Sunday 1 July 2012

Fist Bump Time? Choosing Allies for my Blood Angels

Let's have a little chat about allies shall we.  Clearly one of the top 5 new huge rules of 6th edition along with fliers and rulebook psy powers, allies has epic potential to break the game but also make it loads of fun at the same time depending on who you play and what they take.
Now as a nid player, allies suck, if I ever play nids again, I'll be banning allies against me!  I just dont think they are fair to use them against an army that isnt allowed any at all for what is purely fluff reasons.  Especially when they cant even ally with themselves to make up for it! (extra elite slots would make all the difference to most nid lists).

However Tyranids are not the main aspect of this post, Blood Angels are.  When 6th hit, I settled on them as my primary 6th ed army for at least the first few games at which point the question hit, what ally if any shall I take in games where people are using them?


The first idea was Imperial Guard, I happen to have a guard army already so that's not an issue, plus they have fliers which as we all know are amazing now and the vendetta is a fantastic vehicle in both value for points, look and feel and competitiveness.  To go with the vendetta, simply some plasma vets who are even better now with the change to rapid fire and a Primaris Psyker. 

You may well be thinking, what the hell is a primaris psyker, never seen on before, is that like a member of the psyker battle squad? nope its actually a HQ choice for imperial guard, fairly cheap too at 70 points and the idea of taking one is simply to get access to those lovely cheesy new rulebook powers.


So, let's put them to one side for now and see what else is available, multiple flavours of marine of course but what's the point in allying marines with marines, so smurfs are off the table.  However what is a good strong possibility for a Blood Angels mech list is space wolves.  Space wolves I like certain aspects of, mainly their thunderwolf cavalry.  So what do we go for here, surely it picks its self? well yes, it does.  Space wolves get 2 HQ per HQ choice so that's either 2 rune priests for psychic nonsense OR a priest and a wolf lord to go with some thuderwolves.  This I like, very much.

Troops are troops and wolves have some of the best out there, so just take yourself a nice grey hunter squad with even a terminator wolf guard in there for some standing at the front taking the wounds style action! you could even throw in some long fangs if you wanted to, why bother with generic devastators in a Blood Angel list when you can have the best devastators in the game!

Finally and I think the best option here, Necrons.  Desperate allies so don't get too close however necrons took some serious boosts in 5th edition, but they were still seen as not as good as grey knights or space wolves.  This has all changed now however, Necrons are looking like the kings of 6th edition.


Necrons are amazing, their Catacomb command barge now as a chariot can actually charge units, yes that's right, a vehicle can make charges, what does it think it is a dreadnought or something? Fly over, do s7 + 2d6 pen swoop attacks, land the other side then charge either the vehicle to finish it off or the units that came out. 

What else, well Troops are also an auto pick, immortals with Gauss are also great now, you can abuse the new rapid fire rules while also glancing vehicles into oblivion.  This brings me to their delivery method and what is now the best vehicle in the game, the night scythe.  What was before an average not often used skimmer, its now a flier which due to a cheeky little update in the FAQ can drop off its troops after flying 24" without any penalty.  Simply fantastic.

This is all you really need to take, though it can't hurt to look at the other stand out units if you have points spare, a cheeky annihilation barge is a fantastic source of firepower for a low points cost, or why not compliment your blood angels assault squads and death company (which are also great now) with some wraiths.  Wraiths took the upgrade that 6th gave to jump infantry and added it to their own brand of super cheesy fantastic units so hey take some along.

So there we have it, plenty of choice available, what will you be taking as your allies?