Dark Angels Tactics: Capitalize on the Differences

I've been playing my Dark Angels a lot lately, and while combing through the army book, I've also been trying to find all the reasons  why you SHOULD be playing Dark Angels, instead of vanilla marines.  Aside from the obvious "I don't want to play vanilla" complex that many marine players seem to get, there are actually some quite tangible differences between the books.  Since the DA were written so long ago, many of their items were out of date, until GW wrote the FAQ that saved the book. The first thing players should notice when playing Dark Angels is that not all the points match up with their vanilla counterparts.  First I'll show the things which are more expensive for DA than the exact same unit in the vanilla book:

• Predator - +10 pts, Autocannon variant only.
• Drop Pod - +15 pts
• Razorback HB/LC - +10/5
• Tactical Marines -Free special/heavy weapons.

Now, that does seem like a big list, but DA actually get some units cheaper:

• Tactical Marines - 5 points cheaper on 10, no free weapons.
• Typhoon Land Speeder - 15 points cheaper, can't be taken in squads.
• Venerable Dreadnoughts - 20 points cheaper, lower stats though.

You may have noticed that I didn't list bikes or terminators, the reason for that is that DA have a lot of special rules regarding these units that I will go over in a later article, so it isn't fair to compare them across the books.

Knowing the cost differences between the two books is really important when designing the list.  You don't want to end up paying a lot for an army which you could emulate well enough with the vanilla list, instead, you want to maximize on the differences and take the most advantage of using a different book.

In further articles, I'll break down the book, section by section, talking about units, their options and how they fit into a successful army with this older book.