BA Today

[Jolemai]

 

[Jolemai]

 

[Jolemai]

 

[Jolemai]

I may change the format, but this will do now. Go and brainstorm 

 

[Jolemai]

The 12 Month of Hobby event is a way to plan and complete items from your backlog over the course of the year. Each month a favourite completion is chosen, and these go into a "best of the best" competition at the end of the year.

 

This is currently up and running, so have a look and see what you like (there is Blood Angels interest this year and of course, you don't have to vote for my entry!)

 

 

[Jolemai]

 

 

[Karhedron]

Just finished a squad of Reivers for my Blood Angels along with a Lietuenant in Phobos armour to lead them. 3D6" Charge out of Deep Strike with 30 S6 Attacks in LAG should get some work done.

 

[Blindhamster]

they look great!

 

[Karhedron]

Just finished this chap. He is the champion model but is actually going to be used to reinforce my Bladeguard Veterans.

 

[DemonGSides]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Just finished this chap. He is the champion model but is actually going to be used to reinforce my Bladeguard Veterans.

 

 

That's what I did with my copy of this guy.  Glued a shield to his back and added him to the ranks of BGV.

[Jolemai]

 

[Jolemai]

 

[Karhedron]

I have just finished my new Blood Angel Captain. This kit is really lovely and the detail on the muscle armour is excellent. The good thing is that the different arm poses mean you can make at least a couple of quite different looking models from the same kit. This chap is intended to lead a squad of Assault Intercessors with the Blood Fuelled Warrior upgrade.

 

 

[Karhedron]

On 2/27/2025 at 3:30 PM, Karhedron said:

Just finished a squad of Reivers for my Blood Angels along with a Lietuenant in Phobos armour to lead them. 3D6" Charge out of Deep Strike with 30 S6 Attacks in LAG should get some work done.

 

Typical! I haven't even managed to field them yet and GW has just nerfed them! 

 

[Karhedron]

20 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I have just finished my new Blood Angel Captain. This kit is really lovely and the detail on the muscle armour is excellent. The good thing is that the different arm poses mean you can make at least a couple of quite different looking models from the same kit. This chap is intended to lead a squad of Assault Intercessors with the Blood Fuelled Warrior upgrade.

 

I swear I am cursed! Did GW simply look at my mostly recently painted units when deciding where to swing the nerf bat? 

 

[Jolemai]

 

[Jolemai]

 

With the Datasheets from Codex Supplement: Blood Angels complete, the series is now moving back towards the remaining items from Codex: Space Marines.

[Jolemai]

 

[Mostwanted]

With the Space Wolves preview, how does it make you feel about the Blood Angels refresh we had?

For me, I feel their refresh has far surpassed ours. The rumours are that they are also getting another three characters and a dedicated Terminator kit. So that's five characters and four squads.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy for Wolves players/collectors that they are getting such a good release. It just leaves me even more disappointed as to what ours could have been.

 

Since the Wolves were shown I've seen a lot of comments saying we should have had a dedicated Death Company kit. I know we've had Death Company kits going back to 2nd edition but to me, going by the lore, Death Company should just be Blood Angels that have fallen painted black. So I get why they didn't do this (if that was a reason), but I feel, going by what we've just seen, we should have got a dedicated Blood Angels Intersessor and or jump Assault Intersessor kit. That way, even if they were painted to be Death Company, they would look better than what we currently have. It would also give us more flavour if just painted red. I would have loved having more Blood Angels chest peices, icons on the leg armour etc and some better poses like the Wolves have got.

 

The ranges were probably designed around the same time, so I don't get why we only got one squad kit in the Sanguinary Guard. And I feel they were pretty sub standard. I'm working on mine now and not enjoying them. For an elite unit the Wolf Guard Headtakers look brilliant, and so much better than our SanguinaryGuard. It just feels like our update was pretty lazy. Also why no Terminators for us? I just hope that this may be explained by a possible new Space Hulk game, but who knows.

 

Sorry to waffle on and moan, it's just left me feeling disappointed in what we got again and I would like to know how you now feel.

 

To finish on a positive, I felt our characters were largely a hit for me. I absolutely love our Captain and really like Lemartes.

