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I want to play a Blood Angels List that is true to the fluff and is not muddied by other allies and other armies. I was formerly a Guard player and have been out of the game and hobby for a few editions.

Do you have any suggestions for building such a list?

First, what do you want to focus your list on? First Company? Death Company? Demi-company?

Are you wanting as many jumpers as you can get? As many dreads? A mix? Keep in mind they are codex compliant for the most part (DC and Sanguinary Guard aside).

I'd recommend using the Traitor's Hate formations for it, regardless.

Wait for 8th ed. I can't recommend the the current gakfest, as every other marine chapter save DA have better assault marines.

Please just ignore Martel, he doesn't understand people who collect an army because they love the fluff and the models.

For the core of the army, it definitely depends on what you want to play. Going towards vehicles, you want to have some Furioso Dreadnoughts, Baal Predators and fast Vindicators!
On the infantry side, a good-sized unit of Death Company is always a good start. Also, a 10man unit of Assault Marines with a Sanguniary Priest can be surprisingly effective, especially if you keep the opponent busy with some dreadnoughts in his face while you close the gap.
Sanguinary Guard are very iconic, but they need a more durable character like Dante in front to take any AP2 shots directed towards them, else they die very fast.

Jump units are a joke in 7th. It's really best to wait and see if the fix this.

When I play die-hard tournaments you are correct, I will not bring my blood angels.

When I play some friendly games at my store against my buddies Chaos, Tau or Ultramarines, they work absolutely fine. I'm not sure what your environment is, but we have no problems adjusting the powerlevel of our lists to provide a balanced and fun experience for everybody.

Ushtarador wrote:
When I play die-hard tournaments you are correct, I will not bring my blood angels.

When I play some friendly games at my store against my buddies Chaos, Tau or Ultramarines, they work absolutely fine. I'm not sure what your environment is, but we have no problems adjusting the powerlevel of our lists to provide a balanced and fun experience for everybody.

Just ignore him, his group is apparently a WAAC, TFGs who play with what is essentially a parking lot for terrain, and no idea how to run a non tourny list for friendly games.

Honestly, just build what you like, but a couple boxes of ASM/tac marines/scouts with transports can't go wrong, same with dreads (for fun/friendly games)

 Wolfblade wrote:

Ushtarador wrote:
When I play die-hard tournaments you are correct, I will not bring my blood angels.

When I play some friendly games at my store against my buddies Chaos, Tau or Ultramarines, they work absolutely fine. I'm not sure what your environment is, but we have no problems adjusting the powerlevel of our lists to provide a balanced and fun experience for everybody.

Just ignore him, his group is apparently a WAAC, TFGs who play with what is essentially a parking lot for terrain, and no idea how to run a non tourny list for friendly games.

Honestly, just build what you like, but a couple boxes of ASM/tac marines/scouts with transports can't go wrong, same with dreads (for fun/friendly games)

They're actually NOT TFGs. They're perfectly polite. They just don't self-nerf. And there's a lot of terrain, but evidently not quite the terrain BA need. Funny how GW doesn't mention that in the BA codex anywhere.

Yes, you can get what you want, and BA have very nice models, but they have a lot of downsides vs vanilla marines.

My favourite thing in the BA book is the Lost Brotherhood Strike Force; it lets you skip around some of the bigger issues with melee-oriented armies in 7th with bonus Scout moves and many attacks per Death Company model (so you don't need very many models to make it to melee to be an issue for the enemy). They're also better at Dreadnaughts than most armies with Librarian Dreadnaughts, AV13 Furiosos, and the ability to skip the Initiative order with Chapter Ancients (which, incidentally, gives the Blood Angels one of a very few units that can actually one-on-one a Wraithknight in melee without just up and dying).

