beating blood angels

[HJL]

I have a blood angels opponent who is giving me hard games at the moment. he runs something like this

 

dante,

astoroth,

 

dread with claws in pod

dread with melta in pod

 

5 sang guard

 

10 death company with chaplain in Redeemer all with power weapons

 

5 death company with jump packs all with power weapons.

 

 

the last game we played he jumped in, i missed with basicaly all of my weapons, he then jumped on me and ripped me to pieces, he killed 60 of my 80 marines and we ended the game as a draw (capture and control)

 

ive played him a few times since and it seems to always end in a draw. basicaly he cant hold his home objective but he finds it really easy to get mine.

 

as far as my list:

 

company master

combi plasma, power weapon

 

vets x10

4x combi meltas, power fist drop pod

 

scouts x10

bolters, missile launcher, power weapon, melta bomb

 

tactical squad x10

power fist, flamer, lascannon, rhino

 

tactical squad x10

power weapon, melta gun, plasma cannon, rhino

 

tactical squad x10

plasma pistol, plasma gun, plasam cannon, rhino

 

tactical squad x10

power fist, plasma gun, plasma cannon, rhino

 

devs x10

4x missile launchers

 

predator

twin linked lascannon, 2x lascannons

 

 

 

i have about 12,ooo points and so can change my list around a lot.

 

thanks for the help.

[Grand Master Belial]

The two things that stand out to me is his mobility while you are far more static with no movement save running your troops. That and your flamer is not an AP3 weapon.

 

He is running a special army with Astaroth and perhaps you need to do the same. Sammael and/or Belial would help out in that they give you troops that are mobile. I think the Ravenwing might be nice as they will pull the Death Comp apart by their virtue of chasing after what is closest to them. Have them chase something that is fast will give the Devastators a couple more chances to shoot them up in smaller groups.

[mirage20059]

What point total are you guys playing with? That list comes up 2020 for me.

 

I would also suggest to standardize your Tac units. I know its boring for them all to be the same. But if they are all the same they can fulfill your needs better. Better in a way you don't look at the game and wish it was Squad A instead of Squad B that got in CC with the Dread etc..

 

On the Vets drop a Combi Melta and make it a normal Melta. That way you always have a melta shot for the same amount of points.

[exsulis81]

Yeah, that BA list is going to be moving across the table as your oponet has nothing to sit around to hold his own.

 

Land speeders would allow you to pop his raider, and thus piece meal that unit.

 

Drop the lascannons on the Pred, they are just way to expensive to use. His army is small, and thus a high satuation wins :pinch:

 

Switch the vets with a tact squad so you can claim his objective. He is coming to you so make him choose, and split his army.

 

Add a PP to every sgt, drop the flamer/meltagun, upgrade a rhino to a razorback, combat squad, and move those up to saturate his army. These 6 guys should easily melt the 5 JP death company guys with 12 plasma pistol shots, and then the whole slew of bolters, and the razorbacks on top of it.

 

Drop the scouts

[Makers]

I have to agree with everyone above.

 

Drop the Vets, and scouts.

If your going to stick with the CM, pick up some bikes and LS to replace them to take out those dreads.

 

Standardize your TS squads.

With them all having different weapons, it allows him to prioritize his attacks, by making all 4 of them the same, he just has to pick one and go for it.

 

And combat squads are your friend.

Split them into squads of 5, sit your plasma cannon in a rhino on your objective and send the other 5 to lock one of his squads in CC if possible. They may not last that long, but will allow you an extra turn or 2 to move to another obj and contest it or even take it.

 

With 4 squads, you could essentially have 8 scoring units...huge plus in objective based games.

[Xyon]

I don't have much in the way of advice, other than it never hurts to have a few s10 pie plates to throw onto those uber squads which will die just as easily to them as weak units.

[exsulis81]

the only problem the pie plates is that there aren't enough enemy models to really clean house, and 3 units the likely hood of getting to use it is nill :(

[Xyon]

I understand, but a vindicator is 125 points, all of the units you can shoot it at are more pts than the vindicator itself, dante is about 225, 350 pts for the death company, 200 ish astaroth, 200 sanguine guard, another 250 pts death company, all of these are high pts, low survivability low model units, you could take 3 vindicators to ensure if you do scatter you will still do damage since 1/3 will be a direct hit. If you manage to only destroy 2 of those high cost units with your 3 vindicators, you will still make your pts back, and take out a big chunk of his assaulting force. Say you even use speeders and or some bikes to melta the land raider, you can then obliterate the huge unit of DC and company inside of it and really make your points back.

