Dark Angels Codex in hand... Review...

[Brother_Ambrose]

The Good:

Characters in the new codex are excellent...Belial being the most tournement worthy...Azrael is cleaned up and is more current, and very powerful. All Ezikiel is missing is an invulnerable save... Sammael seems kinda meh... unless he gets the landspeeder, which is really cool, but very expensive...

Combat Squads

Cheap Rhinos

Dark Angels Chapter, Deathwing, and Ravenwing Banners are gross :O

Terminator Apothecary is just cool

Standard marines have more equiptment for the same cost as other companies

Veteran and command squads have 2 attacks!

New whirlwind missiles that ignore cover

The Bad:

No Veteran Skills! FOR THE OLDEST AND MOST EXPERIENCED CHAPTER!!!!!!!

Elite Scouts

Asmodal is gone...

No Mortis Drednought...

Dark Angels Librarians suck!

New (and underwhelming) Psychic powers and NO fear of the darkness, The original Dark Angels power...

No Vehicle upgrades!!!!!!!! Vindicator is officially useless...

Standard of Fortitude, Devestation and Retribution are nerfed

No Terminator Command Squad unless you use Belial...

No "wargear" section... only certain upgrades available...very very restrictive...

Expensive drop pods...

Fast attack section is completely neutered... No such thing as a squadron of Tornados or typhoons...

Land Raiders can no longer be taken as transports...

Heavy bolters up in price...

without access to vet. skills, Ven dred is now useless...

Extra armor is 3x the price

You cant but terminator honours...

No blades of reason...

No Hunting the fallen speacial rules...

1 ass-can per terminator squad...

Tornados up 20 points each...


CONCLUSION:

The Dark Angels have been Neutered. Thats it. The list of horrible things far outways the list of good things. Ultramarines will win the day while the Dark angels sit around contemplating why they suck so much... I'm truly disappointed in the codex. I give it 4/10.

[rintinglen]

i concur whole heartedly. Except in your giving the codex a 4 out of 10. I don't think it rates that high. Jervis Johnson is the enemy of mankind.

[r4wr89]

ouch...really that bad? i'm actually pretty sad that a lot of those things got nerfed...sigh.

at least a lot of the models are sweet...and hopefully not too many nerfings will occur to marines in the future...no longer superhumans? what?

lol
-ant

[Cagarner]

Yea, just use the cool models with standard SM rules....

[experiment 626]

the dark angel codex has fixed most of the things that opponents have come to loath about the marines;
a) extream min/maxing
b) ass-can of 'uber doom armies
c) cheap drop-poding w/librarian with the nasty 'spell of boo!'

this is how marines are ment to be played and goes back more to 2nd edition organisation... (though admittidly jervis is simply too much of an idealist!)

however, i think you're missing out on just how utterly nasty the combat squad options will become! the dark angels now have the most 'scoring units' of any force in 40k! (hell, a single ravenwing attack squadron can break down into 4 scoring units! ) devastators are going to become the staple of the dark angels now that you can effectively get a '2 for 1' deal by breaking the squad in half!!!
and lets not forget about each marine getting frag 'nades & a bolt pistol as standard... now your tactical marines can loose a volly of shots into the enemy and still assault afterwards!

so yes, while some things have been thumped on the head rather hard, it's not as terrible as it might first appear!

cheers!

Originally Posted by experiment 626

the dark angel codex has fixed most of the things that opponents have come to loath about the marines;
a) extream min/maxing
b) ass-can of 'uber doom armies
c) cheap drop-poding w/librarian with the nasty 'spell of boo!'

this is how marines are ment to be played and goes back more to 2nd edition organisation... (though admittidly jervis is simply too much of an idealist!)

however, i think you're missing out on just how utterly nasty the combat squad options will become! the dark angels now have the most 'scoring units' of any force in 40k! (hell, a single ravenwing attack squadron can break down into 4 scoring units! ) devastators are going to become the staple of the dark angels now that you can effectively get a '2 for 1' deal by breaking the squad in half!!!
and lets not forget about each marine getting frag 'nades & a bolt pistol as standard... now your tactical marines can loose a volly of shots into the enemy and still assault afterwards!

so yes, while some things have been thumped on the head rather hard, it's not as terrible as it might first appear!

cheers!

I've fought the new Dark Angels, and they are a bit nasty when it comes to things like objective holding. Just too many scoring units.

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

I like how they can split up like that, that does make them difficult to dislodge. And I like that they can assault after loosing a round of bolt pistols.

