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I am completely brand new to warhammer 40k. I have about 1100 points of SM and i am painting them raven guard. I have Captain Shrike, and i have 2 scout forces. I know i can use infiltrate, but what are the different raven guard tactics? I plan on using Seargent Tellion but im not really sure what i need to buy for a successful army. I also have 1 assault squad, 1 terminator squad, 2 tactical squads, a drop pod, a rhino and a few other things.

Not all Ravenguard armies use Shrike. Do you want to build a vanilla marine army with the Ravenguard paint scheme (without Shrike), or an army based around Shrike?

I do want to build it around shrike and tellion. With the infiltrate and fleet skills. What's a vanilla army? Sorry if I should know that

Vanilla refers to either the Codex: Space Marines list or a Codex: Space Marines list using either no special character or one that doesn't replace combat tactics. If using vanilla in the latter sense, it's to differentiate the army from Vulkan (Salamander), Khan (White Scars), Shrike (Raven Guard), Lysander (Imperial Fist), and Kantor (Crimson Fist) armies.

Depending on how fluffy you want to make the list, Shrike can infiltrate a bunch of assault terminators right into the enemies face. With either a turn one or two assault, that can be a daunting problem for many armies.

A fluffier unit for Shrike to infiltrate would be some assault marines. The unit will be guaranteed a first turn assault, which could be quite devastating against a parking lot that hasn't gotten to move yet. I'd definitely take a ten man unit with a powerfist sarge and (if 'nilla marines can get them) meltas. Be very careful when charging with this unit. You want to stay in combat through the enemies shooting phase then win during their combat phase, allowing you to go after more targets.

Scouts aren't that great. If I was going to run them, I'd give them meltabombs and/or a powerfist with a combi-melta and throw them in a Storm. If you're going to use Telion, take a full ten man sniper unit. IIRC, Telion will confer stealth to the whole sqaud, saving some points. Give the squad a missile launcher.

I'd probably throw the Dread into the drop pod. It'll add support for Shrike and co, giving them a better chance of living past the first two turns. Give it a multi-melta and a heavy flamer and it's good to go. Maybe throw a locator beacon on the pod if you want to DS the termies.

I run my Raven Guard as a combined Drop Pod/Shrike/Infiltrate list and - when it works, it works really well (when it doesn't work it dies horrible and pathetically )

The build is basically this;

Shrike
Librarian with Gate

Sternguard in Pod w Beacon
Tac Squad in Pod w. Beacon
Tac Squad in Pod

10 man 'assault' scout squad w. combat blades

3x 10 Assault Marines

Scouts infiltrate, Shrike sneaks in with some Assault Marines. Sternguard and a Tac squad drop in on turn 1 as I melta stuff and let loose with assaults. Other stuff drops in/gates into opponent's grill.

It's a fun list, very fluffy, and *reasonably* competitive which fulfills my wants from the list. A Melta Dread in a pod instead of a Tac squad or something could probably work fine, and the same with using assault termies instead of one of the assault marine squads - basically the same sort of role is being filled by each substitution.

If you want to go "fluffy" with Raven Guard you want to avoid Heavy Slots and field limited Termies and Dreads. Fast Attack slots are very fluffy, Assault Marines and lots of Scouts are also extremely fluffy. Drop Pods and mechanized forces are also very fluffy.

Hope that's helpful.

Right, Shrike's advantage is that he gives fleet. Fleet doesn't really give a shooting army any advantage--only assault armies benefit from fleet. So that means you're looking at space marine assault units.

TH/SS terminators are among the best assault units in the game. Although they can't get a turn 1 charge when infiltrating with Shrike (unless you can find a spot within 18" where they can't be seen), they are very hard to stop from charging on turn 2. Also terminators in a land raider can disembark, run, and assault, which gives them an effective assault radius of 10-16" plus the 12" move of the land raider. If I were making a Shrike list today, I'd include at least 15 terminators--a unit of 10 to infiltrate and a unit of 5 in a land raider.

I have also played the assault marine list that Thor has posted. Here's a link to my tactical notes:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Ravenguard_Shrike

The article also explains why close-combat scouts are useful, and the different ways to use the drop pods.

The assault marine version of the list is fun to play, but I wouldn't expect to win any tournaments where Grey Knights are present because you can't take on guys with 3+ saves and power weapons in HtH and expect to win.

The terminator version of the list, IMO, would still be competitive.

My friend plays a shrike army, and he infiltrates 10 TH/SS terminators with Shrike at the start of the game. They are incredibly hard to stop, and is a great investment on his part.

He uses 3 drop pods of either sternguard, tacs, or dreads, depending on his list.

Sorry it has taken so long for me to reply. I've been pretty busy with school and work. Thank you for the help, i think i know how i am going to run my army.