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So new codex DA, lots of hoo har about deathwing termies and knights. Anyone having success with pure deathwing elite builds? What are you tactics, where are you putting your points? Bothering with dreads or LRs? What about knights?

I'd be interested to see if these lists can be competitive, especially at the elite, small-model-count end of the spectrum.

Cheers!

h.

Deathwing isn't competitive, especially after the FAQ nerf.

They are fun to play, but that's it.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Deathwing isn't competitive, especially after the FAQ nerf.

They are fun to play, but that's it.

This. Deathwing units are too expensive, too slow and not killy enough to have a chance in 6th.

I haven't played with them yet but from the looks of things it seems like they need some ravenwing or green support to be as effective as possible. They are probably still really fun to play on their own, but if you want competitive I would probably go mixed or pure ravenwing, as I know Ravenwing has seen some small tournament success.

- VardenV2

I don't play pure Dw but I do play majority terminator armored models. I always bring some bikes to outflank+melta/flamer and a few naked 5-man tac squads to babysit objectives. I've had great success; 4-0 against the new Tau.

I expected Knights to be questionable at best but they've been the star of the game against my regular chaos opponent (2-0). They're actually cheap if you just DWA them. 235 points, and if 3 other units, one being a 10-man squad+Belial are also DWA-ing, their target priority will at least be directional.

Honestly, "competitiveness" is a relative term these days. Sans allies, what army IS competitive on its own? Any army is improved by allies. So 6th is skewed that way. I live our new codex and if you're talking about doing well in your local FLGS or gaming group, we can do very well.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Deathwing isn't competitive, especially after the FAQ nerf.

They are fun to play, but that's it.

What FAQ nerf? It barely mentions Deathwing.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Deathwing isn't competitive, especially after the FAQ nerf.

They are fun to play, but that's it.

What FAQ nerf? It barely mentions Deathwing.

You got me wondering too, the only DW mention I saw in the FAQ was clarifying the whole TH/SS + CML issue.

DWA was clarified to the weakest possible meaning of counts toward 50% reserves. So no full army DWAs.

Tourney competitive, no. I would say overall the whole codex is rather sub-optimal for tourney play with DW being one of the weaker approaches. It should be noted that RW can and has won a tournament but it is not the easiest approach to it.

What it is is a fantastic casual play codex that has the strength to stand toe to toe with some of the toughest lists out there. It also has some of the coolest combinations and synergies in the game.
PFG libbys can be really nice to drop your TAC terminators around.
Belial's no scatter DS can be brutal against the right opponents.
BoF is pretty awesome if you can keep the banner man alive.
Overall a very fun list.

 Krellnus wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Deathwing isn't competitive, especially after the FAQ nerf.

They are fun to play, but that's it.

What FAQ nerf? It barely mentions Deathwing.

You got me wondering too, the only DW mention I saw in the FAQ was clarifying the whole TH/SS + CML issue.

Deathwing Assault doesn't count to reserves, so you need to start at least three units on the board if you want to deepstrike two, which means two of your units will be doing nothing most game
if you're playing pure DW.

Also, DW Sarges are forced to take SB/Power Sword and lost their ability to trade SB/PS for TH/SS.




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The Shrike wrote:
I don't play pure Dw but I do play majority terminator armored models. I always bring some bikes to outflank+melta/flamer and a few naked 5-man tac squads to babysit objectives. I've had great success; 4-0 against the new Tau.

I expected Knights to be questionable at best but they've been the star of the game against my regular chaos opponent (2-0). They're actually cheap if you just DWA them. 235 points, and if 3 other units, one being a 10-man squad+Belial are also DWA-ing, their target priority will at least be directional.

Honestly, "competitiveness" is a relative term these days. Sans allies, what army IS competitive on its own? Any army is improved by allies. So 6th is skewed that way. I live our new codex and if you're talking about doing well in your local FLGS or gaming group, we can do very well.

Competitive Mono-Lists:

Tyranids. Necrons. GKs. Daemon FMC/Pinkstar spam. For SM, Pure Ravenwing.

Knights are good against Chaos SM (Bane of the Traitor, PE) but sort of mediocre against everyone else.

