The 40k Lorecast - Episode 18 - Dark Angels- why they are fun to play.

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

On our final episode (for now) on the Dark Angels, we cover some of their key units, detachments, and why they are an enjoyable faction to play. Do you want to go super fast and shoot plasma at everything?? instead would you like to go super slow and LOL as your opponent shoots/punches your terminators? Do you like an army that Brad can only see 60% of the colors in? All these reasons and more we will cover today.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lorecasts. Welcome to the 40K lorecast with me, John Varsati and Brad Chester. This guy, I'm pointing out right now that every single episode, every single take that he has said, my name, I have double thumbs to me every time and I need people to know that. No one will ever see it because we're not doing this on video. 100%. John is in witness protection and he cannot tell you where he is. He's not, no, John does the editing and I barely functional in audio editing.

I'm not going to step on. into video editing. It was unfair because I was drinking when he said that, and I almost died. Yeah, Brett almost spit wine all over the microphone to make my, after saying I'm barely functional auto editing, let's throw a curveball. Episode three of our Dark Angels coverage, like we did with the orcs. This episode's going to be devoted more into why people should play Dark Angels, why we enjoy the Dark Angels Army, et cetera, et cetera.

I will caveat this. I have never played Dark Angels in my entire life. And I have played Dark Kingdom's opponents who I like a lot and I've enjoyed playing them, but I've always hated playing their army. However, I do have a lot of respect for the army. I'm just going to caveat it. Let's go into it. You know what we're going to start with?

We're going off notes because we're going to go into one of the things that we disagree on. I think the cloaks and colles are awesome. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think that you said those are. dumb. I like the other stuff. It's not that I think they're dumb. It's that unlike you, I paint my models

and painting cloaks and cowls. Sounds easy. Oh, man. And honestly, there's people here who are painters. They're like, what are you talking about is incredibly easy. And I'm going to let you guys know, it's not. It is because I'm still, I've been playing this game long enough, but not long enough

that I still fully assemble all my models and then try to paint them. Ooh, that's going to be tough. Yeah, cloaks and cowls bad. Cloaks and cowls bad. But I love that. That look for me. It's just, it pushes the first thing that we have here, which is the lore. I like the Dark Angels lore a ton. Yeah.

Obviously, I got pretty excited about the last two casts. But it's a big thing on this is it gives them that feel, that Dark Angel's lore feel of, I mean, Grim Resolve is their special rule. It always has been their special role. But it really encompasses what they are. And I love the look of secrecy of... Yeah, I mean, I would say, so 40K is, a grim dark universe in the

Imperium, who's more grim dark than the Dark Angels? Oh, they're, they are. I mean, well, I would say maybe Death Corps of Krieg, but that's the only thing that's more grim dark in the Imperium. And they're just sad grim dark. The Corpse of Krieg just die.

Dark angels technically win. And the thing about the Dark Angels and their lore is they are the poster child of shitty Imperium things are awful. What do you do? What does the dark angels say?

Well, your job, your duty. That's what you do your duty. Why would you ever not do that? One of my favorite quotes is from a game that probably knows played on this, but one of my favorites, and I think it's at Dark Angels for sure, which is, well, I hope that death

actually takes you either to the hells or, you know, Valho type thing because only a lazy warrior would stop doing his duty and fighting in death. And that's how I feel the dark angels are. You're like, well, of course I'm going to keep doing this awful thing because it's what I'm supposed to do. And so let's dive into that a bit about the lore of the dark angels. The dark angels are a faction that is purpose.

They are purpose driven. That is their thing. We talk about all the different rules. It's duty and prayer. They have a purpose. Their duty is the purpose. Yeah, I'm just saying. But the biggest thing is, is that they are also, their lore is driven by, the ends justify the means.

And again, I'll give the same thing I did before, which is the operative from Serenity. We're not supposed to live in the society. We're just trying to create the society. And unfortunately, that ship sailed. The Imperium sucks. So the Dark Angel's purpose, from a lore standpoint, it translates well to the tabletop is they take no prisoners. They grant no truces. There's no quarter given.

They are here to kill. And really kind of makes them. Well, they do occasionally take prisoners. The interrogator chaplains take prisoners. And you so wanted to be killed. You don't want prisoners. You eventually just get killed. Don't get me wrong.

It's just you take a longer. on the flow chart of not taking prisoners. Well, they kind of took a prisoner, but not really. It just you took longer to die than everybody else, Ted. So, you know, if you play 40K and you wouldn't kill off your opponents, this is the army for you. Or if you just want to communism to death, you could play the town. And you keep swinging on town non-stop.

It's not studied. But another cool thing, we touched on this in the last episode, is that the fallen element of the dark angels also... Yeah, fine, now is there risen. It's been the fallen for how many decades? Three. And that's... And it's been three months.

Yeah, and the percent of my life, they've been the fallen. I'm going to go with fallen. Three months versus 30 years? Fine, if you're going to use math against me. Yeah, fine. They're the fallen. It's kind of a cool thing of, like, when you plan the tabletop, because me personally, I hate mirror matches.

