Blood Angels & UltraMarines: opinions?

[Maurice76]

After reading these forums a bit, I noticed a negative tendency towards the Blood Angels and I really wonder why?

When we play Space Crusade, my brother always picks the Blood Angels, because he likes the fighting style. He's also pretty good at it, because he usually devastates the opposition with relative little losses. In fact, he's a bit annoyed to have to lug around a Heavy Weapon, which is basically the laughing stock of his squad. Actually, when the "Out of ammo" chance card pops up, he usually begs / taunts me to remove his Rocket Launcher and replace it by a regular bolter as he feels that would actually make his Space Marine stronger instead of weaker. Which is usually the reason I skip him and take out a Heavy Weapon on either of the two other squads .

The reason I see people turn down the Blood Angels so readily is because of the way they combat: in melee for the most part. The deeper reason is that in any melee combat, a Space Marine has the risk of dieing himself, rather than the alien being attacked - a risk you don't have when shooting at an alien instead. However, when I see how my brother plays it ... "Close Assault Blades" allow a diagonal attack, which requires enemies to roll 1 die less and "Bolt Pistols" which grant an addition white die during melee give a significant advantage over the enemy. Gretchins can't defend at all and Orcs and Chaos Marines are reduced to 1 white die vs. the Blood Angels' 3. The only real threats are the Androids and Dreadnoughts, but he usually moves his Admiral into position for those. The Admiral is a heavy hitter in melee in his own right and with an AV of 3 is pretty hard to hit in return. Against Dreadnoughts, going all out with a Melta Bomb usually makes quick work of those and in a hairy situation, "Blind Grenades" prevents most damage for that one turn.

Update: Did some math. When two units attack eachother in melee and one rolls 3 white vs. 1 white of the other, the odds are as follows:
13.58% chance the one with the single white combat die wins
28.09% chance the fight ends in a draw with neither combatant dieing
58.33% chance the one with the three white combat dice wins

The Blood Angel Space Marine has more than four times as much chance to kill his opponent than the other way around. And if you look at survival rate, the Blood Angel Space Marine survives 86.42% of the melee engagements, whereas the opponent only has 41.67% chance to be left standing after combat has finished.

Furthermore, since Space Marines with a Bolter only yield 5 points for the Chaos Player, Space Marines with a Heavy Weapon are usually more interesting targets and any losses are usually easily paid for - easier than for the Ultramarines or Imperial Fists. And even beyond that, usually the best way to take down Space Marines as the Chaos Player is to melee the Space Marines with your Orcs and Gretchin - where the Blood Angels excel over the other two squads and are therefore better shot down than engaged in melee.

Thoughts?

Also, with regards to the Ultramarines, to us they always feel like a bit of a "Jack of All Trades", which can also be summed up as "Master of None". In my group, it's actually considered the weakest squad; it doesn't specialize in anything and therefore doesn't have any real strengths. Is that just our perception?

[Anderas]

I think they all have their advantages.
I never tried to play the bloody with three bolters,
to be honest. I was happy with the Captain as he is,
useful for the big enemies. But the small ones I was
blowing them away with the heavy weapons. You have
to wait for one heavy weapon anyways, so you can as
well carry some heavies while you wait.

Played that way, the ultras are definitly similar to
the bloodies.

I even did a calculation one time to see what the
targeter would do with the bolter, if it's worth
putting it on. It's like rolling three whites in
shooting, it's nearly like a heavy weapon, lacking
only if fighting dreadies.

I like the fists for being fast, but then, when they
meet a real enemy, the boss is just not like the
other two bosses... so again there is a disadvantage.


All in all i found that I could play solo missions
with the bloodies and with the ultras, but not with
the fists - the lack of power when meeting the
dreadnought is just too much.

By the way, I tried once to play with the rules for
scouts found in a white dwarf, and they're really
fun to play. I nominated the survivors to be new
Space Marines and i invented a rule that let the
marines permanently die on a roll of a D6 if they
died in-mission, so that the commanders would run
out of supplies after a while, just to force the
players to play with scouts once in a while.

As that was fun, I tried next with 20 imperial
soldiers. Rules like Gretchins. Except for two
heavies who had plasma and melta, the melta doing
3 red to one single enemy, the plasma doing 2 red
like the holo blaster. They had also one heavy
weapon that you would set up and then use next
turn - well, that one was not really used. It was
a Laser Cannon of course, 3 red dealt to 2x2 fields.

The imperials really played... it was crowded.
Do it once was fun. Would I repeat it? Maybe.

[Gold Bearer]

After reading these forums a bit, I noticed a negative tendency towards the Blood Angels and I really wonder why?

When we play Space Crusade, my brother always picks the Blood Angels, because he likes the fighting style. He's also pretty good at it, because he usually devastates the opposition with relative little losses. In fact, he's a bit annoyed to have to lug around a Heavy Weapon, which is basically the laughing stock of his squad. Actually, when the "Out of ammo" chance card pops up, he usually begs / taunts me to remove his Rocket Launcher and replace it by a regular bolter as he feels that would actually make his Space Marine stronger instead of weaker. Which is usually the reason I skip him and take out a Heavy Weapon on either of the two other squads .

