By Rory Foster

Images copyright of Games Workshop, used without permission.

he Blood Angels have been a bit of a ‘special child’ for the last few years. BA players everywhere were stuck with a cut-down White Dwarf codex with minimal fluff, boring rules and little in the way of uniqueness. Now they’ve got a totally rockin’ new book, with a completely different look and feel from past editions.

The first thing I noticed about the codex was how complete it was. The previous ‘dex was very insubstantial, more or less just ‘vanilla’ Space Marines, but angrier (which was apparently a world of difference in GW’s eyes, the lazy gits). God knows why GW didn’t put the effort into making them more interesting last time around, considering how much opportunity it would have presented to sell even more Space Marines (which outsell the entire Warhammer Fantasy range already, by the way). We all knew GW would expand the BA at some point (to sell more models and stop the hate mail, presumably), but I honestly didn’t expect this.

From the first glance of the contents, we’ve got sweet artwork (including what looks like a fair bit of 3rd edition stuff) and whole pages packed with the usual GW “This is the greatest book we’ve ever put out” type thing. Who wrote this? Oh, Matt Ward. Great. That should tell you what to expect, assuming you’ve read Codex: Space Marines and Warhammer Armies: Chaos Daemons. It’s fairly standard fare in the fluff section; Blood Angels beating the crap out of everyone else (and never losing; this is their codex, after all), a list of significant battles in the chapter’s history, and a good amount of background on the Horus Heresy and Sanguinius. This is all good stuff. There’s some nonsense bit about BA allying with Necrons and happily parting ways afterwards (seriously Matt, have you even read the Necron codex?) and a load of bull about one of the new special characters; more on that later.

Now the best part: the units section. This is much more interesting than before, with more unique units than before. The Baal Predator and Death Company are still here, along with three unique Dreadnought variants (only one of which is new); Furioso, Death Company and… get this, Librarian Furioso. Why can’t any other chapters do this? A psychic Dreadnought is something at least the Grey Knights should have! The best part about Librarian Dreads is that they can still use any psychic power – including ‘Wings of Sanguinius’. Yes, they can fly. It sounds ridiculous from both a fluff and gameplay standpoint, but it’s fun, like almost everything in this book. BA Dreads also get a unique close-combat weapon: Blood Talons, which let their wielder inflict more attacks than usual when they inflict successful wounds.

Death Company can now be 30-strong, and any model can take a special close combat weapon. They still get Feel No Pain and can now take a dedicated Land Raider, like every other infantry unit. Yes, you can have a Land Raider in every force organization slot now. That’s 17 Land Raiders. Nobody’s going to do that outside of Apocalypse, but it’s still a novel idea. Oh, and BA Land Raiders can deep strike now. Whee!

Honour Guard are still here, but there’s another variant of them available as an elites choice: Sanguinary Guard. These guys are supposed to be the best of the best that the Blood Angels can offer, even more skilled than the Sternguard and Vanguard Veterans. They have master-crafted power weapons and AP4 Assault 2 bolters as standard. They also have masks that force enemies in close combat to take a leadership test or be reduced to WS1 for the rest of the assault phase. They’re costly (200 points for 5 Marines) but very useful against elite CC units. The models aren’t half bad either!

It’s worth noting that many Blood Angels units – even elites like Dreadnoughts and Sanguinary Guard – have a special rule called ‘Red Thirst’, representing one of the two major flaws in the Blood Angels’ gene-seed. At the start of the game, after deployment but before making any pre-game scout moves, you roll a D6 for every unit with the ‘Red Thirst’ rule. On a roll of 1, the unit has gone berzerk, gaining Fearless and Furious Charge but losing And They Shall Know No Fear. Depending on your style, this could win the game for you or screw up your entire game plan.

