Detachment Focus: The Angelic Host

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Angelic Host Detachment for the Blood Angels.

The Tenth Edition release of Codex: Blood Angels provides the Sons of Sanguinius with three additional options on top of those in Codex Space Marines. These can dramatically change how the army plays, as each one tends to push players to build in a different way. That’s particularly true of the Angelic Host, which adds incredible mobility tools for Jump Pack units, unlocking a whole new playstyle for fans of Assault Marines, Sanguinary Guard and Inceptors.

Thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of the Blood Angels army box and Codex.

Detachment Overview

There are some Detachment Rules that make you immediately sit up and pay attention, and the Angelic Host very much has one of these, borrowing a trick from the Necrons Hypercrypt Legion and applying it to your Jump Pack units. This gives you exceptional objective play, and helps ensure there’s nowhere for your foe to hide when you’re on the offensive.

Detachment Rule: Upon Wings of Fire

At the end of each of your opponent’s turns, you can pick up a number of un-Engaged Jump Pack units and then have them arrive from Deep Strike on your next turn. The number you can pick up depends on the battle size, one in Incursion, two for Strike Force (which is what we’ll be assuming for the rest of the writeup), and three for Onslaught.

This is an incredibly powerful rule. This can, variously, let a cheap squad of Jump Intercessors adapt to whichever Secondaries you’re targeting, Inceptors zoom around the board blasting stuff, or pull a melee brick across the table for a fresh, violent rampage. Inceptors are probably the biggest winners of the lot here, and it feels like a full squad of six should be in pretty much every Angelic Host army (plus at least one three-model unit for 3” drop objective flips). Dante also becomes extra important here, as his +1” to charge makes it far more practical to take a swing for a charge with a melee unit. Jump Death Company’s built-in re-roll is also welcome, but not quite as helpful as the pure boost that Dante brings.

While this is definitely a powerful ability, there are a couple of drawbacks you need to think about. First up, losing the offensive boosts of the Liberator Assault Force makes your units hit noticeably less hard than you might be used to, though you can get some of it back via Stratagems and liberal use of Inceptors. Secondly, two units isn’t that many, so you’ll sometimes find a bit of tension between objective play and murder. Classic Blood Angel dilemma.

Enhancements

Unsurprisingly, the Angelic Host get four Enhancements for Jump Pack Characters, a mixture of murder buffs and utility tricks (and it’s one of the latter that really stands out).

• Artisan of War (15pts): Good clean fun, this gives its bearer a 2+ Save and +1AP to its weapons. Great for adding a bit of extra oomph to a Jump Intercessor unit.
• Visage of Death (10pts): An interesting effect here, which forces any non-Monster/non-Vehicle units within Engagement Range of your Character to take a Battle-shock test in the opponent’s Command Phase. In theory this is cool as a disruption tool, but in practice it doesn’t quite get there, as because the test happens in the Battle-shock step, your opponent can use Insane Bravery if it really matters.
• Archangel’s Shard (20pts): Another buff tool, giving the bearer [ANTI-CHAOS 5+] and [LANCE] in melee. It’s fine, but you probably want a bit more for the price.
• Gleaming Pinions (10pts): Ah yeah, this is the stuff. Once per turn, if an enemy unit ends a Normal Move, Advance or Fall Back within 9” of the bearer, the bearer’s unit can make a 6” Normal Move. This effect is incredible wherever it appears, and the only thing to watch out for is that the trigger is only on distance from the bearer, not their unit, so be careful with positioning. Potentially good for protecting a big threatening squad, and could also be useful to turn a solo captain into a scoring tool. Also, something I’ve noticed here that I’ve somehow always missed before – this doesn’t only work in your opponent’s turn, so if some sneaky elf uses Phantasm for an extra Normal Move in an unwise position, you can really ruin their day.

Stratagems

As with all Marine Detachments, your first Stratagem slot is taken up with Armour of Contempt (-1AP to incoming attacks for a phase). This is very good, but also doesn’t need any elaboration at this point. Armour of Contempt is the only Stratagem in the Detachment which doesn’t require a JUMP PACK target.

