1500pts Blood Angels and Guard Armour

[DoomMouse]

Hi, I'm going to the June throne of Skulls torunamenton the 28th, and I'm taking a blood angels and guard alliance. I'd like advice on this list that I can actually implement in time for the tournament - I'm frantically painting up 2 chimeras and their guard contents and still have the stormraven to finish off... It's already going to be tight for getting it painted on time. Are there any small balance changes I could make to improve this list?

Librarian with SoS and Blood Lance 100

5 man assault squad with meltagun in las/plas razorback 165
5 man assault squad with meltagun in las/plas razorback 165

Baal Predator 145

Predator with Autocannon and Lascannon sponsons 135
Stormraven Gunship with multi melta and assault cannon 205

Imperial Guard Allies

CCS with 3 Plasma guns in chimera with heavy bolter 150
Veteran Squad with 3 grenade launchers and autocannon in chimera with heavy bolter (to hold home objective) 150
Vendetta 130
2 x Griffons 150

I'd love to add more guard armour, but there literally isn't the time to paint any more :( My (painted) options are: 2 more baals, a vindicator, another auto/las predator, another razorback assault squad, a devastator squad with missiles, an aegis line, a land raider crusader, a terminator assault squad and a sanguinary priest. I could also change the special weapons on the guard infantry as they haven't been painted yet

[DoomMouse]

So it's perfect then?

[Firecrest]

It seems a little disjointed. People add allies to cover something their army is lacking. Yours is numbers, in your main force you have 11 infantry and 4 tanks and a flier, you've supllimented that with 15 guys, 4 tanks and a flier an almost identical copy. While it looks like you have all the bases covered by mixing your weapon choices through the army, I just feel that once those transports are popped your guys are pretty much dead.

[DoomMouse]

The idea was to prevent this happening as long as possible via armour saturation. In most of the games I've played, the transport contents tend to be surprisingly resilient (at least enough to survive on objectives till the end of the game). One thing I've never really used before is the stormraven. I'd swap it for another vendetta if I could and make the guard the main detachment, but that would require painting up another chimera, and I just won't have time. Did you know that each chimera has over 740 rivets on it? It takes a crazy amount of painting...

[Denzark]

I agree that this is very few troops for a Throne of Skulls (my last ToS results was 4-0-1). I would consider losing the Auto pred for more marines for the storm raven - a base tac squad maybe to be ready to pop out on objectives in their half.

Also not sure about the utility of griffins you will be fighting a lot of 3+.

[DoomMouse]

You may be right on the troops, but i can't bring myself to field a tactical squad - you just get so little return for the points... I could get a basic issue assault squad for the stormraven maybe? Not sure what I'd drop for it though.

The griffons are my favorite unit out of the entire army (although i am looking forward to having a go with the stormraven, despite its pricetag). They wipe out any non 3+ unit that isnt in cover, can destroy vehicles via side armour glancing and can snipe off heavy weapons from marine squads. I love the way they can knock out anti tank weapons... If you make a terminator squad take 8 armour saves on their cyclone missile guy, odds are he will go down. Plus they can pin units, move and fire at full effect, shoot at enemies with no line of sight, and are relatively tough (two tanks is much harder to take down than a basilisk, say). They can negate aegis lines too by landing shells behind them, so no cover for pathfinders!) So far I haven't had a single game where they haven't performed admirably. I think I'd get another pair if I could lol. Admittedly, they're no use against fliers or monstrous creatures but I have other things to target them with and the enemy will always have troops.