But some of their neuterings just suck...

[experiment 626]

Originally Posted by Inquisitor Rosenadel

I like how they can split up like that, that does make them difficult to dislodge. And I like that they can assault after loosing a round of bolt pistols.

But some of their neuterings just suck...

well, in all fairness the ass-can needed a huge nerfing! (mind you, just going back and removing the 'rending' ability is what's really needed!)

i also like the fact that half my army will no longer run off because a single librarian deep strikes in and goes "boo!"

cheers!

[Brother_Ambrose]

The new codex forces you to min/max... only 5 or 10 man squads...

They've neutered Dark Angels, Marines are the same though....

Ultramarines FTW???

[Dan296]

dark angels FTW!!!

lots of cheese has been nerfed. cant be a bad thing!
samuel=flying land raider or plasma cannon jetbike.
terminator apothecary=COOLEST THING EVER!!! dam rolled a 1. hes fine anyway! and the one in the codex that the guy converted is really cool. i also saw one yesterday were someone had used a techmarine servo-harness built into the back of the armor with some medical-ish bits and a hood. i can see some golden deamons next year being deathwing squads with an apothecary.
asmondai=senior chaplain dude? WtF?!
but in the old codexes they had waayy to many special characters, for every race. it was rediculous. i can see why they got rid of some of them.

[experiment 626]

Originally Posted by Brother_Ambrose

The new codex forces you to min/max... only 5 or 10 man squads...

They've neutered Dark Angels, Marines are the same though....

Ultramarines FTW???

except that 5 man squads only get a special weapon - you need a full 10 man squad to get access to the big gun!

so the DA's don't do the whole min/max thing very well anymore... (which is only a good thing really)

cheers!

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

I can see how stuff like Asscan limiting is good, but some stuff like Elite scouts, no veteran skills, no land speeder squadrons are why I think the codex is bad.

I did look at the DA summary online, and was agape when I saw that Azreal has 4 wounds. That's pretty cool.

But it doesn't sound like they did for him what they did for "dear" Marneus Calgar: allow terminator armour!! Senior members of the DA are all members of the Deathwing, right? I think he should be allowed to have a Termionator armour option and Terminator command squad if he takes it!

Oh well. DA still sound pretty cool.

[Grand Master Raziel]

I concur with the OP on this one. Codex: Dark Angels represents a huge kick in the junk to DA players as far as rules go, and a bigger one to those who play the DA successor chapters (more on that later). Admittedly, it's a quantum upgrade over the old book in terms of fluff and art, so if that's what you want out of a codex, then you should be quite pleased with it. However, if you want a competitive army or even just some flexibility to fit it to a theme, then this book is the wrong one for you. Here's my list of issues with the dex:

1: ICs took a big hit from the nerf stick, because the armory was basically removed, and instead ICs have a list of what gear they may or may not take. This is a major negative on two levels. The first is that it takes away a lot of the creativity and ingenuity that went into kitting out a good IC. For example, storm shields are out, which blows because that was my favorite low-cost alternative to the Iron Halo. Company Masters get the Halo automatically, but pay full price for it. On the second level, this is bad because it pretty much invalidates conversions, so a lot of people's conversions just became dust collectors. Also, there's no provision for kitting out your own Chapter Master/Master Librarian/etc. That might not be so bad for DA players, but it really stinks for the players of the successor chapters. Apparently, the Masters of the Angels of Absolution, the Angels of Retribution, and the Angels of Vengeance all carry exactly the same gear as Azrael (maybe they have the Tiger, Leopard, and Puma Helms), and it seems that there are actually still quite a few Gothic-class crotch rockets whizzing around.

2: Command Squads are useless, because they're capped out at 5 men. I guess GW wants to peddle more Razorbacks.

3: More expensive dreadnoughts. Like dreads needed to be more expensive.

4: The lack of Veteran Skills

5: Scouts as an Elite slot. Thematically, that makes no sense at all. From a practical standpoint, it puts Scouts in competition with Dreads, Company Vets (the only unit in the book I unreservedly like) and Terminators for those Elite slots. With that kind of competition, you're not going to see Scouts too often.

6: The execution of the Combat Squads rule was poor. When I initially heard the rumor of it, I was interested in it, because I envisioned being able to split up squads during game play in order to pursue different objectives. However, you have to split them up at deployment, which pretty much negates the utility of the idea. You might as well just have a list designed around 5-man squads in the first place. If you wanted to play that way, nothing in the old rules stopped you from building your list around 5-man squads and distributing upgrades appropriately to represent a 10-man squad broken up into two combat squad elements. Most people didn't play that way, because sending 5-man squads into close fighting was universally regarded as retarded. Now, all of a sudden it's tactically feasable because of the Combat Squads rule? Rubbish!

