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Hi Guys, just got the Dark Angels book and am planning my Deathwing list. After reading around on this forum quite a bit I had in mind a list including Dakka Predators and Typhoon Speeders, but have just endured a tirade of abuse from my mate about something called "fluff". Apparently that's really important, or something...

Please review the 4 lists I came up with and suggest which is most likely to be competitive, and why. There's really no comparison to the Guard army I'm currently using.

Option 1

Belial

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone Missile Launcher
Chainfist
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x CF)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone Missile Launcher
Chainfist
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x CF)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone Missile Launcher
Chainfist
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x CF)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone Missile Launcher
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

3x Landspeeder
Multi Meltas
3x Typhoon Missile Launcher

2x Predator
2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons



Option 2

Belial

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

Dreadnought
Multi Melta
Drop Pod



Option 3

Belial

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3x THSS)

Deathwing Squad
Cyclone
(2x LC, 3xTHSS)

Deathwing Squad
Assault Cannon
Chainfist
Apothecary
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x CF)

Dreadnought
Multi Melta
Heavy Flamer
Drop Pod

Dreadnought
Multi Melta
Heavy Flamer
Drop Pod



Option 4

Belial

Librarian
Terminator Armour

Deathwing Squad
Assault Cannon
Apothecary
Company Standard
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x PF)

Deathwing Squad
Assault Cannon
Chainfist
(2x LC, 2x THSS, 1x CF)

Landraider

Landraider Crusader

Dreadnought
Multi Melta
Drop Pod

Well, I would lend towards Options Three. Mainly because it's will be effective against most things. However, you don't have any transport, so it will take a while for you to get to the front lines. However, deep striking is the greatest thing for a deathwing army.

Yeah go for #3

The Apothecary wrote:However, deep striking is the greatest thing for a deathwing army.

No way. Deepstriking leads to you separating units and even having units waiting to come on. You need to keep together to survive. Deathwing lacks firepower and mobility, it is fine as they are dead hard, however drip feeding units to the enemy can not work.
Maybe list 3 is a great example.

You can land 2 squads in your first turn and shoot 2 missiles and assault cannon. Then the entire enemy arsenal concentrates, minus minor casualities, on these 10 men. To put in context a tactical squad should be able to kill at least one termy from shooting bolters, that is some of the less killy units available so 1500 pts will make a real mess in one round of shooting.
Else you could try to come on turn 2 where you'll most likely get three units coming on together but this still suffers from being a bit soft, especially as dreads can be downed from one shot.

List 1 has the amount and range of firepower you need. Apothecary and banner are great by the way, whereas the chainfists are not really needed.

Fluffwise, it makes sense that ravenwing typhoons will call in deathwing to support them, especially on the search for the fallen and it makes sense for the deathwing to bring preds and dreads from the armoury to support them. Complaints about dev. squads and assault squads joining in would be justified as these are a different company, fortunately these neither fit deathwing and are not great units.

A 'pure' deathwing list should only contain Belial, termies, ven dreads and Land Raiders. Anything more isn't 'pure' Deathwing.

Whether you are going for fluffy or competitive, the core of your army will be terminators anyway and up to 1500 points, you should max out the number of termie squads you can have (which will be five). Going above that, you're likely to need more variety, namely blast templates - take whatever you wish for some high STR/Low AP. Personally, going above 1.5K I would throw in 3 dreads with plasma cannons. They're not Venerable so technically it's not a fluffy list.

A fluffy list can still be competitive but it won't contain any Ravenwing elements which I believe are necessary for some extra tactical options and additional firepower at a relatively small cost. So, whether you go fluffy or not, I think you can still be competitive but you'll have a little extra if you stray slightly from 'pure' Deathwing and add in some Ravenwing elements.

ColdSadHungry wrote:A 'pure' deathwing list should only contain Belial, termies, ven dreads and Land Raiders. Anything more isn't 'pure' Deathwing.

Whether you are going for fluffy or competitive, the core of your army will be terminators anyway and up to 1500 points, you should max out the number of termie squads you can have (which will be five). Going above that, you're likely to need more variety, namely blast templates - take whatever you wish for some high STR/Low AP. Personally, going above 1.5K I would throw in 3 dreads with plasma cannons. They're not Venerable so technically it's not a fluffy list.

A fluffy list can still be competitive but it won't contain any Ravenwing elements which I believe are necessary for some extra tactical options and additional firepower at a relatively small cost. So, whether you go fluffy or not, I think you can still be competitive but you'll have a little extra if you stray slightly from 'pure' Deathwing and add in some Ravenwing elements.

You have just suggested taking essentially just 10 missiles with no mobility at 1500 pts. Now this will get you killed against many a list but then will destroy others: it is the definition of an unbalanced list.

The ravenwing do fight alongside deathwing, it is even mentioned in the codex entry about ravenwing. All companies take support from the armoury.
This is not for example a Vulkan list with bikes for example which is completely out of character.

My fav 1500 Deathwing is:

HQ
Belial
Interrogator Chaplain w/ TDA and Combi-Melta

Troops
5x Deathwing Termis - 3x TH/SS, 1x TH/SS + CML, 1x Chainfist/SB
5x Deathwing Termis - 3x TH/SS, 1x TH/SS + CML, 1x Chainfist/SB
5x Deathwing Termis - 4x TH/SS, 1x TH/SS + CML
5x Deathwing Termis - 2x TH/SS, 1x TH/SS + Banner, 1x TH/SS + Apoth, 1x TH/SS + CML

Fast Attack
Speeder - CML/MM
Speeder - CML/MM
Speeder - CML/MM

Comes to 1500 even. You have a Deathstar (chappy/Belial with command squad terms), meltas to pop AV 14 + chainfists (as they normally target the speeders first), uber survivability and tons of missiles. It rocks! But this list surely isn't fluffy haha....

Option 3 sounds good to me.

MFletch wrote:

ColdSadHungry wrote:A 'pure' deathwing list should only contain Belial, termies, ven dreads and Land Raiders. Anything more isn't 'pure' Deathwing.

Whether you are going for fluffy or competitive, the core of your army will be terminators anyway and up to 1500 points, you should max out the number of termie squads you can have (which will be five). Going above that, you're likely to need more variety, namely blast templates - take whatever you wish for some high STR/Low AP. Personally, going above 1.5K I would throw in 3 dreads with plasma cannons. They're not Venerable so technically it's not a fluffy list.

A fluffy list can still be competitive but it won't contain any Ravenwing elements which I believe are necessary for some extra tactical options and additional firepower at a relatively small cost. So, whether you go fluffy or not, I think you can still be competitive but you'll have a little extra if you stray slightly from 'pure' Deathwing and add in some Ravenwing elements.

You have just suggested taking essentially just 10 missiles with no mobility at 1500 pts. Now this will get you killed against many a list but then will destroy others: it is the definition of an unbalanced list.

The ravenwing do fight alongside deathwing, it is even mentioned in the codex entry about ravenwing. All companies take support from the armoury.
This is not for example a Vulkan list with bikes for example which is completely out of character.

At 1500, I actually also have 3 Land Speeders with multi meltas - I was just trying to avoid posting my entire list because I was talking about a fluffy list as opposed to advocating the use of a particular list (guess I should have just posted my list). So it's 10 missile shots and 3 multi melta shots. A Deathwing list is always going to have some kind of weakness because you have to spend so many points on so few models but I think it's most competitive at 2K anyway where I would suggest, as I said, 3 dreads with plasma cannons on top of the 5 termie squads and 3 land speeders.