That said in the interests of completeness I will note that the Blood Angels in 30k are more competitive than the Blood Angels in 40k; you get +S every turn of combat instead of just the first, Day of Revelation to Deep Strike all your Jump Infantry on turn one without needing a roll (and they get Pinning ranged weapons (which actually matters in 30k) and a cover save when doing it) and give them I5 charging, the Blade of Perdition (AP2 at Initiative that causes two Wounds per Wound for any HQ model), and cheap/spammable assault cannons at a level that 40k armies can only dream about. They don't have any unique units yet (the Legion rules and Rites are in Book 6, but no unique units/characters) and unfortunately none of the Heresy boxed games have plastic Heresy-era Assault Marines yet so you'd need to go through Forge World, doctor Chaos Raptor models for Mk.IV or Mk.V armour, or doctor normal Assault Marines to get Mk.VI armour, but they're a pretty cool Legion.

(Unfortunately heretical abuse of synergy isn't that helpful for the Blood Angels with the Shattered Legions rules; the Night Lords get a 5+ cover save on turn one/Raven Guard Dark Furies get a 5+ cover save the turn they arrive from Deep Strike, neither of which stacks in any beneficial way with Day of Revelation.)

Martel732 wrote:
...They're actually NOT TFGs. They're perfectly polite. They just don't self-nerf...

To most of us refusing to not play Riptide Wings, scatterbike spam, and Wraithknights when asked politely is rude/TFG behaviour. You can be as calm/polite/rational about it as you want, telling new players/people who liked models that happen to be bad on the tabletop that they're not allowed to play because you refuse to use anything other than your tournament-caliber giant-robot-spam list is pretty rude.

Please don't ignore Martel, he's talking sense.

Right now, it's a terrible time to start an army. All the indicators point to 40K getting a big shake up in June/July and any advice given now (regardless of the setting you play in) will likely be useless in a few months.
Imagine starting a WFB army a few months before AoS hit !

If you desperately want to buy some models now, buy the ones you like the best. Or just build a small Kill Team (or see what you can do with BA in the forthcoming Armageddon)

Edit - On BA in current game play terms - I play in a non-competitve beer and pretzels setting (normally mono-codex, no super heavies, no Eldar, Daemons, Tau, Gladius etc) and still get steam rollered. Out assaulted by Space Wolves and GSC, out shot by everyone else.

Bartali wrote:
Please don't ignore Martel, he's talking sense.

Right now, it's a terrible time to start an army. All the indicators point to 40K getting a big shake up in June/July and any advice given now (regardless of the setting you play in) will likely be useless in a few months.
Imagine starting a WFB army a few months before AoS hit !

If you desperately want to buy some models now, buy the ones you like the best. Or just build a small Kill Team (or see what you can do with BA in the forthcoming Armageddon)

Addendum: After the s*** thrown at AoS and with the recent updates to basic line units I doubt we'll see the play-post-reboot-armies-or-lose balance of AoS.

That said it is definitely worth mentioning that a) the way edition changes usually go you should probably be acquiring/painting/playing small casual games with a variety of units rather than figuring out what the tournament formation-abuse skew lists are, since if you have one copy each of six or eight units much more of it is going to be useful post-edition change rather than if you have six or eight copies of one unit and that one unit gets drastically altered, and b) that we've been hearing that all currently-legal Forge World books will remain legal, which implies that 30k isn't going to change much (if at all).

So either way you think about it if you get two or three assault/death company squads, a couple of tactical squads, a rhino or two, a dreadnaught, and a captain you'll still have a legal army and it'll still function post-edition change. If you go all-in and get thirty Death Company and a couple of vehicle formations there's no guarantee that list build will still work/be competitive post edition change. Avoid skew, spread out and do the basics.

Martel732 wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:

Ushtarador wrote:
When I play die-hard tournaments you are correct, I will not bring my blood angels.

When I play some friendly games at my store against my buddies Chaos, Tau or Ultramarines, they work absolutely fine. I'm not sure what your environment is, but we have no problems adjusting the powerlevel of our lists to provide a balanced and fun experience for everybody.

Just ignore him, his group is apparently a WAAC, TFGs who play with what is essentially a parking lot for terrain, and no idea how to run a non tourny list for friendly games.

