Astorath vs Dante

[Eorek]

Ait Fellow blood angels, I have an issue.

You see I was minding my own business writing a 2000 army list for my blood angels (semi competative with a fluffy feel) and then a realisation ruined my army making : I need a badass HQ!

My first impulse was "Mephiston!" but when thinking about it ... Blood ravens dosen't really have anything close to mephy apart from our

deamonic corrupted ex-chapter master kyras

(Dow II spoiler) and I want a "pure" army!

 

So what do I need?

- Something that can fly(jump packs)

- Something scary(Mephy!:.<)

- Something that matches my badass emperors champion, mixed with astorath.

 

The 2 best candidates for this are Astorath and Dante... And maybe even Mr. Sanguinor(once again issue with us blood ravens not having a summonable demi-primarch)

 

Well, to the army!:

 

Blood Ravens - 2000(Wip)

 

HQ (1/2)

Librarian , Jump Pack , Unleash Rage, Shield

 

Elites (2/3) 330 points

Sanguinary Priests(2) , Jump packs(2), Combi-Flamer(2)

Furioso Dreadnought, Blood Talons, Flamer, Extra Armour

 

Troops (3/6) 705 points

Assault marines(10), Meltaguns(2), Powerfist

Assault marines(10), Meltaguns(2), Powerfist

Assault marines(10), Meltaguns(2), Powerfist

 

Fast Attack (1/3)

Vanguard Veterans(5), Jump packs(5), Power Weapons(1),

Thunder Hammer(1), Infernus Pistol(1)

 

Heavy Support (1/3)

Storm Raven, Extra Armour, Twin-linked Lascannon, Twin-linked Multimelta

 

Well, what can I say,

- Librarian leading a strike force is customary from Blood ravens... but not enough(because enough is never enough right?) He applies a Shield bubble and supplies badass in dice form with unleash rage.

- 2 priest for fnp/FC bubble + template weapons.

- Talon dread flying in with a raven (what is there not to love about this combo... apart from their point cost...)

- Assault marines core, not much to it...Melta, Melta and more Melta

- Vanguards...pricy ... But I love those bleached bone coloured helmets... Had to had a squad... also they charge devs/lootas/etc to increase the survival rate of my gunship

- Storm raven... Drops the dread, hunts veichles, not rocket science(apart from all the rockets on it)

 

Other than those big shot guys with a name of their own just running a standard captain(not the best choice for winning though) or a rechlusiarch could be the way to go.

 

I have around 415 points to play with still

 

So what can these two(dante and astorath) give to my army:

Dante:

- Precision Deepstriking. I cannor see any bigger use for this in my army... Melta guns have semi long range already and with decent of angels it feels like a "waste" somehow.

- a very reliable melta, this guy has a super high BS and can land next to any veichle without risk... stuff goes BOOM

- a high I(higher than average captain) combined with loads of power weapon attacks. This guy is what I'd call "smashy"

- Mask... the debuff enemy HQ effect is sorta nice, the deathmask effect is so-so but can be game breaking with abit of luck.

 

Astorath:

- Big axe, high strength, this guy makes dante look like he's still stuck in super saiyan I when it comes to being a hard hitter.

- alot more redthirst rolling(Not always a good thing... already have FC bubbles for whenever I'm charging... and fearless tend to be a bad thing in marine armies(IMO) this applies to enemy BA aswell though)

- even more rerolls <3

- another fearless unit...

 

Meh when writing about em they seem unsuited for my army... But that is not for me to say I guess since I almost never field em, Share your exp with em, who is suited to lead my army to glory.

 

(I didn't post this in the army list forum because I'd like it to be a HQ discussion(don't you mess around with my list!)... Also sorry for long post... Guess I could have written "Dante vs Astorath... GO!"... But where is the fun in that?)

[BloodTzar]

First of all, BA as BR ... c'mon ... but if you have to...

 

Second, get combi weaps out of priest's and if you have to, get them hand flamers (+1A in CC)

 

Third, VV's while using Heroic intervention CANNOT shoot, therefore IP might be useless, and perhaps use 3 x melta bombs for the same effect.

 

Finally, while you are using "tons" of infantry I would go with Astro boy as his 1-3 buff might be much more beneficial in your build...just pray you wont be facing another C:SM count-as BA, just because he might buff them as well...

 

~BT

[SnorriSnorrison]

If you want to play a fluffy list, drop C:BA and go with C:SM.

