Dark Angels - Just me, or a bit of a mess?

[Yodhrin]

I've been having ideas for new projects at quite a pace recently(gotta keep new stuff coming in so I have an excuse to procrastinate on finishing the old stuff :P ) and a Dark and Angely one seemed just the ticket - I like their basic backstory, I like their Legion colourscheme, I'm even one of the weirdos who liked the Caliban-focused sections of their HH novels, sorted. Except they seem...a bit confused.

 

In terms of fluff, it seems like the writers can't seem to quite make up their minds what the structure is? Like, in the novels there are numbered Orders in the same way as numbered Chapters, which implies they're just part of the standard Legion structure, but then the Crusade background section is adamant that it's Chapters & Companies for regular structure, and Orders are a separate thing entirely with fancy names...until you hit the special character section, which has multiple examples of "X of the [Number] Order". Am I missing something that reconciles it all, or is this just an example of the legendarily poor editing of the later BBs and they forgot to "fix" references to numbered Orders after deciding to make them warrior lodge-equivalents?

 

Their rules seem downright depressing though. The special units are an extremely mixed bag to my eye, with all except the Cenobium Knights being a sidegrade or kinda worse than alternatives, while the Knights seem like such a no-brainer upgrade over regular Terminators you'd be actively gimping yourself if you chose to take the latter. Most of the thematic "upgrades" seem expensive for what you get or outright pointless and seem to exist solely so they don't seem like a straight-up tax for the Rites of War despite evidently being that, and most of those seem like more of a burden than a benefit. I look at their rules and don't really see a reason to use 90% of them, for my ZM force I'd be better mostly sticking with the stock Legion list and mostly basic wargear & options. Again, am I missing something or are they really just that wonky?

[Robbienw]

There are two type of Orders in the Dark Angels legion. They could have made it a bit clearer in book 9, but it’s a bit clearer when taking BL DA literature into account.

 

The numbered Orders are a legion formation organisation type, larger than companies and chapters, a collection of several chapters. IIRC, orders were around 5000 marines, so 5 chapters per order.

 

The named Orders (Order of Santiles, Order of the Empty Sky, etc) are the specialised orders that some Dark Angels are part of, outside of unit and wing, that deal with specialist expertise in fighting certain enemies or in types of warfare. The Cenobium units are drawn from these.

[Dagoth Ur]

It's not just you, the rules portion is being discussed every so often online. Having wanted to do Dark Angels ever since the Horus Heresy game started, I am extremely disappointed by the given rules. So disappointed that it has actively soured my desire to work on any of my DA wips.

 

Note: people will bring up the Knights Cenobium, Stasis Grenades and Interemptors as great units and that we should be happy we got so many RoW and "fluffy" rules. What these people miss is that the vast majority of these rules is utter garbage and actively hinders a lot of enjoyment. The Scions rules are, for the most part, vastly overcosted and largely confusing. Scion of the Firewing is the only one worth the pricetag really. Scion of the Deathwing is just a far inferior Scion of the Firewing, there is *never* a situation where you'd take SoD over SoF - particularly when you consider that SoD's effect is not conferred to the rest of the unit. Scion of the Stormwing is only marginally useful to a few heavy support options and even then not worth the price. Scion of the Ironwing is again too expensive. Scion of the Dreadwing is....okay? But when I hear Dreadwing, moving through difficult terrain at a naff auto-4 inches *really* isn't what I had in mind. Scion of the Ravenwing isn't bad per se, its effects are decent if overpriced, but weirdly enough benefit things you'd expect to see in the Ravenwing (any sort of bikes) the least.

