5th Edition left me with a pile of unused Blood Angels jump packs.
Like the sands in an hour glass, so are the days of our lives...
Like the pendulum swings, so do the winds of fate...
Like the crow flies?
How about Like the Angels of Death descending from the heavens to bring the Emperor's will.
I like that more.
Any way.
I was thinking out some counters to the new IG and other mech lists, and wondering if Assault Pack Blood Angels were back! I orginally started BA because I was in love with my Black Templars assault squad and wanted more of them, then the BA WD dex came out and Asquads were troops! Boo Yaa! History follows, my Blood Angels are born. The early days were tough though. I was all jump pack marines, up against armies that still packed a lot of static guns in lines and very little tanks because they died so easily in 4th ed. Apparently not as easy as a squad of 10 marines trying to get into assault range... 5th edition came, and I no longer had Area Terrain to block LoS. That made my marines pretty little blood stains, not angels, and provoked my switch to mech. But now that pretty much all armies are all mech, is it time to go back to Jump Packs? Here is what I was looking at:
Dante
Lesmartes
Death Company with Jump Packs x5
10 Marine Assault Squad with P Fist
10 Marine Assault Squad with P Fist
10 Marine Assault Squad with P Fist
10 Marine Vet AS with PW and 2 meltas
10 Marine Vet AS with PW and 2 meltas
Attack Bikes x3 with Meltas.
That will run around 2k points. 50 Assault Marines coming at you with Preferred Enemy! Dawn of war! I deploy 20 marines up front with Dante and assault turn 2 while the rest of my boys catch up. I do miss that movement... Plus there is all the funky interwoven squad cover save action you can pull out that jump packs makes easy.
What do you guys think, is this the rebirth of the jump pack?
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29 comments:
I very much so enjoy my assault marines (as a raven guard player, i get fleet, woo). The issue I run into is with everyone being mech, I have to be careful what I assault. Assault a transport for me is a bad idea, as Ill be getting assaulted next turn (and I dont get counter assault like the Sky Claws of the wolves...). I assume youll be running attack bikes with MM along side the assault marines. I may just have to do that myself.
Jawa you should totally go for it!That way you can give your tac squad the rhino and have a ton of bad-ass hell jumpers charging, annihilating the pesky IG! Maybe you could try to fit 3 baal predators in or something , but I seroiusly think hell jumpers are a good idea. Dante giving them preferred enemy can tear IG to shreds! :)
I resisted the pull to rip all the jetpacks off my blood angels. I think I might give them another run, this army looks almost exactly like mine.
My guard army beat the blood angles in an assault. But there was only twenty of them and there was no Dante. If there was, at least one more squad,I don't think I could have held the line without Straken! With Dante they will make a lot of bloody messes.
Good luck on the build.
Jawa, I admire what you're doing.
Now, ignore for a moment that I've been net-stalking you since BOLSCON (why do you keep closing your blinds?), I really dig how you're constantly rethinking your game.
It will be interesting to see what you come up with, but I was curious... do you think it might be workable to field Tac squads in Rhinos and the Vets/Death Company w Jump packs. It was an idea I had a few months back, and I go back and forth.
I thought it might be useful having a screening element for the Jump troops.
Good luck - Brent
Yes and no is the answer. With the advent of mech armies complete destruction of entire units is more important than ever(pesky contesting chimeras). To do this each offensive attachment needs to be capable of destroying 1. A Chimera or equivalent.& 2. Its occupants. In a single turn.
Large expensive assault squads are asking for some ordnance love. Remember no cover save from the new
guard favorite colossus. Without attack bike intervention you have two very expensive units clumped around a dead mech vets squad. and no amount of squad positioning is going to stop a psyker battle squad.
The mostly mech list( Blood Angels style)2000pt.
Dante
Lemates
Tac squad (times 3)
5 extra men, lascannon, meltagun, rhino.
Assault Squad(Times 3)
Sarg w/pw
Veteran assault squad
2/pw in Rhino!
Death Company (Thats 7!)
Extra man, jump packs.
Baal pred
Storm Bolter
Attack Bike.
The theory. Each attachment forms a mini mech killing army in itself. Tac squads are split. Lascannon with 5, melta with 5 in the rhino. Assault squad lurks behind rhino.
After a fairly conservative set up, we want each chimera to come slightly to us, you are ready to pounce. Rhino rushes forward-disembark. Assault squad moves to the side of chimera. You are now in position for a lascannon round, meltagun shot to pop the tank with a mop up assault squad for the disembarking men. Good-bye pesky melta-vets(1 turn). Each detachment is capable of completing this move.
