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Ok so basically I saw betrayal at calth box set and just had to have one after 6-8 years away from Gw products, I've never played a game of 40k or 30k and I'm looking to get into it I'm planning on playing BA as I just love the vicious nature well to the point I need help what I have here and in the post on route

Betrayal at calth box
Drop pod
Rhino
BA forge world shoulder pads
Contemptor left autocannon and missile launcher
10 jet packs
Codex

What should I run with these and should I mix pods and rhinos or just go with one or the other?
I'm looking to play both 30k and 40k as I'm making the army 30k BA but going to have a few troops like death company for 40k games. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Greetings! Welcome to the fold, fellow Angel.

I personally prefer running either pods or rhinos individually, though you can mix and match to various degrees of success, it generally helps the theme of your force if you try to stick to one exclusively, or at least predominantly.

As for how you want to build the force, you'll have a solid base force with all the tactical marines. I would build up two squads of tactical marines (10 strong) that will fill out your troops selections. The third 10 man squad you can build a few different ways.

You could try build up two 'melta-cide' (I hate the term but it is appropriate) assault squads with jump packs, each one five man strong, kitted out with two meltaguns and a sergeant with an inferno pistol (or two, though I personally like to give my assault squad sergeants a melee weapon and a pistol, you can put dual pistols on him which is pretty swanky as well). The other non meltagun models would get bolt pistols and chainswords. These squads would fall into your 40k list predominantly. I don't know if you can field a squad built like this in 30k.

The other option would be to field them as a single 10 man jump pack assault squad choice, once again with 2x special weapons (Meltaguns preferred) and a Sergeant kitted out as above, with the remaining 7x marines all toting bolt pistols & chainswords.

The contemptor can be a regular dread or Furioso if you feel like converting up a frag cannon or getting a right arm dreadnough powerfist for 40k games.

Do pick up some Death Company, and also consider some Assault Marines as well if you want to roll with larger squads of jump pack marines.

Hopefully this helps, and do let me know if I can be of any other help for you. Welcome to the fold once again, as well.

Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

To be fair here, I'd avoid both tactical marines and assault marines as much as possible. I can't go into a lot of detail right now, but trust me that you want to avoid these units in general.

Wow thanks for the advice red thirst that's cleared up any doubts I had I think I'll go full pod list as it just seems more blood angely, martley surely avoiding tactical squads is impossible without running scouts which personally I'd never use can you elaborate slightly more thanks

Tactical squads are bad. In 7th ed, their offensive output is too low and the defensive prowess of the marine has been eroded too much. There are many BA players who use CC scouts instead of tac squads for troops.

When I say avoid, I really mean minimize. I would never take a full squad of 10. It's better to have minimal squad with special/combi in a cheap transport.

I also would NEVER do a full drop list with BA. Drop pods turn off our chapter tactic by making it physically impossible to assault. BA are NOT a good drop pod chapter. Meltacide units are highly overrated. If you really want to deploy melta, try MM attack bikes or dual MM speeders.

The best general idea seems to utilize fast MSU BA units. Some lists include four separate units of five Death Company, for example.

Thanks Martel, so would I be better off running rhinos or Razorbacks with 5 man tac squads, purely don't like scouts so won't be using them not looking to win tournaments just put up a solid fight against most opponents and cause some mayhem

It's frustratingly difficult for ba to remotely challenge the top codices. On the other end, it's very easy to make a BA list that struggles against basically everyone. There are a lot of trap units in the codex.

I'm going to play the Devil's Advocate here and disagree with Martel. My BA friend can actually make a very mean list. Tac Squads with a bunch of flame weapons in drop pods can do a number against most units that aren't vehicles. While BA aren't super competitive, saying they can't even make a list to take on Marines is just false in my eyes.

Good marine lists wipe the floor with ba mercilessly. The grav cannon makes a huge difference, as does the gladius.

The Grav Cannon isn't that good on a non-relentless model. I'll agree that grav-cents are nasty, but on anything else it's just meh. And Gladius is only really good for maelstrom missions, where you need that many Rhinos, otherwise you just bleed kill points.

So confused lol

Sorry about that. I just disagree with some of Martel's positions on BA. The best thing you can do is learn from experience what units will work in your meta. In my area BA does fairly well for itself.

You're taking a huge risk with BA because (A) a few people consider them to be one of if not the worst Codex, partly due to be the last released Coded before 7.5 edition (with Decurions and co) rolled out and (B) they as of yet have no legion rules. But FW is much better at rules than GW (aside some questionable units) and Sanguinius is a boss.

For 40k, Death Company are great. Not OP but still solid. Sanguinary Priests are good too. I quite like Sternguard in Drop Pods. While its not limited to BA only, I find they always pull their weight. Usually five guys or combat squads, all with combi-melta.

Christoon wrote:
So confused lol

The bottom line is that the vanilla marines, ie Ultramarines, Salamander, White Scars, etc get access to a lot of nasty equipment that BA don't get access to. And BA receive precious little in return.

There's a couple things I'm seeing that are missing here so I'm going to mention them. In 30k there is a Rite of War (which is almost like how Detachments work in 40k in that it restricts some choices and gives benefits to the army but it's purchased via an HQ choice) that is full Drop Pod/Drop Ship and another that is just full Deep Strike. Both are very interesting ideas for a fluffy Blood Angel army in 30k but there's no telling what the actual Blood Angel rules are going to help with when their rules come out. While full drop pod might not be ideal in 40k, though I will always be a fan of 2 Melta ASM and a Fragioso, you might have to work with that downside as you get going if you choose that Rite of War. But that's making a forced concession just to keep your gaming balanced between the two very different games until you build out your collection more.

