Tuesday 11 July 2017

Eagle Knights in 8th edition- blood angels

As with the Scions of the Drag Ormr, the Knights army. list revolved around formations, either the angels blade strike force (at 2000pts) or the lost brotherhood strike force (at 1500pts), both of which are now defunct. So this means that there are going to be significant number of changes to the forces for the Eagle Knights.

To start with I'll just focus on the angels blade strike force as there is quite a bit of overlap overlap, such as both forces contained the "leaders of the angelic host" formation, consisting of a sanguinary priest and a command squad. Now, the priest hasn't changed all that much and will probably be run as he is but the command squad has changed quite a bit. The company champion and the novitiate are now separate units. This means I would end up with a priest, champion, novitiate and a 3 man company vet squad. I could also potentially upgrade one to a company ancient, leaving me with just 2 company vets but I will have to see what happens points wise and also look at wargear.

Next up is the demi-company, consisting of a captain, command squad, 3 tac squads, a dev squad and assault squad, along with a dread. Now, ill start with the easy one, the dread. So while dreads have got a lot better this edition, its still out. I just don't like them and they don't fit with the force, so its gone. The captain will remain pretty much unchanged, however, I believe that auspex's are now not available, so that's had to go. His command squad however will see a lot of changes. I could have just amended it in a similar fashion to the previous command squad, but this squad was originally supposed to be a Vanguard Vets squad, but was changed when the Demi-company came out to be a command squad, now with the rules changes it going back to a vanguard squad, which will involve a bit of rejigging of models, but nothing to hard.

The vanguard vets post build.

The tactical squads will also remain as they are, as although the flamers have gone up in price, they are still useful and they are part of the fluff, both in terms of the BA's and the EK's. The same can be said for the assault marines, although as part of the vanguard vets reshuffle, the Sgt with power sword will return to the vets and the bloke with the powerfist will be promoted and actually get a powerfist in game, rather than just for show. The last squad in the demi- company is the devastators. As mentioned in previous posts, these guys only came about to fill this role but will remain due to the new rules and will hopefully gain an extra heavy bolter, if points allow
.
The devastators 

As with most of these formations, it required an auxiliary section. Now for the demi-company I chose the death company strike force. Now this also formed to core for the Lost Brotherhood strike force, with only minor additions to fill the requirements for this formation. Ill go in to them after, but for the momenymt we'll look at the death company auxiliary units.

The force was lead by a death company chaplain, something that now doesn't exist. I can replace him with a normal chaplain and tool him up the same, but he looses some of the rules specific to the death company. The dreadnought is ditched again, which is good because I wad struggling to figure out how to model this up from my current collection. The final element for this formation is formed of three death company squads. All of these squads will remain as they are, with the exception of one model. this model is one of the thunderhammer wielding boys. In the previous edition, you could take a hammer and bolter, now however you cannot, its either two weapons or the hammer now. One bloke is wielding his hammer 2 handed, ready to strike, the other is shooting and holding his hammer down. Now I have to think about redoing this model, but not sure how to, as his holding his hammer one handed and there's no real way of changing that. I may just leave it but ill see.

The hammer and mauls

So all in all the Angels Blade strike force only has a handful of changes, nothing to worry about. The other formation, the Lost Brotherhood strike force also doesn't have many changes, sharing the Leaders of the Angelic Host and Death company strike force with the Angels Blade, only the inclusion of Lemartes is new. Lemartes will be in the new army somehow, was yet I'm not sure how ill lay everything out, as there are problems with getting everything in to the new detachments (far to many elites) so ill have to work on that.

There is also one other issue with the knights, is that I changed my mind halfway through building the list, so I have an alternative captain and command squad, the captain is armed with a stormshield, pistol and sword and the command squad are similarly armed with shields, power weapons and pistols, none of which is allowed these days.

The problem squad

I possibly could get around it by using the command squad models as company champions, but how many company champions do I want to field? I think 4, or even 5 with the captain, is probably a few to many. I'll have to try and figure something out, but at the moment i'm not sure what, although they may find themselves redeployed to another chapter.

No comments:

Post a Comment