Honestly, just build what you like, but a couple boxes of ASM/tac marines/scouts with transports can't go wrong, same with dreads (for fun/friendly games)

They're actually NOT TFGs. They're perfectly polite. They just don't self-nerf. And there's a lot of terrain, but evidently not quite the terrain BA need. Funny how GW doesn't mention that in the BA codex anywhere.

Yes, you can get what you want, and BA have very nice models, but they have a lot of downsides vs vanilla marines.

Pretty much what AnomanderRake said. Refusing to self nerf for a fair game in a friendly match is pretty TFG behavior ESPECIALLY when refusing to use terrain that might help you/hinder them/prevent LoS to every square inch of the board.

They can be as polite/kind about it as they want, but that doesn't stop it from being WAAC TFG behavior.

wintersfamily, since you've yet to reply the best advice I can give is this for general starts based on units that *should* be perfectly fine edition to edition.
*Get a couple boxes of death company, do two PF and the rest bolter/chainsword.
*Get a tactical box or two.
*Get an sanguinary priest (magnetize the backpack so you can do a jump pack later if desired).
*From there, play some games and evolve the army naturally based on what you want to play.

BA do have some lists that can do well in tournaments, and you can play them perfectly competently if you don't insist on going all ASM. It's a matter of using the formation rules to their max effect, and making sure you can deal with objectives. If someone has never moved on from the last meta for them, of course they're going to suck. And they were very difficult to use well (and even then there were vastly superior options) prior to their last round of formations. You're also not going to be ready for a tournament prior to 8th dropping assuming it does indeed come out this summer.

Martel, for whatever reason you insist on telling every new BA player how much you hate BA and to not play them instead of giving actual advice on units to get for them. I still don't understand it, and wish you'd figure out that you're not contributing anything useful by continually spewing hatred for BA. All you do is ensure your spot as someone that people used to listen to, but now put on ignore once they tire of your distaste for BA. Everyone and their entire family gets that you hate BA, we got it 200 messages ago, if not more. Not everyone has the issues you do in playing them. In my non-tournament games, I do perfectly fine with them unless I bring an utterly crap list, and I know others from different groups in different parts of the country that do fine with them too. You learn how to deal with the weaknesses as you go.

In Martel's defense he plays Blood Angels in a horrible hard core meta. I don't think you can accuse him of hating BAs. Any rational person would have switched to a competitive army by now. Regardless of how stubborn they are. No I think it is quite clear he is a Blood Angel. Whether you guys like it or not.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
In Martel's defense he plays Blood Angels in a horrible hard core meta. I don't think you can accuse him of hating BAs. Any rational person would have switched to a competitive army by now. Regardless of how stubborn they are. No I think it is quite clear he is a Blood Angel. Whether you guys like it or not.

I agree. Martel has a pragmatic outlook on what works and what doesn't, albeit in a negative manner.

@OP, there are some good deals out there for BA. The Start Collecting and the BA Gauntlet Tactical squads are great for their prices. DC are always a good and fluffy investment. Read through the BA lore and codex and see what information you can glean about how they run in a fluffly way. Also, with 8th about to come out, we don't know what will happen to the state of the game. BA were one of the stronger armies when I started playing them in 3rd/4th, but now they're one of the weaker ones. Army strengths ebb and flow from edition to edition.

BA can do well when they bring effective allies and FW units. Things like Fire Raptors, Leviathan Dreads, Hunters Eye/Catahractii/Grav Cents, Telepathy, will all help a lot.

On the pure BA side things like Melta squads, Shrouded Dreads, charge Termies, S10 Force, Veritus Vitae, have a lot of utility. I don't think I've ever seen a list with Jump units place well. Maybe you'd be able to run BA in Castellan with Celestine to tank.

Right now though, look at top lists -- they are cherry-picking from multiple factions (ie. Eldar CAD/Riptide Wing/Servo-Skull Inquisitor/Summoning Daemons in a single list). Trying to run a fluff mono-faction list is crippling. BA isn't the only faction with issues in those respects.