 

With that said, these scion rules pose an *incredible* price tax (a minimum of 75p) for all of our modern Rites of War, which, for the most part are bad. Like, really bad. The Firewing RoW is, and I will admit this, heaps of fun to play - I wish the Alpha Legion's Headhunter Leviathal was more like that, even if the Auto-lose condition is a bit too rough imho. The Ironwing RoW is...okay but vastly inferior to the Ironwing Protocol that we had in both playability and flavour (its what I still use to represent my Dreadwing and Ironwing on the table). Similar with the Ravenwing protocol, its just not really all that interesting and reminiscent of what I imagine the Ravenwing to be like when compared to the older Ravenwing Protocol. The Stormwing rite of war is so cool in concept, but in practice is an absolute chore to build, unwieldy to transport and vastly underpowered even with the stealth FaQ. The Dreadwing RoW is...okay? Considering however that all your infantry will kinda need to have the Scion of the Dreadwing rule, you really can't justify dipping into the Dreadwing armoury at any rate as you'll be spending ~150-200p on SoD alone. It's also strange how the rules really don't synergize with Marduk Sedras - a dreadwing character. The Deathwing RoW is probably the one reason why I refuse to accept that DA rules were playtested at all. I cannot imagine that people sat down, wrote armies with this, played even a single game with them and then said "This is fine, this is good". To me it is the single worst RoW in the game.

 

The Hekatonystika rules are okay, for the most part. Not really a whole lot to complain there.

 

Our characters are a very mixed bag. Holguin and Corswain are great, but Marduk Sedras' failure to gel with the Dreadwing RoW and Farith Redloss' very...confusing rules leave me very bitter as a Dreadwing player. The Lion is okay, he does very well in melee and I like a lot of his rules, but I was maybe expecting them to play up his whole masterful tactician bit - kinda like how they did for Skorr, Fulgrim, Alpharius and Guilliman.

 

Our Legiones Astartes rule is, frankly, garbage and yet so close to being actually workable. The problem is that its useless to the vast majority of your dedicated melee units by sheer virtue of the hegemony that powerfists and chainfists hold. Locally, we've changed it in such a way that it applies to all melee weapons - not just swords - and that's made playing DA a lot more fun. Besides, everyone who knows their knights knows that they were skilled with a lot more than just swords.

 

Now, Stasis Grenades. They are good, and I mean really good. They are our great equalizer in melee and we *need* to rely on them to get that little edge. The problem, I find as a DA player, is that they're both too good and not fun to play against. They need rebalancing or a full on rewrite, but only if the vastness of issues is addressed too.

 

Knights Cenobium are great, no quarrel there. Interemptors are very decent, but no access to Rhinos really hurts them in the Dreadwing RoW since they get super expensive. Deathwing Companions are also great. The Excindio I love, love, love but it is kind of an inferior, overcosted Leviathan really, even if I still regularly use mine. The Enigmatus Cabal is a strange one. On the one side, I like the concept and they do great for infantry blenders, on the other side the inflexible squad size and the lack of reliable access to AP2 means that they both fold quickly and kinda dont really work as character assassins - which is what they're presented as in the lore. It is definitely in the unit department where we shine, that much I'll say.

 

All in all, I would recommend to anyone to pick up Dark Angels. Even in an environment where fluff and theme is king, I find their rules to actively work against any such notion. As I said, I don't enjoy building DA lists and I rarely enjoy fielding them either.

[Noserenda]

I do think the Dark Angels organisation is deliberately confusing as a feature, especially regarding the more secretive parts of it :)

 

I can certainly understand being upset by legion rules, can't say I've looked too deeply into the DA but I did consider them after the poor BA became a flanderised mess and it seemed awkward.

[WrathOfTheLion]

Our Legiones Astartes rule is, frankly, garbage and yet so close to being actually workable. The problem is that its useless to the vast majority of your dedicated melee units by sheer virtue of the hegemony that powerfists and chainfists hold. Locally, we've changed it in such a way that it applies to all melee weapons - not just swords - and that's made playing DA a lot more fun. Besides, everyone who knows their knights knows that they were skilled with a lot more than just swords.

I like the idea of the Legion rule, that we should favor swords, but I wish then we got more wargear perhaps to replace the need for a powerfist or chainfist. I wholly understand that they want DA to favor sword weapons vs non-sword, but I think it needs to be reevaluated. It's also phrased extremely odd, where it wasn't immediately obvious whether unique swords counted, although it was obviously their intention.

[Yodhrin]

There are two type of Orders in the Dark Angels legion. They could have made it a bit clearer in book 9, but it’s a bit clearer when taking BL DA literature into account.