Unlike vanilla Space Marines, you can’t take a ‘normal’ Chapter Master. If you want the head honcho in your army, you have to take Dante instead. Fair enough. Other commanders – Chaplains and Librarians – are standard fare. Librarians have an array of psychic powers unique to the Blood Angels, which are all pretty interesting and make them more of an offensive tool than their vanilla counterparts.

When it comes to interesting special characters, the codex delivers. Dante, Mephiston, Lemartes, Tycho and Corbulo are still here, along with some new faces. First up is Astorath the Grim, the new head Chaplain. Instead of doing the normal Chaplain duties, he goes around beheading Blood Angels who’ve succumbed to the Black Rage and can’t control it. An interesting idea, and it makes the Blood Angels much more grim and dark than vanilla Marines; a nice switch, as it distances them from their unbearable Super Special Snowflake Ultramarine cousins, which is always a good thing.

Next we have the only non-Blood Angels character in the codex: Gabriel Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers. He’s a bit boring rules-wise; basically a standard captain who trades Rites of Battle and normal weapons for a huge chainsword and awesome fluff. He represents the new direction some Blood Angels are taking; trying to harness and control the Black Rage to save the chapter and destroy their foe before causing collateral damage, unlike other BA, who are content to succumb to their insanity one by one. I’d love to see him get more interesting rules in the future, along with more fluff on the Flesh Tearers.

Like I said, Mephiston and Lemartes are still here, but they’ve had some changes. Mephiston is now doing a Greater Daemon impersonation, with WS7, S6, T6, W5(!) and I7 in addition to three psychic powers which he casts on Ld10. Strange that he’s actually a better fighter than the Sanguinor. Lemartes has had an interesting change to his fluff. Instead of the head Chaplain and warden of the Death Company, he’s actually the commander of the Death Company because he’s succumbed to the Black Rage. He’s still able to command other members of the Death Company, but he’s too loony to do anything other than that, so he stays in stasis when not needed.

And now for that ‘gripe’ I mentioned earlier. The Sanguinor…

Oh my god. This guy is the most insufferable git in 40k. This is worse than Marneus Calgar single-handedly defeating an Avatar at the last moment. This is serious bollocks right here. Get this… he kills a Bloodthirster by dropping it to its death. Uh, what? This guy is strong enough to fly to the highest point in the atmosphere, holding a live and kicking Bloodthirster in his hands, and throw it back down to the ground? Now, I may be going into fluff-nut overdrive here, but this it seems like Matt Ward is a bit over excited by the BA. Oh yeah, it also mentions in the fluff section of the codex how at the last minute of a battle between the BA and Eldar, he bursts out of thin air, kills an Avatar and makes the Eldar run away even though they’d almost won.

Seriously, this guy is like Deus Ex Machina incarnate.

Ahem. Moving on… new models. Some great stuff here. The new characters looks good (except the Sanguinor; I think his pose is poorly done and a bit too angelic. Seth looks nice and angry and Astorath looks like a vampire for some reason. The Sanguinary Guard look cool, but I don’t like the Dante-style masks some of them have. Corbulo and Mephiston are starting to show their age, which is unfortunate because they’re useful characters in gaming terms. Lemartes got a new sculpt though (about time), and he doesn’t have any of that flying purity seal nonsense anymore. In fact, he looks more like a Death Company Marine than a Chaplain now, which makes sense considering the changes to his fluff. The Baal Predator is now available as a complete plastic kit, so no more ordering bitz from GW. I’m not sure if we get a Blood Angels conversion kit for our basic squads or an independent plastic box set like Space Wolves did. I’d prefer the latter.

So, what do I think of this codex? Simply put, it’s fun. It’s stupid in parts and really over the top sometimes, but a lot of fun. Matt Ward might be too much of a Blood Angels fanboy, but it’s rich in fluff and is going to be very effective in the current tournament environment. I don’t like it as much as the Space Wolves codex, but I think it’ll be more fun to play. I hope GW listen to feedback from this codex and use it to improve the next Black Templars and Dark Angels codices.