blood angles codex

Well, I've had a look at the new codex and I'm impressed. I like it, there are still a lot of options, and many of the lists people said were dead and buried are still alive and kicking. Yes, a pure decent of angels army is gone, as is a pure DC list, but that's not a major problem as two scout troops can be bought for a little over 100 points and that fills your troop tax.

The codex also takes the BA's to where they should be, as they are a Codex Astartes chapter with just a few differences, unlike the SW's and DA's. Personally I would love for the BA's to move away from the codex for the extra flavour. SW's are very different already, DA's should be more different with  raven wing and death wing as more central to their organisation, and BA's should be moved to be more about fast vehicles and assault troops. The Black Templars are another chapter that has a lot of flavour and should be kept as they are. This would in my opinion create a lot more choice and flavour to the general SM force. But I can moan about that more later, back to the BA codex.

As for my lists, well, I need to sit down and work out points, but it looks good to me. There will be some alterations regarding tac squads with heavy flames and assault squads with melta weapons, but on the whole the plan still looks good. Once I've got the list sorted I'll post it up with the others on here, hopefully it won't take too long, but we're rapidly approaching Christmas, so it will probably be in the new year.

Some things I noted about the codex though are;

Although DC are now elite rather than troop, they have come out better than before. As far as I can tell there is not restrictions on the number of units you can take. This means that with 4 elite slots you could take 60 DC rather than just 30. In addition if you wanted more dreads, you can take more as well, potentially up to 4 DC dreads, with 2 Libby dreads as well. So all in all, I think DC's came out up.

Assault marines defiantly came out of the new codex better than before. Again they moved, but being able to take 4 melta weapons for about 135points is brilliant, although I'll be going for a slightly more expensive load out but keeping every one with a pistol and CCW. Still, these boys will be the core of my army and with one of the formations in WD all about assault marines, they will defiantly be hitting my table soon.

Tac squads with flamers for horde control. As far as I could see, there is now nothing stopping me having a hand flamer, flamer and heavy flamer in my squads. Combat squadded, this will put 3 templates in a 5 man squad, stick them in a Razorback with a TL flamer and you'll have even more template death.

Baal preds moving to Heavy is good, as it frees up that extra slot for assault marines, and its really where they should have been all the time.

Drop pods have also made it in to FA as non-dedicated transport. Brilliant for allied guard, suicide demo SW squad anyone?

The codex formation is nothing to shout about, but as I said about the assault marines, I'm looking forward to the WD ones and possibly the Shield of Baal ones as well, but I haven't heard much about them yet.

When all is said and done though, I'm looking forward to getting stuck in to the codex and sorting out my army and getting them on the table.