Blood Angels: Synchronise!

Some of Burkhardt's Blood Angels.
They're much nicer than yours. And mine.

As Duncan will tell you, this article is late. Like, really late. No, it isn't a crude reference to Blood Angels bleeding profusely and suffering from insanity for 5 days a month: nor is about the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony; its about a few blogs that have got together to throw up a few ideas about how 6th edition has affected how they build Blood Angel armies now and how they've changed compared to how they were in 5th. I've just had to deal with the fact that I've been too ill to post recently despite this article being almost entirely complete for two weeks already. I'll add a few ideas to how to build army ideas that the lads have suggested beforehand and things I think will work based on games I've played, such as Allies which the lads have given scant regard to.

Little Dave over at the Red Thirst and Caolán of the Skibb Wargamers and are my co-conspirators in this endeavour, although I hope that a few more heads will contribute their thoughts on how they've rebuilt their BA (or their own armies as is the case with Dan from Tzarkahn40k and his Guard), especially with a return to the scene of an ETC veteran (2007) in the shape of Big Rog (pronounced Roj) recently running a Blood Rodeo list and Burkhardt (such pretty, pretty models) overcoming his distaste for anything random and inefficient. How un-Germanic - it must be the case that he has been here for too long already.

Ultramarines live longer with Calgar

I wonder if Mat Ward sees this when
he looks in the mirror?

You know the jingle used at the end of Calgon ads? They have it here in German but not in English for some reason. Anyway, if you use the words in the title of this post in place of the ones actually used you'll have that jingle stuck in your head all day. Now that its in there, you can hum along while you're reading the rest of this post.

The reason for it being here is because of a thread on w-ired that reminded me to go back to something I'd been looking at for a while in 5th but abandoned because it wasn't very good - the Calgar wave. Basically the idea is to have a ton of Marines sprinting across the board and getting Hit-and-Run lite in order to hop in and out of combat and pump out as many shots as they can get like waves hitting a beach, or bogging units down in combat when they need to pin something in place like that annoying floater that sometimes decides not to go down the toilet when you flush. What does that floater want anyway?

It didn't work in 5th because the worst things in the Marine army were Marines but with 6th vehicles have taken a hit and infantry is better and you can now run a horde of guys and stand a decent chance against most armies. But there's something that really gives it a big boost: Guard Allies.

Typhus Ideas.

With the favoured disciples of the other three Chaos Gods dealt with (here, here and here) its finally time to move onto the most popular of all the characters in the new dex: Typhus. Why is he the most popular?

One reason. Well, there are a few but one reason stands out moreso than any other.

He gives you access to Zombies. Hordes of the mindless dead. 40k Grimdark Zombies. Resident Evil with Space Marines. The Walking Dead. 

I could go on and on making cultural references but I'll stop before I get completely sidetracked. What I will do is commend myself on the timing of this by having this blog post coincide with Hallowe'en.

Lucius Ideas

If only Lucius' rules were as awesome as this guy...

When the rumours of a new CSM dex started to surface I was hopeful that Lucius would get a handy boost to enable him to tackle all-comers and be a bit more survivable. I knew that getting a Celestine-style back from the dead effect would be out (because its maddeningly powerful) but I was hoping for something that would reflect the background that he takes over the body of the guy that killed him, rather than having his armour reflexively kick out after he gets a slap in the mouth.

What we did get was one of the items that wasn't improved massively from the previous 'dex. He is the only character to get a Doom Siren and he tends to get extra attacks in challenges, which you are doubly encouraged to partake in with the Boons table but there is one major drawback: Lucius is average in combat. In fact there's a song that reminds me of him (Emerge by Fischerspooner) for the repeated use of a single world: Hypermediocrity.

Kharn the Betrayer Ideas

Kharn. He's some man for the skulls.

I was in two minds about my next article but I reckoned that I'd run with more thoughts on Special Characters before moving onto units and army builds. Next up is another of my favourite feens and arguably most iconic of all Chaos Marines: Kharn the Betrayer. Or Betrayer the Betrayer if you are able to read Arabic, according to some.

I've been a fan since his short story by Bill King featured in Inferno Magazine #1 was included in White Dwarf (the one with the kill-count ticking away in his helmet's visor) although there's a resident gamer in my group that is an uber-fanboy of Kharn, but his blushes will be saved and he'll not be named, but you know who you Daire.

