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I see a lot of DC heavy lists lately and it feels like is the only way to make them competitive while allying with some kind of shottiness.

What would make Blood angels a more competitive army? cents, thunderfire, stormtalons,...would this alone make them a competitive army or would they need better CT and formations? what are some of the best posible allies that fit BA´s CC punchiness?

well frankly, from what I understand, they got the short end of the stick, a worse version of dark angels.

Dark Angels in 6th were way worse than space marines because they were like the test codex.

Same for blood angels, they came out, then the space marines did, space marines got a large set of buffs, the biggest of which being the gladius strike force. Being a pretty great set of formations, all the things that the blood angels get, are nothing compared to cents, better devs, and free razorbacks + gak tons of doctrines.

just my $0.02

happy wargaming,

-Mikey

Give us the buffs/points drops that scouts, dreads and termis got for SM. Give us the tank squadrons and allow baals to squadron with benefits.
Move assault marines back to Troops again and allow them to take razors at a 35pt deduction like before. Baals back to FA and scout returned to them.
Blood talons should be halfway between what they were before and what they are now - every unsaved wound caused grants an additional attack, these additional attacks cannot grant further additional attacks.
Priests kept in HQ but 3 to a slot.
SG reduced to 30pts each.
Give Tycho Dead mans hand back.
Give Sanguinor his extra wound, 3++ and old benefits back.
Move Seth back to HQ.
DoA returned as part of our 'chapter tactics'.

The only thing I have suggested without precedent is the SG points deduction.

Are you asking what GW should do or what we should do while waiting for the new dex?

 soomemafia wrote:
Are you asking what GW should do or what we should do while waiting for the new dex?

I was asking what GW should do/add, but in terms allies, what we should do while waiting for the next dex.

I don't think BA conceptually work in 7th ed, so it's more of a failing than just the codex being gak. (Which it is)

The idea of power armor assault units just doesn't work in the high firepower environment of 7th. BA can't get there, and often when they do, they are greeted by real CC units like Wraiths.

BA are not likely to ever get vanilla-level tech ever again based off GW's last three years of publishing.

I've only used it for two games, but so far I am very pleased with the following allied detachment.

SoT brings the Dakka. Dante/SG/DC brings the chopping.


Allied Detachment - Sentinels of Terra
- Close ranged bolter drill
- Centurion Devs as Elite
- Tank Hunter on Devs/Centurion Devs

HQ
Librarian, Auspex, Divination
- I might use the 18" relic auspex
- Goes with cents in the pod

Elites
Centurion Devastators (3)
Grav cannon and grav amp (3)
Omnispex and Missile Launcher on the Sgt.
- ML haven't done anything for me yet
- On a good day, the chest-bolters will be twin-linked because they're Hurricanes, the cents have prescience and they're within rapid fire range. Synergy wasted. Also, tank hunter doesn't really help them, since the amp already allow rerolls.
- They pod in. This keeps them safe during T1 if opponent goes first and allows them to deploy where they're needed.

Troops
5 scouts with bolters
- These have performed marvelously
- I might add a heavy bolter

Fast
Drop pod

Heavy
One unit of two Thunderfire Cannons
- I couldn't fit three in, without removing too much chopping. Also, two TFCs tends to kill things dead, so three would possibly be wasted/overkill.

So what do the BA contribute in your list? Sounds like the list would be better with straight Sentinels of Terra.

Martel732 wrote:
So what do the BA contribute in your list? Sounds like the list would be better with straight Sentinels of Terra.

You might be right.

Death Company and Dante/Sang. Priest/Sang. Guard. And a Stormraven. BA is ~2/3 of the points.

Vertias Vitae with CAD gives double re-rolls on strategic.
Our assault units get a lot better with a WS Shield Eternal Chapter Master.
Sanguinary Priest + bike squad and a cheap White Scar IC can be a decent hybrid unit with some gravs and fists.

Problem with power armor jump units is that cover is meaningless vs many lists. They just dakka and dakka with str 5/6 ap 0 until they die. I have always been convinced that DC are superior to Sanguinary Guard, but with the stealth ruins trait, they could be quite decent with 2+/3+ cover. No invul is still very tricky.

Mephiston is a solid support psyker with his str10.

Fast veichles are nice, but most marine tanks are kinda bad due to SA11 and the long range Predators don't do much dmg.

I made an errata thread in Proposed Rules about this. You can find it here. I am going to make some more formations when I have time.