 

Blood Ravens were never listed as a BA successor, they simply are codex marines. The only "difference" to normal marines is that they are said to have a higher number of psychic active battle brothers, which doesn't even mean that they have more Librarians.

 

You want a badass HQ? Chaptermaster w/ Relic Blade, Stormshield and artificer armour, there you go. Or Tigurius. Fits better to your chapter.

 

To remain fluffy, use Tactical squads instead of assault squads, and some scouts. Furthermore, you'd want some Sternguard instead of Sanguinary Priests as Blood Ravens are not known for going all mad in the presence of a Priest(they have no Primarch even!). Oh, and Codex Marines don't have Blood Talons, so I'd suggest to swap the Furioso for a Ironclad if you want a dual-CC dread.

 

Oh, and finally, the Stormraven is not a choice in C:SM, and as you are only using him to transport the dread, a drop pod will do the job.

 

 

Well, there you go. Fluffy list from C:SM for Blood Ravens. You don't even have to worry about the whole Dante vs Astorath problem either! Now ain't that great?

 

 

 

Snorri

[Morollan]

Second, get combi weaps out of priest's and if you have to, get them hand flamers (+1A in CC)

 

Give them pretty much anything other than hand flamers. Hand flamers in general are pretty pointless and even more so in a BA codex army. They are designed to deal with hordes of (very) light infantry and do you really think we need any help against that?

[BloodTzar]

Yeah, as i said IF YOU HAVE TO :)

 

The PW is far more beneficial than anything else, however if he has to have the template than go rather for Hand Flamer than combi.

[Gv0zD]

Snorri, I love your advice! :D

Seriously, the only Codex Chapter that might be represented by C:BA is Raven Guard, but even then I think any BA-exclusive units must be removed (DoA fits RG as well as reliance on Assault Squads).

Since BR are officially a codex chapter and were never noted to use jump-heavy forces, they should be better off with C:SM.

 

However, if you insist on using C:BA, I'd go with Astro boy for this particular list. If it were pure DoA with lots of VG, melta HG, I'd suggest taking Dante.

[JamesI]

Here is a topic I started to debate the bonuses of Dante versus Astorath.

 

The consensus then was Dante was better, I was one of the few voting Astorath and now almost a year later, I would vote Dante as generically better. In my opinion, if the list is going to use Deep Striking for most of its units, go Dante. If the list is going to deploy most of its units, go Astorath.

 

The main advantages of Astorath (outside of a pure DC army) are the 50% red thirst, the S6 axe, and the chaplains rerolls to hit on the charge. Useful. In my opinion, Astorath lets you take a few less priests to save points there. I rarely ran more than 1 priest in an Astorath army. Astorath works great with some jumper units, mixed with dev squads and attack bikes (who both gain a ton from being fearless). Say a traditional Blood Hammer army with no deepstriking is a good Astorath army.

 

The main advantages of Dante are the higher initiative, higher number of attacks (6 on the charge versus 4 for Astorath), the infernus pistol, hit and run, and no scatter deepstrike, and Sanguinary Guard as Troops. The strength 4 is average, but Dante will always be near a sanguinary priest so he is S5 on the charge, and with hit and run he can charge a lot. Dante works great in a pure DoA army but can work just fine outside of DoA as well.

[Eorek]

check BA codex page 54. Basically a section saying BR have a suggestion to being BA and they do not deny or confirm sanguinius' linage...

 

Seems GW approved does it not?

 

Gonna stick to me BA codex, if it says BR could be BA, then I'm fielding em as BA

[Morollan]

check BA codex page 54. Basically a section saying BR have a suggestion to being BA and they do not deny or confirm sanguinius' linage...

 

Seems GW approved does it not?

 

Gonna stick to me BA codex, if it says BR could be BA, then I'm fielding em as BA

 

It basically says they've got Blood in their name so they might possibly be related. Not exactly a ringing endorsement but if you want to use BA instead of a more appropriate codex then that's your choice.

[Eorek]

"The powerful Blood Ravens Librarians guide the Chapter, enabling them to fight with a precision and calculated fury made possible by their ability to predict and thwart their enemy's strategies and tactics before they come to pass"

"Azariah Vidya used his psychic power and traditional methods of intelligence to learn his enemies' habits in minute detail and then launch devastating attacks against their greatest vulnerabilities."

 

 

- Would explain Dantes tactical precision + decent of angels no?

