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For a while, dakka seemed to be thoroughly anti-Blood Angel as they lacked access to many of the more powerful options of vanilla marines, had worse dreadnaughts, and had worse scouts. What unique options they did have (death company and sanguinary guard) were generally considered too squishy for their points costs to be worth it.

Now that the GW FAQs have adjusted the stats of their dreadnaughts and scouts, are people warming up to them a bit more? Obviously they don't have access to any of the cheese that makes white scars or ultramarines work, but how are they for casual games? Sure, they lose access to certain special characters, centurions, etc, but they gain...


* Furious charge (not bad if you're going assault heavy)
* Extremely murderous special dreadnaughts that are relatively easy to spam
* The ability to make vehicles fast (fast vindicators, anyone?)
* Some reasonably scary special characters
* Some options for deepstriking lots of jump packers with more accuracy, thus allowing you to deliver lots of jump units without exposing them to quite as much fire on the way in.

Again, that's not a recipe for a tournament list, but it seems like you could make a reasonable BA list for a casual game without bending over backwards.

The main problem is that Blood Angels lack a Decurion and small formations that lets you run about with the shenanigans that the other SMs have. Space Wolves managed to dodge this before by having straight up powerful choices in the form of Thunderwolves, Helfrost weapons and troop choices that are great as MSUs (Wolves now also have a decurion of their own which evens it out even more).

That and the current edition heavily favours shooting and close combat is unreliable. These two factors push BAs under the power level of other space marine armies.

However they're not unusable as this forum would have you believe. It's just that we have one or two very vocal members that believe it and they appear in any thread with any remote link to Blood Angels to preach it. That's when I get out the squirt bottle.

Blood Angels aren't quite as bad, but Dreadnoughts and Scouts weren't their issue. The main issue is that they are a choppy army in a shooty game. They really aren't that hard to fix, though. Just make them Space Marines with Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels and they become exponentially better. A Skyhammer with Furious Charge is not to be underestimated.

Reasonably scary special characters?

Are we reading the same codex at all?

If I saw Mephiston or Dante on the board I would probably devote hilarious amounts of firepower towards them.

Dante is pretty scary... AP2 attacks at initiative, eternal warrior, and 2+ 4++ is pretty darn good.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Some options for deepstriking lots of jump packers with more accuracy, thus allowing you to deliver lots of jump units without exposing them to quite as much fire on the way in.

Again, that's not a recipe for a tournament list, but it seems like you could make a reasonable BA list for a casual game without bending over backwards.

Speaking as someone in casual land you could probably make a go for that already. The only change I've seen is now I feel more annoyed at GW.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
If I saw Mephiston or Dante on the board I would probably devote hilarious amounts of firepower towards them.

Only Dante is a threat. Mephiston is easily ignored. And then you ignore the rest of the cast.

 EnTyme wrote:
Blood Angels aren't quite as bad, but Dreadnoughts and Scouts weren't their issue. The main issue is that they are a choppy army in a shooty game. They really aren't that hard to fix, though. Just make them Space Marines with Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels and they become exponentially better. A Skyhammer with Furious Charge is not to be underestimated.

Pretty much this. Except on top of being a choppy army in a shooting edition, they are the absolute worst of the choppy armies. I know people are gonna say "but Orks..." nope. Orks have the bodies, speed and assault transports to make it work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
If I saw Mephiston or Dante on the board I would probably devote hilarious amounts of firepower towards them.

Only Dante is a threat. Mephiston is easily ignored. And then you ignore the rest of the cast.

This. Tycho went from fun and awesome to 130 points of unplayable. Same with Seth. He lost his nut shot rule and he's supposed to be the chapter master of the angriest loyalist chapter I can think of... with an ap4 weapon. Corbulo is still okay on the table top, but I wouldn't dream of using him against any army stronger than Bugs or DE. That's pretty telling. On top of his netf, he got a 25 point price hike.

... aaand let's not even bring up Sanguinor or Lemartes. Nowhere near as unless as Tycho, but still a hilariously sad waste of points.

