How 6th has affected my armies. Part I Knights of Blood

"Brave are they who know everything yet fear nothing."

So I am now 19 games into 6th edition and I figure it's about time I post up some thoughts about how the changes from 5th to 6th edition have affected my armies. First up is the Knights of Blood. I'll talk about the Eldar in another post.

The army I took to Adepticon

I'm going to break this down based on units I actually use (which is most of the codex.) We'll start out with the HQ's and work our way from there.

Up first will be the generic units.

Librarians have seen some of the most dramatic changes, perhaps of all the units in the game, with the inclusion of the new psychic powers from the main rule book and the change to Psychic hoods. Blood Angel Librarians were already very good support units as they were with powers like shield and unleash rage allowing them to provide boosts to the units around them. They can fill this role even better now with the option to trade in for powers from the Divination table. Prescience is a great all around power that can help out in both the shooting and assault phase. From there most of the other powers can add some useful abilities, though I feel that Precognition and Scrier's Gaze don't add much to the army. If you want to beef up your Librarian a bit you can try your luck on the Biomancy table. The primaris power sucks though so you'd best hope you get what your looking for! I haven't really looked too much at the other tables though I do have some experience with Hallucination from Telepathy and that power is pretty fantastic, unfortunately it's only useful if you've upgraded him to be an epistolary.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the nerf to Psychic hoods. Being able to use it to deny the witch for nearby freindly models is nice, but it's not nearly as nice as the ability to shut down any powers cast within 24". 'Nuff said.

All in all I think these guys remain the go-to HQ choice for most lists that aren't running a special character (and maybe some that are.)

Reclusiarchs (and we'll cover Chaplains here as well) have remained relatively the same as they were before. The only major change is that their Crozius Arcanum is now considered to be a Power Maul. That means they now strike with +2 to their strength, which is nice, but only at AP4 which kinda sucks against MEQ and really sucks against terminators and such. Xenos now need to really fear these guys though. The re-roll buffs and fearless they give their units are still quite nice though.

I didn't really use these guys a whole lot except with the Death Company and I don't see that changing much, but they might be the HQ of choice should I decide to ally up with my Eldar since Runes of Warding will hurt my Librarians as they are only Allies of Convenience.

Alright that's about that for the generice HQ choices so lets take a look at the special characters, shall we?

Commander Dante, the living legend himself has really not seen much of a change here. There is a bit of a question about whether the Axe Mortalis is a power axe since that's what it's modeled as or as an unusual power weapon since it has extra rules beyond being a power weapon.  In the games I've used him I have treated it as an Axe since that just makes the most sense to me. It has it's pro's and con's but overall I think I like the Axe profile a bit better due to the +1 strength bonus. Missing out on initiative 6 is a bummer, but I think the greater ability to deal damage offsets that nicely now that he cannot be singled out in combat (excluding challenges of course.)

Mephiston took a bit of a nerf in that his force weapon is now only AP3 and he took the same hit to his Psychic hood as normal Librarians. The flip side of this is that he can now, if you want, take powers from the divination table and use them to help boost the rest of the army while still being a beast in close combat, but you do have to give up wings to do so. Alternately you could gamble on biomancy and see if you can't make him an even bigger badass in cc. I would usually not do either though as you have to trade in three powers and only get two back. It's nice to have the option though.

Astorath the Grim really didn't change at all. He still unlocks the Death Company, which are getting all sorts of press, but we'll cover that in a bit.  His Axe, despite clearly looking like an axe, is definitely an unusual power weapon and thus swings based on his initiative and is ap3. Not too shabby I guess. At least it's not a power maul ;)

The Sanguinor is still a squad killer, but unlike before you now need to avoid 2+ armor save squads since his power sword in now only ap3. I haven't used him yet in 6th but I may have to give it a go as he can soak up any overwatch shots a squad has and then buff any other units that come to play! He's also going to be a beast to kill in challenges, but is going to need to avoid certain match-ups because of the ap3 thing.

Okay so that about covers it for the HQ units I actually have and use. Librarians saw the biggest changes whilst most of the others just saw their weapons change a bit. This is starting to run a bit long and I want to try to get a bit of painting done tonight so I'm going to leave it at that. We'll take a look at more selections next time.

Till then....