Super Secret 1750 Blood Angels – List & Tactics

Here it is… my test list and ideas for use for the X Legion 1750 tournament in Feb. A little while back I posted this dilemma of sorts…since then I have been play testing various options against a variety of opponents from Mechdar to IG to Loganwing Space Wolves to Dark Eldar….need to take on some Orks and Nids and I’ll have a good idea of how this force works and where it is weak across a wide spread of archetypal armies…this is how I part of how I playtest anyway.

The army is:

Librarian – Force Weapon, Hood, Fear of the Darkness, Shield of Sanguinius

Librarian – Force Weapon, Hood, Fear of the Darkness, Shield of Sanguinius

DropCannon Dread(TM bitches!) Dread – Frag Cannon, Meltagun, Fist, Drop Pod

RAS – Meltagun, Razorback – LasPlas

RAS – Meltagun, Razorback – LasPlas

RAS – Meltagun, Razorback – LasPlas

RAS – Flamer, Razorback – LasPlas

2 x Multimelta Attack Bikes

Baal Pred – TLAC, HKM

Baal Pred – TLAC, HKM

Predator – Autocannon, Lascannon sponsons, HKM

Predator – Autocannon, Lascannon sponsons, HKM

Predator – Autocannon, Lascannon sponsons, HKM

This clocks in at 1750 on the nose and works very nicely. The wall of AV13 moves and protects the bikes and Razors, whilst the whole army moves and shoots.

The key difference to me between say IG and BA is that there is a huge amount of suppression fire in a typical IG tournament army. You can easily expect to see plenty of chimera’s with Multilasers and Autocannons (whether on Hydra’s – which there will be, or in Vets squads)…both of which are fantastic weapons and I use as many of each (weighing more heavily on the S7 Autocannon side) as possible in my IG.

On the otherhand we have the Blood Angels…the return of the Lascannon was hailed back when the codex hit…cheap, fast vehicles being able to bring the mighty weapon to bear. The prevalence of melta in every list meant that the lascannon was needed to remove the mobility of the melta. The melta’s short range meant that it had to be delivered. We kill the vehicle, we negate the impact of the melta.

Using a high strength, high quality weapon like the lascannon allows us to not just suppress, but destroy a target.

The perfect example is the Predator…this guy can wield 2 lascannons, 2 S7 Autocannon shots, 1 S8 missile shot for 145 points on an AV13 fast platform.

Sweet. And very likely to kill its target up to AV12. Further up the armour values and the likelihood decreases massively.

What am I trying to get at with this point? Whilst the IG can suppress you and kill you over a couple of turns, the idea behind the BA is that they have a real chance of killing you each turn. This, to me, is one of the key differences.

Of course, the other is mobility.

Test gaming with Blood Angels 1750:

I thought I’d share some deployment ideas and early game movement and application of firepower through target priority etc using my Blood Angels (list here)

This is from a test game versus my 1750 Imperial Guard. The mission is Annihilation and Spearhead. Blood Angels rolled up first turn, after scout moves, IG failed to Seize the Initiative.

Deployment:

The BA take to the field, using the Baals and 2 Preds as the ‘bookends’ to the BA line. In this case, we have a large, partially LOS blocking piece of terrain. Whilst it can be seen through, it is high enough to hide the razorbacks behind for cover first turn.

The DropCannon Dread is, of course, awaiting Drop Pod Assault…

The Baals will scout towards the bottom left of the image, hopefully scouting first to stop any alpha striking or at least to diminish the Vendetta’s ability to threaten side armour. Of course, I’m pretty safe from alpha strike as I am going first, but I need to make sure I’m neutralising the Vendetta’s, or I may leave myself open to it. So for turn 1, they are the number one priority.

The Demolisher will, of course, be bloody high on my priority, but this is partially cos I’m scared shitless by it. It will kill a vehicle per turn if it hits me, with the ‘lumbering behemoth’ rule meaning it can fire both the Demolisher cannon and the hull lascannon.

