I would like to start this off by clarifying: I do not want white scars stripped of what they are getting.

I don't think I need to tell anyway who blood angels are, but just as a refresher: they are a first founding space marines chapter. Their main gimmick is jump packs. We have a unit called sanguinary guard. They are the only chapter specific elite jump packs on table top as of april 2025. We have Death Company Marines with Jump Packs, who are one of two non elite chapter specific units with jump packs. We have Dante, Astorath the Grim, and Lemartes, who are 3 of the 4 characters in space marines who have jump packs. Our army rule is charge and mobility based, inherently rewarding jump packs.

Blood angels are also known as "Codex Divergent." This means that we notably stray from the codex in some way. We are a codex divergent chapter with rules. There are only 4 of those, and 3 are first founding. The other two first founding are dark angels and space wolves.

As it currently stands, Blood Angels will be the only first founding chapter with unique rules to not get a champion skin.

This is astounding. Maybe it's got something to do with how they chose which chapters to give which cosmetics too?
according to Community Manager Mzulft on the Discord: "we tend to base on the global popularity of a chapter; GW also give us help on that"

Allow us to analyze this claim.

According to Goonhammer tournament statistics there were 13198 games played by the blood angels faction (In the pariah nexus mission deck category) between 12/29/2024 and 05/06/2025 (this data collects from tournaments yet to happen this upcoming weekend). If we compare that to other factions who have cosmetics, Dark Angels have 10805 games played in the same time period, and space wolves 5040. Space marines all together (Including generic space marines, blood angels, dark angels, death watch, black templars, and space wolves) played 57935 games, meaning 22.78% of all space marine games are blood angels. Again this is not to say that DA and SW don't deserve their cosmetics. What it is to say is that Blood Angels are certainly a very popular faction. 

"But Stock" I hear you say "That is table top, what about space marine 2?"

I have stats for that aswell.

On the r/spacemarine subreddit user u/gaeb611 made this post and did an unofficial survey of the chapters people play in sm2. There are two interpretations of this data. A few important control variables: The Imperial Fist and Space Wolves cosmetics had not come out yet when this survey was taken.

Interpretation one is by u/gaeb611 whos data is here. This data was obtained by simply taking comments, not by counting upvotes. the top 5 chapters are: Salamanders with 506 players, Dark Angels with 427 players, Blood Angels, with 370 players, Imperial Fists at 321 players, and Black Templars at 290 players. Note that two of these factions had in game cosmetics by this point, specifically a champion skin and weapon skins, and salamanders are incredibly popular amongst online 40k crowds. A flaw with this interpretation is in my (albeit light) research he does not detail his method, and he only included the top 22 results.

Interpretation two is done by u/PH0007 shown here. This data includes upvotes and phrases like "blood for the blood god" or "iron within" to get it's data. Our top 5 have changed slightly. Blood angels come in at number one with 1419, Salamanders come in second with 1239, Imperial Fists come in third at 688, Dark Angels come in fourth at 679, and Raven Guard come in fifth at 469. A notable self admitted flaw with this data is it doesn't filter out duplicate votes.

What does all of this mean? Blood angels are quite popular. Easily one of the most popular chapters in the game. Giving them so little in terms of cosmetics is a tragedy. Especially when they say they chose which chapters get what cosmetics based on general popularity. It's also not like blood angels lack inspiration. We have plenty of stellar art and models to draw inspiration from, even after our less than stellar refresh.

To get into a more personal aside:

This feels like an attempt to give BA as little as possible. Like they don't want to or don't care to put in the effort to give us what they gave DA and SW. If you have seen the leaked cosmetics you'll know that the armor pieces we are getting feel lack luster at best. If they can do 12 companies, 3 weapons, 4 stellar armor pieces, and a champion skin for space wolves, they can at least give us a skin for the BA specific weapon they added to the game. We waited patiently for our turn, and now we are getting bamboozled and shafted.

Here I have created an "Idea" so maybe it will see developer traction. If you agree with this post, upvote it there.

At this point I'm not sure this is GW controlling Saber for the sake of marketing ploy to push SM3 more appealing, or because Saber really against some of the chapters because they themselves are fan of particular chapters, and it's not BA and Salamander.

Of course the Community Manager will never bother reading this post and ask devs to answers this question and go for the usual happy go lucky ignorant "IDW tee hee" or "no plan yet tee hee." FK my life what's going on with this type of company behavior.

Im vibing with this post

The only glimmer of hope is that year 2 there's a second pass on these chapters with more champion skins. DA Plasma Tactical / BA DC Assault / Salamander Heavy Melta / Ultramarines Capt. Sniper etc I don't think we're going to see them backtrack on non customisable champions.

Year 1 was a good deal for pre orders but am I going to drop £40 on another season pass based on these skins? No, I literally play one chapter which I think is where sabre dropped the ball. There will be a lot of people like me that only play as one chapter and have no reason to buy a season pass with no content we want.

Max_Will_It wrote:

At this point I'm not sure this is GW controlling Saber for the sake of marketing ploy to push SM3 more appealing, or because Saber really against some of the chapters because they themselves are fan of particular chapters, and it's not BA and Salamander.

Of course the Community Manager will never bother reading this post and ask devs to answers this question and go for the usual happy go lucky ignorant "IDW tee hee" or "no plan yet tee hee." FK my life what's going on with this type of company behavior.

How is frustrating the majority of the playerbase a ploy to make sm3 appealing? We're years away from SM3 at any rate.

Champion skins are probably one of the most controversial decisions made by sabre. I hate the implementation of these skins because there so restrictive.