Liturgies of Blood: It's a Bird, It's a Plane... Nope, It's a Bad Idea

Today’s chosen topic will be deep striking land raiders. Currently this option only exists for the deep-strike heavy Blood Angels, but that isn’t why we are looking at this today. Nope, for today we are going to discuss the retardation inherent in the very idea.
The first time you hear about deep striking land raiders is likely something along the lines of “That’s cool” (if you play space marines) or “That’s broken” (if you don’t). But then you start to think about it and realize that there aren’t very many benefits to doing this due to the following reasons:

1. Inherent in all deep strike is that you don’t always get it to come in when you want it or need it, and it may arrive too late in the game to be much use.

2. When it does come in it only gets to fire one weapon (thanks to Machine Spirit) and the guys inside don’t get to assault.

3. The land raider is a large model and scattering into another unit or terrain is far far more likely than with small based models.

Now let’s go over each of these reasons in detail. The first reason given is probably the least important as it applies to anything that deep strikes or outflanks, but most units that are held in reserve are back-up type support who are more useful showing up behind enemy lines and blowing something away before getting blown away themselves the next turn, which is something that while more useful early game is still helpful late game if they don’t arrive for the first couple of turns. Often this isn’t the case with a land raider and its occupying squad. These guys are often the big power unit of an army and their presence on the field is necessary. Not having your hammer unit until turn four or five can be disastrous. Furthermore, even if it does show up as early as turn two there aren’t many places that it couldn’t have just moved to with two turns of 12in movement plus the size of your deployment zone. Now a lot of people might say that its showing up without being shot at on the way there, and they are right. But remember it is also showing up with shooting its own guns, or the squad inside doing anything. Plus the shots that would have been fired at it didn’t go away, they just targeted something else in your army, are the kinds of shots that can faze a land raider are the kind of shots that can wreak havoc or other things.

Also we have to remember that when it does come it can only fire one weapon when it does show up. While one shot is better than no shots, it is all you can get while if you moved the land raider you could move it less than the full 12 or not at all in order to get more of the full fire power that the raider can provide. But the point of the land raider is usually not its guns, but its ability to move your heavy hitters up to the front line and have them pop out and kill something. The assault vehicle rule is arguably the most important rule that the land raider has, but when you deep strike you don’t get to use it. What is the point of an Assault Vehicle that you can’t assault out of when you need to?

However, so far all of these problems are only make the idea bad in nearly any situation, while this third large problem catapults the idea into the area of ridiculous. Despite the land raider being a huge nearly unkillable vehicle that is ties only with the monolith for highest armor rating (outside of apocalypse) it has no special rules that allow it to deep strike without horrible consequences. Imagine a giant the giant hunk of metal containing some of the deadliest fighters in the 40k universe, and right below that falling machine of death is a single grot. And then the grot wins. That’s right the grot doesn’t even take a single hit and the land raider goes straight to the mishap table. Now I can understand when this happens to small unstable vehicle like a skimmer, or individual infantry that are teleporting in from the warp, but a land raider falling from the sky? That just seems ridiculous. How much work would it have taken to write the land raider some of its own special rules for deep striking like the monolith?

Liturgies of Blood: Blood Angel Codex Review Part Three

In this final installment of my now very late look at the new Blood Angel codex I will be comparing the new codex to the old pdf codex that the Blood Angels used to run out of. First up, the most obvious benefit of the new codex is that it is an actually bound book and contains a whole section based on the fluff of Blood Angels and a section highlighting professionally done painting jobs of the models described in the book. While this is something that comes standard in every other codex, it is something that the old pdf lacked entirely. However, this isn’t without drawbacks of its own. Most significantly is that by being an actual book it is something that costs money to buy, where the pdf was available for free download. While the fluff and painting display are nice they aren’t by any means necessary for playing the game, so compared to the pdf it is almost like playing the full price of the book just for the binding and nonessential sections. Whether or not this is worth it depends entirely on who you ask, but since this puts us on the same level as every other army I don’t think there is any real justification for complaining.

