So, I covered Eldar, time to give Blood Angels the treatment.

So, first up, with the marine and other codices coming out, the Blood Angels, like other index armies feels like its missing things. Like I did with Eldar, I will point these out, but of course I do expect them to be changed with the codex.

The most obvious thing to point out is that there are no Chapter Trait/Tactics. It kinda looks like Blood Angels get some special rules, but not really. Black Rage only applies to Death Company (including Dreads and fallen Tycho).

Jump Pack Assault is the same rule that appears on Jump pack equipped models.

Again, I am sure that will be addressed.

The most disappointing thing in my opinion, is the lack of certain units for Blood Angels.

The Blood Angels lack access to units like Cataphractii and Tartaros terminators. They also don’t have access to Centurions and the anti-air tanks and fliers.

I don’t mind not having things like Centurions, but not having access to the 30k equipment, like Cataphractii is annoying.

The issue of fliers has also been a thorny issue for me. The suns of the winged primarch have the least flier and anti-air options. Furthermore, I have always felt that they deserved a unique flier more than the Space Wolves and maybe even the Dark Angels.

That being said, the Grey Knights were given access to Stormtalons etc, so hopefully Blood Angels will follow suit.

Characters and weapons

For the most part, I think that the Blood Angels named characters are pretty good. Tycho still seems to suffer from being a bit bland in either option.

The one thing that stands out really, is that the unique weapons seem to have lost out to other master-crafted style weaponry. By this, I refer to the fact that many of the weapons do D3 damage, whereas mastercrafted weapons tend to do a flat damage of 2, or in the case of a lot of named weapons it is 3. It is a minor thing perhaps. That being said, the encarmine sword and axe are much better than the previous versions.

Blood Talons and Furioso Fists also seem a bit odd. The Talons potentially do more damage than the fists, but have no lightning claw type rules. Not saying they are not alright, it just seems strange to me.

Death Company

So, these guys took a bit of a hit. They can have 4 attacks on the charge (with a chainsword), which is good. They now have the equivalent of Feel No Pain on a 6+ (5+ previously, but granted it is different now). They also lost Fearless and their Ld is only 7. Now, you can mitigate that with Lemartes allowing them to use his Ld of 9, or Astorath. That being said, that means needing a character to give that boost.

They also are elites and therefore compete with Sanguinary Guard and Vanguard Vets. I do wonder if Vanguard Vets are not just as good, if not better option.

 

Anyway, the codex will inevitably add more cool stuff and this has been pretty nit-picky (like I did with Eldar).