Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I don't think you'll have to worry about Wraithlords showing up in games. Be merely prepared for Wraithknights.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Anecdotal evidence means literally nothing.

Anecdotal evidence always means something. It just isn't proof in and of itself, which means it merits both scrutiny and perspective.

Aside from trying to table every Eldar unit on the board, what about just playing to objectives? A WK is not Obsec and its damage is limited by MSU. I know you guys are bloodthirsty but seriously why swim against the tide? Given Endurance, Tacs will be incredibly obnoxious to remove with Stomp. Meanwhile they score while the WK does not. This is a solution.

Next, I'm sure you all understand the concept of concentration of force. BA cannot simply point & click to remove WKs -- they will need to disrupt the entire force so they can piecemeal them. 600pts of MSU can split off 70-ish points to block 300pts, then use 530pts against 300pts to fight at an advantage. Throwing 300pts against 300pts without shaping conditions will often result in a loss, this has been established. Fighting as an underdog requires a tactical advantage. Looking for a mathematical sure-shot is the wrong way to approach this, trading point-for-point is not a winning option. BA units are often not strong enough or require tailoring to the point of irrelevance outside that role. Leveraging flexibility is essential.

So what's left are less than conventional 40k tactics, because you do not want to fight on even ground.
-- LD warfare
-- Psychic synergies
-- IC synergies
-- Extreme MSU, board disruption, and playing to objectives
-- Reserves tactics
-- High Adaptability through special rules, unit abilities, WL traits, etc.

Look at the above as a chance to explore wildly different tactics and strategies which may help you win. Certainly not guaranteed. I don't know if anyone here has played XCOM, there is a setting "Impossible Ironman" which is still absolutely unforgiving. There is no guaranteed way to win -- even if you play perfectly, you can get screwed on probability -- but there are plenty of guaranteed ways to lose. You need to be willing to take risks and experiment to learn, not simply play conservative to lose more slowly.

Drill into problems and obstacles, do not just discard ideas. You can get 3x JP Librarians with Combi-Gravs for the cost of a WK, so comparing a single JP lib on the charge is not a fair comparison. Further to that, Endurance on 10x Combi-Gravs will pop a WK, at about 423pts with ML2, and soak up more than 750pts of Scatterbike fire. That's damage and survivability on par with Grav Cents. Yeah its dependent on a psychic power but if you want Grav Spam that's the BA option. You can still Combat Squad, so in some ways that's more flexible if facing MSU.

I don't think desperately crunching numbers to spam Grav will make you a better player -- Relentless Combi-Grav in Pods is pretty basic and Fortune/Invis will shut it down easily -- but it's possible to optimize the shooty side of things too. Lacks style, though, and personally I find that the most important consideration. Don't forget it's only a game.

Exalted, Yoyoyo.

I find that, and it's painfully apparent in this thread, there are two camps regarding Blood Angels on this forum. It's fairly easy to see who falls into which of these camps, based on the posts.

There's camp one, which I am thankful I count myself to be a part of, that feels that Blood Angels aren't in the best spot. We're far from bottom tier, being Space Marines and all, but that we are currently behind the power curve. We've still got some good teeth and legs to run, we just have to be a bit more cagey about how we play, and what we do with our army as far as building and playing, especially against more powerful opposition such as Eldar, Necrons, Vanilla Space Marines/Dark Angels, or other similar codexes. All it takes is trial and error and looking at things from a different perspective/coming up with new ideas. This thread has helped me tremendously for moving my army forward to it's credit, despite the vitriol that has cropped up here and there.

Then there's camp two, which Martel, and Slayerfan are quite loudly members of. This camp is comprised of those who believe all is lost, nothing can save us, we're all going to die in a fire if we play Blood Angels and that nothing we do short of physically punching your opponent to knock them out will result in us winning a game versus even the lowliest of the low current power-level codexes such as Orks or even Dark Eldar. Woe-are-we, we must lament our army for it defies the laws of physics by sucking and blowing at the same time, according to this camp.

It's remarkable really, as there is no middle ground to speak of between these two camps.

As I said, I'm thankful that I've got enough grey matter to flex and think of new ways to play and still have fun with my army, Blood Angels, despite the flaws and power creep that's been on going rather than throw up my hands and shout at the heavens my lament and make sure everyone that even mentions my army on this forum in any way knows exactly how badly my army sucks.

I'd almost call it comical.

