The Blood Angels are the sons of Sanguinius, The Great Angel who sacrificed his life against The Warmaster Horus at the very climax of the Horus Heresy. Even now, 10,000 years later, the psychic echo of that traumatic event still resonates in the hearts and minds of the Blood Angels, inspiring many to acts of heroism, but sending others to the brink of madness.

In the Blood Angels Army Set, up for pre order today, players get their first chance of picking up the Warhammer 40k 10th Edition Codex alongside some awesome new models!

In this review we’ll be unboxing and taking a look at the contents of the Army Set, building up and painting the models and delving into the pages of the Blood Angels Codex to see what is new!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free early review copy – if you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full video unboxing and codex flip through, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So report to your nearest Chaplain, and get ready for us to tear the lid off the latest Army Set!

Blood Angels Army Set Unboxing

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to be the one writing this review and painting up the contents. Jay is our usual Blood Angels representative, but as he is on holiday I ended up doing this one myself. I’ve dabbled in Blood Angels before, but not since 2nd Edition and the more I delved into this box, the more I had an urge to create a Blood Angels force of my own…

Clocking in at £145 it’s probably one of the more Army Sets we’ve seen so far, but there is a lot of stuff in this heavy box!

First up is the plastic, and there’s a lot of it! The box contains a set of Assault Intercessors (Making 10 models), 2 sets of Jump Assault Intercessors (10 models) and a Brutalis Dreadnought

That alone would cost £164 to buy, making the set a bargain already – but there’s also 4 new Blood Angels upgrade frames that have all the weapon options and alternate parts to make Death Company units while also having lots of spare bits to give some bling to your Blood Angels

The kits gell really well with the upgrade frame, and there’s enough bits in the box to put together whichever loadout you want on the units – which is great as you can really go to town with small units of both flavours of Death Company!

That’s not everything in the box however, as you also get new plastic reimaginings of two classic characters

First up we have Astorath, who while not a million miles away from the pose of his old model, looks absolutely gorgeous in plastic! People worried about the lack of wings on Sanguinary Guard have nothing to worry about here, as he keeps his classic wings, and still has an epic pose swinging his Executioners Axe down on his foe.

With all the black in this box, he also acts as a nice spot colour with the vivid red of his textured armour.

The other new model in the box is a new take on Lemartes, who looks ever the sinister looking Chaplain. I know some people have been on the fence with this one, but I thoroughly enjoyed painting this one up as it has quite a lot of different textures and features for what is essentially a model that is mostly black.

Two jump pack characters in the box also means you’re probably going to want to build the jump assault squads as two 5 man squads, but as we’ll see later there’s also some very good rule reasons for doing that too!

If we price the two heroes in line with Dante at £28 that puts the value of the plastic in the box at £220 – and that’s before you factor in the other bits in the box – I’d say all in you’re probably saving £100 when picking up this box rather than getting the parts separately, which is a great deal!

With the box containing a whole load of Death Company, a new Death Company Transfer sheet is also included, and interestingly this covers successor chapters too, which is a nice touch.

The box also contains a full set of Blood Angel data cards presented in a really nice sleeve! I find these cards really useful for remembering unit stats on the battlefield, so whenever these are included in an army set I see it as a massive bonus! Shout out again to Games Workshop moving away from shinkwrapped components and instead packaging them in really nice card fold out sleeves – I really do think this adds to the premium feel of the set.

Finally we also get the full Blood Angels Codex a little ahead of it’s general release, and this has a really gorgeous cover this time with Blood Angels facing off against a Slaanesh horde, and sports some nice metallic spot colours. While some limited edition covers can be a little hit or miss, this is a very nice one and I’m glad to be able to add it to my collection! So without further ado, let’s see just what is within the pages of the new Codex!

Blood Angels Codex (2024) Review

We’ve had a couple of Codex Supplements now for the 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000, and alongside the new Army Set, the Blood Angels get the latest one.

If you’ve picked up any of the 10th Edition books so far you’ll know what to expect here – the same format and style of the other books is repeated here, and as ever the first half of the book is dedicated to lore and miniature shots.

One thing I absolutely loved from the lore section of the book is the amount, range and style of artwork on show here – this was a real walk down memory lane with artwork both old and new from ever era of Games Workshop – there’s stuff here from Epic and Space Hulk, alongside newer pieces that are just dripping with style

As ever there’s stories, background and lore delving into each aspect of the Blood Angels, and as a lapsed Blood Angels player who’s not really revisited them much since 2nd edition, I enjoyed catching up and absorbing the lore – For me, when picking up a new army i love to delve into the lore and use that to create an army that “feels” right, rather than just picking powerful units – Now maybe that’s just something that more narrative players will lean into rather than top tier tournament players, but it’s an aspect of the hobby that is important to me, and I’m glad we still get these great lore sections.