GW will hopefully fix this next edition.

 troa wrote:
wintersfamily, since you've yet to reply the best advice I can give is this for general starts based on units that *should* be perfectly fine edition to edition.
*Get a couple boxes of death company, do two PF and the rest bolter/chainsword.
*Get a tactical box or two.
*Get an sanguinary priest (magnetize the backpack so you can do a jump pack later if desired).
*From there, play some games and evolve the army naturally based on what you want to play.

BA do have some lists that can do well in tournaments, and you can play them perfectly competently if you don't insist on going all ASM. It's a matter of using the formation rules to their max effect, and making sure you can deal with objectives. If someone has never moved on from the last meta for them, of course they're going to suck. And they were very difficult to use well (and even then there were vastly superior options) prior to their last round of formations. You're also not going to be ready for a tournament prior to 8th dropping assuming it does indeed come out this summer.

Martel, for whatever reason you insist on telling every new BA player how much you hate BA and to not play them instead of giving actual advice on units to get for them. I still don't understand it, and wish you'd figure out that you're not contributing anything useful by continually spewing hatred for BA. All you do is ensure your spot as someone that people used to listen to, but now put on ignore once they tire of your distaste for BA. Everyone and their entire family gets that you hate BA, we got it 200 messages ago, if not more. Not everyone has the issues you do in playing them. In my non-tournament games, I do perfectly fine with them unless I bring an utterly crap list, and I know others from different groups in different parts of the country that do fine with them too. You learn how to deal with the weaknesses as you go.

Why collect BA when you can go vanilla and be 10X better and have access to 5X more lists?

Well, if BA had 600pts of free fast Razorbacks, maybe it would be a different story.

It's not like CAD vanilla ASM are a step up.

Well, in skyhammer they are.

Fragioso Dreadnoughts are solid, Furioso Dreadnoughts are solid.

Blood Angels have a very easy way to get terminators to deep strike and charge the same turn. While not perfect they're one of very few armies that have access to this ability.

They're not perfect but I've seen BA handle a lot of different armies.

 Marmatag wrote:
Fragioso Dreadnoughts are solid, Furioso Dreadnoughts are solid.

Blood Angels have a very easy way to get terminators to deep strike and charge the same turn. While not perfect they're one of very few armies that have access to this ability.

They're not perfect but I've seen BA handle a lot of different armies.

BA terminators are one of the worst units in the book. They cost a massive 45 ppm for TH/SS assault terminators. T4 W1 models for 45 ppm. Okay.

Meanwhile, every CSM list ever can deep strike and assault with melta raptors and vanilla marines can deep strike assault their ASM in skyhammer.

I don't know where the love for dreads has come from. They are as fragile as they were when hps got put in the game. Yeah, they can hide in a gimmick pod. Given that that pod might become defunct in 8th, I can't recommend that build in any way.

It's hard to argue that your terminators are the worst, when they're able to charge the turn they arrive.

Furioso and Fragioso dreads in a pod are fantastic at removing anything that jinks or relies on cover. And, they also remove blobs of units fairly effectively.

Does every unit need to go toe-to-toe with a Wraithknight for you to consider it good?

 Marmatag wrote:
It's hard to argue that your terminators are the worst, when they're able to charge the turn they arrive.

Furioso and Fragioso dreads in a pod are fantastic at removing anything that jinks or relies on cover. And, they also remove blobs of units fairly effectively.

Does every unit need to go toe-to-toe with a Wraithknight for you to consider it good?

Yes, and a riptide, while killing both before either gets to strike. First turn.

Grav Devs with Relentless from Celestine will do it.

