... poster Creeping D** regarding buying Ravs. Whether the yet-to-be-released Chapter Approved 2018 hits them with a points increase, you'll still need this great, highly mobile, hard smacking unit. If you are slick with modeling, see if you can allow the assembly to swap DisCans for Dark Lances. I didn't bother in 5th edition, but now I wish I had.

In favor of ravagers in general, I park the archon between them, his Overlord helping to hit and taking Writ of the Living Muse to re-roll wounds. Often, this is my Most-Value-Player ... well 4 units of MVP anyway.

And, model skills aside, take Dark Lances instead of Disintegrator Cannons. T6 Vehicles of 10 wounds or so, fliers, etc, will shrug off S5 trying to wound and only 2 wounds dealt per pop. Daemon Prince? With DLs, two decent Wound rolls with failed invulnerable saves and there's a pain in the butt removed.

9 DisCans - 27 shots. 18 will hit. 2 more with an archon's Overlord bubble.
T6+ means out of the 20 hits, 6 or 7 wounds. Say, 3 more with Writ of the Living Muse. Out of 9 wounds most will go through on vehicles. With the enemy tank making a couple 6+ saves, so 7 wounds get through, yielding 2 each so, 14 points of damage. Meaning one dead rhino, flier (nevermind minus to hit), a daemon prince, etc. However, that takes all 3 ravagers to bag a tank.

9 Dark Lances - 6 hit, 7 with Overlord bubble.
T6+ means 4 or 5 wound, with Writ of the Living Muse. With the nastier minus AP, no vehicle without an invulnerable will save, so 3D6 wounding means 10 to 11 wounds. Dead tank in most cases (Imperial - yes, Wave Serpents & Hammerheads need a couple more).

So one ravager can kill a 10-12 wound tank, though you're likely to need 2 DLance ravs to be certain. Two DisCan ravagers *could* deal out 12 wounds, but that's all hits, all wounds, and no saves to kill a tank. Very unlikely.

Counter argument *for* DisCans versus Dark Lances :
Lotsa poxies to face? Plague Bearers, multi-wound Talos? Ogryn? DisCans are more efficient. There are too many varied Ts and Feel No Pains, and armor/invuln save variants to Math-Hammer out, but yes, if your opponent is vehicle light, the Dark Lances are less desirable.

The meta I face is vehicle strong. But at 2k points, bringing me to question #1:
Are your 1k tourney officials regulating list construction? Any ban on Imperial Knights? Small point games ought to have a bit of hindering for some units, similar to old Combat Patrol limitations for those reasons.


In any case, I feel DLs are better on Ravagers FTW.

Question #2: Was is the "usual relic & wit combo"? Labyrinthine Cunning and Writ of the Living Muse?


Fun vs. Competitive:
I recommend to not bother with this distinction. If you're going to play in tourneys, as you mentioned that you intend to , then write a list to beat face (that is, Take All Comers); that's what a tourney's mechanism is going to establish. Once I really started paying attention to the Fun vs Comp debate back in 5e & 6e, I found that there was no hard line of determining which was which, just lots of gray area, and opinions all over the place. One player's Fun was another's Super-Cheesy-You-Are-That-F-Guy Over-Powered douche.

In 3e, there was a composition formula where points spent would be 10% HQ, 60% troops, then 10% each of H.S., Elite and F.A. Close to that anyway (I'm probably off by 5% here or there), and it was measurable. If you spent too much on Heavy Support and were light on troops, you got dinged on composition by a specified amount and it hurt you in the tourney points. My first Broadside Bash (2012? 2013?) had that going on, something similar anyway.

But 8e codices are so far away from what 3e was, that that old formula was pretty much gone by 4e or maybe a few 5e hold outs.

I've been playing in monthly RTTs for 5+ years and 2 to 4 GTs a year. Based on my experience, I suggest that make a list to Take-All-Comers and turn a deaf ear to that Fun vs. Comp. thing, because really, they're hand in hand, for me at least.