The Day of Revelation is here! The Blood Angels have arrived upon wings of fire, roaring into 10th edition with their own Codex Supplement, included initially in an army set consisting of new models for Lemartes and Astorath the Grim along with upgrade frames to build Death Company Intercessors of the footslogging, jump packing, and Dreadnought varieties. There’s more models to come alongside the full release of the codex, but for now let’s talk about what the rules look like for the Sons of Sanguinius. Blood Angels fans Peter “The Falcon” Colosimo and Liam “Corrode” Royle are taking the lead here, with TheChirurgeon and Wings sniping from the peanut gallery for the main review, then taking the lead on some detachment focuses.
We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Codex.
Army Overview
We think the following are the standout features of this book:
- Three interesting, flavourful detachments which play to the key themes of the Blood Angels
- Key improvements to datasheets for iconic characters like Commander Dante and Astorath the Grim
- Mephiston goes beyond “Improvements” to being hell on vampiric wings, and may be a little too much (Falcon: He is a little too much and that is OK, do you hear me?)
- A welcome end (to everyone else, at least) of massed inferno pistol and power fist Death Company re-rolling everything
- You might actually run Sanguinary Guard now!
On the disappointing end, there’s the inevitable losses to Legends of some older datasheets for resin models. Most people will probably accept Tycho (who’s been dead for centuries in the current setting) and Corbulo passing out of the range, but Gabriel Seth is gone too, robbing Flesh Tearers players of their Chapter Master. Furioso and Librarian Dreadnoughts are also gone, and while the Furioso’s demise was probably inevitable with the Brutalis in the core Space Marine range now (and indeed this book’s Death Company Dreadnought is a reskinned Brutalis), it’s a shame for the Librarian Dreadnought to be excised too.
Rob: You can always just run Tycho as a Death Company Captain anyways, and the Brutalis easily covers the Furioso. But yeah, it sucks to lose Seth and the Librarian Dreadnought.
Where’s Crusade?
As always, you’ll find our review of the book’s Crusade rules this upcoming Tuesday.
The Video Review
If you want to see a video version of this review, good news! You can find it below.
Army Rules
As a Codex Supplement, Blood Angels lack a native faction rule, instead sharing Oath of Moment with the core Codex: Space Marines. The other “army rule,” The Sons of Sanguinius, is the standard bit of text preventing you from mixing Blood Angels-specific units with those of other Chapters.
Detachments
There’s three detachments in this Codex Supplement, two of which are new while the third (the Liberator Assault Group) is a re-imagining of the Sons of Sanguinius from the Index. Two of these are absolute bangers that should make an immediate impact on competitive play and a third, The Lost Brethren, is both flavorful and fun for those favored of Sanguinius that just want to rush screaming black miniatures across the board heedless of what their opponent brings to bear. The Liberator Assault Group in particular has seen some serious glow-ups compared to the Index version in terms of stratagems as the design team leans more into the Red Thirst as a rule mechanic, making a detachment that has seen real results for a while now even more straightforwardly powerful. Perhaps more exciting for some is the brand new Angelic Host, which adds a ton of additional movement and board control options to the jump pack equipped units in the army.
We’ve already done in-depth Detachment focuses for each of these Detachments, and while we have quick overviews here if you want a more detailed dive into their rules and how they’ll play, you can find those here:
With all that said let’s dive in to exactly what our boys bonded in blood are bringing to the table. In this article, we’ll give a brief summary of each detachment, while the full Detachment Focus articles will go into more detail.
Something to highlight right up front is that each of these three detachments offers an Advance-and-Charge Stratagem of some kind, which is a big win for an army of fast-moving infantry with jump packs.