Anyway, that's all I've got to add. Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

Yoyoyo wrote:

So what's left are less than conventional 40k tactics, because you do not want to fight on even ground.
-- LD warfare
-- Psychic synergies
-- IC synergies
-- Extreme MSU, board disruption, and playing to objectives
-- Reserves tactics
-- High Adaptability through special rules, unit abilities, WL traits, etc.

-WK are fearless and you're going to struggle to be in range of any -Ld shenanigans after you get out of your pods against jetbikes or warspiders.
-You don't have enough psychic dice to achieve much of anything against eldar, so good luck with getting more than 1 power off let alone anything that has synergy
-Your IC's are all either too slow to matter or too fragile and the main issue is that some people on here refuse to use allies, so there are very few synergies to exploit
- Eldar have access to 51 point ObSec troops that can move across the board at a moments notice. They can and will out MSU you.
-Reserves tactics when AFAIK, BA don't have any reserve manipulation beyond the ability to buy a coms relay and hope for the best when rolling a warlord trait.
-You have minimal adaptability through anything. the bulk of your forces are T4 guys in power armour. Eldar have more special rules than you can shake a stick at, and try as you might, you'll never be able to pull the sort of crap Spiders can. Your unit abilities are limited to FNP, +1 I and some special short range weapons. WL traits are cancelled out since the BA ones are fairly lacklustre IIRC and the only special character who has one worth building around is Dante, who is still just a normal T4 dude IIRC.

Scatbikes >>> 90% of your codex. WK >>> the other 10%. Same goes for any other army not call Necrons or Space Marines grav cents plus tax units.

Accept the fact that you've got a crappy book that can't compete against Eldar and don't even bother trying to. Focus on what your list can compete against and build for that. Either that or sell your army if you don't want to collect a small allied contingent, since it's quite clear you're not having fun, so why keep bashing your head against the same wall? If you're going to get your gak wrecked for the 84th game in a row against a pair of WK's, scatbikes and a council, are you going to have fun? Are you going to learn anything? If not, why bother playing?

 Drasius wrote:


-WK are fearless and you're going to struggle to be in range of any -Ld shenanigans after you get out of your pods against jetbikes or warspiders.
-You don't have enough psychic dice to achieve much of anything against eldar, so good luck with getting more than 1 power off let alone anything that has synergy
-Your IC's are all either too slow to matter or too fragile and the main issue is that some people on here refuse to use allies, so there are very few synergies to exploit
- Eldar have access to 51 point ObSec troops that can move across the board at a moments notice. They can and will out MSU you.
-Reserves tactics when AFAIK, BA don't have any reserve manipulation beyond the ability to buy a coms relay and hope for the best when rolling a warlord trait.
-You have minimal adaptability through anything. the bulk of your forces are T4 guys in power armour. Eldar have more special rules than you can shake a stick at, and try as you might, you'll never be able to pull the sort of crap Spiders can. Your unit abilities are limited to FNP, +1 I and some special short range weapons. WL traits are cancelled out since the BA ones are fairly lacklustre IIRC and the only special character who has one worth building around is Dante, who is still just a normal T4 dude IIRC.

Scatbikes >>> 90% of your codex. WK >>> the other 10%. Same goes for any other army not call Necrons or Space Marines grav cents plus tax units.

Accept the fact that you've got a crappy book that can't compete against Eldar and don't even bother trying to. Focus on what your list can compete against and build for that. Either that or sell your army if you don't want to collect a small allied contingent, since it's quite clear you're not having fun, so why keep bashing your head against the same wall? If you're going to get your gak wrecked for the 84th game in a row against a pair of WK's, scatbikes and a council, are you going to have fun? Are you going to learn anything? If not, why bother playing?

I get the feeling, based on the tone of your post, that you perhaps accidentally quoted Yoyoyo there.

Yoyoyo is enjoying playing Blood Angels and offering positive, well thought out information about how to use Blood Angels effectively despite the behind-the-curve codex that Blood Angels currently have.

Did you mean to quote martel, or slayerfan? Just curious.

Not calling you out here, was just genuinely confused as to why you quoted someone that's being helpful and offering insight into playing Blood Angels in a positive manner and proceed to tell them to sell their army under the assumption they're not enjoying playing the list.



Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

It was meant to be a response to Yoyoyo in the first part and Martel in the 2nd part, but on re-reading it, it didn't come out that way. My bad.

*Sigh* I am probably going to run the Shadowstrike Kill Team using White Scars tactics and pain the models inside as Blood Angels. Hit and Run and assault out of Deep Strike plus not crappy Scouts (BS/WS 4 and LSS) is too hard to pass up.

Seriously, does EVERYTHING have to be better at being Blood Angels than Blood Angels?

