New Dark Angels Codex Thoughts: Troops!

Old School here to continue my initial thoughts and ramblings on the New Dark Angels Codex. Since I have already covered HQs and Elites (and since I need to keep it brief, haha), I will talk about the troops today.


The Dark Angels, while having a ton of FOC swapping characteres, have pretty much the stock standard two choices for Space Marine troops; the Scouts and the Tactical Marines.

The Tactical Marines are the big deal across the web and with good reason. They weigh in a 14pts per model with LD and stubborn. They also can't ever choose to run away (like when they can't hurt a Furioso).What they can do though, is take a heavy weapon in a five man squad, providing access to that weapon for under 100pts! To me, this is a blessing and a curse for a couple of reasons. First, I feel like I am going to see a lot of five man flakk caddies, which not only is boring, but I think it is a trap, being easy to deal with for units like the heldrake or necron shooting, which (barges on the ground) don't care about your missiles ... and I don't think single flakks are super great for downing flyers. What is good about it, is that you can fill in your troops with small scoring ATSKNF units so you can focus on better quality troops and units from other slots across the army.

With that being said, the Tactical also shines in combination with other DA combos, like the banner of devestation or with Ld10 from the mighty Azreal! All in all, there are a lot of good uses for tactical DA units and I am glad to see the green wing get some love (especial for my good buddy Dues). I plan to try out a lot of variations on DA tactical squads and see what fits my style in conjunction with the rest of the units I want to play (BLACK KNIGHTS!!!)

Now, onto Scouts. Scouts get the standard options of bolters, pistols and CCWs or Sniper rifles. They are still BS3 marines (with BS4 Sgts), but they do weigh in at 12pts, which would be great ... if the tacticals weren't so affordable already. I can certainly see the use in infiltrating cheap units. The thing that I get hung up on is that they really don't seem to fill a niche for me. They have sniper rifles that really don't cut it for real sniping. They have access to flakk, but it costs the same as tactical flakk, they are cheap, but so are tacticals, they are still drakebait, but are even less a priority. I guess you could use them as the beneficiary of a banner of devestation, but tacs again, do this better. I guess I'm also not a big fan of scouts in any dex, so I may be a little bias, but I don't see myself messing around with these guys at all.

Overall, the troops are there to help fill gaps in your list's abilities and offer cheaper scoring. Some lists will make a huge use of them (I have already seen 60 green tacticals in play) and others will take advantage of the FOC swap, maybe adding the traditional troops for extra fire or scoring. I plan to play around alot, but I think tacs will always have a place in my DA lists from now on.

That is my initial take on the troops. What are your thoughts? How will you fill this section of your FOC.