Liberator Assault Group
Much like the Sons of Sanguinius detachment it replaces, the Liberator Assault Group represents the ‘standard’ way of war of the Blood Angels. It preserves the Red Thirst rule in its errata’d form, giving +1 Attacks and +2 Strength on the charge. The key changes lie in the Stratagems and Enhancements. In part this comes from spreading out Stratagems between detachments – for example, Angel’s Sacrifice is now in the Angelic Host – but the main difference now is further work to represent the Red Thirst in many of the Stratagems by offering a choice to the player. To demonstrate this, let’s take a look at Savage Echoes. You use this when a unit gets charged to effectively get some of the detachment rule bonus – either +1 Strength or +1 Attacks. However, you can instead choose for your unit to become Battle-shocked, in which case you get both effects. This is a real win for both background informing mechanics and for giving players meaningful decisions to make on the table; do you want your unit to do more, but lose its scoring potential (and the ability to target it with other Stratagems if necessary), or do you lose out on some of your power ceiling in the hope that you still do enough? It also creates a real use case (and an incredible flavour win) for the vanilla foot Chaplain, as his once-per-game ability to un-Battle-shock a unit lets him pull a squad back to their senses after they’ve gone red thirst mode, albeit at the start of a later phase.
The Sons of Sanguinius detachment has been motoring along at the upper end of the meta recently, and we think the Liberator Assault Group is going to be an able replacement for it and is the most likely of the three to make a competitive impact. You can find our full breakdown of the detachment in the Liberator Assault Group detachment focus..
The Lost Brethren
While the Liberator Assault Group represents the Blood Angels’ standard deployment, the Lost Brethren is the Chapter at their most savage, unleashing the black-armoured warriors of the Death Company. Overcome by visions of the Great Angel’s death, they seek their own demise in combat against the enemies of mankind, who may or may not be Horus.
Everything here is about running as much Death Company stuff as you can fit in a list. The detachment rule only works on Death Company models, Death Company on foot become BATTLELINE, all the Enhancements are for Death Company models (which means Death Company Captains), and all of the Stratagems except the standard Armour of Contempt target Death Company. You are not encouraged to run anyone who isn’t currently experiencing Primarch-induced psychosis.
What’s here looks fun and flavourful, and if you really wanted to run a Death Company-themed army and have your rules be all about that, you’ll enjoy playing it. That said, you can equally just play a big pile of Death Company in Liberator Assault Group or Angelic Host, and those are likely to be better detachments overall. You can check out our full thoughts in the Lost Brethren detachment focus.
The Angelic Host
If you ever thought “wow, I wish Space Marines could play Hypercrypt”, good news – that’s what the Angelic Host does. You can pick up any two (in a Strike Force game) of your JUMP PACK units at the end of your opponent’s turn and deep strike them in your next Movement phase. The theming here is very much about Sanguinary Guard, and the Unbridled Ardour Stratagem specifically targets them, but the rest is all JUMP PACK stuff in general and so you aren’t required to run the golden boys to get the most out of it.
What this detachment ought to offer is a super-flexible style, giving you fantastic mission play, while also offering some decent damage potential by allowing your jump pack units both to get into combat and also do a little more when they get there. It’s also an absolute bonanza for anyone who still has 18 plasma Inceptors kicking around from early 9th. Also, you might finally be able to use Suppressors! For our full thoughts, take a look at the Angelic Host detachment focus.
Datasheets
New codex supplements occasionally bring new units and the Blood Angels come into their 10th edition iteration with a chunk of unit ‘upgrades’ to finalize their full crossing of the Rubicon. There are few ‘new’ datasheets here per se, but the changes to several of the existing ones are massive as they now represent their new primaris selves and Games Workshop’s continued trend towards box-locking your build options. Unfortunately, this means you’ll no longer be allowed to drop 30+ power fists and Inferno pistols into your lists and will need to find more subtle ways of pulverizing opponents.
What’s Not Here?