 

The numbered Orders are a legion formation organisation type, larger than companies and chapters, a collection of several chapters. IIRC, orders were around 5000 marines, so 5 chapters per order.

 

The named Orders (Order of Santiles, Order of the Empty Sky, etc) are the specialised orders that some Dark Angels are part of, outside of unit and wing, that deal with specialist expertise in fighting certain enemies or in types of warfare. The Cenobium units are drawn from these.

Good to know, time to amend my Groghammer 40,000 headcanon fluff file to fix this nonsense.

 

I think I'll keep Companies > Chapters > Orders, and rename the specialist ones...hmm, "Chambers" has an appropriate ring to it. That literally took about twelve seconds, I sometimes wonder how GW still functions when they can't manage such trivial efforts to avoid confusion.

 

And it's nice to see I'm not being too unreasonable in my assessment of the rules. Seems like there are a couple of fan efforts to rewrite it all that don't seem too over the top, I'll probably have a look at basing my force on one of those.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Yodhrin

[Dagoth Ur]

 

Our Legiones Astartes rule is, frankly, garbage and yet so close to being actually workable. The problem is that its useless to the vast majority of your dedicated melee units by sheer virtue of the hegemony that powerfists and chainfists hold. Locally, we've changed it in such a way that it applies to all melee weapons - not just swords - and that's made playing DA a lot more fun. Besides, everyone who knows their knights knows that they were skilled with a lot more than just swords.

I like the idea of the Legion rule, that we should favor swords, but I wish then we got more wargear perhaps to replace the need for a powerfist or chainfist. I wholly understand that they want DA to favor sword weapons vs non-sword, but I think it needs to be reevaluated. It's also phrased extremely odd, where it wasn't immediately obvious whether unique swords counted, although it was obviously their intention.

 

The problem for me is that, as the game currently stands, it's very much a non-rule for CC-oriented units. Nobody is taking legion terminators armed with just powerswords. Cenobium with Thunderhammers lose out on their one Legion Rule. Farith Redloss effectively has no LA. Corswain had to have his access to the LA patched in. Sure, it applies to despoilers, assault squads, destroyers and whatever else combat blade/chainsword toting unit you have - works well if you're not attacking legion elites or weaponmaster veterans, but even then it doesn't apply to the hard-hitting weapons you usually hide in Assault Squads (Power Axes/Fists) or requires more upgrades to be actually valuable (Veterans with Powerswords). Tactical Squads and Destroyers are definitely the big winners here; the former because you can have massive squads that suddenly do become scary, and the latter because of Rad Grenades. The rest is just eh. I guess this is why I run primarily the Ironwing Protocol, the various shooting and dreadnought bonuses actually feel meaningful in a lot of situations. It's not ideal, but sure as hell beats the other options. I essentially circumvent the naff melee LA for a more shooty list.

 

The other issue is that, when compared to other melee-oriented legions (primarily talking about Blood Angels, World Eaters and Night Lords here), it just has such a niche application. First, you need to have equal WS to the enemy you are facing. Then, you also need to be armed with a sword of some variety. On the other hand BA and WE pretty much just get very potent buffs handed that apply to most things with melee capacity, and NL get an extremely powerful buff if they are outnumbering an enemy (which really isn't an issue considering their ability to spam jumppacks, bikes, terminators and volkite weapons). The problem with offering sword-alternatives to PF and CF, as I discovered during homebrewing, is that it essentially comes down to the sweet-spot that is AP2. You really kinda need it to crack deathstars. So what are your options then? An at-initative AP2 weapon with no strength buff? Eh, that's just stealing from White Scars and is bound to be so prohibitively expensive that it just wont work on a squad basis. How about an AP2 sword that strikes at Initiative 1 then? Well, that's just kind of a very poor powerfist/poweraxe and would necessarily have to be dirt cheap, while also feeling mechanically weird. You could maybe have swords that are AP2 on the charge and AP3 otherwise - but that just feels like a reskin of power spears. It just seems the simplest to me to keep the requirement of matching WS for the bonus to apply, and then remove the sword-requirement. It's the least amount of hassle and makes sense considering the wide armoury a knight would have at their disposal (swords, maces, axes, halberds etc were all widely used by both actual knights and knights in medieval literature), plus it also helps Dark Angels firmly occupy their niche in the gamut of melee legions (Blood Angels who strike hard, World Eaters who dish out lots of hits, Night Lords who gang up and exploit numbers, and thus Dark Angels who strike with technical mastery). If we really ought to *just* favour swords, then swords need to be less gak.