People need to get there heads out of the BA onry mindset when talking about competitive builds.

BA by themselves aren't going to beat Eldar, but then none of the other mono codex marines are going to either. See all the DA/SW and SM/GK lists for a start.
There's a bazillion codexes that BA can ally with. If you want to play mono BA, that's fine, but understand you're the equivalent of a Deathwing player in 5th ed.

Alternatively, play Horus Heresy

 Drasius wrote:
Are you going to learn anything?

That's kind of the entire point of a tactics thread, or wargaming in the formal sense, isn't it?

I will say that it's difficult to get in a high volume of games in 40k, as well as having each and every model to experiment with. Most successful players with unconventional tactics tends to possess a lot of models and a lot of experience. These aren't tactical issues per se but they do compound the difficulties of playing a weaker army.

Then again if anyone REALLY wanted an easy button netlist, they are probably no longer in this thread

Obviously ba are better with allies. The question to me is why bother with the ba? They dont really bring anything to an allied list.

Martel732 wrote:
Obviously ba are better with allies. The question to me is why bother with the ba? They dont really bring anything to an allied list.

They have Death Company and fragnoughts don't they? They also bring Furious Charge and Initiative + Leadership manipulation.



I will admit Death Company would be way better if they had some access to heavy weapons....

Martel732 wrote:
Obviously ba are better with allies. The question to me is why bother with the ba? They dont really bring anything to an allied list.

That's a question that only you can answer. The mainstays of BA since 5th - jump infantry, (fast) mech and Dreads haven't been good for a few years now, so I imagine you continue to play BA because you like the fluff, the colour scheme, models, a certain unit etc

If I was building a BA with allies list I'd cherry pick the units I want to use and build a list to support them and plug the weaknesses. Even just adding a Knight in can solve issues for some players.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Obviously ba are better with allies. The question to me is why bother with the ba? They dont really bring anything to an allied list.

They have Death Company and fragnoughts don't they? They also bring Furious Charge and Initiative + Leadership manipulation.



I will admit Death Company would be way better if they had some access to heavy weapons....

Loyalist marines certainly don't need DC help. Anything that skyhammer ASM can't punch out gets shot with grav. The fragnought is an interesting niche, as it causes many wounds that ignore cover.

Bartali wrote:
If I was building a BA with allies list I'd cherry pick the units I want to use and build a list to support them and plug the weaknesses. Even just adding a Knight in can solve issues for some players.

Out of curiosity, are there any Knight characters? So Quickening could potentially boost them to I6?

One of their formations turns the Warlord into a character. I don't own the Knight book so I know nothing outside of that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Obviously ba are better with allies. The question to me is why bother with the ba? They dont really bring anything to an allied list.

They have Death Company and fragnoughts don't they? They also bring Furious Charge and Initiative + Leadership manipulation.



I will admit Death Company would be way better if they had some access to heavy weapons....

While Fragnoughts ARE cool and Death Company works, TWC can replace Death Company overall. Their Dreads also need 4 attacks base.

Ok, so going off the discussion that has been going on here, these are the units from BA that are worth taking from a competitive standpoint that are ALSO uniquely Blood Angel-y

Dante
Mephiston
Sanguinary Priests
Fighty Librarians
Death Company
Sanguinary Guard (meta dependent)
Fragnoughts
Fast mech (including fast razors, tri las preds, and in certain metas baal preds)
Suicide melta ASM

I'm pretty sure we can still build an effective and unique list from these units.

"Suicide melta ASM "

I really question the effectiveness of this unit, tbh. You're paying over 100 pts for two melta hits.

Martel732 wrote:
"Suicide melta ASM "

I really question the effectiveness of this unit, tbh. You're paying over 100 pts for two melta hits.

Three, actually. The sergeant can have a Combimelta + Meltabombs or, conversely, a Melta Pistol if you feel like being gutsy with the drop/have descent of angels WL trait with Dante/lucky roll on the warlord trait chart. Either option costs the same points.

I personally would go with the Inferno Pistol so you get more than one shot over the course of the game, and that squad with this loadout is just 110 points. If they land in melta range, you're likely to kill whatever armor you're shooting at with them, assuming you luck out and get all three melta shots to hit.

I will also mention that this squad can rip their JP's off and ride in a drop pod for free. So 110 points for a pod-dropped five man squad with three melta shots + a meltabomb or 2x melta shots and an inferno pistol shot. That's not too shabby for 110 points in my opinion.

