"Dear Kirby & co
I have something of a challenge for you all. I intend on entering April's Throne of Skulls tournament at Warhammer World, Nottingham (UK) and need your help in designing a competitive list. Though this will be my first ever Warhammer 40K tournament, I consider myself to be an above average wargamer - I am a previous Warmachine tournament winner. I shall be taking my Flesh Tearers Space Marines to Nottingham, and will thus be selecting my army from Codex Blood Angels. I am not terribly interested in becoming another Mech player, but know that I could be quite easily tempted into fielding an 'immolator-spam' army should anyone argue convincingly about its merits. I am however currently much more fascinated with 3++'s Bloodhammer and Blood Rodeo lists, as they are (IMO) a refreshing alternative to the Razorspam armies which seem to be advocated by everyone else on the interwebz. The problem is that the UK tournament has a 1500-point limit so any build is going to be pretty limited in scope and size.
For now I need to design a list, build it, paint it, and familiarise myself with it (no small feat). Though I have a reasonable collection of models, I have no qualms about purchasing a completely new army, especially as I am currently unable to field what I would consider to be a competitive build. For reference I have been playing mostly 1000-point friendly games using hybrid armies e.g. Seth, Priest, 5 Sanguinary Guard, 10 Tactical Marines, 5 Assault Marines (in Rhino), Dreadnought and 5 Devastators. I have access to 3 gaming clubs with some (very) competitive players, so will be exploiting them to whip me into shape over the next few months! Now I just need an army (and your help!)....
Mercury"
Blood Hammer is the list I'd go for here as Blood Rodeo really starts ticking at 1750. Same with Flamestorm (BA Immo-spam), it's just plain gorgerous at 1750 and since you're not really keen on RBack spam, we won't try and convince you. So Blood Hammer it is. Main issue here though is Seth isn't going to be usable sorry :(. I'm not sure if this is a key point for you or not but without a Jump Pack, Seth just has issues fitting into most BA lists when Libbies (and Dante/Meph) are so much more versatile.
So with that in mind let's start working out a list. We'll start with our shooting core which is 3x5x Devs w/4x ML + a Priest and we've gobbled up 440 points leaving us just over a 1000 to make a Jumper list. Easy as pie, or so they say. Our core is going to be quite similar to most Jumper lists, Libby and Assault Marines. For this list we will obviously take a Libby with Shield and Lance + JP and two full ASM squads should be enough. Fill them out with double meltagun and a PFist and we've used 595 points; lots of room to spare. 20 FNP Marines should be quite solid for scoring at 1500 points but we need to make them have FNP/FC (dur). Since we've got Devs to help with cracking open tanks, Honor Guard aren't as useful. Whilst lots of melta is great, unlike a pure Jumper list it's not as important because there are 12 missile launchers waving in the wind. We'll therefore take Priests rather than HG for our FNP/FC bubbles. Two with Jump Packs and LClaws adds to our combat punch and gets the bubbles we need. 180 gone with 285 left. This is enough for a beater unit; basically a squad which goes around and cracks things open in combat. We won't have enough to double this squad unless we drop a Dev squad which is annoying but gives our ASM some much needed back-up.
The most obvious selection here is Sang Guard and for good reason. Although a bit expensive they add significant combat punch (yay for lots of mastercrafted S5 PW attacks) and are quite survivable against anything which doesn't ignore saves or is AP1/2. Equipping our squad with a PFist and 2 infernous pistols ensures it can deal with tanks, MCs and infantry alike. However, now we've got 55 points to burn. Not enough for another squad unless we drop something so we'll hand out some upgrades. Hand-flamers and infernous pistols are the go-to here but more bodies in the Devs is also feasible. We'll add a hand-flamer to each of the ASM squads, a Priest and libby and an infernous pistol to the other Priest to hit 1500 on the dot and the list looks like:
Libby w/hand-flamer, Jump Pack, Shield, Lance
Priest
Priest w/LClaw, hand-flamer, Jump Pack
Priest w/LClaw, infernous pistol, Jump Pack
5x Sanguinary Guard w/PFist, 2x infernous pistols
2x 10x ASM w/2x meltagun, PFist, hand-flamer
3x5x Devastators w/4x Missile Launchers
Totals: 1500 points
44 infantry (28 jumpers, 16 foot)
Another option is of course to drop a Dev squad for another Sanguinary Guard unit. By dropping a Dev squad and the LClaws off the Priests, there's enough points for another SG squad with PFist and infernous pistol which improves your combat output but decreases your ranged anti-mech. You could also replace the SG squad with an HG squad with meltaguns and SS. You get better anti-mech and an anti-super unit with some combat potential (drop the pistol upgrades and SG and you can get a 3 meltagun, 3 SS and 2 LClaw HG squad) but it is quite expensive.