I hate them, I hate them, because it's just, it's narratively doesn't make sense unless you're playing works. then it totally makes complete sense. But it's a weird thing to have. The only time that it, the dark angels, it actually makes sense because maybe you're the fallen. Well, and this is my favorite show now that you have. Because right now we're looking through our line and he goes,

does the opponent know you were the fallen? Do you? Because the fallen, most of, literally most of the fallen, didn't know they were the fallen either. Exactly. In the, think about the newest book, the lion is getting the risen now, but they become that because, and they're explaining to him, hey, man, all we knew before we got teleported halfway across the galaxy was our brothers were shooting at us. That was it. Like, you blew up the planet.

And when anybody that saw me, they shot a boulder at me. I was literally watching TV when this happened. I don't know what you guys were. What's wrong? Why? And because that's an important piece. We call them the fallen. But they never go into the warp.

They're never, they're never tempted by chaos. In fact, the vast majority of them never even. Some of them are. And that's the, some are obvious. But that's the crazy thing is, is some of the fallen are fallen.

Some of the other fallen. where, not even some, 80% of the fallen were just dudes that happened to be on duty and got launched somewhere else. Yes, because Caliban was enveloped by a warp storm. It wasn't like Caliban was somewhere all these people went to because they were going to turn on the lion. They all just happened to be there and transport got turned off. So I guess I live here now.

And also, you did put the guys that are in charge of being. traitors in charge. Yeah. We were already here. We weren't traders. We were just dudes. Yeah, we're just, but my boss is a traitor.

This is the old. And also, I'm not allowed to leave, you know, because of the black cloud that's over the planet right now. I'm going to make my movie reference now of clerks discussing

all the employees on the Death Star that got blown up. They were just a dude, you know, working in the cafeteria. Look, man, contractors know what jobs they take, John. I just said,

the dude working in the cafeteria, area making the food for the stormtroopers also got blown up with the emperor. And the best part about this is, if you want to go deep dark, the dark angels keep so many secrets from other dark angels. And the other dark angels, if you're in, if you're not in first or second company, part of the inner circle. And also part of the Raven Wing aren't part of the inner circle. So if you're not those guys, you have been told for the last, carry of the one, 11,000. years, don't ask a lot of questions, Joe.

You'll find out when you level up, basically. And they just go, that's just how we do things. That is literally our culture as dark angels. So you, and also, remember, we go do sketchy shit all the time. That's the cool thing of the dark angels. The dark angels are, it is where I like it. Like, that's why I made the note. You could be playing dark angels and don't realize you are the fallen because

this is just how the dark, there's so many secrets in the dark angels, your models are keeping a secret from you as to which army you're even paying you out for. You could be the bad guys. And being the good guys doesn't mean you don't do bad guy shit. I mean, it's a real thing. And the thing is,

you know, here's my thing. Do you like saying liquid hot plasma as much as I do? Because, yeah. Let's dive into some of the weapons that the dark angels get to use. And I think the first one and the primary one and kind of the only one is plasma. Plasma talon, plasma speeders. They take every model in the space marine line and slap plasma on it.

This is the, like, really good plasma. Yeah, really good plasma. This is like when Brad grew up in the 70s, people putting flames on cars. Thank you. I'll just drive my El Camino out of here. And it's right. That was I put pickup beds on cars. Good error, guys.

But seriously, though, do you think plasma's cool? Do you want to play space marines? Are you upset that the space marines don't have enough plasma? Because the Dark Angels got you covered. Oh, they got you covered hard. Because they, I mean, to be fair, if you want to destroy your enemy and remove them from existence, how about super hot energy beans? How about liquefy them?

Yeah, just disintegrate them. cool, they're not there anymore. I mean, also. It also makes them look really cool for me, like, that we'll say from a pain. I mean, the plasma gun is actually one of the cooler guns. It's one of the cooler guns. Rules have been hit and miss pretty bad throughout the additions. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason.

I do like the reason that plasma's bad in the Imperium because they've lost most of their tech because they're saying prayers to the guns. Yeah. So, you're like, it'd be cooler if you fix this instead of through holy water on it. having it explode on me and blow me out. Well, because you, again, set a prayer to it as opposed to just, you know, like, hey, man, you could fix this, right? I did. I blessed it with incense.

