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so this is me taking a stab at a rework of all the "special" parts of the codex. what i mean by this is that i wont be touching the psy powers, relics, or commands i am retyping this on poor sleep but have it all down so here we go. i will type more later but for now here are the characters

characters overview: one of the biggest problems with the dark angels is that our characters are bland, wayy underpowered and have get along with nothing in the codex (outside of maybe sammael but we will get to his mobility scooter riding behind in a moment). azreal is a chapter master and he is so boring to read his rules and he does nothing. he needs to be a fighter, belial is literally a worthless pile of junk, asmodai might be the worst hq in the game, ezekiel is disjointed from the rest of his codex, and sammael has been leaned on so long by GW that the old man finally broke in two and now we are seeing the price of leaning on slapping ravenwing as the avenue in which you build the army and nothing else as the lazy codex writing we have been subjected too for 3 editions now.

so lets get to HQ's

belial: *sigh* belial is supposed to be the commander of the most fearsome assemblage of terminators since the heresy, a ruthless and exacting commander and a master duelist. shame that in a fist fight between all captains in the game belial would be eliminated within the 1st round of eliminations. his cost is over inflated because hes a terminator. in 7th edition he was SO BAD it was painful to watch anyone field him and in 8th this hasnt gotten any better, i argue even worse now that primarchs are stamping about. so we redo belial in a number of ways and the end result will be (in my opinion) a much better belial.

we dont change belials baseline, we cut his points, belial goes to 105 from 150 which is a much needed drop
in addition we rework the sword of silence we remove the "always wound on a 2+ unless its a vehicle" and replace with: "deals mortal wounds instead of normal wounds if enemy has a PSYKER keyword". thats a powerful change, if he locks up with a squad of rubrici with a sgt they cannot accept a challenge unless they want their sgt to get melted, eldar warlocks have reason to avoid him and hop on bikes even more then they already do. a small change that i feel is more thematic to the sword of silence

next for his special rules:

parrying blade is removed completely and replaced with: deathwing requisition order: if belial is your warlord you may take one of any vehicle keyword model in the heavy support slot of codex dark angels for free within his detachment. this list contains: the 3 land raiders, predator, stalker, whirlwind, vindicator, and hunter the big ones obviously being the land raiders. considering how much of a massive points sink the deathwing are this is an offset to help the deathwing out. suddenly one of the biggest hurdles for terminators: getting them mobile is taken care of. im aware of the obvious coming outrage but when you consider that every squad of terminators you take actively HURT your chances to win a game by massive amounts. this offsets this at least a little bit, since your probably taking terminators if your taking belial. i feel this would help out the deathwing a lot and even if belial is still a terrible HQ he now doesnt cost a mounting of points and belial with a free land raider is suddenly a much more appealing proposition to consider when deciding what HQ to take. instead of it basically being sammael or more sammael (and we will get to sammaels problems rest your head)


ezekiel: ezekiels biggest problem is that hes a foot commander in an army struggling as is to get mobile: here is my two suggested changes to ezekiel either is acceptable:

1) no points changes or rules changes, make him a primaris HQ. retire his archaic pewter model and we have at least a tougher ezekiel to slog up a table. this is probably what GW would do but i dislike it to be honest
2) 5 points price drop, let him take a jump pack for free. we dont have a jump pack hq and are the ONLY marine army outside of grey knights and deathwatch without one. (codex marines have shrike, wolves have lukas, blood angels have every second named hq in their roster) giving him a jump pack option makes him fast enough that he can keep up sorta with bike armies, and gives him deepstrike, and makes him a tempting secondary HQ option this way. and slapping a jump pack to him is actually pretty easy if you use a forgeworld or blood angels jump pack.

this solves ezekiel not being fast enough for bike armies which are half the armies anyone cares about from the dark angels codex, and now serves as a replacement for librarian on a bike which is now dead.alternatively we have a much beefier HQ which might work a lot better with non ravenwing armies


asmodai: asmodai is a dumpster fire, hes slow, hes got a terrible relic, and hes not exceptional at all. heres how we rework asmodai: 1st we toss out the blades of reason, garbadge bin that sucker just flat. we primaris asmodai to dump his finecrasp model in the dumpster we tossed the blades of reason. now as a primaris chaplain asmodai has a plasma pistol that has relic rule for pistol 2. we give him no points increase to reflect it, we might even drop him to 105 points, 105 for such a commander is a lot more fair then 130 for what we have now.

