How to Beat Blood Angels with Space Wolves

How do you beat Blood Angels with Space Wolves? With a lot of cunning tactics, that's how. Contrary to our first impressions about everyone's favourite blood red emo vampire Space Marines with pretty angel wings, the Blood Angel players really got their game on to figure out their Codex and exploit the huge range of options available to them.

So now that Blood Angels are one of the best close combat armies in the game, it's always a complete blood bath whenever you get a game of Blood Angels VS Space Wolves. In a way it doesn't help that the Space Wolves are designed to receive a charge while the Blood Angels are designed to charge in, which kind of puts Space Wolves on the back foot.

Blood Angels are fast too. Their tanks are fast, they can field whole armies of jump pack troops, or failing that, they can speed Mephiston, Furious Dreadnoughts and Assault Terminators across the board in Storm Ravens and really mess you up before you've even had two turns of shooting.

All we know as Space Wolf players is that they are one of the armies which will be coming for us -and that makes it a little easier to figure things out on our part.

Based on my gaming experience, I'm going to explain how to beat a Blood Angels army (whether it's jumping, driving, flying or just throwing 9 Dreadnoughts at you!) with Space Wolves, while explaining what to look out for and how to best utilise your units to deal with each threat.


BLOOD ANGELS ARMY STRENGTHS

Feel No Pain
3+ save and Feel No Pain makes Blood Angels ridiculously hard to kill. Seriously, I'm surprised I haven't seen people fielding 'regular' Space Marine style lists using the Blood Angels Codex, spreading some Apothecaries around and just watching as the whole thing refuses to die.

Once you throw Feel No Pain into the mix, basic weapons become pretty useless, even basic attacks can become pretty useless as a statistically speaking a standard 3+ save Blood Angels efectively becomes a 2+ save Blood Angel.

So next time you decide you're going to attack 10 Blood Angel Assault Marines joined by an Apothecary, just remember that you're effectively attacking 10 Blood Angels Terminators! Wow, that really puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

Fast
Fast Predators, Fats Rhinos, Razorbacks, Storm Ravens, Attack Bikes and even Bikes: The Blood Angels trump most armies for mobile firepower and speed in general.

This makes them incredible versatile in terms of tactics. I also makes redelopyment and objective grabbing much easier as well.

Let's not forget that Assault Marines can be taken as Troops and re-roll their Deepstrike using 'decent of angels' too.

Furious Charge
Coupled with their speed, Furious Charge is what makes Blood Angels so dangerous. Initiative 5 and Strength 5 means that they're going to be hitting our Grey Hunters first and wounding them on 3+. It also makes their Power Weapon attacks even more devastating, because as Space Marines, Space Wolves die easily to Power Weapon attacks.

So whatever happens, try not to let Blood Angels charge your Space Wolves. And if it can't be helped, get ready with your Wolf Standards! You're going to need them.


BLOOD ANGELS ARMY WEAKNESSES

Blood Angels Players
No disrespect to Blood Angels players as a whole, but with so many advantages I'm still amazed at how people play this army so badly.

In competitive games all my victories have been down to the player being over aggressive and seriously over extending their forces when they could have simply waited another turn to maintain a cohesive force, then just hit me with everything they had.

I've heard people say that Blood Angels' weakness is if they get charged, because they don't get any of their usual bonuses. Well, getting charged is bad for anyone. It's like saying "my army doesn't like being shot at". Hmmm, let's think about that one...

But anyway, When I've been facing Blood Angels played well, I've had a really tough time. Mostly because they just won't die!


TYPICAL BLOOD ANGELS ARMY LIST
Is there really such a thing as a typical Blood Angels list? Not really. So I've decided to choose one of my favourite Blood Angels lists from a past tournament which really gave me a hard time.

Mephiston
Corbulo
Librarian
Assault Terminators in a Land Raider Redeemer with extra armour
10 Assault Marines with power fist and 2 melta guns
5 Assault Marines with melta gun
5 Assault Marines with melta gun
Storm Raven
Furioso Dreadnought with extra armour


Blood Angels Strategy VS Space Wolves
Pray for the first turn, so the Storm Raven (with Mephiston and Furioso) can speed across the board and multimelta something. The Land Raider Redeemer can speed forward, firing its smoke launchers. Meanwhile the Assault Squads wait in reserve ready to Deepstrike using 'decent of angels'.

In Turn 2, the Assault Squads arrive, land and blow up the Space Wolves Transports while the Storm Raven and Land Raider charge into the middle of the Space Wolf formation, blowing up more transports while disembarking Mephiston, the Furioso Dreadnought and the Assault Terminators.

Carnage ensues as Blood Angels use all their strengths to get into close combat quickly, deny any long ranged shooting and watch as their best units make short work of the Space Wolves, regardless of whether they charge or not.


Space Wolves Strategy VS Blood Angels
In order to take away their mobility, the Space Wolves need to take down the Storm Raven and Land Raider straight away. Obviously, this is much easier if they have the first turn, so that they can get 2 turns of shooting rather than just one.

Obvisouly, you'll prioritise your firepower according to how many turns shooting you have. If you've got two turns, take down the Storm Raven with everything on Turn 1 and fire everything at the Land Raider on Turn 2.

Then get all your Grey Hunters in position to form a wall of Rhinos and fire their melta guns and combi-meltas from out of the top hatches to nail the Furioso and the Land Raider.

Mephiston you have to ignore until you can bring lots of high strength, low AP weaponry to bear. Wolf Guard Terminators with combi-weapons are great for this.

Then the game will inevitably turn into a massive punch up. It's going to happen regardless. Just be sure to jump one one unit at a time with everything you've got.

For example, 3 units of 8-man Grey Hunter packs should be able to wipe out a squad of Blood Angels Assault Terminators in close combat.


CONCLUSION
Regardless of what kind of Blood Angels army you end up playing, due to their speed, the game is likely to turn into one great big punch up. But if you can ensure that it's the Space Wolves who get the charge and hack apart one of their best units en masse (like Assault Terminators), then you can control the enormous 'bar brawl' that's going to ensue.

Just make sure Mephiston gets a good dose of plasma to the face to keep him down. You don't want him getting into close combat, because he's pretty much unstoppable.

As for 9 Dreadnought armies. Just run away and keep shooting them as best you can.
And against all-jump pack Blood Angels armies, you're going to have great fun, because it's much easier to kill troops than it is tanks.

So to wrap up, when you fight Blood Angels, pick your targets carefully, plan out how many turns of shooting you're going to get and what you're going to do with those shots.
Most importantly, make sure that you are the one who is charging and charge as many of your units as you can against 1 of their units at a time to make sure you wipe them out quickly and efficiently in order to take as few casualties as possible.

And if you're going to get charged and there's nothing you can do about it, use your Wolf Standard! They might think twice about charging you then.