Detachment Focus: Angelic Inheritors

Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games.

With their codex supplement only recently released, the Blood Angels were already enjoying the freshness of new rules for their faction. It’s Grotmas though, and so the Sons of Sanguinius get one more to add to their collection – the Angelic Inheritors. It’s a Detachment which dares to ask the question: “What if the Blood Angels weren’t just a melee faction?”

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

The theme here is intended to evoke the Blood Angels’ more noble legacy from Sanguinius, contrasting with the usual focus on the Flaw. Instead of losing themselves to rage, the Blood Angels dig deep to find the defiant, focused fury of the Great Angel. This means a more balanced approach on the table, with more of a nod toward combined arms and shooting units than we’ve seen in the other Blood Angels detachments, albeit with a heavy focus on characters.

The overall set of stuff here is pretty good and provides a new way to play the army, but unlike the other Blood Angels detachments it lacks a way to get access to advance and charge which is a big deal. For that reason alone Liberator Assault Group remains the best way to play BA, but there’s enough here that Angelic Inheritors isn’t useless.

The Video Version

If you’re more interested in watch or listening to our recap of this Detachment, or if you just want to get a quick recap before you dive in, we’ve got you covered here:

Detachment Rule: Legacy of the Angel

The detachment rule offers up three abilities to choose from, of which you pick two at the beginning of the first battle round. These affect all of your ADEPTUS ASTARTES CHARACTER units. 

• Sanguinary Grace allows you to Fall Back and shoot/charge 
• Carmine Wrath gives re-rolls of 1 for Hit and Wound rolls to all attacks 
• Their Appointed Hour gives you re-rolls to Advance and Charge rolls. 

Blood Angels lists tend to run character-heavy as they have a wide range of good character datasheets, so this rule works nicely with what you want to do anyway. All three rules have practical uses that fit what you’re going to try and do with the detachment. You’re pretty much always going to be opting for Carmine Wrath, so the question after that will be whether you need the flexibility of falling back and shooting/charging, but most of the time you’ll be opting for the re-rolls.

Enhancements

This is a decent set of enhancements, with Prescient Flash and Blazing Icon the standouts. Your main challenge here is that you have a lot of strong named characters, so you’re trading off those to get the right character into a unit to utilize these.

• Prescient Flash (20 pts) – The bearer’s unit gets Scouts 6”. This mitigates some of the loss of advance and charge for one unit, and is potentially really helpful for staging. It also opens up the option of scouting an Impulsor full of Bladeguard or Death Company up the table.
• Troubling Visions (15 pts) – Once per battle, you can use this in Command phase; until the start of your next Command phase the bearer’s unit has all three Angelic Legacy abilities active. Because you’ll likely be taking re-rolls for hits/wounds and advances/charges, this will probably be most useful for turning on Fall Back and shoot/charge in a pinch.
• Blazing Icon (20 pts) – INFANTRY only; enemy units cannot use the Fire Overwatch Stratagem against the bearer’s unit. This is great for getting your expensive jump-packing combat units into the breach without them eating a load of Torrent weapons or something on the way in.
• Ordained Sacrifice (25 pts) – This gives a model a chance to stand back up with 3 wounds the first time it’s destroyed – this happens on a 2+ – with the typical riders for this kind of thing (as close as possible to where it died, not in Engagement Range). This is going to feel very pricey every time your character rolls a 1 or lives through the game without getting anything from it, and extremely clutch when they stand up and save a game for you.

Stratagems

There are five new Stratagems here plus Armour of Contempt as usual – slightly oddly following the dataslate update, AoC still says “to end of phase,” but this is probably one of those instances where GW is being very pedantic about dataslate adjustments not being true rules changes/errata. Note that three of these either target or key off CHARACTER units.

• Armour of Contempt (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Worsens incoming AP for attacks for a single activation. Still decent, but not as good as it used to be.
• Focused Fury (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in the Fight phase, pick one of your units that hasn’t fought. Their melee weapons gain LETHAL HITS and, if it’s a CHARACTER unit, LANCE as well. A neat inversion of the Red Rampage Stratagem from Liberator Assault Group – instead of falling to the Red Thirst, your unit is channeling it. This is good, clean fun and a button you’ll be smashing a lot.
• Instant of Grace (Epic Deed, 1 CP) – Used in your Command phase, one INFANTRY unit, one non-character model in that unit gains the CHARACTER keyword until your next Command phase. There is a designer’s note here to make it explicit that this therefore makes them a CHARACTER unit, so the detachment rule affects them but so do all other rules that interact with characters. This is great for turning on the Angelic Legacy stuff and empowering some of the other Stratagems here, but be careful not to get caught out by something like a Master of Executions or the Epic Challenge Stratagem.
• Strike Now for Glory (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used in your Shooting phase on a unit that hasn’t shot this phase. Until the end of the phase that unit gets SUSTAINED HITS 1 on its ranged weapons. There are plenty of fun options here – Heavy Intercessors and their new Damage 2 bolt rifles, anyone? Just make sure that your list includes something with harder-hitting shooting than a few bolt pistols. Falcon: Keep in mind that this is any ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit in your army – there’s no character or infantry limitation. The sky is the limit on the violence you can cause if you so desire. Have you ever been jealous of Chaos Vindicators being able to gain Sustained Hits 1? Well now’s your time.
• In the Shadow of Great Wings (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Used in your opponent’s Shooting phase after an enemy unit has selected its targets. One of your CHARACTER units that was selected as a target can only be selected if the attacking model is within 18”. This is delightful for keeping a key unit safe from reprisals if they need to come out into the open. Falcon: Just an awesome strat, holding home field objectives has never been easier.
• Unto the Burning Skies (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Used at the end of your opponent’s Fight phase on one JUMP PACK unit that is not within Engagement Range of an enemy unit. You can remove that unit from the battlefield and put it back in Strategic Reserves. Comically, this has an additional rider that lets you do this on the Sanguinor even if he is within Engagement Range. There’s plenty to like about a broad uppy-downy. Falcon: The Sanguinor has felt like they were missing just a little oomph in the new codex. He frequently drops in, kills a handful of models and then gets punked in the following turn. Being able to dive in to assist a combat and then duck out immediately if he’s still in combat in order to do it all over again might just make him a worthy take now.

