I've painted the Sanguinary Novitiate as a mix of the Honour Guard colour scheme and the way I've turned out my Sanguinary Priests and he's turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself.
I had my first couple of games with this list against Bradimus Prime (of the Space Wolves Grey blog) the other day and whilst I did lose both games there were an awful lot of lessons learnt. The first game was against his all Terminator list and the second was against his standard 1500 point tournament build (see the Space Wolves Grey blog for more details) and the key points I took away are as follows:
1) Brad's terminator list is sick and wrong - my Blood Angels broke against his wedge of terminators like waves crashing against a cliff! Admittedly I did lose pretty much all my Sanguinary Priests pretty early on due to some Space Wolf trickery (all jump movement within a certain range of them was classed as difficult terrain, guess which of my guys rolled 1's when they were incoming!!!) but the main lesson here is to either stay away from them or seriously gang up on them!
2) Trust in thy armour! - cover becomes less important when you can get an armour save against most weapons that are thrown at you, that coupled with the Feel No Pain granted by the Sanguinary Priests means that these guys are one hell of allot more durable than Fire Warriors and standing in the open is not quite the death sentence it is with the Tau.
3) 18 inch threat range - this is very important with this list that I hadn't really considered until Brad pointed it out to me. I was dropping my guys in right amongst his Space Wolves which meant they pretty much took a round of fire and were then assaulted meaning that I lost the advantage of the Furious Charge granted by the Sanguinary Priests. Opting to drop them further out on their first turn of deployment and then roll in on masse seems to be the order of the day!
4) Play like you've got a pair! - this is something that I did during the games (some very, VERY risky deep strike's which pretty much all panned out thanks to Descent of Angels) but is worth remembering that losses are less important with a BA list than they are with the Tau, in fact even at the point when I'd lost about half my army I still felt in a fairly confident position which is something that I'm afraid I can't say about the Tau.
I really don't want to seem like I'm now completely anti-Tau, I will still be playing them as I really, REALLY enjoy the army it's just given that 5th edition has such a huge emphasis on the Assault phase of the game I can't really equate the Tau to being competitive as they pretty much ignore this entire aspect of the game.
Boy you paint fast, your blood angels are coming along at a rate of knots.
ReplyDeleteI think your learning from your fist few games are spot on. The blood angels are all about getting the charge to make the most of feel no pain.
Did you find the blood angels struggled with tank killing. I imagine against a mech army it might be hard to get the enemy troops out of their transports before the assault marines get close so you can get the first change ?
Rathstar
Opps, I meant furious charge not feel no pain in the second paragraph.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it kindof helps that I'm between jobs at the minute so I've plenty of time for painting lol
ReplyDeleteThey seemed to do ok at popping tanks, well Rhinos at any rate, as I've got 9 Meltaguns kicking about in the list (2 in each of the three Assault Squad's and 3 in the Honour Guard) and the Librarian has Blood Lance which has the Lance quality. The trick's going to be landing far enough away that I don't get charged and then rolling into charge range the next turn which will mean I'm also in Melta range.
I should be playing Ork's and IG next week so I'll get a better feel for the overall effectivness of the list after those games I think.