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Beavetron wrote:
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.

" I fail to see how everyone is having a hard time with this army. "

I shoot all your guys to death before you can charge. That's why we are having a problem.

" "Relies" on getting the charge off"

I put my guys in Rhinos. You can't charge me. You lose.

And if you are a troll, I consider myself trolled, because I took your post seriously.

" I shoot all your guys to death before you can charge. That's why we are having a problem."

you shoot all my 2+/5+++/probably 3++++ models to death, that will hopefully start on a board with line blocking terrain anyway? How?

"I put my guys in Rhinos. You can't charge me. You lose."

Who says my two dreads hopping out of an assault flyer cant charge your rhino? who says the 10 man tac squad that hits at S5 I5 cant charge out of the assault flyer after the dread kills your "rhino" last time i checked rhino's are one of the easiest vehicles to pop.

Coming in with a defeatest attitude isnt going to contribute at all. Yes some armies are more competitive but all armies have something to bring to the table. just gotta look a little harder in some codexes.

Beavetron wrote:
" I shoot all your guys to death before you can charge. That's why we are having a problem."

you shoot all my 2+/5+++/probably 3++++ models to death, that will hopefully start on a board with line blocking terrain anyway? How?

"I put my guys in Rhinos. You can't charge me. You lose."

Who says my two dreads hopping out of an assault flyer cant charge your rhino? who says the 10 man tac squad that hits at S5 I5 cant charge out of the assault flyer after the dread kills your "rhino" last time i checked rhino's are one of the easiest vehicles to pop.

Coming in with a defeatest attitude isnt going to contribute at all. Yes some armies are more competitive but all armies have something to bring to the table. just gotta look a little harder in some codexes.

I'm not sure you know how to play the game....

Death Company, tact marines, dreads, Stormravens and SG are at BEST average in terms of survivability. I'd lean towards mediocre or poor overall.

Rhinos are junk....they are easy to kill in multiple ways....but who cares? Their jobs is to prevent you, or delay you from killing anything IMPORTANT until you are shot off of the board. Break 2, or 5 or 15 rhinos and a good player wouldn't care if you had to trade a tactical squad or dread to do it.

Rules issues; You know that the dreads CANNOT charge the turn the ravens come on the board right? No coming on from reserve, dropping out then charging, so you have to hang in the air for at least 1 turn vulnerable to enemy fire power. Second, You realize you can't charge a dread into a rhino, then charge the contents with tact marines (lol, tactical marines) in the same turn right? So you are AGAIN, hanging out for a turn, vulnerable.

Martel is a bit of a defeatist, but that's because he's a solid player playing a mediocre army against other solid players that aren't handicapped by a slowed book. He knows the math, he's played the games, and he and his opponents know all the weaknesses of the BA book WAY better than you do. If you are playing Beer and Pretzels fluff bunny level 40k....yeah, you can win with that list, but it's not going to hold up in a serious hard core environment against good opponents.

Greetings Beavetron, meet Martel732. He has 10238 posts, 10,000 of which are about how much Blood Angels, the army he plays, can't hold a candle to other competitive armies.

I'm not choosing sides or saying anyone is right or wrong...just letting Beavetron know what he's getting into. Carry on.

Beavetron wrote:
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.

I get this feeling you don't have much experience with the a-game lists from the big boy codices. Eldar scat bikes would shoot the Ravens out of the sky, while the wraithknight would wreck anything he fights. Firebase cadre would pick and down a raven on entry. Battle companies would put up a bloody fight but end up with a dozen different obsec units still on the board on objectives while you have maybe an empty raven left at the end. Decurion would counter charge you with invincible lychguard stars, Orikan stars, and harvest wraiths. Flying circus daemons wouldn't bat an eye at this list. Even the void shield green tide combo from orks, as well as the stompa+ msu combo and trukk spam msu lists would be hilariously hard to handle.

Go to some decently large tourneys (I'm talking like 30+ 2 day events, not those little 8 man local ones,) to get some experience with the top lists played by good players, and you'll begin to see that although BA have things they can contribute as allies like meltacide pods and taxi services, they cannot stand alone or even as the majority of your army and expect to commonly be at top tables.

" that will hopefully start on a board with line blocking terrain anyway?"

