Thursday 29 December 2011

Blood Angels Relaunch

Hey folks,
Back from Christmas and ready for some 40K? Me too...

Necrons are out and people are slowly but surely coming to appreciate their strengths and their weaknesses. They are my favourite army at the minute, but they have a long way to go to prove they are the toughest new kid on the block.
All the time I am discovering more weakenesses and army builds that they are incredible susceptible to.

Which leads me into today... Necrons are my current tournament army, or rather...I am playing them at the Caledonian Uprising tournament in January..

But part of my hobby has been and always will be boredom, or short attention span...whichever you choose. So over the last week or so, whilst munching away on all the wonderful Christmas food I have been having dreams.

Dreams of a golden figure, heroic and awe insiring, mighty spread wings flared into the light.. the Sanguinor!

It may coincide with receiving the model for Christmas stocking filler...

So I thought about putting together a BA Jumper army for 1850 to playtest against the Necrons. Part of a playtet gauntlet if you will.

I recalled and old Goatboy list (I think) that he called Super Friends or some crap.. Sanguinor and Mephiston. Sounds good no?

Sanguinor
Mephiston
2 x 10 Assault Marines w. 2 Melta, Sergeant - LC and SS
2 x 10 Assault Marines w 2 Melta, Sergeant - PFist (1 w Combat Shield)
3 x Priests, 1 x LC, 2 x Melta JPs
1 x Priest - LC and Melta JP

And that is 1850!
Its great fun.
I played versus Bringer's IG that he is taking to Caledonian in one of the missions, and took the fight to him big time.
I sacrificed Mephiston to draw major fire and movement over to the left flank and then swept the army on to the right.
They then walked through the army smashing crap all the way...S5 marines across the board with Sanguinor's Fervour (+1A) makes a massive difference..remember how alot of DE players use Hellions with FC and +1S from Drugs to multcharge and rape vehicles? Yeah, same principle.
Plus melta..that helps too! lol.

Favourite thing? Sanguinors Blessing - either a LC/SS troop killer or a PFist powerhouse is going to get WS5, I5, A3, W2, plus Fervour and FC/FNP...wonderful.

Got a game against my own Necrons (Stargazer ran them - back from Uni for a while) and the Sanguinor had been assaulted by 2 x 7 strong Scarab swarms, lost his army and had taken a wound, so the Sergeant Sanguinor had blessed fell back from the frontline push and swept in to his aid, ultimately killing the Scarabs and freeing the Sanguinor.. It was epic and very cool. Prolly much better than I have just written.

Onto Necrons and BA.. Necrons were literally just swept from the board in furious charges and their Gauss and Tesla had almost no effect on the marines, 3+ and FNP is just too good when you are firing AP-..even wounding on 2's and getting 6-8 hits per vehicle simply could not produce enough weight of fire.

I know that the army has  enough firepower to kill Termies - even with FNP (smaller squads, more concentrated fire), but I am seriously worried about taking out massed FNP marines.. Mephiston was taken care of by Mindshackles and Warscythe lord, Sanguinor was rendered ineffectual by Scarabs.. that's all fine, but then regular marines (well, fucking crazy BA) just walked through the rest of the army.

How is it best to take out all those pain-insensitive marines? I clearly need to take control of my army to face off with these guys.. How are any of you Necrons out there getting on versus this kind of BA list?

As for a 'relaunch' - I am in the process of painting up the last few models for this BA army and it will be my go to force for when I am bored of the Crons...keep both fresh and fun..

8 comments:

  1. yeah not really sure how the crons could have effectively countered.. the toughness of the marines combined with their mobility means there is no way of getting enough shots off before they are on you..

    Maybe leave the warriors in reserve to walk on as late as possible and then beforehand try to break up and fragment the BA force? Hopefully meaning that the warriors will have some space to come on and add their firepower rather than just being jumped on with little to no defence?

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  2. BA's always give me issues with guard as well due to the speed that they can be on you, and their great resilience to traditional methods of killing marines (normally weight of low/mid strength fire). i have learned my own methods of countering them, but i just don't think they can be applied to crons.

    this question leaves me at a bit of a loss to be honest.

    maybe hope you don't play em? :P

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  3. Not really an option Ateides! Need to learn it..although it is not an over common build tbh..I can't remember the last time I saw an all jumper army at a tournie, maybe last January at X Legion?
    I've seen armies with a strong Jump element, but not flat out..
    I have to admit, it was really good fun running them, Meph and Sanguinor, plus the mini-Captain from Sanguinor.. great stuff...and shrugging off dozens of wounds per game through FNP..

    I think I will be ok running against it.. I'll work on it next week...

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  4. I must admit i took jumper Bangles for a while and flat out jump pack and mephy lists worked pretty good right up until strike squads turned up :S

    Now that alot of grey knight armys have moved away from warp quake as a general rule i think a jumper army would be a quirky dark horse at a torunament....just dont forget to take the vanguard.

    I could see that kind of list causing crons problems - the big leveler though would be rolling the magic 6's on barges.

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  5. Have you tied the bromance of dante/sanguinor ? Lemme break it down with a quick and dirty army list.
    Dantes
    Sanguinor
    3 x priests with jp and infernus pistol
    4 x sanguie guard with. 2 pistols fist
    5 Vanguard vets with. Combat sarge

    If points remain add honor squads with melta and packs

    The point of the bromance army is either it can be played as a doa style army or flying circus of fnp 2+ dudes who hop from cover to cover.
    Oh and count the number of sarges ... 1 . Guess who gets the blessing?

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  6. Personally without long range support, Jumper armies may fall into some problems. Im considering a Jumper army for the Masters which also has 3 Preds.

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  7. @The Voice - even the magic 6's don't help if the dice gods are on your side (they are always on mine...I have faith...)!

    Vanguard get expensive quick..I'd have to lose The Sanguinor in order to get them in..

    In a competitive setting, yeah I think they could do well, they have the flexibility and the hitting power, but the lack of consistent and ranged firepower is a big issue.

    @Anon - the Bromance with Dante/Sanguinor is cool and definately a possibility..small model count and cool as.. but not as effective against as wide a range of armies IMHO.. I'll give it a go though, thanks for the suggestion..I did run a Dante-wing a while back and have a full Sanguinary Guard army ready to just hit the table..

    @Alex. Agreed. I'd go Devs over Preds in that context no?

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  8. Bromance can be effective against a wide variety of lists you just have to think outside the standard box.
    Facing a mech list: deploy and play as a Low model Count DoA army.
    Facing a gunline? DoA again.
    Facing a Gk warpquake gunline counter assualt list? Leap frog units for cover and multicharge everything.
    Draigowing: one massed multi assualt can break that army.5++ isn't reliable enough to withstand enough attacks. Yes this is a 50/50 assualt.

    And yes vanguard vets are spendy but what's better than a tooled up VV sarge getting blessing 100 of the time?

    Fyi I've tested bbromance against the lists above and done well. Draigo was the onnly one I felt iffy on

    Oh and bromance with th/ss terms over VV is a truly frightening aspect for most no likes being in combat with thss squads with fnp

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