What could we have to make us unique?

[DevianID]

I would like to see discounted plasmaweapons for starters. Also, the 'Mortis' Dread in my mind would be a seperate dread entry, probably heavy support, with much discounted weapons compared to codex. The discounted weapons are justified as the CC aspect of the dread will never be used. So a missile mortis would run for 80 points, cheaper than what landspeeder typhoons pay but with no heavy bolter. A twinned lascannon mortis would be 120, and a twinned autocannon mortis would be 100. This puts them on par with predators, with pros and cons. Regular dreads will NOT have the option to go dual shooty weapon, and will remain an elite choice.

 

As for deathwing, I would go with the rule that any character in termie armor grants deathwing as troops, which means characters like Belial can have their own rules not tied to just making deathwing troops.

 

Fearless is a good rule to represent the over the top stubborness that DA can have, perhaps when DA drop below half they become fearless, rallying immediately if fleeing? So sometimes good, sometimes bad, as instead of running from the big baddies they cant beat they stand and deliver.

 

Finally, the DA would make a nice pre-heresy force, perhaps with a special character. So if you take 'Name Inserted' then your Assault Cannons become reaper cannons and stormbolters become twin linked bolters, you lose certian vehicles as an option, but gain some pre-heresy appropriate squad or unit. (40k Rules balanced Fellblade?)

[gundog8324]

The DS+Assault idea isn't bad, just rough when combined with teleport homers. If it was linked to an IC, that means you have a crunch squad AND an IC assaulting when they come in... Not saying it wouldn't work, but would definitely need playtesting.

 

Maybe that should be the way it would work. Similar to Lesser Daemons they may only Assault on DS if they used a Teleport Homer, it also builds the DW synergy with the rest of the army especially if Scouts/Tac Squads could purchase Theleport Homers for their sergeants

[Grafius]

Funny thing is i came hear to the forum to post somthing similer to the OP. I have recently taken the hobby back up and was happy the codex is bigger but after reading it was very disapointed. There is nothing in the codex that really sets them apart from Ultra\foundings. Yes they have RW and DW but they are restricted to being unique only when using special characters to field them as troops. Otherwise they are similer to there astartes bretheren. The things I see improving the uniqness of the DA is:

 

1. Lose the chaplins. should be Interagator Chaps only. (bring Asmodai back aswell :D )

2. An Interigation squad special unit either as an elite choice or command squad for an IC. They could have prefered enemy against an enemy unit decided at the start of the game by a dice roll.(as they have knowledge of the fallen)

3. Improve the ravenwing bikers with a return of something like jink and or possably hit and run USR. (keep squadrons)

4. DW should stay the same but the first squad is automatically a troop choice the rest elites.

 

I dont want to see:

 

Stubborn or equivilent, Cypher, prefered enemy chaos, no deathwing assault.

[gundog8324]

Well with Cypher they could include a Fallen unit that "repented" with fluff similar to Death Company, okay they get one battle and they are executed if they survive.

[Bryan Blaire]

A Fallen that repents dies after repentance. They are not left alive and wouldn't be invited back onto the battle field. Redemption of the Fallen themselves is not what the Hunt is about, it is redemption of the Chapter that is important.

[Bryan Blaire]

I can point to something that we can no longer have to make us unique: our Chapter Master title and the keeper of one of our supreme secrets being solely the Supreme Grand Master. Instead, the title of "Supreme Grand Master" no longer belongs solely to the Chapter Master of the Dark Angels, but also now the head of the Grey Knights. Also, now the Grey Knights also have a supreme secret destined to change the future of humanity, of which, the location is only known to the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. Sounds a lot like having a future seeing Luther locked away in the darkest of cells in the Rock, known only to the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels.

 

I don't know that we actually have any unique fluff left either.

 

Boo!

