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.

DG are certainly looking strong right now. That said, outside of SG most of my close combat weapons are either D3 or D1 so punching PM in the face should still be effective. We'll take a bit more pain in return thanks to the Contagions.

I think the real issue is with a lot of shooting now being hugely inefficient against DG. Partly this is down to players adding in lots of D2 weapons to deal with regular SM. The real question is can we get, then maintain, board control against DG and try to play the objectives. My concern is we can't because it looks like DG damage output has generally increased as well.

I played against Death Guard (no-morty) last weekend. I tailored my list by dropping my SG, plasma inceptors and adding two redemptor dreads along with 5man eradicators unit.

Quick takes:
Van vets with lightning claw & storm shields mulch through both plague marines and blightlord termies with the volume of attacks.

My death company had 5 thunder hammers and did still great, although the -1T aura made them vanish fast.

In melee trades, LC's and 3dmg weapons trade well, but so can DG counter them the following turn. It was brutal.

Redemptors are great, I ran two with plasma, for 3dmg, but I think I'll try out gatlin variants for the volume of shots.

All and all, I need to include some elements from this tailoring, but have to add my SG back for more all comers list.

Tried also the primaris smash chaplain on bike because of the fore mentioned 3dmg (4dmg with buffs) and it also wrecks stuff. Had to drop my rites of war/visage of death JP captain for it, but the single game was all trading on objectives.

Side track here.. I really liked the changed 5th turn scoring..

a_typical_hero wrote:
I made a quick calculation to compare some BA melee units to see how many points we pay to do one wound to a Plague Marine in actual melee combat.
I don't take shooting or any buffs on either side into account, only looking at the first round of combat where +1 attack and +1 to wound triggers.

Points per wound - Unit
20,25 - Sanguinary Guard w. axe
23,63 - Bladeguard Veteran
24,00 - Death Company Intercessor w. Chainsword
26,00 - Vanguard Veteran w. lightning claw and shield
28,50 - Assault Intercessor
28,80 - Aggressor
30,00 - Death Company Marine w. Chainsword
40,11 - Death Company Dreadnought
56,25 - Outrider

Now some units bring more to the table than their melee output. Aggressor do have a respectable horde clearing capability, which we might need against Poxwalker and similar targets. Bladeguard Veterans being hard to shift from an objective and so on.

But this should give us a good idea what to expect when we send units into melee against Death Guard.

Your exercise is fundamentally wrong because buffs make units work ignoring them massively underrepresents what that unit can do and gives you no idea what to expect against death guard other than an auto loss because the person running the army was a fool.

If I factor in reasonable buffs (I assume I'm in a 9" reroll bubble of my deepstrikeing captain that I am receiving +1 to hit (quake bolts, fury of the first, descent of angels, heirs of azkellon) as appropriate) im in assault doctrine (I won't be fighting T1 and t3 onwards its active) and fight twice on the assault intercessors

You take an assault intercessor as 28.5 pts per wound
I take it as 5.86 pts per Wound factoring in the buffs i expect it to have (4.9 pts per wound for the sgt) as an example

Compared to your 26 pt vanguard vet My vanguard vet with lC 9.5pts per wound (6.5pts per wound on the sgt (the big difference is my sgt doesnt have a stormshield it has a pistol for quake bolts)

Assault terminator lC 8.98 pts per wound 7.7 for the SGT

Compared to your 20.25 sanguinary guard my sanguinary guard do 8.74 pts per wound

Now of course I recognise these buffs may not always be online but they will be the majority of the time and is a much closer reflection of real game effectiveness.

All your math shows is your an idiot to fight without buffs. Any sane person is going to have a much easier time of it.

you also underestimate performance of assault intercessors by 5or6 times while only underestimating sang guard by about half this is going to cause poor unit selection.

You respond like I made some claim that this is the be all end all list of what units to take against Death Guard. Chill.