DWA was clarified to the weakest possible meaning of counts toward 50% reserves. So no full army DWAs.

Tourney competitive, no. I would say overall the whole codex is rather sub-optimal for tourney play with DW being one of the weaker approaches. It should be noted that RW can and has won a tournament but it is not the easiest approach to it.

RW is the strongest SM mono-build. Shoots more shots than Tau gunline with tricks. Stronger assault elements than most assault armies. If not for Helldrakes and the comparative rarity of bike armies, they would dominate.

Wow... That was quite a beatdown Deathwing got...

/sarcasm

How does that really screw up Deathwing?

I believe that the reserves rule is not no more than 50% (rounding up) can start in reserves. That means that you can effectively have 3/5 or 4/7 DW units in reserve. It's really not that big a deal tbh. It does suck when you are doing pure DW as it basically forces you to take some land raiders to start on the board. You can always go

LRC + HQ model + Terminators = 3 units
Then deep strike up to 4 squads via Deathwing Assault. It's not terrible, but it makes all foot DW harder to play. If dreadnoughts weren't so crap this edition then it wouldn't be as bad. Start with a few mortis or lascannon dreadnoughts on the field and then drop in all the Deathwing. That could still be fun, but a lot more difficult to pull off.

Regarding the TH/SS mix up, I think that GW did not intend to take away that option on the sergeants... they just worded it horribly...again. Regardless, I am NOT going to go out and buy more models to replace my "out of date" sergeants when the original dex said I could have TH/SS sergeants and now I can't, only a month or so later. GW needs to get it's **** together for stuff like this.

- VardenV2

 ansacs wrote:
DWA was clarified to the weakest possible meaning of counts toward 50% reserves. So no full army DWAs..

That didn't need an FAQ it was read as written...

So if you played raw and rai per FAQ nothing has changed...what a nerf. Dw needs green or black support. It is very strong in the correct ratios.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Wow... That was quite a beatdown Deathwing got...

/sarcasm

How does that really screw up Deathwing?

To be entirely honest DW was not really a competitive build since the TH/SS went up in points and was only arguably competitive before. With the FAQ rules clarifications for those two items you have to take a 44 pts Sarge tax on every squad and you have to try to footslog those 210 pts minimum 5 man squads. Against most tourney type lists this is devastating as most lists are now packing ~20ish S7+ AP2 weapons in their armies due to the prevalence of plasma and lascannons being the go to answer for long range tank. This usually means at least a squad of terminators gone Turn 1 with no reprisal if you DWA Turn 2...and if you DWA Turn 1 you hit with only half your army as the Footsloggers cannot run and will probably not reach combat until the turn after the DWA do.

@Asmodai Asmodean
You mean if not for Hellturkeys, Tau(Markerlights+Riptides), and Flyers in general. Mono-Ravenwing have the blackknights to snap fire at flyers and that is it.

@General_Chaos
And yet there was all sorts of argument over it. Obviously it was not necessarily as clear as it needed to be and this spawned a FAQ.

Yea - this was kind of my suspicion. I love the idea of elite armies (small model count), but not really sure how well any work in 6th.

By themselves? You won't be successful.
However, with solid RW support, the can be very good.

I like Azrael to lead a big IG blob, maybe with a prescience Libriarian to boost the HWTs. RWAS and Black Knights cruising around with DWT dropping accurately on them. My point? DW absolutely needs support.

Not really. Deathwing is depressingly nerfed in the 2013 codex. It went from being a reasonable counter to mechanized lists, to a theme list comprised of overpriced shitbird units that synergize pathetically with the meta.

I built a Deathwing army for travel. If you NEED an army that fits into a tiny case, or you want to occasionally play with little kid gloves, it's fine. For competitive play, pure Deathwing blows.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Not really. Deathwing is depressingly nerfed in the 2013 codex. It went from being a reasonable counter to mechanized lists, to a theme list comprised of overpriced shitbird units that synergize pathetically with the meta.

I built a Deathwing army for travel. If you NEED an army that fits into a tiny case, or you want to occasionally play with little kid gloves, it's fine. For competitive play, pure Deathwing blows.

