Now you are suitable warned, let get on with the rant and it all centres around one item, the humble Astartes jump pack. And what is the problem here you might ask? Well, with the actual jump pack, nothing. The gripe lies with the fact that either the blood angels are incredibly untidy and forgetful or GW is further eroding the individuality of the Blood Angles, intentionally or otherwise.
My big issue come with the changes from 7th to 8th, not in a sense of the rules but unit options. In 7th we had the command squad, firmed of 3 veterans, a champion and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Within this squad, one of the unit could take a standard, as an extra, and the unit could take jump packs. That is all of the unit could take jump packs. So when 8th rolled around and they changed the way things worked, splitting up the command squad in to it's composite parts, one would have assumed that they would have kept all of the options the same, for the benefit of all those long standing BA players. Alas no, they gave us false hope, then shattered our dreams.
Ok, so that's a little dramatic but they did give us hope that all would continue as before on the model front with the BA index entries, which contained entries for Sanguinary Novitiate with jump pack, company champion with jump pack, company ancient with jump pack and company Veterans with jump pack. Now, i built my list and my forces for 7th, starting before any of the formations came out and my models reflected the options available at the time. With the release of the index it looked like BA were going to retain the options they had and there play style, maybe even give more emphasis to the fast, mobile infantry based forces that they were know for. I was excited, for BA could have all these extra jump pack units, playing in to the nature of the Blood Angles and there liking for jump packs. Regular marines couldn't take these units, but then they were getting there own unique units, so that was fine.
It's taken me a while but now i realise that this was false hope and with the codex we have yet again been moved closer to becoming red Ultramarines. We have lost some unique units and we have gained some very generic units, we may even be loosing the most unique unit of them all, the death company. Although i have a funny feeling that the black rage will show itself again but that's for another time. So, are we really becoming red Ultramarines and are GW slowly killing the flavour of the Blood Angles or was this just purely a marketing move, bringing the codex inline with the current model range?
It seems that the second option is more likely, as there doesn't seem to be a specific Blood Angles command squad, just the generic marines one. This means, no jump packs, as there are none in the box. However, GW do sell jump packs separately, at 5 pound for 5, which isn't to bad. This means you can easily convert you Command squad to a jump pack Command squad with ease. I know GW have been pushing the whole, no model, no entry thing for a while but it annoys me that something many people would have spent a long time building and painting has been ditched in a second. At this point your probably thinking, well why not just carry on with the index entries and the answer is simple, i could. However, for how long? If they change the points values of a unit, it will be the codex version, not the index one, so would i adjust that unit by the same or leave it? What happens if they adjust all the other jump pack equipped characters, should i adjust mine as well? There is such a variation in the effective cost of a jump pack, ranging from just 3 points on a vet, up to 30 points on a champion. Novitiate and ancient are 5 and 9 respectively, with the Sanguinary priest coming in at 17 points extra for a jump pack. If jump packs were all the same points cost it would be easier to amend if needs be, but I as it stands it's a bit of a mess. It's the main reason that sticking with the codex is my preferred choice, but i don't particularly like the loss of the units by doing so.
Maybe one day they will put the units back in but i highly doubt that they will. If they have been removed at this stage, it's unlikely to think that they would put them back in at a later date, especially as they will be phasing out the standard marine over the next few years anyway but that's another rant for another time.
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