Today on List Review we’ve got a little something from the far side of the Atlantic- a Ravenwing list from a poster in Poland with a very different set of rules and restrictions to work with. For those of you in different metas, eyes open, ’cause we’re working with quite the change in assumptions here. Be sure to check out the Tactics Corner for more great articles!
(1470pts)
RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE
-Sammael 200pts
-Ravenwing Command Squad (5) 235pts
1x Grenade Launcher
Apothecary
Ravenwing Champion
-Ravenwing Bike Squad (3) 105pts
2x Grav Gun
-Ravenwing Bike Squad (3) 105pts
2x Grav Gun
-Ravenwing Bike Squad (3) 105pts
2x Grav Gun
-Ravenwing Attack Bike (1) 55pts
1x Multi-Melta
-Ravenwing Attack Bike (1) 55pts
1x Multi-Melta
-Ravenwing Attack Bike (1) 55pts
1x Multi-Melta
-Ravenwing Black Knights (3) 125pts
Melta-Bomb on sergeant
-Ravenwing Black Knights (3) 125pts
Melta-Bomb on sergeant
RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON 305pts
-Darkshroud
-3x Land Speeder
-3x Typhoon Missile Launcher
-3x Heavy Bolter
-Unlimited detachments.
-No restrictions on anything rules-wise (D, Invisibility, 2+ re-rollable… none of that is modified).
-Ravenwing Strike Force played RAW (Sammael is only available HQ).
-Standard game-size is 1500pts (sometimes 1850).
-All missions include an Eternal War component, a Maelstrom (GW cards) component, Kill Points, plus Slay the Warlord, Firstblood, Linebreaker.
Since all missions include Kill Points, we all tend to aim to play lists with not many KP, or at least not easily killable ones.
So, we have an interesting little piece on our plate here. Ravenwing are very good- I’ve been running a RW component in my own tournament army for a number of months here and had very good experiences with them. The speed, hitting power, survivability, and flexibility of their units is hard to match- however, to this list is NOT taking good advantage of most of their abilities. While it certainly has some good tools in it, the list itself is problematic at best and doesn’t really do a good job of matching its own aims- for example, it notes that it wants to minimize Kill Points due to the mission rules, but has large numbers of minimized units. So we’re probably going to have to rebuild this army from the ground up in order to make it work, but the original poster said (in later comments) that he wasn’t bound to any particular specifications and just wanted the list improved overall.
The big thing to take note here is that the usual ITC restrictions are NOT in place, which is absolutely huge as a take-away. Ravenwing are potentially huge in such an environment due to their ability to get a 2+ rerollable cover save, but there are plenty of other things to worry about. However, the tournaments also do not allow Forge World rules, meaning that some of the very threatening Lords of War (such as AP2 Ignores Cover mega-blasts) are not available; apparently flyers in general (and Heldrakes in particular) are also rare in his area, which lets us tick off another potential point of concern for the army.
So, we want an army that scores objectives well, doesn’t easily give up KP easily, and has enough punch to it to make folks worry. These are all very doable things within the context of a Ravenwing force, as RW are mobile enough (and punchy enough) that they can often overrun objectives even despite lacking ObSec and are extremely hard to get rid of with any kind of shooting- at my most recent tournament, I had a three-man unit of Black Knights tank twenty saves from a squad of Scatter Bikes without losing a single member. This is obviously better than average, but it’s not so much better that you shouldn’t expect to see it happen reasonably often- that reroll on Jink saves is absolutely clutch and lets you simply ignore many armies main strategy outright.
So what we’re looking to add to the army is actually not the main strategy (i.e. survivability) because we’ve got that covered; instead, we need to tinker with the support components that are added to solve problems for the army and look at rejiggering the main body of the force to more accurately suit our aims.
The Ravenwing
First off, let’s address the Ravenwing component of the army. Being forced to take Sammael is unfortunate because that guy is little more than a weight around our neck, but sadly it is a necessary evil in this circumstance. Sammy does at least have one thing going for him, a good warlord trait- between Scout, two movement phases and the potential for Turbo-Boost we should be getting into combat on turn 2 every single time, and against unwary foes we can very easily get into combat in the first turn by simply choosing not to Scout up. Our minimum threat range is 17″ and 21″ is a pretty reliable number for Sammy’s unit- and should the enemy deploy on the line, a roll of ‘9’ on the dice will get us in on the first turn, far from impossible to see.
Beyond Sammael himself, our aim with the Ravenwing Strike Force is simple: we want to stay alive, get into fights where the opponent can’t deal with us, and overwhelm them early before attrition can wear down our total number of models. This essentially prohibits us from making any use of the two Ravenwing flyers despite them being pretty decent, as they are forced to start in reserve and thus also make the whole detachment stay in reserve, as per its own rules- we want to play aggressively, and while the option to stay in reserve is handy to have, we don’t want to lock ourselves into that decision every game.
Our main trick is going to be achieving a 2+ rerollable cover save across the whole army; this is critical because the progression of survivability is exponential as our save goes up. A 4+ rerollable passes 75% of the time, but a 3+ rerollable passes 89% of the time and a 2+ rerollable passes a back-breaking 97% of the time. And that’s the average– you would be well within your rights to expect to pass two hundred saves in a row some games. What this means in essence is that a Ravenwing army under full buffs simply cannot be shot at without Ignores Cover- it simply does not accomplish anything, end of story. It is thus imperative that we maximize our ability to get this across all of our units.