[Yodhrin]

I do think the Dark Angels organisation is deliberately confusing as a feature, especially regarding the more secretive parts of it

 

Ehh, I prefer to think of the confusion as being outsiders' bafflement at sometimes seeing high ranking officers deferring to random line legionaries or sergeants, or watching the invocation of a Protocol and seeing the whole character and command structure of the army shift around, with the internal obfuscation coming from the whole Spiral/Circles/Voted Successor system. Having two different but very similar linguistically uses of "Order" just calls up conversations that to me sound a little bit comedic in a Pratchett-/Python-esque way; "No not *that* order Brother, the other one - no no, the other other one, you know the one with the thing".

 

As to the sword thing - I can see where they got the idea from. Arthurian myth pretty thoroughly cemented the "knight = sword" idea in people's minds despite the realities of history, and the OG Order on Caliban revolved around them exclusively thanks to their having the ability to produce shoddy chainswords, but yeah it's a pain in the backside mechanically and thematically limiting.

[Trixie]

The units are pretty damn good but all very pricey, the wargear is sick (stasis nades, greatswords, all the unique plasma). Sadly this is where it ends, as the rows are a mess, the 2 orders of upgrades are a mess and very expensive and the legion rule is often unusuable.

 

I still would love a full Firewing army to run as the Serpent's Bane row though. The mix of fluff/scheme/row style is just so damn cool.

 

Stupid sexy Firewing.

[Cris R]

Being a Blood Angels and Dark Angels player, I think Malevolence gave previews to the quality control issues that undermine Dark Angels’ Rites and rules. First, there’s the mess that are Crimson Paladins and the Day of Sorrow RoW, which have rules that clearly needed more play testing and refinement. Judiciar Aster Crohne grants benefits to the Angel’s Tears but doesn’t have a jump pack to actually work well with that unit. And on the White Scars’ aide, Ebon Keshig not getting a DT really is head scratching for a unit that needs one to hang with the rest of the legion. That said, both legions still have rules, rites, and useful units and weapons that make them fun to play with. The Dark Angels rules and rites took these individual problems and expanded them, which raises questions why they came out half-baked like this.

[Gorgoff]

 

 

 

 

Our Legiones Astartes rule is, frankly, garbage and yet so close to being actually workable. The problem is that its useless to the vast majority of your dedicated melee units by sheer virtue of the hegemony that powerfists and chainfists hold. Locally, we've changed it in such a way that it applies to all melee weapons - not just swords - and that's made playing DA a lot more fun. Besides, everyone who knows their knights knows that they were skilled with a lot more than just swords.

I like the idea of the Legion rule, that we should favor swords, but I wish then we got more wargear perhaps to replace the need for a powerfist or chainfist. I wholly understand that they want DA to favor sword weapons vs non-sword, but I think it needs to be reevaluated. It's also phrased extremely odd, where it wasn't immediately obvious whether unique swords counted, although it was obviously their intention.

The problem for me is that, as the game currently stands, it's very much a non-rule for CC-oriented units. Nobody is taking legion terminators armed with just powerswords. Cenobium with Thunderhammers lose out on their one Legion Rule. Farith Redloss effectively has no LA. Corswain had to have his access to the LA patched in. Sure, it applies to despoilers, assault squads, destroyers and whatever else combat blade/chainsword toting unit you have - works well if you're not attacking legion elites or weaponmaster veterans, but even then it doesn't apply to the hard-hitting weapons you usually hide in Assault Squads (Power Axes/Fists) or requires more upgrades to be actually valuable (Veterans with Powerswords). Tactical Squads and Destroyers are definitely the big winners here; the former because you can have massive squads that suddenly do become scary, and the latter because of Rad Grenades. The rest is just eh. I guess this is why I run primarily the Ironwing Protocol, the various shooting and dreadnought bonuses actually feel meaningful in a lot of situations. It's not ideal, but sure as hell beats the other options. I essentially circumvent the naff melee LA for a more shooty list.