Next let’s look at the changes to the way that the Blood Angels now play. In terms of army wide special rules the new codex only gave us new things without taking away anything. Before the Bas had no army wide rules available to them that weren’t available to any space marine, while we now have the Red Thirst and Descent of Angels. Both of these rules are advantageous, although they may not be relevant to every possible build of the army, and obviously gaining things without losing is always a good deal. The majority of the units in the army are returning from the old codex and haven’t changed in either stats or wargear options, but they have gotten cheaper (this is mostly due the fact they no longer provide “free” death company, a change covered later in the article). The only real change to the returning infantry units is that the wargear has been changed to be the same as in the new vanilla Space Marine codex (storm shields, I’m looking at you). The biggest changes to returning units take place in the vehicles used by the Blood Angels. The drop pod was now been upgraded to follow the new drop pod assault rule, and by knowing that a unit can come in on the first turn almost where ever you want them and still fire can be a handy strategy. The land raider now has deep strike (a truly weird option that will likely be the focus of my next article). Most importantly is the fact that all rhino based vehicles (the rhino, razorback, predator, baal predator, vindicator, and the whirlwind) are now fast vehicles, a definite upgrade from the old over-charged engines and even that was only available to the rhino. The new baal predator even has the scout rule, which combined with the option to replace its twin-linked assault cannon with a flamestorm cannon, can do devastating things even on the first turn. As for the completely new units like the priests, sanguinary guard, the stromraven, and the new special characters, they are just icing on the cake. They don’t fit into everyone’s play style, but there is no arguing about the fact that they do give new options to choose from without limiting previously existing options and that can only be a good thing.

Finally rare is the change that can be changed without losing something of what it had and the new codex is no exception to this. The special characters changed rather significantly and while the new options can be very good what they do is very different from what they used to do and many people may not like the new versions. Also a big loss to some styles (and a non-issue to other styles) is the change in the death company. Before the death company were a must take as every infantry unit provided a member of the death company (at the cost of the unit costing a little bit more). This made every Blood Angels player use death company and more or less made the death company what set the Bas apart from every other space marine chapter. Now that death company are no longer “free” and must be taken as a Troops choice that can’t hold points and have no way of ignoring the Rage rule once they are out of a transport they require a much more serious investment of points in order to achieve the same results. Furthermore, they now have the ability to take power weapons and fists, but have lost the Rending Rule so the inclusion of some power weapons at additional points is required to make the death company as killy as they use to be. On the plus side the death company has gained a weapon skill, allowing them to hit almost any infantry unit on a 3+, the ability to give everyone power weapons has given them the potential to be ridiculously killy when the points are invested, chaplains now boost the death company even more by allowing rerolls to hit and to wound on the charge, and Furious Charge and Feel No Pain is just as awesome as it used to be. In the end the death company are now something you can build an army around rather than always having, which some people will like and others won’t.

All-in-all the new codex is most definitely an improvement. It allows for new options that no other army has and accentuates the “feel” of the Blood Angel army while inflicting minimal losses. I feel that this codex elevates the Blood Angels from just another space marine variant to their own army to be respected.

Liturgies of Blood: Blood Angel Codex Review Part Two

Welcome back to dramatt’s rather late review of the new Blood Angel’s codex. This time we are going to cover the special characters that the Blood Angels have, new and returning. The new codex now contains 6 special HQ units and 2 special upgrade characters. This is up from the 5 special characters that were in the last Blood Angel pdf and up from the 6 that were in the 3rd edition (same number of special HQs though) . This is showing an increase in the number of special characters, but before anyone starts to shout about how we are moving to HeroHammer who have to look at the situation. Now that Blood Angels have a real codex with more fluff than we’ve seen for a very very long time it only makes sense that new characters have been introduced to the Blood Angels stories and legends and having a model for these new guys only makes sense. Plus the point of a new codex is to get new stuff and that means new special characters. People want new things without losing old things, so we end up with more special characters than we had before. I know that lots of people don’t always agree with all of GW’s business practices, but making new things better to sell them seems like a pretty standard idea in the business world. But that is a topic for another day so anyway, on to the characters themselves.