" They just dakka and dakka with str 5/6 ap 0 until they die"

That's the game now. It's been the game since the middle of 5th, really. 5th ed IG/Eldar could bring the S5/6 pain.

Actually, I was just thinking about BA when a tournament I was interested in going to advertised having more LoS blocking terrain.

I would say LoS blocking, impassable terrain helps BA a lot. Jump packs can jump over and benefit from not being shot up, while other popular assault options like bikes, TWC would be hindered by impassability.

Mavnas wrote:
Actually, I was just thinking about BA when a tournament I was interested in going to advertised having more LoS blocking terrain.

I would say LoS blocking, impassable terrain helps BA a lot. Jump packs can jump over and benefit from not being shot up, while other popular assault options like bikes, TWC would be hindered by impassability.

That's true, but army with scoot and shoot can abuse it as well, so it ends up being rather neutral. Ailaros had a very good analysis of high terrain vs mobile shooting a while ago. Good player with mobile shooting can make it a wash.

Jump pack guys are just completely inferior to bikers at this point because of relentless grav guns.

I'd say BA with some good ally synergi is still quite competitive. Throw in a grav cent unit and some white scar IC's into BA bike units.

With 2 strategic traits and re-rolls you got a pretty decent shot at stealth ruins for 2+ jink (60%?), add in some grav and a powerfist the BA bikes actually become quite decent with ws5. Same thing with grav cents in ruins, with t5 and 3+ cover they become quite efficient, and now they have hit and run in the new SM book.

Between drop pod or high mobility list jump pack units are such and uphill battle. Your not gonna be able to charge Eldar before turn 3 at best. Building a list around Sanguinary Priests, Mephiston, bikes and bringing in some shooty allies seems feels like a viable tournament list, but still far from tier 1.

Remtek wrote:
I'd say BA with some good ally synergi is still quite competitive. Throw in a grav cent unit and some white scar IC's into BA bike units.

With 2 strategic traits and re-rolls you got a pretty decent shot at stealth ruins for 2+ jink (60%?), add in some grav and a powerfist the BA bikes actually become quite decent with ws5. Same thing with grav cents in ruins, with t5 and 3+ cover they become quite efficient, and now they have hit and run in the new SM book.

Between drop pod or high mobility list jump pack units are such and uphill battle. Your not gonna be able to charge Eldar before turn 3 at best. Building a list around Sanguinary Priests, Mephiston, bikes and bringing in some shooty allies seems feels like a viable tournament list, but still far from tier 1.

And if your board doesn't have any ruins?

Martel732 wrote:

Remtek wrote:
I'd say BA with some good ally synergi is still quite competitive. Throw in a grav cent unit and some white scar IC's into BA bike units.

With 2 strategic traits and re-rolls you got a pretty decent shot at stealth ruins for 2+ jink (60%?), add in some grav and a powerfist the BA bikes actually become quite decent with ws5. Same thing with grav cents in ruins, with t5 and 3+ cover they become quite efficient, and now they have hit and run in the new SM book.

Between drop pod or high mobility list jump pack units are such and uphill battle. Your not gonna be able to charge Eldar before turn 3 at best. Building a list around Sanguinary Priests, Mephiston, bikes and bringing in some shooty allies seems feels like a viable tournament list, but still far from tier 1.

And if your board doesn't have any ruins?

Then get a better board? (But seriously, I went to a tournament where none of the tables I played on had 4+ cover terrain... it made my sniper scouts with camo cloaks almost completely useless.) Not really sure what the right answer is here. If there's not enough terrain, long-range shooty units will just be better and there's nothing can really be done since those are balanced around the idea that they can't always shoot exactly what they want to shoot with no cover (to the extent that they are balanced at all, which I somewhat doubt after codex Eldar).

There can be terrain. Why does there ALWAYS have to be ruins? That makes no sense.

Martel732 wrote:
There can be terrain. Why does there ALWAYS have to be ruins? That makes no sense.

Because already strong armies get stronger without 4+ terrain. You could always use some thick vegetation and have it count as ruins?

If there are no ruins, that makes the game extremly unbalanced. It's fine with 9 hills for a narrative game, but i don't really see any lists other than 1 priest and six empty pods working there.

We don't have that many unique BA specific abilities that are potentially really good. I feel that building a list around those is the right way to go.

Remtek wrote:
If there are no ruins, that makes the game extremly unbalanced. It's fine with 9 hills for a narrative game, but i don't really see any lists other than 1 priest and six empty pods working there.

