Winning with Blood Angels in 7th Edition

The Blood Angels chapter has certainly gone through their fair share of ups and downs in 40k.  When 6th edition dropped, Blood Angels eventually fell far behind the power curve not even receiving a codex update until 7th edition had been out for several months.  Blood Angels would be the last codex released for 7th edition without the "Decurion" style build.  In a matter of one month the codex was viewed as already outdated, which was a shame as Blood Angels players waited patiently for 4 years for an update.

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Being an avid fan of our winged astartes brothers (they were my first army), I have tried to make them work testing different builds over and over and just trying to make the best of what is overall a bland codex.  It's not necessarily that Blood Angels are singularly bad really.  The real problem with Blood Angels however is that nearly everything they can do, vanilla marines can also do better. 

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Make no mistake, you're probably not going to win any major GT events with a pure Blood Angels army.  There are no secret meta busting lists hiding within the book.  With some patience and practice, however, a skilled general can at least do fairly well with them.  The key is to design lists that build upon the army's strengths.  Below is a sample pure 1850 Blood Angels list which we'll cover more in-depth on how the army works and why I chose the units I did for the list. 

1850 Blood Angels Combined Arms Detachment

HQ:

Librarian ML2, jump pack, Force Staff

Librarian ML2, jump pack, Force Staff

Elites:

8 Death Company, jump packs, 1 power fist

8 Death Company, jump packs, 1 power fist

Sternguard, 4 combi-gravs

Drop Pod

Troops:

Tactical Squad, heavy flamer, combi-flamer

Drop Pod

Tactical Squad, heavy flamer, combi-flamer

Drop Pod

Tactical Squad, melta ,combi-melta

Drop Pod

Tactical Squad, melta, combi-melta

Drop Pod

Tactical Squad, melta, combi-melta

Drop Pod

Fast

Assault Squad, meltax2, 2 inferno pistols

Drop Pod 

Assault Squad, meltax2, 2 inferno pistols

Drop Pod 

Assault Squad, meltax2, 2 inferno pistols

Drop Pod 

There really is no magic formula to how this list works. The idea is it provides precise, hard hitting alpha or beta strikes with a heavy amount of firepower.  10 Objective Secured units makes it versatile especially with the drop pod transports.  Let's dissect it further.

Why the librarian? He's cheap, has access to Divination as well as the Sanguinary discipline (good in its own right) and the new psychic powers in Angels of Death.  You're giving him a +2 strength staff making him +7 Strength on the charge, with instant death (when you activate it).  For a mere 105 points each they pack some good punch for your army.

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The death company units are your punch-back units. The army has a lot of surgical precise high powered shooting but the death company give you the tools to really dish out some pain in combat, especially with Prescience cast on them, or a variety of other available buffs from the Librarians (1 each attached to these units).  Death company can get expensive when overloaded with power weapons so we're going to keep it down to a single power fist in each unit.

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Additionally we have a unit of Sternguard with 4 combi-gravs.  This unit is capable of putting out some nasty firepower out of a pod onto pesky units like Riptides, wraithknights, and stormsurges. 

In the troops slot, as stated above, we have 10 objective secured units.  Two of the units are equipped for dealing with infantry and hordes with the heavy flamer/combi-flamers and the other three have plenty of melta to wreck your opponent's world.  Coming out of pods you can get these guys practically anywhere on the battlefield to maximize the use of their flamers and their melta guns as well as cover the objectives.

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Finally, in the fast attack slot we have 3 units of assault marines with melta guns and double inferno pistols on the sergeants.  That's 4 melta shots when these guys drop in.  I have put down imperial knights with a single squad of these guys.  They are meant to harass your opponent, block lanes, and have a tremendously high damage output. Just don't expect them to live very long. 

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Again, this list probably isn't going to win a 200 player GT anytime soon.  The list does give you some versatility while highlighting the things that actually separate Blood Angels from their vanilla brothers with heavy flamer tac squads, death company, and melta assault squads.  With some practice and dedication, a smart general can make this army stand toe to toe with nearly any list in the game.