 

 

[Karhedron]

I was disappointed by the BA refresh at the time and this has reinforced it. This shows what we could have had.

 

The only reason that I am not so salty is that I also play Space Wolves so at least I can enjoy the shiny new goodness.

[DemonGSides]

3 hours ago, Mostwanted said:

With the Space Wolves preview, how does it make you feel about the Blood Angels refresh we had?

For me, I feel their refresh has far surpassed ours. The rumours are that they are also getting another three characters and a dedicated Terminator kit. So that's five characters and four squads.

 

I've definitely complained about it but I've already kinda gotten over it because there's literally nothing to be done now.  Our relaese in comparison is prettyo obviously had the least time dedicated to it.  It was anemic by all standards now that we see what SW have and have seen what all the SM alt factions get, besides maybe Grey Knights, and frankly, I don't want to be compared to them as a faction.  That's rough considering the disparity of our backgrounds.

 

3 hours ago, Mostwanted said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy for Wolves players/collectors that they are getting such a good release. It just leaves me even more disappointed as to what ours could have been.

Yeah, I'm jealous not mad that they got what they got.  Literally every kit shown was an absolute banger in almost all ways; obviously SW without being caricatures, which has been a problem with their faction in the past.  It makes our even MORE austerity very sad.

 

3 hours ago, Mostwanted said:

Since the Wolves were shown I've seen a lot of comments saying we should have had a dedicated Death Company kit. I know we've had Death Company kits going back to 2nd edition but to me, going by the lore, Death Company should just be Blood Angels that have fallen painted black. So I get why they didn't do this (if that was a reason), but I feel, going by what we've just seen, we should have got a dedicated Blood Angels Intersessor and or jump Assault Intersessor kit. That way, even if they were painted to be Death Company, they would look better than what we currently have. It would also give us more flavour if just painted red. I would have loved having more Blood Angels chest peices, icons on the leg armour etc and some better poses like the Wolves have got.

 

I think that's a great compromise and basically all I really wanted out of a death company kit; I'd end up sharing bits between them in either case, so it works out.

I think that's part of why I am so jealous of this SW release; the kits are all, so far, GREAT base designs for basically any space marine unit you'd want to run.  Want to run some Hell Blasters but want em more SW oriented?  Grab the grey hunters and replace the arms with the hellblasters arms and bang, you've got a very thematic SW unit without having to do a bunch of extra work.  Even if you like Sanguinary Guard, what other use case do they have?  Maybe a captain?  I'm not running them as Vanguard Vets or JPAI, and the poses and frankly box contents don't really translate well to using for kitbashes.  It's just a bummer compared to what is, even on just the first wave, an absolutely stellar foundation for ANY kind of Space Wolves army you want.  Meanwhile, our release was, quite literally, just normal space marine releases and a mostly meh upgrade sprue.  It's a vast disparity and they haven't even shown their character upgrades that they've said are coming.

 

3 hours ago, Mostwanted said:

The ranges were probably designed around the same time, so I don't get why we only got one squad kit in the Sanguinary Guard. And I feel they were pretty sub standard. I'm working on mine now and not enjoying them. For an elite unit the Wolf Guard Headtakers look brilliant, and so much better than our SanguinaryGuard. It just feels like our update was pretty lazy. Also why no Terminators for us? I just hope that this may be explained by a possible new Space Hulk game, but who knows.

 

Lazy.  They also have some very obvious tiers amongst their design team, or if not tiers, obvious directions THEY want to focus.  SW have always been darlings, so I didn't expect them to get shafted, but the disparity is what's brutal.

 

3 hours ago, Mostwanted said:

 

Sorry to waffle on and moan, it's just left me feeling disappointed in what we got again and I would like to know how you now feel.

 

To finish on a positive, I felt our characters were largely a hit for me. I absolutely love our Captain and really like Lemartes.

 

Lemartes is a miss for me but I think Astorath is really solid, Dante and Mephiston are brilliant (Although technically outside of our range refresh I like it look at the full range hollistically), and the SPriest is only a loss because of a lack of Jump Pack (Which feels so silly and a self goal on GW's part; we're the JP marines.  WHY?), and our captain is cool if a bit of a bland pose for further kitbashing (Which sort of feels intentional?  Which is a bummer.)