• Armour of Contempt (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Used in your Opponent’s Shooting phase or a Fight phase on a targeted marine unit to worsen the AP of incoming attacks by 1. Always great.
• Unbridled Ardour (Epic Deed, 1 CP): When your opponent kills an Astartes unit, your Sanguinary Guard can get super mad about it, receiving full hit and wound re-rolls against the culprit for the rest of the game. This is obviously situational, but if something like Canis Rex flattens your Scouts, it can be worth popping.
• Angel’s Sacrifice (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): A welcome return from Editions past, this lets you pick one of your Jump Pack units at the start of the Fight Phase, and force all enemy models within Engagement Range of them to target that unit with all their attacks. This can allow you to go on the offensive with a high-value unit like Sanguinary Guard while absorbing the blows on either an ablative Jump Intercessor squad, or Lemartes super-tough Death Guard. It also gives you great utility from a few straggling survivors from a shooty unit, and means that the Sanguinor has even more ways of causing disruption and mischief.
• Martial Exemplars (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Gives a Jump Pack unit Lethal Hits and Precision in a Fight. Very handy to have around, and helps get around the lower Strength some of your units have in this detachment. There are some matchups like Aeldari where sending a squad of Jump Intercessors to assassinate a key Character will be a very worthwhile endeavor too.
• Descent of Angels (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Your classic 3” Deep Strike, ensuring that very few objectives are safe from incoming Jump Intercessors flipping it (and it comes with the standard “no charging” rider). This is useful, but suffers from the small downside that the unit you most want to do it on (Inceptors) already have it built in (though Suppressors can benefit, and are cheap). Amping up the scoring potential of a basic Jump Intercessor squad is handy though, and I can imagine you getting some good mischief out of doing this with a unit sporting a Gleaming Pinions captain. Also, unlike Inceptors, Jump Intercessors and Suppressors have Grenades, which opens up some additional (if pricy) damage options.
• Death From the Skies (Epic Deed, 1 CP): This definitely lets you Charge after Falling Back or Advancing, and maybe lets you shoot too. We say “maybe” because the timing on this is in your Charge phase, so either that’s wrong, or it’s not supposed to say “Shoot.” Regardless – this is great if it’s just Advance/Charge for getting your melee stuff into a fight, and exceptional if it covers Shooting as well, as it makes it hard to shut down Inceptors with bully charges.

It’s worth noting that Death From the Skies has different timing than the advance and charge stratagems in the other Blood Angels Detachments; this timing is arguably much better than being able to shoot as it frees you up to make decisions later in the turn, but it seems from the text that it’s likely to be an error. Keep that in mind for future FAQs/Errata.

Playing This Detachment

All Jump Packs, all the time. Competitive Blood Angels lists were already going hard on jump pack units but the Angelic Host goes much further, focusing almost exclusively on JUMP PACK units in your army. Which isn’t to say you won’t take any standard units – there’s still plenty of utility for the likes of Scouts and a single unit of Intercessors to sticky your home objective – but almost everything else can be done with Jump Pack units. The amount of mobility and flexibility you gain from the Detachment rule here is amazing – units can almost never be caught out of position.

Because of the timing of the On Wings of Fire ability, you’ll often find yourself wanting to go second in games, as doing so means you can use the ability on your first turn. That said, 9” charges aren’t necessarily great so it’s a much more compelling play with Inceptors and Suppressors than it is melee units, and your jump melee units have plenty of movement to stage with, plus advance and charge from the Death from the Skies Stratagem.

On that note, this may be the only detachment where Suppressors merit consideration. Although not as tough as Inceptors they come in at a much cheaper cost, while having the GRENADES keyword and significantly longer range. They won’t do nearly as much damage as a unit of Inceptors dropping in, but you can play much safer with them and afford to set them up much further away, taking shots and leaving the table without giving an opponent a chance to respond. 

With The Angelic Host you have a lot more ability to do mission actions but it comes at the cost of your melee prowess: Losing the +2 Strength/+1 Attack from Liberator Assault Group is a huge loss and if you’re used to playing with it your jump units might suddenly feel anemic. It’ll be important to overcommit with your units to removing key threats early to ensure you don’t leave important targets alive on a few wounds/models to make you regret it. You also don’t really have the Stratagems to make your units hit much harder in a pinch – there’s Martial Exemplars, but that’s about it, meaning you’re on your own with this detachment. 

All of this points to the notion that the Angelic Host, despite being about some of the faction’s melee units, isn’t really for building a melee army. Rather the Angelic Host army is one that has decent melee threats but is more about quick movement around the table and scoring, using those melee units to eliminate key threats in the opponent’s army or tie up dangerous units before falling back and taking on another target. 

A Sample List

Here’s my (Wings) take on where I’d start with this.

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The plan is not especially complex – you’ve got three big hammers, then some scoring and herohammer backup, with the Pinions Captain and his accompanying 5-model jump squad being particularly annoying. It is notable that once you start slamming the stuff you want into this detachments you run out of points pretty quickly, so you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of each and every unit via the Detachment rule.

Final Thoughts

If you want to run a pure melee jump army, Liberator Assault Group is what you’re after. If you want crafty objective play with lots of careful movement, the Angelic Host is for you. There are a ton of powerful effects here, and this army is absolutely going to give opponents fits when they look to engage with you, only to find your units leaving the table and coming back down in favorable spots the following turn. It’s a completely different way to play Blood Angels, and one opponents may not be ready for.

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