That's a massive ,massive assumption. And you have to move at some point when the shooty lists start taking all the objectives, right? Once the Eldar starting forcing 40+ armor saves a turn from 36" away, it starts looking bad quickly.

I'm pretty much just going to let others explain this, because I don't see any reason to add on to the 10,000 unnecessarily. Also, I don't claim to have any special magic knowledge that other good players on there don't have. I've probably just lived it a bit more because I only own mono-BA.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Voidwraith wrote:
Greetings Beavetron, meet Martel732. He has 10238 posts, 10,000 of which are about how much Blood Angels, the army he plays, can't hold a candle to other competitive armies.

I'm not choosing sides or saying anyone is right or wrong...just letting Beavetron know what he's getting into. Carry on.

That's not fair! I've got at least 500 or so about Riptides.

"Coming in with a defeatest attitude isnt going to contribute at all"

I not coming in with a defeatist attitude without a lot of data points to back it up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Carnage43 wrote:

Beavetron wrote:
" I shoot all your guys to death before you can charge. That's why we are having a problem."

you shoot all my 2+/5+++/probably 3++++ models to death, that will hopefully start on a board with line blocking terrain anyway? How?

"I put my guys in Rhinos. You can't charge me. You lose."

Who says my two dreads hopping out of an assault flyer cant charge your rhino? who says the 10 man tac squad that hits at S5 I5 cant charge out of the assault flyer after the dread kills your "rhino" last time i checked rhino's are one of the easiest vehicles to pop.

Coming in with a defeatest attitude isnt going to contribute at all. Yes some armies are more competitive but all armies have something to bring to the table. just gotta look a little harder in some codexes.

I'm not sure you know how to play the game....

Death Company, tact marines, dreads, Stormravens and SG are at BEST average in terms of survivability. I'd lean towards mediocre or poor overall.

Rhinos are junk....they are easy to kill in multiple ways....but who cares? Their jobs is to prevent you, or delay you from killing anything IMPORTANT until you are shot off of the board. Break 2, or 5 or 15 rhinos and a good player wouldn't care if you had to trade a tactical squad or dread to do it.

Rules issues; You know that the dreads CANNOT charge the turn the ravens come on the board right? No coming on from reserve, dropping out then charging, so you have to hang in the air for at least 1 turn vulnerable to enemy fire power. Second, You realize you can't charge a dread into a rhino, then charge the contents with tact marines (lol, tactical marines) in the same turn right? So you are AGAIN, hanging out for a turn, vulnerable.

Martel is a bit of a defeatist, but that's because he's a solid player playing a mediocre army against other solid players that aren't handicapped by a slowed book. He knows the math, he's played the games, and he and his opponents know all the weaknesses of the BA book WAY better than you do. If you are playing Beer and Pretzels fluff bunny level 40k....yeah, you can win with that list, but it's not going to hold up in a serious hard core environment against good opponents.

In Lana's voice: YUUUUUUP.

BA bike libbies are quite good as well. Poweraxe + furious charge make our librarians very cheap beatsticks and being able to switch powers from game to game make them very flexible.

Str 6 force will scare a lot of units, and with BA primaris that's 6 attacks on avg when charging (if you don't get denied),

Precognition in Divination lets you re-roll jink saves, you won't always get it, but there are good primaris spells in both disciplines.

Since often libbies fuction as batteries for other psykers, having a strong close combat one is nice for later turns, one of the reasons why Mephiston is still competitive.

Beavetron wrote:
" I shoot all your guys to death before you can charge. That's why we are having a problem."

you shoot all my 2+/5+++/probably 3++++ models to death, that will hopefully start on a board with line blocking terrain anyway? How?

"I put my guys in Rhinos. You can't charge me. You lose."

Who says my two dreads hopping out of an assault flyer cant charge your rhino? who says the 10 man tac squad that hits at S5 I5 cant charge out of the assault flyer after the dread kills your "rhino" last time i checked rhino's are one of the easiest vehicles to pop.

Coming in with a defeatest attitude isnt going to contribute at all. Yes some armies are more competitive but all armies have something to bring to the table. just gotta look a little harder in some codexes.

Every point you've made is flawed.

Charges are declared BEFORE you fight any combats. All charges are resolved before fighting. If a dread charges the rhino, once the rhino dies, you cannot charge the things inside since the charge sub-phase is already over!

