Hey everyone,

As a treat to myself, and as a project once i sell my Fantasy stuff i plan on putting together a second Epic army. Now ive whittled it down to either Blood Angels or Black Legion. Now im taking a look through the Blood Angels section of the codex and am struggling to see how and if they can be a competitive force, or whether i should just use the standard marine list.

At the moment i just cant seem to piece together a list which works! With the Death Company being compulsory and wanting to take some Baal Predators (although im not sure they are great) heres what ive come up with so far:-

Death Company + Chaplain - 350pts
Baal Predators - 300 pts
Bikes + Attack Bike - 200pts
Terminators - 350pts
Tacticals + Razorback (Las) + Hunter + 2 Vindicators + Supreme Commander - 600pts
Vindicators + Hunter - 325pts
Whirlwinds + Hunter - 375pts
Two Thunderbolts - 150 pts
Two Thunderbolts - 150 pts
Thunderhawk - 200pts

Total - 3000 points.

So what do people think of the list? and what do people think of the BA? can they be competitive?

Cheers

Zog

2850

Speaking as the developer of the NetEA Blood Angels list, to me they just seem like Space Marines except worse.

From my chats with EpicUK fellows, they set out to make all their variant lists (so far) less powerful than the core list they're working off, so that they don't cause any problems in the tournament environment.


So no, EpicUK Blood Angels cannot be as competitive as generic Space Marines.

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Blood Angels are very slightly less powerful than codex marines, they effectively are forced to swap a terminator formation out for a death company (after all what else would you have spent the 350pts of the death company on).

That doesn't mean however they are uncompetitive just slightly less competitive than codex marines which when mastered are one of the most effective tournament armies.

However at 3000 pts for tournament play you have to be fairly ruthless with your army list choices and something like the following would probably be fine.

Tacticals + Supreme + Razorback + Hunter - 500
Terminators + Chaplain - 400
Death Company + Chaplain - 350
Baal Preds - 300
Thunderhawk - 200
Thunderhawk - 200
Warhound - 275
Warhound - 275
Thunderbolts - 150
Scouts + Razorback - 175
Scouts + Razorback - 175

At higher points tournaments such as Britcon or BotCh you could probably play around with some of the other toys like drop poding Furioso Dreds or Baals in Landing craft but its tricky to fit it effectively into a 3000pt list.

Looking at that list, I can't help but see a generic Marine list with another Terminator formation (Or two full Assault formations again for 350pts) instead of the Death Company*, and a normal Predator (Annihilator, for the love of the Emperor, not the original stats Destructors) formation instead of the Baals as being quite a bit better.

I think you might be able to do something better with the EpicUK list with Landing Craft and Assault formations (No longer an awkward size then). But in the EUK tournament environment you'll probably be out-activated 3:2 at minimum with such a list, and again you're still stuck with having to take the Death Company.


I took my Blood Angels painted army to an EUK tournament (London), and just played them as generic Marines, because however I squint at the EUK list it just looks like you're taking a 10% drop in power due to the Death Company, and also adding in some extra hampering to the list building process (6 strong Assault formations that don't fit nicely in Thunderhawks, and no Devastators at all). All you get in return is the Baal Predators** and some punchy Dreadnoughts***.





*Who don't have jump packs in the EpicUK list unless you want to pay another 50pts. So they're only going to fight one (favourable) engagement per game, at that's at only half a Thunderhawk-load as there's no other 4-strong Engagement formations you can put in a Thunderhawk in the EUK list.

**With a 15cm range on its sponsons, so you better damn well kill what you shot at or you'll be close combatted to death by basically anything in the game.

***But no formations to usefully attach them to.

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I would take the Death Company mounted in rhino's and run them on the ground in combination with the tacs, scouts and Baal's to form a mobile battle line which I would use very agressively.

Baal's are nasty short range death in combination with the Strat 5 of Marines and with other assault forces in support.

The Warhounds do exactly what they would usually do in a Codex list - hunt AA, alpha strike.

Thunderbolts are AA and broken formation harasment.

Termies can teleport and then be picked up by a thunderhawk or can air assault and then be recycled by the empty thunderhawk.

Does it play very similarly to a Codex list - of course but then why should Blood Angels play completely differently?

If I was taking Furioso Dreads I would add them to drop podding Tacs - 6 Tacs + 2 Furioso + Chaplain make a very nasty drop pod force.

Pop a Rhino (Not the hardest thing in the world to do for most armies) and then they're stranded on the ground as a 350pt, 15cm speed, CC based formation*, with no ranged weapons at all... If I was using the EUK Blood Angels list I'd do anything to try and get them airborne (Thunderhawk/Landing Craft) where at least they'll get one CC Engagement in the game.

Alternatively, I'd drop the Chaplain and take 'em with Jump Packs for ground deployment, again so that they'll actually reach CC at least once in most games I played.


*Unlike Rhino-less Tacticals or Devastators, they're not useful in a Firefight.

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Even if as you say the BA are 10% down on the Codex SM, which I would dispute, that would still make them a very competitive list when you look at the results of the Codex list.