7: Land Speeder Squadrons took a big hit from the nerf stick. The basic Speeder went up in price so it now costs as much as the melta-armed version. In addition to that, the squadron can only have one each of Tornados and Typhoons, which effectively means that players will only be taking one upgraded speeder per squadron, because limiting access to Tornados still doesn't make Typhoons worth paying the points for.

8: Nerfed the vehicle upgrades. No more PotMS.

9: Tanks are more expensive

10: No more Land Raider transports for Terminator Squads.

11: Speaking of Terminators, they took a big hit from the nerf stick as well, and it's not like they were overpowered.

12: Something that made me scratch my head: the costing on the Rhino. Rhinos got considerably cheaper, but the price of the Extra Armor upgrade tripled in price. The net effect is that a DA Rhino with Extra Armor and Smoke Launchers (which it gets for base cost) costs 8 points less than a SM Rhino with the same gear. Why not just price the DA Rhino at 50pts and have it have those upgrades as standard gear?

13: Another head-scratcher: While a 5-man Tac squad can't take a single heavy weapon, a 5-man Devestator squad can take a full compliment of 4 heavy weapons.

14: Upcosted heavy weapons and assault weapons.

15: Nerfed Assault Squads. No flamers, overpriced plasma pistols, no meltabombs.

So, what's to like about Codex: Dark Angels? Other than fluff and art, not much. Here's the whole list: Company Veterans. That's it.

Now, to respond to a post that contained some points I'd like to address:

Originally Posted by experiment 626

the dark angel codex has fixed most of the things that opponents have come to loath about the marines;
a) extream min/maxing
b) ass-can of 'uber doom armies
c) cheap drop-poding w/librarian with the nasty 'spell of boo!'

a) Well, I might have done something similar, but I'd have given the 5-man squad the option of the heavy, with the option of taking the assault weapon if you bought the extra 5 men. With the price of the veteran sergeant built into the squad, the lack of the 6th man for the scoring unit math, and the lack of the plasma gun, that would have done plenty to tone down the Marine gun line without completely invalidating it.

b) That should have been done by toning down the assault cannon, not nerfing the hell out of the units that happen to carry it. The way they did it has the side effect of punishing those of us who liked those units but did not fall prey to the overuse of assault cannons. I happen to really like the Tornado with the multimelta and heavy flamer, which no one ever complained about, but is equally restricted as the much-reviled assault cannon variant.

c) Once again, it shows an overreaction on GW's part to a perceived problem. The problem could have been resolved by either upcosting the drop pod or removing Fear of the Darkness from the list of powers. What did GW do? Both!

this is how marines are ment to be played and goes back more to 2nd edition organisation... (though admittidly jervis is simply too much of an idealist!)

That's putting it mildly. I think it would be more accurate to state that Jervis Johnson just became the patron saint of Marine-haters.

however, i think you're missing out on just how utterly nasty the combat squad options will become! the dark angels now have the most 'scoring units' of any force in 40k! (hell, a single ravenwing attack squadron can break down into 4 scoring units! ) devastators are going to become the staple of the dark angels now that you can effectively get a '2 for 1' deal by breaking the squad in half!!!
and lets not forget about each marine getting frag 'nades & a bolt pistol as standard... now your tactical marines can loose a volly of shots into the enemy and still assault afterwards!

so yes, while some things have been thumped on the head rather hard, it's not as terrible as it might first appear!

cheers!

No, it's worse. Let me debunk some of the things you're gushing about here. For starters, DA players don't really have access to more scoring units than they used to. Virtually everything is more expensive, so if anything they've got less. The Ravenwing Squadron you're referring to is going to cost close to 400 points. So, the amount of those you can have in your army list is limited by the extreme points-cost. Being able to break it up into a bunch of tiny scoring units isn't much of an upside. You can do virtually the same thing by taking smaller units. They might take up more FOC slots, but for the amount of points we're talking about here, you're not realistically going to ever be able to take more than one full Ravenwing squadron in any kind of balanced army.

