weighs around 72-81 Tonnes and is massive I don't think it should be getting dropped. To reiterate the point:


Rhino probably, Land Raider nope

Infantryman wrote:Also, on a tangent about dropping heavy vehicles with crew inside: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMD-1#Air-drop_techniques

That is not a heavy vehicle. It weighs about as much as an M113. A Rhino is probably heavier.

One thing about the dropping of LRs.

Has anyone played Innquisition Daemonhunt Mod for dow:dc? Coz thats how they do it. It makes perfect sense and the crew are safe.

If you havnt seen that, star ship troopers drop boxes anyone? The aircraft lands, then the LR is simply unclamped.

None the less, I do dislike the fact that the most noob player can pick up the codex and slaughter a pro with it. You would have to go total leaf blower if you wanted IG to beat an actual pro BA player.

Thanks n0t_u. That seems kinda silly, on both accounts.

Alex: I know; I meant to put a disclaimer about that very thing but I was distracted. It was supposed to be RE an earlier post about not having crew in dropped vehicles today. Just stating that it -can- be done with what is basically WW2 level tech.

M.

Chongara wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't think Matt Ward understands how carry-all flyers actually work. They set their cargo down before lifting off again. They don't just drop Land Raiders like a fething bomb!

I agree. I demand sensible physics in my games with bipedal walking war machines. Bipedal walking war machines driven by undead space mutant religious zealots.

It's not so much that it bends Physics as that it rips it in half with one hand while Physics begs for its wife and children to be spared. The Blood Angels codex then rapes Physic's corpse in front of its kids for six hours, and takes a dump in its mouth before falling asleep on their couch.

It did what no other codex, (even the prior BA one) did before. And it did it in spades, to the point where it makde the new SM codex (thought to be game-changing at the time) look underpowered.

Take Drop pods for example. Specifically designed pods, made for delivering marines into combat via deep strike. No other army had something like it. Then the Blood Angels just say "Screw it. Let's just push out tanks out of the drop ships from orbit."

Another example: Cassius. His claim to fame was really high toughness. Nope, now BA characters get that sort of toughness by default.

Or Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, who's out toughed by a Blood Angel.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Or Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, who's out toughed by a Blood Angel.

Pfft. Typhus gets out-toughed by a lot of things. He's not even really toughness 5. Unlike those space wolves on wolves. Or Bloodcrushers. Or Mephiston.

And isn't it odd that Dante is initiative 6? Does he have the mark of Slaanesh or what?

Pika_power wrote:

Chongara wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't think Matt Ward understands how carry-all flyers actually work. They set their cargo down before lifting off again. They don't just drop Land Raiders like a fething bomb!

I agree. I demand sensible physics in my games with bipedal walking war machines. Bipedal walking war machines driven by undead space mutant religious zealots.

It's not so much that it bends Physics as that it rips it in half with one hand while Physics begs for its wife and children to be spared. The Blood Angels codex then rapes Physic's corpse in front of its kids for six hours, and takes a dump in its mouth before falling asleep on their couch.

It did what no other codex, (even the prior BA one) did before. And it did it in spades, to the point where it makde the new SM codex (thought to be game-changing at the time) look underpowered.

Take Drop pods for example. Specifically designed pods, made for delivering marines into combat via deep strike. No other army had something like it. Then the Blood Angels just say "Screw it. Let's just push out tanks out of the drop ships from orbit."

Another example: Cassius. His claim to fame was really high toughness. Nope, now BA characters get that sort of toughness by default.

This.

Jaon wrote:One thing about the dropping of LRs.

Has anyone played Innquisition Daemonhunt Mod for dow:dc? Coz thats how they do it. It makes perfect sense and the crew are safe.

If you havnt seen that, star ship troopers drop boxes anyone? The aircraft lands, then the LR is simply unclamped.

Except the Land Raider isn't 'dropped off', it's thrown off at high velocity. with a load of blokes in it.
If it was dropped off then it would make sense. However it's not and there's no chance for the enemy to try and shoot said Thunderhawk down.

