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A little history before I begin asking my questions. I played Dark Angles back in 4th and the early part of 5th. I stopped playing them about 2 years ago when I picked up Orks...I have't touched one of their models sense, until I found a half assembled ravenwing box today.

So here is my question:

How do you make them an effective army? Is RW/DW dead (this is what I use to run)?

I know they will not be a top tier list anymore (even among SM armies) but I want to get them back out on the table at some point. I have the newest FaQ and am pondering the new options this army has.

there are 3 ways to make DAs decent.


Deathwing,

Ravenwing,

or Doublewing(both Belial and Samial)

any other army build and you might as well play Vanilla.


Deathwing got alot nastier with the new FAQ.

Apparently the new FAQ makes deathwing really good. I played deathwing a couple months ago, very tough army but couldn't do much against me because the opponent wasn't that canny, and all his units had assault cannons. (not good vs wave serpents!)

Seems like any regular power-armour marines, the regular codex can do better, to say nothing of SW or BA. Take plenty of deathwing, remember you can mix units up, so have some TH/SS, a cyclone missile launcher, and some normal terminators or lightning claws in every squad. Deathwing assault is not mandatory, it can be effective to just march up the board.

Ravenwing I know nothing about, I suppose a couple small squads with meltaguns, and some landspeeders, would make mobile fire support for a deathwing army.

Casper wrote:A little history before I begin asking my questions. I played Dark Angles back in 4th and the early part of 5th. I stopped playing them about 2 years ago when I picked up Orks...I have't touched one of their models sense, until I found a half assembled ravenwing box today.

So here is my question:

How do you make them an effective army? Is RW/DW dead (this is what I use to run)?

I know they will not be a top tier list anymore (even among SM armies) but I want to get them back out on the table at some point. I have the newest FaQ and am pondering the new options this army has.

Deathwing are now a very effective army list, since their cyclone missile launchers gained the ability to fire two shots each. The current list building wisdom is field a crapload of terminators with thunder hammers and storm shields (to give them a 3+ invulnerabale save), and a cyclone launcher in each squad. Throw in a couple of preds with lascannon sponsoons, or speeders with cyclone launchers, and you have a very viable army.

Best units in DA codex:

Deathwing squad. 235 for 5 AssTerms with CML
Land Speeder Typhoon with MM

I run 25 Terminators in 1500 with land speeder support and it's a scary army for a lot of people to face off against. You can build specifically against it, but with the exception of a couple DE and IG builds they look nothing like the "normal" ML and MSU spam that's dominating the meta right now.

What point's level are you looking at? The deathwing squads are just amazing now. I still would never use Sammael (just too expensive). However I have had a lot of fun with 5 deathwing squads and then three squads of ravenwing bikes w/ melta for tank hunting.

In lower point levels swapping all the bikes for typhoon gives you very effective down range shooting for lower points.

Dual Land Raider, speeder's, and then terminators also seems like a fun combination.

The big thing I've seen as far as weaknesses go is the lack of any psychic defense for the army. This really hurts against lash-oblit chaos, nid's (paroxysm), and marines (null zone). Currently I'm running a brother captain with a hood to offset this, I'm not sure what the plan will be at the end of the month, I guess I'll just enjoy it while it lasts.

I still would never use Sammael (just too expensive)

I strongly disagree, if he is mounted in his landspeeder. He is one of the best SCs in my opinion. How many other special characters can absorb so much fire for your army?

I play pure ravenwing, in fact I have not played anything but pure ravenwing (at least when playing Dark Angels) in years. They are very similar to Dark Eldar in that they are very fragile, but they are capable of crushing every style or army if you play them properly