Hi everyone, Michael here with a review of the big guns of the Ravenwing, the Ravenwing Land Speeder Vengeance. For more reviews, analyses and tactics, check out the Tactics Corner.
Overview:
The second of the largest Ravenwing Land Speeders, the Land Speeder Vengeance comes armed with the impressive Plasma Storm Battery, a souped up plasma weapon that is as dangerous to itself as it is to the enemy. The Land Speeder Vengeance has a big gun on a fairly weak chassis. It has armour 10 all round and three hull points, and costs 120 points.
Wargear:
- Heavy Bolter
- Plasma Storm Battery- 36″ range. Gets Hot. Fires either three Heavy S7 AP2 shots or a single S7 AP2 Large Blast.
- Can replace the Heavy Bolter with an Assault Cannon.
Special Rules:
- Fast, Skimmer
- Deep Strike
- Ravenwing- My re-roll failed cover saves when it Jinks.
Tactics:
The Land Speeder Vengeance is ideally suited as a long range support vehicle for the Dark Angels or Ravenwing army. The Plasma Storm Battery is an impressive weapon. A S7 AP2 large blast should make a mess of most infantry in the game, able to take out a big chunk of a unit lacking a decent cover save or invulnerable save. For vehicle targets (or large individual models) it can be fired as Heavy 3, to hopefully score more hits than the single Large Blast wound. The big downside of the Plasma Storm Battery is that it is not twin-linked and has Gets Hot. This means a good chance of the weapon stripping hull points from the Land Speeder Vengeance and possibly even destroying it over the course of the game.
The Land Speeder Vengeance comes with quite a weak vehicle profile. Armour 10 all round and 3 hull points means that most armies will not struggle to bring it down, either through shooting or combat. Being a skimmer, it does have access to a Jink save (4+ re-rollable thanks to Ravnewing). However, jinking with the speeder will pretty much shut down its usefulness in a game. You can risk snap firing the Plasma Storm Battery, but you are just as likely to damage your own vehicle as to hit the enemy forces. The weak armour of the Land Speeder Vengeance, coupled with the relatively short range of the Plasma Storm Battery means that it will be quite easy for your opponent to shut down its firepower, either one turn at a time through forcing it to jink or permanently with its destruction.
It comes with a Heavy Bolter as a secondary weapon, useful for maybe putting some extra wounds on your target. I would not advise taking the Assault Cannon, as you would not wish to reduce the weapons range of the vehicle any further.
Given how easy it is to destroy, the best move for the Land Speeder Vengeance is to stay away from the enemy army and in cover, firing the Plasma Storm Battery at maximum range. One bonus of the Vengeance is that it is a fast skimmer, allowing it to move 12″ and still fire the Plasma Storm Battery. This makes it quite easy to re-position the Land Speeder if it finds itself without a suitable target to fire upon. This also allows you to deploy out of line of sight or further away from your opponent if they get the first turn. Having Deep Strike is also a useful advantage, allowing you to keep the Vengeance in reserve if facing an alpha-strike army or if you are forced to go second. The Land Speeder Vengeance can actually be a potent beta-strike unit when facing a Drop Pod army. Generally, your opponent may not be able to deploy in cover when arriving by Drop Pod. This means there should be little to stop the Large Blast Plasma weapon from decimating any Drop Pod unit (assuming it passes its Gets Hot roll).
Formations
The Land Speeder Vengeance can be taken in the Ravenwing Attack Squadron. This features the Land Speeder Vengeance and a unit of Ravenwing Bikers. The Vengeance gains Scout in the formation. This can be useful if you wish to Outflank with the formation. I would not advise using it to Scout closer to the enemy army, unless you find yourself out of range for a first turn shot or are using Hammer and Anvil deployment. In addition, the Bike Squad gains +1BS when firing at the same target as the Land Speeder Vengeance (assuming it hits the target).
It can also be taken as part of the Ravenwing Support Squadron, along with at least 3 other Land Speeders. If you choose to use this option, I would recommend arming the Land Speeders with long range weaponry, so that you can stay at maximum range for firing. The downside of this is that you need to be within 24″ of other Ravenwing units if you wish to utilise the Ravenshield rule.
Overall
It’s hard to recommend the Ravenwing Land Speeder Vengeance. The Plasma Storm Battery is a powerful weapon, but I think you will struggle to fire it more than once before the vehicle is targeted by the enemy army and either destroyed or forced to Jink, rendering it almost useless. The Ravenwing Darkshroud surpasses the Vengeance, both for usefulness to a Dark Angels army and for durability, as well as being two-thirds the cost.
The Vengeance is rarely seen on the tabletop, so may provide a nasty surprise for an opponent that is not expecting it. This should allow you to get a turn or two of firing at prime enemy targets before it is taken out.
And as always, Frontline Gaming sells Games Workshop product at up to 25% off of retail, every day!
Frontline Gaming will buy your used models for cash or store credit!
Garbage unit.
No, you can’t snap fire blast weapons while jinking.
The Plasma Storm Battery has two firing modes, either a single Large Blast or three plasma shots, so you could always try and snap fire the three shots if you are jinking. The risk there is that you have as much chance of harming yourself with Gets Hot as you have with hitting the enemy unit, as I mentioned above.
I’m sorry, I thought those were small blasts.
It was 3x small blasts originally, unless they changed in the 7th update. That’s how bad this unit is. DA Ravenwing is my primary and I’m not clear on this one.
It’s not enough to make it worthwhile, but I’d note that in the Attack Squadron, if you can score Hits on multiple Units with the Blast, the Bikers can get re-rolls against any of them. Blast a Squad and just tag a Tank next to them to give re-rolls to Melta Bikers.
As much as I love alot of the unique units available to DA, they’re just not on par with points efficacy of SM alternatives. Maybe if this was a 7″ blast plasma cannon; like a mini, mobile, significantly more fragile Plasma Obliterator?
Make Unique Ravenwimg Vehicles Great again! ;-p
I would say that the Darkshroud is the only really good one of the bunch. The Vengeance and the two flyers are great models and nice, characterful additions to an army, but not really worth the points overall.
One of these in a support squadron and sitting next to an ammo dump will really make you think twice about deep-striking in – that large blast is nasty. The easiest way to access that ammo dump is probably the Munitorum Armoured Container – not too expensive for a lot of re-rolls from all your skimmers.
The real difference between this and the similar Tau tactic is that the DA do not really need it – they should be resilient enough to alpha-strike (and assault) that they do not really need to sink the points into this so much.