BLOOD ANGELS: BLOODY MARY, BLOODY MARY, BLOODY MARY, BLOODY MARY...

Ok, here we are at part number 3 of the Blood Angel review.  It feels like the last post too forever to write and my finger are still sore so lets hope that the Heavy Support and their Wargear aren't bogged down with things that will make my list.  On with the show!

Go ahead, think that I keep spelling Baal wrong on accident.

Yeah, the Ball Predator is on my list.  The main reason is it's hefty price tag of 115 points.  For that all you get is twin linked assault cannons and super charged engines.  A regular Predator is 75 points and super charged engines is a 10 point upgrade, that leaves 30 points to upgrade the auto cannon to a twin linked assault cannon.  That is BS, the assault cannon is good, but I can get 3 razor backs that are also transports for the same points as 2 Ball Predators.  Sure they have a lower front armour, but I'm getting 50% more firepower, and if you put any kind of upgrades on the Ball it just makes them more expensive.
All is not lost though as you can upgrade that Assault cannon to a Flamestorm cannon.  Now for those of you who have no clue what that is, I won't hold that against you but to put it in simple terms, that is what the Heldrake is armed with...sort of.  This version doesn't have the torrent special rule, but it does have a 360 deg fire arc cause the damn thing is mounted on a turret, and it has a 13 AV front armour.
If you were wanting to go all out with the assault cannons play Astartes Battle Company.  A mere 20 point cost to upgrade your free Razorback and you can get 10 of them in your army.  Unless your going super-heated promethium spewing tank spear head, I'd stick to the normal predator and leave the Ball Predator to Chris Hansen.  Look it up, it's funny, I swear.

The wargear is largely the same as the Astartes, but as they have their own book they must have some unique weapons, that are terrible enough for me to talk about.

The Frag cannon actually is kind of cool.  Its a template weapon, so it has a limited range, but it is S6 and has Rending.  Oh, and it can only be taken by Dreadnoughts.  I don't know why, I thought it would have been an awesome upgrade to the Heavy bolters on a Razorback, or even a great substitute for losing the Grav-Cannon.  Instead they put it on one of the units that will almost never see the table top.
If you were to take one, it would go well in a drop pod and another flamer template like a heavy flamer.  Give the pod a deathwind launcher and watch as light infantry melt away before your eyes.

Blood talons are largely unimportant, unless you can roll 1's like it's going out of style or face a lot of things that are T9 or 10, as they are a Dreadnought close combat weapon that gives him Sx2 and Shred.  Even the mighty Wraithknight is only T8.  The only creatures that this is likely to come in use against is a Great Unclean one with Iron Arm.

So for those time where you are going to run into a Daemon prince with Iron Arm, or anything S6 or higher, the Furioso Force Halberd can take care of it.  This bad boy is a Sx2 force weapon, and when the guy holding it is a S6 Dreadnought, this means trouble for a lot of models.

Glaives Encarmine, well, we all remember the little rant I had in the last episode.  The weapons themselves are no better than your typical power weapon.  They are the same stats for a sword and axe, but with the combination of the master crafted rule and the 2-handed rule they kind of negate each other.

One of the most useless relics the Blood Angels have to offer is the Crown Angelic.  It's not very expensive, but it gives the wearer Fear, with a -2Ld.  This effect only comes into effect in close combat and it will only be effective against something that you probably aren't scared of in the first place, other wise you probably wouldn't have charged into it.

The last piece of equipment I'm going to talk about is the Fury of Baal, which is a plasma pistol that doesn't get hot and is master crafted.  Except that if it's master crafted, the odds of it getting hot are greatly diminished almost to the point of it not needing to get rid of the rule.  At 25 points, it looks like they have charged you a tax for both removing gets hot and giving it master crafted.  25 points for a plasma pistol is too many points, even with the upgrades.

But there is good news.  I believe that the Blood Angels are not without their strengths.