I personally would go with Jump Packs, and drop them in that way. Mostly because they can be deployed normally or deep strike and if they aren't immediately picked up the following turn they have the mobility to get around the table a little easier vs. having to footslog once they're out of the Pod.

My opinion on that. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Two melta HITS. Three melta SHOTS. Two melta hits have around a 50/50 (46%) chance to smoke a Rhino. Not exactly wowing me. They've got about an 18% chance to take out a land raider. The really sad part is that you have a 29.6% chance to HP out a LR with pens before rolling an explodes. Yay for AP 1 nerfs.

It really depends if your opponent is fielding units vulnerable to Suicide ASM. If they are its a good trade. If a pawn can trade for a Knight then your ahead.

You have to admit, that wasn't exactly clear with the way you wrote it, but you're being pedantic now, so whatev's.

One of these squads landing next to an enemy vehicle will make sure it has a bad day. Your average vehicle has three hull points. You will get two hits on average, but three will also be common enough to be considered 'normal' and assuming you don't flub your penetration roll you will kill that vehicle with hull point damage alone, not considering you blow it up outright on a 5+ with Melta, or 4+ if it's open topped.

Don't forget also that two immobilized results is 3 hull points worth of damage, it won't come up terribly often but it does warrant some consideration since you immobilize a tank on a 4+ with AP:1 hits.

Thought, honestly, I don't even know why I'm trying to talk to you, Martel. You have such hate for BA in your veins and are so vocal about it, nobody offering counter points to your vitriol receives anything but negative and condescending responses. Consider yourself ignored from this point forward. Have a nice life, bud.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

You posted math, so you're ignored! Okay.

"One of these squads landing next to an enemy vehicle will make sure it has a bad day. "

I just showed how that's not really true.

"but three will also be common enough to be considered 'normal'"

Nope. This only occurs 29.6% of the time, less than a third.

"You have to admit, that wasn't exactly clear with the way you wrote it, but you're being pedantic now, so whatev's. "

I wrote the word "hit" for a reason.

"nobody offering counter points to your vitriol receives anything but negative and condescending responses"

Correction: YOU offering counter points makes me impatient, because they are usually nonsense.

I would ask everybody to control your black rage. We are having a productive discussion overall, despite setbacks. No need for this thread to fly off the rails like all the others.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
It really depends if your opponent is fielding units vulnerable to Suicide ASM. If they are its a good trade. If a pawn can trade for a Knight then your ahead.

What unit might that be? Something open-topped that costs a lot?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
I would ask everybody to control your black rage. We are having a productive discussion overall, despite setbacks. No need for this thread to fly off the rails like all the others.

All I'm doing is challenging the notion that suicide melta ASM is a good squad. I'm pretty much stopped using them, and I have no problems killing tanks. Tanks have never been the problem.

TBH, I stopped using suicide ASM myself. I prefer sternguard if I'm going to do it.

I wouldn't bother with tanks. I would use them against long fangs for example. You don't need to kill all of them to neuter the effectiveness of the unit. I think that would be a fair trade for the investment.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
TBH, I stopped using suicide ASM myself. I prefer sternguard if I'm going to do it.

I wouldn't bother with tanks. I would use them against long fangs for example. You don't need to kill all of them to neuter the effectiveness of the unit. I think that would be a fair trade for the investment.

Melta sternguard are giving away even more points, though. I don't think drop melta Sternguard was EVER worked out against me. Ever. That's a lot of drops, too. All of 5th included.

I prefer plasma sterns.

Got to spend points to make victory points.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
I prefer plasma sterns.

Got to spend points to make victory points.

Those in some ways are worse, as they kill themselves at a non-trivial rate. I think it's actually pretty rare now that plasma Sternguards can even make their points back.

Bikes should also be on that list. While they're not as good as their white scar or ravenwing counterparts, having furious charge and either red thirst or the chance for rage on a fast moving unit is never bad. Plus they make use of the concussive USR from grav better than the other chapters do.

I am a little salty that Raven Guard got a formation that lets them assault from deep strike. Way to go, GW.

 th3maninblak wrote:
Bikes should also be on that list. While they're not as good as their white scar or ravenwing counterparts, having furious charge and either red thirst or the chance for rage on a fast moving unit is never bad. Plus they make use of the concussive USR from grav better than the other chapters do.

I am a little salty that Raven Guard got a formation that lets them assault from deep strike. Way to go, GW.

Only a little? They published a BA codex that is best used as wallpaper, and then gave vanilla marines assault from DS. BA bikes aren't bad, but vanilla and ravenwing bikers are so much better.