Seaward wrote:

Just Dave wrote:Can we just clarify to those leaping to their defence, that it's not their competitiveness or 'strength' (or lack of) that's the problem, it's the way everything is over-the-top. Not in-game, but in theory and reasoning.

But that's true of the power armor codex released just before it as well, so I'm not sure why it's such a big issue. Space Wolves aren't exactly understated and dignified as they RIDE GIANT WOLVES INTO BATTLE with ale in one hand and a Wolfclaw of the Wolfy Wolf in the other.

I play Space Wolves but I agree their codex is also OTT and Over-powered. However...
- The only Wolf-named additional equipment to the Space Wolves was the Wolf Claw. Everything else had been there in the previous Codex.
- Wolves are more OTT in Game Terms, whereas the Blood Angels are OTT in Fluff and Reasoning Terms.

Some of the stuff in the Wolves Codex is over-done, eg. Thunder Wolf Cavalry *shudder*, Lukas the Prickster, Canis Wolfboring etc.

However, these are the only 3 that SPRING to mind, Blood Angels have:
- Flying Landraiders.
- Flying Psyker Dreadnoughts.
- Daemon Prince/Primarch Mephiston
- Golden Armoured Jesus. Whoops. Sanguinor.
- Vehicle Grapples?!
- BA exclusive Flyers
- Apothecary's round every other corner
- Fast everything.
- Even more use of a specific word (Blood) as a descriptor.
- Homeboys with Necrons

So Space Wolves have a lot of flaws, Blood Angels have even more! So that's like... How many flaws? A lot, no?
Space Wolves are OTT in-game: TWC shouldn't exist, Rune Priests should be much worse, Long Fangs should be much more expensive and Grey Hunters should have some feasible downside. But part of Codex Creep is that Blood Angels blew the Space Wolves out of the water in terms of ridiculousness, just not in competitiveness.
Finally, in why the Space Wolves are less OTT than Blood Angels. I can understand only the Wolves riding on giant chihuahua's*, what I can't understand is how only the Blood Angels and their few successors are the only chapters to have pskyer dreads, personal Valkyries, flying Land Riaders and a shed load of apothecary's...

They both suck, but yours sucks more.

*I dont endorse the idea of giant space puppies, I do however endorse that if they have to exist, that only one chapter uses them.

IMO on the tabletop Space Wolves are much more powerful than Blood Angels. It's really not close. Vanilla marines have as much of a chance to defeat SW as BA do. Vanilla marines have combat tactics which allow them to get out of problem areas and let the rest of the army shoot the problem to death.

BA have lots of tricks and fun units, but overall they aren't superior to codex marines like Space Wolves are.

I'd say in terms of fluff Blood Angels are superior to every other Space Marine. In game terms, then generally the Space Wolves win.

I do fully accept however that Space Wolves are superior in competitiveness and that they are over-powered. I didn't argue Blood Angels are OTT in-game, just everything else.

In game I'd say Blood Angels can be one of the better codices due to the variety of potential builds and uses.

The Blood Angels are OTT in physics rape and fluff (And Blood), While the SW are OP in-game.

The Blood Angels are still twice as annoying.

Sometimes when I think about suicide I pick up the White Dwarf featuring the BA release and just stare at it.
If I feel really depressed I read the Codex too. I stare at it and scream in frustration just to vent my feelings.
If I want to pull my stomach out through my anus, I read every Liber Apocalyptica Robin Crudacce has ever written.

The Iron Warriors counter-attacked the Tyranids with 600 Defilers. But the Iron Warriors, the greatest siege troops in the multiverse,
had not suspected that the Tyranids might possess tunneling equipment. Thus they were consumed by hundreds of thousands of Trygons. End.

Massive Space Puppies are acceptable. Space Wolfs don't exactly have a reputation for being the most sensible or anything. I mean, all they're doing is riding on giant wolves. Sounds pretty standard for a non-codex chapter.