Lets go back, all the way back to the HQ choices.  A psychic Dreadnought is a crazy powerful thing, especially when nearly all the powers it has access to make it extremely powerful, the Blood Angel primaris power being possibly the greatest power.  True it's only +D3, but it's a guaranteed power.  And with AV13 on the front, a force weapon, and S10, it makes this beast extremely dangerous.  It's true that Psychic powers are a tricky thing to use, and unless you go heavy on them, there is a good chance that your opponent will be able to nullify them.  But there are many strong armies out there that don't rely on, or even have psychic powers, Tau and Necrons coming to mind.

As for the marines, there are a hand full of differences between the Blood Angels codex and the Astartes one that actually benefits them.  First off, the ability for the Assault Marines to get access to a variety of special weapons is immense, and that they can get a drop pod for a straight up swap for their jump packs makes sure they land on target.  3 Melta shots on turn 1 makes for a pretty strong alpha strike vs a clutch vehicle, and for a mere 115 points.
Another weapon change is the Heavy Flamer as a general heavy weapon selection.  This is a swap for the Grav-Cannon, but as the army can get grav elsewhere, the Command and bike squad come to mind, it can be used to great effect.  A unit of Devastators in a drop pod can land and throw down 4 heavy flamer templates for 140 points.  Or you can boost that unit up to combat squad it and have 2 heavy flamers each.  The heavy flamer also comes in handy with the lowly Tactical squad.  115 pts for 2 Objective secure units, one of which is an AV12 vehicle, the other has a heavy flamer.
Speaking of objective secure vehicles, Blood Angles Rhinos and Razorbacks are fast vehicles.  This means that the Razorback and move 12" and still shoot their turret weapon to full effect.  This ability costs 10 points, but it's well worth it.  This can also be bought for Predators and Vindicators, which can ensure they remain mobile while unleashing their payload.
Finally, I feel that I must comment on the Death Company.  These guys can seriously put out some pain, and thanks having FNP built in, they can take some punishment and survive.  A mere 20 pts a model, they can be upgraded to take a variety of weaponry and with their 5 attacks on the charge, they will be able to deal with any type of threat that your opponent may throw at you.

Well, there you have it.  Hopefully you don't feel too bad about having a huge and beautifully painted Blood Angle army that sucks balls.  As you can see, they still have a couple tricks up their sleeve.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

BLOOD ANGLES: SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY

To continue on with my list of crappy Blood angels units, lets move into the Elites section.  Now, again, I am going iterate that most everything in this book is not as good as the same unit in the Astartes Codex, but I'm going to try and focus on the things that are terrible outside the context of that book.  So, lets take a deep breath, clench those butt cheeks and dive right in.

The Command squad is 100 pts for 5 dudes.  That's 20 pts a model because math says so and all they have is chainsword and pistol with the exception of the Champ who had a power sword and combat shield.  You then get the option to take special weapons making the Champ kinda pointless.  No, he's useless, he certainly isn't pointless because he is part of the reason you pay 100 pts for these dudes.  You can't make the unit any bigger than that, and it takes up an Elites slot.  Maybe I'm confused, or perhaps I'm remembering an older edition, but do you remember when these guys didn't take up a slot?  You could simply buy one to accompany one of your HQ choices.  However, you could only buy one if you took a specific HQ, now it seems you can take them willy-nilly.  To be honest, with the upgrades you can give them, you can make them a deepstriking, jump infantry, miniature ball of assaulty AND/OR shooty death.  In that they can deal out death AND die really well.  They also have a medic which gives them FNP, but since he is a character he can be challenged out and killed, after the Champ gets pasted of course, by which time the rest of the unit is probably already dead unless they all have Storm Shields.

I want to talk about Death Company just for a second, not because they are bad, but because the fact that they exist makes the Command squad that much worse.  The Death company have Fearless, FNP, Rage, and Relentless, can be upgraded to be just as deadly in combat, and can have up to 15 models in the unit for the same price per model as the Command squad.  Plus their jump pack are cheaper.