Obviously your units won't fight without any kind of buffs. Factoring in all possible combinations of positive and negative character auras, stratagems, prayers, psychic casts gets excessive really fast, though.
Feel free to provide such an overview if you like to

The list shows the base performance of a single model of a unit. If there exists a buff that boosts the performance of a unit by 100% (like the fight twice stratagem for Assault Intercessors), then you can easily derive how the unit would compare to the rest. Applying the same buff to Outriders (if you could) would still leave them behind other choices, indicating that the unit might not be worth it for the offensive potential alone.

No im pointing out that assessing units in that way doesnt give you even close to a an accurate comparison of their performance on the tabletop. To the extent that your conclusions are both meaningless and misleading. When some of those perform 5 or 6 times better and some such as aggressors or the dc dread perform not much different you don't at all get an assessment of performance against DG.

No you don't factor in all combinations of buffs that would create an unreadable answer. their are plenty of buffs in 40k that you look at and are not worth the CP or attached to characters you won't take. You only factor in the ones you would reasonably use.

Rr1s to hit is ubiquitous in 99% of lists (though where it comes from can vary. Assault doctrine is free and occurs in 75% of the turns you actually charge in. + as demonstrated with the 4 different ways of getting +1 to hit thats common aswell. Plus some units have a key buffing strat your going to use and fight twice is a good example of that so you factor these in.
Actual order / your order / rankdiff
outrider is 32.14 outrider 56.25 +-
Dc chainsword 17.86 dc dread 40.11 -4
aggressor 16.32 dc chainsword 30 +1
Dc intercessor 15.43 aggressor 28.8 +1
Bladeguard 13.51 assault intercessor 28.5 -4
Dc dread 12.8 vanguard vet 26 -2
Sang guard 8.74 dc intercessor 24 +3
vanguard vet 6.5 bladeguard 23.36 +3
assault intercessor 5.86 sang guard 20.25 +2

Now by your scale the only unit you get in the right place is the outrider

But performance scale is hugely different ignoring the outrider as an outlier
Your worst performer is half that of your best when it should be a third

(I note I didn't factor in sgt so units with sgt will be slightly better

If you can apply the same buff to several units, it won't change how they perform compared to each other. (With some exceptions, like adding AP when already forcing the target to use an invul save).

Rerolling 1s and Assault Doctrine will have the same effect on all units. So why factor them in?

You can make a case for unit specific stratagems, but they are one per round, so are subject to diminishing returns (and we might want to factor them in as 20p per CP spent into their actual cost). Your first Assault Intercessor squad that fights twice will have a great points per wound value. Every additional squad after that in the same round will struggle to come close. How is that for an accurate comparison on the tabletop? Is your calculated number true now?

Your list lacks an explanation what kind of buffs you are using. One could say it is meaningless and misleading. Or are you suggesting to spam 60 Assault Intercessors to tackle Death Guard?

But their not the same for several reasons

Not all units have a personal buff strat

The assault doctrine doesnt effect all units equally it has more of an impact the lower the AP of a weapon while an extra +1 attack makes more of a difference on a low cost model than it does on a high cost model they also have an inverse relationship to the number of attacks (a model with 3 attacks gaining one is 25% more effective 4 attacks gaining one 20% 5 attacks 16%.....)

Not all units benefit from +1 to hit bladeguard veterans, dc dreads outriders aggressors and dc intercessors do not benefit in a realistic list

Rerolling 1's improves performance by a 6th but a 6th boost on an efficient unit is not the same as a 6th increase on a less efficient unit. It is multiplicative so a unit that hits on a 3+ increases from 0.6666 to 0.7777 a 0.11% increase while a unit hits on a 2+ goes from 0.84 to 0.97 a 0.13% increase

Absolutely you only use a strat once but thats why most competent lists have a variety of units not just spam a single type. My own use sg assault terminators vanguard and assault intercessors without overlapping strats. So yes its pretty accurate with the exception of sg I run one of each and thats because sg don't need a strat to get +1 to hit look at your own numbers and ask is spamming them more effective than takeing different units with buffs.

