Blood Angels army rules, detachment abilities, stratagems and lore for Warhammer 40k, with links to the full unit datasheet table.
The Blood Angels are one of the 20 First Founding Legions of the Space Marines and were originally the IX Legion before the Second Founding broke the Legiones Astartes up into separate Chapters of 1,000 Space Marines each.
They are well-known across the galaxy for their bloodthirsty nature in battle, and feared for the curse of flawed gene-seed they carry. The Blood Angels are amongst the longest-living of the Adeptus Astartes, with some of the Chapter's Space Marines having served the Emperor of Mankind for over a thousand standard years.
Due to recent events, the Blood Angels' numbers were severely depleted. Under the threat of extinction, and in order to quickly replenish their numbers, the Blood Angels were forced to ask their kindred Successor Chapters from subsequent Astartes Foundings for a tithe of warriors from the related Chapters' pools of neophytes, their candidate Space Marines.
With these tithes of new recruits, and the recent arrival of the Primaris Space Marines during the Indomitus Crusade, the Blood Angels were able to replenish their losses, though they still face a time of trial like none the Chapter has known since the days of the Horus Heresy.
The Blood Angels are the noble descendants of that most puissant and angelic of the primarchs -- Sanguinius. They are perhaps one of the most celebrated Chapters in the entire Imperium, their countless heroic deeds and victories known to untold billions of the Emperor's subjects across the length and breadth of the galaxy.
The beauteous, angelic visages of the Chapter's heroes adorn Gothic facades and stained glass windows in a million holy basilicas, and their portraits gaze serenely from endlessly copied and much cherished illuminated tomes.
Yet, hidden from the multitudes, the Blood Angels harbour a terrible curse. When their beloved primarch was slain at the hands of the Arch-traitor Horus at the very height of the Horus Heresy, every Blood Angel was doomed to share a portion of the pain inflicted upon his flawless form. From that day forth, every Blood Angel has been tormented by visions of the last moment of Sanguinius.
The older the Space Marine gets, the more frequent and debilitating such waking nightmares become. Should he not fall in battle, every Blood Angel will one day become so consumed by these soul-searing visions that he will descend into a madness in which he must witness the death of Sanguinius over and over again, ever unable to intervene as the Warmaster enacts his vile treachery.
The very inevitability of their curse ennobles the battle-brothers of the Blood Angels, driving them ever onwards to a glorious death in the name of the Emperor and their primarch. Where lesser men might have surrendered to the dark urgings to shed the blood of the enemies of the Emperor, the Blood Angels have remained pure and noble for ten thousand standard years. Despite this, the Chapter is dying, for each year ever more of its brethren succumb to the so-called Red Thirst -- the desire to rend limb from limb those responsible for the death of Sanguinius, and by extension every enemy of the Emperor.
The death of Sanguinius represents one of the most perfidious and tragic moments of the Horus Heresy, for he died at the hands of his brother-primarch, the Arch-traitor Horus. Although some say that the sacrifice weakened the Warmaster just enough to allow the Emperor to later defeat him at the climax of the Siege of Terra, the death of Sanguinius is mourned to this day, and felt keenly by the Blood Angels, in whose veins his blood still pumps.
When war calls and blood is spilled, the Blood Angels are gripped by a fury born of the last moments of their primarch's life.
Fate is a cruel master, for no matter how much his prey might twist or turn, no matter what triumphs they might rise to or what trials they overcome, he will still drag them down. The Blood Angels struggled against the fate written into their very genes, defied the role the Emperor chose for them and dared to believe they could transcend the darkness that followed them.
They took the worst of Mankind and made of it something bright and true, they rose above what they had once been and stood astride the fledgling Imperium like the guardian angels for which they were named. Yet, nurtured in their successes were the seeds of their fall, in the jealousy of the fallen Warmaster Horus who saw in them everything he himself had thrown away.
The opening stroke of the Horus Heresy brought the Blood Angels to their knees, and the tragedies that were to follow would shatter their resolve and leave them broken. Such is the nature of the IXth Legion that they did not surrender to despair nor surrender to darkness, but rose again and again.
