Warhammer 40K: Codex Blood Angels Review – The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly
Goatboy here with everything you need to know about the new 40K Codex: Blood Angel. It’s a strong one!
It is a pretty swell Codex with a lot of neat stuff, a real good feeling on how GW want Blood Angels to play, and some fixes to things that were a bit too rough from the 10th Edition Index. I am excited about the book and I am even contemplating adding to my Space Marine army and creating a nice “Blood Angels” theme within my Space Goats color scheme that happens to be very close to Blood Angels. Let’s dive in and get to reviewing the latest Blood Angels Supplemental Codex.
As usual I will go over a high level look at the codex. I really would rather go into the things that make me excited to paint up a bunch of new models and throw them on the tabletop. The review is broken up into the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and thankfully there is a ton of good in this book.
Codex Blood Angels: The Good
I am very thankful this is a Codex Supplement as it is very much focused on the things that make Blood Angels feel like the Blood Angels should. You got a ton of options to create a bloodthirsty force of madness-bound Space Vampires, noble warriors, and golden fly boys. In fact it is a pretty awesome thing that this book pushes the Jump Troop aspects of the Space Marine army and that is a good thing to make the faction unique. We have already had a Dark Angels book that is pushing Terminators and it is nice to see something else updated to be important within the power armor genre of 40K.
Blood Angels Detachments
At a top level we have three Detachments – Liberator Assault Group (Index one), The Lost Brethren (Death Company), and The Angelic Host (Jump Bros for days). Overall two of the Detachments are very strong and will show up to events while the third – The Lost Brethren feels a little bit lost compared to the others. My favorite one is the Angelic Host and I want to talk a bit more about that.
The Angelic Host detachment is the “Hypercrypt” style detachment for the codex. In this one, you will be able to select up to two units to “pick up” at the end of your opponents’ Movement phase and redeploy them. This is huge as we all know how movement can be important factor for winning the game. I don’t think we’ll see a ton of pick up and try to assault you beyond a single super unit combo’d with a Character. But just having the ability to redeploy will be amazing on the tabletop.
The other strong detachment is the updated Index one in the Liberator Assault Group – aka the LAG bros. This one gives you a +1 to your attack characteristic and a +2 to your strength when you charge which is extremely powerful. The new Sanguinary Guard are heavily pushed in this codex and this Detachment is made for them. Overall it is a powerful detachment with some thankful tweaks to make it not just the obvious choice.
Big things with this one is that their Advance/Charge Strat has to be picked in the movement phase. Which is a lot less “flexible” but most likely a balancing factor to try and keep the aggressive nature of the army less overwhelming. They have that Strat, an Armor of Contempt option, and then the coolest thing is 4 options to “give” into the Red Thirst and gain a bigger advantage. I can expect these to show up a ton when they are using a lot of Death Company and Chaplains that can “turn” off the Red Thirst and bring back OC and take them out of Battleshock. I do like this as it feels fluffy and powerful to give into the Red Thirst.
The Death Company Detachment , The Lost Brethren is ok as it feels very fluffy. It lets you take regular Death Company Marines and Death Company with Bolt Rifles as Battleline units plus it gives you a reroll a wound roll of 1 for Death Company units. If the unit you are attacking is below half strength you can get a full wound reroll. It isn’t a bad rule but the Death Company detachment’s Strats and enhancements all depend on your options having the Death Company Rule to be useful. You mix this with needing a ton of Chaplains to run around and let the army not be OC 0 and you see how this can be a hard army to play with and score points.
Blood Angel Stratagems & Enhancments
On their Stratagem front we really have three that Blood Angels will use a ton of. They of course get an Armor of Contempt style Strat, a good Advance/Charge they choose to use in their Charge phase, and a 3” deploy from Deepstrike ability. All of these will be heavily used for this army and thankfully all are costing 1 CP so things like using your Captain to reduce them will be a thing. I also like two of the Enhancements with one giving the Bearer a 2+ save and a +1 to their melee weapons AP value. The other one gives the bearer Anti-Chaos 5+ and Lance to their melee weapons. Both of these Enhancements seem a good way to make a little murder Captain!
Blood Angels Unit Updates
On the new unit side of things we have updated Characters from the new boxed set with Astorath, Lemartes, and The Sanguinor. I have built Astorath and Lemartes and both models look lot better than pics lead us to believe. I think if you are going hard into the Death Company side of things I would get the new boxed set but will see how many characters you really need beyond Dante and Mephiston.
If Mephiston stays at the points listed in the book this model will be a boogie man on the tabletop. He is going to be hiding in MDF walls, coming out and punching you so hard in the face. He gained Feel No Pain 4+, Lone Operative, and is just a rough Space Vampire to face. I am thankful I have a nice one painted if I want to dance the space vampire dance in the moonlight.
Dante seems to be the other powerful character we’ll see as he is well set to join the newest role models for an army – the updated Sanguinary Guard. I like the models and while they look a bit goofy I really hated the old models’ wings. They didn’t stay on that well, looked a bit weird, and just didn’t fit nearly as well. I am hoping they go down in points a bit as while they are good they do not have a crap ton of attacks. It makes me feel like a unit of 6 with Dante will be common in most armies as he can come down, get closer to assault, and hit hard enough to remove obstacles they are getting mixed into.
Sanguinor got an updated model which is cool because that old one was on too small of a base, was normally metal, and just a pain to travel with. I don’t know if you need him in your army as he still has a weird way to deploy but we’ll see. I am just happy to have an army of all plastic jerks versus some weird resin/metal nonsense.
On the Death Company side of things and something I will leave in the good is GW updated their wargear loadouts to match their kits. This is a good thing as it was frustrating to have a unit with all Thermal Pistols, powerfists, and full rerolls to hit. This is now be synced up and locked in which be a good thing. It is why I expected this book to come out right away as Blood Angels didn’t get hit points wise and Dataslate wise.
The final little new unit is the updated Death Company Dread who got a glow up in the Brutalis Redemptor style shell. It is now bigger, meaner, and faster with a new rule that will let them move towards the enemy when they get shot at the first time. The ability to get a 1d6+2 to movement and can get into engagement range is very powerful and fun. I hope the Death company Dread’s points go down from the book as while it has a 6+ FNP it still isn’t nearly as brutal as a regular Redemptor that is -1 to damage.
Codex Blood Angels: The Bad
The Blood Angels did lose a lot of resin models. Tycho and Corbulo are now gone to warp *sniff*. They also lost the Librarian Dreadnought that didn’t really fit in 40K right now. I feel the real loss int he updated Blood Angels Codex is the Libbie Dread – it was something interesting and unique inthe game from the old codex. A lot of the army is also really shifted just due to the game balancing some of their choices. This means a lot of players are going to need to remove arms and update weapons, which can be a pain.
Codex Blood Angels: The Ugly
The real ugliness of this Codex is we are going to need to wait 6 weeks to get the rest of the army and a true Codex release to play it. We also will have to deal with shortages of Combat Patrols as we try to get all the parts to fill out a Sanguinary Guard unit which can be an issue. It is just frustrating we have to wait to get the whole Codex and only get a small sliver of units for a few months from a pretty Army box update.
Overall the Codex is pretty cool. I think it feels fun to play, fluffy to Blood Angels lore, and isn’t just a “same ole” marine army using the tanks and other nonsense to feel valid. I am happy it shifted some of the “bad” things from the index and just made something fun and unique. The biggest win is that GW’s Design Studio clearly has a strong vision of what the army is supposed to be about on the tabletop, and wrote a focussed set of rules to achieve it. More of this please.
Also that Combat Patrol is straight fire for those wanting to play this book.
For Sanguinius!