I provided an exact list rr1s to hit, assault doctrine, +1 to hit on any unit with a jump pack or terminator armour, fight twice on assault intercessors

So in an effort to collect more unpainted minis, after reading Dante, I want to start collecting/painting a new BA Army. Should I just focus on Intercessors first? Shooty or slashy versions to start? Also, is there a good way to get a crash course on how to play Marines in 9th? I come from Custodes and AM, so let's pretend I don't know what a Super doctrine or a doctrine at all for that matter. I know that there are Vampire Space Marines who have a very old guy as their leader, and they look like a fun army to paint. AND GO.

Allow me to rephrase: I understand doctrines, but not how to plan around using them effectively. I usually just move up the board and hit stuff and they get taken off the board.

I'm copying and pasting what I wrote for someone else earlier

HQ 2-3
Terminator CPT Thunder hammer combi-melta (your buffer to Land with your deepstrikerz)
LIBRARIAN dreadnought/lemartes (Your T1 CC missile)
Astorath/primaris chaplain on bike. (Half buff/half beatstick)
Sanguinor (counter charger i don't think he makes the cut in most lists but he's an interesting option)

Troop 3
Assault intercessors
Incursors
Infiltrators

Elt 6
0-1 Company champion/judicar
3 sanguinary guard axes
0-3 vanguard stormshield and lightning claw
1 assault terminators lightning claw
0-3 bladeguard veterens

Less competative but viable options to fill out your list in my preference order
Land speeder storms
Attack bikes
Eradicators
0-1 death company
CPT jump pack Thunder Hammer combi melta
Plasma intercessors
Tarrantula
More troops
Hellblasters - assault plasma
Sanguinary priest/corbulo
Outriders
DC Dread/Furioso from reserves


Blood angels are the close combat marines we therefore want 50-75% of are models to be close combat units with the remainder being used to hold objectives/ supporting fire.

There's nothing wrong with intercessors but they will always be better in a different chapter. I would personally favour assault intercessors but incursors or infiltrators also have their uses (more objective control than shooting)

Doctrines is easy turn 3 becomes assault when our close combat goes nuts and thats when you have to drop your reserves therefore dropping reserves on turn 3 with rerolling charges is how you make the most of it.

What's the best way to approach a jump pack assault?
Is it worth going for the deepstrike charge? Without Descent of Angels giving you a reliable 3d6" charge it's a risky endeavour.

How do you include characters in this? Presumably a Captain or Chaplain with the Icon of the Angel relic giving rerolls would be the way to go, which gives approximately a 70% of a successful charge assuming you're using Blood Angels (my Flesh Tearers only have a ~50% chance if I use their proper trait).
But if you do use the character, how do you protect them? The chances of both the character and the unit succeeding a charge is only 45%, and with the new 3" 'Look Out Sir' it's going to be almost impossible to continue protecting a character if the unit succeeds and the character fails.
However, 40k now practically revolves around character buffs and you'll be losing a lot if you go without.

This point about characters in particular makes we wonder if such deepstrike charges are even viable anymore? Would it not be better to hide in a building for a turn? But then of course you run the high risk of being annihilated or avoided as a result.

Of course the obvious solution that presents itself is just run Inceptors with Descent of Angels instead, but I'm not running Primaris.

Well this is mine (although I swapped the libby dread for astorath)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795332.page

My answer is icon of the angel and I forget what is called but the chapter champion warlord trait (because you want to be able to effect more of the board) are essential now in a ba list you have +1 to charge but in an ft list I would always be using a primaris chaplain on bike for the +2. Its less essential in BA but I've still decided its worth it. Although their are other ways such as lemartes or imprriums sword.
.