[pueriexdeus]

I can point to something that we can no longer have to make us unique: our Chapter Master title and the keeper of one of our supreme secrets being solely the Supreme Grand Master. Instead, the title of "Supreme Grand Master" no longer belongs solely to the Chapter Master of the Dark Angels, but also now the head of the Grey Knights. Also, now the Grey Knights also have a supreme secret destined to change the future of humanity, of which, the location is only known to the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights. Sounds a lot like having a future seeing Luther locked away in the darkest of cells in the Rock, known only to the Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels.

 

I don't know that we actually have any unique fluff left either.

 

Boo!

Lets look on the bright side, ;). The DA have always been too cool for the fridge, thats why everyone else gets our stuff. Kind of reminds me of the company lunch room, my lunch is always disappearing, even with my name on it. :)

 

**edit SP**

[Bryan Blaire]

Lets look on the bright side, ;). The DA have always been too cool for the fridge, thats why everyone else gets our stuff. Kind of reminds me of the company lunch room, my lunch is always disappearing, even with my name on it. :)

 

Yeah, I guess I can do that, especially since I've already got a couple of boxes of GK stuff and plans to completely rip off stuff for my army. :D Turn about is fair play after all!

 

Your lunch too, huh? :D

[Ronin_eX]

1) Bring back jet-bikes. We've got some awesome RT fluff for these (direct orbital insertion) and they really fit our style of rapid mounted warfare. As the Chapter that still hangs on to lost technology in large numbers it wouldn't be hard to justify our ability to equip several elite units with them (they would work best as an elite choice to give Ravenwing armies something for that slot).

 

2) Deathwing and Ravenwing as troops without character investment. At least one of these would be a good idea, especially after the Grey Knight codex allowed them to take terminator armoured GK as troops without needing a character. If terminators are one of our shticks then we shouldn't need a character to alter our structure. If people think both bikes and terminators as troop choices is unfair then we can always switch over to allowing one as a troops choice each game instead (so we could take terminators or bikes as troops but not both in the same game).

 

3) Mortis dreadnought with a few more loadouts than a standard support dreadnought and some good stats for shooting.

 

4) A unique land speeder variant. We can keep the old ones of course but we used to have a unique variant back in 2nd that was handed out to everyone come 3rd Edition and I think we should get a unique variant back, not like Dark Angels aren't known for coming up with a lot of variant vehicles in the fluff after all.

 

5) Land Raider Prometheus replaces the Land Raider Redeemer in our codex. As the personal ride of our Supreme Grand Master it seems a bit fluffier.

 

6) Deathwing Honour Guard. I'd be tempted to give them stats close to Paladins and make them the real elite Deathwing squad. To keep from stepping on the toes of the GK they can only be brought along with Azrael or Belial. But we need to bring some focus back to us having some of the most elite terminators in the galaxy and I think things like the company veterans have taken focus off of that.

 

7) Vangaurd and Sternguard entries replace the company veteran entry. No reason for this not to happen anymore, even the Blood Angels have these options. We can still keep the awesome Dark Angels veteran minis of course but I think sharing the standard veteran squads between the "codex" chapters is a good plan myself.

 

8) Bring the focus away from plasma and more toward a lot of weird and ancient tech. Plasma is part of that but there can be a lot more. This is the perfect time to dig through the wargear cards of old and find some interesting lost technology for us. Displacer fields (rules changed of course), Plasma Blasters (would be a cool choice for Deathwing I think), blind grenades, auto-launchers (another good terminator option), conversion beamer, and even power fields (think lower-powered version of the Lion's Helm) are all possibilities here. There is a lot of old war gear that could give us some unique tactics.

 

9) Special rules that are actually helpful in more than just a narrow set of circumstances. The last iteration of the Deathwing and Ravenwing were one trick ponies who were dedicated to teleport assault. I wouldn't mind DWA becoming an option when we bring a character along (Belial) but making it the only shtick of a whole army means that army will get boring to play really fast. So don't automatically equip Ravenwing with teleport homers (because that is all dead weight if all you are running is Ravenwing) and give them back skilled rider. Remove fearless and give them jink (Orks get cover saves from shooting why not our bikes?). Deathwing should drop fearless, not even the Grey Knight Terminators are fearless anymore, Stubborn fits Dark Angels more anyways as it is less fanatical and more stoic. Fearless should be used to represent the zeal of chapters like the Black Templar, not our stubborn refusal to give ground.