We don't have that many unique BA specific abilities that are potentially really good. I feel that building a list around those is the right way to go.

Seriously? The game is unbalanced without 4+++ cover? Really? Maybe the game is unbalanced because of say mass S6 or unkillable gak like Wraiths. Plenty of battles historically were fought out on open fields. The game should be balanced with and WITHOUT terrain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mavnas wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
There can be terrain. Why does there ALWAYS have to be ruins? That makes no sense.

Because already strong armies get stronger without 4+ terrain. You could always use some thick vegetation and have it count as ruins?

I don't want to play a game where that is true. It's incredibly dumb to put ruins on every board. And cover frequently does absolutely nothing for marines. Scatbikes care not for your cover. Make 50 saves! Oh, you can't? Too bad, astartes...

" it made my sniper scouts with camo cloaks almost completely useless"

So..... 5+++ cover is completely useless? Okay...

I've had good success with a hybrid drop pod/armor list for BA. I'll take 5 armor 13 vehicles which do well against the str 5/6 shooting spam and I'll take drop pods to deliver assault marines and Mephiston into a weak spot. I follow that up with some fast moving objective grabbing units who hug the midfield.

BA fast vehicles are nice to move from objective to objective in the backfield. They become a mobile shooting bunker that is hard for the enemy to pin down.

I do agree that it seem ridiculous that BA scouts and dreads are the only "weak" scouts and dreads in in the Imperium. Furioso's with 4 attacks stock would be so much better .....

AV13 walls were far easier to achieve with the last dex. Avaliable in a single cad. The 2 changes to Baals are what annoy me most of all.

I'm experimenting with lists that have Rhinos and nothing else for armor. I'm really dissatisfied with the firepower and durability of predators. They take so many side shots from drop attacks and fast shooters.

I play in the NOVA area and many RTTs and events use the NOVA terrain format meaning each terrain has 4 ruins.

In fact most big GTs ive seen usually put a fair amount of ruins on each table.

The 2 Strategic Warlord trait relic is very, very good and stealth/MTC has always been super helpful.

In fact, i've been taking CADs of BA partially just to get access to it as well as access to more pods and cheap melta squads (BA do this better than anyone due to ASM)

Without terrain the game isnt balanced because terrain is one of the big things that balances out shooting vs. assault. There is a reason all the big events run some LOS blockers on every table. It makes for a much more strategic game where movement and positioning becomes important. 40k feels far less strategic when playing on planet bowling ball.

To OP question:
-errata the scouts and dreads to match core marines.
-put in a voltron detachment with fairly ludicrous bonuses on par with an entire army getting +1 RP or 500 points of free stuff. Bonus if it doesn't require a whole bunch of crappy tac marines in the core. (It would be nice if they made a "sanguine" strike force able to be run as an all jump pack force in some fashion.)

Without pretending to be tier1, BA would well allie with IH. Vanilla apothecary's units have 4+ Fnp, and other important units may be joined by a Priest for another 4+ Fnp.
Add in some DC for an army with a lot of Fnp.

What would make Blood angels a more competitive army?

They need a redux just like every other book that was released in that stinking batch.. gk, de, orks, am, and even sw. The list is so big for fixing each of these its just better to go back one book and start over from there. Hate to say it but BA are to Marines what DE are to eldar.

DE might be a bit better.

I think they are very competitive personally.

I run a Baal Strike Force Det for the boost to initiative. It makes it the army the hands down uncontested SM killer.

DC unit and an SG unit with an attached Jump Priest absolutely wrecks everything they touch. S5 and I5 army wide is utterly amazing. I fail to see how everyone is having a hard time with this army.

IMO DC work better with Bolters vs pistol/sword due to rapid firing and still charging. SG with a PF or two in there will handle any unit you put on the board. Ive recently added the Libby Dred to my list with amazing results. I love Mephiston i really do, but the Dred delivers on a more consistent basis for me.

Libby Dred
Jump Priest

DC- with bolters and 2-3 with PF's
SG- 2-3 with PF's
Furiouso Dred- w talons for fluff

2 tac squads

2 Stormravens with Hurricane bolters

EVERYTHING is inside the Stormravens except jump units who hide in the "game breaking" ruins until the Alpha strike/pod, JSJ, DW drop, hordes, get close enough to charge. "Relies" on getting the charge off, and trying to get the descent of angels warlord trait, but i personally have never lost with this above list.