Mephiston by Community

This is a big one for Blood Angels players: Mephiston. It's a large points investment that will partially guide the kind of list you will bring.

Mephiston, Lord of Death, has been included in the Blood Angel codices from the beginning.

Mephiston has the problem of not being able to join units. However, he does have a plasma pistol and a force sword. His stat line is impressive- WS7  S6  T6  W5  I7  A4  and he has a 2+ save. Having power weapons weakened really hurts his effectiveness against AP2 enemies. Transfixing Gaze is nice for challenges now too. This might allow him to re-roll attempts to hit and attempts to wound.

Let's see what the community has to say:

Stelek:

Dante. Still overpriced, like all the rest.


Mr. Black:

Well, you stayed scary, didn't you? Mephiston has always been our go-to "Run! Run Away!" character, and now he's back and meaner than ever. You already know his state-line is just insane, but now even Plasma or Melta isn't going to stop him for sure, assuming he has a Priest around, of course. What other marine can you think of that can take a Meltagun to the face and just sneer it off and keep charging? No one, that's who! We also get the honor of having one of the few Mastery Level 3 Psykers in the game, which is always nice. 

On the note of Psychic Powers, however, I can see the merits in taking some of the other options, but for me keeping the three powers he has is just fine. I mean, we have Wings, which combined with Fleet means he is still super mobile, we have Sanguine Sword, so he still hits like a truck, and Unleash Rage so we know those truck-hands will land. Sure, there are other psychic combinations which could prove useful, but we're trading out a complete and whole package for the chance to do some nice tricks, and to me that's a waste. You want to have some mix-and-match fun? Take a standard Librarian.

I don't have much to say about Mephiston here aside from the fact that an already great Special Character was only made better by this edition. His rules mix in a near perfect way to weather any storm that this edition might bring (Wings and Fleet, for example). It seems he gained a whole lot of nifty buffs and tricks without losing anything that made him the scary figurehead he was before... Rock on, Mephiston, ain't no edition going to keep you down!

Sons of Sanguinius:

Well what can I say? Probably the most utilised special characters for blood angels in 5th if not of any army. The amount of lists that I saw without him were few and far between (or maybe that's cos Ven has a major hard on for him... lol) ahem anyway.. 6th seems to have changed things a bit.

Lets get on with it shall we?

So 2+ save is good especially in the new edition with PW being AP3.. Plasma Pistol at AP2 is definitely a bonus due to the likely prevalence in 2+ saves due to the above rule change. Now here's where things get.. iffy. Psychic hood straight away the effectiveness of this has dropped. No straight up shutdown and no long range.. 6" range and less effective at stopping psychic powers is not so great. but don't worry he's still a beast in combat and can fell all before him.. oh wait. No he can't. With the new rules his force sword is still only AP3. Ok great at killing marines. No in fact great at killing 1 marine at a time. Period. With the new challenge rules and Mephistons lack of joining units ability he can only kill one marine a turn in a challenge, and if the opposing sergeant happens to have a storm shield or is a special character with a 2+ save. Big Meph is now seriously struggling to layeth the smack down. A 10 man unit of marines will now hold him up for at least 4 Assault Phases if they pass their Morale checks!! Seriously reducing his impact on the overall game, and for 250pts probably not really such an auto include.

3++:
Our libbies got both boosted and nerfed all at the same time. Boosted in that opposing libbies can't stop our powers that help our own units (Shield, Wings, etc), nerfed because our hoods got nerfed too. Mephiston and Libby Dreads are much more reliable now. That said, fudgemuiffin Wolves and Eldar still have their great psy defence, so it's not all roses.


BA Devastators:

Well, if you are going to go with a big scary character, I suppose this is the one for you. If you take him, you better have a plan for him to stay alive for as long as possible. Otherwise, you have to look back at your list and weigh whether just taking a regular Librarian is the better choice.