I have no clue what the fuck GW was thinking when they wrote the rules for these guys.  They game them all these neat bits of wargear and special rules, but each one comes with a caveat that fucks them over and they ARE STILL 33 POINTS PER MODEL!!

Let me explain.  They have these cool Stormbolter wrist launcher things that are S4 AP4.  That's cool right?  A little boost from the typical Stormbolter, except they are only 12" range.  FUCKED!

They each have a master-crafted power weapon, except they are 2-handed which means if they buy a pistol upgrade they won't get the extra attack for 2 weapons.  FUCKED!!

They have Artificer armour but no way to even get an invulnerable save.  FUCKED!!

They can BUY the FEAR ability.  FUCKED!!

And then you can pay 25 pts to get a banner that makes them as good as they should have been to start with.  FUCKED!!

The first line of their flavour text reads:"The Sanguinary Guard are the best their Chapter has to offer."  WHY DO THEY HAVE WS 4??????

These guys remind me of an expensive version of Warp Talons.

There is literally nothing about these guys that makes them any more special than any of the other jump pack wearing close combat units in this book, and there are a few to choose from, all of which would be better choices.  The command squad, Death Company, Vanguard Vets, even regular Assault marines who are HALF the price.  I have seen these guys charge into a unit of Daemonettes and LOSE COMBAT!

After all that, I have seen these guys used to decent effect with Dante, a Priest, and a Chaplain in a unit of 10 making a super Deathstar.  The poor bastards still ended up getting shot to death after they killed 2 whole units.  WOW!

Anyway, I'm done with them, onto bigger things...

Dreadnoughts.  I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail as to why Dreadnoughts suck because I mostly covered it in an old post I did on a previous Blog I used to write on called 40Kegger.  You can find that post here:

http://40kegger.blogspot.ca/2014/02/misfits-of-40k-episode-9.html

In that post I talk about regular Dreads, not the multitude of fancy ones that the Blood Angles break out, the Death Company Dread getting an extra attack and Rage for 25 pts more and the Furioso getting an extra WS and 13 FA for 25 pts more.  Both of which are really good for a moderate price increase yet still don't match the Astartes Codex since their basic Dreads can be taken in units of 3 and have 4 attacks base.

Terminators are pretty much the same as always.  40 pts a model for a single wound close combat focused dude who can't sweeping advance.  It's the same issue terminators have always had, they are way too expensive and have very little mobility once they either get out of their transport or deep strike.  I won't drone on as it's not a problem with Blood Angels specifically.  Perhaps I will do a Misfit episode on them some day, but I won't go deep today.

Now I know I said I wasn't going to re-iterate the fact that Furious Charge is inferior to all the other Chapter Tactics that appear in the Codex Astartes, but it makes itself even more apparent with the Sternguard.  These guys are shooting specialists.  With their generous amount of special and heavy weapon selections, and their special bolter ammo, there is no reason these guys should be charging anything.  And yet despite the fact that they have a pointless rule, and their points value suffers for it, they are still very good, giving them 2 heavy flamers and a drop pod will ruin anyones day.

Ok, well that was quite a lot of writing for the Elites section.  Poor Blood Angels.  Lets move on to the Fast Attach choices and hopefully things will get better.

Land Speeders are not very good and it's probably because Attack Bikes are a thing that exists.  Attack bikes are cheaper, more durable, can assault, are just as fast, and can actually benefit from Furious Charge.  They can't get the range of weapons, but all the extra weaponry actually makes the Land Speeder more of a liability when they die.  And they will die.

This is going to be a bit of a twist, instead of me talking about a crappy unit, I am going to mentioned one of the very few units that happens to be better in the Blood Angels Codex than in the Astartes Codex and that's the lowly Assault Marine.  Now you might be asking me what could possibly make these guys better than the Astartes version?  Is it a weird loop hole? A nifty rule?  Nope, it's simply the equipment options.  The Astartes have nothing but flamers and plasma pistols available to them.  The BA Assault marines have the full gambit of special weapons available to them.  Plasma guns, melta guns, fusion pistols.  Except Grav-guns, these guys can get it all, and can become extremely reliable when you can take a 5 man unit with 2 special weapons and a combi weapon on the sarge, then loose the jump pack and get them a drop pod for free.  115 points get you 3 melta shots and a drop pod.