Build this - may not be ultra fluffy but it should compete -

Fleshtearers Strike Force - Compulsory: 1 HQ, 1 Troop, 1 FA
Optional: 1 HQ, 3 Troops, 1 Elite, 5 FA, 3 HS, Fortification, 1 Lord of War

+ HQ +

········Captain [Artificer Armour, Bolt Pistol, Power fist, Storm shield]

········Chaplain [Auspex, Crozius Arcanum, Power fist]

+ Elites +

········Command Squad
············Drop Pod [Storm Bolter]
············Veteran [Bolt Pistol, Grav-gun, Storm shield]
············Veteran [Bolt Pistol, Grav-gun, Storm shield]
············Veteran [Bolt Pistol, Grav-gun, Storm shield]
············Company Champion
············Sanguinary Novitiate

+ Troops +

········Cassor the Damned [Lucius Pattern Dreadnought Drop Pod]

········Tactical Squad [Flamer, 4x Tactical Marine]
············Drop Pod [Storm Bolter]
············Tactical Sergeant [Bolt Pistol, Boltgun]

+ Fast Attack +

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

········Bike Squad [2x Grav-gun, 2x Space Marine Biker]
············Biker Sergeant [Bolt Pistol]

+ Heavy Support +

········Devastator Squad [4x Devastator Marine, 2x Grav-cannon with grav-amp, Rhino]
············Devastator Sergeant [Bolt Pistol, Chainsword]

········Devastator Squad [4x Devastator Marine, 2x Grav-cannon with grav-amp, Rhino]
············Devastator Sergeant [Bolt Pistol, Chainsword]

········Devastator Squad [4x Devastator Marine, 2x Grav-cannon with grav-amp]
············Devastator Sergeant [Bolt Pistol, Boltgun]

Yoyoyo wrote:
Grav Devs with Relentless from Celestine will do it.

Celestine is relentless?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's hard to argue that your terminators are the worst, when they're able to charge the turn they arrive.

Furioso and Fragioso dreads in a pod are fantastic at removing anything that jinks or relies on cover. And, they also remove blobs of units fairly effectively.

Does every unit need to go toe-to-toe with a Wraithknight for you to consider it good?

No, they are one of the worst units in the book. The formation is a modifier to this fact. So the BA deep strike assault formation is still fueled by a terrible unit, but the formation raises them up to mediocre. Just think if they'd been good to begin with.

Well, when facing WKs, I've got to deal with them somehow. It's not just toe-to-toe. Can I squeeze the utility out of my 295 pt unit that the Eldar can squeeze out of the 295 pt WK? That's the real question.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wolfblade wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
It's hard to argue that your terminators are the worst, when they're able to charge the turn they arrive.

Furioso and Fragioso dreads in a pod are fantastic at removing anything that jinks or relies on cover. And, they also remove blobs of units fairly effectively.

Does every unit need to go toe-to-toe with a Wraithknight for you to consider it good?

Yes, and a riptide, while killing both before either gets to strike. First turn.

One can dream of the shoe being on the other foot. But I'll settle for equitable utility/pt. Which is where BA really suffer.

Celestine has an area-effect ability called "Saintly Blessings". It affects different FOC choices in different ways, including making Heavy Support choices Relentless for one turn.

BA need a ranged MC/GMC solution. Celestine is probably your best option since she'll also tank well for the jump units you like using.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Celestine has an area-effect ability called "Saintly Blessings". It affects different FOC choices in different ways, including making Heavy Support choices Relentless for one turn.

BA need a ranged MC/GMC solution. Celestine is probably your best option since she'll also tank well for the jump units you like using.

I guess I could run the devs in a Rhino and the turn they get out, the blessing can be used. Or, depending on the range, maybe a pod. It's a really expensive way to simulate a crappy skyhammer. But, I get a tank for a squad as well. Which just means the Tau will dakka everything else off the table, but its something I guess.

Celestine is one of the best units in the game.

Way better than Skyhammer. You can't make a clear judgement until you actually read her rules.

Don't sleep on the relics she unlocks either, with Furious Charge you've potentially got S7 AP2 at full initiative.

She's 200ish I've been told. Oh, wait. Saintly blessing can hit more than one squad, right? Okay, so that's about as good as skyhammer for the devs, but the ASM are left out in the cold.