Well the answer in my case is you drop 1000ish points of DS at multiple parts of the board - the enemy can only overwatch once yes some units won't make it but a large portion will . Yes a single unit will fail 1 in 3 games but I'm probably dropping 7-10ish and the ones that succeed should devastate what they hit and hopefully push into something else. I will also be supported by creeping jumppackers not in DS. The DS that don't make it are vulnerable but most oppoents won't kill 1000pts in a turn not after being smashed and what ever is left is going to be able to move 1w and charge the following turn

As to protecting character why t3 my terminator cpt with icon drops he can probably buff himself and 2 -3 units going for 1 objective

The chapter champion does the same thing on the flank

Lemartes is a missile and probably died T1 (move 12 move 12 charge 8 score mission by being only model in their DS die in op turn

Which leaves the only character I want to protect the chaplain/astorath and in that case I'm going to terrain hug

The single biggest threat to the ds charge is infiltrators and thats where lemartes/heavy bolters come in (Land speeder storm/attackbikes)

U02dah4 wrote:
Well this is mine (although I swapped the libby dread for astorath)

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795332.page

My answer is icon of the angel and I forget what is called but the chapter champion warlord trait (because you want to be able to effect more of the board) are essential now in a ba list you have +1 to charge but in an ft list I would always be using a primaris chaplain on bike for the +2. Its less essential in BA but I've still decided its worth it. Although their are other ways such as lemartes or imprriums sword.
.

Well the answer in my case is you drop 1000ish points of DS at multiple parts of the board - the enemy can only overwatch once yes some units won't make it but a large portion will . Yes a single unit will fail 1 in 3 games but I'm probably dropping 7-10ish and the ones that succeed should devastate what they hit and hopefully push into something else. I will also be supported by creeping jumppackers not in DS. The DS that don't make it are vulnerable but most oppoents won't kill 1000pts in a turn not after being smashed and what ever is left is going to be able to move 1w and charge the following turn

As to protecting character why t3 my terminator cpt with icon drops he can probably buff himself and 2 -3 units going for 1 objective

The chapter champion does the same thing on the flank

Lemartes is a missile and probably died T1 (move 12 move 12 charge 8 score mission by being only model in their DS die in op turn

Which leaves the only character I want to protect the chaplain/astorath and in that case I'm going to terrain hug

The single biggest threat to the ds charge is infiltrators and thats where lemartes/heavy bolters come in (Land speeder storm/attackbikes)

7 to 10 deepstrike units (being 1000points)
That are a lot of small units. What units are they and with what loadout?
Those are unbuffed units then?
I dont think i have much mor then 10 units in a 2000 point game.

I do play most units maxed or nearly maxed.

Ok edit: just seen your list. MSU it is.
But isnt 4 land speeders illegal (max 3 of the same units)
It isnt how i would build my list but i see potential. Altough in my gaming group a lot wouldnt survive turn 2 and thus being it hard to keep objectives

The list is in the quoted link i keep tinkering with it slightly but my current iteration

The units in DS

the terminator cpt master crafted thunder hammer combi melta icon of the angel artisan of war heroic bearing

7 Assault terminators lightning claw

7 Vanguard lightning claw stormshield 1boltpistol with quake bolts

4 sang guard with axes

Reserve
Chapter champion blade of triumph martial exemplar

1 8x assault intercessors

1 5x assault intercessors

Terrain hugging melee units
6 sanguinary guard +5 Sanguinary guard +astorath(replacing the librarian dread) - these also serve as counter chargers if the enemy come into the middle

They are land speeder storms they are a dedicated transport choice (although given they can only transport scouts you don't use them as transports) and so you may take one for each infantry unit in your army and like troops dedicated transports are exempted from the limitations of 3 datasheets

Most of the buffs are in relation to charges (icon of the angel, martial Exemplar) i can probably get 4 units hitting on 2's and the bigger assault intercessors fighting twice in atleast the first round of charging with the cpt having a 9"rr bubble. Astorath will likely be providing the cantical of hate and strength to boost his melee provide +1 to charge (on top of what we get base) and boost pile ins/consolidation

Yes I agree the first two turns are likely terrain dependent and if you can't hide much will die but I can still scoop some vp

Namely relentless assault should score t1 and t2 with lemartes hitting their dz t1 and hopefully clearing a screen unit preferably infiltrators If possible a land speeder storm sacrificing itsself t2 the rest of my army is going to make its way to the centre of the board and objective hold against many opponent's it won't win a shootout its trying to score and clear some screening models especially infiltrators and if possible hide in an ideal world other than lemartes who dies i try and keep everything or as much as possible out of los. Then t3 the reserves smash face but this is a rough plan and against certain armies (more assault based i can commit to melee on t2.