All right. Ding, ding, John Diatribe. I don't always say why plasma is just as dangerous from Bureau of Guardsmen as it is for space marines. I'm just going to say, like, it's the same result, but the value of points in the model that died is a lot higher. I mean, you guys can always go to the towel and find stable plasma. Yeah, but then they tower like the Jehovah's Way. is the galaxy. Then they're going to have to talk to you for a while about all the reasons their plasma is better. And then you went, you guys basically just created your own plasma,

which is cyclic ion. I'd rather go to the works. One of the great things about playing, and this is the thing, I can't, if you're playing 40K and I'm a competitive player, but I can't tell you enough how cool crusade and narratives are. Yeah. And playing Dark Angels in a Crusade or Narrative League is super cool. We actually probably should do an episode on the value of narrative. Because Crusade's newer to the game and some of these things. We talk about doing a lore cast and, you know, in all candor, Brad and I both bred much more than I do play very competitive,

very competitive. But we both enjoy a narrative style. We try to write lists that have a theme unless a certain someone's going to LVO and decides to take a crush your stampede because his bat doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That may or may not have happened. Everyone's been a traitor at one point or another, but anyway. Just because my head has two bills on it.

Yeah. What I would say, though, is that the Dark Angels play really well. I think you want to play narrative. Dark Angels are an incredible army to play narrative. That's great. You can really do something because the army works. And we're going to dive into that some more in this. Of why they do.

But it's better because they have a lot of things. One, they have ancient technology. They use shit that you're not supposed to use. They're still using shit that you're not supposed to use, but they also use archaic versions of stuff. Even that speeder, the Lance Peter Vengeance. No, I'm saying. Like, we're talking about plasma.

Just certain things like that, they use, and it's fantastic on that. Also, they give you a great lore in those narrative games, and that they have a litany of awesome name characters. and one of the things I like about narratives and be honest crusade is making your own guy and level them up level them up we're both d and d players there's something there's something about gaining experience and then leveling up that just feels but it's it's the way that I know how to play games and so when you allow me to do it in games basically if you give me a game where I can't level up or improve myself I actually don't enjoy it as much and the thing about this is it's it's fantastic

to just think about the role-playing version of it and let your guys getting into the inner circle. Because then you know, you get to know the secrets of the inner circle. And it's a big deal. Now, one of the other things that in game, not just narrative, but in the game itself, they have wildly different ways to play the game. Which is super unique.

You don't see this, especially within Imperium factions, this level of diversity of play. No, because there's other factions that have. have a unique way, like space wolves of old. We'll see them when they get their book. But certain things, blood angels, space wolves, sometimes salamanders with it. They have a certain schick. They have their way of playing.

But they don't have multiple ways. Exactly. They have one way of playing. Dark agents have multiple ways in their own chapter. Yeah. Like, for instance, let's talk about it. Let's talk about Ricky Bobby. Yeah, let's go fast.

So the note I had here is basically, if you want to go fast, The simply put the board, they give you 44 inches by 60 inches. Sorry. I love the show notice or whatever that is metric. Yeah, I have no idea what 44 by 60 inches is. It's probably like $700.000. We're Americans. We have no idea.

I don't know. What is that in centimeters? I think it's probably 2,000. Yeah, it's some level of centimeter and meter, whatever. That's what it is. It's kind of nice to use all of it. Some people rock up to a table and they say, I want to use all of this table. And movement wins 40K games.

And it also gives you so many options with it, the Ravenwing. The Raven Wing is what we're talking about. Their second company on that. Raven Wing is all about bikes, speeders, any way that you can go hella fast. And they've got great rules. They've always had great rules for doing this. Pre-game moves, extra moves, shooting after you move, when other people can't. It's really, really nice because of the fact that you can play a full, there's a lot of

armies that can bring speeders and bikes or whatever. They can bring them. But can you bring all them. Can you bring an entire army of them? Can you bring them and it still feels narrative? I think the, what's narrative plus competitive? The thing we want to talk about here is like, okay, going back to our orc episode, the reason I love orcs is there's ways you can play orcs and you can put an orc army on the board that is a certain style. And the or codex, despite not actually being in that big, gives you that flexibility. I have to give the Dark Angels Codex credit.

It's only two main play styles it gives you, but they give you a full play style, all within that. You are not sitting there kind of like... You would say three. Death Wing, Raven Wing, Red, Green tied. Yeah, green tied. But, no, that's fair enough. The Raven Wing, you can play the Raven Wing purely as Ravenwing,

and you're not having to make bad choices in order to do it. You can almost play these guys' narrative in a competitive setting. Oh, to think about it like in a, I don't remember even the eighth or ninth, Ogden, Tom Ogden. Broad Ravenwing was topping multiple tournaments. And it felt very Ravenwing. You know what I mean? It felt like Ravenwing. And it was super highly competitive.

But it also, man, it played exactly like the lore did. And I'll, anytime you can tell me that I can play something that feels extra lore and make it good, I mean, that's a double whammy. That's a fantastic. So let's dive into some of the pieces of Rayburn. They're really cool. The first one, we have to, we have to touch on are the Black Knights. And I say we have to because. I don't want to.

Because they were good at one point. They're one of the coolest models. It is a, they should be fantastic. It's a biker so you could drive a bike. You can shoot plasma and hits me with an axe. It's a special plasma. And you've got your corvus, your hammer. Yep.

The model looks cool. They have not been good in a while. Decade? No, because they were good. It might have been a decade, to be honest with you. I think it was seven. I believe it was seven years. I was going to say, that wasn't that long ago.

