advice for space marine novice

[nathaniel]

Hey all.

I have been playing WHFB for the last 16 yrs or so but have not played 40k since second ed. Im looking to get re-aquainted by starting a Blood Angels force. This seems to be perfect as my favorite models are dreadnoughts and assault troops and i love the idea of lots of drop pods

My question is a simple one. Is a marine army constructed around these 3 choices competitive? Will i need to take terminators with thunder hammers and storm shields to have a chance as I really dont like these as a unit choice? where would this build really suffer and what would people recommend to ballence it?

I know this is a slighty difficult question as the new codex has not been released and i am assuming things (such as assault troops being scoring units). Just wanted to here the thoughts of an experienced community

[Nabterayl]

As you say, it's a little hard to tell, because we don't know precisely what the codex will look like. On the whole, though, I think what you describe is a safe bet. It's almost certain that the codex will be designed with an eye toward making "lots of jump troops, lots of dreads" a viable build, so you can take some comfort in that.

It sounds like Blood Angels assault marines should do just fine handling enemy infantry in close combat. The major potential weakness I see in the list core you outline is vehicles. Blood Angels power fists will almost certainly be S9 on the charge (due to Furious Charge), but your average sergeant is still only going to get 3 attacks with it. It's not that hard for vehicles to evade a low number of high-Strength assault attacks like that (as an ork player, I've had plenty of experience with this myself, and my nobz get 4 S9 attacks on the charge). That, in turn, will make it that much harder for you to take advantage of the all-powerful Furious Charge.

Dreads could potentially fill your anti-light-vehicle role, but depending on the options Blood Angels dreads get, that might not be the way you feel like running them. Baal Predators will likely be as awesome at destroying light armor in the next codex as they are now, so that's an obvious Blood Angel-flavored choice. Odds are decent that the Tantalus Lander will also pack some good light armor-busting firepower, if the rumors of double twin-linked assault cannons are true.

For heavy armor (meaning AV13 and up) assault cannons will not be useless, but reliably taking out heavy armor requires more specialized tools. Melta weapons are probably your gun of choice, and it's unclear which Blood Angels units will be able to take meltaguns. Dreads, tac squads, and devastator squads are all almost certain. If assault squads can take meltaguns, that will be an obvious place for them.

Hope these thoughts help.

[nathaniel]

Thank you, great info and constructive criticism, just what i was looking for

[fuzzbuket]

assault maarines are good (jumpy/rhino/pod)
dreads are killer take DC FURISO's (2 is really powerful)
pods are good but until the nex dex is out you cant use the missiles:(