Blood Angels Tactics: List Design

Greetings fellow brothers of Sanguinius! It has been some time since I posted on the blog. Make no mistake, while my time for writing has been lost to the warp over the past several months, my passion for Warhammer 40k has not waned. I have been busy building and playing Blood Angels in 8th Edition since the release of our beloved Codex. 



Thus far, I have been to 2 ITC RTT events, both 16 man events, and have performed incredibly well in both finishing 3rd and 5th place in each with a 4-1-1 record. My only loss coming to Tyranids by a single point.  Indeed it has been a fun tournament season thus far and I am looking forward to running my Blood Angels throughout 2018 in ITC events.

In doing so, I'm going to share ideas and concepts I have found to be useful in playtests I have been running with the army. I have several different builds that have done quite well, and I'm going to cover how you can improve your game as a Blood Angels player in a series of tactica articles.

First up, the initial hurdle you will have to jump; designing an effective list. When you are designing a list for competitive play, there are several things you need to consider.

1. What missions will the event use? 
2. What sort of meta will you be playing in?
3. Is your list capable of controlling the board?
4. Can your army kill screens quickly?
5. Does your army list have synergy?

Now, we are going to cover all of these more in-depth as I feel having a firm grasp on these concepts is vital to list design in 8th edition Warhammer 40k.  

What are the Missions:

This is really the first thing you need to take into account when designing an army list, not just for Blood Angels, but for any army and event you plan to attend.  There are a variety of different missions that are used in competitive play from ETC missions, Adepticon, ITC Champions missions, Warzone: Atlanta missions, etc.

Lately I have been playing a lot of ITC Champions missions and these have quickly become a favorite of competitive events all over the United States. They are fun to play, engaging, and challenging. They also encourage a more balanced approach to list building. For this article, we are going to be focusing on the ITC Champs missions as a general guide for list design. These missions can be found at Frontline Gaming under the ITC tab.

The ITC Champiions missions focus on 2 primary goals which both you and your opponent are trying to accomplish every turn. They are hold an objective and kill an enemy unit in your player turn and hold more than your opponent and kill more than your opponent in the battle round. Pretty straightforward concept. Hold more objectives on the table (which requires a lot of troops with a large footprint) and kill your opponent's units (which you will be trying to do anyway obviously). Additionally, there are a set of Secondary objectives which you are trying to accomplish. These include having a unit in each table quarter every turn, kill the enemy's warlord, kill one of their Titanic units, etc. These are selected after reviewing your opponent's army list as many of the Secondaries require you to kill certain unit types of your opponent's army.

The basic concept here is that the ITC missions require a large board presence of boots on the ground in the form of Troops choices to score objectives. Most ITC lists that are successful in their competitive format have a large emphasis on lots of troop choices coupled with elite units capable of dishing out massive damage. Fortunately for Blood Angels players, we can effectively do these things as well.

What is the meta:

The "meta" in 40k is a general term used to describe the types of armies you will likely see at a tournament. These can be more focused and specialized as in your local tournament meta, or a bit more broad such as a Grand Tournament meta which will feature players from all over making the meta a bit larger and more broad.

Oftentimes the mission format will dictate a meta, but not always. It really just depends on how your local area likes to play. But let's say you have a player in your meta who has been running double primarchs and obliterating his opponents in tournament play and winning events in your local area. Can your list handle playing against that army?  Do you have the tools to kill two primarchs in your list? If not, can your list survive long enough to outscore the opponent? These are the types of things to consider when building your list. If you know that in order to advance in your local tournament you will have to defeat a player running 3 Imperial Knights, then you must build around these considerations. 

When you get to a more broad meta, such as a Grand Tournament, you are looking at more wide sweeping broad results. As of this writing, Chaos Soup, Ynnari and Imperium lists are performing quite well followed closely by Tyranids. When building your list you need to practice against these types of armies to get a feel for how they function, and understand what you can do to beat them.

Board Control:

Now we will get more into the general specifics of your army list design. It is important, especially for Blood Angels players (as well as many other armies) to be able to control the board. What does that mean exactly? It means positioning your units and models in such a way as to prevent a large portion of the board from enemy contact, especially via "deep strike" entry.

The new reserve mechanic in 8th has completely changed how Warhammer 40k is played because unlike previous editions, there is no scatter range when entering in the middle of the battle. Instead, you must place units more than 9" away from the enemy. Being able to layer units 18" apart and covering the board is vital. Futhermore, Blood Angels absolutely require board control to function as a large portion of your army will want to benefit from deep striking in and assaulting with a 3d6 charge due to Descent of Angels.

How do we control the board? For Blood Angels this comes in the form of Scouts. These little guys are keys to victory in your games as they allow you to forward deploy into the neutral zone. They should be included in your army builds as must haves and if your opponent is running similar units in their lists, you should always deploy yours first to ensure you can take the neutral zone. This provides you an area to ensure you can land those jump pack units like Death Company 9" away from the enemy lines. Furthermore when wrapped in layers it can basically prevent your opponent from doing the same to you. Scouts will die fast, but that is ok. Simply being deployed they have done their job. If they score some objective points, or kill something before dying then that is just an added plus.

