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I don't know what I'm doing wrong here. People are telling me that my list is decent/strong/good but I've lost my two test games by pretty massive margins. Help is greatly appreciated.

Sammael Land Speeder

5 Deathwing Assault Terminators with TH/SS + Vanilla Codex Terminator Librarian /w Force Weapon and Storm Bolter

5 Deathwing Tactical Terminators with 1 Chainfist, 1 Power Sword and 1 Assault Cannon (from Dark Vengeance set)

Vanilla Telion + 3 Vanilla Sniper Scouts + 1 Vanilla Sniper Missile

Ravenwing Bikes: 2 Plasma Guns, 1 Apothecary, Sergeant + Company Standard + Power Sword, Attack Bike /w Multi-Melta

Ravenwing Bikes: 2 Melta Guns, Sergeant + Power Fist, Attack Bike /w Multi-Meltat

Ravenwing Land Speeder /w Typhoon Missiles

 NEWater wrote:
I don't know what I'm doing wrong here. People are telling me that my list is decent/strong/good but I've lost my two test games by pretty massive margins. Help is greatly appreciated.

Sammael Land Speeder

5 Deathwing Assault Terminators with TH/SS + Vanilla Codex Terminator Librarian /w Force Weapon and Storm Bolter

5 Deathwing Tactical Terminators with 1 Chainfist, 1 Power Sword and 1 Assault Cannon (from Dark Vengeance set)

Vanilla Telion + 3 Vanilla Sniper Scouts + 1 Vanilla Sniper Missile

Ravenwing Bikes: 2 Plasma Guns, 1 Apothecary, Sergeant + Company Standard + Power Sword, Attack Bike /w Multi-Melta

Ravenwing Bikes: 2 Melta Guns, Sergeant + Power Fist, Attack Bike /w Multi-Meltat

Ravenwing Land Speeder /w Typhoon Missiles

Sadly Samiel is not worth the points and that means you are trying to get by with two very small troop choices. The other is that you are not utilizing your deathwing. You don't have to go pure assault or pure shooty.

Now if you can get CMLs that would be preferable but assault cannons are pretty easy to get.

Try this:

Belial 130

Deathwing 2 Th/SS, 2 SB/PF, 1 AssCan & ChF 250
Deathwing 2 TH/SS, 2 SB/PF, 1 AssCan & ChF 250
Deathwing 2 TH/SS, 2 SB/PF, 1 AssCan & ChF 250

3 Ravenwing Bikers 120

Now if you had some points or would expand this, 3 typhoon speeders and more bikes or perhaps even Sammiel but I would hesitate to field Sammiel unless you could get to bike squads of 6 out there.

Could you please explain to me the strengths behind having mixed capabilities in Deathwing? As someone who likes to min/max things it does not make a lot of sense to me to NOT go pure shooty or pure assault.

Let's go with the simplest...

An enemy is coming at you with 3 typhoons. You cannot get them in HTH due to speed.

With a min/max list with one shooty and one HTH your HTH unit is just going to take it and tough it out. So you have 1 assault cannon and 4 stormbolters to fire at it. You may kill one but there is no way to engage both. With two mixed units, you have 1 assault and 4 stormbolters to fire at each one. From an opponent's thoughts... if I don't fear one unit - either your shooty or CC unit, I can afford to ignore the one. While generic squads are not as awesome at their one thing, they are an equal threat.

Now in 5th, I would not argue as much about the pure TH/SS unit. However NEVER give up on that heavy weapon. I also put a chainfist in each unit. That chainfist is a deterrent to dreadnoughts and an awesome answer to any landraider.

If you like pure, I would suggest 4 TH/SS and 1 CML/Chainfist or Assault Cannon/Chainfist.

Went back to the drawing board and came up with this:

Sammael 205

Deathwing Termies [TH/SS TH/SS PS/SB CF/SB PF/SB/AssCan] 215 + 5 + 30 = 250

Deathwing Termies [TH/SS TH/SS PS/SB CF/SB PF/SB/AssCan] 215 + 5 + 30 = 250

Ravenwing Attack Command Squadron [6 bikes, Apoth, 2PG, AB+MM] 120 + 100 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 50 = 315

Ravenwing Attack Squadron Melta [3 bikes, PS, 2MG, AB+MM] 120 + 15 + 10 + 10 + 50 = 205

Ravenwing Attack Squadron PlasmaGuns [3 bikes, 2PG, AB+HB] 120 + 15 + 15 + 50 = 200

Ravenwing Support Squadron Land Speeder Typhoon = 75

Total 1500

You really should get Belial in there his not expensive, he allows you to take ur deathwing as troops and you can take the apothecary and Banner which IMHO is much more useful in a squad of termies than bikes.

take belial and lose sammael, you free up some points.

Terminators (deathwing) is better than ravenwing

Well, going with your idea using allies, run belial with a couple terminator squads, and then pop in a vanilla captain on bike with a couple bike squads as troops. This will get you what you want with the bikes and termies, and it will be MUCH more points efficient.

Added bonus: all your bikes and terminators will be troops.

The list isn't that strong at all, not sure why people have said as much. Just count how many more models you could have if you played vanilla biker list and then your set up of models is not that great. Your allies are not doing much for you.

In terms of shooty vs. assault. Deathwing is shooty, but as they have very few models they need to be able to handle cc. Trying to force cc with a small number of foot slogging terminators is a hard task.
Your fearless bikers need to be very weary of cc, especially your banner squad can handle it.