 

" but it is not an uncommon thought among the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus that there may be some Chaotic taint within the Blood Ravens' gene-seed. It is said in hushed tones among the Blood Ravens that there is a special squad made up of only Librarians that works secretly within the Chapter. "

 

- Sorta sound like something hidden among the chapter that this teams deals with... perhaps people falling to some type of black rage-ish madness? Don't some sections of the inqusition think that the black rage is due to chaos influense?

 

- The blood drop in their insignia... goes without saying...sure there is a raven there aswell, but there are like 4 blood angel based chapters with black wings im em(Angels sanguine, Angels vermillion, angels encarmine and vanilla blood angels)

 

"knowledge is power"

 

- What are all blood angel priests searching for? a way to cure the black rage... the knowledge to cure it... maybe abit far fetched but still there.

 

- Also the blood ravens have alot of relics from their own and other various chapters... Would explain han held flamers/meltas, loads of relic armour/furioso dreads, storm ravens,

[Gv0zD]

A bit of offtop from my side. In several recent HH books GW heavily hinted that BR are descendants from Thousand Sons. And the mentioning of BR in C:BA was used to say that not every chapter with the word Blood in their name descends from Blood Angels Legion.

[Eorek]

Yes, but the BA being TS is impossible... I mean... the thousand sons were getting mutated by a daily basis ... no flesh mutation is seen with the BA. sure it's hinted, But highly unlikely

[Gv0zD]

Yes, but the BA being TS is impossible... I mean... the thousand sons were getting mutated by a daily basis ... no flesh mutation is seen with the BA. sure it's hinted, But highly unlikely

Yes, BA can in no way be TS sucessors :)

 

Anyway, this is your army and you can whatever you want with it, unless you like it :P

 

P.S. James, thanks for the link! I've never used Astorath myself, but I think I'll give him a try. In my opinion he'll do pretty well in a RAS heavy list with a couple of Chappies added.

[SnorriSnorrison]

"The powerful Blood Ravens Librarians guide the Chapter, enabling them to fight with a precision and calculated fury made possible by their ability to predict and thwart their enemy's strategies and tactics before they come to pass"

"Azariah Vidya used his psychic power and traditional methods of intelligence to learn his enemies' habits in minute detail and then launch devastating attacks against their greatest vulnerabilities."

 

 

- Would explain Dantes tactical precision + decent of angels no?

 

No, just no. MAYBE it could explain Dante's special rule, but not DoA for EVERY JP unit in the chapter. And then, Dante is no Librarian.

 

" but it is not an uncommon thought among the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus that there may be some Chaotic taint within the Blood Ravens' gene-seed. It is said in hushed tones among the Blood Ravens that there is a special squad made up of only Librarians that works secretly within the Chapter. "

 

- Sorta sound like something hidden among the chapter that this teams deals with... perhaps people falling to some type of black rage-ish madness? Don't some sections of the inqusition think that the black rage is due to chaos influense?

 

The taint of Chaos is not similar to the Black Rage. The Black Rage is caused by the Death of Sanguinius. The Blood Ravens don't know their Primarch in the first place.

 

- The blood drop in their insignia... goes without saying...sure there is a raven there aswell, but there are like 4 blood angel based chapters with black wings im em(Angels sanguine, Angels vermillion, angels encarmine and vanilla blood angels)

 

The Blood Angels themselves have black wings on their emblem. However, as Gv0zD pointed out, the hint in the codex indicates that Chapters with "Blood" in their names are not automatically successors to the Blood Angels Legion.

 

Again, the BR are of unknown Primarch and Legion, they were created and nobody knows which Geneseed was used. They show no outbursts of Red Thirst or Black Rage, a sign that is apparent in every other Blood Angels successor.

 

'

"knowledge is power"

 

- What are all blood angel priests searching for? a way to cure the black rage... the knowledge to cure it... maybe abit far fetched but still there.

 

EVERY Chapter is searching for knowledge. The Blood Ravens do so because they don't know their origins, the Blood Angels do because the Curse is a threat too great for the survival of the Chapter.

 

- Also the blood ravens have alot of relics from their own and other various chapters... Would explain han held flamers/meltas, loads of relic armour/furioso dreads, storm ravens,

 

 

So you mean that somewhere, somehow, the Blood Angels or one of their successors would just leave precious and unique armament and equipment behind, just like "Oh c'mon, we don't need those 'ravens, just let them here in the desert! And that old :( Furioso's gettin' on my nerves the whole day! Who needs that old :cuss? "

 

Yeah. Thought so.