So how best do you help Kharn collect skulls for his perpetually angry patron?

Daemons in 6th thoughts

So with the new rules changes brought about by the release of 6th and the subsequent White Dwarf update booklet the Daemons of Chaos have been given a nice boost and they're now no longer one of the unwanted step-children of the 40k family of armies. Even the Nids have been improved, but not to the degree of their Warp-spawned cousins, although rumblings have begun to suggest that they're due for a similar WD update that will allow Pyrovores to become an Anti-Aircraft unit. They might even appear in games if that were true.

Back to the Daemons: thanks to a large number of their HQs having Wings and with their Daemon Princes having access to them they are able to get a large number of Flying Monstrous Creatures (unlike their Chaos Marine counterparts) which has been dubbed the Flying Circus as this build relies on making their big guys hard to hit and also enables them to fly around torching units with Breath of Chaos before gliding down to assault units later on. As the lads over on the 11th Company Podcast said, when someone says a Flying Circus army is not that good he's a Nid player but when someone says they're really good they're a Daemon player.

What's not to like?

Stormy's A.S.S.: Multi-charging

So while not quite a cheesy tactic or trick to pull on people this is something I've been meaning to type up for a while.

Go big or go home. That's all I have to say about multi-assaulting. Like buses, you don’t see one for ages and then two come along at once.  This comes from a game I played against England’s Ork player at the 6 Nations (Hello Harry) and after Mike from my team came over to have a look he told me that I had got it wrong with the way my units had assaulted the various Ork units.

I told him I reckoned I had got it right. I knew I had to get photos and write something up on the blog afterwards to analyse how it went and what I would have done differently. And to give advice as to how it can be done right because if it goes wrong you'll suffer. Badly.

Lysander's Counter-Productivity

Now that's a Lysander. By Destrega.

Well, there's one of the lads in our group that's been wondering what to do with Lysander in his Ultramarine army for the past while.

There's been a few builds played upon to varying success: Sternguard in a Pod with the Big Fella dropping Turn 1; Riding dirty in a Land Raider with Termies; Loping behind vehicles ala Meph but nothing was consistently performing.

Things took a turn for the better when Shrike showed up to party by making everyone run faster: the Termies can get stuck in quicker while the Tac squads can run away from trouble.

Shrike's Fleet also means that you replace Lysander's Stubborn which I believe is actually a de-buff for Marines as a whole. Yes, Stubborn is a debuff. That goes for El Pedro too. ¿Qué?

Let me explain...

I just don't like Thunderwolves

Shameless self-promotion.

Having seen posts and articles from all over the blogosphere about how good TWC are I have to say that I can't bring myself to agree with them. Spaguatyrine over on theback40k and Simo on Claws and Fists give their views (note to Simo: label your TWC stuff separately :P) but I have to say that I don't rate them as much as Spaggy - TWC are definitely not the best unit in the game. I think that Darkseer got it right in that thread.

I've also been reading The War Altar and its observations of the past few month's tourneys in Ireland, and the fact that TWC were popular among the Wolf players but not one of my staples.

Where's me Jumper? (Blood Angel DoA).

Assault Squad Sultans of Ping.

So continuing with the advice thrown out for Caolán which Dave took up I've been able to witness an all-DoA (Descent of Angels) army in action for the past few weeks and have been providing suggestions to tweak it after each game.

Its evolved from a toy-heavy to a boy-heavy (oh dear) list and the win ratio is starting to improve against a variety of opponents. It is of course early days but the signs are looking good at this should hopefully be putting in an appearance at Warpcon in a few weeks.

So what did he start with and what is he now running?

The Tyranidsaurus Fex

Well we've all seen lots of Nid players running multi-Trygon lists (in fact I reckon they're the most popular Heavy slot there) and they tend to do the same thing over and over: get to combat and scythe through stuff or get shot down/pucked around without having a significant effect on the game.

Having read various pieces arguing over the use of T-Fexes (like the one on the right that I ripped from Dakka) and seeing a very mixed reaction to them I'm going to stick my neck out and say they're actually quite a good unit and give Nids something that they're often sorely lacking: Long-Range Anti-Tank firepower.