Games Workshop has been cranking out new rules and formations with their latest campaign books. First we had “Traitor’s Hate” cataloging a part of the 13th Black Crusade from the Chaos perspective. Now, we have “Angel’s Blade” telling the story from the Imperial, but especially the Blood Angels’, perspective. With all the new formations today we’re going to talk about Angel’s Blade tips and tricks that you can pull off on the tabletop.
This campaign supplement really breathes life back into the Blood Angels. First it updates many of their units to Space Marine standards like vehicle squadrons, adjusted assault marines, and devastators that can take grav-cannons. The second thing the supplement does is allow the Blood Angels to organize in not one, but two decuerion style detachments. And last but not least, the Sons of Sanguinius get many new formations to take independently or as part of that new deceurion, some of which feature the dread assault out of deep-strike.
The updated units and vehicle squadrons are certainly nice especially after Games Workshop decided to give everyone’s Dreadnoughts the extra attacks. I did take a look at Blood Angels Vindicators because they now get the siege breaker shell (a S10, AP1, Ignores Cover, Apocalyptic Blast) when they take a squadron of three. This is especially nasty if you consider that the Blood Angels can give their Vindicators overcharged engines making them “Fast” vehicles to really land that shell where you want it. Unfortunately the update to units also means that Assault Marines can’t do their 5 man 4 meltagun combo out of a Drop Pod for only 135pts. It will cost you at least 155pts now (big deal I know). There’s also a new Death Company Chaplain that comes with pretty restricted wargear but lets Death Company re-roll all to hit AND all to wound in the first round of combat.
The Blood Angels got a lot of love with all the new formations but I’d like to pick two in particular, both with assault out of deep strike. The first is the “Archangel Orbital Intervention Force” which is 3 squads of either type of terminator. Regular Terminators can shoot twice, at different targets, the turn they arrive. Assault Terminators however may assault on the turn they deep strike although it counts as a disordered charge. Three squads of thunder hammer terminators assaulting out of deepstrike? I have to say that could put down a lot of armies, especially War Convocation or Tau without interceptor.
My other favorite formation is definitely the Golden Host. You must bring Dante or the Sanguinor and 3-5 squads of Sanguinary Guard. Now I’ve never had a huge interest in the golden boys but for 175pts a squad they all have jump packs, 2+ armor, either a master crafted power sword or axe, assault out of deep strike, and one guy has a power fist. That’s pretty good for the points. Oh and if you bring Dante then you scatter D6 less than usual because of his in-built warlord trait and his unit gets Hit and Run. Not bad to tie up squishy units in the back field or silly Vraks artillery armies. You also get Dante without a true troop tax which is nice on its own.
I mentioned earlier that the Blood Angels got two decuerion style detachments. The first is your average Space Marine stuff but the second one is specifically for Death Company. Now you have to take at least two Death Company Chaplains, a Death Company Dreadnought, and 3 units of Death Company to fill out the core. This gives all units in the detachment a free extra 6″ of movement immediately after deployment which essentially extends your deployment zone by 6″ inches. This is great for jump pack Death Company but it can be combo-ed nicely with the “Lucifer Armored Task Force” which has a Techmarine, a Landraider, and 1-3 Baal Storm Predators. The whole formation also gets scout. So now you’ve probably got 2 squads of jump pack Death Dompany with their Chaplains and one squad in the Landraider with the Techmarine. The beauty though is that your Predators with S6 AP3 Flamestorm Cannons are 6″ up, scout 12″, and are fast so move 12″ and can then fire their template turn one. And remember there are 3 of those. That’s a 30″ movement first-turn alpha strike followed by quite a bit of assault troops. Not too shabby of a wombo-combo not to mention possibly mixing in those fast Vindicators as a separate formation.
I’ll definitely update this as I get more games in but I’m certainly pleased to see the Blood Angels get something new to play with. Do you have any especially good tricks coming out of this release? What else would you have liked to see? Let me know in the comments!