It was like just yesterday, wasn't it? Just yesterday. But they are, so this is probably the only negative in this whole lift we're going to make here. of Raven Wing models, because it is a very, very cool-looking model that unfortunately doesn't play that well. But if you like bikes, I think it's the best-looking space marine bike. Well, they also make the best use of one of my favorite things, and I want to give it, as Bullets put it in the bikes, attack bikes.

Yeah. They've had good uses over the years for attack bikes and regular bikes. And I kind of like the idea of supercharged ghost riders running across. again, we have no idea what they're driving with, figure it out yourself because they have a weapon in each hand. And I don't know what they're doing, but things are going down. They're driving the bike. But they've had really good use of all of the bikes.

Regular bikes, black knights, and attack bikes. They've done tons with them. And they've had tons of success with one of the models that's usually used only for a scoring piece, which is Lance Beater. Yeah, let's talk about landspeers. Because Lance Peters is something that the Raven, I have been seeing Dark Angels

put Landspeaters in the board for years. And I don't think I think, with the exception of a couple of times they got pointed wrong. I don't think I've ever seen them on the board. Cough, Cuff, Typhoon. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Like, it was just, but that's where,

and even then, it was usually by Dark Dark Dark Angels players. So it was, they are the only ones. And I'm going to shit on Lancebun, Speeders a minute, for a minute here. I've been playing the game Dawn of War on my PC since it came out. And when I say since it came out, I played it today. Like it's like that since it came out. And the only time I ever run a landspeeder is when it's just part.

It's one of the free things I get at the start of the mission. That's how badly I think about landspeaters, with the exception being Ravenwing. Ravenwing landspeaters are. And we're talking real landspeeders. A lot of people are going to be like, I took Lance Peter's storm. No, we're not talking about the transport. We're talking about a speeder with some guns doing some damage. Because usually it bounced and did nothing, but the Ravenwing version is amazing.

It has been forever. It will wreck you. We'll get later into the character version of it, which is even nastier. But the Ravenwing, the Dark Shroud, and you got the Lance Beater Vengeance. Yeah, but the Lanspeter Dark Shrout is. Yeah, it also gives you minus one to hit, to stealth around. Yeah. They've got a lot of good speeder options, to be honest with you.

And of course, they have a plasma speeder because why not? We have to have plasma speed. Now, we'll get to one of Brad's favorite elements of the game are airplanes. And I'm with Brad on this, actually. There are two airplanes in the game that I think are cool and only two. One is every plane, the orc zone, because all of the arc planes are objectively funny. They're useless. and I like the dark talent.

I mean, it does have the Rift Canon on it, which is pretty gross. And it's coolest. So from a LOR standpoint, the Rift Canon moves you out of the material into the immaterial. I mean, it literally creates a rift between the warp and reality. This is the ultimate,

as we talked about earlier from a lore standpoint, the Dark Angel's purpose is to remove things from existence. Well, how about I remove you from this plane of existence? It's also one of the most sucky guns for you because if it doesn't grab all of you, some of you goes into the warp and some of you doesn't. Yeah, there's... That's always a bummer. It's always nice when your two options are die or go into the warp.

Yeah. But the thing, what I reason I thought we should talk about the dark talent is aesthetically, it looks a lot better than the rest of the planes. It had just the angles that it takes, and I've seen paint jobs put in these things. If you just take the standard on the box paint job that is presented by GW, still looks cool. Actually, we probably should have mentioned the fact that the Dark Angels colors are black, dark green with a little bit of white.

Two of those colors Brad can see. I think that you meant to say that the Dark Angels colors are black and white. So Brad's not aware that there's actually some shading done on Dark Angels that are really cool. Shating. This is a concept. Brad's colorblind, those of who don't know. I do really like, this is one of the things I like, and I hope we go back, and I'm going to give you a little bit of rant before we continue, because I really enjoy when chapters, factions, it doesn't matter what it is, have unique things to that faction, that sub faction, that whatever. So things like Dark Talons, even though I don't like Flyers, I like that you can't be Ultramarines and get a Dark Talon.

Exactly. I just like character. in my armies. That's why I like Ravenwing and things of that. You know you're playing Dark Angels. You see Raven Wing? That's a Dark Angel's only thing. Exactly.

And I love that. Because we talked about it in the lore. The first Legion is a secretive Legion. They, yes, as we discussed in the first episode, some of the tactics that they developed, they would share with other legions. But they also developed their own, weaponry, their own vehicles, et cetera, as we've discussed here, that they didn't share with our

lesions. And that's what's really cool about playing Dark Angels. You get access to things no one else has. Ultramarines have about 500 characters no one else has, but only a couple of units. Brad's laughing because he tried playing every ultramarine character in an event. True story. Yeah. Anyway, we've done a lot on Raven Wing. Now, what if you have a bad back? Or you just get tired easily moving models around a board. Or note-wise, would it be easier to use a shuffleboard stick to push your models a few inches ever, just, by the way, a few inches every year? Yeah, the show. Is that highly?

