40K Friday - Blood Angels Drop Assault!

My old school Howling Griffon pods standing in until I get the official ones built

Last week we managed to work in a game of 40K on a weeknight! Since we've played a fair amount of Eldar on Eldar battles this year I decided to change things up and try my Blood Angels out for the first time in 7th. We went with 1500 points and my army looked like this:

Sanguinary Priest: combi-flamer 70

Sanguinary Priest: combi-flamer 70

9 Tactical Marines: Veteran Sergeant (power weapon; combi-flamer; melta bombs); 8 Tactical Marines; heavy flamer 176
· Drop Pod 35

9 Tactical Marines: Veteran Sergeant (power weapon; combi-flamer; melta bombs); 8 Tactical Marines; heavy flamer 176
· Drop Pod 35

Lemartes 130

7 Death Company Marines: 2 × boltgun; 3 × power weapon; 2 × power fist; jump packs 256

Furioso Dreadnought: frag cannon; blood fist (built-in heavy flamer); magna-grapple 125
· Drop Pod 35

5 Assault Marines: Veteran Sergeant (combi-melta); 4 Assault Marines; 2 × meltagun 125

5 Assault Marines: Veteran Sergeant (combi-melta); 4 Assault Marines; 2 × meltagun 125

Baal Predator: sponson heavy bolters; storm bolter 140

Blaster went with what's becoming a fairly standard layout for him: Farseer on a jetbike, 2 five-bike scatter bike squads, a squad of dire avengers, a falcon, a fire prism, squad of swooping hawks, squad of dark reapers, and a sword and board wraithknight.

We played the standard 3 card objectives.

My goal with the army was to try out one of the BA's distinguishing features: Allowing tac squads to carry heavy flamers. This opens up some options for them that I think are worth exploring, so I put two of them in drop pods with a sanguinary priest who carried a combi-flamer and a also put a combi-flamer on the sgt. The sgt is also a veteran and has a power sword so he can take challenges against exarchs with a reasonable chance of contributing to the fight.

The tac quads mission is pretty much "take and hold": Drop pod in near an objective, clear it off with multiple flame templates and rapid fire bolters, charge whatever is left, then hold onto it for the rest of the game. With BA's having furious charge and also having Feel No Pain from the priests, it seemed like a job they could do. The Furioso dread had a similar mission.

I started with only the two assault squads and the death company on the board - because you have to have something.

Various degrees of "painted" but better than none!

Turn 1
Eldar: For some reason I let him take the first turn. I was thinking it would draw his units out and spread them apart so that I could land cleanly and destroy them easier. It worked to a point, but I probably could have done it with the first turn just as easily. His jetbikes moved out, blew away a couple of death company troopers and all but one assault squad trooper. Great. Why did I let him go first again?

Blood Angels: I dropped in the furioso and one tac squad. I blew away 4 out of 5 members of one jet bike squad and 3 out of the other 5. The death company moved up and shot one dire avenger. Ok, feeling better as while my assault marines are all but gone he has one bike fleeing off the board and one squad at about half strength.

Turn 2
Eldar: The wraithknight kills the furioso of course. Swoops land and shoot one tac marine. Reapers shoot one marine. Falcon and Fire Prism kill the remaining death company leaving the chaplain standing alone.

Blood Angels: 3rd pod lands, tac marines kill all but one reaper but cannot secure the objective. Baal Pred rolls onto the field and blasts the remaining two scatter bikes leaving the farseer all by his lonesome. Tacs kill one swooping hawk. Gambling, the lone chaplain charges the dire avengers and is cut down by overwatch fire.

At this point I conceded as I had no VP's - bad cards! but mainly as I had no way to handle the wraithknight. He was easily going to kill one of my tac squads on his next turn and the falcon and prism could kill the baal pred next turn as well. Blaster agreed with my assessment but was very impressed with the tac squads and the fact they they wiped his bikes out in two turns.


Post-Battle Thoughts
I need more practice with the army and the approach but I already know drop pods are strong. I think the priests in both squads were overkill  as FNP didn't do all that much and a large squad is already pretty resilient to anything short of a wratihknight anyway. I'll probably go back to the full 10-man triple-flamer squad next time and change up my HQ's - maybe Mephiston. I'm also considering moving the melta assault squads to pods as well and bringing in a devastator squad for Turn 1 board-holding duty. Also - how to reliably handle the Wraithknight ...