I suppose we should start with the Lord of the Host himself: Commander Dante. In terms of fluff Dante hasn’t changed that much. He is still older than balls (having been chapter master for like three thousand years now) and supposedly venerated for his tactical knowledge and general awesomeness. New to his fluff is how he is supposedly waiting for a time of crisis where he has to save the entire imperium, which would be cool. Dante costs the same as a ten man assault squad with power weapon and meltagun and comes with a jump pack. His stats have been slightly changed grabbing him an extra wound and initiative. He makes the sanguinary guard troops choices (although why anyone would want them even as troops is beyond me). His weapon loadout is still the same, with a infernus pistol (used to be called the Perdition Pistol before the entire army could take it), the Axe Mortalis (which despite the cool name is just a master crafted power axe), and the standard Iron Halo. His Death Mask of Sanguinius has been changed to act like a regular death mask like the sanguinary guard have and to significantly reduce one enemy independent character’s stats (this effect lasts even if Dante is killed). Dante also gives the squad he joins the ability to arrive from deep strike without scattering (assuming they are jump infantry) as well as the rule Hit & Run. Perhaps most glaringly absent is Eternal Warrior. Apparently three thousand years of chapter mastering isn’t enough to stop you from getting blown away by a single melta gun. All in all a pretty useful guy, but if the enemy doesn’t have an IC or you aren’t using much jump infantry to put him with he may have a hard time earning his points.

Next we come to one of the new additions to the army: Gabriel Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers. Seth is the cheapest of the BA special charters(still a lot more than a regular chapter master though). And he probably isn’t even worth that much. He is one of the only two special characters who is stuck on foot with no way of having a jump pack (along with Tycho). He comes with a pretty blah stat line for an special character HQ: the same as a regular Captain’s with one extra wound and attack (for a total of 4 each). With only regular power armor and an iron halo his saves aren’t anything to write home about. For weapons he has a regular bolt pistol and a huge ass chainsword. This chainsword, called the Blood Reaver, is a strength 8 weapon with rending. The fact that he still always allows armor saves 5/6s of the time makes him a lot less useful in close combat where his special rules kick in. He has a rule called Whirlwind Of Gore which lets him give up his regular attacks to automatically hit every individual model that he is in base to base with. A nice way to snipe out special guys, but as he still allows armor saves its usefulness is limited. His other rule Ferocious Instincts means that anyone who rolls a 1 trying to hit him in close combat takes an immediate strength 4 hit as he headbutts them back. Cool to think about, but not that useful in real life. To sum him up he is the cheapest special character, but probably not as useful as a cheaper non unique Captain.

Another newcomer to the Blood Angels is the new high chaplain guy: Astorath the Grim. Astorath is only a few points shy of the same price as Dante himself. He counts as jump infantry (he doesn’t actually have a jump packs, but uses wings). Fluff wise Astorath is the guy who comes around to the Blood Angels and their successor chapters to finish off any Death Company who lived through a fight and his presence makes regular Blood Angels more likely to succumb to the Red Thirst. His rules reflect this as he removes the 0-1 limit on the Death Company and causes red thirst to activate on a roll of 1-3 rather than just 1 (although if you run Sanguinary Priests the Red Thirst isn’t neccessary). His stat line and the rest of his rules are the same as a regular Reclusiarch (the generic HQ chaplain) except for his weapon: the Executioner’s Axe, a strength 5 power axe that forces successful invul saves to be rerolled. Although he does have some good points in the end Astorath is probably just doesn’t add enough to useful in most armies as the Death Company aren’t nearly as useful as they used to be and can’t hold points and Priests make the Red Thirst unnecessary. His axe is awesome, but doesn’t justify all the extra points from a generic Reclusiarch. If you want to try a Death Company centered army, though, Astrorath is a must have (literally as he is the only way to have multiple Death Company squads).