 

I am very happy for the SW fans; I mentioned elsewhere that depending on how the sprues look, I may grab a unit of Blood Claws to use as on foot Death Company, as I think they'd look cool mixed in amongst the various armor types I want to have in my on foot death company.  I have been using the old FB DC box bolters as Bolt Pistols and they actually work pretty good and help give a LITTLE more flavor back to the Primaris DC.

Edited March 28 by DemonGSides

[Blindhamster]

I think our characters are great still, with no real exceptions. So no complaints there

 

i actually still like our sanguinary guard after making them BUT should have had a bit more variety, some alternative heads and maybe some different leg designs or torso designs. Both things I’ve fixed myself with mine. I don’t really care about the wings personally, though I do have some alternative winged backpacks (tortuga bay) I was going to experiment with.

 

i don’t even mind our upgrade sprue, it’s a solid upgrade sprue, but, it’s really only useful for death company, the bare heads are a bit too bestial to look good on regular models for the most part, and it could have done with a couple more helmets as @DemonGSides has said in the past

 

but I think we definitely needed another kit at least. Logical option would have been a BA intercessor kit, with a mix of more static and aggressive poses, and a bit of ornamentation to the same level as the wolf kits (a lot less than our old one, but having chalices and blood drops on the wing designs for the chest, some greave and knee details here and there etc)

[DemonGSides]

Yeah just some kit we could use as foundation to other units within our roster would've gone a long way to mollifying a lot of my complaints around what we got.  The SG are just not good and require so much work; I'm happy to do work, but I also like it when a kit stands on it's own feet without NEEDING help.  Any kit can become cool if you work at it enough, but we should aspire to having fun, flavorful kits for our forces, not just be happy to be forgotten.

 

BA Tacticals were a huge hit for many reasons, and being able to be utilized throughout the entire force was one of them.  I'm happy SW got that, but DA and BA deserve it too (BT also already have it, with their Crusader squads and Sword Bretheren both pulling a lot of bits to be disbursed across the other units used from Codex:SM).

Edited March 28 by DemonGSides

[Jolemai]

 

[Blindhamster]

3 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

Yeah just some kit we could use as foundation to other units within our roster would've gone a long way to mollifying a lot of my complaints around what we got.  The SG are just not good and require so much work; I'm happy to do work, but I also like it when a kit stands on it's own feet without NEEDING help.  Any kit can become cool if you work at it enough, but we should aspire to having fun, flavorful kits for our forces, not just be happy to be forgotten.

 

BA Tacticals were a huge hit for many reasons, and being able to be utilized throughout the entire force was one of them.  I'm happy SW got that, but DA and BA deserve it too (BT also already have it, with their Crusader squads and Sword Bretheren both pulling a lot of bits to be disbursed across the other units used from Codex:SM).

 

I still legitimately think the Sanguinary Guard are good at being what they're meant to be, I even think they'd be good for doing sergeants for assault intercessors or captains. As a jump unit, they were never going to have the utility a rank and file style kit could though. (though i do agree that a little more variety in them beyond the bare heads, would be nice)

 

As for BA tacticals, I've (eventually) come around to your thought process on them, for me their bling was a bit more understated than the death company kit and realistically would have been excellent if replicated for intercessors now. Importantly, I think a BA intercessor kit would have had a mix of poses, more like the grey hunters have (so some running, some walking, some stood still). I'd even say they could have had both types of arms even (bolt rifle and BP/CS) in a single box and it would have been fine. In some ways I think the different poses (ideally exemplifying that even our shooty intercessors are more aggressive) would be more important than details, but understated details like a few knee pads, different chest ornamentation and a few heads and backpacks would have gone a LONG way for us.

 

Now... obviously the actual REASON crusader squads, blood claws and grey hunters got kits, where BA and DA didn't get an intercessor kit is because the former are actual distinct units, with distinct options, where for us its "just" appearance, so harder to justify for GW no doubt. But it doesn't change that it kinda sucks and would be nice for us to have a bit more in the way of visual identity.