Biker armies in particular are hard to use. You have very few models and are very vulnerable so the army is not forgiving to mistakes. It used to be grey knights that would get mentioned here, where you could bring any collection of models and pretend be an awesome general now it is probably vendetta spam where you bring enough vendettas you can pretend that you choose targets really intelligently.
The point being biker armies are one of the ones that take kill to use.

If you are taking 2 units of terminators than Belial is dirt cheap for what he brings. Taking a mix of ravenwing and deathwing can work very well.

The only thing that deathwing/dualwing lack is any ability at hitting flyers. If you lose to a flying list that is perfectly ok. Let the flyers arrive turn 2 have a go at hitting them, if you do not get enough lucky hits it can be acceptable to resign turn 3.

The reason why I've held off on including Belial is because I know that the DA codex is coming pretty soon, and as new codex releases come, new models will be released. I know myself to be really bad at conversions, so I didn't want to put all of my Dark Angels eggs in a basket just yet.

Perhaps I should have explained this in the OP but I want to maximize my options in models so that I may adapt to new codex changes when they arrive. Same thing about dealing with flyers where I'm not willing to spend a disproportionate amount of money on dealing with something that may not be optimal for the long term. Also, thankfully, few people in my club have flyers and none of them abuse them like the Vendetta spam you folks talked about.

Either way, I've decided to take away the allies until I can find a use for them in the future.

I would then take the jet bike Sammael. He is fine cast so he is going nowhere, dead cert. for the codex.
Also 2 hull points? really?

Also I wager the ravenwing boxset is a good investment. The models therein are competitive enough.

my answer is 2 part

1) If you feel like going full TH/SS, why not take 5 and put a CML on one of them ? (the Codex gives you this option -that will surely disappear in the next one- and i double-checked the FAQ as I wasn't unsure, nothing forbids it)
I prefer Full firepower Deathwing with the exception of the Sarge who replaces his lousy sword with a TH/SS

2) Ravenwing bikers really, really suck bad .... they're basically the same as marine ones with teleport beacons and without Combat Tactics for about 33% more points. And they can't be troops unless you take the overcosted Samael

My advice would be to take
a core of Belial + Deathwing units
Ravenwing Typhoon Speeders

Allied Marines Biker Captain
Allied marines Biker Squads (Teleport beacons IF needed)

Add Attack Bikes to the bikers or as independant units
maybe an ADL with Quad manned by scouts + Telion (or scouts + cloak if you want to go cheap) and some goodies on the side, but it might limit the numbers of Troop bikers then
You should switch between Main DA / Allied SM and main SM / Allied DA depending on the army and the tests you're doing
One very important thing, never -and I mean never- take Tacticals DA, more expensive and no combat tactics for those

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully this works well. Gonna proxy a lot of things with my current bike models that are chock full of DA markings but here goes:


SM Captain Bike 135

[7] SM Bike Squad + 2MG + MMAB = 90 + 100 + 10 +10 + 50 = 260

[7] SM Bike Squad + 2PG + MMAB = 90 + 100 + 15 + 15 + 50 = 270

Belial TH/SS + 5 Deathwing [TH/SS TH/SS PF/SB/CML PF/SB CF/SB] + Apothecary = 130 + 250 + 30 = 410

5 Deathwing [TH/SS TH/SS PF/SB/CML PF/SB CF/SB] = 250

Ravenwing Typhoon Speeder = 75

Ravenwing Typhoon AssCan = 100

1500

if you're fielding ravenwing speeders, take the Cyclone, for 10 pts it's a must have
The normal Marines Tornados are better for that role

TanKoL wrote:

1) If you feel like going full TH/SS, why not take 5 and put a CML on one of them ? (the Codex gives you this option -that will surely disappear in the next one- and i double-checked the FAQ as I wasn't unsure, nothing forbids it)
I prefer Full firepower Deathwing with the exception of the Sarge who replaces his lousy sword with a TH/SS

Why would you think that it would go away next edition? It is part of what makes Deathwing Terminators the best in the game, it would be really stupid for them to take it away.

 Farseer Mael Dannan wrote:

TanKoL wrote:

1) If you feel like going full TH/SS, why not take 5 and put a CML on one of them ? (the Codex gives you this option -that will surely disappear in the next one- and i double-checked the FAQ as I wasn't unsure, nothing forbids it)
I prefer Full firepower Deathwing with the exception of the Sarge who replaces his lousy sword with a TH/SS

Why would you think that it would go away next edition? It is part of what makes Deathwing Terminators the best in the game, it would be really stupid for them to take it away.

The rumor is it will be going away. And to correct the post. What makes DW - in theory - the best is not being tied down to all assault (TH/SS or 2 LC) or all shooty (SB/PF and 1 with HW). The problem that GW has not solved is making a SS 3++ in all situations... That change has unbalanced the game towards TH/SS being the idiots choice for terminators. (Give a crap if I can shoot, 3++ is so superior to 5++)
SW addresses it by making it so costly.

 NEWater wrote:

Belial TH/SS + 5 Deathwing [TH/SS TH/SS PF/SB/CML PF/SB CF/SB] + Apothecary = 130 + 250 + 30 = 410

Belial=130
DW +CML+CF+apothecary=270
Total=400
(These do count as two separate units in your list)

 NEWater wrote:
5 Deathwing [TH/SS TH/SS PF/SB/CML PF/SB CF/SB] = 250

DW+CML+CF=240

 NEWater wrote:
Ravenwing Typhoon Speeder = 75

Ravenwing Typhoon AssCan = 100

Typhoon speeder means that it has a typhoon missile launcher, which then disallows the assault cannon. Speeder with assault cannon would be a Tornado.

Other than those simple mistakes, I think this should be a fairly solid list.