Well, then congratulations. You just discovered Death Wing. Deathwing is the first company is basically the all inner circle, all Terminator option for Dark Angels. Isn't my cup of tea as far as my play style because I do want to go fast. I want to move stuff all over the place. But lore-wise, I love the idea of this extermination force going down and going, you guys can all stay up in the battle barges because we have to go talk to these guys down here. And you're like, so we're going to kill everybody, right?

Yeah, for sure. We'll be right back after a quick break. This is the one that's a little bit complicated. From a lore standpoint, this plays on the board the way the lore is written better than almost anything in the game. Yeah, because their terminators are worth of shit. Terminators, for those of you who don't know, have been hot garbage. On multiple editions. I mean, they were broken a little bit.

What was the, there was space wolves with? They weren't. I mean, they were still, they were just good. The thing is, is death, Dark Angel's death wing has been the only time, and they've always been good, I think. I was assuming, I played since

second, so, yes, they've always been good, and the thing is is that other Terminators have been trash multiple editions. Yeah, while the, while the Death Wing Terminers have been good. 100%. Because Death Wing Terminers don't die. And so those of you who don't know what Terminator armor is, we may do an entire episode of Terminator Armor.

Terminator Armor is you wearing a tank. Yes, you have a foot, thick, seramite all around you. Yeah. It's tactical dreadness. It's tactical. Yeah. You are wearing a tank. And for some reason, guardsmen kill you with, with last guns. Drives me crazy. Like, unless you're dead. My first purchase ever was Terminators, by the way. Yeah, most people's was because it's the coolest looking model. Yeah. And then they got shot by a command squad of Imperial Guard. And, and, and, and, and, And I wanted to quit the game. But the thing is that the Death Wing Terminators on the board are fantastic because they have the secrets.

They are durable as shit. Also, they have so many guys that carry banners. And I am such a dork about banners. Aesthetically, these are awesome. So your regular Terminators, depending on your edition, look anywhere from kind of cool all the way through Amazing. And the amazing is Deathwing. Oh, they look insane. They have the black knights.

Oh, the black knights. Yeah, they've got cowls. They've got, I mean, you can customize them. Death Wing Night, sorry. You can customize them however you want, and they look awesome. With, they have huge banners. They look sick as hell. Their first company of Death Wing, Deathwing Knights, it comes with the flails of the Unforgiven.

Oh, yeah. The flails. Yes. They look super cool. And the thing is, is that these are in addition to the regular night, the regular Terminators and the Death Wing Command Squad, which is the best command squad in the game. Fight me. It just is.

And it has been forever because they can add the best characters into it. And again, banners, I'm just saying, like you, this is a cool looking army. It can be the most bland army because you could just make them black and white. Yeah. I mean, I heard there's apparent. some green. There's green in there. There's actually quite a lot of green. Yeah. So a black and white army. But it's dark green.

But yeah, exactly. Like I said, a black and white army. But in that black and white or you can like literally juice these guys out. It's just really, you're so old. You see the world. They've never changed TV. Yes, they didn't color. Did they? I don't remember seeing any of that. I'm not aware of it. But this army can look. look cool as shit.

And it also just relentlessly pushes the board, which is what Terminators are supposed to be, which is when you go, what's your special rule? Grim resolve. Oh, yes, this plays exactly like you think they would play. And I think it's an important piece when you talk about Terminator's is anyone who's played the game. It's annoying when you spend the time,

especially as customizable as these are, to build, paint your dark angels, your dark angel terminers, put them on the board, and they just die instantly. That will not happen when you're playing. These guys are good. They're not as terrible. And they were a ninth, but holy crap.

Yeah. I mean, we can do a quick side story about ninth edition and the Atlantic City Open. Look, it wasn't Atlantic City. It was Cherokee. Thank you very much. And I may or may not have crowdsourced whether I should have charged.

And I also was stalling time until I went to the hospital. So let's call it. Brad went to the hospital after playing this army. I got beat up so bad by Death Wing Terminators that they put me in the ER. You rolled how many shots of last cannons? It was also that in the Maltos.

So yes, last cannons and Meltas. Let me carry the one. How many did I kill out of the unit that I killed that I shot for three turns, zero. Yeah, in three turns, because they're pressing, obviously. I'm assuming they just mailed the letter to me that said, would you please stop shooting at us? It's annoying us.