we also adjust his exemplar of hate: bikers, infantry, and dreadnought keyword units. this improves his utility in a small way which also helps asmodai


azreal:

azreal is a terrible HQ tied to an invulnerability battery. he needs to be more then that hes a chapter master of the 1st legion ffs. if shrike can get an emo haircut that apparently makes him twice as deadly as he once was, azreal can get an improvement as well. his rules flat are lazy lazy lazy writing.

azreal drops from 180 to 150

azreal goes to 6A from 5A for a little more melee teeth, hes survived a duel with kharn and other notable figures, hes not some dork. this will give him a welcome boost

azreal gets orbital bombardment like other chapter masters, this is just something he should have, he commands the rock, the rock travels with him, justify him not having orbital bombard

chapter master is reworded to master of the 1st: same as before but now 12" instead of 6" hes a grand commander and master tactician, but for some reason cant order men less then 6" away to fight harder?? do they even read the lore they write for their commanders.

azreal also gains the ravenwing keyword to benefit from ravenwing synergy.. because i think it makes no damn sense that someone ABOVE sammael cant command or work with the ravenwing. no he can have the ravenwing keyword and i dont expect much arguement on this from others.


interrogator chaplains:

interrogator chaplains can take a jump pack for 5 points, to give him some mobility but beyond that no change to rules

points do not change at this time



im too tired to keep going ill do sammael upon my return i have a lot to say about him, and i dont want to make the mistakes i know im going too


i will post later about the special units for the sake of organization i will tackle the deathwing, veterans and ravenwing bikers at once and then i will come back for another round where we go over the ravenwing speeders and flyers

These are bad changes.

DA is certainly in a bad spot compared to main Marines, but these are not good changes at all.

You want changes? Get consolidated. Dark Angels aren't unique enough to actually have their own codex.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You want changes? Get consolidated. Dark Angels aren't unique enough to actually have their own codex.

At this point it's pretty obvious gw doesn't want consolidation.
Or actual thought put behind traits.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You want changes? Get consolidated. Dark Angels aren't unique enough to actually have their own codex.

At this point it's pretty obvious gw doesn't want consolidation.
Or actual thought put behind traits.

I don't think the Dark Angel's trait is terrible. It's a decent two parter for a camping army though you're likely not going to get much from the morale thing. What they need is consolidation so that everyone's tools are easily accessed and they get Doctrines.

Yeah. Going to agree that these are really bad changes, even as a DA player.

DA needs something in lines of combat doctrines in terms of strength but not systematically similar (i.e. changing stance type of mechanic)

A suggestion would be to split the current army-wide three-phase doctrine into unique, permanently active traits for each wing.

Greenwing gets a flavor of devastator doctrine focused on improving gunline aspect.
Ravenwing gets a flavor of tactical doctrine focused on abilities that pair well with mobility (i.e. no movement associated penalties, etc)
Deathwing gets a flavor of assault doctrine focused on improving assault capabilities.

Plus, RW and DW needs FOC changing treatment like how berzerkers become troop choice for world eaters detachment. This would be THE MOST modest start to making DA feel truly unique.

I skipped over all the fiddly HQ things to see what you did with tactical squads and intercessors. Oops it was nothing.

Doesn’t matter it’s only the numerically largest part of a chapter.

 ionusx wrote:
so this is me taking a stab at a rework of all the "special" parts of the codex. what i mean by this is that i wont be touching the psy powers, relics, or commands i am retyping this on poor sleep but have it all down so here we go. i will type more later but for now here are the characters

characters overview: one of the biggest problems with the dark angels is that our characters are bland, wayy underpowered and have get along with nothing in the codex (outside of maybe sammael but we will get to his mobility scooter riding behind in a moment). azreal is a chapter master and he is so boring to read his rules and he does nothing. he needs to be a fighter, belial is literally a worthless pile of junk, asmodai might be the worst hq in the game, ezekiel is disjointed from the rest of his codex, and sammael has been leaned on so long by GW that the old man finally broke in two and now we are seeing the price of leaning on slapping ravenwing as the avenue in which you build the army and nothing else as the lazy codex writing we have been subjected too for 3 editions now.

