DA Codex Follow-up: No Cypher.

Unlike Tom Cruise, the Dark Angles are now out of the closet with their new book.

Well I've got my hands on Codex Dark Angels and having flicked through it quickly I've seen that there is no Cypher in the list anywhere. Sorry for getting your hopes up by the way. He does get a mention in the fluff on page 14 but alas he's nowhere to be found in the unit entries. I am disappoint, if I'm honest as it would have been nice to see him but it does leave room for him to appear in White Dwarf in the future. I'll try and make up for this by highlight some of the units in the 'dex.

Looking at some of the unit entries there are some things that jump off the page: 10-man Tactical Squads for 140 points without Special Weapons. I can see a wall of these guys parked in front of a Standard of Devastation to re-roll Morale and Pinning Tests and give them Salvo 2/4 Bolters. Combined with Grim Resolve (Stubborn and not allowed to auto-fail Ld tests) they'll be hard to shift. Even if the Banner is 65 points and has to be given to a Command Squad (Death/Raven/Greenwing variants available) which are at least 100 points to begin with...


Sammael is one guy that I quite like now: he's got a 4+ invul (which is conferred to his Jetbike) and he's got an Ap2 MC sword. The Plasma Cannon is nice but what I really like is the fact that he's got Hit and Run (at Initiative 5) and  can swap his Jetbike for an AV 14 Land Speeder. And Eternal Warrior to boot. He's a good buy at 200 points but this is at first glance and playtesting might say something different. Oh, and Libbies don't get Biomancy but they get Divination which is much better so they'll probably feature prominently in a lot of lists like their Space Wolf and Blood Angel counterparts.

Of the Flyers, the Nephilim looks a far better buy - 180 points for a Twin-Lascannon, Twin-Heavy Bolter which I imagine most people will swap for the S6 Heavy 5 Avenger variant so they can shoot down enemy Flyers more reliably (because S5 can't hurt AV 12 Vendettas and Heldrakes).

Deathwing Terminators are still as flexible as they used to be but it's a bit more expensive now as squads are 220 pts base and 5 pts per man for TH/SS. Chainfists are 5 points and heavy weapons are slightly discounted (Plasma Cannons are 15 pts and Cyclones are 25 pts) but they get Vengeful Strike which gives their ranged weapons twin-linked when they Deep Strike. I'm not going to lie: that's pretty good, especially when you can have 2 special weapons for every 5 guys, although the guys are 44 points base.

A Devastator squad looks more promising now too - they're 70 for 5, 14 per man and their weapons are discounted too: Meltas/H Bolters are 10 pts, Missiles are 15 (with Flakk at 10) while Plasma is 15 pts and Las are 20 pts a pop.

There's a brief look at one unit from each section of the book. I'm sure people who are more interested in the DA will be willing to write up more extensive reviews in time but for now those units are the ones that I've spotted within going in for an in-depth look.  I have a hunch they'll be popular as Allies with Guard (Best buds afaik) due to Divination and getting an extra Flyer as well as providing lots of anti-infantry fire and cheap Power Armoured bodies.

I'm guessing that Caolán over at Skibb Wargamers will do a review at some point so I'll leave him to go into more detail.