Blood Angles Advanced Order Now Up!

Check with your Games Workshop Site, but the Blood Angels are now up for advanced order in the US at least:

Codex Blood Angels
Baal Predator
Death Company
Sanguinary Guard
Astorath
Sanguinor
Lemartes
Vanguard Veteran Sergeant
Chapter Master Seth
Flesh Tearer Shoulder Pads

Oh HAPPY DAY!

*EDIT: They are up in the store, but not quite ready for order! BAH! I have to wait a few hours now to blow my money.

Blood Angels: Will they be an assault army or something else?

There may be a paradigm shift here with the new Blood Angel codex, moving from an assault army to a fast firefight army. This may be good new for all of you out there in Templar land. For me though, I love my jump infantry, and unfortunately they may not be the thing to do.
My reaction to the potential change.

With Baal, Vindicators, and Rhino's being fast, I can zoom along 18" first turn, and then 12 and shoot subsequent turns, which is faster than jump infantry can move. And then since Furious Charge is only a 1 in 6 chance, banking on making an assault move isn't really reliable. Seth can improve this, yes, but he probably can't take a jump pack and I feel is wasted in a Tactical squad, especially since you then couldn't take the cheap/free heavy weapon as it could only be a 9 man squad.
Then there is the relentless Death Company armed with Bolter, Bolt Pistol and Chainsword. If only they were scoring something could rival plague marines ability to hold objectives. Anyways, I bet you see them used a lot more in different ways. They will still be assault troops as well, as they always have furious charge (as befits them) but still, they are more multi-role now than ever before.

On the other hand, barely scattering when deep striking really lends a hand to the Jump Troop department. And with infernus pistols and hand flamers, these guys can cause some havoc coming down behind enemy lines, or swoop in late game to contest and capture. As well, less scatter and re-rollable scatters means more reliably deploying these guys behind cover for their first turn.
As well the storm raven is an assault vehicle and we see Furioso dreads able to be taken as troops.

Maybe the best though will be a happy balance. Some fast shooting with Baals and Vindicators mashed together with deep striking awesomeness of assault squads and storm ravens (or Land Raiders, which I don't quite believe yet).

Anyways, tell me what you think on the poll over there -->

Oh yeah, and if you have seen the painted minis, look at the banner. NOTE: IT IS NOT THE BLOOD ANGELS BANNER. Close but no cigar. Big relief to me. Looks like Ancient Medici gets to keep his job.

POLL RESULTS:
What type of Army will the Blood Angels be?
Full on Assault/Deepstirking 10 (43%)
Fast Firefights/Mech 3 (13%)
A mix of both 10 (43%)

My thoughts on the new Blood Angels stuff

Well, a lot has been leaked recently. And this time, all of it for real. I see a ton of stuff I like, and some things I am not the happiest about.

Let me start with the negative so from there it can only get better.

The sanguinary guard sprue.

Almost everything on here is great. Love the wings/single nozzle jump packs. Love the torsos and weapons. Wish there had been more stiletto type blades still, but whatever. REALLY happy to see axes. What I am disappointed with is 2 things.
1- I am not convinced with the heads. Not all of them need to look like Dante. A spiffy mask would have been enough. No crest needed. However, this may change once I see the faces.
2- The banner. While this is great for everyone else, I am somewhat disheartened myself by it. Why? Because I already freehanded it. And now most likely the squad it is in won't be taking it. I have a feeling based off this banner that honour guards are out and sanguinary guards are in and that based on other pictures, sternguard and vanguard now have the gold helmets.
Really, I am being selfish with the banner, but now everyone and their mom will have a well painted BA banner, making mine look insignificant in some ways, and also making mine redundant.

Next thing: Red Thirst. A 1 in 6 chance of furious charge/fearless isn't something to bank on and Seth is really the only way to make it truly great. And as I have stated before, I really only wanted to use Blood Angel characters. But I will probably be using Seth. The plan I have is to convert up a model to represent him and use that as my 2nd Company Captain.

Final Bad bit: No Eternal Warriors. Just generally bummed that Dante can still be offed by a power fist. The only thing that can cover this is if you can take Sanguinary Guard as a retinue, which I am hoping for, rather than just attaching him to a squad.
Mephiston looks really tough, but still enough landed power weapons will end him.