Not true at all, your HQs are one of the highlights of your faction, with various cool buffs that help builds be bad instead of absolute trash. Characters like Feirros aren't well designed, don't be tricked by him being OP to mean that he's well designed. A 4+ invul for Bikes and Infantry is very unique in terms of abilities, it works both in melee and at range as well. Asmodai provides one of the best melee buffs in the game, a must-have for any melee-centric DA list if you can find a way to keep your squads close to him. Belial is a pretty cheap upgrade for a Terminator master, Terminator Masters are probably a little overpriced, but Belial isn't more than 15 pts overcosted.

we dont change belials baseline, we cut his points, belial goes to 105 from 150 which is a much needed drop. parrying blade is removed completely and replaced with: deathwing requisition order: if belial is your warlord you may take one of any vehicle keyword model in the heavy support slot of codex dark angels for free within his detachment. this list contains: the 3 land raiders, predator, stalker, whirlwind, vindicator, and hunter the big ones obviously being the land raiders. considering how much of a massive points sink the deathwing are this is an offset to help the deathwing out. suddenly one of the biggest hurdles for terminators: getting them mobile is taken care of. im aware of the obvious coming outrage but when you consider that every squad of terminators you take actively HURT your chances to win a game by massive amounts. this offsets this at least a little bit, since your probably taking terminators if your taking belial. i feel this would help out the deathwing a lot and even if belial is still a terrible HQ he now doesnt cost a mounting of points and belial with a free land raider is suddenly a much more appealing proposition to consider when deciding what HQ to take. instead of it basically being sammael or more sammael (and we will get to sammaels problems rest your head)

So instead of finding a fair price for Deathwing you make Belial an auto-include of enormous proportions? He's worth at least 80 pts no matter how you swing it, so with the free vehicle he's more than 200 pts negative in cost. Let's also assume that Land Raiders are overcosted and only worth 120 pts. You're still paying negative 100 pts for this unit. Not to mention you're removing the fluffy rule that makes him harder to best in single combat.

In addition we rework the sword of silence we remove the "always wound on a 2+ unless its a vehicle" and replace with: "deals mortal wounds instead of normal wounds if enemy has a PSYKER keyword". thats a powerful change, if he locks up with a squad of rubrici with a sgt they cannot accept a challenge unless they want their sgt to get melted, eldar warlocks have reason to avoid him and hop on bikes even more then they already do. a small change that i feel is more thematic to the sword of silence

Challenges don't exist in 8th and I thought I was going to be responding to every point you made but you really just need to read the main rulebook before trying to "fix" your codex by making units cost negative pts and making up new unique rules that don't represent the fluff in your codex.

I would have argued Dark Angels were among the strongest marine options prior to the 8.5 codex release. There are some supremely nasty combinations, but the entire book was built as a castle which is boring/frustrating. Any traits and heroes which more or less reward you for sitting in a little dinky spot on the table just makes for gak games.

Azrael is over priced? Are you actually having a girraffe?

For 180 pts we have a 4++ bubble, re roll bubble of all failed hits, 5 attacks standard 6 on a charge or being charged; 7 if he's near certain buffs; 6 wounds; ws 2+ and bs 2+ and 2+ armour. Strength 6 and on 6 to wound deals additional mortal wound d3 damage ap-3. +1 extra CP if he is warlord. Also a combi plasmafor shooting too, for 180 pts? No other HQ offers all that in one for so little. Needs to be better combat??? with perfect rolling he has the potential to do 28 wounds in a single round of combat. Azrael with perfect rolling can oneshot a knight and then some. again 180 pts.

I started a thread about points and as aDA player who takes Azrael most games i think he's too cheap, i'm dreading him getting the primaris treatment as I know he'll probably go back to being 210pts. (deep down I know this probably the right thing to do).

Could we do with an update - probably. But we are by no means weak where we need an entire overhaul.

 Elbows wrote:
I would have argued Dark Angels were among the strongest marine options prior to the 8.5 codex release. There are some supremely nasty combinations, but the entire book was built as a castle which is boring/frustrating. Any traits and heroes which more or less reward you for sitting in a little dinky spot on the table just makes for gak games.

If the DA codex was strong they wouldn't have a 40% win rate. They are currently the worst or tied for being the worst faction in the game.

Slaul wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I would have argued Dark Angels were among the strongest marine options prior to the 8.5 codex release. There are some supremely nasty combinations, but the entire book was built as a castle which is boring/frustrating. Any traits and heroes which more or less reward you for sitting in a little dinky spot on the table just makes for gak games.

If the DA codex was strong they wouldn't have a 40% win rate. They are currently the worst or tied for being the worst faction in the game.

That comes down to very few choices and units, BA Smash Captains, Grand Master Dreadknights and Guilliman.

Terrible suggestions really.