Because that's, they had plenty of time. They could have literally gave me a dear Brad letter. Dearest Bradley. And the reason I bring this up is for those that you who want to play kind of a really a grim resolve, the way that you can play them is cool. You pick an objective, and I've played against our game, those players, they tend to be very good at this.

they pick an objective and they say, this is my objective. And you put down your Death Wing Terminators who do have grim resolve. And they are going to say, I'm not moving. You can shoot at me with everything you want. I'm not moving. And by the way, if you decide to come close to me, I'm going to kill you. And it's really, so what they do is as an army, they actually play, ironically, kind of how custodes should play, where they move, they just move up the board and conquer the board,

slowly but consistently, this is mine, and there's nothing behind me. Until those guys get some new rules that Custod's players are going to be mad at you for even bringing them up. I get that,

but my point is I'm actually making the point that Custodes probably should also play like this, but for some reason, don't. But the idea, if you want to play, I mean, I was being facetious about having a bad back and not wanting to move very much,

but it is true. The idea of the Death Wing is that they go to an area and they remove all the enemy in that area and move on to the next. Whereas the Raven Wing are kind of jumping in here and there, taking shots.

They should work in theory together. The Raven Wing go ahead and they disrupt the supply lines. They kind of isolate the units. And then you're sitting there as the opponent looking around going, hey, where is all my support? It's all gone. And then the Death Wing shows up. And now you are so rude because you can shoot them all you want.

Because the Raven Wing drove away. Yeah. And the Raven Wing are gone and the Death Wing are just sitting there. You can shoot at us all. all you want, you're going to basically run out of bullets. And when you do, we're going to get to you, and it's going to be over. They are the Michael Myers of 40. Yeah.

Now, let's get into the thing that actually really draws me to Dark Angels is their special characters, their leaders, have been cool as shit. Yes. For a long time. And this is like before we got the lion. Yeah, I mean, this is, to be fair, we've had the lion for six months, nine months now. Yeah. Have we had him for that long? No, sorry, we did get him at that.

Yeah, so we, we did not. But right about, yeah, we've had a line for about six months now. We've had the real lion for a couple months now. But we've had the Dark Angels leaders for 30 years. But Asriel, chapter master, all we, I mean, his rules are good now. He can't attach to anybody. GW, listen to me, that's bullshit. but his powers were nuts for a long time.

He's had really cool lore, but he's had really cool rules for, yes, forever. I mean, back when he gave a four-up invalind that everything within six inches, on the board, he was gross. Belial leading the Death Wing Terminator, and one of the coolest characters, because he also could be taking two different ways,

Samuel. Yep. the leader of the Raven Wing, which, by the way, they literally are so different that they made a chapter master for the different types. This is important thing is that when we talk about this before, you really do. You can run these guys so fluffy, yet be competitive because you're not in this situation where you're kind of wedging this character in who doesn't like, oh, I'm running Ravenwing. And so my entire army are bikes and speeders. and then I got these three dudes who are trying to run real fast on foot. No, I've got guys in bikes and speeders who are exceptional too.

The whole army moves as one. Led by a guy that could either take a speeder or a bike. Samuel. Who I think is super cool in just the fact that you're like, hey, I'm leading this style. Because they've done this. A lot of times in the game, guys don't have the in-game ability to be the lore. And Samuel does.

Like, Coughcroft, we'll talk about the white scars in a minute. One of the guys might not have access to a bike that should be on a bike, but whatever. But, of course, O'Connor suck. But Samuel's like literally driving around, going super fast with cool rules,

and their characters are pretty badass in the fact that they really feel like they are Deathwing. They are Raven Wing. Exactly. Asriel, does feel like he's got great buff powers for whoever's in the army, because he is the overall master of the dark angels, which is really cool because they've always had pretty good fun.

And I can't say, I'm going over one of my boys, Zechial. Yeah. Super Cooper cool. He's the master of a specific set of powers, psychic powers that come with the Dark Angels, which was super cool on that. He was a great castor. And then you've got the guy that you don't want to meet ever in a dark alley and probably a basement. Asma die.

Yeah, Asma die is, to those who aren't aware, let's go through real quick, Asmodai lore. He does bad shit all the time. I mean, his title should be master of sick torture, but he's supposed to be one of the good guys. He's the good guy interrogator. Yeah. He, uh, but he also will beat your ass. Right. Before on the table.

And that's the, like, every character that we talk about has appeared in a book significantly. Yes. And they're awesome on the table. Yeah. They literally Thunderdome. They have a good translation. I have to say that the dark angels from lore, book lore, codex lore, to tabletop might be the top. I mean, they can make the argument that they are the top.

I think of the loyalists. They're the top. The traders obviously get a bit more. I think, you know, Deathguard. But you get, yeah, these, but the thing is, man, they feel really good from, from lore to table. And it's a real reason to play them. Yeah.

We're in lore cast. We should be, that's why we start. Well, that's the thing is. We started with these guys. Right. These guys are, if you, if you're looking, this is not a, like, I guess this is probably, the Dark Angels players are, might be high-fiving themselves. Listen, they'll say this.

But for those of you who are looking for a space, faction to play and think, well, you know, I want a deep history. I want to be able to make a backstory. I want to do all these things. Yeah, the Dark Angels are the one because then you can, you can make up a full backstory of your army. And play competitively. Yeah, and competitively.