 

10) I think 'Rites of Battle' as our "chapter tactic" would be pretty good. Chapter tactics isn't fitting, stubborn might be but that is an Imperial Fist/Crimson Fist thing, Rites of Battle represents our tactical acumen pretty well by allowing the whole army access to Ld 10.

 

11) Give Interrogator-Chaplains some unique options. These guys have been a unique feature of our chapter for a while and should be on the same level of uniqueness as a Sanguinary Priest is in the Blood Angels. Getting his own command squad option may be cool (though considering their role I would argue it would need to be a Deathwing-derived squad; anything less would be unfitting).

 

12) Get rid of the current Ravenwing Squadrons, they are stupidly inflexible for no real gain and they weaken the Ravenwing needlessly. Land Speeder squads, bike squads and attack bike squads do the job just fine and give all-Ravenwing armies a lot of potential build options. I think combat squad was both over and under-utilized in our last codex. It was misapplied in areas it wasn't needed and the Ravenwing Attack Squad was one of the best examples of the misapplication in my mind. It was a radical change in fluff that made little sense and actually reduced the flexibility of the Ravenwing compared to other chapters. It is a prime reason that RW bike armies are usually a worse prospect than vanilla right now. Besides all of those RW players with loads of attack bikes will be happy again.

 

13) Bring back our special characters, we have loads. Sapphon (chaplain with Rites of Battle anyone?), Asmodai and even Bethor would be great to have back. Bethor would be great to take in a power-armoured command squad. In addition an option for Deathwing Honour Guard like a champion of the Feast of Malediction would be pretty awesome. It would also be great to have one or two successor characters in there.

 

I'm not necessarily saying all that needs to happen, I'm just saying that with a bit of creativity the Dark Angels have plenty of avenues to be unique again after most of our tricks and features have been sold off to other chapters at wholesale prices. In a lot of ways Dark Angels are the Dwarfs of 40k, they have remained unchanged for over a decade and I think it is time for them to get a shot in the arm and update a bit. Our fluff has been frozen for so long as has our army list with the sole interesting addition in over a decade being *gasp* power armoured veteran units. I think the next writer of the Dark Angels codex needs to expand on us a bit and make us unique in the current environment or I will have to side with everyone who is starting to wonder why we exist as a different codex anymore. Large scale revamps of chapters have been happening since the Space Wolves became ultra-unique space vikings in 2nd Edition and has been continuing since the Black Templar went from so codex they were in the Ultramarines codex in 2nd to requiring their own unique list. I doubt adding in a few unique units and features will ruin the core of the Dark Angels... well so long as Matt Ward keeps away from writing our fluff. :P

[Zincite]

Please write our next codex!

 

Good points all, and an interesting read to boot. ;)

[Bryan Blaire]

A lot of those things have already been discussed and are likely to be incorporated in the Codex: Unforgiven DA community effort and in individual 5 Ed Codexes written by fellow DA players in the Unforgiven Rules Discussion forum. :tu: Drum up some more support!

 

I disagree with the Sternguard/Vanguard Vet option and the Land Raider Prometheus though. For the Prometheus, it just isn't common enough to justify a command vehicle in place of a less specialist combat tank/transport. Having it as a unique upgrade transport option for Azrael/his command squad would definitely work though! As far as the Company Vets vs. Sternguard/Vanguard, Company Vets should simply be given more flexibility, plus it should be remembered that Company Vets are definitely not the equivalent of the 1st Company, while Sternguard and Vanguard are supposed to be 1st Company for the Chapters that have them.