Combat Patrol

Much like the other 10th edition Codexes, we get a section dedicated to Combat Patrol – and like with the previous books this also contains a full painting guide that helps you get your force from the box to the tabletop as quickly as possible. I really like this, especially for people new to the hobby – while painting guides can easily be found online, I do feel that by having basic painting guides within books it makes the Codex the place for a player to start out from all aspects, from painting to playing!

As for the Combat Patrol itself this is an interesting one – I don’t know when it is released, but I do wonder if this will be the first place to pick up the new Blood Angels Captain and the Sanguinary guard (Which it contains 6 of!) – in addition to these it also contains a unit of Assault Intercessors. I think this will be a pretty popular box, especially if it’s going to be the first place to grab the new Sang Guard!

From a rules point of view, the Combat patrol revolves around trying to control the objective marker nearest your opponents table edge, or scoring by killing enemy characters – both of which lead to a nice aggressive playstyle with your quick combat units

On a side note, the pack of cards in the box actually includes profiles for the Combat Patrol too, which is a bonus!

Detachments

With this being a Codex Supplement, we get 3 Blood Angels detachments that can be used in addition to the generic ones found in the Space Marines Codex.

First up is the Liberator Assault Group, which is the Index Sons of Sanguinius detachment with a new name. The still get the Red Thirst rule, which is very strong giving Adeptus Astartes units +1 attack and +2 strength when they make a charge. This is very powerful and favours a hard hitting force that is looking to get into combat and maximise these bonuses

Stratagems have shuffled around a little, and there’s some really fun stuff here.

Angelic Grace replaces Angel’s Sacrifice and gives a target unit a 5+ Feel no pain against Mortal wounds, Red Rampage has been tweaked and now gives lance or lethal hits – you can gain both but in you do you become battle shocked, giving this powerful strat a downside. Save Echos replaces “Only in Death…” and works in a similar way to Red Rampage – you can increase your Strength or Attacks of a unit by 1 when they get charged, or have both buffs but become battle shocked – it’s probably worth doing this though as it’s a nice way of getting the detachment bonuses even when you get charged yourself.

Apart from Icon of the Angel, all the other Enhancements have also changed – Speed of the Primarch gives the fighter Firsts First once per battle, Rage Fueled Warrior gives you Sustained hits 3 once per battle, and Gift of foresight allows you to chance a hit, wound or save to a 6 once per battle round – this is probably the best giving you access to some Eldar like schenanigans.

The Lost Brethren is the next detachment, and this is very much the Death Company one – it makes all your Death Company Marines and Death Company Marines with Bolt Rifles Battleline (But interestingly not the jump assault variety) and also allows them to reroll wounds of 1 if they are below starting strength and reroll all wounds if they are below half strength. While there’s some good strats here such as allowing units to fight on death, pile in 6″ and charge after advancing, I just don’t think this is as good as the extra attacks and strength from the Liberator Assault Group, and unless you want to run a pure Death Cmpany for thematic reasons, you’re probably better just picking up some generic marine units for Battleline duties.

They do have some nice Enhancements such as being able to fight a second time at the end of the fight phase, coming back to life on a 2+ or making your entire army + to hit for a turn when the model is slain.

The final detachment is The Angelic Host, and this is all about your jump units. at the end of each enemy turn you are able to select a number of jump pack units (2 for a Strike force battle) and send them into reserves ready to deep strike the following turn. This is pretty cool, but sadly can’t be used on units in combat (I feel this would be ace for a hit and run style force) – still this can be handy for getting around for objectives

Again there’s some nice upgrades here such as Artisan of War which improves the AP of weapons by 1 and gives the bearer a 2+ save, Visage of Death which makes units in engagement range take battleshock and the Archangels Shard which gives you Anti-Chaos 5+ and lance on your melee weapons.

Starts favour jump units, one gives a jump pack unit lethal hits and precision, which is pretty good, another allows sanguinary Guard to reroll hts and wounds when a friendly unit is destroyed and Death From the Skies allows you to charge after falling back or advancing.

Data Sheets

A lot of units just have minor tweaks, so I’ll be covering those ones along with the new units – It’s worth noting here that a lot of classic Blood Angels models have now been removed from the Codex – Corbulo, Tycho, classic Death Company Dreads, Furioso Dreads, Gabriel Seth, Librarian Dreads and Sanguinary Priests with Jump Packs are all headed to legends. This is a fair chunk of models, and some people will be understandably upset about this, and I feel that as we’ve seen with Age of Sigmar, we’re at the point in the games lifecycles where a lot of older kits are starting to get discontinued to make room for an ever expanding plastic range. Hopefully in the future some of these get new adaptations, but sadly for now they are no longer in the Codex

