Reecius here from Frontline Gaming to talk about the very cool Blood Angels, Archangels Demi-Company formation from the Angel’s Blade book. Check the Tactics Corner for more great reviews and articles!
The Angel’s Blade supplement while certainly cool has fallen a bit flat with the community. Why? It simply doesn’t compare to the Space Marine Battle Company. Hundreds of free points and army wide rerolls in addition to Chapter Tactics is pretty damn hard to beat.
That said, there is a lot to like with the new Blood Angels rules and while not amazing, what they get is certainly not bad. I for one, dig the Archangels Demi-Company. It is a flexible–if expensive–core formation that relaly lets you build a unique Blood Angels army.
It has what I like, too: deployment tricks, flexibility and some cool units. Which is a great segway into what the formation is comprised of:
- Terminator Captain
- 2 Furioso Dreadnoughts
- 5 of any mix of the following:
- Terminator Squad
- Terminator Assault Squad
- Vanguard Veteran Squad
- Sternguard Veteran Squad
Anyone who knows me knows I love me some Sternguard! But, the other units listed are fun as well. It is disappointing that some of the units in the Blood Angels book didn’t get the Scout treatment but hey.
Taken for what it is, Having elite units coming out of deep strike reserves starting turn 1 with a reroll to reserves, a D6″ scatter, Stubborn, Zealot under 50% squad size in the Angel’s Blade Strike Force, and that is a lot of fun. Many armies are very vulnerable to deep striking tactics and being able to react to your opponent’s deployment is very powerful. If you find yourself facing another deep striking army, using that reroll to try and force your self to stay in reserves can be game winning.
Terminator Assault Squsds, Vanguard Vets and Furioso Dreadnoughts coming in on weak flanks with high precision can really pack a punch! While this may not be a tournament winning army it sure does strike me as being very enjoyable to play.
I’d run with something similar to the following:
- Terminator Captain
- 2 x Furioso Dreads in Lucious Pattern Drop Pods (SOOO good!)
- 10 Sternguard in a pod
- 2 x Assault Termies with 3 x T.Hammers and 2 x L. Claws (which are quite good with +1 Strength and Initiative)
- 5 Vanguard Vets with your choice of kit.
Again, not a tournament winner most likely but fun, hits hard and a nice low model count for an easy hobby project. Slap your choice of Auxiliary formation in there (I’d probably go with the 10th Company Ambush force as I love Scouts and melee Scouts with the combat bonuses Blood Angels get are mean!) and you have a fun army that will give as good as it gets. Of course, a Deathstar will give you fits though, so bring along everyone’s favorite Culexus Assassin and have some fun games.
What do you think about the Archangels Demi-Company?
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I like the archangel demi company but it very annoying that termies points costs weren’t brought in line with their codex brothers.
I agree 100%. Definitely a missed opportunity.
I tried out nearly that exact list the other day, although went all sternguard. It is fun in the right game! (I.e your opponent and you have an understanding that were he to rock up with double riptide wing, he should also bring a large pineapple and allow you shove it up his ass.)
Thanks for the review (and neat summary of what is wrong with this supplement)!
The pineapple rule, I dig it! haha
In larger scale games, I am doing this with the angel fury spearhead, it is pretty hardcore when you have turn one deepstriking turn one charging assault termies, with 3 stormraven supporting it, and six obsc squads of tactical marines
Nice combo!
Yeah that is a brutal combo but damn it is expensive. You’re talking like 3000 point games lol.
Fallen flat is such an understatement though. So much hype for so long about Blood Angels getting attention and then this thing drops, doesn’t splash and sinks like a stone. Didn’t even hear about it again.
Considering it came after Angels of Death that’s pretty hard to understand. I admit I don’t realy see the hard times for BA players as I’d just play any power armor army with any Codex I want (hello Chaos Legions with chapter tactics) and I’m sure Raven Guard or a Skyhammer would make just wonderful Blood Angels standins but its still just so weird that it’s with those guys that they suddenly hold back so much.
Yeah, it certainly was not what BA players were hoping for, but hey. You work with what you’ve got. I think it can be a fun formation to play but it certainly ranks in the Ork and AM “Decurion” detachment power levels.
Clearly you’ve never faced a fully tooled out ork list. All you need to do is give them a 300-500 point advantage and they start to really shine.
I play Orks very frequently actually, or were you being sarcastic? Hard to tell online sometimes.
My only issue with that is that the only real solution to just play for fun that we’ve found is just not play formations because then something will just inevitably be completly bonkers.
So fun formations don’t realy do anything for me.
Its no real solution though as some armies like Harlequins, Admech and appearantly GS Cult seem to realy need their formations. I get dizzy trying to realy find a way out. At this point I’m just hoping 8th Edition is a hard reboot. Which is funny considering how much I don’t like the one they just did with their other game.
Formations are fun but yeah, they really make the game mega complex.
I was somewhat disappointed in general with Angel’s Blade. There is some stuff in there that I like and some stuff I don’t really care for. Lost Brotherhood Detachment is pretty good, but the low model count hurts.
The Archangels Demi-Company is definitely what I’d run in core for the Angel’s Blade Strike Force though. It is far superior to the Battle Demi-Company which is very disappointing overall (the same command benefit as the Strike Force? Seriously, GW?) Rolling for reserves turn 1 is amazing and with some sternguard you can really lay down a hard alpha strike coming in from pods.
I’d probably run fragiosos out of standard pods but the dreadnought pods are amazing indeed. Of course, I think the Archangels Orbital Intervention Force is really awesome, but you need to cater to it a bit to get the most out of it (pods with beacons, homers on the ground, etc).
Try those Lucious Pods, I swear, you will never go back after trying them even one time!
There are some fun formations, but i really dislike the cores and decurion. I get so salty thinking about this book, but keep forgetting how many fun formations there are for casual games. Good write up though!
I feel your pain and feel the salt is not unwarranted.
I dunno, I rather like the new book. The demi company blows, but the archangels as a core to Sanguine Blade is pretty awesome, as is the lost brothethood. I think the biggest beef most people have is with the discrepancy between the good and bad. Archangels, Intervention Force, Lost Brotherhood and Golden host are all awesome (10th co is good too), while the rest is kinda meh. We’re not crons, eldar or white scars, but we’re in better shape than chaos, DE, orks, pure GK, and the like. Probably on par with wolves.
So many missed opportunities with AB.
We could have gotten fixed termies, fixed vanguard, cataphractii armor, chapter master availability, additional death company units like termies and captains, and maybe some formations that don’t take up half a tourney-size army.
In addition to all the missed opportunities, they also managed to screw up the battle Demi-company formation, they made the DC chap have pre-selected wargear, screwed up the relics so that ONLY the DC chap can take any of them while also hilariously overpricing them, made any deep strike-charging abilities strictly worse than what the other 997 chapters in codex marines can do. (seriously, imperial fists ASM can charge out of deep strike just fine but BA, the jump pack, deep strike, and assault specialists, have to do disordered charges? Wtf?)
They need to stop having rules writers that don’t like the faction and don’t understand the current power level of the game write rules for it. Overall the book is a huge disappointment and I’d advise anyone wanting to run anything out of it to get the formation info by “other means.” GW does not deserve to get paid for this.