4 Winds and Dark Angels

So many things I'd like to blog right now but no time! (Thus the "4 winds".)  But i did get to play this weekend (thanks J!) and luckily met a whole crew of good guys to eventually play with as well.  I will blog our "battle narrative" sometime before I play again but not sure how quickly that is going to come.  I'd also like to comment on my writing ambitions at the moment (mostly for my own sake, no one else needs to care), the fact that I just won an ebay auction to gain some centigors to use as chaos spawn, and a whole slew (is that the right spelling? hey, i think i just found the past tense for "slay"!  I was looking for that the other day...) of other things.  But again, no time today, wasting time now.  Have to prepare for my promotion ceremony today (yeah me!) and the wife needs help with school projects this week, so... when I have time I will hopefully get to all these things.

But for now, I have spent precious time on the inspiration of the moment.

     So one of the guys there was playing Dark Angels but running them as an army from the Space Marine Codex.  He didn't care for the current DA codex (and while I do like alot of the cool stuff in it, I have to agree that some of it stinks, like basically having alot of units that are either 5 or 10 models, nothing in between, out of date/scale points costs, etc.)  So that got me to thinking as I was pushing my boy around the neighborhood (my second best time to do my thinking -- I'm sure you can guess in which room of the house I do my best thinking), how would *I* run a codex army as Dark Angels?

The HQs would be somewhat of a sacrifice.  I would still run cool HQ characters but could not ethically claim that they were Azreal, Belial, or Samael because they wouldn't have the same cool rules and generally awesome gear, though you could come close and give it a try.  I figured, aside from Chaplains, Librarians, and generic Captains, you could run Khan as a badass Ravenwing commander (or just a made-up Bike Captain), Sicarius as a cool DA master, the maxed out Chaps and Librarian characters from the Ultramarines lists, and Lysander as an awesome Deathwing commander (or your own captain in termie armor).  So no shortage of cool HQs, I just wouldn't claim any of them as the superheroes of the DA chapter.

So my basic list (subject to alterations) worked out like this:

T	Tac squad (10) sgt w. p-fist and t-port homer, plasgun, MM/ML/HB	220
*	Drop Pod w. locator beacon	45
E	St. Augustine (venerable dreadnought) hvy flamer, plascannon/AC	185
FA/T	Ravenwing Bike squadron (8+1) sgt p-wpn + m-bombs, melta, plas, AB w MM	310
FA	Ravenwing Landspeeder Squardon (2) MM and HB + Typhoon ML	150
FA	Vanguard Vets (5) sgt w. relic blade + SS, plas-pistol	220
T	Scouts (6) sgt. Plas-pistol + t-port homer, all cloaks (infiltrate)	131
E	Deathwing Gun Termies (5) sgt w. p-sword, assault cannon + c-fist	235
E	Deathwing Assault Termies (5) 3 LCs, 2 TH + SS	200

That totals 1695 points, which doesn't seem to have gone very far, leaving just enough for HQs maybe.  I would actually like to tweek this to allow for at least one Heavy Support choice as well; maybe only take one Termie squad, not max out the bikes, and maybe downgrade the vanguards to assault marines (vanguard are way over priced anyway but I did buy cool blood angel sanguary guard to paint green).  But with a Bike Captain or Khan your Ravenwing becomes Troops (and here I have maxed out the squad and so could even break it into combat squads) and have included teleport homers on the scouts and tac squads, plus a locator beacon on the drop pod (good for both termies and jump packs).  Another good combo would be Land Raider variant with a termie HQ/Chaps and assault termies inside (also points expensive).

So that's what I've wasted the last hour or so of my valuable time on.  Better get on to more important things.

Oh, and the centigors...  I figured they'd make badass chaos spawn for my CSM army.  They look like beasts/cavalry and savage and strong and just cool.  Fit the stats and rules nicely i think: S5, T5, W3, no armor, D6 attacks cuz theyz crazy-mad, and random movement and rage... you know, cuz theyz crazy-mad.

 (So I successfully played my fave Crimson Fist force this weekend and all I can think about now is switching to Chaos and Dark Angels...  I have a problem.)