Don’t miss all the new Warhammer 40k rules changes coming for Blood Angels in their 9th Edition Codex Supplement!
Join us as we dive into the new supplement and look at the changes coming for the Blood Angels as we go over their, Relics, Warlord Traits, Datasheets, Psychic Powers, and more.
Keep in mind that for other units they can take, you will need the base Space Marines Codex (which looks to be the norm now for all future supplements). We talk more about that in this article, along with the pending new releases for marines overall.
We found these images on Imgur containing a great look at the new book.
All the New 40k Blood Angels Codex 40k Rules
This is going to be quite a large post, but if you want to learn everything about the boys in red, this is worth the read! If you just want to check out certain rules, you can find them all in their own posts below:
- Datasheets & Points
- Stratagems & Secondaires
- Relics & Special Issue Wargear
- Detachment Abilities & Special Rules
- Death Company Rules
- Psychic Powers & Warlord Traits
Commander Dante
You can click on the picture and zoom in if you need to see the pic a little bigger! With six attacks and 2 damage, Dante can really dish out the damage. Also, just by taking him, you gain an extra command point, not too bad!
The Sanguinor
The Sanguinor can add a few extra mortal wounds every time he fights, and with high strength and D2, he can really tear through some high wound minis! His saviour ability is pretty neat too!
Mephiston Old vs. New
The new Mephiston has some familiar items, like the double strength CC weapon with D3 damage. Honestly, the main change comes in his Stateline. With one more wound and one more attack. Other than the change to the name of his CC weapon (to match the lore) and better stats, he is pretty similar. Remember how bonus attacks stack now for Blood Angels with Savage Echoes and Shock Assault– that’s +2 attacks on the charge!
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Points Costs
They are kind of hard to see because of the glare, but you should be able to manage. You can start making out those new lists nice and early as you sit around from your food coma! The points are about what we expected them to be, for example, Mephiston only went up about 10 points, so not terrible for that boost. Let’s look at some of the wargear next!
Wargear
The melee weapons are really the thing to focus on here! Some pretty decent stat lines in there, and if notice almost every weapon does more than one damage. The only things that don’t are the Dead Man’s Hands and Heaven’s Teeth. Also, a ton of the weapons even gained D3, so they can punch through all kinds of stuff in CC now!
Death Company Rules
There are four main units that can be made into the Death Company. But with the new Blood Angels rules, you can also upgrade one Captain and two Lieutenants in each Blood Angels Detachment into the Death Company.
The point increase isn’t too crazy and they gain all the benefits and downsides. Including the Death Visions ability. Let’s check it out!
Death Visions Ability
This new rule allows you to pick one of three delusions. This is the only one they revealed so far but the new mechanic seems really fun! If you are fighting hordes, needless to say, this will make them hit sooo hard! If you are 6″ within 15 minis, you get three extra attacks rerolling all missed hits!
The other two death visions are above. So you can pick and choose which fits best in the scenario. A cheaper character having the ability to just do 6 mortal wounds to an enemy character is pretty sweet!
Visions of Sanguinius
We don’t know what the other ones will be, but if they are as good as the first, this could be amazing! Maybe you will get extra attacks and more charge distance. Who knows?
Death Company Units
They can have all sorts of cool weapons, and of course, can still all take Jump Packs. Also, you can upgrade every single model in the unit with special weaponry if you want as well.
You can also now take Intercessors as Death Company. They can also be outfitted for either shooting or CC as well, so pretty nice.
You can run Tycho as either his normal version or the Lost version. He gains all the Death Company rules when ran as the Lost.
Blood Angels Detachment Abilities & Tactics
For their Chapter Tactics that didn’t change, this is the one from Blood of Baal (released literally a year ago this week). Still good though, that is for sure!
Don’t forget though, all the Blood Angels still gain access to the normal Space Marines abilities and detachment rules from their codex shown below too, as well as access to their Strats, relics, traits, etc…
Just in case you need a quick refresher, here are the normal Marine rules they gain access to. Now, let’s look at a ton of the new datasheets found.
Character Datasheets
Everyone’s favorite crazed hero who can fend off the Black Rage! His stats aren’t too insane, but rerolling charges are!
If you roll a 6 for the Mass of Doom, that unit becomes super-powered for the turn! Adding one to the hit roll and a 4+ invuln save is nothing to sneeze at! Also, a d3 weapon at strength 6 is also quite nice.
Gabriel is a combat monster! With 5 (10 if he fights twice) attacks at strength 8 and d3, he will tear through basically anything. He could even come close to killing a Knight in one turn. The Blood Angels get so much from the Assualt Doctrine that Brother Corbulo can really come in handy.
Sanguinary Guard Datasheet
The golden boys of the Blood Angels are coming back with a vengeance! When they are within your Warlord, they are getting three attacks each hitting on twos at strength 5 with d2. Not bad at all!
Vehicle Datasheets
With all the new floaty vehicles, Predators need some love too!
With the Magna-grapple, enemy vehicles will not be able to escape from you! Also, getting less damage incoming, these will be perfect for destroying enemy CC Vehicles and Dreads.
Blood Angels Relics & Wargear
Starting with the relics, there are some pretty interesting choices here. Especially the Visage of Death, Icon of the Angel, and the Wrath of Baal.