Please feel free to turtle your assault units in your own backfield while my units go grab objectives. You know...the way you win games. (EDIT and when you start jumping across the board, you will get shot to death. You are aware that the bane of 2+(3+)/5+++ (SG and DC have no invuln without storm shield. which I dont remember if either can take) is massed lasgun (bolter/pulse rifle) fire. Every 1 rolled is a loss of lots of points and attack capabilities when you only have 5 30+ point models in the unit.

Also, please hover your storm ravens to get out. If you do skys of fury they cannot assault the same turn. Same for the dreads. Also they cant assault the turn they arrive from reserves regardless. Have fun when someone shoots a plane down and you lose 1/3 of your army.


EDIT: I play Dark Angels...Im going to walk right up next to you and shoot. Then get another round of shooting when you charge me also. Those SG/DC are NOT making it into combat without losing at least 3 models and probably 5+.

It is true. Pure BA struggle to compete. What we really need are units with staying power, we just lack anything really durable.

Actually what we need is damage output that is viable from T1 and isn't reliant on getting the charge. However as an assault army, we're unlikely to see that until they re-address the shooting vs punching power imbalance...

D

I don't think that dude is coming back. Even an Eldar player would have a hard time convincing me he wins EVERY game. Sometimes things DO go wrong, even for the most OP lists.

I do feel like we're about in the same boat as wolves, DE, AM, orks, GK, and to a great extent nids. Really, there are only like 3 to 4 codexes that are problematically powerful. And from that list of decidedly meh codices, we are on par or slightly worse than wolves and equal to or better than orks, DE, GK, etc. Nids are better mainly because of forgeworld and the flyrant.

Our choices for remaining competitive got more limited when the new marine dex came out. And while i would LOVE if they FAQd us, i don't think its going to happen. But let's just take a look at the units we still have as building blocks for an army

LoW
-Dante

HQ
-Mephiston
-Sanguinary Priests
-Librarians
-Astorath

Elites
-Death Company
-Sanguinary Guard
-Furioso Dreads (but only with frag cannons)
-Command Squads
-Sternguard vets

Troops
-Tactical marines (are still awesome due to furious charge and access to fast transports and 4 flamers per squad)

Fast Attack
-Grav Bikes
-Min maxxed assault marine squads in pods (or with jump packs if Dante is your warlord)

Heavy Support
-Tri las preds
-Baal preds (this is meta dependant. My local scene is filled with av10-11 vehicles and t4 3+ infantry and bikes, so my Baals clean house. YMMV)
-Stormraven (in certain lists)

I dunno about all of you, but i can still build a mean army around all lf that, and those units just encompass the ones we have that are either unique, as good as or better than their vanilla counterparts.

Sanguinary Guard are largely terrible. I wouldn't list them under usable since Death Company are more durable and efficient for the cost.

With the return of volume of fire being many peoples preferred method of bringing things down (scatter lasers and bolters being the primary offenders) the value of a 2+ armor save has increased. Granted, i will take a unit of death co over sanguinary guard any day if there isnt a character attached, but SG are one of those units whos power increases with every support or combat character attached to them. A big unit with Dante and a priest is a very real and hard to shift threat.

I love my 8 man SG with Dante and priest. They are a fun mini star that had been doing well in my games.

"I love my 8 man SG with Dante and priest. "

That's a 500 pt squad. All T4. I'll pass, thanks.

" the value of a 2+ armor save has increased."

Not if the unit costs more than double a space marine.

I used to be one of the guys talking up Sanguinary guard, and now that they're cheaper and can be fielded in larger squads, I loved them even more....

....BUT, there's just a ton of Grav out there. Like...Grav LITERALLY falling from the skies in drop pods. I just can't see spending that many points on a unit that many of my opponents have the PERFECT at-ranged answer for.

At this point, if I had the models (which I don't) my BA jump pack deathstar would be Dante with a Command Squad (with 3 Storm Shields), or Dante, a Sanguinary Priest, and 10 Vanguard Veterans with as many Storm shields as I could shoehorn into the list. Basically...Dante, some FnP, and Stormshield toting guys to LoS to if I feel the need....Dante is good enough to wreck a lot of face by himself if he has the ablative wounds to get him around the field.

