Blood Angels in 6th Edition

[ElectricPaladin]

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?

[Phototoxin]

I think you need to look at the advantages :

50%+ on the table means that you wont die if only one unit arrives at a time
better reserve rolls from the onset (not 5/4/3/2 anymore)
scattering into terrain doesn't instagib you
saves vs dangeous terrain rolls
everyone elses FNP got nerfed too (except corbulo!)
everyone elses furious charge got nerfed too
Tanks are balanced, not over powered and everyone elses are too.
you get option for hammer of wrath if you don't want that extra D6 assault.

[Wildcard]

- Yeah, and you still get probably most ap1/ap2 shooting to any squad available to any loyalist marine force...

- Terminators and tanks being what they are, you still got a way to punch them hard via shooting before getting up close and personal...

- When you compare to grey knight (no hard feelings from 5th - let the past be past ), those poor souls got no access to meltas, inferno pistols, plasmaguns and plasmapistols, all while leaving them to mostly ap3 weaponry (note i am talking about the superiority of 2+ save and what BA got better to deal with it). Also, assault terminators with 5man TH/SS is way more survivable than 5man DH/SB (Daemonhammer/Stormbolter) GK terminator squad (when trying to max out that ap2 potential).

- Also, with the ability to pre-measure stuff, 2d6 assault range, possible use of beacons / teleport homers etc creates a strong advantage for assaulting straight from the deepstrike. GK got one HQ that will deepstrike on turn 1 and wont scatter, but he has only stormbolter (and ghost knights get only stormbolters) and they cannot assault after ds'ing, thus leaving them out in the open on those daring and up-in-the-enemys-face -raids

- Also, fast rhino / predator chassis is still good, in fact, with vehicles shooting becoming even better in 6th their firepower is even more formidable than before.

- FNP auras still stand, and you can take them always against pretty much everything else than str8+ wounds..

- Was it rage that got buffed that makes death company even more formidable (poor bloodtalon dreads tho)


So in my opinion it doesn't look like you truly got hurted by the coming of 6th.. Ofcourse it will require adaptation and learning of new approaches.. But even so, you are far from out of the game.

And the examples above were just ones i could come up with from my head, so it is possible that there are some mistakes, and most likely there are even more points in codex for those who know it from cover to cover to point out!

[Capt Forsythe]

What do you think about the Sons of Baal in 6th Edition?

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.

Could be I read the rules incorrect here, but I thought an army does not count units which must be reserved towards the total which must be halved to indicate how many units must start on the table. Meaning an army with all drop pods has 0 units that must start on the table.

As far as the no unit on the table at the end of a turn thing...yeah, that's a tough one to swallow.

All in all though, the BA took a pretty good lashing.

[Grovel]

Could be I read the rules incorrect here, but I thought an army does not count units which must be reserved towards the total which must be halved to indicate how many units must start on the table. Meaning an army with all drop pods has 0 units that must start on the table.

As far as the no unit on the table at the end of a turn thing...yeah, that's a tough one to swallow.

All in all though, the BA took a pretty good lashing.

In the drop pod example you gave, the units inside the drop pod aren't forced to deploy in them. Since you would need half the units on the table, all the troops inside the drop pods would have to deploy, and you would then rain down empty drop pods on your opponent.

[Capt Forsythe]

In the drop pod example you gave, the units inside the drop pod aren't forced to deploy in them. Since you would need half the units on the table, all the troops inside the drop pods would have to deploy, and you would then rain down empty drop pods on your opponent.

A unit and its dedicated transport are one unit, units in a drop pod must start in reserves.

Is that different now in 6th?

However the ICs from from HQ slots do not have a dedicated transport, and would thus count towards turn 1 forces on the table, so 2 HQs with 5 pods would means 1 mandatory unit starts on the table?

Page 36 states any passengers in units that must Deep Strike in are not counted towards the reserve numbers.

[JMichael]

A unit and its dedicated transport are one unit, units in a drop pod must start in reserves.

Is that different now in 6th?

A dedicated transport and it's unit are not considered 1 unit (they weren't in 5th either and were considered 2 separate units). A dedicated transport simply does not take up a FOC slot (rulebook p78).

On deploying units it states that you MAY deploy units inside transports if you wish (p121).

[DarkLink]

Actually, it does explicitly state that if you deploy a unit in its dedicated transport, it counts as 1 unit for the purposes of the 50% rule. And that 1 unit, due to the drop pod rules, must start in reserve.

[JMichael]

But you don't HAVE to start the unit deployed in the Drop Pod

[ElectricPaladin]

I believe that the rule is this: units with dedicated drop pod transports can start in their drop pod and do not count as either in reserve or not in reserve. Regarding the 50% rule, they are null. This means that you could potentially start your entire army in reserve if all of them were in drop pods.

However, I'm afraid that this doesn't satisfy me. Drop pods? Anyone can do that. I want to be able to take advantage of the Descent of Angels special rule!