Similar theory with you death star unit. Dante and death guard lurk behind vet rhino only to leap over and assault with the vets joining the fray next turn!
Baal pred and attack bike plug the gaps and hose daemon princes(heavy weapons teams)with fire.
Benefits include reducing line of sight for ordnance weapons to assault troops. Yes some can still fire indirectly. Psyker battle squad needs line of sight,denied by your rhinos. Redundancy means army still functions should an area go unpleasantly.
I did the same thing about a year ago. I saw the PDF, and wanted to play a marine army that was totally different than my custom chapter. I focused on jump marines, and have had a blast ever since. I still roll with one tac squad, but almost always 2 assault squads. What my opponent sees is Dante with on Asquad, Another Asquad screening, Death company following behind, and if I am lucky corbulo with a 5 man tac squad driving up with overcharged engines.
Couple things.
Brent: A 10 man tactical with las/melta/PW in a rhino with EA costs 290 points. At that rate, you cant get much on the table!
And Matt: I used to try exactlly what you suggest. Before arriving at my current list, I used to play a few squads in rhinos to give screening for my assault squads etc. But against the new guard lists, those pesky melta vets are the least of my worries... the three Valkries in the back pummeling my 3 Rhinos with Lascannon fire will stop me dead in the water.
Interesting idea though both of you going with Tacticals in rhinos. I use one, doing just what you say. Las stays back while rhino moves up giving cover, usually for Dante.
Something that needs playtesting! Fritz lets warm up the new table!
The funniest part about this is that we are talking about tactics I abandoned over a year ago because I was getting smoked off the table as if they might just work. :)
Now, another thing to consider is Drop Pods! Blood Angels are not hindered by Drop Pod Assault, so the standard "Reserve Everything" defense is no good. Psychers? Fine, force me to come on turn 5. Just enough time for all of my melta vets, flamers and Furiosos to pop out and lay waste.
Yes Vendetta gunships outflanking are a pain. Detachment style play is working for me against them, as a witch hunters player, because i am able to offer them up some tastier targets, exorcists. Once they have done their trick they are treated with the same disrespect as the chimera.
Perhaps the three preds do make a come back.
Maybe you should go for a mix of Mech and Jump as others have mentioned. Triple Baals, Tac squad or two in Rhinos and possibly Death Company as well and then finish off with RAS squads and either a 'Kill everything in CC' or swiss army knife VAS.
I'm preferential to the Swiss Army Knife squad as double meltaguns and Dante with his pistol can pop transports and then assault in the following phase.
Im already running the three Baals which are just about useless against 3 Valks. They are out of my range, and can hit each of my preds with 3 Lascannon shots. Against guard, they are pretty much done. Especially since Valks are 10" off the table and can see over most of the cover I can hide behind.
Drop pods would be fun, but I would get raped in KP missions! The switch blade might just be the way to go! Tacticals in rhinos running screen for VAS. Now to Army Builder!
Just quickly i like this detachment.
Tac squad
lascannon, flamer, drop pod.
Devastator or tac squad with lascannon and razorback-twin linked lascanon.
All in res.(going to plan)
Razorback squad rolls on, fires twin linked las, down goes valk/chimera.
Pod lands next to target-Combat squad flamer unleashes, as well as lascannon squad. Next turn flamer advances, lascannon hunkers down ready to pop another tank.
Dam their officers of the fleet. Perhaps a vindicar bullet would help, oh wait he's in a transport tooooooooooo!
Maybe a single Vindicator then? Killy enough on its own, threatening enough by reputation (both deserved and otherwise) to draw fire from the big guns, and tough enough to weather the storm.
Treat as a less-expensive Dante from your mech list. :P
Interesting about your new approach is, that I am currently working on my chaos list in a similar way. The melta heavy environment calls for a return of footslogging/jumping units to the table I think. The problem with this is contesting objectives and surviving, so using reserves and bringing a lot of modells will be key I think. My current chaos army will bring around 70 heads to the table with a deepstrinking DP and ~20 demons...
From a tactical point of view I guess that a stable, defensive part of your army is nessassary to hold homeobjectives and force your opponent to come to you, so that the jumpunits have the space to outmanover threats. 2-3 Baal Preds and 1-2 tactical combat squads with a long range weapon should be enough...
http://www.parcival.org/2009/08/08/battle-report-another-ba-vs-da-2000-points/
This has been an interesting thread; I'm also seeing the trend.
With the game changing with every codex, it's interesting to see how older strategies may now be viable.