As already mentioned, it is a sad day for those of us that have sat with our angelic armies for a long time, but one we probably should have all seen coming. With the updates to ‘Primaris’ versions of units, my mom told me that many old favorites had been sent out to a farm on Baal Secundus to join my old dog Rufus. This means we’ve lost the poor Sanguinary Priest with Jump Pack, Librarian Dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought, both variations of the long dead Captain Tycho, Gabriel Seth, and Brother Corbulo (who luckily still remains an important and alive figure in the lore section of the book, his model just no longer matches the drapes). The Baal Predator, however, survives, so if you like your flamer tanks then you’re in luck.
New Datasheets
That is a lot of loss to be sure and a few of those choices sting more than others. But what do we gain? As inheritors of Sanguinius’s perfections and flaws, the Blood Angels supplement adds 3 new Captain variants exclusive to the sons of Baal. They’re kind of boring.
The Blood Angels Captain is essentially a copy/paste of the standard Captain datasheet available to all marines replete with Finest Hour and Rites of Battle. Where it differs is that they may not join units of Bladeguard or Hellblasters like their more generic variation as their weapon options are limited to the Heavy Bolt Pistol, Inferno Pistol, Master-Crafted Chainsword, Power Fist, and Relic Weapon. While the Master-Crafted Chainsword does give you a potential 11 attacks with Devastating Wounds on a ‘go’ turn in the Liberator Assault Force, I don’t think this character will see a ton of play given his attachable units so very rarely fit into Blood Angels lists.
The Death Company Captain returns to the army after a few years away with a brand new perspective. With the same loadouts as the Blood Angels Captain, the Death Company variety loses out on Finest Hour and Rites of Battle in exchange for the 6+ Feel No Pain and Black Rage (re-roll hits in melee, but loses OC if not within 12” of a Chaplain. abilities of the Death Company. He also gets the new Forlorn Hero and Death Visions of Sanguinius special rules that grant it the Scouts 6” special rule so long as it is leading a unit of Death Company and not embarked in a transport, and a chance to blow up if he heroically dies in melee combat doing anywhere from d3 to 3+d3 Mortal wounds to the unit that brought about his downfall. A cute and thematic little guy to be sure.
Lastly the new Death Company Captain with Jump Pack takes the Captain with Jump Pack datasheet available to standard Marines, strips away its thunder hammer, Rites of Battle, and Angel’s Wrath abilities in exchange for the same Death Visions of Sanguinius and Black Rage special rules as well as Lost to Fury which a unit he’s leading SUSTAINED HITS 1, which certainly isn’t a terrible buff for a unit that is already putting out a blistering amount of attacks to begin with (and can re-roll hits to fish if they need to). This guy could definitely see play if you’re taking multiple squads of jump-packing Death Company, though you’re likely to want Astorath or Lemartes ahead of him for your first one. There are also some nice Enhancement combos to turn him into a solo murder missile if you’re feeling so inclined.
Updated Datasheets
Characters
While the new datasheets may leave something to be desired, many of the old ones have been redesigned to match their new kits which has led to at least one serious glow-up and many other delightful surprises. The Blood Angels special characters in particular have long been a huge part of their flavor on the battlefield and the changes they have received make all 5 remaining eminently playable, particularly if the points in the back of the book remain the same. It’s also worth noting that the Black Rage ability now only gives Hit re-rolls for melee attacks, though you no longer care as much about their shooting anyway.
First up is Astorath, formerly the Grim, who has undergone a bit of a metamorphosis and seems all the happier for it. Firstly, his Executioner’s Axe has jumped from Str 6 to Str 7 and now has a much more respectable 6 attacks over its previous 4 making him a very serious combat threat at all times, especially as being able to reach S9 in Liberator is a fairly important breakpoint for killing medium-light vehicles. Redeemer of the Lost is still here granting fight on death on a 4+ to all of the models in his unit. Perhaps most importantly given how much the output of a standard Death Company Jump Pack squad has gone down, his Mass of Doom ability is no longer once per battle and instead activates every time his unit successfully charges to grant those Devastating Wounds. Given that Death Company can no longer spam power fists and inferno pistols with abandon I fully expect this new Astorath will make a home in most Blood Angel lists going forward as his value outstrips the standard Chaplain with Jump Pack by a good margin.
