Detachment Focus: Rage-Cursed Onslaught

In our Detachment Focus series we take a deep dive into individual detachments, examine their rules, what makes them tick, and how to play them. In this article we’re looking at the new Rage-Cursed Onslaught Detachment for the Blood Angels.

Codex Supplement: Blood Angels gave the faction a number of new ways to play, though many players felt like the Lost Brethren’s take on Death Company left a bit to be desired. Likewise, the Liberator Assault Group Detachment had some neat ideas around battle-shocking your units for a bonus that could have gone further. Well good news to fans of both – this new Detachment gives you another crack at fielding your rage-fueled madmen on the battlefield, killing everyone you see – from Horus over there on the objective marker to all those Horuses back there in your enemy’s deployment Horus. Horus. 

We’d like to thank HorusGames Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

This is a melee-focused Detachment for the Blood Angels, giving you both a broad buff in melee – re-roll Wound rolls of 1 and +1 Attack on the charge – and giving you a bonus extra attack if your unit is Battle-shocked. While you don’t get the +2 Strength buff that you’d pick up from Liberator Assault Group, you can more than make up for that with an extra Attack from being Battle-shocked. On top of that, two of the Stratagems here give you the ability to give into the Red Thirst, becoming Battle-shocked in exchange for an additional bonus. While the Detachment rule is army-wide, many of the Enhancements and Stratagems are Death Company-focused, making this more of a Death Company Detachment, only with better rules.

Detachment Rule: Maddened Ferocity

Each time an ADEPTUS ASTARTES model from your army makes a melee attack, re-roll a Wound roll of 1. Each time an ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit from your army is selected to fight, if that unit made a Charge move this turn, until the end of the phase, add 1 to the Attacks characteristic of melee weapons equipped by models in that unit. If your unit is Battle-shocked, add 2 to the Attacks characteristic instead.

It can also be noted that unlike Lost Brethren, Death Company on foot, with and without bolt rifles, are not Battleline here, but you weren’t taking 4+ of them anyway.

This detachment rule is pretty solid, and combines some of the best aspects of the Lost Brethren and Liberator Assault Group’s rules. Wound re-rolls are always welcome, and not limiting them to damaged DEATH COMPANY units only really opens the detachment up. Getting the +1 Attack and not the +2 Strength means that lists will likely look more like what you’d expect to see in an Angelic Inheritors army rather than LAG. Failing Battle-shock tests is kind of a hard trigger to get naturally, but there are a few tricks here to help nudge your dudes into madness so you can swing at full strength on the charge.

Enhancements

These Rage-cursed Blood Angels have access to four very powerful enhancements, but it must be tempered by the fact that this is one of the most expensive suites of enhancements we’ve seen yet. The cheapest option here is 25 points, so you’re probably not going to be taking all three of them. One of these is Chaplain-only; the rest can go on any ASTARTES character.

• Carmine Reliquary (30 pts): CHAPLAIN model only, models in the bearer’s unit have the Scouts 6” ability, and each time you take a Battle-shock test for an Adeptus Astartes unit within 6” of the bearer, you can re-roll the result. Do you want two extra attacks in the charge phase? Do you not care about contesting an objective, or using Armour of Contempt on the swing back? Then try to fail a Battle-shock test! The challenge is harder, as Chaplains have LD5, giving you a less than 1 in 3 chance to actually fail the few tests you will be taking, but you are free to go for it. You’ll really be taking this to give your Death Company unit scout, and while 30 points is pretty expensive, throwing a 6” scout move on a jump unit that moves 12” and can then Advance and Charge with Red Wrath is insanely good, giving you a unit that can reliably clear 20”+ of movement on the first turn before charging.
• Master of the Red Thirst (25 pts): Once per battle, at the start of the Fight phase, the bearer can use this Enhancement. If it does, until the end of the phase, models in the bearer’s unit have the Fights First ability. We have a second Speed of the Primarch. This is always a great enhancement, not only for the stated effect, but the chilling effect it puts on your opponent, where they just won’t charge you because you have this enhancement. Remember, you win all the fights you bully your opponent into not making. It’s also just an amazing counter-play. Opponent got a deadly melee threat coming your way? Ingress close to their charge target, then if they charge in, use Heroic Intervention to charge into them and fight first.
• Sanguinary Tear (Aura) (35 pts): While a friendly DEATH COMPANY unit is within 6” of the bearer, add 1 to the Strength characteristic of weapons equipped by models in that unit. This is expensive and a bit weird. Your first instinct will be to think that it gives you S5 chainsword attacks on your Death Company Marines and that’s not bad. But what if we told you that it’s not restricted to melee attacks? Suddenly you’re looking at S10 multi-melta shots from the Death Company Dreadnought and S5 bolter shots on the Death Company Marines with Bolt Rifles and it makes a little more sense why this is so expensive at 35 points. It’s still a lot to spend but you can get quite a bit of extra juice out of S5 bolt rifle shots. If you combine this with the Limb from Limb Stratagem, you’ll never miss the Liberator Assault Group Detachment bonus.
• Angel’s Fang (25 pts): Each time the bearer makes a melee attack that targets a CHARACTER, MONSTER, or VEHICLE unit, that attack has the [SUSTAINED HITS 2] ability. A little cheaper and less effective than LAG’s Rage-fueled Warrior – you were probably only popping that on these three unit types anyway – but it isn’t one time only. Death Company Jump Pack Captains already have SUSTAINED HITS 1 and pass that ability onto their unit so it’s not great on them but solid on a Chaplain or regular Captain/Jump Captain.