It is the only, there's only a few people that can play narratively and competitively without a significant change of the army. Equal. And the thing, I'm not going to lie, the narrative, you play a narrative of Dark Angels, you might have an OP army. They might ask you to bring different shit. Yeah, that's true. Because their narrative, you can make an argument that this is an amazing army in that.

And, I mean, let's talk about one of the main reasons to play. They got a prime mark. They're one of the two loyalists that have a prime mark. And I'm sorry, ultramarines, guys, but... You can... Don't bad mouth. Don't... I'm not going to baton off Bobby G, but I'm just saying,

if I'm looking for someone to kick ass and take names, it's not Bobby his sword is kind of cool I'm just saying that literally the lion just showed up like literally went hey man what's going on guys

oh shit is that Angron maybe I'll just crush his skull oh yeah the lion came out of I'm just saying the lion came out of stasis with an attitude the lion also

also don't put the helmet on him I will again fight me over it middle aged lion who has seen some shit. The model's literally Skel. Yes. Literally scouting. He looks like Tywin Lannister, but unhappier.

And a lot bigger. Yeah, slightly. It's slightly bigger. I mean, he's no Luther. Jesus. That guy can never get, he will never escape your ire. I don't play Dark Kings, but if I did, I would actually put a Luther on my lion just for scale. So everyone can understand how useless Luther was.

There is a special. rule that was called eternal hatred. I feel like you have that for Luther. I really do. It's just it's it's poor writing. I have an issue with poor writing and it's a poor writing to pretend dude on Caliban equals Primark. Well, one of the reasons I love the lion, especially in the game, changes price, but dude's got a two up, three up. He looks cool as shit. He can wreck you. He can wreck big things and small things. He's got a what's called a sweep attack, which means he can make a multitude of tax, or he can focus swing and beat the whole lot of people. But what I really like is that he has powers that buff everybody around him.

He's a primark. That's the thing. Like, we can, little competitive diatribe here, but they have always struggled with balancing primers. Oh, 100%. Gilliman, at one point, ninth edition, may have been the best model in the entire ever, ever, ever, Ever, ever, ever, ever. Oops.

But with the lion, what's this, and this is, again, why you should play with a primark. We talked about playing narrative and then playing narrative competitively. The primark lets you do that. Because what the primark, what a primark is, is it gives you a centerpiece model. And when we talk about primark, just for the record, there is Gilliman, there is the lion, there is Angron. Oh, that's it.

That's it for loyal. And Magnus. Those are your, and if you've. ever seen any of those models, you know what I'm saying? They are a signature piece of your army. Well, three of them are demon prime arcs that are a foot tall on the board. Yeah, they all have wings. It's interesting how they all get wings. But anyway, I don't know why they need wings. Because they fly with psychics, but go ahead. Exactly. Just this feels like the Incredibles with capes. Yeah.

No capes. No capes. It's easy to see you. Why do you need a cane? But anyway, what the lion gives you on But he also travels by the power of his mind. Yes. But the line gives you on the tabletop is he gives you a force multiplier, which is really great from a jump credit. But I don't want this to be a competitive conversation. I'm talking about from a lore standpoint. When a, as we discussed in the last couple casts,

the Dark Angels before the arrival of the line, the Dark Angels at the arrival of the line, were a different fighting force. His mere presence made them better. And that's what's really cool with having a part, because it actually does that for your army. That's what's so great about this. If you want to play an army that we're talking about lore that plays like the lore,

that's how it plays like the lore. You put your prime mark down, and anything that's even present with the primark performs better. And well, they should. And I'm going to do a side in the game. I think that all of the primarks should have their own detachments. That won't make any sense to you. That don't play the game right now.

I just know the lore. but I think that if you bring it a primark, you should have access to a primark detachment that gets whatever. I don't even care what the room is. Probably. Probably. But the thing is that they do.

In the lore, when they are around, they, in multiple books, the mere presence of the primark showing up, changed a battle. You're like, did he make a plan? You're like, no. They just... They hit harder.

Yeah. People literally, people shot harder. My bullets, my last cannon did more damage because I was standing next to the lion. Exactly. And the thing is, you're just inspired. And the thing is that I love him on the board

because he looks cool. Also, feel free to bring the heat to the lion in 10th edition. Yeah, that's the one thing I will say is don't charge the lion. fights first is a hell of a drug. Don't, the lion, they made him, he is the, the number one knight of Caliban.

Yeah, number two through 30 or empty, 31 was Luther. Yeah, you should probably just shoot him. If you touch the lion, but again, good job, GW and the lore.

Of your primarks, it is the lion and Angron are the two that you don't want touching you, and both of them in the game if they touch you. Oh, bad things happen. You're very, very, very dead.

I like him a lot. I like the dark. I actually think that Dark Angels are doing really well. I'm very excited for this book. I hope that we're all looking at the book right now and saying they did a great job on that last codices to give GW props. And people tell him, me, I'm a show all the time for it. But I actually really enjoyed, we're in 10th edition right now. We'll see how this, this, this ages.

