I plan to briefly talk about the datamines in this patch, and why they might suggest the next faction as the Blood Angels, as well as do a bit of speculation about the units that might translate to game.

As always, the datamines are subject to change, but the clues left by Snowprint in this patch, sparse as they are, are too exciting not to share and discuss.

The miners this time have found new upgrades, as well as the requirements for the next Legendary release event.

In the game files are new upgrades as titled on screen.

I am told that these named upgrades take up slots like we have seen for existing factions in the game.

I am not going to read through the list, but there is a lot of blood being mentioned here.

I know what you're thinking, come on Nandi, I've clicked on your video and given you my time and this is all you've got.

There is more, bear with me.

The Visage of Death is a Blood Angels faction enhancement for the Tabletop Army.

It is also the name given to the gold mask worn by Dante and the Sanguinary Guard.

I have to thank Draupnir, another aspiring Tacticus creator, who has been so helpful from a lore point of view.

We know as well that historically Snowprint have been pretty faithful to the community votes.

Every so often there are faction surveys released where the community decide on who they want to see in the game.

I've highlighted a couple of excerpts from the official discord, which would suggest that the Blood Angels are popular write-ins.

The datamines have also shown us there is another legendary release event in the works.

There isn't any information about who the legendary character will be yet, but we will come back to that.

The tracks and requirements are shown here on screen.

I've shared this information with Tawan, who has done his usual spreadsheet mastery and brought you a summary google sheet for you to peruse.

Bear in mind this is all pretty soft stuff, we don't even know who the character will be, but if you just want to see your characters and where they line up against these requirements then you can check out the google sheet in the video description below.

As I said we don't know specifically who the character could be, but we can take a reasonable stab at who it might be based on previous datamines and information.

At the moment the uncompleted factions are shown here on screen.

The Tyranids are awaiting their fifth character, who we know is the parasite of Mortrex.

This excerpt was taken from Snowprint designer, Kyle, on the official discord.

It suggests that Snowprint have the character ready to go and are using it as a fallback option in case one of their other characters in development falls through.

He's even gone as far as to say that it won't be a legendary unlock.

Now obviously things can change and some of these posts are a few months old, but previous datamines have also suggested that the parasite would be an epic unlock.

The combination of these bits of information make it seem unlikely to be the coming legendary release character.

The next unfinished faction is the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I suppose it is possible that they get another legendary character alongside Vitruvius Thanek.

There hasn't been much official chatter about this, but again we have previously datamined this character as Psygex, the Cataphron Destroyer.

Previous datamines have this character as an uncommon unlock, making it unlikely to be a legendary release event character.

What about the World Eaters?

They've just had Karn, could they have a legendary character as their fifth character?

Well I suppose they could, but again we've seen the Master of Executions, Tarvak, datamined previously as well.

The only true unknown at this stage is who the last Dark Angel will be.

We're getting Barakil, the Deathwing Terminator on June 30th as the fourth character to join the faction.

I suppose theoretically this legendary release event could be the faction's fifth character.

I don't really have any evidence to support or refute that.

But for the sake of speculation and because we have seen a raft of new presumed Blood Angel stuff added to the game, let's keep rolling and see what theories we can craft.

For those of you that want the hard stuff, this is probably where the video stops being useful.

I'm going to spend the next few minutes speculating on what I think the next legendary character will be, as well as how the Blood Angels faction might manifest in game.

The first thing is the Blood Angels faction trait.

This is described in the datasheets as the Red Thirst, which gives Blood Angels units bonus strength and attacks when they charge into melee combat.

This probably most closely resembles the Rapid Assault trait already in the game, giving the unit bonus movement and damage until it attacks.

Rapid Assault is an existing trait though, and I think they'll probably come up with something more exciting if it ends up being a defining faction trait.

Who might we see in the faction?

Well, generally each faction has had two legendary or named characters alongside three non-named characters.

Of course, there are some exceptions to that rule, with some factions having three named characters like the Space Wolves, with Ragnar, Niall, and Arjak.

Other factions are less fortunate, like the poor Tyranids.

Therefore, I think two named characters is a reasonable baseline to work from.

In asking around, Commander Dante seems to be the most iconic Blood Angels character that most of my respondents are confident will come to the game as faction leader.

He is the chapter master for the Blood Angels, so they are equivalent of Marnius Calgar, and has been an iconic tabletop feature for a long time.

His datasheet describes him with his two iconic weapons.

Perdition is a melter pistol that does high damage at short range, and is likely to do melter damage in some capacity.

The Axe Mortalis is his named melee axe, which could deliver power or piercing melee damage.

Dante has a movement of 12 inches on the tabletop, which is super fast, and as you can see on the bottom of the datasheet, he has the fly keyword, courtesy of his jump pack, so we might see him with flying and movement 4 at baseline.

Personally, Mephiston is the legendary that I know the best and is probably just as iconic as Dante.

I used to own a model for him back in 4th edition when I toyed with the idea of building a Blood Angels army.

He is the chief librarian for the faction, and would come to the game as a powerful psyker.

There are lots of potentially cool abilities he could have, but he does psychic damage through his melee weapon as well as either a ranged plasma or psychic attack, at least based on his datasheet for tabletop.

He also has a psychic hood, which might confer some defensive bonuses against enemy psykers.

Moving down in order of eliteness, I wonder if we'll get a Sanguinary Guard as an elite unit.

These units are also iconic Blood Angels, wearing the gold masks known as the Visage of Death.

They are highly mobile, with their jump packs allowing them to move 12 inches, and incredibly lethal in close combat, especially when combined with the faction trait of bloodthirst.

I think this is probably my most confident speculation for the faction, as I don't think you can bring Blood Angels to the game without their iconic gold clad warriors.

Next up, I wondered about the Sanguinary Priests.

The Imperial Alliance already have two healers through Incisus and Isabella, and it's possible that the Sanguinary Priest becomes a third.

The Blood Angels faction is quite melee heavy thematically, and they may try and rush towards an enemy and kill them as soon as possible.

A healer type unit would help keep the team alive and sustained as they cross the battlefield as Angels of Death.

The final unit that I think we'll see is a Death Company unit of some description.

I've pulled up the Intercessor datasheet, but it could just as easily be a normal Death Company infantry.

Lorewise the Death Company are Blood Angels that have succumbed to the Black Rage, a psychosis that is an inherent risk for any Space Marine with the Blood Angel's gene seed.

The faction could be all melee, as we're expecting with the World Eaters, or the Death Company unit might be a way to shoehorn something in with ranged attacks.

So what do you think?

Do you think the Blood Angels are a reasonable speculation for the next faction?

What about the units that you would expect to see?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for sticking around, that's all I've got for today.

I like helping those that help me, and I've left Tawan's referral code here on screen.

Entering it gets you 100 Blackstone and supports Tawan, who in turn supports me in the work that I do.

It is single use though, so choose who you support carefully.

Bye for now!