Stratagems

The six Stratagems here all offer some solid effects, and two of them let you opt to give into the Red Thirst and become Battle-shocked in exchange for an additional bonus. 

• Armour of Contempt (1 CP): One ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit selected as the target of an enemy’s attacks worsens the Armour Penetration of those attacks by 1. You know it, you love it. The balance dataslate rule change is still in effect, so this is indeed only for one shooting or fight activation, not until the end of the phase as the text says.
• A Grim Warning (1 CP): You can sticky one objective that a BLOOD ANGELS unit was controlling before they were destroyed. Sticky strats are always great, but be careful here as the target has to be a BLOOD ANGELS specific unit – you can’t use this after your opponent blows up a Gladiator or a Ballistus holding your expansion objective. You also have to actually be holding the objective the phase before, so Death Company with no character nearby won’t be able to plant the flag when they bite it, or if you give into the Red Thirst with one of the other stratagems if they were the only one on it. That said, this does work on Baal Predators and Sanguinary Guard just fine – but we wish it worked on Jump Assault Intercessors.
• Insensate Rampage (1 CP): In the Shooting or Fight phase, one DEATH COMPANY unit targeted by an enemy gains FNP (5+) until the end of the phase. Unlike AOC, they really mean end of phase here. Death Company already have a 6+ FNP, but this is a great way to ensure that damage 2 attacks really bounce off your angry boys. It also works on a Death Company Dreadnought, if you really want to frustrate your enemy when their Thundercoil Harpoon does 13 mortal wounds.
• Limb from Limb (1 CP): One Adeptus Astartes unit that Charged gains either +1S or an additional AP on their melee weapons, or you can choose to have them succumb to the Red Thirst, become Battle-shocked, and get both. Note that you can do this before the check for the detachment rule happens, so you’ll also get an extra attack on top of it. This is the feature stratagem of the detachment, and will make your opponent very afraid of being charged by anything you can throw at them. Even just basic fists from a Hellblaster start to look scary at 5A, S5, AP-1, reroll 1s to wound. Use this on a Jump Pack Captain with the Sanguinary Tear for a +2 Strength bonus.
• Deathless Duty (2 CP): One DEATH COMPANY unit targeted by an enemy unit, until the end of phase, each time a model that has not fought is destroyed, they are not removed from play until after the enemy unit finishes making their attacks, and then can fight. The Blade of Ultramar’s lost stratagem found its way over here. The threat of mutually assured destruction is very powerful, and can allow you to hold onto the momentum of battle even though you’ve lost a powerful unit. Death Company with automatic fights on death are insanely scary, and become a nigh-unchargeable unit.
• Red Wrath (1 CP): Used in the Movement phase. Until the end of the turn, one ADEPTUS ASTARTES unit that just Advanced can either shoot or charge later in the turn. You can instead give into the Red Thirst, become Battle-shocked, and then can both shoot and charge later in the same turn. Blood Angels don’t really have a whole lot of units that really care to both shoot and charge (though Vanguard Veterans with Inferno Pistols is a pretty strong contender here), but the real value is the Battle-shock for the extra Attack on the charge. I can even see using this on someone like Mephiston, who can already advance and charge, just for the bonus attack, with the chance to kill himself with an ill advised overcharged plasma pistol a fun intrusive thought. That said, because this is used in the Movement phase, if you Battle-shock with your unit you won’t be able to re-roll your Charge roll with a Command Re-roll later, so be very careful about how you use this one. The good news is that Death Company with Jump Packs re-roll charges natively, so you’re free to go ahead and let them give in to the Red Thirst all the time with this one.

