Allying Blood Angels and Dark Angels
Today I will be discussing my new Dark Angels purchase and how I am thinking of allying them with my Blood Angels. I won't be making any concrete decisions here but I'll be typing out loud and taking any feedback into consideration as well. In the coming weeks I will review some select parts of the Dark Angels codex that have a direct link to how I will personally play them, rather than reviewing all sections of the books, as that has been done very well elsewhere such as St Andrews Wargaming Blog.
This will also be talked about in the context of competitive gaming. I hope that the general impression from my blog is one of fun and narrative gaming that has quite a strong fluff bias in my Blood Angels and Black Templars forces. However I am very keen to start attending tournaments on a regular basis, aiming to get up to 5 or 6 a year and make sure some of these are the big competitive ones like Caledonia Uprising here in the UK.
My local tournament which is 70-100 people has a competitive edge to it that will be perfect for this, it allows full forgeworld armies but awards "soft" points for variety in the list rather than banning a spam list out right, so it strikes a nice balance for me. This tournament is in April most years so I have till then to get my full Dark Angel/Blood Angel army up to snuff.
Demi-Company
Today I wanted to start of fairly heavy and talk about the Demi-company. I have all the mandatory units for the demi company bar a squad of devastators. These will be purchased next month and will be rocking grav cannons in a drop pod. They will be my hard counter to high armour save monster deathstars and things like the dreaded Wraithknight. These are not perfect and they have many weaknesses and can be suicidal but I am aware of this and hope that my list will contain both duality and redundancy to counter these.
Currently I have the the following set up in the Demi-company:
1 Company Master
2 x 7 man tactical squads with Plasma cannon and veteran sergeant
1 x 5 man tactical squad with plasma gun and veteran sergeant
10 x assault marines with 2 x flamers and a veteran sergeant with a power maul
Now I also have the option of some veterans that came with my buy, but these aren't Dark Angel specific models (but they are very cool and pictures will be coming of all these models) so I won't be using them in this force and actually plan to build some Dark Angel veterans using a mixture of third party bits and the soon to be released forgeworld Dark Angel upgrade.
For those that don't know, the benefits of this formation are absolutely enormous. Firstly, any model that has the grim resolve special rule and isn't jinking (i.e. everything in the above list) will resolve its overwatch at ballistic skill 3. That is hitting on a 4+ people. That is huge. And it also reinforces that Dark Angels want to be charged not to charge themselves, there special rules are very geared to strong fire support play style.
Secondly, all the units in the formation have objective secured. So that is assault marines and devastators, veterans and the company master as well. In the world of Maelstrom this is ideal. Especially with the mobility of the assault squad, but also it means that when you drop in those devastators with their drop pod, it means you can deny maelstrom points with them, meaning that both the squad and the drop pod, potentially, have to be dealt with immediately. This can provide valuable distraction from the rest of your army. In my case this would be the advancing Blood Angels.
The Demi-company allows a strong fire base with a mobile element, and I plan to add a razorback for the plasma gun squad for extra mobility, and this fire base should be able cover the arrival of my death company. This would include a ten man squad of Death Company, Cassor the damned drop podding in and Raphen's Death Company. Taken as a Combined arms detachment this would add another 2 objective secured units into the fray (Cassor can't take a transport so the drop pod is fast attack).
This is currently my rough plan for how to synergise these two armies BUT I am open to suggestions and will be discussing other ideas over the coming days. I also have a Nephelim Dark Talon, 5 Ravenwing bikers plus a ravenwing attack bike and the big boss Sammael that came in my purchase (Sammael was sold by the same guy and fits into the custom foam of the KR multicase so I snapped him up for 18 pounds!). So I could go double mobile? But right now the enhanced overwatch and objective secured seem strongest to me.
Thoughts?
Death Company!
Back on to normal fare!!
I have nearly completed another 5 death company and have begun painting 5 more. I have also received so eBay bought items that will allow me to build 20 more Death company. 10 of these will be built with some vintage metal death company bodies that have turned out some remarkably dynamic poses!
Anyway, see below for the nearly completed squad (just jump pack glow and base to do), the just begun squad and then the vintage death company assembled so far!
Anyway, till next time.
Peace out,
Rob
I love that you are double teaming Blood Angels with Dark Angels. It brings back great memories of the old Angels of Death Codex days, when I used to team Death Company up with Deathwing Terminators for twice the death :-)
ReplyDeleteYour DC Assault marines look fantastic, you have done a great job with the two shades of red (the dark saltires and the bright blood drops). I'm looking forward to seeing those classic models painted, good luck!
Yeah I feel its a really cool combination of models and fluff, though I will be steering clear of Deathwing until I feel I can paint well enough to get that bone up to scratch!
DeleteThanks for the compliment :)
I am proper old school. I have never allied anything in my life. A purist I think. I have only just started taking flyers in my lists, so I can't really offer you any meaningful input on your ally choice or tactics. Sounds a blast though :D
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the flyers, I am finally biting the bullet this year and painting a couple. Were there no allies in rogue trader? I can't remember! I have used allies with Dark Angels since second edition (no aliens abhumans).
DeleteHaha you fill me with guilt Naff you vagabond :P
DeleteDon't forget that the Dark Angels have incredibly cheap options for Auxiliary Choices to turn that Demi-Company into a Lion's Blade Strike Force, which takes your Overwatch up to full BS! A RavenWing Attack Squad can be as little as a single Attack Bike and Land Speeder, or you can even take just a single Squad of Scouts. I like taking my Master/Chaplain with a Jump Pack (and if a Master, the Shroud of Heroes), and running him around solo as a fast, fairly durable, easy to hide ObSec Unit.
ReplyDeleteObjective Secured Dreads with 4 Attacks on the profile are pretty cool, too. Even if they do make my Furiosos sad :(
I think I still have some of those old 2nd Ed Death Company around. Not sure, I might have sold them off. They look way better with the new arms like you've got them than they did with the clunky old arms.
I will be picking up a scout squad at some point just for that purpose, sadly I don't rate the look of landspeeders so will be avoiding them. I like the idea of the company master though and will probably go about converting one at some point!
DeleteSad furioso :( though mine is full of flames!! Apart from the scouts (and the devastators) I will be avoiding generic purchases and focus on DA specific ones to try and enhance the flavour of the force I think. I'm interested in the Silence squadron as some air support that comes with some nice additional rules, not too strong but strong enough to warrant inclusion I think.
I'm really happy with how they turned out, very surprised too!
Thanks again :)
The Ravenwing attack squadron is well worth the inclusion. I have been running mine as tank hunters using 5 man bike squad with 2 meltaguns and landspeeder with multimelta and typhoon missile launcher. If the landspeeder cannot destroy the vehicle it fires at, the meltagun bikers get to hit it on a 2+, been quite successful so far.
DeleteThe support squadron is another beast. I run mine with 4 assault cannons (one on Darkshroud) and 3 heavy bolters. The volume of fire this unit can put out is amazing and the overwatch capacity is great too (even when jinking).