In short, the Massive Space Puppies make sense.

On the other hand, Mephiston really has no excuse for his Carnifex-esque statline. What, he's really strong and tough and such?

Of course, chucking Land Raiders out from orbit is a really stupid idea for a chapter to have. It risks imperial tech, and has no reasonable reason. And no, "Delivering the men into combat faster" is not a reason. You do that by using Drop pods. You know, the tool specifically designed to drop your men down from space?

Kapitan Montag wrote: Another thing that sucks about the BA codex is the picture on the front.

Yes, the throwback artwork on the cover is horrible. It's amazing that GW didn't put one of their better artists on it, for something similar to the SW or CSM covers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

andain841 wrote: I cannot think of anything that a vanilla marine list can do that a BA one cannot.

Try fielding both armies with a full 6 10-man Tactical Squads in Rhinos as their army core, and the SM one will do better.

I would love to have a storm raven XD

Just Dave wrote:However, these are the only 3 that SPRING to mind, Blood Angels have:
- Flying Landraiders.

- BA exclusive Flyers

- Fast everything.

- Homeboys with Necrons

If you're going to nerdrage, at least get your facts straight.

- The BA have DEEP-STRIKING Land Raiders. Maybe BA have giant teleporter pads, who knows, who cares? After the Space Woofs riding giant Woofs debacle (which there's simply no getting around), anything is possible, no matter how ridiculous.

- Yeah, just like how BT had the lock on the Crusader for the longest time. Wait your turn, like everybody else.

- Overcharged engines rule. Too bad they aren't free.

- Where is this in the RULES? If you're going nuts over Fluff, I've got a book by CS Goto you can read a few times to make you feel better.

Jayden63 wrote:The problem is Matt took everything one (sometimes two) steps too far. Take the simple jump pack assault marine.

To show that BA have more assault type guys he made them troop choices.

There. Done. Point made. BA like jump pack asssult guys. Good enough, well done.

But he had to take it two steps further with DOA. Not only do BA only scatter 1D6 instead of 2D6 like every other DS unit, but they can also reroll reserves because..... yeah no real reason.

That is the ##### of the BA codex and unfortunatly its loaded with it.

You forgot that Dante can make his unit not scatter at all. Fun fun. Oh, not only that, but your 200+ HQ unit starts with 1 less wound, 1 less WS, 1 less Initiative. . .

Actually they do explain how Brother Calistarius became Mephiston, the Lord of Death. The friendly and voluble Calistarius succumbed to the Black Rage and was trapped under a mountain of rubble far past the point of Astates endurance. Something overcame his inhuman bloodlust and he was reborn with a dark secret, one that he now keeps from his Battle-Brothers and which will eventually destroy the Blood Angels.

You know, those Blood Angels that aspire to perfection and a golden future?

Something else I'll mention is the recurrence of the same Bloodthirster throughout the Blood Angels history. It's like a Bloody Rage is haunting the Blood Angels...

Also the Friends with Benefits thing with the Necrons isn't so much friends as cessation of prolonged and spectacularly violent hostilities for the duration of a Tyranid invasion, after which they were both too farked up to fight to the death. Maybe it's just where I came from, but if your fight to the death with some donkey-cave gets broken up by the pigs and you're later unable to kill him, people don't think you're friends.

I'm not saying Codex: Blood Angels is better than most of the fanbrew in our very own Rules Development forum, it's not, but I am saying that GW fans tend to make mountains out of molehills.

I'm also not saying we shouldn't care, because we should care about our hobby and its contents, but people should get annoyed with the things actually deserve annoyance rather than succumbing to some bizarre 1984-esque 5-minute hate.

AlexHolker wrote:That is not a heavy vehicle. It weighs about as much as an M113. A Rhino is probably heavier.

Suspensors could have something to say about that.

I'm just saying.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Or Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, who's out toughed by a Blood Angel.