Playing This Detachment

This is an interesting Detachment. While there are times in Liberator Assault Group when you want to take the double benefit from being Battle-shocked, in this army you just want to be Battle-shocked much of the time as a default state when you’re fighting in combat. That’s an interesting dynamic, because it’s liable to cause issues every now and then when you want to do things like steal an objective from an enemy unit via a consolidate move, or when you need to use a Stratagem on one of your units, such as Heroic Intervention, Counter-Attack, Deathless Duty, or Command Re-roll. 

On the whole, this is a melee Detachment, and as a result it needs to contend with the Liberator Assault Group, where the +2 Strength and +1 Attack bonuses are both pretty solid. In most circumstances, +2 Attacks will be better, and when paired with the passive re-roll 1s to hit in melee, you’ve got something that can easily make up for what that Detachment gave you. What you get here is a Detachment that’s much better at playing a reactive game – guaranteed Fight on Death, Fights First with Master of the Red Thirst, and Insensate Rampage all give you a better way to handle incoming attacks and respond to different types of threats. What you end up with is a force that’s much more aggressive than the Liberator Assault Group, and likely to go harder on units like Death Company, particularly since you lose the ability to Fall Back and shoot. That’s not a huge loss, and ultimately what you end up with here gives you exactly the tools you need. 

One question you’re going to have with this Detachment is on the role of Chaplains. Generally speaking Jump Chaplains can provide an important service, but lack the melee punch that Captains provide. A single foot Chaplain might have use however as a tool for selectively removing Battle-shock from a unit in a pinch.

Players have toyed with infantry-heavy Marine melee lists before. There’s certainly  a case you can make for running this Detachment with 60 marine bodies and even though you’ll cap out at 30 Death Company marines with Jump Packs, between Sanguinary Guard and regular Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs, you’ll have plenty you can do to flesh out that list with units that want to get into your opponent’s face early and often, without a care for objectives or scoring.

Strengths

• A Power Fist hitting Horus in the face, forever. This is an extremely aggressive detachment, in an army that already has some fight phase heat in their other options. There’s a lot here to ensure that whatever you touch, you kill.
• Wound re-rolls. You can pretend that you get vanilla codex Oath with this detachment, at least in the fight phase. Remember that Death Company already re-roll to hit, so spend that oath elsewhere.
• Sticky Objectives. This is something that is surprisingly lacking in most Space Marine lists, especially for those of us who resist the siren song of 40 shot Intercessor bricks. This detachment pulls you towards avoiding objective holder units to afford more heavy hitters, and though it’s harder to use than most sticky strats, it can help you hold onto some primary points you otherwise might miss, and punish an opponent for daring to shoot your units off objectives.

Weaknesses

• CP Hungry. One of the downsides of having 6 killer stratagems is that you actually want to use them. Blood Angels generally lack CP generation, so you might look to Captains to help keep something like Deathless Duty an option while still getting to use the Battle-shocking stratagems.
• No Access to Lance. Most of the other Blood Angels Detachments have a Stratagem that gives a unit’s weapons the [LANCE] rule on demand, and it would have been great to combine with rerolling 1s to wound. Veteran Blood Angel players will need to compensate for this missing from their toolboxes.
• Single Minded Aggression. When you have this many melee weapons, you really want to use them. The desire is there to just give into your inner Ork and just rush your entire army up the field, but more times than not that will just lead to your demise. You still gotta play smart and cagey, even if you’re swinging a power sledgehammer over your head.

A Sample List

There aren’t any new units here, and while this is a Death Company Detachment, it’s not necessarily going to benefit you to run only Death Guard. We think a great starting point for this one will be to look at Chris Green’s Blood Angels list from Mid-MO Maelstrom in early November as a starting point. Chris took this list to a 4-1 start as Liberator Assault Group, but it runs heavier on Death Company and will likely perform better here. We’ve adjusted it to reflect the new Detachment.

Chris' List - click to expand

Chris has run this list with some success at a few events now, notably finishing 5-0 for a second-place finish with it at the Queen City Orktoberfest event in mid October. Looking at this list the next step is to probably swap one five-man Death Company Jump unit for a ten-man, but a lot of elements we like are here – the scouts for a scoring piece, a Lancer and two Ballistus for ranged support, and three death company jump captains.

Final Thoughts

We expect this to more or less replace The Lost Brethren Detachment as the way to run Death Company, and there’s enough power here that we expect to see players at least trying to make it work competitively. The big question will just be whether running a ton of power armored jump units is viable, and if so how many you’ll need to get the job done. If there was ever a Detachment to run 60 jump bodies in, it’s this one.

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