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What makes Blood Angels tick


Frater Cornelius

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Greetings. I admit, that I have not played BA since their release and I kind of lost track on what it is like. I bow my head before those who stick to their Chapter and humbly ask how the BA faction has developed? What strategies are there? Which ones are successful? Do people run Jump Packs? Dreads? Please let me know.

 

Cheers :)

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I'd say the most defining characteristic of how BA have developed is the variety of units they have available to them now. I remember when I started playing in 3rd edition, we just had unique characters, DC and Furioso Dreadnoughts.

 

Now we have a bunch of unique units like Sanguinary Guard, Librarian Furioso Dreadnoughts, Death Company that you can pay points for (where back in 3rd you had to roll for each squad), unique wargear and warlord traits, their own psychic powers, The Red Thirst, fast vehicles, etc.

 

Blood Angels now feel as unique and their fluff made them sound since 3rd edition and it makes me pretty happy :D

Oh yes, it sure is. They're just so good together. It's like they're high school sweethearts who broke up before University and now they're back together and we're all invited to the wedding.

They're work well because they offer what each other lacks. Dante is an utter beast, but he is but one man, while the Guard are a host, but they lack survivability and a real knock-out punch. Str5/6 on the charge is good, but Encarmine Swords and Axes don't really offer much outside of reliability, and 2+ saves are good until you take a large handful of wounds all at once (or some AP2). Dante tanks like a champ with a 4++ and EW.

Plus, he comes with a death mask stock, so that's another 5-10 pts you can save!

Oh, they die like chumps to Grav and Plasma. Melta, too. Nothing you can't hide behind a wall from, of course, but it IS something to keep in mind.

An attached Priest can help with the first two, as a FNP puts them roughly on the same survivability against Grav and Plas as tactical Termies. And if they're throwing Str8+ AP1/2 at them, then at least they're not shooting at your vehicles.

Dante is also useful here, as I mentioned earlier, as he can hope to tank the occasional AP1/2 wound on his Eternal Warrior Iron Halo. He won't get FNP from an attached Priest on Str8+, but see the aforementioned "not shooting your vehicles", and he's not going to pop from Instant Death.

Yeah, the lack of invulnerable is what puts me off the nipple brigade. Always tempted to ally in a shield eternal chapter master to help tank, with IH tactics for a 4+ FNP too against the Plas/grav. Making the most of GWs lack of giving us "chapter tactics".

 

Of course you could always get lucky on Sanguinary and get the 5++ power. Really a Librarian with that dicipline does wonders for this unit. Probably the closest thing to a death star we have!

 

As for armour, vanilla and dangles can keep thier squadrons (except whirlwinds, but we can get that with suppression force) were faster and more useful. Plus the Baal is hilarious. Run two and a Redeemer then watch as your opponent loses it making sure not a single flamestorm cannon reaches his lines intact.

Whenever sanguinary guard come up I like to point out I was running them consistently last codex when they where not amazing.

 

Always give them Dante and a priest. Be careful if you deep strike them. NEVER forget your chapter banner

Tripling, if you've combat squaded them. Combat squads are the exception to the 'Can't have two different units in the same transport' rule, which means you can have two squads hop out of the Rhino (different times, or the same time, either is fine) and go after three objectives.

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