I'd almost say it's pointing toward balanced lists - but that would be giving GW far too much credit for foresight.
I think this thread does the prove the point that GW is just keeping the game interesting. By changing a codex, the effectively alter the balance of the game, forcing armies to be adapted. This is a good thing. I am very pleased that I am forced to use units that have been gathering dust in my drawer for years!
Looks like a fun list.
Hopefully if you go up against guard players they'll all be copypasting meltavet lists off the net. If one guy randomly stocks up on banewolves and executioners things could get really ugly for the Angels.
The banewolf especially. It's a fast 12/12/10 tank (so you hit it on 6's), and fires an autohitting cover-ignoring template that wounds everything on 2+ and is AP3. For less than 135 points (they also get a heavy flamer/HB for free but who's counting). Hopefully your MM attack bikes can gun them down before the poisoned death hits!
Either way nice to see someone mixing up the metagame :)
I sort of wanted this to work as a companion to my End of 40k as we know it post. A lot of people jumped on me for complaining about guard, but in the end, it is forcing change, which is good. I'm still not sure if I can beat the uber guard list, but this will change things up!
I see guard (as you pointed out) and to a degree Spaces Wolves really supporting the change in tactic a lot of the Blogging community has been talking about of late. Even I, with my philosophy of start with 100 boyz and go from there am finding that that just does not cut it anymore and I'm having to rethink how the Orks play against IG and SW.
I am also a Blood Angels player and plan to in the near future come back to them and I think the Tactical Squads in Rhinos supported by Jump Pack Vet Assaults, JP DC, and Attack Bikes are the way of the future of the BA army.
Dante & Lemartes + DC, two 8-10 strong Vet Assault Squads with Fist and 2 meltaguns; 3 Tactical squads in rhinos kitted to leave 5 guys back to shoot and 5 to get up close and use meltas and powerfist; all supported my 2-3 squads of attack bikes. I'd love to through a Landraider with some termies in there too but meltas just nuke them right now. Maybe a cheap Autocannon/Lascannon Pred or two for some long range anti tank killing power.
Good luck and let us know how the test turns out. Are we going to be seeing a new Jawaballs BA army at Mechanicon? I will be sorry to see the Baals go.
I have no time to make any major changes for mechanicon. So you will be seeing my 1850 list heavy on attack bikes with 3 Baal Preds. I will seriously look at more tacs in rhinos supported by VAS with packs though. I need to hook up Fritz to my computer and put him in the bathtub with some goop like those nav cylons in Battlestar and see what sort of stuff he spews out.
so you are putting a toaster in a bath tub...
Now would be a good time to start magnetizing minis. I wish I had done that with my death company.
I really like the idea of rhinos with 1/2 tac squad with MM and PW along for the ride. The air cav can come up behind while in cover and then spring out. if you only get one move it is still substantial.
i honestly never saw the jump marines die they just had to cope get 10 2 plasmas and a power fist deep strike and they were fine but yea they needed some adjusting to cope with the menace that is the guard.
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I think it can work in that the enemy gets 1-2 turns to kill you. If he doesn't, you're in his lines.
I'd consider trimming the VAS down for more meltaguns, as the one real issue you're going to hit is killing armor.
Go with the BA 'dex strengths. 50 marines is a LOT to kill.
It is a nice blog.
I've played xenos for nearly 20 years, but 5th is making me think marines are the army for this edition. I am attracted to BA because of the ability to run lots of jump packs.
While I'm attracted to the jump pack unit I think a half jump pack/ half mech list is for me. I'm not planning on winning much, but I think it will provide me the best marine army for my preferred playing style.
I'll check out your insights in the future.
Thanks
I never switched to Mech. Love my jump troops too much.
The problem I always have is that when I assault a vehicle, my opponent then piles out and assaults me. All advantages of being jump infantry are gone.
Using melta-guns I fare little better because I have to be 12 inches away max, which puts them in assault range of me. And I can't assault with the squad that shot.
So I would drop the Power Fists on the assault squads for Power Weapons and take melta-bombs on those sergeants if they HAVE to assault a vehicle.
Since you are taking meltas in the Vet squads, switch their Power Weapons to Power Fists. This way, if the melta failed to kill the vehicle, the squad can. You are going to be in assault range anyways, finish off that vehicle! As well, the veteran can weather getting assaulted better since they all have base 2 attacks to begin with, so even when charged, they should have more attacks then the squad assaulting them.
Gothmog you know you can destroy a transport in the shooting phase then assault the passengers in the assault phase right?
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