Blood Angels in 6th Edition
What do you think about the Sons of Baal in 6th Edition?
I've got to say, I think it looks pretty grim. In five major ways, 6th Edition has cut the legs out from under the Blood Angels.
1) 6th Edition has made Deep Strike more dangerous through the introduction of the Interceptor USR. Although there aren't a lot of Interceptors out there, I think we will see a lot more of them in the near future, especially as adding the Interceptor rule is how you make a model with Skyfire able to shoot at models on the ground without penalty. I predict that every faction will get at least one Interceptor + Skyfire model (Space Marine Whirlwind is one, and I predict that Tyranid Pyrovore will work the same way, if it is in fact being re-imagined as an anti-aircraft weapon).
2) 6th Edition has made Deep Strike less flexible. Now that half your army has to start in play, and losing every model on the table is the same as being tabled, even if you have models in reserves, it's no longer possible to dynamically deploy your army based on your opponent's deployment and early maneuvers. This is a huge hit.
3) I don't think vehicles are now completely useless, but the fact that they are a lot more fragile seriously hurts the fast-rhino-chassis family of strategies. Vehicular fragility is a mixed bane, since it does - theoretically - make it easier for us to tear transports open to eat the delicious targets inside.
4) Overwatch isn't enormously reliable, but it can put a dent in you, especially with flame template weapons. This is bad for assault armies, which many Blood Angels strategies are. Of course, this makes creating a flamer-heavy drop squad and deploying it up an enemy's nose potentially a fun strategy. However, unlike the Space Wolves we are not a counter-punch army - we lack Counter-Attack - which makes this strategy iffy at best in terms of actual effectiveness.
5) The changes to Furious Charge make it harder for Blood Angels to get that first blow in. Since we don't actually hit harder than any other power armor army, that extra point of Initiative was key. Now that we don't have it any more, we're going to lose a lot of combats we used to win.
Where does this leave us?
I don't think the prognosis is good. We're still a marine army, and we can still do a lot of marine tricks. We can still field impressive and adaptable gunlines - the changes to rapid fire weapons makes this an attractive option - we still have some cool vehicles, and we have one of the best flyers out there, albeit also one of the most expensive. We have land raiders, which are still reasonably hard to kill. The changes to power weapons make both terminators and sanguinary guard more attractive.
However, I think that most of what makes Blood Angels unique - not competitive, but unique, interesting, and worth playing as more than just red space marines - has been nerfed. We can't drop our entire army out of the sky. We can't rush forward with unusually fast vehicles, at least not if we expect to win. We can't unexpectedly win combats by virtue of striking first.
In that context, what can we do?
We can play a standard marines army that's a little harder to kill thanks to Feel No Pain, has access to a couple of unusually powerful assault units like death company and sanguinary guard.
That's not really something I'm interested in. It increasingly looks to me like I'll be leaving my Blood Angels on the shelf, alongside my Tau, until their codex gets updated. Fortunately, I have a new marines army that I'm perfectly happy to play as a standard marines army, since that's what I always planned for them to be.
Anyway, I opened this thread to start a conversation, not to *****. Actually, as far as nerfing goes, the Blood Angels are still miles ahead of my poor, poor Tau; I think many Blood Angels players won't be bothered nearly as much as I am by to playing Blood Angels as red marines. What do you think about the situation of the Blood Angels in 6th edition?