If you still have old editions laying around, there’s nothing to stop you from playing the one you like most.
Except the lack of an opponent.
Well, if you’re going to let little things like that stop you…
So my thousand points are, roughly :
Space Marine Captain (Power Sword / Boltgun / Bolt Pistol)
Two Tactical Squads, each with a flamer and a missile launcher. One sergeant is a dual pistol wielder, the other has a power fist.
An Assault squad with jump packs. Sergeant has a combat shield, power sword, and infernus pistol. Another one has a hand flamer.
A chaplain with jump pack, bolt pistol, and crozius.
And my Dreadnought with CCW and multi-melta.
I forget, does the BA chaplain confer any special bonuses on the squad he accompanies?
Well, then come to the Games Workshop at Denton Town Crossing on Saturday, the 19th of July, and you shall have your opponent, sir!
Yes.
He bestows “Honour of the Chapter”; he and any unit he joins have the “Fearless” universal special rule.
He also grants “Liturgies of Blood”; on the turn he and his squad charge into an assault, they can re-roll all failed “To-Hit” rolls. If the squad he’s leading is the Death Company, the Death Company models can also re-roll failed “To Wound” rolls, as they are “particularly susceptible to the Chaplain’s fiery oratory.”
I’m curious, why flamers on the Tac marines over meltas or plasmaguns ?
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some flamers, conceptually… but I don’t think I ever got to fire one in anger, back in the day.
Heavy Flamers from TP’d Termies sure, hand flamers a bunch, and regular sized flamers were a real treat in Necromunda… but mostly tac marines pick a piece of ground, plant there and go dakkadakka, particularly when they’re on foot. IME flamers work poorly even as a counter-charge tool since on Overwatch they won’t get to broil more than one model, and typically won’t be able to fire on melee troops the turn before their charge…
That being said, I did stop playing 5 editions ago, so maybe they changed a little bit of stuff :D.
Indeed they did:[ul][]Flamers ignore cover. If your opponent is relying on a cover save to pull his fat out of the fire, he doesn’t get one. This is particularly nasty when you have two or more flamers overlapping the target unit, as this can result in the same model(s) getting hit more than once![]On Overwatch, flamers and other template weapons use the “Wall of Death” rule. You roll a d3, and that’s how many hits each flamer automatically inflicts on the attacking unit as they charge in.[]Of less importance is the “No Escape!” rule: if a flamer hits the firing port of a fortification or an open-topped vehicle, the unit(s) inside suffer d6 automatic hits, in addition to whatever affect the template weapon may have on the building or vehicle itself.[]Creature swarms like Tyranid Rippers or Necron Scarabs take two Wounds for every wounding hit inflicted on them by a template weapon.[/ul]
Because swapping a bolter for a flamer costs zero points, if memory serves. Or it did in 5th Edition, anyway, and the Blood Angels codex dates back to then. Any other substitution is at least 5 points more, and I’m at 998/1000. And it does 1d3 hits on Overwatch.
Also, sometimes I like to split the squad - send the flamer with the half going at the enemy, leave the missile launcher with the guys camping on an objective.
I had to look that up, but apparently, that’s in Texas. 
Bit far to travel.
That’s not new - back in 2nd & 3rd there were no “cover saves”, merely BS modifiers and endless arguments on whether from its point of view *this *model could see more than half of *that *model and whether if it did it would even **mean **anything because
obviously while that model is fixed in a high-aspect jumping pose the “real” soldier would obviously be crouching and you only see the point of its gun anyway and… 
But flamers were always just a matter of “are you under the gorram template or not ? Then stop winging and **burn **!”, with a 4+ “tagged” roll if they were only partially under it as I recall.
However…
That is. Considering flamers have a chance to semi-disable a model they don’t kill outright / force morale rolls / whatever secondary they have these days to boot, that changes things quite a bit. Thanks !
[QUOTE=CandidGamera]
Also, sometimes I like to split the squad - send the flamer with the half going at the enemy, leave the missile launcher with the guys camping on an objective.
[/QUOTE]
And that’s new as well !
Makes sense, too. Back then it was weird to have all these Smurfs with medium-range weapons and 'nades, not to mention a Sarge with close combat weaponry who never got to use them in favourable conditions because GUYS, GUYS, I HAZ HEAVY BOLTER, DON’T ANYBODY EVER MOVE OR I’LL CRY :o.
Yeah, Marine Tactical Squads have the ‘Combat Squads’ special rule - meaning a ten man squad can be deployed as two five-man squads.
“Combat Squads” is nothing new, though, either. Page 60 of the Second Edition Ultramarines Codex explicitly describes how the Space Marine player may opt to split a ten-man squad into two units before the game begins:
[QUOTE=Ultramarines Codex, page 60]
An Ultramarines squad consists of ten Ultramarines Space Marine warriors and is normally referred to as a ‘squad’. This squad may fight as a single unit of troops lead by its Sergeant. Alternatively, before the game begins, you may wish to divide squads into two equal halves. This gives you two units of five troops instead of a single unit of ten. One of the halves will be lead by the Sergeant while the other is lead by the second most senior warrior who is referred to as a Veteran.
Veterans have identical profiles to ordinary warriors, but are usually distinguished by having a back banner in the same way as Sergeants. Divided squads are called ‘combat squads’ and function as two completely separate units for the duration of the battle.
[/quote]
Blood Angels sergeants were supposed to have black banners with red chapter insignia, while the veteran would have a red back banner; in Third Edition, this was explained as being the distinction between a Veteran Sergeant (who had an improved profile) and a neophyte Sergeant.