Mephiston sees the range of his psychic weapon get a little longer and in addition is now rocking a 4+ Feel no Pain. This is probably also because he is now a Lone Operative – The Quickening also now allows him to charge after advancing rather than fighting first, and Transfixing gaze is now used to stop units from falling back rather than affecting their stats

Astorath’s Axe has had an upgrade and now gets 6 attacks base, making him hit harder

Lemartes also gets a small tweak with an extra 6″ range on his pistol

Blood Angels Captains are a new unit, which can be given a power fist or relic weapon, ad once per battle they can add 3 to the attacks characteristic of melee weapons AND give them devastating wounds – Combine this with the first Detachment and you now have a powerfist with 9 attacks on the charge and devastating wounds! Makes the Captain into a one man army who can probably take out a squad single handedly when he pops his ability.

Death Company Captains can be taken on foot or with a jump pack, and sadly non have the bonus attacks ability of the standard captain – however both of them deal mortal wounds back to the target that kills them and each has a unique buff – the Captain gives his unit Scout 6″ and the jump Captain gives his unit Sustained Hits 1

The Sanguinary Priest can now be attached to a lot more units such as Desolation, Hellblaster and Infernus Squads, which is a great place for him to offer his 5+ Feel No Pain

Sanguinary guard get some improvements with Encarmine Blades now hitting at S6 and Ap-3. They lost access to Plasma Pistols and Power Fists, but gain access to Encarmine Spears which have one less attack and AP, however also have Lance. They can now also take banners that make them OC 2

Death Company get a lot of love in the new book with 3 units – Death Company Marines with Bolt Rifles are an off choice for a unit that wants to get stuck in, but you can still take a thunder hammer and an Evisorator, though honestly I’d just take them with assault weapons unless you want to run a thematic Death Company force

Death Company Marines are your standard assault variety, and just like the Bolter armed version they can take a special close combat weapon, plus an evisorator per 5 models

The real winners in the book however are the Death Company Marines with Jump Packs. These guys get a lot of weapon options, and if you take small units of 5 you can really maximise these! You can for example in a unit of five take 1 with a plasma pistol, one with an evisorator, one with a power fist and another model with an inferno pistol and a power fist, giving you an awful lot of hitting power in a little 5 man squad. You’re paying a 20 point premium over the standard squad without jump packs, but I feel this is absolutely worth it!

the Death Company Dreadnought is a new unit based on the Brutalis Dreadnought, and moves closer to the enemy each time it is shot with its Driven by Fury special rule. This moves the dread D6+2 inches towards the unit that shot them!

Crusade

As with all other 40k Codexes we get some fun Crusade rules, and here we see mechanics to elevate units to the Sanguinary Guard or have your Death Company slowly get consumed by The Flaw – essentially this has your Death Company units have to take an Out of Action test after every battle and gaining the chance of picking up a unique death company battle scar – these give the units a pretty big negative effect balanced by a decent ability. So for example Consumed by Rage gives your Death Company +1 attack, but they can never fall back unless a Chaplain is nearby, Visions of Bloodshed gives them Scout 6″ but have to test Battle Shock every turn, and Injured to Agony gives them Feel no Pain 5+ but they fail Out of Action tests on a roll of 1-3. If a Death Company unit ever gains a 4th Battle Scar they are perminatly removed from your army lists as the Chaplians have to take them out back and shoot them as the psychosis has consumed them past the point of any use to the Chapter.

I really like mechanics like this where there’s bad to balance the good, and always the chance that you push your luck too far and end up with a raving madman who you can’t even give a weapon and point at the enemy any more!

Summary

So what do I think of the new Blood Angels Army Set and the new Codex, and is it worth the cash? Well after some time with the new models and book I knew that I had to put together a Blood Angels army and relive my 2nd edition memories! The box itself is great value and contains a decent assortment of models to start putting together a nice Death Company themed force – add in the Combat Patrol and you’ve got a decent core to an army with a nice mix of units.

I know a lot of people will be disappointed in the units that have been stripped from the box, and sadly I think that this may be the case going forwards. A lot of armies have got models that have not been updated in years, and ultimately they probably werent selling very well any more – It makes more sense to me to slowly retire those units and replace them with awesome new plastic kits, though I know that does have an impact on people’s collections.

I do think that in casual games Legends units should be more accepted – these are not models that have been removed from the game because they are too powerful or broken, instead this is a resource allowing people to use models that they own that may no longer be available to buy, and most players really dont need to worry about the balance of these units. I understand that is a different situation in a formal tournament, but the large majority of players do games in their own homes or hobby groups, and I really think that people need to reevaluate their thoughts on the “legality” of legends in friendly games.

I’m really excited for the rest of the new kits in the range to be released and put together the army I dreamed of back in the 90s!

The Blood Angels Army Set is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 7th September

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.