 

 

In the end, it is your choice. It's just that BR are not fluffy the way you described them...C:SM would have been the better choice.

 

 

Snorri

 

 

Snorri

[JamesI]

Calm down guys. We should be happy people want to use our codex.

 

By the fluff, other chapters are starting to get Storm Ravens. Its mentioned in the White Dwarf Storm Raven article (though no rules allow it). So there in an excuse to get RAvens in a BR army.

 

Furiosos can count as Ironclads, they're pretty similar.

 

There are ways around the fluff issues.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

It never ceases to amaze me how many people, no matter the issue, feel that they have a right to dictate how others should act when the actions of those others have no impact upon them. Mills' On Liberty should be required reading in state schools, methinks.

 

Use C:BA for the Blood Ravens if you want to. Hell, use Codex: Black Templars to represent Thousand Sons if you want to; it has nothing to do with anyone else.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Dante is, IMO, the better all-round but personally I take Astorath (on the rare occasions when I take a SC) because he fits what I want to do with my army better, is cheaper (just!) and means, as mentioned earlier, that I can cut a Priest out of my list and spend those points on beefing up some other units.

[Leonaides]

surely you mean BR, not BA...

[Tamwulf]

:verymad: I use my Blood Ravens as "Counts As Blood Angels" all the time. I don't have a fluffy reason for it any more than a Chaos player using Counts As Space Wolves, or bug players using Blood Angels as "Counts As" or any of a dozen other lists I've seen just here on B&C using an army counting as something else. If a guy wants to do it, all the power to him. GW has blessed this on more than one occasion. This is a game of little toy soldiers on a make believe battlefield, and if someone wants to make believe that his Blood Ravens are a Blood Angel successor chapter, then who am I or anyone else to object? We play games to have fun, and the OP wants to have fun. Please don't look down on him for it. ^_^

 

To the discussion at hand!

 

Dante is a "super solo" that makes one squad awesome. He doesn't do much for your army, and his Death Mask will just piss your opponent off. Anytime one of your models gets a nerf before the game even begins is a bit frustrating. Dante has +1 W, +1 I, and +1 A over Astorath (Astroboi), and comes with a MC Power Weapon. He also has an Infernus pistol, so can go tank hunting in a pinch. The squad he joins won't scatter if they Deepstrike, so that lends him to joining a DS squad, usually something like an Assault Squad, Sanguinary Guard, or even a tooled up Honor Guard. They'll also get Hit and Run. Most of the squad that can DS in a Blood Angels army only scatter d6" anyways, and that's only a 2 in 3 chance of happening. To me, not a big deal.

 

Astorath gets a S6 Power weapon that forces rerolls on invulnerable saves. Pretty nice! If we talk about the differences in charging between Dante and Astorath, yes, Astorath will have fewer attacks, but him and his squad get to reroll all misses. His squad also becomes fearless. I think that is just a little bit better then Dante's rules, and I have found Hit and Run to be very, very situational. What I mean by that is that if I assault something, I bring enough to wipe out the unit I'm assaulting. If I get charged, I failed at something somewhere. Then there is the 50% chance Astorath can give your army the Red Thirst. Army wide buffs are sooo much better then Dante's Death Mask. Especially The Red Thirst.

 

Finally, there is the models themselves. Dante just looks horrible in my opinion. It's an old sculpt, and it has very little to do with the rest of the Blood Angel's look. His Deathmask doesn't look anything like the Sanguinary Guard, and his axe is just out of place for the model. A maul or hammer would have been better. His jump pack is uninspired- Death Company jump packs look way, way better. I guess the big deal for me is this: He doesn't look like a Chapter Master. He looks more like a Chaplain. In other words, his model is the worst out of the special character models available to the Blood Angels.

 

Astorath (I like to call him Astroboi) just looks awesome. He has the feather jump pack, awesome dynamic pose, the parchment flowing off him, the huge Blood Angel belt buckle, and finally, an axe made out of a spine of something. How kewl is that? To make Dante that cool requires quite a bit of conversion. In my opinion, the Sanguinar model should have been used as Dante's new model.

 

The best advice I can offer- try them both out in the army you have. Don't swap any other units out- or you might as well just customize your army build around your HQ. My preference is Astroboi. B)

[JamesI]

Finally, there is the models themselves. Dante just looks horrible in my opinion. It's an old sculpt, and it has very little to do with the rest of the Blood Angel's look. His Deathmask doesn't look anything like the Sanguinary Guard, and his axe is just out of place for the model. A maul or hammer would have been better. His jump pack is uninspired- Death Company jump packs look way, way better. I guess the big deal for me is this: He doesn't look like a Chapter Master. He looks more like a Chaplain. In other words, his model is the worst out of the special character models available to the Blood Angels.

