BA's biggest weakness...

[Rybnick]

Since coming back to the hobby after 10+ years away and starting up fresh with the BA when the codex released, I've come to really enjoy playing my Angels and wouldn't trade them for any other army.

 

from my (admittedly limited) experience the BA can be very competitive no matter how you play them so long as you play smart. I have noticed however that we have one area of major disadvantage in 1/3 of the missions in the brb. Kill Points. Normally in my JP army I have between 11-12 kill points, and in my mech army I could have anywhere from 14-16. I've only played a handful of Annihilation games but in each I had more kill points to give than my enemy.

 

Juust last night I had a game against Tyranids with one of my good friends and the only reason I was able to keep up killpoint wise was thanks to his Tervigon pooping out more gaunts for me to mutilate (the game ended in a draw 8 to 8). I had a total of 11 KP to give and he had 9. Having so many 1 point IC's seems to really pump out the easy KP's.

 

Has anyone else experienced this with BA, or am I the only one?

[JamesI]

Kill points are an issue. I lost a game to Space wolves where I wiped him down to just 1 wolf guard left and lost because I got 6 KP and gave up 8.

 

I'd much rather go back to vicotry points, always seems odd to me that a rhino is worth as much as a 10 man veteran squad in KP.

[Requiemnex]

Anyone remember when Drop Pods gave victory points........

 

 

If they base it on a point system it needs to be tailored better. HOWEVER.... There are more 5th edition codecies to be released. it should be interesting.

[Seahawk]

It's actually an issue for all marine armies, especially mechanized ones. For instance, my 1750 Ultramarines army had 16 KP. Compare that to my daemons, who only had 9 KP at 1750, and are killier to boot.

 

Whenever you're creating a mechanized army, you're taking two KP per unit basically. I'm personally not a fan of KP, desiring Victory Points like James. My 1500 pt BA army I used yesterday had only 8 KP, making it very hard for my opponent. I ended up getting 10 KP to his 1 (I lost a tactical squad...nooo...).

[thundrchickn]

my 2k meq build has 19 kp :) but I'm just forced to play better. I try to alpha strike them hard on first turn with my LC and HK missles to destroy all their vehicles(MCs or other things that can hurt me bad) and then mow down their troops with the baal preds. I do well with this against just about every army but orks.

[Zid]

Like others said, its a huge issue with all marines.

 

Look at it this way; my 2500 Libby list has 19 kill points. My buddys Orc 'Ardboyz list has ~14 kp. His list is hard as hell to even get 1 KP from (killing 3 kans for a KP is gay) compared to mine. I agree; we need to go back to VP's like Fantasy. VP's make much more sense and don't penalize certain armies; kill the harder stuff, you win. Its lame that a squad of marines w/ HQ and priest is 3 KP's, but a LR is 1 KP...

[Ranwulf]

It's true, however your army is capable of compensating for it. Each Kill Point are pretty much VERY valuable, useful and if you play smart, they can be very hard to kill.

 

Rhinos? Fast them up, get them alway from weapons.

 

IC Elite Characters? Are incredibly powerful add to your army, they are double your force!

 

Ran

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I still like KPs since they are a basic deterrent to MSU style armies. It's still possible to design armies with VP denial. Basically any system can be gamed. It is what it is.

 

0b :wallbash:

[Corby]

My army only seems to do very well in kill point missions , it however fails horrbily during Ojective based missions. I'd say the low body count of the blood angels army is its greatest weakness. As expensive fast vehicles and moderatly pricey independant characthers dig deeply into our points.

[Arschbombe]

I like the kill point system. It's another consideration for list building that discourages using the max number of small units like BO says. It makes the combat squad rule more powerful since you can keep the squad together in a KP mission and split it up for an objective mission.

 

I ran a 1500 all jump list against a buddy. On its face it's 8 kill points with three scoring units. With combat squads, it can go to 10 kps and five scoring units. Lots of armies don't have that kind of flexibility.

[Redo]

Like many I think the KP system is weaker than the old VP system and as many have pointed out KPs can be detrimental to marines but especially BA. I find that you have to rather careful of using Sang. Priests as they are each one KP and independent characters.

In my opinion these guys should have been more like Wolf Guard and simply assigned to other units.

 

To get away from these limitations I try to use Honour Guards as the Sang Priest is included. I also try to avoid a pruely mech approach and use a roughly 50/50 jump pack mix which limits KPs on transports.

 

Just on one other note. I tend to find Librarians lack of an invulnerable save quite a disadvantage. I find that in all missions he is quite a helpful fellow but as I like to have him with my jump packers he will eventually get amongst it and one has to be careful that he is picking his fights. Of ocurse this is an issue with all marine armies but all the same these fellows are rather fragile, especially with the plethora of weapons that offer instant death or ignore armour saves.

[bloodancient]

ok i must have read the rules wrong i thought that DT don't count as KP only the squad that they were bought for.

[Zealadin]

Everyone here isn't really realising the true weakness to all BA.....

 

...18 yr. old SOB...

 

Thats only because they know where to go for some purity :P

 

KP's are what they are as Ob said, you can design armies that deny them, its just a matter of making that decision or playing a slightly harder list.

With the huge boost in vehicular survivability this edition and increase in their use for the same reason it would be pretty horrible to certain armies if they didn't have SOME drawbacks. Especially since they are so cheap!

 

Biggest true weakness for BA though IMO, is just too much awesome stuff to choose from. Honestly, it really is terrible, maybe they should have shared some of the sweet stuff with all the other people waiting for updated codexes..... (or we could just kill them all on the battle-feild :P)

[Chairman_woo]

Biggest true weakness for BA though IMO, is just too much awesome stuff to choose from.

 

Absoluteley This!

 

Biggest problem I have is that it can be very very hard to make a ballanced armylist that I'm actually happy with. Certainly more than any codex I've ever used I find myself constantly having to compromise and sacrifice. But this I ultimateley have to take as a sign of a good codex, just too many dammned good units! I get the same thing with my nid book (Which for the reccord eats assault focused BA armies alive (So glad I'm the only nid player in my group)).

[lorider2]

It can be a problem, especially for thse of us with Sps and razors squads. But those same things give an egde in objectives so its worth the risk to me. I ran a 20 KP army today and with 4 objective it worked great.