What might have Sanguinius and his sons achieved were it not for the dark fate brought upon them by treachery and genetics? What brilliant flower might have bloomed from the carnage and blood of their origins? That unknown future is yet another casualty of Horus' civil war, the Blood Angels left to endure the slow degeneration of their noble line with the stubborn pride that is their hallmark.
There are many noble legends of the Unification Wars, of the battles where the Emperor's newborn Space Marine Legions swept aside all who opposed Him before them. Among these tales there are none to be found that mention the IXth Legion, only grim rumours and half-heard whispers. Where the first companies of the other proto-Legions were blooded in Albia, Yndonesia and Franc alongside the massed ranks of the Thunder Warriors, the IXth Legion was absent, granted a role as vital as it was unsightly.
The old IXth Legion served the Emperor as an inferno serves a general upon the battlefield; they did not conquer but instead ravaged, growing and growing as they went, a weapon that could not be directed or controlled, only endured.
Few in number, the early Space Marine Legions fought as mere vanguards to larger forces, a sharp dagger alongside the blunt sledgehammer of the armies of Unification. They were the fulcrum upon which battles turned, the point of control, waging small scale battles by precision strike and audacious raids. The IXth Legion was made in a different image. Even in their earliest days they were among the largest of the proto-Legions and when they made war it was like the sudden arrival of a tsunami, sweeping away the opposition in a flurry of brutal assaults.
They found themselves deployed to the most dangerous war zones of Terra, to those accursed regions ravaged by the rad-phages and chem strains of Old Night, places where only the most twisted and debased breeds of Mankind still lived. In the wastelands that existed outside of history's spotlight they held the line, alone and unnoticed while the Emperor drove home His grand conquests.
This grim fate was no accident, no arbitrary choice made by a distant general, for each of the Legions had been granted genetic tools to fit the roles for them by the Emperor, and the IXth Legion was no exception.
In all of its incarnations, the IXth Legion defied the standard by which the Legiones Astartes were measured. In its earliest days, it operated with such a simple order of battle and command structure that it could barely be called an army, consisting only of massed infantry companies with few specialised troops of any kind.
Most often these troops were equipped as "reaver" squads, close quarters optimised and wielding arms requiring limited resupply, the perfect warriors for operations undertaken at arm's length from the main force of the Great Crusade. The aberrant quirks of the Legion, the Red Thirst that haunted its warriors, wreaked havoc on its discipline and made any attempt at large scale organisation difficult.
Tactics were often developed and employed at the company or even squad level during combat rather than being part of a larger Legion-wide approach to strategy. This unique manner of operation, fighting at a distance from other units and with limited oversight by the early Imperium's Divisio Militaris, served to limit the impact of the Legion's more aberrant practises on the morale of allied units.
As such there was no concerted effort to bring the Legion into compliance with others of the Imperial Host, and it was a matter of tacit complicity among the various generals and commanders that fought alongside the IXth Legion that it was to be allowed to operate in a manner of its own choosing.
Its first commanders were more warlords than true officers, they enforced discipline at the point of a sword, earned respect with the strength of their arms, and they walked the battlefield as visceral forces of nature. When these respected commanders advanced, the warriors of the IXth Legion followed. When they held the line, their followers dug in, and when they laid down their blades, those around them ceased the killing. It was a brutally efficient structure, one that could be impeded only by the infliction of massive casualties, for even if one warlord fell, there were a dozen veterans ready to step forwards and take his place.
This was all to change with the return of Sanguinius. The winged Primarch was to bring a sense of order to the often fractious Legion, stamping a new structure onto it in the hopes of containing its hunger. Though in essence this new order would seem to be in accord with the Principia Bellicosa, the schema by which the other Legions were organised, in actuality it also varied a great deal from the standard pattern.
It retained the basic structure of companies, initially forming the Legion into 200 companies of approximately 300 Astartes warriors each, although by the last years of the Great Crusade this would have increased to 300 companies each of 500 warriors. However, past this basic structure there were many discrepancies, each chosen by the Great Angel to serve a purpose in his plans.
These companies were grouped into "Hosts" for campaigns requiring greater force of numbers than that possessed of a single company, though each Host was a temporary creature broken and made as tactical need required.