And then we end with Bike units, which are all pretty good.  High T with good weapon options.  Even the scout bikers aren't terrible being able to take cluster mines and not having to worry about WS and BS with hammer of wrath and grenade launchers.  I hope you had a good time reading this, or at least as good a time as can be had listening to a grown ass man bitch about shitty rules for his toys.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

BLOOD ANGELS: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GO...uuhh, sorry.

Oh man these guys look so cool.  They got some real attention from GW this year, getting a new book, a bunch of new models with their fancy 32mm bases, a campaign book with tons of new formations.  So why are they being showcased on this Blog?  Because Codex Astartes came out shortly after and EVERYTHING in it is better than the Blood Angel book.  I thought that only happened to Dark Angels.
So perhaps it's unfair, but I'll most likely be comparing everything in this book with the vastly superior Codex Astartes book.

First up, Army wide rules...there are none.  Well, that's not entirely true.  While the "Special Rules" section only has Combat Squads listed under it (at least on the PDF version I have), everything that has a WS value has Furious Charge.  Now I'll not to reiterate it a thousand times through this review but their lack of an actual decent chapter tactic makes almost everything in this book worse than it's equivalent in the Astartes book.  They also have ATSKNF because...

On to the HQ section and lets start with the very first entry in the book, the Captain.  Which can't upgraded to a Chapter Master which means Orloc and Sentikan can go suck it.  Successor Chapter?  What's that?  Aside from that he's pretty much the same, except his "Chapter Tactic" is Furious Charge instead of something good.

And it looks like he is really the only bad one, and that's simply because he doesn't get the option to become a Chapter Master which doesn't actually make the Captain a bad choice.  I did notice something, holy fuck are there a lot of HQ choices!  There are 12, including characters, 6 non-unique, and all of them are necessary to make a good list.  Simply making Techmarines and Sanguinary Priests and Elites section, or a unit add on that doesn't take up a HQ slot similar to Meks in an Ork army would boost this ENTIRE army.

Tactical Marines are pretty much the same except they loose out on the ever popular Grav-Cannon.  Instead they get to take a Heavy Flamer!  wow.  But lets not look too badly on this swap as it saves us 25 points and can be useful against lots of things that the Grav-Cannon fails against especially when the unit comes out of a drop pod which is sort of the fluff direction the Blood Angels take anyway.  125 points gets you 5 guys in a drop pod with a heavy flamer and a combi-flamer.  Not too bad if your hunting anything with 4+ armour or worse.  Another Meh Factor is that they have Furious Charge, which is an ability that is only useful the turn you charge, yet they don't have the ability to take a close combat weapon.  Seriously?  Lets give a unit combat oriented abilities but not the equipment to really make it effective.

Durrrr

This picture says it all really.  Poor poor Blood Angel scouts.  These guys got the short end of the stick with their Astartes counterpart came out with WS and BS of 4.  What the fuck GW?  That shit is weak.  But perhaps having S5  on the charge Infiltrating, Scouting, close combat weapon wielding  with WS 4 was a little too much for 11 pts a piece.

And with a measly 3 entries of sucktitude, we are done for this episode.  Its a wonder why these guys are getting a Misfit review at all.  Well, I might remind you that they only reason they are really getting one at all is because the Astartes book makes these guys look like chumps.  There are a couple things that differentiate them from the main book that need to be talked about so the review won't be a total "my big brother is better than me" bitch fest.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

BATTLE REPORT: CHAOS VS RAVEN GUARD

I'm back ladies and gents with another battle report.  Once again the night of nerds was held at the awesome nerd hole Reset Ultra Lounge and run by the Plains of War guys.  They have some awesome terrain and a ton of those awesome mats from Frontline Gaming.  They had around 10 tables set up and almost all were being played on.