6th and 7th have both punished melee forces like blood angels, I've tabled my mate with my sw just buy standing still shooting the crap out of his transports and troops till only a third of his force remains, then thanks to counter attack I wiped him out in one round of combat.

A far cry from 5th.

We can but hope 8th is a better edition than the last two abominations.

Oh great. It's this can of worms. Cue the usual suspects for whining.

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Furious charge (not bad if you're going assault heavy)
* Extremely murderous special dreadnaughts that are relatively easy to spam
* The ability to make vehicles fast (fast vindicators, anyone?)
* Some reasonably scary special characters
* Some options for deepstriking lots of jump packers with more accuracy, thus allowing you to deliver lots of jump units without exposing them to quite as much fire on the way in.

Again, that's not a recipe for a tournament list, but it seems like you could make a reasonable BA list for a casual game without bending over backwards.

* Furious charge (not bad if you're going assault heavy) Seventh is about shooting, my friend, and the units that do the assaulting well (CENTURIONS OR SKYHAMMER ASSAULT SQUADS) are not available.
* Extremely murderous special dreadnaughts that are relatively easy to spam Bar Contemptors, Dreadnoughts still suck, and are susceptible to all the problems with vehicles.
* The ability to make vehicles fast (fast vindicators, anyone?) SM tanks, bar Forgeworld ones, still suck, sorry.
* Some reasonably scary special charactersEven though I can construct a better Chapter Master cheaper than Dante, a better Librarian than Mephiston and a better Chaplain than Astorath? OK
* Some options for deepstriking lots of jump packers with more accuracy, thus allowing you to deliver lots of jump units without exposing them to quite as much fire on the way in. Skyhammer, First Company Task Force etc. does this already

Seriously, Blood Angels Characters? Reasonably scary? Come on, I saw a Sanguinor get blatted off the board by four bolters. His sword is basically a Power Sword with a fancy name. I advise you change them to Vanilla Codex Marines and use Ultramarines/IF Tactics because they're probably the most generic, build your Special Characters as you would captains/libbys/chaplains.

SNAAAAKE wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

* Furious charge (not bad if you're going assault heavy)
* Extremely murderous special dreadnaughts that are relatively easy to spam
* The ability to make vehicles fast (fast vindicators, anyone?)
* Some reasonably scary special characters
* Some options for deepstriking lots of jump packers with more accuracy, thus allowing you to deliver lots of jump units without exposing them to quite as much fire on the way in.

Again, that's not a recipe for a tournament list, but it seems like you could make a reasonable BA list for a casual game without bending over backwards.

Come on, I saw a Sanguinor get blatted off the board by four bolters.

That's also a pretty unlikely thing to happen. I can kill a Wraithknight with one round of shooting from two Heavy Bolters but nobody is going to claim they're good because of that.

I just remembered one more thing they lack: Vehicle squadrons and those hilarious rules that come with them.

 Purifier wrote:
Oh great. It's this can of worms. Cue the usual suspects for whining.

Wrong again.

 EnTyme wrote:
Just make them Space Marines with Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels

Thats why you play Lamenters
A Space Marine Army with units chosen from the BA codex

Straight up, they aren't unplayable. They can certainly but fun at times (psykers dreads with quickening and wings) and fast vindicators, but they are an assault army (who happened to be terrible at getting that far, let alone getting the job done) in a shooting edition. To make it to assault this edition you have to have survivability and speed, numbers and speed, or toughness and speed. BA lack the speed element, the survivability element, they are MEQ so no numbers and they are laughably fraile compared to wolves or Crons ( IMO the only two viable assault armies as of now).

That isn't to say you can't make a fast vehicle list that spams razors and vindicators to take fire off of hammernators your psyker dread (Wraiths and TWC hate these BTW) and your DC with mephy work, but your best bet is maelstrom. In.a kill point game BA get mulched by just about everybody unless ones soul is bargained away to the dice gods.