Either way, Grav...boo hiss.

Even at t4, a 2+ armor save with feel no pain in cover is going to be difficult for most armies to shift, particularly with a guy with 4 wounds, EW, and a 2+/4++/5+++ to tank wounds on. I've even been experimenting with an iron hands shield eternal master on a bike to run with them.

And yes, a 5 man squad with Dante and a priest is around 500 points, but I have almost never had them fail to make up more than their points cost and impact the game in a significant way. In some cases, the unit has almost single handedly won me the day.

I'm not paying points for Dante to have a WK stomp him. Plus, many lists can angle shots into your SG and avoid the Dante tank.

 th3maninblak wrote:
With the return of volume of fire being many peoples preferred method of bringing things down (scatter lasers and bolters being the primary offenders) the value of a 2+ armor save has increased. Granted, i will take a unit of death co over sanguinary guard any day if there isnt a character attached, but SG are one of those units whos power increases with every support or combat character attached to them. A big unit with Dante and a priest is a very real and hard to shift threat.

3+/5+++ is MUCH more valuable than a 2+. SURE you can attach a Priest to them, but by that logic I can just keep attaching other characters to the Death Company to keep up with the point costs.

 Voidwraith wrote:
I used to be one of the guys talking up Sanguinary guard, and now that they're cheaper and can be fielded in larger squads, I loved them even more....

....BUT, there's just a ton of Grav out there. Like...Grav LITERALLY falling from the skies in drop pods. I just can't see spending that many points on a unit that many of my opponents have the PERFECT at-ranged answer for.

At this point, if I had the models (which I don't) my BA jump pack deathstar would be Dante with a Command Squad (with 3 Storm Shields), or Dante, a Sanguinary Priest, and 10 Vanguard Veterans with as many Storm shields as I could shoehorn into the list. Basically...Dante, some FnP, and Stormshield toting guys to LoS to if I feel the need....Dante is good enough to wreck a lot of face by himself if he has the ablative wounds to get him around the field.

Either way, Grav...boo hiss.

This I can agree with. Grav heavy armies are the only armies where I get really worried about my SG and Dante not doing anything. Those games become a trial of very good ds placement and timing for the reserves roll for that squad to have any chance.

Umm... Tau AP 2 pie plates? Eldar D weapons?

Martel732 wrote:
Umm... Tau AP 2 pie plates? Eldar D weapons?

Those platforms are not spammed across the entire army the way grav tends to be. SG have good mobility and multiple deployment options. So I have never had an issue playing around those units with the SG. YMMV.

Red Inquisition wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Umm... Tau AP 2 pie plates? Eldar D weapons?

Those platforms are not spammed across the entire army the way grav tends to be. SG have good mobility and multiple deployment options. So I have never had an issue playing around those units with the SG. YMMV.

Interesting. Have you had success against scatbikes/warp spider S6 spam?

Only one player in my area plays skatbikes spam and I just use my SG carefully like I do in every game. Never fought more then 1 unit of spiders in an army before.

I don't throw my SG star at everything. It is my scalpel and I use it like one.

In my current list I also run an 8 man DC squad. That squad I will use like a hammer. I also run 2 pods of melta and some melta attack bikes that play very aggressively. I have found that those threats draw the fire from the SG star. That could be bad play by my opponents but so far it has been successful.

I put a lot of thought into the deployment and use of the SG star and I find that helps them be much more survivable. There are games where they get punked hard but that is happens with any star.

If I am going into a bad matchup for the SG I will put Dante in the DC instead and keep my SG in reserves or in back field cover as a deterant.

I do agree that they are expensive. But I don't think they are useless or even sub par. They are a focused unit that has very viable target selection in my 3+ meta.

I've started running the 1st company task force formation with 4x5 sternguard with 2 combis each in pods, alongside a fragioso pod to take out or distract things like riptides and eldar D artillary. Ive only faced the D support batteries a few times, and they've never gotten to fire.

This all being said, I have been making the switch to 10 death co with jump packs and a fist+sword led by Astorath over the sanguinary guard unit with Dante, but that doesn't mean I think SG are bad by any means. On average, a 5 man scatbike squad will kill MAYBE one sanguinary guard a turn.