The last of the newcomers is The Sanguinor, Exemplar of the Host. A mysterious guy who shows up to kick ass when the Blood Angels need help the real identity of this guy is unknown. I’ve heard all sorts of cool speculation, like he is a manifestation of the Blood Angels collective physic powers, or perhaps even a fragment of Sanguinius himself preserved by the Emperor. In any case he is the most expensive special character. His weapons and gear are pretty standard: artificer armor, grenades, a jump pack, and a Glaive Encarmine like those used by the Sanguinary Guard. It is his rules and stats that make him interesting guy. At weapon skill 8 he hits almost anything on 3s. His BS is 5, although that is irrelevant as he doesn’t even have a gun. Strength 5 is always nice, but Toughness 4 is average. His 3 Wounds seems a little low for his points, but he does have Eternal Warrior (the only guy in the BA codex to get it) and a special rule (not wargear) that gives him a 3+ invul save. Initiative 6 with 5 attacks can be all sort of deadly. For rules he has Avenging Angel that lets him chose one enemy HQ at the start of the game and reroll and To Hits and To Wounds against that HQ, The Sanguinor’s Blessing that beefs up one sergeant, Aura of Fervor that gives all units (except himself) within 6 inches +1 attack, and the standard Descent of Angels, Fearless, and Furious Charge. The biggest drawback to this guy is that he lacks Independent Character status, which means he can’t join units to meat shield for him. He has to be all by himself. With good play techniques to keep the enemy from just massing shots on him he can be a real beast, but it is up to you if you want to commit so many points to something you have to baby so much.

Now we get to the resident BA-dass: Mephiston, The Lord of Death. The fluff for Mephiston is largely the same with a few hints that he might be slowly giving in to the dark side. The best way to think of the new Mephiston isn’t as a space marine, but rather a monstrous creature. Like the Sanguinor he doesn’t have IC status and can’t be put with a squad. His stats are rather, looking like they were ripped out of the Tyranid codex. The Tough 6 helps make up for the fact that he still doesn’t have Eternal Warrior. His points are smack in the middle of Dante and the Sanguinor and he comes with artificer armor, a plasma pistol, a force sword, the usual grenades, and a psychic hood. If you notice he has no invul save, by far his biggest weakness requiring careful play to make sure a group of lascannons don’t just blow him out of the water. He comes with pre-selected psychic powers that can give him wings for a turn, preferred enemy, and strength 10, as well as the ability to use all of them in one turn. For rules he comes with the usual And They Shall Know No Fear, and Psyker. More importantly is that he is Fleet and that his Transfixing Gaze is now an ability that forces an enemy independent character to pass a leadership test at -4 or Mephiston gets to reroll all To Hits and To Wounds against him. Now obviously without any kind of invulnerable save Meph is weak to a number of things and most other players will just start listing things that they have that can tear him a new one. However, between having wings and Fleet he can be incredibly mobile and easy to hide so that you can choose what he hits. The list of things that eat him may be long, but the list of things he eats is even longer. Of course his points are kind of salty so you have to make sure to use him well and can’t just throw him up front and hope for the best.

The final special HQ is return Captain Tycho. To be honest I’m not entirely sure why he is in the codex as according to the fluff he is already dead. Even on his own page it talks about how he died during the third battle for Armageddon after finally snapping and joining the Death Company. At any rate he is the second cheapest special HQ, being only a few points more than Gabriel Seth (and more useful). The interesting thing about Tycho is that he comes in two different flavors: regular and Death Company. His regular form has the same stats as a generic captain (he is a captain after all), while his Death Company form loses a BS and two to his leadership, but gets an extra WS and attack. Both of his forms have the same gear which is pretty nice as he comes with artificer armor and an Iron Halo, plus some his weapons. His gun, the Blood Song, is a combi-melta that can fire sternguard ammunition. His close combat weapon is the Dead Man’s Hand that acts like a power weapon with built-in digital lasers. He also has the standard bolt pistol to give him an extra attack for dual-armed. Regular Captain Tycho’s rules are fitting for an army leader with Rites of Battle, but no fancy shenanigans. Death Company Tycho doesn’t have Rites or even IC, but gets Rage, Fearless, Fleet, Furious Charge, Feel No Pain, and Relentless (which goes well with his gun). Both forms of Tycho have his fluff based Preferred Enemy: Orks as Tycho hates him some greenskins. If you are trying to get a fair amount of bang for your buck Tycho either form of his aren’t bad choices and are generally a fair amount better than any generic HQ, but his power and rules aren’t as game-changing as his more expensive brethren.