Nowadays, GW seems to want to throw out back banners altogether - the newere dreadnoughts and sergeant models don’t even have bosspoles to mount them on - but I like them!
First Match vs. Chaos Marines of Khorne. Hoo, boy - and I thought Blood Angels liked close combat!
He had :
Two squads of cultists, held in reserve - lots of them.
Two squads of Khorne berserkers, 8 strong
A Warlord captain who made the Berserkers count as troops.
Two Rhinos
A Predator specced with lascannons all around.
A Hellbrute.
The early game was going heavily my way… one Rhino was annihilated and the Berserkers within subsequently demolished. The other Rhino got a Weapon Destroyed and an Immobilized. I lost a few Assault Marines to the template weapon of the Helbrute, but charged into close combat and took it down with another casualty or two,
His Predator had a mad-on for my Dreadnought - since it was my only vehicle, and its multi-melta would wreck the predator’s day.
The dice started to turn his way, though - I made a critical error of getting one of my tac squads in close combat with his remaining berserker troop, trying to finish them off after a couple rounds of withering fire, but… nope! His warlord had gained a 2+ Armor save from its Chaos traits, and once it ate the sergeant from my tac squad, he got to re-roll that armor save.
The Predator ultimately succumbed to the remainder of my assault marines, who were then decimated by the shooting of two large cultist squads.
Mercifully, the game ended after turn five, and I eked out a technical victory thanks to a tie on primary objective points, and my having claimed First Blood with his Rhino. My warlord, a Marine Captain, was locked in combat with the remainder of his berserkers and his warlord, and had one wound left. My Chaplain had one wound left. My Dreadnought had one hull point left. I had two tactical squads left - one with one Marine, one with five.
That 2++ armor save was just impossible for me to overcome, short of marching the Dreadnought over to melt him.
Thoughts on my build : As much as Close Combat turned against me with his Warlord kicking ass and taking skulls … it also was the factor that killed his Hellbrute and his Predator. Plus, the tactical marines underperformed a little. I think I am going to - for the long term - switch my 1000 point build of this army around, losing one tactical squad (with the sergeant carrying a power fist, whom I have never seen survive to land a blow with it) for an assault squad, with jump packs.
I may also want to reallocate some points on my HQ choice, and do a captain with a jump pack, so he can join in the close combat fun and jet around the battlefield. Leave one squad of tac marines for camping an objective and some long range firepower, though.
Had my 2nd match for the Summer League yesterday, and that one was an unequivocal victory, but had the game run longer, it would likely have gone the other way.
My opponent had :
[ul]
[li]Chaos Space Marine Rhino[/li][li]Chaos Space Marine Squad[/li][li]Chaos Cultists Squad ( + a Chaos Lord of some sort in Terminator Armor leading them)[/li][li]a Squad of three Chaos Devastator-types with Terminator Armor and Heavy Weapons[/li][li]a Daemon Prince as warlord, with wings[/li][li]A goddamn Helldrake.[/li][/ul]
Oh, man, that Helldrake. I have no answers for flying in my army. And I don’t just mean in my particular army list - the Blood Angels codex predates rules for proper flyers, so they have exactly zero options, other than shoot at the thing as snap shots. Of my 32 infantry models, 11 died to that Helldrake.
The primary mission this time was a kill’em all, so I did my best to focus-fire, and didn’t waste time on the drake, or the Devastator guys that he’d parked in a far corner, raining alternating lascannon and plasma cannon bursts down on me. The las/plas fire was probably the next biggest contributor to kills for him.
I tagged his Daemon Prince once in the air with an unsaved wound, and then he landed to finish off my Dreadnought (which was ailing from two lascannon bursts) but then the Prince embarrassingly went down in a hail of bolter fire, caught between my half-strength Assault Squad (thanks, Helldrake) and one of my Tac Squads. Oops.
I divided one of my tac squads into sub-squads at the beginning and the half without the missile launcher actually had the Red Thirst, so I moved them up towards his Rhino, and actually brought it down, forcing the CSM squad inside to disembark and face a hail of heavy gunfire from my other nearby units. Then the half-squad got Helldraked.
My Assault marines wiped out the cultists and their Terminator babysitter - the final blow slipping past his 2+ Armor Save coming from a common Chainsword. My Chaplain had engaged him in a challenge and ended up totally unwounded.
The CSMs for the Rhino finally charged my full strength Tac Squad and due to my Warlord taking on the challenge of his sergeant and good rolls, I managed to wipe out his squad in the second round of combat, and still had five guys plus my Warlord. The plasma cannons took out the five, though, at the top of turn five, so I used my turn at the bottom of five to regroup my forces - 1 SM Captain, 1 Chaplain, and 4 Assault Marines (including the sergeant) into a single unit so I could best deny him ‘Slay the Warlord’, and started moving away from his remaining troops - three devastators and the Drake… and the game mercifully ended.
Just so you know, Candid, I enjoy those AARs so keep it up !
Thanks for the feedback! This week’s matchup is vs. Sisters of Battle, but we’re having trouble scheduling, so it might be a bust.
My new match this week… is the Sisters of Battle again! We didn’t get to play last time, and remain paired. Hopefully we can schedule it this time.
Also : Anyone tried these 40K papercraft models? Seems like a good way to save some scratch.
http://www.papercraftsquare.com/topics/warhammer-40k-free-paper-models-collection-topic
Those paper models look interesting.