Email in: Love the blog!

"Kirby,

I’ve been incorporating much of the advice that I read on your blog into my builds, and my game has been improving steadily.  While I am still a novice 40k player, I am definitely getting better.  Keep on keeping on!

With my current build, I have room left for one more unit.  I run a Mephiston that I use as an all-rounder (anti-infantry, anti-mech, whatever the situation, he’s a beast).  However, what I would ideally like is to have a bit of duality with another assault unit that can handle basic, non-terminator MEQ as well as vehicles up to AV14 (a mini Meph, if you will).  Here are a couple options that I’m looking at:

Option (1)
Honor Guard
-4x Power Weapons
-4x Meltaguns
Chapter Banner
JP
--295 pts
Probably the best of the options for anti-mech with 4 meltaguns.  I like that they have an 18 inch melta range, and a 24 inch str8 ap1 range, while still having the 1str 1ini bonus for charging, ensuring that MEQ and up get slaughtered.  Downsides are that there are no ablative wounds, and losing even 1 to torrent fire means their effectiveness degrades very quickly.

Option (2)
Sanguinary Guard
-3x Infernus pistols
-1x Priest w/JP
--305 pts
These are basically impervious to small arms fire, forcing the opponent to target them with anti-mech weapons (thereby protecting my tanks by proxy). Downside is that you have to be extremely close to get the melta off (15 and 18 inches).  Tougher than the Honor Guard, but still no ablative wounds.

Option (3)
10x Assault Marines
1x Priest w/JP
1x Fist
2x Meltaguns
--310 pts
The standard.  Not as tough as Sanguinary, but more ablative wounds than both.  Half the melta power of the Honor Guard, but more range than the Sanguinary.  Effective against MEQ due to the high volume of attacks on the charge.  More troops means slightly harder to hide behind/in cover.  The middle of the road choice, imo, though ironically, the most expensive.

Noticeably absent from this list are Terminators.  While I like terminators, the above three have mobility, which I think is a huge asset to a Blood Angels army.  I’ve also tried using a Furioso to fill this role, but I find that a standard Furioso with fists and a Magna is too slow on the field and can’t get to where he needs to be all the time, and a librarian Furioso can’t take the melta/magna options, and is thusly not as effective at mech killing (at least in my experience).

Thoughts?  Am I spending too many points on this for what I expect it to do?"

Well it really depends what list they are going into. Is this a mech list you are trying to add a non-mech combat element to or looking to expand part of the Jumper list? If it's a mech list I'd keep Mephiston as he works very well with lots of vehicle hulls to hide behind and work around and when supported by the army, he is very hard to get a handle on for your opponent.

If it's a non-mech list I'd be looking at either the Sanguinary Guard or ASM options. Honor Guard are nice but have a huge target painted on them and as you pointed out yourself, lose effectiveness quickly when shot at. What the rest of your list entails will dictate whether you want the SGuard or ASM. If you've got nothing which is really capable of smacking things in combat (i.e. mass ASM), then grab a unit of Sanguinary Guard (but throw in a PFist) just for that extra beater unit. If you already have such a unit (i.e. Vanguard Vets) add in the extra ASM for more scoring, a lightening of the load across your other ASM units and more torrenting options.