Campaign Units: My take

[Prof_Nekko]

So I beat the campaign (second highest difficulty) and I felt I wanted to evaluate the Blood Angel units that I had access to in the game.

HQ:

Carlson: a very solid unit. everything he has access to is pretty useful. Mostly he's used to either dropping a buff when he can't get close to the enemies or leaping in and going HAMMER TIME! Essentially he's an assault marine without the inherent fragility and that makes him good.

Sanguinary Priest: Points wise for the campaign it's best to just keep Auturo about since he's free and infantry do struggle in later missions. Pairs well with hellblasters since he can quickly patch up their overcharge backlash. Chainsword can also do decent damage but he's really going to prefer dropping buffs. The generic priests however are a bit pricy and since you'll likely transition to vehicles later an additional one isn't worth the points.

Techmarine: In campaign you'll probably only field our sass factory for free. Like the priest he's mostly goign to be for healing and buffing, though unlike the priest I'd still think fielding a second if you are going an all vehicle army could be of value to keep extra heals going.

Librarian Dreadnought: Big, bulky, and painful. He can take a lot of punishment and his abilities can get him into battle fast, unfortunately the non free ones probably aren't that worth the points as normal dreadnoughts are cheaper and more modular. Questis however will be your best friend for a good chunk of the campaign so love him.

Canoness: Verity is all you get for this role and she's free. Buffs are good and her melee damage isn't too bad. Upgrading to a power sword or plasma pistol is nice but eh her default is enough for when she has to actually do damage.

Librarian: Mean little bugger. big point investment and as far as HQ units go he's somewhat fragile, but the boy can leap in and put on solid hurt against any unit. The effectiveness of the force sword alone with magic leaping powers is enough to make him always a valuable addition to your army with his AoE abilites just being icing on the cake.

Infantry

Intercessor: They're your bread and butter. That makes them by default useful. Frag grenades for gaunt popping and they will mostly be supplemental damage or trash clearers. Auto Bolt Guns are the way to go for this specific reason. Their self buff combined with the land speeder's debuff can help them dish out a decent amount of damage to some of the mid tier bulkier enemies. However they are pretty useless against the tougher armor units.

Assault Marines/Death Company: Fine early on, but once you start fighting anything past the venomthorpes their value degrades fast. They can do decent damage and krak grenades can do a decent chunk to tankier units, but ultimately they're too fragile to do much. I combined Assault marines and death company because they're similar in role and weakness, though DC is a bit better overall but still suffers from the same flaws.

Aggressors: A good all purpose infanty. Decent bulk, their guns shred trash, and their fists hurt bigger guys. Slow and low range tend to be their core weaknesses. However with flamestorm gauntlets they can tear down a full wall of melee charges from up to venomthorpes. Still kinda expensive though and that's holding them back in teh long run.

Hellblasters: The ranged tank killers. Honestly using the heavy plasma incinerators is a bit of a waste though since the normal ones work just fine unless you want a big boy to die hard, but the value of saving points and still having them be valuable shooters to take down Warriors and other mid tier enemies keeps them better with the regular gun. If you have a sanguinary priest though they are significantly better since they can use their overcharge far more safely as they will patch up almost all the damage you take and can shred tanky enemies quite a lot.

Inceptors: The "better" assault marines. They are tankier and don't risk counterattacks due to their ranged only weapons. Plasma pistols make them great at mid tier fights. Do take note though they are a bit on the pricier side for infantry and really want those plasma pistols, so invest wisely.

Sanguinary Guard: Simply beautiful. They are by far the best infantry you can field. They're stupid expensive though so alt weapons just aren't worth the cost since they are fantastic with what they already have. Just... Try not to get them killed.

Terminators: Useless... Utterly useless... Yeah they're big and bulky but their damage output leaves a lot to be desired for the sheer mass of points you dump into them. At least give them wrist flamers as an anti swarm option or something to justify that massive price tag.

Battle Sisters: The weakest of the lot you can field in the campaign, but that's ok cause they're really cheap to field. You will use them to squeeze just a little power out when you are too close to the point cap for anything else. Their upgrades can make them deal pretty decent damage overall especially if you can drop a couple more buffs on them, and of course the ever loved frag grenade. No weapon options makes me kinda sad though, but such is life.

Seraphim: They are glass cannons in every sense of the word. If you can afford the points to give them inferno pistols they can melt big beasties pretty damn hard and can be pretty hard to swat out of the sky if you jump first. The big flaw is they are woefully made of paper so make sure whatever they want dead is going to die or they will go down first.


Vehicles:

Land Speeder/Tornado: In my opinion? Best unit in the campaign hands down. Cheap cost, decent damage, can swap to a melta gun for tank melting, and can debuff enemies so you can burn a bigger target down faster. Tornado also has the perks of an assault gun or a flamer to fire for free, and that is huge and makes them well worth the extra point cost from teh original. Use them well.

Dreadnought: The ever versatile bulky bois. Melta guns if you need to burn big targets, flamers if you need them for swarm management, and frag grenades to shut those stupid gargoyles up. Always worth a field.

Baal Predator: Pretty powerful unit and of course better with fire, only thing I don't like about it is the sheer points cost. IMO it's better to save the points for a couple more land speeders instead but that's just me.


Anyways that's my opinion on the matter. It's probably far from perfect though so if I got anything too egregiously wrong let me know.