Oaths is easy to score as most of my units won't want to fallback and its end of turn scoreing for having 1 model in the centre (which then dies)

As to blade of sanguinous it might only score 10 but most games your going to be able to stab a character to death if you set your mind to it but i can ignore it till t3

If starting a new army, should I go for all Terminators, and build out from there, or go Assault Intercessors? Sanguinary guard? Are the axes better or the swords on S. Guard?

I wouldn't go all one thing a mix of the three units will perform better than just one because of the way stratagems work.

E.g. their is a stratagem that gives one unit of terminators +1 to hit but you can only use it on one unit per turn so your second unit of terminators is weaker. I personally would go with assault terminators with lightning claws over other variants

As to the axes sword question the simple answer is axes are generally better.

The detailed answer is it depends exactly what your trying to kill axes get a boost vs toughness 5 or 6 units swords get a boost against 3+svs or better but only if they don't have an invul save. Then you have to factor in ceiling effects where lots of the units that swords are better at such as 5 man intercessors are probably killed by both swords and axes where as the difference actual counts when your hitting 5 man custodes

Finally if you are new and building on a budget you should consider the sanguinary guard box is an old school box with 3 swords and 2 axes meaning you need to convert or buy excess boxes if you want to tailor your weapons

I guess I am way too used to Custodes, where one box can be my HQ, my Troops, or my Fast attack, or my elites. It's not so easy to build a SM army because there are over 100 different units.

If there was one single unit that I could buy to learn painting blood angels, I would think it's a box of intercessors, assault or otherwise. Is that fair? I am trigger shy because of the book cost just to play the damn faction. I have the core rules, but they require 3 books now to play. So I want to see if I even enjoy painting them first.

One if interesting things with blood angels compared to other sm factions is their not uniform painting a sanguinary guard mostly gold is quite different to an intercessor red or a death company black.

U02dah4 wrote:
One if interesting things with blood angels compared to other sm factions is their not uniform painting a sanguinary guard mostly gold is quite different to an intercessor red or a death company black.

And the helmets are of different colors

So I like the idea of buying them because I have everything to paint my custodes, and they are almost the exact same, save the weapons, which are not force lightning....

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I guess I am way too used to Custodes, where one box can be my HQ, my Troops, or my Fast attack, or my elites. It's not so easy to build a SM army because there are over 100 different units.

If there was one single unit that I could buy to learn painting blood angels, I would think it's a box of intercessors, assault or otherwise. Is that fair? I am trigger shy because of the book cost just to play the damn faction. I have the core rules, but they require 3 books now to play. So I want to see if I even enjoy painting them first.

As far as painting goes, even a trash painter like me can make Blood Angels look good cause the contrast paints do all the work for you. Book cost doesn’t have to be a thing for a trial run, you can find all the rules online places like 1d4chan or goonhammer. If you’re going to start with a box probably assault intercessors, they will always be a good choice in a BA army. Just don’t do what Matt Ward’s reincarnation did a page or two back and ignore the fact that Blood Angels money units are elite melee options. SG hammers and Bladeguard/Terminator anvils are going to be the core of your army, and I’ve heard good things about vanvets. Can’t really go wrong with any of those.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also SG swords are better. Due to the +1 to wound, s5 to s6 isn’t a huge difference and -4 ap turns 3-5 is sweet.