But as of right now, they've done a great job. in the codices so far. Yeah, I agree. I'm just in time for a bunch of broken codex. I was to say, now we're in 2024, and we've got a great time

for us to break the game. Yeah, I'm sure there's an Eldar codex coming, and everyone plays a game knows what I mean by that. Oh, the index of the Eldar were broken. Yeah, okay. Fair and balanced.

Yeah, watch this. So... Hold my beer. But let's kind of conclude the Dark Angel coverage, especially with this piece around, like, why?

So the dark angels are, and I wrote a dark faction. But they were the emperors not a sassan. They were the emperors dirty deed doers. You said killing force, it has to be said they did the shit that had to be done. And also, it was the shit that had to be done that you got no. That no one could know you did. No credit for, yeah. And then they were turned from that into the Knights of the Ron.

table by the prime mark. Yep. Who was, it uplifted them, made them beautiful, only to be betrayed by their own. By their own. And so now they're scouring the galaxy to clear their name. Even though no one he knows about it. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That's one of my, that is kind of one of my favorite parts of this. We talk about the Dark Angels is that they're obsessed with clearing their name and killing everyone in the galaxy who's aware of their betrayal, except that no. No one in the galaxy knows about the betrayal, including some of the people they're killing, didn't know that they betrayed. I mean, not some, a lot. To be honest, probably most. I don't know why you guys are shooting me.

You could have known about stuff. He's like, I don't know who you are. I don't know who you are, but I'm still going to shoot you? The Dark Angels are amazing for this reason. And this is why I think a lot of you who are either are playing them or are looking for a faction to play. This is why you play them. all the lore lines up really well.

And to be honest with you, this is also a reason to collect them. No, really. If you're not even a, there's a ton of people that play the occasional game of 40K, but they love hobbying and modeling. They want to have stuff that's great with the lore.

This force is a great force to collect. You have a prime arc. You've got awesome looking squads that all the death wing with all the giant banners and they have all the lure that's on it. They basically mark the things they've done. And then you've got the Raven Wing coming in. And you've got the cool models that I love with the cows,

the shrouded models and stuff. You don't need to play. This is just a nice model army to have. If you've got a steady hand and good eyesight, you can do stuff with this. I use those two statements because two things I don't have. You could do some amazing things at this. It is, this is an army you put in a glass case.

Yeah. If you're displaying your stuff and you're a hobbyer, you're a hobbyist, this is a great army to have. This might be one of the best armies if you're talking to Perium to have. Yeah, I think aesthetically, it means actually my best game armies in the game, honestly, because the models are all newer. They're kept, et cetera, et cetera. But, yeah, they are a beautiful faction. And as we've said it numerous times throughout the cast, they play like their floor.

You're not building an army and then wedging them into some other thing. But I do like this. If you're someone that likes the lore or if you're starting, Dark Angels are a great starter army for that because they're also, they play like the lore. They're never going to, they've been good. They've been good enough. How about that forever?

In every edition. So they're a nice army to have. But also if you're looking to just start an army, especially with someone that did lore first. and then, you know, competitive 40K second. This is a great army to have. Yeah. So with that, I think we'll conclude our coverage of the Dark Angels.

And we've now done a Zenos. We've done an Imperium. Gee, I wonder what we'll be doing next. Weird. Weird. I wonder if there's a third section. And so Brad and I were discussing it. We decided that if you're going to go chaos, let's go,

chaos. Go all in, baby. So we're going to dive in next into a spoiler. We're not going to go to Black Legion. I mean, it is the Black Legion. The Don is the Black Legion. Thank you very much. We're going to dive and do it because I think I want to make this so if people are listening from episode one to whatever episode they're on, I want there to be some level of kind of story arc that we're following. And as you guys are noticing, we kind of get to certain pieces and then we expand a little bit, but the goal is to kind of move us into the 41st millennia. Spoiler alert, the 41st millennia is largely determined by the actions of a bat. It's like they just are.

Yeah, it is he. But he's also been there since the beginning. He's been there for a while. His Black Crusades been a bit of different levels of effectiveness. Yeah. But things, I mean, I'll just spoil it now. We have the necrons and we have the tyrannids because of a bad. Yeah.

We have... Sorry by Acadia. No longer stands. Yeah. So that's why we're going to about next. As always, whenever we say this, I don't know if this is one cast or two casts because we haven't actually written it yet or five. So tune in next time to find out, is it one or more casts about Abadden that a spoiler?

With that, though, again, as we say, every cast, please join our Facebook, join our Discord. The link is in the show notes. If you guys have any feedback you want to give, some of you've been leading feedback on Facebook, some of you've been leaving feedback in Discord. It's been extremely appreciated, positive and negative. Also, if you guys could leave positive-only reviews for us on Spotify or iTunes,

it also helps a little bit. This is something that Brad and I really enjoy. We have a lot of fun doing it. And just seeing the amount of people that are listening and people who are engaging with us really is fantastic. But with that, I'm John Barsai. This is Bradchester. We'll see you all next week.