Finally, priority 3 is the Hellhound…it has a fast Multimelta and the flame cannon has the range and strength to threaten multiple razorbacks if I’m stupid enough to leave them too close – ‘parking lot’ style. Hopefully I’m not that dopey.

Scout moves: 

BA get the first move, with a Baal pushing across almost 18”, making sure to keep 12” away from the IG. In this manner, it can push 12” across to the right, into the corner of the table, putting side armour shots into the troop transports. Why the APC’s? Well, they are 2 separate threat vectors each, with the chimera multilaser and the Autocannon vets inside. Stunning and shaking it will remove the number of targets available to return fire. The Baals move also pins back the Vendetta from threatening side armour as I said earlier.

The first IG scout move is to bring the left hand Vendetta over to the right hand side, this provides it with a 4+ flat out save against incoming fire whilst leaving the other to either scout behind the middle terrain piece, or to swing backwards behind the ruin in the corner of the table…

The second Baal pushes up with its counter part, whilst this does leave the attack bikes out in the open (ordinarily I’d leave them hidden completely behind a Predator or Razor hull until they can lash out and melta a high value target) but in this case, going first, I want to hammer the IG line hard.

Both Baals have of course popped smoke, as ridiculous as it is, they’ll get cover saves in the next enemy shooting phase….that’d be after they move and fire. Seriously, wtf? But I’m still going to take it…

The second Vendetta takes the easy option, and moves flat out to behind the central terrain piece, picking up its cover save whilst leaving it in position to redeploy to wherever its firepower is needed.

At the end of turn one, the DropCannon Dread has toasted not 1 but 2 chimera’s carrying the CCS and one plasma vet squad. The meltagun completely whiffed, but the frag cannon smashed them into pieces of twisted metal. However, with a 4 meltagun (TL’d of course!) squad inches from the Dread and not being pinned…well, its not a pretty end for the venerable battle brother.

The Hellhound is melta’d by the attack bike squadron, and both vendetta’s cannot move or shoot…saved of course by their extra armour leaving them with their fantastic mobility still…The rest of the Imperial Guard fire was ineffective against AV13, however, the Demolisher did plough forward and would have exploded the Pred opposite it if it were not for the Shield of Sanguinius…5+ cover ftw!

The overview shows us that despite the Vendetta on the left not being able to shoot, it can still cause real problems just through its sheer mobility and the threat of 3 TL lascannons next turn… although this dude is only rocking two right now as it got one shot off by an Autocannon.

Throughout the game, the Vendetta’s will get their firepower suppressed whilst causing major problems with their movement…by constantly threatening side or rear armour they force their position at the top of the target priority list… they are both eventually downed, one from plasma fire, the other from lascannon fire. They would have fallen sooner in retrospect but by constantly moving flat out, they increase their survivability…worth pondering…is a Vendetta more survivable moving flat out or firing to reduce the number of incoming shots…the answer is of course firing… aggressive defence…it is a pissing war game after all.

The Baals continue their push up the left hand board edge, peppering squad and chimera alike with fire..

The Librarians do a sterling job of providing cover for the two ‘battle groups’ and also punishing the puny humans with Fear of the Darkness…causing 3 separate units to fall back though out the game, making a huge difference to the return fire… as planned they have fantastic range with a 12” fast Razor still firing its lascannon or plasma and disembarking just the librarian 2”+base then we have an auto-hitting 24” range power…almost 37”. With two of them, I can have an excellent chance of removing one immediate threat, or with average Leadership (see Imperial Guard…lol) a good shot at 2 separate units…

An additional thought…if a unit is falling back already…don’t they automagically fail any LD check required to make? If a FearOTD victim does not regroup…lets just hit them again!!

Anyway, we finished up with it being a decisive Blood Angel victory… 14 – 8 on KP’s… with over half the BA army left and in good order. Astartes blood is not cheaply sold…

More insights to come on the army… in the meantime, you guys have any ideas or tweaks that you would make?