Although that's purely the fault of Gav and Alessio.

What was it you called them in your CSM review?

Edit: Found it!

The authors of this train wreck are Gavin ‘They Still Let Me Write Rules!’ Thorpe, and Alessio ‘I Should Know Better Than This’ Cavatore. Interestingly my spellchecker knew the words ‘Alessio’ and ‘Cavatore’, but suggested ‘Failure’ as an alternative to ‘Gavin’ and ‘Thorpe’. Now I mention the authors because when I get to this end of the review I have a few things to mention on the full credits page, and because I found it funny that the author’s names were so small at the bottom, almost as if they were hoping someone wouldn’t see it was them who wrote it.

I think I'll sig part of that.

It's possible that GW took this far OTT view with Space Wolves and Blood Angels because they know they won't get back to them for a good while. This way they might survive an edition without needing a new codex release. At least, that's what I tell myself when I know when I play my brother next, I'm going to have a flying psychic dreadnought fly into my army.

I still think the only OTT fluff in the Space Wolves Book is the single blurb about them driving Land Raiders across the bottom of the Ocean and fighting Crisis Battle Suits fitted with Propellers.

Well that and the whole Thunder Wolf thing.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Just Dave wrote:However, these are the only 3 that SPRING to mind, Blood Angels have:
- Flying Landraiders.

- BA exclusive Flyers

- Fast everything.

- Homeboys with Necrons

If you're going to nerdrage, at least get your facts straight.

- The BA have DEEP-STRIKING Land Raiders. Maybe BA have giant teleporter pads, who knows, who cares? After the Space Woofs riding giant Woofs debacle (which there's simply no getting around), anything is possible, no matter how ridiculous.

- Yeah, just like how BT had the lock on the Crusader for the longest time. Wait your turn, like everybody else.

- Overcharged engines rule. Too bad they aren't free.

- Where is this in the RULES? If you're going nuts over Fluff, I've got a book by CS Goto you can read a few times to make you feel better.

For what it's worth I've never nerd-raged, although I am fairly impressed by your arrogance.

So first in your 'line of defence' are the semantics of flying over deep-striking? I purposely exageratted the flying aspect for four reasons, one; it's slightly humorous, two; it suits the exaggerated idea of deep-striking Land Raiders, three; repition alongside flying dreadnought, four; it is arguably flying considering it's travelling through the air. If you are going to argue my being 'wrong' over a single word, then you could similarly complain about how the golden armoured jesus or that TWC actually have no thunder

I don't care about my turn and frankly the turn is not going to come around any time soon for any other Marine Dex's. It's not that the Blood Angels have their own Valkyrie (I know it's not actually a Valkyrie don't 'nerd-rage' me about it), it's that no-one else has it. As I said and you conveniently ignored, Thunderwolves are ridiculous, but at-least they are limited to one chapter for a reason. There is little logic in only the Blood Angels having a Storm-raven. Thunderwolves only 'exist' on Fenris, Storm-ravens can be built and manufactured for any Space Marine Chapter and for the good of the Imperium.

Yeah, over-charged engines aren't free. bugger. it must suck being able to have fast vehicles for little extra. I expect most people will agree that for what you get, over-charged engines are worth it.

It's not in the rules. I never said it was in the rules and I didn't say the rules were the problem with Blood Angels. If you are going to claim me to be wrong, how about you listen to what I say rather than pick and choose.

As I said, Space Wolves are also OTT, except they are LARGELY OTT in terms of the game. Blood Angels are OTT also, except they are more OTT in terms of logic and fluff. For one thing it's a natural part of 'Codex-creep' but as has been said over and over again, the Blood Angels have taken things two steps too far whereas the Space Wolves took it 1 step too far.
As I said (and you conveniently didn't quote) they are both flawed and TWC is a stupid idea, as are many things in the SW Codex. however it still doesn't compensate for the list of stupidity present throughout the Blood Angel Codex.