This is a great set of Stratagems, particularly if you like the idea of having a set whose names sounds like the tracklist on a metalcore EP. You’ve got a good mix of offensive and defensive buffs along with solid movement tech with Unto the Burning Skies.

Playing This Detachment

If you’ve been used to whizzing around the table with advance and charge, you’re going to miss that, but there’s plenty to like here. You are going to want a lot of characters in your list to make sure you get the best out of the Stratagems (either by getting the better version or by letting them work at all), but that isn’t a terrible burden for Blood Angels. You have a really nice toolbox of options here, which produces a detachment that sits at the halfway point between LAG and the Angelic Host – more mission play than the former, more punch than the latter, not quite as specialised as either. You can profitably include more of a shooting base than you might otherwise consider with Strike Now for Glory interacting neatly with Oath of Moment. 

Falcon: Okay, hear me out. This detachment feels pretty good with the new Outriders doesn’t it? There’s some great potential for a squad with the normally maligned Chaplain on Bike to slip in and out of combat with +1 Strength, +1 Damage, and +1 to wound effectively always activated. Not to mention the handful of Devastating Wounds they’ll toss out as they slip around the battlefield. Most of the updated marine units gain solid value from this detachment as Intercessors of both the regular and heavy variety can both take advantage of Strike Now for Glory

TheChirurgeon: I agree with you on the Outriders, and the ability to fall back and charge is huge on them. I’ll add that Eradicators and Heavy Intercessors both feel like they have a role to play here, along with a few supporting Vindicators. And while we’re on the topic of generic units, I can absolutely see running this Detachment without any Blood Angels units and trading those out for the upgraded version of Oath of Moment. I also really like Ordained Sacrifice on the solo Gravis Captain to make him even more annoying as a midtable threat.

Strengths

• Hit and Wound re-rolls in an army that tends to run multiple characters that dole out +1 to hit or wound seems pretty good
• Legacy of the Angel’s starting options and a stratagem suite that favors a combined arms approach makes for a really flexible game plan with great board control
• The Stratagems give you a solid mix of offensive, defensive, and movement tools

Weaknesses

• No access to Advance and Charge takes away a lot of the pressure tactics from the Blood Angels arsenal
• The melee buffs here are only so-so, which means there’s lackuster support for the faction’s bespoke units
• You’re going to be spending a lot of points on Leaders in order to actually get the Detachment bonus, and it does nothing for Vehicle units

A Sample List

Whether you’re heavy on melee or shooting, building an Angelic Inheritors list means taking lots of characters to lead your units and get them the Detachment bonus.

Who's Who - click to expand

We’re not necessarily going to reinvent the wheel here. The Blood Angels have been blessed with a number of very playable named characters so we’re going to take advantage of that. In most games you’ll choose Fallback and Shoot/Charge and Hit/Wound Rerolls with this list so you can take the most advantage of your multi-phase damage potential. Heavy Intercessors can post up in your back field with the Gravis Captain and use In the Shadow of Great Wings to force your opponent to engage them up close. Along with the Vindicator they also make for a great target for Strike Now for Glory. Giving the Gravis Captain Ordained Sacrifice just adds redundancy should your opponent decide to allocate their resources to the unit.

As you can never be truly locked down, it will be easy to set up some interesting killboxes that will punish aggressive opponents too. The Outriders are a lynchpin piece in this strategy using their newfound Thunderous abilities to make the most out of dashing in and out of combat free from the worry of Overwatch. The Sanguinor is probably the weakpoint here and could easily be a Callidus or just more board presence, but with a stratagem designed to specifically target him, it feels like a waste not to include him.

Final Thoughts

The Angelic Inheritors Detachment is a refreshing change of pace for Blood Angels players, giving everyone who wanted something a bit less melee-focused for the chapter something to work with. With a decent Detachment ability and a solid suite of Stratagems, there’s quite a bit here to like, but it’s very difficult to compete with either the raw power from the Liberator Assault Group or the utility of the Angelic Host. Still, there’s likely a competitive list or two you can make for this Detachment.

Falcon: I really like this detachment for what it is. While not as overtly powerful as some of the other Grotmas options we’ve seen, there is a lot of juice that can be squeezed out of it and it really makes for some interesting list design choices that the Liberator Assault Force really doesn’t as it’s design is more about maximizing ‘big stick energy’. I’m a big fan of lists that give me some freedom of movement and that is here in spades. As was previously mentioned, I think I’m most interested in running this as a more ‘vanilla’ list to see how the new Oath of Moment can also interact with what’s on offer here.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.