I played Alex, a guy I have played only once before, who is well known for his amazingly converted Ork army.

Alex's heavily converted Ork army.

This time, I'm lucky enough to play against his new army, Raven Guard.  Which, while not done yet, is going to look really sharp.  I'm not 100% sure what his list was and I missed a handful of special weapons, but it looked like this:

"Fancy Raven Guard" detachment
Chaplain with jump pack
10 Assault marines
5 Scouts, missile launcher
5 Scouts
10 Tac marines drop pod
10 Tac marines drop pod
5 Tac marines drop pod
5 Devestators, 2 grav cannon, 2 multi melta Drop pod
8ish Sternguard, heavy flamer
Storm raven
Dreadnought

15 Kill points

That's 48 MEQ bodies, 38 of them are in drop pods.  His fancy detachment gives him all kinds of re-rolls for pregame things like first turn and table edges and such and he can bring in reserves turn 1 on a 4+  His scouts can also nominate an enemy unit within 9" of them and an ally unit gets ignores cover against the target unit.  Finally, he can add or subtract 1 to the dice roll when rolling for random game length.  I don't think my ragtag Word Bearer's list is up to the task.  I have:

Crimson Slaughter CAD
Dark Apostle, Crozius of the Dark Covenant, Mark of Khorne
Sorcerer, lvl 3, spell familiar, Prophet of the Voices
10 Cultists, autoguns, heavy stubber
20 Cultists, 2 flamers, Mark of Khorne
10 Marine, 2 flamers, power sword, rhino
5 Possessed
5 Raptors, 2 melta guns
5 Warp Talons
Infernal Relic Predator, Plasma destroyer, heavy bolters, havoc launcher
2 Hades autocannon rapier
Vindicator

Daemons AD
Daemon Prince, lvl 3, flight, Nurgle
3 Nurglings

14 Kill points

The mission we played was Purge the Alien with Hammer and Anvil Deployment.  We were pretty evenly matched in the Kill points division, so it would come down to the better list and better player.

Deployment:

Alex won the roll off to deploy and chose for me to deploy first.  I fanned out my army using the marines and cultists to bubble wrap my 2 tanks and the Rapiers.  My Sorcerer and Possessed were front and center and the Warp Talons took up residence in a building on my right and the Prince was next to them.  I then infiltrated my Nurglings in his far back corner where they stayed the whole game and did noting but score me Linebreaker.

Alex deployed his big Assault squad with his Chaplain behind a hill near the middle of the table and infiltrated 1 scout squad 18" away from my front line on my left, and the other in a building in the middle right side of the table.  Everything else went into reserve.

I forgot to take pics of just the deployment, but I got a pic after my first turn which I will describe...NOW

Turn 1:
Most of my army calmly shuffles forward a little, but my Possessed and Prince explode out of the gates like...like...something that...moves really fast all of a sudden.  I hate words.

The Prince goes into flight mode moving right next to the Assault marines and the Possessed became beasts and lined themselves up for a 7" charge into those damn Scouts who got a little too close.
My magic Phase is pretty sweet rolling a 6 and getting 12 dice.  I get off a slew of powers one of which, from the Prince, killed a couple Assault marines.  I also summoned a unit of Daemonettes who spread out to create a speed bump between my Sorcerer and his Chaplain fuelled Assault squad.
My shooting phase was rather un-impressive as there was not a lot for me to shoot at, and not a lot in range of shooting.
In the assault phase I hit and wiped out the scouts, FIRST BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

End of my turn and the table looks like this

The Assault Marines and Chaplain, and my Prince are just out of the shot "north" of the Daemonettes and the sign in the middle of the table.

Alex's first turn he gets a little aggro.  He avoids my left table edge, where the Sorcerer and Possessed are bubble wrapped by Daemonettes and loads up my right flank and because of his fancy ability that allows him to roll for reserves on turn 1, his Stormraven and a 3rd drop pod arrive.