Although Lemartes and Corbulo aren’t HQs anymore they used to be and they are still special characters so I’ll be giving them a quick review of their own. Lemartes is now an upgrade character for the Death Company. Fluff wise Lemartes has had a 180 degree change. Where he used to be the High Chaplain and responsible for guiding the souls of all the Blood Angels he has now fallen to the Black Rage and only holds on to his sanity by sheer force of will and is carted from battle to battle. He comes with a jump pack and costs just a little bit more than the elites slot chaplain with jump pack and combines the special rules and equipment for the chaplain with the rules of the Death Company. Plus he has his own rule where if he loses one of his two wounds both his strength and attacks increase to five. If you were planning on running a Chaplain to boost the Death Company Lemartes is a logical replacement unless you are really hurting for points, but in an army without much Death Company Lemartes doesn’t really add that much. Corbulo is now an upgrade character for the sanguinary priests. His fluff remains largely unchanged as he is still the visionary for the Blood Angels as he sometimes has visions hinting of the future as he searches for the cure to the Red Thirst and Black Rage. Corbulo costs a few points over double that of a plain priest with no extra wargear. His stats are the same as a priest except for an extra wound and attack. His equipment is also mostly the same except for his sword which hits at S5 and has Rending. His Chalice of Blood works the same as a regular priest, but gives him Feel No Pain on a 2+ rather than a 3+. Also he allows you to reroll any one die as long as you do so before he dies. Corbs is a good option when looking for a priest to help beef up a hammer unit, although without a jump pack he isn’t much use for a regular assault squad and there isn’t a lot of point in paying extra just to throw him into a tactical squad.

Liturgies of Blood: Blood Angel Codex Review Part One

Now that the blood angels’ have been running on a real bound codex rather than a pdf for a while now I suppose I can go ahead and give a review of what has changed, both for the army and for the game itself.

First let’s look at the codex itself. As the Blood Angels are a space marine chapter we have nearly all the goodies of the vanilla space marine codex are here with a few exceptions such as the Legion of the Damned (apparently they don’t like Blood Angels, Dark Angels, or Templar), the Master of the Forge, the Thunderfire Cannon (and to those of you who would have used the cannon, I’m sorry both of you), Ironclad Dreadnought (they have been replaced with a cooler dreadnought anyway) and the generic Space Marine Chapter Master. Although the Chapter Master was pretty much a Captain with the addition of an orbital bombardment and we still have Captains (without the orbital, of course) who is down some bits of wargear and the option to make bikes troops. Other than that the squads have largely been copied and pasted into the new codex, but we are space marines so no surprise there.

“So what makes the new Blood Angels special?” you might say. Well, it’s all the new things that we have and different things that have carried over and our very own special characters (more on them in a bit). For instance we have our new special rules. The regular space marine rules are still present, while the ability the chose to fail leadership test is gone and has been replaced with new Blood Angel oriented rules (a pretty good trade really). Harkening back to the third edition codex (last time we had an actual codex we didn’t have to print off of a pdf) where all infantry (including jump infantry and bikes) had furious charge and a kind of ”half-rage” and the fourth edition pdf where only the death company had, or could get for that matter, furious charge is a rule that makes all infantry, jump infantry, bike, and dreadnoughts roll a die at the beginning of the game, after deployment, but before the first turn. Any rolls of 1 mean the squad has given in to the red thirst gain for fearless and furious charge (why this is on a 1 which typically means a failure I don’t know as it is pretty good). The other new army wide special rule is a rule for jump infantry (minus the Vanguard Vets for reasons probably known only to Matt Ward) that lets them reroll for reserves when coming in from deep strike and has them scatter less. This is a cool way of showing the BA’s expertise with jump packs and makes deep striking a much more appealing and deadly option.

