We’re halfway through our crop of six new Detachments releasing as part of this year’s Grotmas Calendar, and today we take a solemn moment’s silence for those honourable Blood Angels consumed by the tragedy of the Black Rage – before hurling them onto the tabletop and letting the chainswords whir.
If you’ve ever wanted to drop the nobility and let your Blood Angels revel in their true, savage nature, this is the one for you. It might even give the fearmongers of yesterday’s Chaos Space Marines pause for thought.
Rage-cursed Onslaught
The Red Thirst and the Black Rage will forever be the twin spiritual curses that the Blood Angels must hide from their allies for fear of censure. However, they can prove potent weapons of last resort when unleashed upon a determined foe. No Blood Angel takes such a decision lightly: to the sons of Sanguinius, a victory won through giving in to their Red Thirst is tainted at best, whilst to succumb to the Black Rage is no better than a living death. All this is little comfort to enemies facing the Blood Angels’ onslaught in such moments, however. Power-armoured killers pound across the battlefield, shrugging off incoming fire as they close the distance with terrifying haste. Blood detonates from each crunching charge as the sons of Sanguinius rip their victims apart or carve them into gory ruin. At the very heart of the battle, the lost brethren of the Death Company fight with even greater fury, a whirlwind of rage-fuelled savagery that can end only with their deaths or those of all their foes.
As this Detachment is themed around the Red Thirst and Black Rage, we think it’ll particularly appeal to players who have a sizable contingent of Death Company units. Adeptus Astartes units can re-roll 1’s to wound in combat, then if your unit charges you get +1 attack, +2 instead if your unit is battle-shocked.
There is a good mix of Enhancements. You can let one of your units scout 6” and it has a re-roll battle-shock aura of 6” (which you could use to try and fail for detachment benefits), there is a 6” aura for +1 Str to Death Company units, a once per game fights first, and finally Sustained Hits 2 vs Character/Monster/Vehicle units.
A number of the stratagems have a unique mechanic that they give the player the choice of a more powerful buff, but at the cost of battle-shocking your unit. There is an advance and shoot or charge, but battle-shock yourself and it is shoot and charge. There is a +1 Str or +1 AP for melee attacks, but battle-shock yourself and it is +1 Str and +1 AP. On top of these, you can reduce the AP of incoming enemy attacks, you can secure an objective when the enemy kills one of your units in range of that objective, you can give Death Company a 5+ Feel No Pain, and finally you can have a Death Company unit fight on death.
Rage-cursed Onslaught
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Weird, after reading those Detachment rules, all of our opponent’s miniatures are starting to look a little… Horus-y. We’re going to go ahead and deal with that, so while we do, make sure you download a copy for yourself and come back tomorrow for the fourth new Detachment.
Catch up on the Grotmas Calendar
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