The Visage of Death could really take an enemy by surprise, thinking they are safe on an objective, then bam! No more Obsec, and you steal it away. Rerolling charge rolls is always an amazing ability, so you can’t complain about that! The Wrath of Baal doesn’t seem too insane, but adding that extra 2 inches to Jump Pack dudes can really make a huge difference. Especially when you need to get into combat as fast as possible, and can re-roll charges with the Icon.
The Flesh Tearers Relics are pretty interesting as well. Mortal wounds on 5+ in addition to other damage can really add up. Gaining extra movement on a Terminator is always awesome, and being able to advance and charge can catch people by surprise for sure.
Special Issue Wargear
Nothing here is too crazy but some nice little additions. The Gleaming Pinions give you tons of flexibility and the option of falling back to charge again and again with all the bonuses that come with the Blood Angels. If you’re playing against Chaos, be sure to take the Archangel’s Shard. Having a weapon at 4 damage against, Chaos Monsters is just insane. With 5 or 6 attacks, they won’t last long, even if they have like 15 wounds. The Fleshrender Grenades are also a super fun little addition and are really good against high wound, good save infantry.
Blood Angels Stratagems
Descent of Angels is REALLY good. When you need a melee centric Jump Pack squad to get into melee and the Custode player hits them with a tanglefoot grenade, a part of you gets really sad. However with this strat that nade does nothing! For a single CP, you can ignore any amount of modifiers you choose on a single Jump Pack unit. On top of that, they also get +1 to hit that combat! Very good overall.
Angel Exemplar: allows you to get an extra warlord trait if the model isn’t named. Overall super good, the extra flexibility is a warm welcome. The extra trait does have to come from their respective list though, flesh tearers get a flesh tearer trait, Blood angels get a Blood Angel trait, etc. You can only use this strat once.
Refusal to Die: is another great cheap stratagem. For 1cp, on small squads, or 2CP for larger ones, an entire squad of Death Company can get a 5+ FNP. Considering the other stratagems you can also get going on a squad, this is great. They might just be your ace in the whole if you build the squad right, which means you’ll want them alive at all costs.
Angel Ascendant looks to be super strong as well. Any model with “Sergeant” in their profile can get this stratagem used on them. When you do decide to use it for 1CP, that model gets to pick a relic from the following list: Digital Weapons, Fleshrender Grenades, or Quake Bolts. This is pretty nice to have the option to supe-up one of your models who usually wouldn’t get the chance to if you need just that tiny bit of oomph later on in the game.
Red Rampage is perfect for when you really need to punch through some heavily armored foes, and for one cp, something that affects your entire army is pretty awesome. Just note, it can only be used once.
Upon Wings of Fire is sure to see competitive use. for a single CP, you can blink one of your jump pack units off the field for a turn and reply them 9″ away from enemies. This might be great with some buff stratagems and a giant squad of Jumppacks to form a super mobile ball of hurt.
With those covered let’s check out the secondaries as well.
Blood Angels Secondary Objectives
The two best options here are most likely going to be Death From Above and Relentless Assault.
- Death From Above can be easy to complete depending on how you build your list. Also, it conveniently works extremely well with the…
- Upon Wings of Fire stratagem, we talked about above. If you do want to use that synergy though, you will probably want a decent ranged weapon on that squad/character to increase your chance of killing a nearby unit to get those points.
- Relentless Assault can be extremely easy to farm if you are playing against a melee-focused army since they’ll want to rush up the board and get in your face. Once again, this works very well with Upon Wings of Fire, but not quite as well as the previous secondary does. It’s also super nice that this is at the end of your turn and not the battle round, meaning if its an empty deployment zone, you can throw one random model in there you don’t plan on defending to score points if your opponent ignores it, or wastes time answering it.
Blood Angels 40k Psychic Rules: Sanguinary Discipline
If you need more help reading the rules, you can click on the picture and zoom in! Of all the rules we’ve gotten like this though, these are some of the best pictures! They have a couple of powers to make your Psykers really be able to move across the map much faster. The Quickening can help get your Psykers into combat with much more regularity or give them a decent number of extra attacks. While Wings of Sanguinius can give them a full extra move and boost their normal movement that phase up to “12. Perfect if you need to grab an objective at the last second.
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Next, they have a couple of nice buff abilities. One giving extra hits on unmodified 6’s and one for an Invuln save. For the last set of powers you get two to take out enemy units. They both have the potential to do a decent amount of mortal wounds, both in different ways than Smite, so that’s always nice.
Warlord Traits
Some pretty nice buffs and auras are included for your Warlords. Saving minis from mortal wounds is always nice, but the Leadership one isn’t super amazing. The reroll trait is actually really nice and can add some reliability to your champion without using any command rerolls.
It’s also nice they give you some Fleshtearers specific ones as well! You can charge your Warlord in first without fear of Overwatch and then move in the rest of your units once he’s in. Or give him, even more, combat potency.
That does it for all of the new Blood Angels rules! It’s quite the list, so if you made it this far, you are either excited about the rules or a little miffed. Either way, now you know!
What do you think about these new Blood Angels rules?
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