GOOD STUFF
Chaplains/Lemartes as Elites/Upgrade Characters. This means I no long have to use up an HQ slot everytime on a Chaplain. I am happy that I can now play around and choose what I want in the most restricting part of the force org.

Sanguinary Priest as an elites. Cool I think. Probably can attach each to a squad if you want. Just generally good. And allows you to take a few without using up HQ once again. Also glad to see them brought back, as they were missing in the PDF version.

Scouting Baals. Broken but awesome. Every BA tourney list will probably have 3 of these things, most likely with flamestorms and heavy flamers.

Troop Dreadnoughts. Even if they aren't scoring, it is a nice way to work furiosos into an army without using up Elites slots better used on sanguinary guard, vanguard and Sang Priests.

Stormraven. Glad to see it. Not as broken as we all thought it would be. Much more limited as a heavy support as well. But still a really cool concept and I am sure the model will be awesome.

Project: Chaos Banner / Freehanding Tutorial

So a while back I did my freehand Blood Angels Chapter Banner. This seemed to get a real good reaction and even made the FTW Tuesday Top Ten List(#52).

Well, after that Ron and a few others asked if I could do a tutorial on how I did it. Unfortunately, I didn't keep records of how I did it enough to make a tutorial. I know the process and can describe it, but not really show it. On top of that I don't have or need another banner in my Blood Angels at the moment. So I asked around my gaming club and found a Khornate CSM player who had a banner that they wouldn't mind being painted.

Now I am just waiting for my spare time and good enough weather to spray paint to line up to get a base coat on this thing and I can start. But this is step 2. I have already completed step one by choosing a design I want on the banner. It is very critical, that this is done before everything else. Find or Draw a picture. Try to do it to scale so that the level of detail will be constant. Too big a picture or drawing and you will have too much detail that will be difficult to transfer down to a miniature scale.

The design I have chosen is this:

The banner I am working with is more tattered though and so the skulls at the bottom will be missing for the most part. Just imagine ripping the bottom corners off the banner above. Got it? Good.

Well, thats all for now. When the tutorial is done is the next time you will read about this I guess.

Storm Harbinger/Tantalus Lander: Do BA need it? Should they have it? Will they get it?

Well BoLS posted some more BA rumours today, the most ominus of which is that the Storm Harbinger/Tantalus Lander does not exist.

Here is all the concept art I have seen thus for for the Lander



Lander is the flying thing in that final picture. Propossed cover for the Hunt of Valdorius and is a White Scars lander.
So, basically, I am disheartend by this news. To me it made the Blood Angels something more than "Just another Space Marine army." It really differentiated them and allowed for more jump infantry. But without it, in the Mech Environment of 5th ed., really BA will just be back in rhinos like all other SM sitting on objectives and assaulting a slight bit more than other armies. Really, it just is turning into Red Space Wolves in my mind. This is what really made the army different.

HOWEVER, as it is written now, it is mostly broken. Deepstrike assault can be rather brutal. Heavy 8 S6 AP4 rending shots on a fast skimmer with AV 13 is crazy, oh and twin linked meltas for 10 points more to boot. Yeah, I won't say that isn't broken.
I will say though while most people felt them undercosted, especially compared to the Valkyrie, you also have to consider the cost of the units transported with in. 150 pts ontop of a 7 man assault squad gets expensive fast and you can't reliably fit more than about 3 into a 2k list.

If they aren't coming out, then I know many people will be rather dissapointed and kinda put a black mark on the BA from the beginning. I just hope there is something else that really makes them more than Red Space Wolves. I really do.

Tell me what you think over on the right there. -->

POLL RESULTS
Blood Angels Storm Harbinger/Tantalus Lander:
BA need it. Defines the Army. 6 (18%)
BA should have it. So cool! 7 (21%)
Eh. I guess it would be okay. 7 (21%)
BA shouldn't get it. My Dark Ultrawolf Templars don't get it so niether should they. 1 (3%)
It shouldn't exist. It is more broken than a boxer's nose. 12 (36%)