Commander Dante also sees a few subtle buffs that make him much more appealing. Both Perdition and the Axe Mortalis gain a pip of Strength (bumping to 9 and 8 respectively) which is nothing to sneeze at. Additionally, his Lord Regent of the Imperium Nihilus rule has been changed to Warden of the Imperium Nihilus and he now grants +1 to both Advance AND Charge rolls to his unit on top of +1 to hit. With the addition of stratagems that grant access to advance and charge to your Blood Angels armies we just may start to see people pulling Dante out of their display cases and back onto the board.
Despite getting brand new models, both Lemartes and The Sanguinor remain effectively unchanged other than the angriest boy’s bolt pistol has been upgraded to the Absolvor pattern making you that much less likely to forget to shoot it every turn. That said, he is still a great choice as a leader for one of your inevitable squads of Death Company as damage reduction and Lethal Hits shouldn’t be scoffed at. More subtly, the loss of jump pack Priests means you can only get an extra-durable jump unit via this route, making it even more of a staple. The Sanguinor’s utility carries on over from the index – there is still nothing quite like the disruptive effect of a Fight First Lone Operative that deep strikes directly into combat elsewhere in the game.
Finally in terms of special characters comes Chief Librarian Mephiston and holy shit does he deliver. Talk about going from zero to hero. If you don’t own him, make it a priority because someone at Games Workshop unstoppered the bottle and turned him into the practically unstoppable juggernaut reflected in the lore, and if the points found in the book remain the same he is obscenely priced to move. Mephiston is now a Lone Operative with Fights First rather than a Leader that grants it to his unit and has had his Feel No Pain boosted from a 5+ to 4+ all the time, removing his need for a Psychic Hood. The Quickening has been reworked to simply give this terrifying avatar of the darkness found in every Blood Angel advance and fucking charge. Transfixing Gaze has been completely reworked as well. No longer is it a roll to potentially worsen an opponent’s WS and Attacks, instead all enemy units within six inches of Mephiston must pass a leadership test after they have been selected to fall back, with a failure forcing them to remain stationary instead. He’s an absolute monster, and he will be the centrepiece of any Blood Angels list going forward in his current state for sure. Oh, and his melee attacks now do LETHAL HITS as well, as if being S11 on the charge in Liberator wasn’t quite enough.
Rob: Thanks, I hate it.
Wings: I honestly yelled out loud the first time I looked at his point cost (125pts) in the back of the book. He better get the Vindicare treatment.
Other Datasheets
The Baal Predator is still here and fans of the unit will be happy to know that it has also received a small facelift. Overcharge Engines no longer gives all of your ranged weapons the ASSAULT special rule so long as they target Infantry models, instead letting you re-roll Advance rolls, while all of the ranged weapons on the Predator now just come with Assault built-in with no caveats at all! Go forth and burn down whatever you want, family, it’s a beautiful time to be alive.
The Death Company Dreadnought is dead, long live the Death Company Dreadnought. With the retirement of the old DC Dread chassis, the new Dreadnought datasheet is an almost direct copy of the standard Brutalis dread. Gone is the Frenzied Reprisal meme of ad nauseum shooting or fighting activations when targeted. Instead this new dreadnought gains Driven by Fury. Once per shooting phase, if hit by an enemy ranged attack, the Death Company Dread may free move D6 + 2 inches. Now, there are a number of caveats here. The Dreadnought cannot already be engaged in combat or Battle-Shocked if it wishes to use the ability and if it does it must finish its move as close as possible to the closest enemy unit. While it is disappointing that someone at GW hates fun and won’t let you murder-motor your way around the board with abandon, it’s still free movement on a particularly deadly combat monster, and you can use it to get into Engagement Range – great news for the murder machine.