Its a huge difference when it counts unlike ap4 which has very little difference due to ceiling effects and invuls

The axe will typically do better vs admech breachers, custodes, deathguard certain squadrens of light vehicles such as admech kastellan, gravis armour, t3 with a -1 to wound

They perform identically vs power armour (overkilling makes no difference (so for 5sg asssuming reroll 1,s and charge you can reasonably kill 16 with a sword or 13.5 with an axe), any space marine with an invul, hordes

The sword will do better vs baneblade type vehicles (3+/2+ T7/8 18w+ no invul)

That's actually a good point about gravis armor, I haven't run into it all that much. Custodes aren't really an issue for Guard due to volume of attacks, although I guess that argument could go the other way too. Against hordes that ap makes more of a difference than you'd think, denying saves is actually kind of a big deal. Bloat drones and blight haulers are T7, which kind of comes back to the idea that the things these guys are attacking are usually not T5 or T6, which is where the axes give the bonus. Unless you're playing death guard, which hard counter BA, but if they end up being big enough of a meta then it's probably worth switching.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess the answer is magnetize your Guard.

Except it isn't against hordes because most hordes have a sv if 4+ or less or a 5++ so they both deny/do not deny the save you see no real bonus with the sword

again most t7/8 vehicles excepting DG with their -1D dont have the wounds so either kill them

E.g. A russ takes 24D from the sword and 20 from the axe but dies at 12.

With regards to the bloat drone and blight hawler because of the t7 and their invul both weapons perform identically and it dies to both while the plagueburst crawler is again identical performance but neither squad kills it

As to custodes swords kill 4 axes kill 5 (that's a noticeable difference)

Actually, just getting down to the simplest level, anti-wound invulns don't exist, so I guess you're probably getting more value out of wound bonuses than out of ap bonuses. I stand convinced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I notice your list only has 4 sanguinary, I get so much value out of these guys it seems like you'd want more. Do you get more value out of vanvets?
Edit: I can't read. 11 Sanguinary. A lot of the lists I see build their army around them though, I run 15-20 and they win games for me if treated well

I'm testing between 4 and 6 man squads

Partially its deepstrike limitations.

But partially its about overkill I use mine to make a charge kill a unit if i have more smaller units means I can blitz more targets and 5 sang+-1 kill most targets. My current iteration has a 4 a 5 and a 6

In addition more smaller units helps with the risks of ds charging in a big blob of sg drops and if it fails the charge its very costly smaller units less so but some Will fail its just odds

As to van vets it depends on the target as general rule van vets outperform vs single wound targets especially with quake bolts while reroll wounds + the plus one to wound make them surprisingly effective against high t targets they are also much more resistant to high ap which is really important in some board situations where your sg will get vapourised

Yeah, SG need proper handling. I usually start with 2 5s in deepstrike with a chaplain for a total of +3 to charges, and one or two 5s hiding on the table in case I get deepstrike denied hard, and also as a qrf. They really need to hide until it's hammer time or they get vaporized. I'm lucky enough to mostly play on tables with enough terrain to hide them. Seems to me Sanguinary can always be relied on to punch two or three times above their weight class though, so learning to run them is worth it. I've had 10 sanguinary delete 1000 points of Necrons without taking a casualty.

I usually run assault intercessors for skirmishers but I'm going to look into vanvets.

I wouldn't run a lot of van vets but I have found 1 squad very useful the one type of unit they are not awesome against is a big blob of 2w marines which given the current meta is a weakness

So out of interest if we are looking at the blade of Sanguinius what do we think is the best character for the mission?

I think I've settled on a DC Lieutenant with teeth of terror combi melta and imperiums sword

That’s decently Killy, but a chapter champion would do the job better for less points, it’s kind of his whole thing.
Blood Angels Commander has a really good breakdown on ways you can build him here.

https://youtu.be/cL3az3y4ZuU

I would always take one in my lists he excellent and he would be good for it if he could take a jump pack but even with reserves he's just not maneuverable enough. If he doesn't get to the model he doesnt get the kill and the opponents counter is to just keep the model central if you reserve it and the further corner if you dont