Then we come to the new units. Assault Squads, while having been copied and pasted from the space marine codex are a Troops choice for the Blood Angels. It is definitely nice that they kept this as this is one of the core aspects that has come to define the BAs. Rhino based vehicles (rhinos, razorbacks, predators, Baal predators, whirlwinds, and vindicators) have also gotten an upgrade. All of them cost an additional a few more points and have the same possible upgrades, but are fast. Land Raiders can now deep strike, but that almost never works out well, so we’ll just ignore it. The Death Company are now a regular troops choice costing a few more points than a Assault Marine (jump packs cost additional and can get real expensive) and come with the ability to buy power weapons/fists (no more rending), have furious charge and FNP standard, and can never hold a point (‘cause they be craaaaaazy). Lemartes is now just an upgrade charcter for the death company. Death Company Dreadnoughts are now their own troops choice (as a vehicle they can’t hold a point though) and they same loadout as the Furioso dreadnoughts discussed below, but without the increased front armor, furious charge, fleet, rage, and a new rule which grants them immunity from shaken and stunned (just like the old Moriar from the 3rd edition).

For HQs the only new guy (other than the special characters) is the Reclusiarch, who is a slightly buffed up chaplain, the regular chaplain having been downgraded to an Elite choice. For Elites we have the Furioso Dreadnought, who more or less replaces the Ironclad with his increased front armor, the Sanguinary Guard, and the Sanguinary Priests. The Furioso comes with two Dreadnought close combat weapons, called Blood Fists, one having an underslung meltagun and the other a storm bolter. The biggest change is the option to replace the fists for Blood Talons, which wreak havoc on infantry by generating additional attacks that can also generate additional attacks and acting like lightning claws by allowing rerolls of failed To Wound rolls. The down side is the claws don’t give the strength increase like dreadnought close combat weapons, so no more anti tank punches. The Sanguinary Guard are terminators with wings without the invul save or the good weapons. They cost as much as a regular terminator, come in squads of five (no more, no less), have a regular marine stat line, artificer armor, storm bolters with an extra AP (mounted on their wrist) and two-handed master crafted power swords. Note that despite two-handing the swords they get no bonus out of it and essentially just lose an attack they could have from being dual-armed. They can, however, take the chapter banner and/or fancy new masks like Dante wears which make enemies they are assaulting pass a leadership or lose their weapon skill for the combat (still aren’t worth their points though). Last new addition to the Elite slot is my personal favorite, the Sanguinary Priest. These guys are fairly cheap for what they do (jump packs still cost extra though). They are independent characters, although three of them can fit in one elites slot. They have a pretty standard stat line (regular marines, but with one higher weapon skill), and no invul. What makes them rock though, is their Blood Chalices. These essentially turn even regular units into the Death Company without the downside of not being able to control them. Corbulo is now an upgrade character for these guys rather than an HQ and comes with an interesting rule that lets you reroll any one dice, regardless of what it is for, once per game as long as he is alive. For new Fast Attack we have the Baal Predator. Tanks in my Fast Attack? It is more likely than you think. These guys are predators that have the scout rule and come with either a twin-linked assault cannon or a flamestorm cannon (enough AP to kill space marine out of terminator armor and just enough strength to do it on a 2+). Useful for scounting in turn one, killing a few dudes and then soaking up fire while the rest of your army moves up. The only new Heavy Support is the Storm Raven, sort of the space marine answer to the Imperial Guard’s Valkryie . It is has the same armor as a drop pod, but can ignore the melta rule. It has high AP one-shot missiles, a twin-linked assault cannon, and a twin-linked heavy bolter (that can be changed to a twin-linked multi-melta for free). It is an assault vehicle (although if it moves flat out guys who get out may scatter, take dangerous terrain tests, and can’t assault) that can carry 12 models (no terminators, jump pack guys count as two models) AND a dreadnought. I just really like the idea of a dreadnought jump with a flying ship onto very surprised infantry.

That’s it for the new units of Blood Angels. Check out my upcoming article on the new and returning special characters for the Blood Angels, how these BA-dasses work, and how they stack up to everything else.