Sanguinius next created three "Spheres" to encompass his Hosts, three chambers by which he would give order and purpose to the warriors of the Legion. Each was separate and distinct from the Three Hundred Companies and the strictures of the Principia Bellicosa, forming a distinct strata of organisation that allowed the transhuman warriors of the IXth Legion to focus their hunger and rage towards a single end and to conquer it.
At first glance it might seem odd that a Space Marine Legion so proud of its traditions would set aside its individuality, but the events of the Horus Heresy had shaken the Blood Angels to their core. The Blood Angels were thus amongst the first Space Marines to adopt Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes.
In the aftermath of Horus' defeat on Terra, the death of Sanguinius left no clear line of succession. Factions within the Blood Angels formed around potential candidates. In addition, the Flaw was slowly making its presence felt, further muddying the Legion's future. Ultimately, it was Azkaellon, sole survivor of the Sanguinary Guard, who drove the Blood Angels' destiny onwards.
Azkaellon -- who saw clearly that the Blood Angels had more pressing worries than organisational doctrine -- ensured the division of the Blood Angels Legion into the Chapters that endure today. These were the Blood Angels themselves, who maintained the old Legion's heraldry and traditions, the Flesh Tearers, the Angels Vermillion, the Angels Encarmine and the Angels Sanguine. What became of Azkaellon himself after this point is unrecorded, but his legacy lives on in the Chapters he created.
The Blood Angels and their Successor Chapters adhere as closely to the Codex Astartes as their flaw allows -- they recognise the strictures of the Codex as a form of discipline that can be used to restrain the Red Thirst. Accordingly, each Chapter has a nominal strength of one thousand battle-brothers under arms, further divided into ten companies of roughly one hundred Space Marines each.
The 1st Company is home to the Chapter's most experienced Veterans -- all of its Battle-Brothers steeped in solar decades, if not Terran centuries, of constant warfare. The 2nd through 5th Companies are the Chapter's backbone, the Battle Companies who form the core of any strike force.
The remaining companies are reserve and training formations of one sort or another. The 6th and 7th Companies are the Tactical Companies, used to reinforce a strike force or battleline when the Battle Companies are overstretched. The 8th and 9th Companies are specialist formations, composed of Assault Squads and Devastator Squads respectively.
These companies are rather more limited in their tactical scope, and are deployed only when an overwhelmingly single-minded approach is required. Finally, the 10th Company is seen by many as the future of the Chapter, for it is here that Scouts hone their skills in the Space Marine way of war. Of all a Chapter's companies, it is the 10th that fights least commonly as a single unit. Though the Scouts are not yet fully trained Space Marines, their skills are highly valued. As a result, every strike force will likely have a squad or two of Scouts attached to it.
Though each company can, and does, fight as a separate unit, a Blood Angels strike force will often be composed of several squads from different companies, assembled on an ad hoc basis according to the mission at hand. Such strike forces are normally given code names, such as Bloodspear, Liberator or Primarch's Wrath.
Nonetheless, a strike force will inevitably be referenced by the company from which most of its personnel are drawn, or the officer that leads it. The company that forms the core of such a strike force can be reinforced by auxiliary squads drawn from the Reserve Companies. Such squads will often become the 11th Squad and upwards of that company for the duration of the strike force's action.
In battle, the Blood Angels Legion was the incarnation of the Emperor's wrath upon those who rejected the gift of Unity. Led by their angelic Primarch Sanguinius, their coming was nothing less than apocalyptic judgement delivered upon the guilty from on high, as descending from the skies on wings of fire, the IXth Legion conquered lost human worlds by their preternatural fury as well as by the dread and awe they created. Entire nations fell to their knees cowering before the wrath and splendour of these "red angels", lest they too perish beneath the Space Marines' glimmering blades. Against the xenos, no such quarter was given, and the wrath of the Legion was made manifest as a tide of unrelenting carnage that only gave way once complete extermination had been achieved.
Throughout the Great Crusade, the IXth Legion became renowned for its "wars of ultimatum". These campaigns of open domination against non-Compliant worlds began with Sanguinius or one of his Praetors affording a world one opportunity to embrace Unification or face a "Day of Revelation", in which they would suffer the fury of the Blood Angels unleashed. Many foes confronted by the gathered IXth Legion hosts were overcome with dread and awe, and capitulated without hesitation.
Lore excerpt from Warhammer 40k Wiki on Fandom, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.