The Darkshroud, obviously, is one component of this- the Speeder itself has the Shrouded rule (meaning it can Jink for a 2+) and it grants Stealth to all other Dark Angels units within 6″. As a fairly important side benefit, it also denies enemies the ability to fire Overwatch if we charge from within 6″ of the Darkshroud- this can help us take care of some very problematic units (such as Wraithguard) and armies (such as Tau), so it’s a welcome benefit. While AV10 does not excite, three HP does at least grant us the ability to hopefully survive the one or two Ignores Cover shots capable of hurting us before we get into combat. However, as a 6″ radius is actually pretty small, we will have to look seriously into investing into more than one of them- mobility is a big advantage of the army, so we don’t want to be confining ourselves to a relatively-small area of the battlefield if we can help it.
The second component of our 2+ shenanigans is Skilled Rider, which grants us (amongst other things) +1 to our Jink saves. Normal Ravenwing Bikers do not have not have the rule, sadly, but Black Knights and Sammael do, which is why we will be focusing on them. Black Knights in particular deserve a lot more credit than they get- with three attacks standing still, S5 rending in melee, Scout and Hit and Run and all of the other standard Ravenwing rules, twin-linked Plasmaguns on every model, and the option to pick up Stasis Grenades (-1WS/Init to any unit hit by them) they are an absolute package even at 40pts a piece. The strength of Ravenwing comes largely from the Knights, who can do essentially any job you can imagine with relative proficiency. Combined with their survivability and speed, a Ravenwing army can simply drown the enemy in tough, punchy bodies that no unit is fast enough to escape from and even melee forces will find themselves overwhelmed as the Knights make favorable charges, block movement, and soften up tough targets with the aid of Stasis and other abilities.
The Other
However, like any army Ravenwing need some help from their friends to get by- Black Knights do everything fairly well but don’t excel in any particular arena, so we need to bring in some specialists to help us out. We want these other units to fit with our general strategy- aggressive, fast, and multitalented. We’d also like them to have a bit of melee punch if possible, because S5 Rending is a great general-purpose profile, but when you’re trying to break walkers, MCs, 2+ saves, and other tough targets it can be really unreliable.
Two general options open themselves to us: Thunderwolves and Librarian Conclave. The former uses the Company of the Great Wolf to bring 3-4 characters riding Thunderwolves and carrying Power Fists to add some serious hitting power to the list for a reasonable price; although it doesn’t help a lot with our overall body count, S10 AP2 attacks are hard to resist, especially in numbers. The latter option is pretty simple- we bring a trio of Level 2 Librarians on bikes to the party to spam out powerful spells, including Prescience, Invisibility, Summoning, etc. While less reliable (as we don’t always know what powers we’ll roll up) it does have the advantage of flexibility- we can customize our powers game-to-game to handle many different types of targets, and can shut down many enemy shenanigans like 2+ rerollable invulns, etc by virtue of our own psyker status.
Choosing between these two options is actually fairly difficult, but we have a small saving grace here- they come to almost exactly the same number of points, so we really don’t have to choose, at least not from a list-building perspective. I’ll go with the Thunderwoof version below, but for those that want to try the alternative it’s a simple matter to swap it out for the other. Note that we favor Iron Hands chapter tactics for several reasons- we already have HnR and Skilled Rider, making their presence on the Librarians redundant and the FNP allows us to more easily shrug off Perils wounds when we take them (especially while joined to the Command Squad and its Apothecary) and IWND helps us in this regard as well.
New and Improved
1500pts
RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE
1 Sammael (Warlord) (200)
6 Ravenwing Command Squad (Apothecary, 2 Grenade Launcher) (270)
3 Black Knights (Grenade Launcher) (120)
3 Black Knights (Grenade Launcher) (120)
3 Black Knights (Grenade Launcher) (120)
3 Black Knights (Grenade Launcher) (120)
1 Attack Bike (Multimelta) (55)
1 Darkshroud (80)
1 Darkshroud (80)
COMPANY OF THE GREAT WOLF
1 Wolf Guard Battle Leader (Thunderwolf, Power Fist) (125)
1 Iron Priest (Thunderwolf) (105)
1 Iron Priest (Thunderwolf) (105)
So we essentially have five units of Knights to distribute our characters amongst; we can either ball them all up into the Command Squad if we need a deathstar with maximum survivability or we can distribute them to the various squads to spread our threats out. Our ability to kill vehicles at range is pretty limited, unfortunately, but we accept that and work under the assumption that our S10 AP1 melee attacks from the Priests can do most of the work as needed. Walkers are surprisingly annoying for us to deal with, though tanking wounds with Sammael is a possibility under some circumstances; Imperial Knights are particularly problematic.
The pair of Darkshrouds is a little bit overkill for such a small army but I think the redundancy is needed so that one lucky jerk getting an order from Yarrick or sniping with Tau doesn’t disable our whole strategy. Note that against Tau we typically want to Outflank- most Tau shooting is not dangerous to us in and of itself, but rather when supported by Markerlights. If we can eliminate their sources of ML hits before they can respond (by getting the first turn, Outflanking, etc) we are in a much better position even if they have Interceptor.
One thing the original poster asked for was expansion to 1850, which is actually exceptionally easy in this case- we would prefer this to be an 1850 list, as it turns out. Adding two or three more Black Knight squads (with the potential for some more Attack Bikes to take the place of the last one) would be our go-to choice. We also have the option to bring in support elements via the CotG detachment if we need it- this is more relevant when Forge World is available for stuff like Hyperios Batteries, but it’s not without strengths here as well.
That just about wraps it up for this installment of List Review; hopefully this has been helpful and informative to all of you out there.