 

The other issue is that, when compared to other melee-oriented legions (primarily talking about Blood Angels, World Eaters and Night Lords here), it just has such a niche application. First, you need to have equal WS to the enemy you are facing. Then, you also need to be armed with a sword of some variety. On the other hand BA and WE pretty much just get very potent buffs handed that apply to most things with melee capacity, and NL get an extremely powerful buff if they are outnumbering an enemy (which really isn't an issue considering their ability to spam jumppacks, bikes, terminators and volkite weapons). The problem with offering sword-alternatives to PF and CF, as I discovered during homebrewing, is that it essentially comes down to the sweet-spot that is AP2. You really kinda need it to crack deathstars. So what are your options then? An at-initative AP2 weapon with no strength buff? Eh, that's just stealing from White Scars and is bound to be so prohibitively expensive that it just wont work on a squad basis. How about an AP2 sword that strikes at Initiative 1 then? Well, that's just kind of a very poor powerfist/poweraxe and would necessarily have to be dirt cheap, while also feeling mechanically weird. You could maybe have swords that are AP2 on the charge and AP3 otherwise - but that just feels like a reskin of power spears. It just seems the simplest to me to keep the requirement of matching WS for the bonus to apply, and then remove the sword-requirement. It's the least amount of hassle and makes sense considering the wide armoury a knight would have at their disposal (swords, maces, axes, halberds etc were all widely used by both actual knights and knights in medieval literature), plus it also helps Dark Angels firmly occupy their niche in the gamut of melee legions (Blood Angels who strike hard, World Eaters who dish out lots of hits, Night Lords who gang up and exploit numbers, and thus Dark Angels who strike with technical mastery). If we really ought to *just* favour swords, then swords need to be less gak.

They should just straight get +1 to hit with swords to a maximum of 2+.

[Gattopardo]

The units are pretty damn good but all very pricey, the wargear is sick (stasis nades, greatswords, all the unique plasma). Sadly this is where it ends, as the rows are a mess, the 2 orders of upgrades are a mess and very expensive and the legion rule is often unusuable.

I still would love a full Firewing army to run as the Serpent's Bane row though. The mix of fluff/scheme/row style is just so damn cool.

Stupid sexy Firewing.

I largely agree with this, although I think the Rites of War aren't all bad. The Unbroken Vow is hilariously bad and just never something you'll want to use, even in a purely narrative game, as it's just so so awful. The rest are all at least workable though, even if some are stronger than others and / or don't work best in the way that (I presume) the designers envisaged.

 

For example, the Seeker's Arrow (which I do think is a viable Rite in normal games) is actually a very interesting option in ZM as it hands out movement bonuses to infantry that are very very useful in that setting, as well as reserves bonuses which again will be very helpful. I'm not sure this was intended by the designers though!

 

Again, as another example, the Steel Fist looks kinda underwhelming compared to Armoured Breakthrough and Ironwing Protocol, but it does allow you to take Predator Executioners as troops. So you could have quite a few of them and then take more firepower in your Heavy Support slots. Could be pretty brutal to be honest and is something I'm quite keen to try.

 

Then there are other combinations that are at least worth thinking about. For example, attaching a Scion of the Stormwing to a large unit of plasma Outriders - probably an apothecary, though you could give it to a squad sergeant - this means you'll be shooting at BS5 even when you've jinked, which is pretty major. You can actually expect that you'll hit with over half of your shots between the BS5 and twin linked. So you still have a lot of firepower after jinking. A Stormwing apothecary (or other character) is also a good option to attach to a unit with plasma burners to make for really nasty overwatch. No doubt there are other examples of this kind of thing.

 

So in short - while its true that the rules are complicated and a mess in places - they are far from universally bad.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Gattopardo