As far as Devestators go, they are the only squad that would really unreservedly benefit from the Combat Squads rule, but since you can get the full four heavies in a 5-man squad, I'm not so sure we're going to be seeing too many 10-man Dev squads broken up into their 5-man elements. Instead, what I expect to start seeing are the 5-man Dev squads with four heavies and one of the super-cheap Rhinos to play first turn fire screen. You park that think in front of your Devs so they can't be shot at if you don't get the first turn, and when you get to go you drive it out of the way and open up. If your opponent shoots the Rhino, they can move into the wreck. They don't get to shoot that turn, but they get a 4+ cover save on subsequent turns. If your opponent doesn't shoot the Rhino, then they have an option to rapidly redeploy to another part of the board if they happen to need it, or you can use it for Rhino-screening tactics.

As far as the free stuff the squads get goes: it's nice to have the free frags, and free is about what the kraks were worth. The free bolt pistols is a nice way of giving back the single shot before charging that you used to be able to get in 3rd ed without changing the framework of the 4th ed rules, but AFAIC, it's giving back something that never should have been taken away in the first place.

So, what it all boils down to is that there's really only one build that you can do with Codex: Dark Angels that's as good or marginally better/only marginally worse (depending on how you build it) than what you can do with vanilla SM rules, and that's a mechanised infantry force. The free frags, being able to double tap after debussing and single-tap before charging, and the marginally cheaper Rhinos make that the most attractive build you can make with a DA army now.

[masterofweirdness]

*sigh*

Why can't WE make the rules for 40k?

Glad I play DIY.... I still think the best Tact. Squad is one w/ 2 Melt guns, p. fist vet. sarge and a rhino.... or infiltrate.

[Killermoose]

Meh, I'll still be doing a Deathwing army. 4 Termie Sqauds, Master of the Deathwing, and 2 Dreads. Probably will do rubbishly, but then I only want to do it because I love Termies and Dreadnoughts!

[Ides]

Well if you look at the new issue of WD, you see a combined Deathwing, Ravenwing and DA army decimate the Tau... Only two models from the deathwing made it to the main assault and they, along with the master of the Ravenwing accounted for between 20-30 kills. Plus, with the Deathwing assault rule, and teleport homers on ravenwing bikes you can deep strike the death wing ****her without scattering...

[vinny]

As to the As Cannon I would have liked it to be rending 'V' Inf but St 6 against vehicles like a mini Gun.

[masterofweirdness]

Originally Posted by Ides

Well if you look at the new issue of WD, you see a combined Deathwing, Ravenwing and DA army decimate the Tau... Only two models from the deathwing made it to the main assault and they, along with the master of the Ravenwing accounted for between 20-30 kills. Plus, with the Deathwing assault rule, and teleport homers on ravenwing bikes you can deep strike the death wing ****her without scattering...

but, don't WD battlereports make sure that the newest army ALWAYS wins???

[Grand Master Raziel]

Originally Posted by Killermoose

Meh, I'll still be doing a Deathwing army. 4 Termie Sqauds, Master of the Deathwing, and 2 Dreads. Probably will do rubbishly, but then I only want to do it because I love Termies and Dreadnoughts!

Well, no one ever accused a Deathwing player of playing because he wanted an uber-effective army. Enjoy the army, but expect an uphill struggle most of the time.

Originally Posted by Ides

Well if you look at the new issue of WD, you see a combined Deathwing, Ravenwing and DA army decimate the Tau... Only two models from the deathwing made it to the main assault and they, along with the master of the Ravenwing accounted for between 20-30 kills. Plus, with the Deathwing assault rule, and teleport homers on ravenwing bikes you can deep strike the death wing ****her without scattering...

Originally Posted by masterofweirdness

but, don't WD battlereports make sure that the newest army ALWAYS wins???

What masterofweirdness said. /\ Don't take WD battle reports too seriously. They're totally rigged to get the outcome they desire, and sometimes the player of the opposition army plays like a monkey to ensure the desired result. Remember the Tau vs Dark Eldar battle report, back when the Tau got their new book? All the DE player had to do is rush the Tau lines with everything he had, and it would have been all over in three turns. Instead, he tried to claim the objectives, and parked T3 5+ save troops in front of a Tau gunline. That was not a savvy plan.

[Brother_Ambrose]

Originally Posted by Ides

Well if you look at the new issue of WD, you see a combined Deathwing, Ravenwing and DA army decimate the Tau... Only two models from the deathwing made it to the main assault and they, along with the master of the Ravenwing accounted for between 20-30 kills. Plus, with the Deathwing assault rule, and teleport homers on ravenwing bikes you can deep strike the death wing ****her without scattering...

I'd rather use the Scout/infiltrate/teleport homer combo I used to have...