Site icon

Guest Editorial on the Ravenwing at TSHFT Part 1 by Jeremy Veysseire

Kor'sarro_Khan

This article will cover a specific list that I will be taking to a regional tournament in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, TSHFT OPEN (http://www.tshftopen.com/), ran by a long time TO and awesome persona, Zen from Bloghammer.net.

 

Some of you might recognize me as MikhailLenin, the French Overlord, the guy that wrote that super (aka: Ultra!) boring (aka: Awesome!) article about my Sisters of Battle and GK ally army that I have been seriously enjoying as the dismay of my local 40k cohorts. But since I reserving their 2013 reappearance for BAO, I was going to take something shiny and new for me for TSHFT OPEN.

Originally I was going to be taking a Necron with CSM allies and then GW decided to drop a bomb on me by releasing the DA Codex a week before the event. At first I dismissed the usual exhilaration of new SM codex because who needs angrier, flawed, hateful super humans? Turns out I did (Who’s got two thumbs up someone’s Wallet (aka: rear-end)? GW!). I used to play a White Scars army back in 4th using Ravenwing rules and then in the early days of 5th edition with the new shiny SM codex but they were soon shelved to follow more interesting ventures. But once again this new Codex offers me the childhood glee of being a Loyalist Commander to the best Astartes Legion to have ever been created! (aka: Historically based on the military force that to this day holds the record for largest dominion of Earth.) But what spark this resurgence of Loyalist Mongolian Bike Fever? (Note: No, not yellow fever…)

As you can see from the list above, the changes to the core mechanic of the Ravenwing Units is that they essentially have all the tactics and rules that reflect a fluffy White Scars Company. In the Mini Dex they got from WD in 3rd edition, they had Hit&Run and the first early versions of Outflank. They also had a totem that increased their turboboost distance (Rapid Manoeuvre Warlord Trait from Sammael achieves this for his unit also). They also had the “Born in the Saddle” rule giving them Skilled Rider essentially.

But enough about fluff! What about functionality!?!  Well first here is the 2,000 Points list:

As most of you will notice the army has what I call a Combo (even maybe perhaps a 1-trick Pony, get it White Scars, Mongolians, Ponies! Comedic Gold right there!) essentially around the TL Bolters of the Bikes and the Banner and to a lesser extent the Rad Grenades. Assuming the Banner can live past the first turn of enemy fire, you are on your way to put down a lot of hurt quickly. The other downside is essentially requiring that your army moves into this massive bike fest bubble but I soon realized that no matter what you do, you are essentially stuck doing this as all those bikers will take all the open space in your deployment very quickly. Other double edge sword are the Attack Bikes which always function as independent models and thus are likely to give away First Blood very easily but also greatly increase your effectiveness of firepower. I will be blunt and state that this army has a very Nasty Alpha Strike capability because of Scout for it allows your army to be in the perfect shooting position right off the bat. But the army still suffers from the same pitfalls as I had in late 5th Edition with my Vanilla Marine version. T5 used to mean a big difference but with Tzeentch Flamers, GK and Psybolt, Necrons with Tesla, Helldrakes from CSM, Poison from Dark Eldar there is a lot of armies that mechanically make your T5 Marines just as durable as T4 Marines. While it almost has 50 Models on the table, it is still a very small number relative to some of the firepower from certain builds. I hope to see how far I can take them at TSHFT this weekend. I will let you all know how it does and if it punches Reecius or Frankie in the proverbial “ballsack” or vice versa.

 

Exit mobile version