After seeing this happen my asshole puckers up tighter than a snare drum as I prepare for a pounding that I will not soon forget.
Things start off well for Alex as he wrecks the Vindicator and wipes out the Warp Talons with ease.

What Talons?

After this his shooting seems to dry up as he only manages to kill a handful more models, to which I let out a sigh of relief.
The Assault squad and Chaplain had moved toward the Daemonettes and after killing a couple with pistol shots they charge into them and loose combat fairly badly, the high initiative and rending attacks see off 3 marines before they can swing.  The retaliation is rather lack luster thanks to some poor dice on Alex's part and because of Cursed Earth, a power I was able to get off during my turn that boosts their Invul save to 4+.

Turn 2:

It was about this time, as is common for me, that I forgot to keep taking pictures getting too engrossed in the game, so you will mostly have to use your imaginations from here on out.  It was also the time I realised Alex had made a mistake.  He had deployed out of his drop pods too close together, and I took full advantage of this.
My first move was to jump the Raptors, who still had both Meltaguns left, up close to the drop pod.  I was hoping to make it explode and take out a couple Marines as they were all within 4" of the pod.  Then I moved the Prince to right under the Stormraven so he can poison flame breath the large Tack Squad that just deployed from the soon to explode drop pod.  My last movement was to turn my Marines around and move the Cultist down the hill to engage the Marine squad that had orbitally inserted itself into my backyard, they both have flamers.
My Psychic phase was pretty good as I rolled 5 dice this time.  The Prince once again killed a bunch of marines with his AP3 poison breath weapon, one day I'll figure out what it's called, I also cast Endurance on the Cultists as they plan on charging the invaders, and Alex stops Cursed Earth.
My combined shooting reduces both of the Tac squads to 2 men each, an exploded drop pod and a lost hull point on the Stormraven.
In the assault phase I got the Possessed and Sorcerer into the Assault marines and between them and the Daemonettes they erased the last of them leaving just the Chaplain.

Alex's turn starts by the Stormraven disgorging it's bowels and dropping a deuce of a Dreadnought and a spray of Sternguard.  It goes into hover mode to pull this off however, making it vulnerable to my gun later.
His shooting phase is quite potent as he wipes the last of the Raptors, kills a handful from my Marine squad, and kills one of the Marines on the artillery.  He also uses one of his sneaky Raven Guard and manages to get a Scout squad within range to use their ignore cover ability.  They use this in conjunction with the Sternguard using their wound on 2+ rounds and kill the shit out of the Prince, or should I say the Daemon formerly known as Prince.

Finally in his assault phase this happens...

See what I did there?  His Chaplain died.  Get it?

Turn 3+:

The rest of the game kind of plays itself.  I've done quite a number on Alex's army as he only has a couple Marines left, the Scouts, and the Stormraven (which dies turn 5).
A couple interesting things to note; I finally get the Cultists in to the Marines on turn 3 and with 4 attacks each, with Hatred re-rolls, these guys will put the smack down.  One of those Cultists manage to survive right up to the last turn when Alex's Deathwind launcher on the drop pod in my deployment zone, which has gone unmentioned thus far due to it's abysmal display of effectiveness, shoots at said Cultist and scatters just far enough to hit the last Chaos Marine of that unit and kill them both.

However even with that fantastic display of marksmanship the Chaos manage to run away with this game 14-9.  I score Linebreaker, First Blood, and Slay the Warlord, and that damn sniper drop pod scores Linebreaker for Alex.

Tactics:

Alex made some target priority mistakes, I think, when he decided to charge the Daemonettes with the Assault squad.  Moving that squad to that side of the table while putting the rest of his army on the opposite side gave the Assault squad no support.
Also, considering the Plasma Destroyer he should have deployed a little more spread out.  This would have prevented it from killing 15 Marines.

Alex is a great guy and I look forward to seeing him across the table from me again.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.