If only because the 4th ed Codex scaled poorly to 5th (and early 6th), so that TH/SS Termies and Belial were super cheap and MM/typhoon speeders were only 65pts. To be fair, everything else was overcosted, but for a little while Deathwing were an amazingly undercosted army. Now that they're reasonably costed, they're not so attractive.

I played pure DW in 5th with decent success..The several games I've played in 6th as full DW, it usually ends turn 4 with me being tabled.
Too much firepower out there for the DW low model count to survive, and they have sub-par firepower in return.

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Not really. Deathwing is depressingly nerfed in the 2013 codex. It went from being a reasonable counter to mechanized lists, to a theme list comprised of overpriced shitbird units that synergize pathetically with the meta.

I built a Deathwing army for travel. If you NEED an army that fits into a tiny case, or you want to occasionally play with little kid gloves, it's fine. For competitive play, pure Deathwing blows.

If only because the 4th ed Codex scaled poorly to 5th (and early 6th), so that TH/SS Termies and Belial were super cheap and MM/typhoon speeders were only 65pts. To be fair, everything else was overcosted, but for a little while Deathwing were an amazingly undercosted army. Now that they're reasonably costed, they're not so attractive.

If by reasonably costed, you mean completely overpriced for a meta in which assault distances are variable (so you may or may not get to use those 20-30 power fists you paid for, even if you line up your assaults reasonably well) and everybody and their fething mother spams plasma.

If Belial let ALL DW squads DS without scatter, and let DWA override the usual 50% restriction on reserves, a pure DW army *might* be viable in 6th edition. As it is now, it's pretty awful for competitive play.

Whoa there chief! Now you're stepping on Dante's shoes! If Dante can't do that trick, no one should be able to.

The DA codex is written full of synergys.

If you choose to ignore those and build a themed list, its your fault, don't assume it'll work and bitch about it.

DW don't work well alone, but frankly, nor do green or ravenwing, the ravenwing bikers won tourneys because the. Meta had not yet adapted to fast coversave using high firepower stuff. 7th ed is likely to focus on assault somewhat, and DW's strong saves, with reasonable firepower and widely available fists will sneak a comeback, much as mono-sisters are viable these days despite the terrible hate the ward wd minidex got on release (reasonably, mind, but the girls aint dead yet, just like dw aint)

I think Deathwing just suffers from terminators still not being able to weather fire quite well enough to justify their points. You can force a lot of saves on T4. Frankly, this problem in general has put the marines as far down the power scale as they have been in a long time.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Not really. Deathwing is depressingly nerfed in the 2013 codex. It went from being a reasonable counter to mechanized lists, to a theme list comprised of overpriced shitbird units that synergize pathetically with the meta.

I built a Deathwing army for travel. If you NEED an army that fits into a tiny case, or you want to occasionally play with little kid gloves, it's fine. For competitive play, pure Deathwing blows.

Sounds just like Deathwing in 3rd Edition

A week ago during exercises Second Company wiped the First Company in two turns losing only a single Black Knight. Belial was hopping mad, and Sammael was gloating in the mess for days.

(Translation: I tabled a Deathwing army in two turns losing only a single bike.)









Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nobody_Holme wrote:
The DA codex is written full of synergys.

If you choose to ignore those and build a themed list, its your fault, don't assume it'll work and bitch about it.

DW don't work well alone, but frankly, nor do green or ravenwing, the ravenwing bikers won tourneys because the. Meta had not yet adapted to fast coversave using high firepower stuff. 7th ed is likely to focus on assault somewhat, and DW's strong saves, with reasonable firepower and widely available fists will sneak a comeback, much as mono-sisters are viable these days despite the terrible hate the ward wd minidex got on release (reasonably, mind, but the girls aint dead yet, just like dw aint)

That's utter bollocks, mono-Ravenwing is still top tier. In the tourney the player faced and defeated Helldrakes CSM.

I'll not speculate on 7th but it's a hell of a long time to wait for DW to be viable again.

Whether DW lists will work also depends on the points level. Low level games denies Deathwing much support. If you are dropping terminators without any Land Raiders at all, you're going to be sorely disappointed, mow that they get dedicated battle taxis, it's even better now.