The art of objective holding: rise of the Tactical Squad

Tacticals and Aegis Defense Line, the new marine bread and butter?

This is the first (hopefully) of a series of articles analyzing how to play Blood Angels in 6th edition and trying to devise new methods to make our army competitive on the gaming table.

I will start with the humble tactical squad, because i think it's the unit that had the major change in use within our army from 5th to 6th edition.

Indeed, in 5th edition there was no reason at all to fill a troop slot with tacticals instead of assault marines. The typical Blood Angel assault marine was superior in every aspect to his brother tactical marine. He had far more mobility, same staying power and point to point was a lot more cost effective.

Sadly, this has changed with the new rules: firstly, it's a lot easier to kill marines now. There's even single weapons that's entirely devoted to that (baleflamer omg...). So having a power armour it's not a warranty of survival on his own anymore.

Second, the mechanized assault armies of past are long gone (at least for what concerns Blood Angels). No more your average ass-marine can disembark from a Rhino or Razorback and engage the enemy in the same turn, thus staying safe from incoming fire. Nor they can stay safe inside their transports and still capture their objective...

Thirdly, the Sanguinary Priest and his portable Feel no Pain have been nerfed great time: reduced from 4+ to 5+ (i know, now you can save against more weapons but still it's a 22% less chance to make it). Combine this with the HUGE Furious Charge nerf (bye bye +1I and bye bye striking first against other MEQ) and the ass-marine becomes a lot less survivable both from enemy shooting and during the close combat phase.

Under this light, tactical squads became a lot more useful for a single but really important task: objective holding. The importance of this function in 6th edition is stressed everywhere so no need to explain it here. But why tacticals should be better at it?

Because they are cheaper than assault squads. A lot cheaper. Even if they are still more expensive than the new DA tacticals, they only cost 170 points with a flamer and a missile launcher (both excellent weapons, in defensive and offensive roles). To reasonably kit an assault squad you need at least 215 pts for a pair of melta guns and melta bombs, and then they need to get up close to enemy armor, not to stay back camping an objective. Or, if you wanna kit them defensively, you need to give up the jump packs, buy a Rhino, a pair of flamers and a power fist, for a grand total of 240 points (and still, Rhino will die easily and give away First Blood).
A tactical hiding behind an ADL with quad gun and a librarian in support can do even better: 2+ cover saves when going to ground make them a tough cookie (yes, they will only snap shot then, but they are not there to shoot, they are there to hold a precious objective while your assault marines are away doing the real killing), and the libby can deal some decent anti air manning the quad gun while giving prescience to that missile launcher for some extra anti air fire (it will hit on 6's anyway so who cares if you are going to ground? At least you get the reroll from prescience).
I would advise not to combat squad, since you need a tough blob to stay on the objective and hold it. Five men squads are too easy to kill or rout, and then ten men are more effective since the librarian can give prescience to all. Of course, if you need to hold many objectives (or, on the contrary, if objective holding is not a concern for you) you can split the special weapon and send it to do some forward mayhem (or just to distract enemy fire from the real target).
So, in conclusion, my humble opinion here is that you need some tactical squads now (one or two, depending on how many points you are playing and how many objectives you need to hold). You can also give 'em Rhinos for cover against those pesky heldrake's baleflamers, but that will raise their price and probably give away some easy VP's to your opponent.
In the end, waiting for a new codex, i think that tactical squads are a good stop-gap unit, but in reality Blood Angels should be centered around aggressive, assault focused tactics and not objective camping. While we still wait, though, this is what we have, and what we need to make good use of. On a final note, i always thought that tactical squads are easy and fun to paint and they make a great show on the gaming table, so even from an aesthetic p.o.w. it doesn't hurt to have a few of them hanging around!