The reason I see people turn down the Blood Angels so readily is because of the way they combat: in melee for the most part. The deeper reason is that in any melee combat, a Space Marine has the risk of dieing himself, rather than the alien being attacked - a risk you don't have when shooting at an alien instead. However, when I see how my brother plays it ... "Close Assault Blades" allow a diagonal attack, which requires enemies to roll 1 die less and "Bolt Pistols" which grant an addition white die during melee give a significant advantage over the enemy. Gretchins can't defend at all and Orcs and Chaos Marines are reduced to 1 white die vs. the Blood Angels' 3. The only real threats are the Androids and Dreadnoughts, but he usually moves his Admiral into position for those. The Admiral is a heavy hitter in melee in his own right and with an AV of 3 is pretty hard to hit in return. Against Dreadnoughts, going all out with a Melta Bomb usually makes quick work of those and in a hairy situation, "Blind Grenades" prevents most damage for that one turn.

Update: Did some math. When two units attack eachother in melee and one rolls 3 white vs. 1 white of the other, the odds are as follows:
13.58% chance the one with the single white combat die wins
28.09% chance the fight ends in a draw with neither combatant dieing
58.33% chance the one with the three white combat dice wins

The Blood Angel Space Marine has more than four times as much chance to kill his opponent than the other way around. And if you look at survival rate, the Blood Angel Space Marine survives 86.42% of the melee engagements, whereas the opponent only has 41.67% chance to be left standing after combat has finished.

Furthermore, since Space Marines with a Bolter only yield 5 points for the Chaos Player, Space Marines with a Heavy Weapon are usually more interesting targets and any losses are usually easily paid for - easier than for the Ultramarines or Imperial Fists. And even beyond that, usually the best way to take down Space Marines as the Chaos Player is to melee the Space Marines with your Orcs and Gretchin - where the Blood Angels excel over the other two squads and are therefore better shot down than engaged in melee.

Thoughts?

I love the blood angels, I would never take less than the maximum number of bolters.

Also, with regards to the Ultramarines, to us they always feel like a bit of a "Jack of All Trades", which can also be summed up as "Master of None". In my group, it's actually considered the weakest squad; it doesn't specialize in anything and therefore doesn't have any real strengths. Is that just our perception?

I think BAs are the strongest and UMs are the weakest.

The BAs have five essential equipment cards, and the best order card that works in perfect combination with the commander's weapons and equipment, with the bolters bolt pistols + close assault blades and with a melta bomb. The five essentials are force field, bionic arm, bolt pistols, close assault blades and targeters for the bolters, I leave out the targeter if I haven't got any honour badges. Having said that, there's not much that's great to attack with the close assaults blades, really just chaos marines. Androids and genestealers are a bit risky and orcs are arguably better to shoot with their 1AV. It's actually the commander that pushes them over the edge for me, tough to kill shooting and in hand to hand.

The IFs have one of the two best equipment cards in the game in my opinion, suspensors. They have three essential equipment cards, suspensors, bionic eye and combi-weapon. The biggest downer with the IFs is how easily the commander goes down.

The UMs have by far the most useless card in the game, bioscanner. It's not too much of a problem because just don't take it until they're maxed out. They only have two essential equipment cards, medi-kit (the other of the two best equipment cards in the game) and digital weapons. They get a lot better in Mission Dreadnought because they can take all the new weapons but that really just shows how weak they are, the other two can also take all the new weapons but it isn't worth them doing that because they've got better options. I do like using them in MD though.

Basically the BA are hand to hand with the best bolters, the IFs are shooty with the best heavy weapons and the UMs are inbetween with the best commander (although that's debatable with the BA's awesomeness). The BAs are designed for the power sword + power fist, three bolters and the assault cannon. The IF are designed for the heavy bolter (obviously) and all three heavy weapons. The UMs are designed for the power axe + bolt pistol, two bolters and the plasma gun and missile launcher,

[Maurice76]

The BAs are designed for the power sword + power fist, three bolters and the assault cannon. The IF are designed for the heavy bolter (obviously) and all three heavy weapons. The UMs are designed for the power axe + bolt pistol, two bolters and the plasma gun and missile launcher,

Thanks for your reply, Gold Bearer. I have quoted the above part, because it raises a few interesting questions for me:

- You take the Assault Cannon? It's not the first weapon of choice I would take, so I wonder why you would prefer it over the other two . Can you elaborate?
- The Power Axe + Bolt Pistol for the Commander? It's basically a switch of the dice between the Heavy Bolter and the Power Axe + Bolt Pistol: 2 red on one attack, 2 white on the other. As such, they're about even in offensive power; isn't Shooting the better option then?

[Gold Bearer]

Heaver bolter or power axe + bolt pistol works well for the UM commander but I like to take advantage of it being much easier to kill the aliens in hand to hand than it is to shoot them and with the medi-kit it's also well worth the risk. The power sword + power fist works as well but it's a bit of a waste since he gets a reroll with both types of attack, plus it's nice to have one of each of the commander weapons.

With the BA's bolters running around they tend to get in the way of the plasmagun and missile launcher shots but work perfectly with an assault cannon mopping up the survivors. That's the loadout if I'm using all three squads but if I'm only using one I might take the missile launcher over the assault cannon with the BAs because you can shoot targets that are next to the commander without risk.