I will get into some more advanced board control concepts in further tactica articles.

Can You Remove Screens:

A screen in 40k is a unit, much like our own Scouts for Blood Angels, that are trying to block you out from getting to what you want to kill. This might be a gunline of devastators or Leman Russ tanks. The real juicy targets you want to get to that are hurting you will often be protected by layers of screen units which generally come in the form of cheap troops like Brimstone Horrors, Cultists, Infantry Platoons or Conscripts, etc. These annoying units will hold you up from getting where you want to for assaulting and that is what they are designed to do. They are merely speed bumps and you need to be able to get rid of them fast preferably in shooting, but also melee with certain dedicated screen removal units.

For Blood Angels the units you really want to send out to kill screens are things like Inceptors, Scout Bikes, Death Company with bolters, Sternguard with either special issue ammo or storm bolters in a pod, Razorbacks with Twin Assault Cannons, etc. Units that are capable of putting out a lot of small arms fire that can remove these annoying units quickly.

Not everyone will run lots of screens, but most armies will run them and if you attend an event, especially at the Grand Tournament level, you absolutely will face an army with hordes of bodies you need to remove in a hurry. It can seem overwhelming but with the right tools you can remove screens very fast.

Army Synergy:

If you look at top players and lists, one of the most common things you will find is list synergy. Units that are benefiting and supporting one another either through buffs, psychic powers, stratagems, etc. An example for Blood Angels would be Lemartes and Death Company. Sure, Descent of Angels is nice for a 3d6 charge...until you fail it. Then it's 2 Command Points wasted for nothing. Ah but then Lemartes allows Death Company to re-roll a failed charge roll. Suddenly your chances of getting a Descent of Angels charge off with them skyrocket to nearly impossible to fail odds (although it can still happen, this is a dice game after all).

Librarians in Blood Angels casting Unleash Rage on a squad of Sanguinary Guard supported by the Sanguinor nearby. Suddenly that unit with 2 attacks each is now hitting with 4 attacks each with ap -3 weapons doing d3 damage each. That is pretty scary to face.

The first thing you want to look at is what kind of synergy can you obtain without the use of Command Points and Stratagems? Aura buffs, psychic powers, etc that will not require you to invest Command Points into them.  Things such as Lemartes charge re-roll as mentioned above, or The Sanguinor providing +1 attack to all units within 6".  Captains camped with Devastators or Razorbacks to re-roll 1s to hit when shooting. 

Stratagems are amazing abilities that really define how armies work in 8th edition. They unlock often very powerful abilities that can take an army from just ok, to absolute beasts on the table. As mentioned above, for Blood Angels, that would be Descent of Angels. Combined with natural abilities like Red Thirst (+1 to wound when charged or charging) it really ramps Blood Angels up to new heights when combined with stratagems to take advantage of it. Many of these Stratagems are Command Point heavy however and will require you to have a lot of them at your disposal.

Each unit in your army should have a definite role in what you want them to accomplish.  That role might be something as simple as camp the backfield and score an objective for me every turn. Or it could be something as complex as deep strike in and clear multiple large targets and draw enemy firepower.

Putting it all Together:

Let's take an example list here for Blood Angels that will likely do quite well against many different opponents in ITC Champions missions:

Battalion

HQ

Captain, Thunder hammer, Storm Shield - 129

- Warlord: Artisan of War

- Relic: Angel's Wings

Librarian with Jump Pack, Force Stave, Bolt Pistol - 120

- Psychic Powers: Unleash Rage, Shield of Sanguinius

Troops

Tactical Squad - 65

Tactical Squad - 65

Tactical Squad - 65

Battalion

HQ

Captain with Jump Pack, Thunder hammer, Inferno Pistol - 123

The Sanguinor - 170

Troops

Scouts, Snipers - 75

Scouts, Snipers - 75

Scouts, Bolters - 55

Fast Attack

3 Inceptors, 6 Assault Bolters - 135

Vanguard

HQ

Lemartes - 129

Elites

15 Death Company with Jump Packs, 1 Thunder hammer, 2 Power Swords, 1 Power Fist, 14 Boltguns - 336

10 Sanguinary Guard, 2 Power Fist, 2 Encarmine Axe, 6 Encarmine Swords, 10 Angelus Boltguns - 358

Sanguinary Ancient - 99

Total - 1999

CP - 10

Total Units - 15

You'll see in this list that we have multiple tools for board control in the form of scouts, we have the ability to score progressive objectives with them combined with Tactical Marines. We have screen removal in the form of Inceptors cranking out lots of shots as well as the Death Company with Boltguns dropping in or moving up field using Forlorn Fury. 

There is a great amount of synergy here as we have a Captain to drop in with the Inceptors to re-roll 1st to hit with them and the Death Company blob in shooting. Lemartes to allow the Death Company to re-roll a charge. Librarian and The Sanguinor to throw on extra attacks on them and the Sanguinary Guard. The Ancient allowing them to re-roll 1s to wound.  You get the picture here. 

The list also provides a nice 10 Command Points to use ensuring that we will have enough to take down those targets we want to hit through the game.

That is it for part 1 of my Blood Angels tactica series. Stay tuned as next week I will focus on making the most of assault.