As far as doctrines go, I think they are fine as is for the DA. Greenwing will benefit from Dev/tac, Ravenwing will benefit from Dev/tac and Deathwing will benefit from Tac/Assault.

You then can bias the Ravenwing and Deathwing with Super Doctrines. Not sure how at this point, would need to think on it. They then need better WTs, relics and strats.

 bullyboy wrote:
Terrible suggestions really.

As far as doctrines go, I think they are fine as is for the DA. Greenwing will benefit from Dev/tac, Ravenwing will benefit from Dev/tac and Deathwing will benefit from Tac/Assault.

You then can bias the Ravenwing and Deathwing with Super Doctrines. Not sure how at this point, would need to think on it. They then need better WTs, relics and strats.

Right. In theory, DA is very well rounded army consisting of static (greenwing), mobile (ravenwing), and surgical (deathwing) elements that synergizes well. The main issue is that SM lines as a whole are way overcosted.

Ideally, a balanced DA army should be comprised of all three wings complimenting each other, however, due to the issue above, it's impossible at 2k pt games.

As it currently stands, you need to "specialize" in one of the three aspects. But again, Deathwing is noncompetitive, so really, you're down to picking from either Azrael based castle strat using hellblasters or go ravenwing.

 skchsan wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
Terrible suggestions really.

As far as doctrines go, I think they are fine as is for the DA. Greenwing will benefit from Dev/tac, Ravenwing will benefit from Dev/tac and Deathwing will benefit from Tac/Assault.

You then can bias the Ravenwing and Deathwing with Super Doctrines. Not sure how at this point, would need to think on it. They then need better WTs, relics and strats.

Right. In theory, DA is very well rounded army consisting of static (greenwing), mobile (ravenwing), and surgical (deathwing) elements that synergizes well. The main issue is that SM lines as a whole are way overcosted.

Ideally, a balanced DA army should be comprised of all three wings complimenting each other, however, due to the issue above, it's impossible at 2k pt games.

As it currently stands, you need to "specialize" in one of the three aspects. But again, Deathwing is noncompetitive, so really, you're down to picking from either Azrael based castle strat using hellblasters or go ravenwing.

Not impossible, just gotta be careful One of my most successful lists is as follows (brief detail)

Battallion -
Azrael and Lieutenant (with plasma and bolt pistol with heavenfall blade as I use the Cypher model)

2 5 man intercessors wiht bolt rifles and power swords and a bolter scout squad
a primaris ancient with eye of the unseen and 2 veterens with power swords and storm bolters (just a 40pt filler to meat shield a hq).

vanguard -
belial and sammael on corvex

Agressors with bolters
5 DW knights
a redempter dread with plasma

3 black knights and a darkshroud

10 hellblasters.

I've won local tourni's with this list. They do synergize well. Not perfect but well enough.

What I feel we could do with is simply a couple of the characteristic feels back. I.e. if you take Belial DW can be troops etc.

That's precisely the point. What you have listed up there is a greenwing army with DW/RW support.

Your main element is the hellblaster/aggressor castle.

Belial does nothing for DWK, and Sammael proving multipliers for measly 3 RBKs. Not quite what many of us would consider "tri-wing" list.

P.S. to clarify my position, the list you've provided would work better if you removed the belial and the DWK and free up pts for better units. They are there for the sake of claiming your list to be 'tri-wing'ed. They don't add any tactical/strategical benefit.

Outside of Azrael castle, the only other viable build is RW/GW combo where the GW aspect covers the backfield while the RW element moves forward to cover the mid field/enemy deployment zone.
Anything DW can do (aside from melee wreckage DWK may potentially cause) RW can do in alternative fashion (kiting, midfield plasma bashing, target priority w/ dark talons in opponent's face, etc). There really is nothing DW and the units falling under DW category has to offer in a DA list.

In theory, following the general construction of the DA codex, DA should be functioning more or less like a IoM version of Drukhari, where the three different 'wings' (kabal, cult & coven) come together to create a coherent force, where one wing compliments the others' short comings (cult deals with bogging down units up front, kabal harasses mid field, coven brings the heavy damage)

Not Online!!! wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You want changes? Get consolidated. Dark Angels aren't unique enough to actually have their own codex.

At this point it's pretty obvious gw doesn't want consolidation.
Or actual thought put behind traits.

The issue is that GW doesn't put enough thought into things to make consolidation anything other than a giant middle finger but they're also incompetent enough that the special armies get terrible treatment. Like many things in Warhammer applying effort would probably fix it.