Well, it's been a bit since my last Blood Angel 'article', but don't think I haven't been thinking about them or making lists- tomorrow I even plan on playing my first game with them. It'll be a 'team game' in which I play alongside Salamanders, and with friends, so I'm not really concerned with making my list super duper competitive, though I will try to do what I can. Mostly, I want to see what sort of synergy I can get out of my troops. But, that's not really what I want to talk about today.
Today I want to talk about random ideas, and about what direction I see my Blood Angels heading. I have specific goals that I never really accomplished with the new PDF that I want to make sure I do this time. So, this post is going to be more about random thoughts I'm having on Blood Angels in general.
Here's a few goals I want to accomplish with my 'new' army:
1) Be the bane of Imperial Guard. I want to create an army that when a Mech Imperial Guard player looks across the table and see's what I took, he shudders a little bit. I absolutely loathe what Imperial Guard have done to the local Tournament scene- it's not really a fun list to play against at all, with SO MUCH cheap armor, and when you get it open (which is an enormous pain), chances are there are like 3 or 4 melta guns still alive to kill your face with later. Not to mention, if you can beat guard, you can win a major tournament. If you can't beat guard, you can't win one. Simple as that.
2) Stop fearing Eldar. I remember back when I played PDF Blood Angels, and I would pray to the heavens that I wouldn't have to play a Mech Wave Serpent army. It never really was a super competitive army (generally speaking, though some generals can do rather well with it), and hardly anyone played it, so it worked out well with me, but I don't want to hold my breath every pairing in a tournament, hoping I don't have to play against that list. So, I need things that will reliably-ish kill wave serpents, and even kill falcons.
3) Have a way to win Capture and Control without relying on my Rhinos to 'get me there'. At BoLScon last year, I remember hating capture and control, because my only way there was through a big pile of bodies, and it was tough to get there to contest, even if we had a 7-turn game. If you can't win Capture and Control reliably, you can't win a major tournament. This means I need either really good deepstrikers, or outflankers. Fast rhinos aren't going to cut it.
4) Still be able to out-assault most armies. My PDF Blood Angels did assault really really well- I never really played a game against an all-assault army that I didn't like my chances of (besides genestealer cults, but nobody really brought those). The new Blood Angels will handle a little differently. Instead of being able to reliably hit and wound most things like they used to be able to with 'high quality' hits, their hit percentage will go down considerably. This means that either I need to find a super-efficient way to deal mass wounds again, or add more attacks.
You see- with a 5-man tactical squad in the PDF, I remember once destroying a battlewagon with their one melta, then charging the 20-boy shoota squad inside and wiping them out. You could do crazy stuff like that with Preferred Enemy, and it wasn't really very uncommon. Now a single combat tactical squad will have virtually no shot at something like that. Or even a five-man assault squad w/ a melta. Librarians can give that, but it's not as perfectly reliable as the last Codex.
So, you'll see me trying volume of attacks and seeing if it works (probably won't, I mean, a 10-man assault squad hits 13 times, wounds ~8 times, and kills somewhere close to 3 marines, or 7 orks (and then the fist kills 1 or 2, maybe). And then I'll continue on and probably eventually lose to some kind of devastating counter-assault and I'll be out 250 points. (by the math, with preferred enemy, a 5-man assault squad in the PDF with FC and Preferred Enemy would kill 3-5 marines, and about 6 or 7 orks, roughly the same output for way less).
What I think I'll end up doing is having a few really strong fighting squads, that (kind of) get rerolls. Either honor guards with power weapons/ Librarian, death company in rhinos w/ lemartes, or Sanguinary Guard w/ master crafted, all should get some sort of reroll. I just don't know how effective it'll be. I guess we'll see.
Some random thoughts on killing hated Imperial Guard:
Vanguard Veterans rock, if you put melta bombs on them, they might potentially kill lines of tanks. I'm guessing it won't work out that well though, what with having to get everyone in B2B before multi-charging. Still, they might be useful for taking out random squads in the backfield like gretchin holding objectives, or heavy weapons teams. Killing troops off of objectives can really change the dynamics of a game.
Dante w/ a squad who has meltas. This could really work out to your benefit, since he doesn't scatter when he deepstrikes. It's expensive, but if you do it in the right situation, it could really really rock. Kill that one executioner and you might be homefree.
2-Melta assault squads might be money with rhinos- move 12" then shoot meltas? Yes, please. We'll see if that pans out either though.
Alright, I'm done with typing for tonight, I'll post a while later with thoughts on my first game with my 'Swords of the Prophet' (my own heretical Blood Angels chapter). Tell me what you think of my ideas!
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