Dark Angels are here!

And just so you know - Dark Angels are up for purchase on advance orders. I'm rather excited!

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCatsLarge.jsp?catId=cat440160a

You like the deathwing dont you? pity - the ravenwing flyer looks amazing! not too sure about the landspeeder though...

curse GW Sutton for being sold out of white dwarf today!!!!! i wanna read about them!

Yeah, never really liked the Raven Wing element. Just not a bike person I guess.

One of the Land Speeders is quite good, the other one is terrible. I do not like it at all. Starting to look like Sisters of Battle, which I dispise!

It will likely be a death wing. Not sure how much trouble it will be to do a full death wing army, but hopefully it will need only one character or something. Got to decide then what to do with the 2nd HQ, as I do intend to take two. Chaplains are so cool....

That was the 600th post

woo hoo! beers on relik when we get to 1000!

the front-of-the-box pictures dont do the new deathwiing models justice - skimming through the other pics on the GW website they look awesome

YAY! more crunchy space marine biomass - NOM NOM NOM!!!!!

Why have I gotta get the beers in?!!

More to the point why were you replying at 5.47am! I think all of us have sleeping disorders,.....

I already started work then - trust me I have no disorder (not a sleeping one anyway), I just not allowed to lie in like you lot!

But you do go to bed early like the old man you are

Doesn't mean I get more sleep tho......

Is that coz your so old you bladder wakes you up every few hours?

New codex tomorrow, tee hee. Really hope I can sneak away to buy it!

soooo....you finally got a list together - how did you find it in the end once you learnt the options? are you happy with it?

What are the highlights and low lights of the codex?

A brief dark angels book review huh? OK, here we go.

It is very good!

More than that? OK!

Well the main thing to take is that it rely does seem balanced. Even to a large degree in comparison to the other marine codex's I am familiar with (so no space wolves comments!)

There are four type of army to play. All of which have been done very well: Raven wing, death wing, green wing and mixed. All of them have strengths and weakness and none of them seem to contain MUST HAVE units.

Death Wing - the first company. All in terminator armour. All got really cool models. Really looking forward to playing them. Will likely lose of course because there are so few models on the board. Got to hate those 1's....Real limitations to the models and tactics if you play exclusive death wing. No fast options either. Like to take a Death Wing land raider adds another 30 points to the raider. It turns out to be a 300 point model!

Raven Wing - the second company. Designed as a flexible fast response unit. Each have there own fluff which is really nice. Toughness 5 from their bikes helps them but they are expensive so again there are limits to what you can achieve and take. Some things appear slightly over costed too but it does have option in all foc's so does offer more flexibility.

Green Wing - Standard marines. They do everything you expect a marine to do. There has been wide outrage (especially amongst chaos players) at the cost of standard marines however by the time you add the upgrades to make a direct comparison they are the same price! Can be used really well when adding special rules into account. Otherwise a very green marine force. They also get skyfire missiles... Though they are 10 points per model (not per squad).

HQ's - this is really fun. They have 5 special characters. All of whom bring something to the table in terms of amazing rules or brilliant fluff. The chapter master allows death wing and raven wing to be troops. This obviously allows for huge options. The company masters of the raven wing and death wing make appearances and have rules which compliment their companies. A level 3 psyker and an interigator chaplain round them off. Standard options are available too. Command squads for each option are also available with additional rules provided by banners. These banners really help to take these forces to another tactical level. But they are not cheap. This does lead to a balanced book.

Mixed - which brings us to how they work together. And they really do work together! This is a master stroke by the writer because it means the force becomes a collection of the entire chapter and still retains all fluff and actually becomes more competative. Admittedly at larger points totals though....

Lets look at an example. Missile launchers with sky fire at the back. A central force of Azreals's command squad with a banner that doubles bolter fire. Add a librarian with additional chapter relics (ALL models within 6" get 4+ invun). Put them in a land raider surrounded by tactical marines in rhinos. Put a flanking force of Raven Wing on each side, all of whom get great plasma options and come with teleport homers. Let the death wing use these homers to land on turn two (guaranteed. in the rules if you so wish) to unleash twin linked shooting while the rest of the force catches up. That's before you add flyers....

Obviously thats just one build but I think it should show what you can do.

So, In conclusion - the best book I have read because it takes the fluff and uses it well. It gives you a lot of options whilst not being over powered due to the costs.... In short, I love it and will probably collect MANY 1000's of points of these minis over the years. Then unleash the Dark Angels and the Raven Wing in one great apocolpse battle. How sweet would that be...