Great idea on the painting a list as your own custom chapter. I did ultramarines, which now I regret as the
SW and
BA codex are just better -- had I made my own chapter i could play them as
BA or
SW when I wanted something different.
As far as the list in the link, its a prime example of what I was talking about. It wil do great against specific armies, but it will get clobbered by others. Let me give you examples.
It faces a
BA razorback spam list with 8
RBs. Lets assume its playing a smart player who knows to castle. The ravenwing move forward and on the first turn they manage to kill 5 of the razorbacks. On the following turn, the bikes are assaulted by every
BA and wiped off the board.
Lets say that your facing a
KoS army. You move forward and blow a wagon with your
MG. On the following turn, 12 orks assault the sqaud of 4 bikes and clear them off the table with the orks
PK. The same applies to a battlewagon. The orks will deploy out of range of your flamers and then just pound you. Assuming that your
MM destroy the BW -- as it will be obscured by a
KFF the
MM has a ~10.52% of destorying obscured
AV 14. Not betting odds.
S6 Eldar spam will decimate that list. Warwalkers pile in enough
STR 6 shots a turn to wipe one squad of bikes a turn. Add the
SC from the vehicles, and you will lose 2-3 squads per turn against S6 eldar spam. I've been tabled by someone who had 6 war walkers and 4 serpents. He killed all 32 of my bikes by turn 4.
Ravenwing cannot turbo-boost during the scout move. This means that, unlike deffkoptas, you cannot guarantee a round one assault on vehicles. It also means they cannot take advantage of the 3+ cover save that deffkoptas can on their first turn. If that were changed, I would be singing a different tune on the ravenwing scout worth.
I've tried similar lists to the one posted (though I ran with 5 man bike squads using C:
SM) and found big glaring holes in it. Once I started adding some long range support, such as
ACs,
LCs, and
MLs, my entire game changed. Now the truuks were cracked open 20" away, allowing my bikes to attack the troops inside. I could force the
BA to come to be in bite-sized chunks instead of an unmanageable swarm.
My advise : Try some games to see what works. Your local meta may be different than mine so
YMMV.
Also - I got my bikes for ~8 bucks a pop off ebay. Many of them I bought all the pieces for from hordeobits or reddragongames and just made them. Its the cheapest way to build bike armies -- and as an added bonus all your models can be wielding chainswords, bolt pistols, etc. I also added some ravenwing bikers to my army and gave them white robes -- which looks awesome on the ultramarines armor.
