Email in: New to 40k; Hybrid Blood Angels?

"Hi Kirby,

So first off I love your blog, You and the rest of the guys do a great job. Next a thing you should know about me is I'm completely new to 40k but not fantasy, I play Wood Elves and WoC (about 4k of each). But now due to the absolute 40k takeover at my hobby store I'm starting 40k. I want blood angles, I won't play another army; I just love the BA models so much. My dilemma now is how to build my BA force for the cheapest yet most efficient. So I want to know my list(s) before I buy stuff, buy the right stuff, and be competitive. I thought about a jumper list but I heard it is really hard to play and the SG kinda suck (your paying termie pts, for non-termie survivability), next I thought the other BA standard mech spam, I just don't want to do it. My final conclusion is Hybrid Stormereaven/Baal Pred w/ a couple Libby Dreads and some Sang Priest for the bubble? What do you think and can you make a list for me? *remember I have no idea how to play 40k. Let me rephrase that I know what stuff does but I don't know if it is good? I'm looking for something in the 1850 range. I know this is a lot but use your magic Kirbs...

Thanks"

Pure Jumper isn't that hard to play but it does require a lot of knowledge about match-ups (not to be confused with a 'finesse' style of play many on the Internet seem to love throwing about). SG don't suck but they have serious limitations. SG are beater units which hate to see anything which can ignore their saves. Ya they are over-costed and really should of come with at least a 5++, but nothing you can do. They still fulfill a vital role when used, crushing units before they can strike back.



Hybrid Stormraven lists we can do however. I often say in regards to Stormravens to run them as fire support with cheap scoring units inside or to carry one assault unit (either Dread or an actual unit) rather than filling them to the brim most people do. So let's see if we can do that here. We'll take three Stormravens w/TL-PC, TL-MM and EA and build around that concept. This leaves us with 1205 points for the rest of the army.

We'll take Furioso Dreads for the Stormravens to carry. These can play the role of what the SG normally fill in a Jumper army and clean up squads whilst also being durable. We've now got our 'fast' and combat elements nutted out so let's add in our basic scoring units and HQ. We've got 830 points left so we should have enough to play around with quite a bit. In the best case scenario I'd like to be able to grab some Speeders for saturation as well but not sure that's feasible at 1850. We'll see. Your basic ASM squad is generally PFist + 2x meltagun which are 235 points. If we add in our HQ libby w/Jump Pack, well we've used our 830 points up to the letter.

Seems okay but we don't have any Priests so we need to work in some of those. However we don't have an elite slots. Let's therefore drop a Dread + Raven combo (340 points saved) and take 4x MM/HF speeders and 2x Priests w/Jump Packs. This sends us 90 points over so we need to cut back one of the ASM squads to 5 man which leaves us with:

Libby w/Blood Lance, Shield, Jump Pack
2x Priests w/Jump Packs
2x Furioso Dread
2x10x ASM w/2x meltagun, PFist
5x ASM w/meltagun, hand-flamer, infernous pistol, meltabomb
2x2x Land Speeder w/MM, HF
2x Stormraven w/EA, TL-PC, TL-MM

Totals: 1845 points
28 jumpers
8 vehicles

You have decent armor saturation and body saturation with MEQ + FNP. However...it's not going to be super cheap to buy with 4 land speeders so I'd be looking to trade with someone or get bargains off e-bay, etc. If you wanted a cheaper army overall I'd go with the 3 Stormraven concept but you'd be running your ASM without FNP (unless you replaced one of the Dreadnoughts with some Priests or Honor Guard).