Basically what I'm saying is they can be a lot of fun, just don't count on em to win gak.

Our FLGS tournament first place winner was a Blood Angels player, so they're actually not that bad for what is considered worst SM faction.

Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

It's an army I LIKE playing against., which is also a plus.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

 Purifier wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

So....
The BEST units in the BA codex are the Worst?
Something tells me those people are incompetent
Death Company with Boltguns get 4 Attacks each on the charge, plus an Extra 2 S4 AP5 shots each in charge range


But as i said Earlier, i use Lamenters Chapter Tactics, so i can Get Furious Charge Assault Marines in a Skyhammer

A Lamenters army is selected using the rules presented in
Codex: Blood Angels. They don't have Chapter Tactics. What exactly are you using?

 Purifier wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

The Raven is, and Drop Pods can be countered. If you play competitively at all you'd have to learn that.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

The Raven is, and Drop Pods can be countered. If you play competitively at all you'd have to learn that.

Pretty sure everything has a counter.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

The Raven is, and Drop Pods can be countered. If you play competitively at all you'd have to learn that.

That's like saying Rock counters Scissors therefore Scissors are underpowered. Not every army has a Wraith Knight (thank god too, because then the entire game would boil down to a coin toss).

 Purifier wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Drop pods, furiosos, and death company in a raven.

Haha, nonono. That is according to the BA people on here, literally the worst units in the game. I suggested exactly this; Death Company delivered as a payload out of a Raven, and got declared stupid for bringing anything that flies, and DC were not viable.

News to me. I HAVE heard that bringing death co in a raven is a stupid idea against certain armies (it is) because if the raven gets popped you just lost 1/3 of your army as none have invulns. And yes, DC are difficult to run across the board unless you pod in several dreads to draw fire. Even then a good round of shooting will make your DC combat ineffective or God forbid you don't get the first turn and they get shot off the board before you can move em. They either need a metal bawks or a pod and either way they will be prone to getting blasted off the table after they exit the transport unless your raider miraculously makes it across the board. Even then you're looking at a lucky T2 or T3 charge at best.

Dantes_Baals wrote:
I HAVE heard that bringing death co in a raven is a stupid idea against certain armies (it is) because if the raven gets popped you just lost 1/3 of your army

No, when I suggested it, it was against full sisters of battle, ie nothing with skyfire in the entire army.

Whole thing is in the "worst army" thread.

 Purifier wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
I HAVE heard that bringing death co in a raven is a stupid idea against certain armies (it is) because if the raven gets popped you just lost 1/3 of your army

No, when I suggested it, it was against full sisters of battle, ie nothing with skyfire in the entire army.

Whole thing is in the "worst army" thread.

That's because it is a T3 charge earliest. If that does not make it a stupid idea I don't know what else to tell you.

 Purifier wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
I HAVE heard that bringing death co in a raven is a stupid idea against certain armies (it is) because if the raven gets popped you just lost 1/3 of your army

No, when I suggested it, it was against full sisters of battle, ie nothing with skyfire in the entire army.

Whole thing is in the "worst army" thread.

So you decided to continue the argument in this thread as well.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
I HAVE heard that bringing death co in a raven is a stupid idea against certain armies (it is) because if the raven gets popped you just lost 1/3 of your army

No, when I suggested it, it was against full sisters of battle, ie nothing with skyfire in the entire army.

Whole thing is in the "worst army" thread.

So you decided to continue the argument in this thread as well.

I referenced it. Nothing more. The argument is being continued by Slayer-Fan123. I'm not going there.

I mean gak, I even specifically gave the source to not have to reiterate anything here.

commander dante wrote:
But as i said Earlier, i use Lamenters Chapter Tactics, so i can Get Furious Charge Assault Marines in a Skyhammer

Just to zone in on this part. It's wrong. Lamenters are a Blood Angels army. They use full Blood Angels rules. They are not "BA and SM combined". I'm really shocked that someone willfully misinterpreted the rules to pull this one out.