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NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Depends how fine Epic's balance is in the first place... could be that air assault spam Marines are only an abstract 5% more effective than the average playing field at the moment, so an abstract 10% drop in power would then leave the list as 5% behind the average...

Are Marines really so far ahead of the power curve that an abstract 10% drop in power for the list still leaves it "very competitive"?

Would you therefore take 2700pts* of EUK Marines against 3000pts of EUK Orks with confidence that it was a balanced game?

(Presumably a *more* balanced game than it was before, if Codex Marines are so far ahead of the power curve that a 10% drop still leaves them "very competative"?)

That was a serious question, by the way, as if the objective answer is "yes", something should definitely be done about it, like a 10% rise in points (rounded to the nearest 25pts) for all of the most commonly-taken Marine formations.


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I do think that the EUK Blood Angels are indeed behind the power level of EUK's Codex Marine list**, as they have to take the (IMO) overpriced Death Company, they don't have Devastators, and their Assault formations don't fit neatly into Thunderhawks.

Are they behind or ahead of the power level of the average list in (Both EUK & NetEA) Epic however?
That's not a question I had actually considered.

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*A 10% drop in points from 3000pts.

**And as noted before, that is what EUK aimed for when developing the list, no?

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Lol! I'm having similar difficulties with the Black Templars (Who are even less competetive IMO - not titans, no thunderbolts, no whirlwinds and no scout fms make it quite difficult to get AA into the list and get the activation count up.

Anyhow, back to BA. I reckon you should stick with the BA, that way you get 2 armies for the price of 1 (As you can always use them as codex marines if you want. I'm going to do this with my templars, as I already have a couple of warhounds.)

Looking at the list, I reckon you could boost your activation count a bit by dropping some of the hunters. I'd be thinking of something along the lines of:

Tacticals + Supreme + hunter - 475
Terminators - 350
Death Company + Jump packs - 350
Baal Preds - 300
Landing Craft - 350
Thunderhawk - 200
2 x Warhound - 500
Thunderbolts - 150
Scouts + Razorback - 175
Scouts - 150

3000 pts

You can mount your DC and Baals in the landing craft for a very hardhitting (Although expensive) version of the Devastator/Assault marine TH. Warhounds work well as a pair for Alpha striking AA and support fire for a follow up air engagement as well as a pretty resilient BTS. I based this list on the one Yme-loc wrote but had to make a few changes to fit the landing craft in. Without the landing craft, the Baals are as good as useless and 25pts more expensive than normal pred annihilators to boot. It also leaves you an activation down on that list.

Baals are a shooting formation, and Death Company are an Engagement (CC) formation.

Tacs (Same 300pt cost) and DC would be a better Landing Craft mix if you're Engaging. You get 9 units instead of 4, 6 of which have the same FF4+ as the (EUK) Baal Predator. Or Assault Marines and DC and maybe a cheaper tank formation like Vindicators (Same 4x FF4+ as the Baal Predators, but cheaper).

Actually, you could put DC, Terminators, and Vindicators into a Landing Craft. It'd take up almost half of your army list (1400pts if you add chaplains to the 2 infantry formations and a librarian to a Vindicator) but I doubt anything in the game could hold against its first turn atomic hit.

Being as the EUK Blood Angels list doesn't have Devastators, you can't team up Baal Predators and Devastators for a "land and shoot" loadout, so I'd flat out recommend against using airborne Baals.


Well, being as the EUK Blood Angels list lacks Devastators to team up with in a complementary loadout, they aren't all that great when placed onboard a Landing Craft either.

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Aye but they're not a very good shooting unit, unless you're shooting at infantry.

Landing an air assault with a landing craft, gives you 8 x 3+ CC attacks, 4 x 4+ FF and 4 x 3+ FF attacks.

Because of the high mobility of the Baals and DC they can move off after the initial assault and still be useful for shooting etc.

I agree, the tacticals are probably more use but if you're dropping the Baals, you might as well just be a codex marine list and I just don't see them being any use short of LC deployment or sitting on the blitz with a hunter in overwatch all game.

A BA Landing Craft army is going to be low on activations (Again, due to Death Company, large Assault formations, and lack of Devastators), so you're going to be hitting before your enemy has run out of activations... so the likelyhood of surviving unscathed and moving off on the turn after the initial assault doesn't seem great to me.

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I guess that all depends on how many enemy fms you can break or lay BMs on to make harder to activate, as well as where you choose to place your Air assault. You may even get lucky and catch a couple of fms intermingled.

Baals starting on the ground, only has 1 more activation and these are still tied into air assaults, reducing the effective no of activations overall.

With the LC, you have more options, as you can choose to bring the Baals in by air, with various combinations of infantry support or start them on the ground. A good example being combining them with terminators teleporting or DC in a TH. The LC and Baals land and shoot, the terminators or DC engage with supporting fire from the preds and LC. You can tailor it to combat the type of opponent you're facing as the LC can transport troops in all manner of different combinations.

So you gain more flexibility and some actual use out of the Baals by using the LC at the cost of 1 activation - which is balanced up by the fact that that 1 extra activation is likely to be crap ground based Baals who do next to nothing all game.

At least with the LC they get to do something meaningful before coming under fire, unlike if they started on the ground.