In the biggest hit to the current Blood Angel lists’ damage output Death Company Marines of all varieties have been revamped to match the box contents of their respective kits. Death Company Intercessors have been renamed Death Company with Bolt Rifles with the Assault Intercessor loadouts having been removed from their sheets and now made analagous to standard Death Company Marines. Bolt Rifle Death Company keep their Visions of Heresy special rule though it has been upgraded to provide Hit Rerolls and Charge rerolls to their free uses of Fire Overwatch and Heroic Intervention.
Death Company Marines are now locked to 1 Eviscerator per 5 models, 1 power fist/thunder hammer/power weapon per unit and 1 inferno pistol/hand flamer/plasma pistol, while Death Company with Jump Packs are now capped at 1 plasma pistol, 1 eviscerator, 1 power weapon or power fist, and then one model per 5 with an extensive list of options that boils down to taking a bolt pistol, plasma pistol, or inferno pistol paired with a chainsword, power weapon, or power fist. There may be a mistake somewhere in the datasheet here – the kit instructions don’t acknowledge the second special melee weapon and there’s only one power fist in a box of 5, so maybe don’t rush to dig things out from your bitz box unless you’re gonna magnetise them. There’s a definite loss of power here compared to the existing version, but their output can still be respectable and they’re likely to get a lot cheaper now they’re not all toting around upgrades.
The Sanguinary Priest sees only slight modifications to go with its new model which is a bit of a shame. Bolt pistols become Absolvors and the attached unit options for the model have been modified to remove Assault Squads and Vanguard Veterans in exchange for Hellblasters, Infernus, and Desolation Squads. Let me take one with my Bladeguard Veterans you cowards!
Lastly, while their aesthetic evokes Age of Sigmar 1.0 the new Sanguinary Guard are modern solutions to modern problems. The new Sanguinary Guard keep Angelic Visage and Heirs of Azkaellon and add an additional wound and a 4+ Invulnerable save to their repertoire making them particularly hard to shift unit should the need arise. Importantly, Heirs now works if any CHARACTER is attached, not just the Warlord. Additionally, the old encarmine blade and axe debate has been updated to blades or spears. Spears are 3 attacks at Str 6 AP -2 D 2 with the LANCE special rule, while blades lose out on LANCE for an additional AP and attack. At least in the Liberator Assault Force the answer is going to be resoundingly for blades as you have ready access to LANCE in that detachment already, but if you are trying your hand at something different then maybe the spears are for you. The excitement of the datasheet improvements here has to be tempered with the change to the unit size; they’re now a 3-6 rather than a 5-10, so currently 150pts of Sanguinary Guard gets you 5 guys with 10 wounds while 150pts of the new ones (per the book points) gets you 3 guys with 9 wounds, though adding a 4+ Invulnerable on top of that is still an overall defensive improvement.
New Ways to Use Units
The most significant change from the Index is going to be Death Company, where the version toting inferno pistols and power fists galore is dead and gone. The new version still has play, with options for comboing Lethal and Sustained hits or picking up Devastating Wounds from Astorath, but it’ll depend on how points shake out.
The good news is that in many cases the new way to use units is simply that you’ll use them at all – Commander Dante, Mephiston, and and Sanguinary Guard all look like real options that will make the table rather than things you look longingly at before putting back on the shelf. Access to Advance and charge and strong incentives for running massed jump packs encourage a playstyle that resonates with the Blood Angels’ fluff, and it’s likely that both Liberator Assault Group and Angelic Host are going to see regular play.
How They Will Play
Your starting point is going to be the Liberator Assault Group, which will have a lot of similarities to the current way the army plays in the index, though with different hammers. Advance and charge makes a huge difference to your offensive reach, though, and the combination of Speed of the Primarch granting a once per game Fights First, Savage Echoes giving you some of the detachment rule, and Relentless Assault allowing Fall Back and charge means that you’re way less vulnerable to someone counter-charging you.