The big question here is what do you do to actually get BA into an assault? Drop Pods and Deep Strike for me have always resulted in things getting blown to bits the turn they arrive. The last SG+Dante unit I used had a turn of shooting and that was it. Do we have any other tactic to get our good assault-y units (i.e. SG & DC) into an assault other than sticking everything in Stormravens and hope they don't get shot down the first turn they get on the board?

KefkaZ wrote:
The big question here is what do you do to actually get BA into an assault? Drop Pods and Deep Strike for me have always resulted in things getting blown to bits the turn they arrive. The last SG+Dante unit I used had a turn of shooting and that was it. Do we have any other tactic to get our good assault-y units (i.e. SG & DC) into an assault other than sticking everything in Stormravens and hope they don't get shot down the first turn they get on the board?

Well, we suffer from not having a Wraith or TWC equivalent. Nothing in the BA codex is particularly durable, which is why I've gone to a lot of MSU obj sec shenanigans.

Martel732 wrote:

KefkaZ wrote:
The big question here is what do you do to actually get BA into an assault? Drop Pods and Deep Strike for me have always resulted in things getting blown to bits the turn they arrive. The last SG+Dante unit I used had a turn of shooting and that was it. Do we have any other tactic to get our good assault-y units (i.e. SG & DC) into an assault other than sticking everything in Stormravens and hope they don't get shot down the first turn they get on the board?

Well, we suffer from not having a Wraith or TWC equivalent. Nothing in the BA codex is particularly durable, which is why I've gone to a lot of MSU obj sec shenanigans.

I've been having some luck with a hybrid mech style list. 2x5 man tac squads with 2 hand flamers and a heavy flamer in las plas razors with either 2 baal preds or 2 tri las preds. Use them as mobile cover for as long as you can, and also to shoot some gunz downfield to soften up targets or take out immediate threats. MSU works as well. Running 3x5 death co (or one 10 man squad alongside two 5 man units) has become one of my favorite strategies.

KefkaZ wrote:
The big question here is what do you do to actually get BA into an assault? Drop Pods and Deep Strike for me have always resulted in things getting blown to bits the turn they arrive. The last SG+Dante unit I used had a turn of shooting and that was it. Do we have any other tactic to get our good assault-y units (i.e. SG & DC) into an assault other than sticking everything in Stormravens and hope they don't get shot down the first turn they get on the board?

I DS in well positioned places on the table. That mitigate return fire and use my mobility to close the distance. This does not always work but most tables I play on support this playstyle. I get into my opponents OODA loop by using multiple threats. I play to the mission. 40k is not just about what is the best unit out there and spamming it. I try to insist on LoS blocking terrain as much as I can. I also find that in the west coast meta there is a good amount if terrain, that helps a lot. In the shooty edition of 40k well designed tables make the difference.

I almost always run the turn I DS then setup the assault. Shooting is for suckers. :-)

Overall the BA dex is mid tier IMO. They fit my aggressive threat overload playstyle, so they work well for me. We do not have they overwhelming firepower from turn 1 that the SM dex can bring. You have to be okay with this to play BA. We do have a dex that works well though.

There are so many good to decent units in the dex that list synergies are very possible. Can we compete untit to unit against top tier dexes? No. But we can compete against them with a well designed list and have fun doing so. Personally I feel confident playing against any army. Some I have to play better against than others but I find that fun and don't look down on it. No amy, no list wins 100% if the time.

We can talk about how x unit is crap against y all day. Every army can. I find that making a list that works for me throws all the mathamner out the window because I play well with it. I know what I need to do when and how to mitigate my bad match ups. This is a tenement of all armies when played at a competent level. Some are just easier than others.

I know I'm not alone in including a Vindicator in my BA army, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet (unless I was too sleepy to notice last night). I was struggling to win games when the codex first came out, and then I stumbled upon a Fritz 40k video about Vindicators, and his recommendations to take at least one, if not two. This is before the new SM codex came out, and wasn't a dedicated BA video. I thought I'd give it a try as I'd always liked the way the tank looks. Plus, S10 AP2 large blast? It stands out in the codex, to me.

Maybe I've been lucky, but the one Vindicator I have has won me some games that would have been dire otherwise. I imagine a most if not all will disagree with the tank's effectiveness, though.