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Hey I bought the DE codex and saw that two of the Heavy Support choices are IG Vindicator style aircraft

ie Voidraven Bomber and Razorwing Fighter



I am salivating at the prospect of sonic boom over the opposition dropping bombs or gunshipping them to death. Are either of these viable support choices? I'm waiting for a Dark Eldar cockpit piece similar to the Falcon Grav Tank kit's before attempting to make these



How tactically viable are the voidraven bomber / razorwing fighter?

Well, I had a similar reaction. To keep it short:

They seem to have some great potential, but their weak armor and high cost seems to make them a loosing option.

A razorback is 35, with great guns is what, 70 points?

These are the same armor and much faster and better armed for 120+, nearly double, just to expensive.

Quite pricey and mainly bring in anti infantry firepower which should usually be already covered by other choices. The main issue imo is that they also compete for the tried and tested anti tank Ravagers. But if you got the points you could try them.

I'd do it for thematic coolness and for building the kits if they are cool looking, but I think they'd stay out of the tourney versions of a DE army I would use.

I'd be happy to see them across the table, I think Long Fangs (and other 48 inch range guns) would generally end them pretty fast!

Complete noob at this but... is they can fire when going really fast can they rely on the "moving fast" save??

I suspect you'd have to use it by moving its maximum alotment each turn from which it can fire weapons

If it does this, it can't shoot. And being up on a flying stand, getting cover will be very difficult.

Point for point, there is no reason to take these over Ravagers.

But, the models will most likely be awesome and they are not bad, just not as good as the ravager. I think people will use them more for cool factor than anything else. The cheaper, shootier and easier to hide Ravager will nearly always take the flyers' place in a competitive list.

I like my void raven.bit performs well. I know the math folks do not like the raven but S9 lances are good. If you do not go first reserve it and it will be effective when it comes in. I typically run 2 shatter fields which is good anti-horde.

You can see my whip raven at my blog in my sig below.

I'm not sure if it's GW making units that suffer from One With Nothing syndrome (i.e. it is useless and not competitive but adds flavour)

or ,

because no model exists, it hasn't been playtested enough to explore the possibilities.





I'm intrigued. Thanks acsmedic for giving me an anecdote for how you run them.

Razorwings are worth it because they bring staggering anti-infantry firepower at 48", can deepstrike or move 12" and still fire four 48" large blasts that wound MEQs on a 2+ (or wound anything on a 2+ coupled with pinning or get an S7 reroll failed to wound rolls, for +5 points per shot), and then have 2/3rds the anti-tank firepower of a ravager too. All for just 15 points more than a tricked out ravager capable of deepstriking costs.

Voidravens I'd argue against, but only because they don't have the missiles included, and even the basic ones cost ten points per shot. S9 lances are nice, but not worth losing a shot and upping the cost so much.

That's the thing though, you don't need any more anti infantry firepower in a DE list, you get tons of it with Venoms and your own infantry. The Ravager is the best, long range AT platform you have in the list. That is why it outshines the other choices in an efficiency comparison.

Now as for preference, hell, go with whatever you want.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. ACSmedic
That model is looking ace!

But there's nothing else with that range, or that can hit quite that hard. Two ravagers and a razorwing, with everything else loaded into raiders, along with the haywire grenades wyches can take, will have more than enough antitank to easily deal with any armor but mech guard (which it should still be able to handle if played right), while the razorwing brings far better anti-infantry than its cost in venoms, especially against horde armies that you'd otherwise have some trouble saturating with fire (while not being all that big a sacrifice in anti-tank capability either).

That is a good a point, it does have twice the range. Plus with a 36" turbo boost it is a hell of an objective contester, if it lives to end game, which with it's range is plausible.

I'd still go with triple Ravagers, but I do see your point.

Reecius wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. ACSmedic
That model is looking ace!

Thanks! I also use a combined arms approach with beast masters, haywire Wyches, 2ravagers, and the void raven. My philosphy is threaten them in multiple ways and screw up their target allocation. In bigger games toss in some blaster true born. YMMV but it works well for me in a heavy mech meta area.

Jwolf over at BoLS uses the same strategy and I think with a very skilled player it can be great as combined arms gives you tools to threaten every army you face and doesn't leave you as a "one trick pony" as you can get with a spam list.

My only fear with that philosophy is that if the one unit you have that is a real threat to the enemy, without redundancy it can be eliminated quickly. That is why I adhere to the spam techniques of list building as it allows you absorb loses without losing your ability to fight back.

Combined arms is admittedly a mind game strategy that does not work against competent opponents. It can mess them up early game but unless it is a combined arms/alpha strike army, it rarely works (and even if you get them off guard, you can easily falter, still)

I agree in general, but some excellent players like Inquisitor Malice and Jwolf have both won major tournaments using armies most would consider weak or unfocused that had a wide variety of units and little to now unit replication.

I think it just requires a very good, very experienced player to make the most of these types of armies whereas in most hands, the min/maxed spam lists will be better.

I think the fighters and bombers were put in to help with one of the bigger problems that DE had before the new codex: Scaling. 2500 was one of the most awful points levels to play DE at and being able to bump up a ravager to a void raven bomber will net you almost equal anti-tank with a very significant bump in anti-infantry depending on missiles and similar for the razorwing except for slightly less anti-tank (but cheaper allowing for that AT to be made up elsewhere in the lsit)

As it stands I think DE now scales very well and as you get to 2000-2500 they are still perfectly viable and have grown into many more builds than they would have without the fighter/bomber.

I personally love the Razorwing. If you drop four missiles down you will take out a complete infantry squad, alpha strike at its finest. On top of that it has two dark lances which means that after you trash their troops you can go tank hunting. It can easily make it's points back in the first turn, plus your opponent will be so freaked out by it they will concentrate fire toward them, meaning your raider's don't go down in as great of numbers or as early. Combine a ff and ns and you have a very very viable threat.

A fascinating insight lad, thanks.

Did I forget to mention that Dakka is awesome?? why?

You.

Thanks again

Great discussion and information, thanks all.