[exsulis81]

and when those dreads drop right next to them, and make like a wrecking ball?

 

Or the BA libi blasting said vehicles as well

[Xyon]

Well, the list he showed has no librarian for the BA, the dreads dropping down is a problem though. Bubble wrapping the vindi's with rhino's, table edges, and tactical squads can prevent 12" range from the multi melta, or at the very least give concealment. Its not a perfect plan, but if you get first turn, you would at least be able to pop smoke before the pod comes in on turn 1.

 

But what else can I say that has not been said all ready, synergy for your entire army is good. I'd drop the vets, stick to tac squads, grab 3 vindicators. Probably missile launcher for each tac squad, and maybe plasma or melta depending on taste.

[exsulis81]

My bad, I was thinking Astorath was a Librarian, and not a chaplain.

[Tanhausen]

That would be mephiston B)

 

I think fighting fire with fire is not the way out.

 

Hasn't anybody noticed he doesn't have any scoring models? All he can aspire is to draw... or table the enemy.

 

Rather than tooling the list, which you're probably comfortable with and have all the models and so on... why not try some specific tactics?

 

- You have a lot of mobility with the rhinos... use it! Make him chase you all around the board, so he can't concentrate on a specific point (where his CC prowess will bog you down).

 

- Spread out. It sounds a bit elementary... but if you force his dreads to pod separate from each other, at most they will target say 1 rhino + tactical (combat squadded of course)... so be it. You can even use the 5 squadded marines to cover your rhinos so the DN can land so close so easily.

 

- 3 plasma cannons, in rhinos, are a beautiful tool vs this BA: focus on a single target and blast him to kingdom come. Don't think that "oh, just 2 DC guys... I'll deal with that later"... no way!

 

- As soon as the DN land, you devastators and predators should make them priority number 1: they can wreck havoc but will be useless if you manage to stun them or immo, don't need to wreck.

 

Hope this helps ;)

[Terrahawk]

Hasn't anybody noticed he doesn't have any scoring models? All he can aspire is to draw... or table the enemy.

 

This!

 

The only models that can score are his 5 Sanguinary Guard, and even they are lacking an inv save. Get rid of them and things should start looking a lot better for you.

 

Also our black-armoured loonies (The Death Company), while do have Feel No Pain, are also lacking an inv save. When playing my BAs I absolutely hate Plasma, so I think that is what you should really stock up on.

[timmytool]

is it just me or is the BA list illegal, he has 2 Death Company squads..... C:BA p88 "you can include only one unit of Death Company in you army." and it does not have combat tactics.

 

BTW his Death company is the only troop choice.DC dont count as scooring :)

having 2 DC squads in the army(instead of the one MAX) changes the way his opponent plays.

 

if there is another rule that changes this I'm sorry for jumping the gun.

 

EDIT:

found the army list entries that modded the limit and made the Sanguinary guard troops, my bad

 

still one scoring unit does not fair well when doing BRB missions

[Xyon]

The chaplain special character lets you take more than 1 DC squad.

[HJL]

interesting, he only has 1 scoring unit eh? it just happens that the last 3 games have all been capture and control. If we get either of the others then i should do ok. The pred with lascannons was actually doing a pretty good job at taking out his sang guard and shaking his dreads.

 

I didnt realise i was 20 points off, ill have to go back and check my maths again :/

 

lots of good ideas there though, i think our next game shall go differently.

[angel of justice]

just some thoughts

 

All units in his army except the sang guard and dante suffer from rage. This means they will be forced to move towards the closest enemy unit, this is where you have a variety of choices as to what to do you can use land speeders to draw them away from your scoring units, and leave them vulnerable to massed bolter and plasma fire or just lead them around the board.

 

If there are no powerfists in his squads you may want to take some dreadnoughts, as they will be very effective tarpits that the death company will have a hard time to kill s which gives you time to move and redeploy or counter assault.

 

Multi melta attack bikes and land speeders will give you the ability to destroy the land raider which will make life easy for you and then they can go character hunting since dante and astorah dont have eternal warrior.

 

good luck