Email in: Escalating Bloodhammer Advice

"Hey, Kirby,

First off, I’d like to say I respect your gameplay advice and have found it rather useful for upping my game. I’ve been following your recent adventures with Blood Angels, and was wanting to get into them myself. I’ve been playing a lot of heavily mechanized lists and wanted to switch it up with Bloodhammer. I’ll be playing them in an escalation league with the following ruleset, and I'd appreciate your perspective on setting up the force. Obtaining models and bitz is no issue for changing the list. The local meta is reasonably competition oriented, though disproportionately non-MEQ, but there will still be the odd marine player.

Standard BRB missions, max 4 games per tier of 250 points, ranging from 250 to 1500. A single list per point level, and it must contain all units from previous level, though upgrades/body count do not matter, eg, a Librarian could be in power armour at 500, TDA at 1000, then power armour again at 1250, and a boyz mob could be 20 strong at 250 and 12 strong at 500.


250 Points 4’x4’ game field

•You must have at least one Troops choice.

•No models allowed with more than two wounds.

•No Special Characters.

•No 2+ armour Saves, or any invulnerable saves.

•No vehicles or any models with an Armor Value are allowed.


500 Points 4’x4’ game field

•You must have at least one Troops choice.

•No more than one HQ choice.

•No models allowed with more than two wounds.

•No Special Characters.

•No 2+ armour saves, or any invulnerable saves..

•No vehicles may have an armor value of greater than 33 (Front + Side + Rear).


750+ Points Standard game field and Force Org.


This is my starting point:

249: Assault Squad (8), power weapon, flamer

Sanguinary Priest, jump pack

496: Librarian, Unleash, Shield, jump pack

Sanguinary Priest, jump pack

Assault Squad (6), power fist, flamer

Assault Squad (6), power fist, flamer

750: Librarian, Lance, Shield, jump pack

Sanguinary Priest(2), 1 jump pack

Assault Squad (10), power fist, 2 Meltagun

Assault Squad (5), power fist, meltagun

Devastator Squad (5), 4 Missile Launcher

980: Librarian, Lance, Shield, jump pack

Sanguinary Priest

Assault Squad (10), power fist, 2 Meltagun

Assault Squad (10), power fist, 2 Meltagun

Devastator Squad (5), 4 Missile Launcher

Honor Guard, 4 meltagun, jump packs (perhaps switch to 2x meltagun 2x storm shield?)

I don’t really know how to fill out the later point values, and I’m not too sure on what I have for the earlier ones. I want to add a single Sanguinary Guard unit, more Devs, and perhaps VV with claws or shields, but I’m not sure in what order or with what. Thanks in advance!

-The Imperial Space Hamster"

Overall escalation looks fine there though I'm not a fan of the Honor Guard - they are always a target and while they do bring multiple meltaguns and a FNP/FC bubble, as your only option I'd lean away from them. Replace them with Jump Priests and potentially back field Scouts.

In terms of Devs, VV and Sang Guard moving up - pick Devs and one squad of the other. Sang Guard provide a beater unit to the army which can take care of the tougher stuff quickly but isn't going to be able to go toe to toe with death stars. VV can here but are much more expensive (storm shields) whilst still being T4/3+ Marines. They also bringing in the ability to deep-strike into combat which is always very nice. The extra Devs obviously provide more firepower and are going to shore up some of the weaknesses mass ASM expose themselves to. So pair one of the extra squads with another Dev unit and ASM unit and you'll have a solid list moving forward!