 

Astorath (I like to call him Astroboi) just looks awesome. He has the feather jump pack, awesome dynamic pose, the parchment flowing off him, the huge Blood Angel belt buckle, and finally, an axe made out of a spine of something. How kewl is that? To make Dante that cool requires quite a bit of conversion. In my opinion, the Sanguinar model should have been used as Dante's new model.

There is a reason my Dante is a Sanguinary Guard model with The Sanguinor's jump pack.

 

All I can say is my play experience (over a year using Astorath in almost every list, almost a year using Dante a lot) says Dante is better. This really is a your Mileage may vary kind of situation.

[Demoulius]

Tbh i give my vote to astorath here. you got plenty of assault troopers and true, you got 2 priests already but they can be quite easily killed off in combat and red thrist also grants fearless.... allthough tbh thatsm roe a drawback when you get into combat :lol:

 

dante is nice but...eh....he lacks oompf if you ask me. his stats are nice and all but he needs a priest to get a decent S. This in itself isent hard to achieve but considering what your paying for him is kind of a let down <_<

 

also Dante's nerf doesent work on a great number of HQ's. (non IC monstrous creatures like hive tyrants, hq's that are basicly squads like IG command squads etc) and like some of my brothers already said, your scattering only 1d6 to begin with. sure not scattering is nice but.... not THE reason to take Dante if you ask me :ermm:

 

you got assault squads as troops so you dont need him to make SG troops. So again, I say take astorath :D

 

now off topic, tbh m8 i dont see why your using the blood angel codex for blood ravens :confused: is it for fluff reasons or for gaming reasons? as tbh for fluff reasons the BA codex is a pretty poor example. BR are basicly a codex chapter with a higher than avarage number of librarians. which tbh you can do no better with our codex then with the vanilla codex. max is 2 per FOC just like vanilla marines... and no, librarian furiosos dont count as outside the blood angels they dont (apparently) excist... or rather are never mentioned or an option anywhere. safe to assume that they would be if they were around...

 

SP's are blood angel specific and tbh dont achieve what they do via psychic powers. I guess you could say they are libies in training and that they just buff their fellow brothers in the meantime or something.

 

the furiosos is akin to the ironclad (ironclad even has better armour) but only has WS4. VV's are also available in the vanilla codex so theyre not really misplaced.

 

the storm raven on the other hand is. aside from the grey knights the blood angels are the only ones who have acces to it. period. does it make sense? eh...tbh it doesent but thats how things are -_-

 

the high number of assault marines is also pretty improbable, unless your playing an assault company (8th to be exact) in which case its possible but other then that no company has more then 20 assault marines....

 

dont get me wrong here. if you want to use the blood angel dex thats fine by me. heck if youve got a nicely painted army with nice background i could care less which codex you use. but i dont see many fluff reasons right now that tie your army and the blood angels together :huh:

 

and tbh if the only thing tying us together is the word blood then the blood angels could also be a dark angels succesor :P

[Eorek]

"The powerful Blood Ravens Librarians guide the Chapter, enabling them to fight with a precision and calculated fury made possible by their ability to predict and thwart their enemy's strategies and tactics before they come to pass"

"Azariah Vidya used his psychic power and traditional methods of intelligence to learn his enemies' habits in minute detail and then launch devastating attacks against their greatest vulnerabilities."

 

 

- Would explain Dantes tactical precision + decent of angels no?

 

No, just no. MAYBE it could explain Dante's special rule, but not DoA for EVERY JP unit in the chapter. And then, Dante is no Librarian.

 

" but it is not an uncommon thought among the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus that there may be some Chaotic taint within the Blood Ravens' gene-seed. It is said in hushed tones among the Blood Ravens that there is a special squad made up of only Librarians that works secretly within the Chapter. "

 

- Sorta sound like something hidden among the chapter that this teams deals with... perhaps people falling to some type of black rage-ish madness? Don't some sections of the inqusition think that the black rage is due to chaos influense?

 

The taint of Chaos is not similar to the Black Rage. The Black Rage is caused by the Death of Sanguinius. The Blood Ravens don't know their Primarch in the first place.

