Dark Angels Black Knights are the new GOLD

Hello all,

Apologies for the delayed postings, but you know....life.  I wanted to talk with you today about a unit in the Dark Angels codex that recently caught my eye, the Black Knights.  No, I'm not talking about the delightful comedy romp starring Martin Lawrence (though I could write an entire blog post about the topic), I'm talking about the Dark Angel's elite hard hitting, bike riding hooligans.

I'll be honest.  The first time I read through the Dark Angels codex I didn't give the Black Knights a second glance.  I was far more interested in the standard Raven Wing bikers.  This was mostly because I like to run Azrael and his ability to unlock the standard bikers as Troop choices really interested me.  After several months of running Dark Angels as my primary army I was becoming dissatisfied with my Ravenwing bikers.  While their toughness 5 was nice and their 4/5+ jink save is useful, the plethora of Helldrakes being fielded rendered them fairly obsolete.  Don't get me wrong I still love to run them in my army lists, and with Azrael being my primary HQ it's nice to have such fast moving Troop choices, but they just weren't getting as much done as I thought they would.  Enter Reece Robbins.  My roommate and sexual confidant, Reece mentioned that he had begun to use the Black Knights in his own Dark Angels force and expounded their merits both loudly and drunkenly.  Intrigued, I began to look into the unit more closely.  Here's the basics,

• Toughness 5 
• 12'' movement plus a 12'' turbo boost.  Relentless.
• Skilled Rider.  +1 jink save/automatic dangerous terrain pass
• Frag/Krak grenades.
• Teleport Homer
• Grim Resolve (Stubborn LD)
• Hit and Run
• Scouts (12'' move?YES)
• Corvus Hammer.  Strength 5 rending attacks.  Arguably more powerful than a power weapon.  4 attacks on the charge.  Yes please.
• Plasma Talon.  Twin-Linked 18'' Plasma Guns.  

As you can see, they are pretty hard hitting both in the shooting phase AND the assault phase.  They are 15 points more expensive than a Ravenwing biker and get SO MUCH MORE.  Why did I miss these guys? 

There is still one nagging issue.  How to deal with the ever prevalent Hell Turkeys with their 360 degree Strength 7 AP 3 Flamer of Doom (oh and also their Strength 7 no cover save Vector Strikes).   After some thought and consultation with the council (Frontline Games)  it was determined that by taking the Ravenwing Command Squad you could get an Apothecary for around 20 more points (DA FAQ now allows you to add 2 more Black Knights to the Command Squad).  This way you get Feel No Pain against Hell Turkey shenanigans and makes them more survivable to small arms fire.  

That wasn't enough though, I needed them to be MORE durable (I roll a LOT of 1's and 2's).  Since I HAVE to take an HQ on a bike to unlock the Ravenwing Command Squad, I decided to go with a Librarian.  I then gave him the Power Field Generator, which grants the model and any other model within 3'' a 4+ Invulnerable save.  NOW WE'RE COOKING WITH FIRE!  Oh, it also confers a 4+ invulnerable save to ENEMY units withing 3"?  FUCK.MY.NUTS.  Well, the trick is to not get charged if you can help it and break the Librarian off if you MUST charge the unit into something.  The 4+ Invulnerable Save is pretty crucial to my overall list (READ: MY NEXT POST) so it IS very important for this guy to have it, so again, just be smart with your positioning. 

What do you guys think about these Caballero Negroes?

Why BOLS sucks more than your mom (A Rant in A Minor)

Not able to leave a critical comment on BOLS? It’s more likely than you may think.  Would you like to know more?

I think most people who have the faculty of both their eyes and half of their brain know that the infamous war gaming blog Bell of Lost Souls has become synonymous with poor writing and non-existent editing.  Every other post is now either a loosely veiled advertisement (Man Boy Genius) or one of four writers reviewing the same blog at the same time.  I honestly think that the only reason I still visit the site is to get my blood pressure up in order to concern my doctor.  I’ll give a few more dollars to Larry Vela in order to get ideas for my own blog, and hey, he needs to feed his family, too.  Above all of the advertisements and incoherent, borderline unintelligibly written articles there is one contributor who fully and completely activates my nerd rage.  He goes by the name of Mercer.  I think my biggest complaint about Mercer is that his articles always feel like they were written 5 minutes before the deadline.  I can image him waking up hung-over, a slight stubble growing across his neck.  He scratches his belly and looks around at the devastation he caused in his studio apartment.  He slowly becomes aware that it is Tuesday, and his article for BOLS is due in 5 minutes.  He walks to the computer on his milk carton desk and quickly posts a picture of a yellow rhino and a blue rhino.  He then writes a line of text under the pictures that reads ‘so what do you like better, yellow or blue?’  He submits his article and gets 10,000 views. 

While the above story is entirely fictional, and perhaps a bit harsh (I’m sure Mercer is a nice guy in real life) the article he posted is basically an article he posted on BOLS a couple months ago verbatim.  It’s this type of lazy bullshit that gets me so irritated with Larry Vela.  He makes a great deal of money on his website, and with the amount of people that regularly read the website (myself included) you would think he gives more of a shit in regards to what is posted on his website.  You have four authors writing the same review for the Deamon codex!  Larry, I’m going to give you a quick editing trick and I won’t charge you a cent for it.  PLAN YOUR CONTENT EVERY MONTH!  Don’t just pick people you like to write articles and then give them a hard deadline.  You have a responsibility to give a fuck.  People give you money by visiting your site.  Maybe, for once, pretend you care about them and stop posting bullshit advertisements for Man Boy Genius and half assed reviews that read like a high school freshman’s first review of Moby Dick.

It also appears that BOLS now moderates comments that might be critical of their writers.  This morning during my morning cup of coffee, I read Mercer’s article Flesh Hounds vs. Seekers.  Here is an example of the fine writing I’ve come to expect,

“Ok I lie about the Seekers, I do not think they are that interesting. I think they are ok so don't get me wrong, just I see the internet saying how awesome they are and not a lot of people seem to give the Flesh Hounds a second thought.”

If anyone can break this down into English, please do so for me.  After leaving a comment to the effect that they should edit their posts, I was notified the comment was awaiting approval.  This is the first time this has happened to me, so  I looked at every other comment in the article.  Not one negative comment!  That’s very impressive; I cannot image not ONE person leaving a comment regarding the horrendous grammar and spelling mistakes, or at the very least commenting on the weak review of the models themselves.  The only explanation is that not one comment that was critical of Mercer was allowed to be posted.  Bravo, Mr. Vela.  If you can’t find competent writers or editors you might as well artificially make them appear to be competent by not allowing legitimate criticisms to be voiced.