I love Space Marine terminators. Everything about terminators represents the biggest and baddest things about Space Marines, from the massive armour to the iconic bulldog-faced helmets. I used to play Deathwing on the tabletop and it was one of the most fun armies I had ever collected.
Like with Imperial Guard, I had never played 40K CCG Space Marines back in the day, so it’s been a challenge assembling a deck with the cards I currently have. I know at some point I will evolve past the jank commons I’m currently using (at time of writing, the deck is entirely PP except for 3-4 CC cards), so in light of this I would like to sing some praises for the Blood Angels Terminators.
First off, Blood Angels Terminators are monsters on the battlefield. Despite being a bit slow with 1 speed, they have respectable firepower (3), are hard to kill (4 armor), and have an insane assault value (6!). Your opponent will have to respect its ability to do damage.
Being both a line and assault unit has its perks as well. Space Marines have plenty of abilities and command lines that refer to both, such as Rhino (T: Any line unit gets counterattack) and Squad Triton (BA: Rally any assault unit). Specifically, abilities that rally assault units become another way to rally a shooting unit.
Being as tough as they are, Blood Angels Terminators are also much more likely to survive to the end of a battle, which is commonly a good time to begin using your rally abilities, as well as abilities like Techmarine Krey’s command line (BA: Discard a card: shoot with one of your locked units).
The Blood Angels Terminators’ command line can come in handy with your blocking units such as bikes and landspeeders, and comes with an easy test to offset its atrocious die roll.
But it is the die roll that initially turned me off of the card, as I’m sure it did for most players. They can be hard to accommodate when you’re also trying to run 1-die blockbusters like Commander Reifenrath (PP), Captain Agemman (PP), or Vindicare Assassin (PP).
To be honest, after comparing Blood Angels Terminators with their other 40K CCG brethren, they don’t look that bad – although that might be more indicative of how good/bad Terminators generally are in 40K CCG (I count 7 other Terminator units in the game). Squad Gathris (MH) is clearly the best all-around Terminator squad, although as a Malogrim Hive rare I haven’t even seen, getting a hold of a couple might take a while.
Until then, the humble Blood Angels Terminators have their work cut out for them.
Pandora Prime Recon 