On the other hand, Angelic Host offers a super-flexible mission play game, with the built-in uppy-downy, along with access to a 3” deep strike Stratagem and a reactive move Enhancement, offering you great movement tricks to exploit with your already-speedy flying units.
Looking outside of the codex itself, there’s a couple of key options to consider when using these. In the Liberator Assault Group, it’s worth figuring out how to get a regular foot Chaplain into your list; his once per game ability to un-Battle-shock something within 12” could be clutch for maximising your use of one of the Stratagems without having to eat the penalty. Meanwhile, when you’re thinking about getting the most out of Angelic Host, don’t forget about Inceptors – their native ability to get 3” deep strike is a great combination with the detachment rule, and while we’ve mostly talked about Death from the Skies as giving Advance and charge what it actually does is give you Fall Back or Advance and shoot and charge on a jump pack unit, perfect for an Inceptor unit that someone might otherwise want to tag to limit their firepower.
Final Thoughts
Liam: It’s fair to say that I’m really excited for this book. I’ve enjoyed running my Blood Angels throughout 10th edition, and Sons of Sanguinius becoming a real detachment was fun, but it was eminently predictable that Death Company weren’t going to keep the weapon options they had in the index and so it was hard to want to build 30 of them that way. What we have instead of that raw power is a book with a set of fun, flavourful detachments that look like they’ll play exactly how Blood Angels always should have. Plus Mephiston looks psychotic, hell yeah.
Rob: There’s some great stuff in this book, and some stuff that’s very powerful but that I’m not as jazzed about. The Liberator Assault Group Detachment looks great, and I love the flavor of giving into the Red Thirst in exchange for additional power, and the way Chaplains help you get around those downsides by removing your Battle-shocked status. The Lost Brethren Detachment, while not quite as powerful, also has some solid abilities and I like the idea of doing a Death Company/Flesh Tearers option in this book. The only real losers in this book are the Blood Angels vehicles – while you can certainly run the Chapter with an Ironstorm Detachment, it feels like there’s nothing in the book’s Detachments to reward you for taking the chapter’s iconic Predators.
What I’m less enthusiastic about is the Angelic Host Detachment. Hypercrypt Legion-style “up/down” effects are just painfully unfun to play against, often removing your ability to interact meaningfully with those units. It’s something the game has been plagued with since we got rules for Swooping Hawks in 9th edition and they’ve been creating more Detachments and units with up/down rules as tenth has gone on – and gone on to nerf them repeatedly. This is coupled with a completely unneeded “Deep Strike more than 3” away” Stratagem, which in turn makes screening out small units like three Inceptors nearly impossible for some armies. It’s just not a play pattern the game needs more of and it feels a bit off in Blood Angels, an army whose stand-out Deep Striking units are dedicated melee threats. I’m interested to see how it ends up playing but I suspect the answer will be “annoyingly.”
And Mephiston is just incredibly stupid. I’m begging Games Workshop to stop putting 4+ feel no pain in the game and just give things more wounds.
Other than those two things, the book feels very solid and is going to make an immediate splash in competitive play. I think Games Workshop have done a great job with the book, even if the model decisions remain a bit baffling – the Librarian Dread was an awesome model and I’m sad to see it go, and I’d have liked to see more than just Death Company Captains as DC units.
Wings: I like this book a lot, outside the frankly criminal printed price on Mephiston. The lift on this one was quite big – current Blood Angels lists lean heavily on equipment combinations that were never realistically going to stick around, so making the book not a disappointment to existing players was challenging. I’m sure some people are going to get mad at us in the comments, but I think they’ve nailed it here, while also creating a book that’s just fun.
You can tell reading this that the writers really like Blood Angels, and really want them to be cool. The detachments hit a nice three way split of a strong, versatile all-rounder, one that offers a unique and promising playstyle that hits right for the lore, and one that’s super flavourful if not actually particularly good. Little tweaks to datasheets also land well, and honestly I think I can just leave it there – this book is really well put together and I hope it sets a standard that the future Marine supplements follow.
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