How to win objective based games with DoA armies (by DV8)

I saw this posted by DV8 over on the B&C BA forum today and thought I'd share it...


DoA stands for Descent of Angels. That is to say, the special rule that Blood Angels Jump Infantry get to take advantage of.


A DoA list is an army built PURELY of units that have the Descent of Angels rule.

• Characters with Jump Packs (Dante, Sanguinary, Astorath, anything generic with a Jump Pack):
• Priests with Jump Packs
• Chaplains with Jump Packs
• Death Company with Jump Packs
• Assault Marines with Jump Packs
• Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs

You get the picture. Not to put too fine a point on it, a DoA list has NOTHING that is not equipped with a jump pack. Which means you have no vehicles, and nothing stationary holding down the fort in your deployment zone. The army is pure aggression, and diluting it with "mechanized" units or stationary fire support or with armored support reduces that aggression, as already mentioned before.

So to answer your question of how one takes objectives, especially one in your deployment/rear zone, with a DoA army? Well I've already answered in regards to rear objectives. I'll explain why.

A unit in a DoA army that is held back to "secure" an objective is a unit that isn't being played aggressively to harass/waylay/disrupt/kill the enemy. It's a jump infantry unit that you're paying a premium in points for to simply sit back and do nothing. Blood Angels DoA units have no long range (certainly almost nothing beyond 12"...heck half of my army has nothing more than a 6" range! Oh Nipple Wing), and lack numbers to weather and survive torrents of incoming fire. And again, splitting your army up to this degree dilutes the aggression of the army.

So what do you do? You either put your own objective as far forward as possible, or you ignore it, and take the enemy's objective. It's not about how many objectives you control at the end of the game. It's all about controlling just one more than your opponent. By blitzing forward and taking your opponent's objective, while at the same time denying him the opportunity and the ability to take yours (by any number of ways, all situational and impossible to postulate at this point), means that at the end of the game, you win because you control one objective (the one in your enemy's end zone) to your opponent's zero (because they were unable to score or contest theirs or yours).

If, in some situations you are unable to "not" focus on objectives (meaning a scenario where you pretty much HAVE to take and hold an objective), then what you can do is to bunch all the objectives close together. So doing means you don't need to spread your forces thin to contest multiple objectives to guarantee you have that "one-up" on your opponent. By grouping them all together you can keep your army close and hammer the opponent with everything, without fear of having to waste precious turns trying to contest distant objectives.

Remember: Annihilation is ALWAYS an objective.

DV8




Note that while I agree with 99 percent of what DV8 has said I will say that Stormravens can and should be fielded in DoA armies.