You can run Blood Angels with a big focus on Jump Packs in 40k but it is very difficult to pull out the win. Some armies just do movement better than Blood Angels, and Blood Angels HAVE to have the upper hand in positioning and deciding when the charge is going to happen. It's hard, but it's fun. I wouldn't consider bringing it to tournaments though.

Something to consider picking up is a Sicaran tank. In both 30 and 40k they are damn good tanks and they are pretty tailor made to kill the toughest things that most traditional Jump Pack BA can't handle. Bikes and jetbikes. The things that outmaneuver Blood Angels and ruin that charge bonus. Throw in a Fast Vindicator or two and you have your Heavy Support.

Sicarans are good. Not as good as in 6th ed, but still solid. I'm not a fan of Vindicators myself.

Honestly, while some feel the tactical squad is a bad place to go troops wise, I actually disagree. Scouts are a solid choice too, and obviously a cheaper one, but they fulfill a different role in the army.

Drop pod tactical marines can be quite effective, but you need to overwhelm with numbers in a concentrated area in my experience, preferably where you can get a lot of damage-on-target quickly and hit their weaker spots with focused firepower.

An example I'll offer for the list I'm currently building (40k, as 30k hasn't really taken off here as yet):

I intend to field multiple drop pods and try to drop at least twenty to thirty (depending on list size) tactical marines in two to three drop pods. Each tactical squad will be armed with a Heavy Flamer, a Sergeant w/ a combi-weapon (Flamer or Melta, depending on the squad) and a Grav or Melta gun (again, depending on the squad).

The goal is to land all three pods as closely together as possible so that the squads disembark and combat squad (breaking into four to six individual five man combat squads upon deployment from the pod) and then focusing as much firepower as possible on one to two near-by enemy units. In theory, between the template weapons, and massed small-arms fire, whatever infantry target I land near will be either weakened to the point of being combat ineffective for the remainder of the game, or outright destroyed ideally.

That's one way to play Drop Pods, and make no mistake, there are other armies that do drop pod assault style tactics 'better' than Blood Angels. I would say that Salamanders and to a lesser extent, Imperial/Crimson Fists are likely two of the best in regard to that kind of tactic, but that doesn't mean that Blood Angels aren't able to do it well enough to warrant trying it out. Also, unlike the two chapters above, Blood Angels get Heavy Flamers in their tactical squads as a 'heavy' weapon, which is excellent, as the Heavy Flamer is an Assault weapon versus a Heavy Weapon, meaning we retain our mobility, and can also fire our heavy weapon in addition to any other assault weapons in the squad and still charge in afterward (obviously, not on the turn we disembark from the drop pod, but on subsequent turns).

Just offering some tactical advice to give you ideas on how to play and use your army moving forward. Take it easy for now and if you have any other questions or want to talk more in-depth do please send me a PM if you'd like.

Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

 War Kitten wrote:
I'm going to play the Devil's Advocate here and disagree with Martel. My BA friend can actually make a very mean list. Tac Squads with a bunch of flame weapons in drop pods can do a number against most units that aren't vehicles. While BA aren't super competitive, saying they can't even make a list to take on Marines is just false in my eyes.

Absolutely agree. It depends on the match-up. Don't listen to Martel. He is clearly a hypothetical wargamer.

Yeah, I'm totally hypothetical. I just imagine all that grav damage and all those invisible cent stars.

A list with 30 tactical marines is a disaster waiting to happen. Putting them in pods is even worse, because then they are stranded on foot (ie, dead) after they drop and fail to do enough damage. Good players will recognize a drop attack and give you very few soft spots to hit and on top of this, set up kill zones for all the dropping units. I know I do. I could probably beat the described list 80% of the time to due alpha strike mitigation techniques.

Everybody faps off to the heavy flamer in the tactical squad, but it's really not that big of a revelation, and almost always fails to do enough damage to make the squad worthwhile.

For the OP, many posters on here don't want to acknowledge just how poor the BA are at the moment. The situation is bad enough without a bunch of people in denial trying to explain it all away.

I hate to admit it, but they seem to do better when not being played as an assault army which is such a crying shame.

Tacticals I think are a valid option for Blood Angels, but I agree that 10 man squads are just a waste of points. 5 man squads with combi-weapon sgt and special weapon in a razorback I think are the least worse troop option for them - e.g. comb-grav sgt and grav gun marine. I don't think heavy weapons in the squad really work. The fast razorbacks help with getting across the table quicker and provide a layer of protection before getting blown to smithereens. They also carry the heavy weapon that your tactical marines aren't carrying.

My stormraven generally does alright (nothing to shout about mind). So yes, if you play tactical marines in a Blood Angel army you are probably better off with 5 man squads in Razorbacks with combi and special weapons.

It is such a shame really. If you are going down the above route then you might as well just play normal marines. I only stick with Blood Angels because I am a huge fan of them in terms of fluff and appearance and the fact that I don't continuously play against Eldar! ha ha

Tacticals of any flavour are terrible.
Boltguns don't really do much, and T4 3+ isn't very survivable any more.
They're also slow outside of a transport, with Razorbacks being too expensive to field for a AV11/11/10 Vehicle.
It's no wonder Vanilla players generally don't use Tacticals outside of Gladius.

BA Tacticals are worse than the already terrible SM Tacticals as they don't have a chapter tactic that benefits them., and no access to a Gladius for the free stuff.
The Heavy Flamer option also encourages people to use drop pods which are a terrible option for them, essentially turning them into an expensive suicide unit with limited damage potential

Apocalypse 40k has moved away from infantry unless you're on a Bike/Thunderwolf (or a Warp Spider). Most people run min squads to fill out mandatory requirements.
Gladius tried to change this by throwing free stuff at you but even then it's not making the top tables at tournaments.