 

- The blood drop in their insignia... goes without saying...sure there is a raven there aswell, but there are like 4 blood angel based chapters with black wings im em(Angels sanguine, Angels vermillion, angels encarmine and vanilla blood angels)

 

The Blood Angels themselves have black wings on their emblem. However, as Gv0zD pointed out, the hint in the codex indicates that Chapters with "Blood" in their names are not automatically successors to the Blood Angels Legion.

 

Again, the BR are of unknown Primarch and Legion, they were created and nobody knows which Geneseed was used. They show no outbursts of Red Thirst or Black Rage, a sign that is apparent in every other Blood Angels successor.

 

'

"knowledge is power"

 

- What are all blood angel priests searching for? a way to cure the black rage... the knowledge to cure it... maybe abit far fetched but still there.

 

EVERY Chapter is searching for knowledge. The Blood Ravens do so because they don't know their origins, the Blood Angels do because the Curse is a threat too great for the survival of the Chapter.

 

- Also the blood ravens have alot of relics from their own and other various chapters... Would explain han held flamers/meltas, loads of relic armour/furioso dreads, storm ravens,

 

 

So you mean that somewhere, somehow, the Blood Angels or one of their successors would just leave precious and unique armament and equipment behind, just like "Oh c'mon, we don't need those 'ravens, just let them here in the desert! And that old :cuss Furioso's gettin' on my nerves the whole day! Who needs that old :cuss? "

 

Yeah. Thought so.

 

 

In the end, it is your choice. It's just that BR are not fluffy the way you described them...C:SM would have been the better choice.

 

 

Snorri

 

 

Snorri

 

Could you please find lore backing up your claims, cause so far I've only seen you spout nonsense

 

- Doa = skilled with jump packs "enabling them to fight with a precision and calculated fury" sounds very very very much like -1d6 scatter to me

 

- "The taint of Chaos is not similar to the Black Rage. The Black Rage is caused by the Death of Sanguinius. The Blood Ravens don't know their Primarch in the first place." for someone not tainted by chaos the lord of death seems quite daemonprincy wouldn't you say? Besides, Sanguinius was slain by the singel strongest focus point of chaos in realspace apart from the eye of terror/maelstrom... I dare say that could lead to some lingering corruption.

 

- "EVERY Chapter is searching for knowledge. The Blood Ravens do so because they don't know their origins, the Blood Angels do because the Curse is a threat too great for the survival of the Chapter." - Yes This proves that BR does not have to be TS just for having a similar quote, thank you.

 

 

 

Apart from that, Really I didn't do this thread to defend me playing C:BA, Just pretend I'm playing Vanilla BA and try seeing the point of the thread.

[redfeild32]

try the sanginuor

[Taz]

Come on, fellas. Try to keep things civil. I personally subscribe to the Thousand Sons descendents point of view, but if Eorek wants to use our codex, that's his business. Likewise Eorek, just a reminder that the mods, like the Inquisition, have ears everywhere, and one's already been checking in, so please mind the tone of your posts. Your question will never be answered if your thread gets locked.

[Zealadin]

The mods are pretty strict on this forum, its a shame they don't seem to mind people bashing others choice of codex, despite it being off topic and adding no value to the discussion.

 

All he asked for was advice on his choice of HQ. Not very hard.

 

Astorath looks good on paper with his red thirst modification, but being a dice roll I think the mileage can vary too greatly to be highly worthwhile.

S6 and rerolls on successful invuln saves isn't bad, particularly against some of the units which scare DOA armies, but at the same time those units will normally be able to instant kill him in some manner.

 

Dante can be used for the pinpoint accuracy to drop in a melta unit, its a bit of a gimmick but is a valuable tactical option.

He isn't really a beast, but adds H&R and is basically your all rounder, especially with the curse. Also keep in mind with his death mask your opponents need to take a Ld test or be reduced to WS1 - not hugely reliable, but able to turn a battle around. Good if you take SG particularly.

 

I'd actually suggest Mephy though, you have a SR with a Dread, put him in there. He is a one man wrecking crew used properly. Against the right targets he will eat stuff alive, and if your opponents don't have the resources to take him out, be a real pain for them.

[Quixus]

Not very effective but how about you take a Captain (Gabriel Angelos) and a Librarian (Isador Akios). Or if you rather go for an army after the events of DoWII: Retribution, take Gabriel Seth as Counts as Gabriel Angelos. Since Seth does not have a JP just like Angelos you should probably build a mechanized list around him then.