Zero Sanguinary Guard Blood Angels?!

After not playing much 40k for a couple months, I was finally able to sign up for an RTT being held at Tables and Towers in Westminster, MD (an amazing store that everyone should check out if they are anywhere near MD!). I hadn’t played a game of 40k in a couple months thanks to Conquest (an amazing game by Para Bellum Games that FLG sells on their webstore!) pulling me away, so I obviously did what any normal wargamer would do and have their friend build a completely converted Blood Angels army from scratch while getting it all painted in less than a month. I was getting tired of playing my beloved GSC, and the fast moving close combat punch of the Blood Angels always seemed like they would be a ton of fun to put on the table. I was slightly limited in my list building in that I really only had the units that were in mine and my friends collections, but despite this limitation I thought I could build a very competitive Blood Angels army even with the lack of Sanguinary Guard in our collections (list in the comments).

Round 1: Round 1 I was paired into a very interesting Daemons list that contained a ton of Slaanesh Fiends, 12 Flamers, and a bunch of Character support to back them up. The Fiends could move just as fast as my Blood Angels, and those Flamers sure did scare me with no way to turn off Overwatch in my list. I knew this game would come down to who hit who first by using their impressive speed to the biggest advantage. The mission was Conversion, so there was not going to be a lot of space in between deployment zones with us starting just 18 inches apart. With this in mind my Secondary choices were pretty simple with me taking Shock Tactics, Fury of The Lost, and Blade of Sanguinius (the same Secondaries I would take all three games). Shock Tactics is a no brainer here with three Objectives in no mans land that my army will be wrestling Daemons on all game, and my army is built to take Fury of The Lost every game with four Death Company units. Blade of Sanguinius was also a pretty safe pick for 10 points as my opponent had a Slaanesh character on chariot who was going to have to come toward me if she wanted to do anything all game.

My opponent’s Secondaries were Reality Rebels, No Prisoners, and Warp Ritual. Reality Rebels is an auto take for this Daemons army as it has so many units to throw at the opponent, and my army gives up 13 No Prisoner points. The mistake my opponent made here was in taking Warp Ritual instead of Psychic Interrogation. Warp Ritual requires Characters to be in the middle of the table, and while there is an Objective there in this mission, my army would like nothing more than to ball up around my Character buffs and slam into the middle of the table. By taking Psychic Interrogation instead, my opponent could have safely target my aggressive Characters from outside of my charge range while scoring points.

Aside from some Vanguard Vets fighting Daemonettes at my opponents back corner Objective, and some Eliminators fighting Nurglings on mine, my opponent and I committed the bulk of our armies to the middle of the table, but with the overwhelming number of attacks Blood Angels can dish out, and some clever uses of Angel Sacrifice to stop my opponent’s army wide fights first from hurting too much, the Slaanesh Daemons were knocked off the middle Objective for the majority of the game.

This game ended in a 96-75 victory for the Blood Angels. In this close game it came down to being able to score more Primary points than my opponent while keeping him at a 7 for his Warp Ritual scoring.

Round 2: For Round 2 I was paired into a Thousand Sons/Flamers list that looked incredibly durable and deadly. 20 Scarab Occult Terminators that could teleport around the table backed up by 18(ish) Tzeetch Flamers was going to be a rough matchup. The game started out rough with my opponent’s first turn of just moving one unit of 3 Flamers onto an Objective allowing my pre-game moving Death Company a good chance to at a charge. I thought I had a solid way to score 4 points from Shock Assault AND 4 points for Fury of The Lost (assuming the Death Company also died).

Wrong, through Overwatch those three Flamers killed 4 Death Company. I had assumed, at worst, 3 would die and the massive amount of attacks the Death Company get would finish off three Flamers. I even use the Stratagem to give the Death Company a 5+ ignore wounds save! What actually happened was the last Death Company failed to kill anything, and then was shamefully murdered by three Tzeetch Flamers….in Close Combat.

The rest of the game went about this same way. After rolling (I think) 6 1’s for some 3+ saves for my Vanguard Vets my opponent commented, “it’s nice you can laugh about this, your luck has been terrible all game.” I only laugh to keep from crying sir.

I don’t want to make it seem like the only reason I lost this game was to bad luck. My opponent recognized early that the game would be won or lost based off who moved out onto the Objectives first to take the first big hit, as each army was capable of doing some serious damage. After my disasterous attempt to kill three Flamers on my first turn my opponent knew he could sit back on his Objectives and wait for me to make the first move while he counter attacked with his entire army. Wisely, this is exactly what he did to get a 94-41 victory over my poor Blood Angels.

Round 3: Quickly moving on to Round 3 where I was paired into a great guy I have played 3 other times this ITC season. My third round opponent and I had never met before this year, but have randomly been paired against each other in four separate events this year. We both must be really good 1-1 type players.

My opponent was playing Dark Angels Inner Circle this tournament and the mission was Data Scry-Salvage. Unfortunately, the hold 2 Objective mission was going to be rough for my opponent who just had less units on the table to be in all the places required to hold more Objectives than a standard hold 1. My opponent put up an awesome fight though, with his incredibly hard to kill Terminators pushing aggressively toward the Objectives on my side of the table. I was a little worried when my opponent took full advantage of a positioning mistake I made with my Death Company Captain by using him as a charge target to spring board onto an Objective, kill my Captain, AND sit comfortably in cover.

Thankfully, my Thunder Hammer wielding Death Company rolled above average throughout the entire game by deleting units of Dark Angel Terminators each turn while moving across the board to steal Objectives from my opponent. With the help of some absolutely horrible saving throws made by my opponent, and some above average saving throws made by my Rites of War Sanguinary Priest, I was able to win the Primary score handedly in this game resulting in a 94-54 Blood Angels victory.

This game was actually much closer than the score indicates, and if my opponent rolled even average saves on the turn I pushed into his home Objective I think it would be an extremely tough game to call! My biggest mistake here was picking his Armor of Indomitus Apothecary on bike as my Blade of Sanguinius target. After healing some units up Turn 2 my opponent sped his bike Apothecary right back to his deployment zone. I was kicking myself for choosing such a fast character (not to mention one who had a 3+ Invulnerable save in his pocket), but as was the norm in this game my Death Company managed to make contact with the Apothecary with my opponent failing the majority of his 3++ saves allowing me to score a very undeserved 10 points on Blade of Sanguinius.

Overall I had an absolute blast playing Blood Angels. I plan to stick with them for a tournament coming up in January at Tables and Towers, and I feel like I have a much more solid grasp on how to play the army! Knowing which enemy Character to pick for Blade of Sanguinius, when to go all in with my fast close combat army, and knowing when to sit and wait for my opponent to make the first move are all things I learned over the tournament. I hope to use some of these lessons learned next month, and I will be sure to share the tournament report here after it happens!