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I was thinking about tactical options as I build up a Dark Angels army and realized something: I've never seen anyone run RW or DW reflective of the hammer and anvil style described in their codex. So here is what I was thinking.

Deploy the Ravenwing bikes in a forward position and scout as close as you can towards the enemy positions.

Move forward again during movement phase. Shoot what you can, do what else you can to survive any return shooting. Chief goal is to simply stay out of assault.

On turn two the DW termies come in loaded up for CC, using the bike's locators.

More dakka, then RW assaults. Either the RW get wiped out in your turn two, hit&run after the following opponents turn, or get wiped out in that same turn. Being RW, the chanced of them surviving two consecutive assault phases worth of the same combat seems unlikely, one side or other will most like break. However it works out, the only outcome that doesn't suit your purposes is the assault ending on your turn two.

Once the bikes are clear, they move on to harass or shoot whatever they can. Then the DW can move into assault whatever the RW just left behind. After this, do what needs to be done.

There are a few things that I though this might accomplish. First is that an army built to run this tactic should have good shooting and assault. Second, by hit and running the RW, you should be able to insulate the terminators from that first round of fire that always seems to chew them up. This also doesn't require the use of Land Raiders (expensive in points and money) and the addition of Azrael makes all of the mentioned units scoring. Is this tactic possible? What does Dakka think?

*Disclaimer: I have not taken the time to actually build up a list that could run this to see what point totals you would need. It's too much work to answer what is, at the moment, a purely theoretical question

I like this. I've also never done a list made for this but I have done this tactic when I used a squad of bike and a squad of DW but on a much lower level.

I run a list that is similar, its only an alright all comers list. but fun to play and very fluffy.

basically I did as you mentioned, but with 2 tac squads, 1 command, 1 azeral and 1 lib. I put 1 HQ per tac squad. Turn 1 I run bikes up and run tac squad to 24" range.

These lists would have to have a RW focus (think rougly 2/3 of points should be RW). The RW banner is crucial for said strategy. Speaking of, be sure to use a banner in any DA force. They just add SO much.

Did you have any thoughts on how you're going to equip the termies?

I failed to mention the RW banner, but it was included in my thoughts. The termies would be cc, likely a TH/SS combo to add to their chances of survival. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, you just can't count on the bike assaults going your way enough to assume the DW won't take any fire. Whether the RW would be better in large or small units would take some trial and error.

I have seen this used a little.

The DWA can usually happen turn 1 as scout usually gets you close enough to the enemy line for the termies to get into CC turn 2. Don't think you will always need to DWA turn 2.

I would not go completely CC it works better with a heavy weapon to employ. HF works really well when you can DS with no scatter and the RW can handle the AV cracking.

If you run Azzy you need some way of making him useful. As far as I have been able to tell Azzy only becomes useful in a decent sized IG blobb. Which is somewhat nice as you can usually use a vendetta or two to deal with flyers.

The biggest problem with this type of list is the low model count and low damage output. I would recommend BK as they are very nice for damage dealing.

I like your suggestions. The re-roll on wounds for a DWA twin-linked HF sounds tantalizing. PF would still give good strength and ID many enemies. If you replaced the RW with Black Knights, Azrael could be switched for Belial.

Do you think that this would decrease an already worryingly number of scoring units?

Stop using the viable instead of possible or usable.

This strategy would work, but it would require a larger game than normal. In a smaller environment, it would be too easy to knock one or two unots out and destroy the whole strategy. Probably above 2000 points would be where unita would be resilient enough to make a grand strategy like this one work.

The problem is that in the fluff, they only use both the 1st and 2nd companies to hunt and capture fallen, everyday fights and investigations are up to the other companies.. Who ironically are left I the dark and are over-glorified recruitment trial apprentices. So they don't care about the overall battle or losses as long as they get that one guy..

So fluff-wise it would really depend on if you could win at relic or consistently kill the warlord point.. As when the 1st/2nd companies DO join its a momentous occasion