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Just saw this on Battlescribe while making a list for upcoming game.

Blood Ravens now get a special rule called Relentless Seekers which means:

"When resolving an attack made against a unit with this tactic, an unmodified wound roll of 1 or 2 always fails, irrespective of any abilities that the weapon or the model making that attack may have"

Wow, so any high power unit that will wound you on a 2 always fails! Is that right?? Since ones are automatic fails.


In addition, when a Psychic test or Deny the Witch test is taken for a PSYKER model with this tactic, reroll any or all dice rolls of 1.

So basically you shouldn't be able to easily fail any psychic test with a librarian!



What are people's thoughts on this new ability?

They're a little deceptive.

Auto fails on 2 is not that good when you consider only INFANTRY, BIKERS, and DREADNOUGHTS get the ability.

Anything that isn't double the strength of your toughness fails on 2s anyway. So they need to be shooting your infantry with S8, Bikers with S10, and Dreads with basically volcano cannons or similar for it to do ANYTHING. Generally these weapons are not optimal for these targets anyway, so its not going to come up a great deal. The most common will be plasma overcharged against your infantry, which is admittedly quite nice.

Except actually it maths out exactly the same in number of wounds it prevents as Iron Hands trait, just massively more restricted on when it applies at all. In some niche circumstances it does work out a bit better depending on the wounds of the target and the damage of the weapon. But it's really nowhere near as good as it first looks.

The re-roll 1s on psychic tests is pretty nice, the only issue being that Marine powers are very meh. Still, it puts the average test from a 7 to a 9, which makes that clutch Null Zone a bit more reliable.

The stragem is also quite poor, again becauce there just aren't enough decent Marine psychic powers.

Relentless Seekers
When resolving an attack made against a unit with this tactic, an unmodified wound roll of 1 or 2 always fails, irrespective of any abilities that the weapon or the model making that attack may have.

First of all, an unmodified wound roll of 1 always fails. So, only unmodified 2s remain. That means every weapon auto wounding on 2s will fail when an unmodified 2 is rolled. How many weapons do you know which auto wound on 2s ? How many models do you know that have the ability to auto wound on 2s ? How many times are your BR units going to be attacked by a weapon which has double the strength of their toughness ? Infantry getting shot by S8+ weapons ? Very unlikely. How many dreads are going to get shot by S14+ weapons ? How many S14+ weapons do you know ?

I agree with stux on the psychic powers. You may be able to manifest more smites than usual, but thats it.

 Corennus wrote:
Just saw this on Battlescribe while making a list for upcoming game.

Blood Ravens now get a special rule called Relentless Seekers which means:

"When resolving an attack made against a unit with this tactic, an unmodified wound roll of 1 or 2 always fails, irrespective of any abilities that the weapon or the model making that attack may have"

Wow, so any high power unit that will wound you on a 2 always fails! Is that right?? Since ones are automatic fails.

Not quite.

"any high power unit that will wound you on a 2" will only fail if a 1 or 2 is rolled. a 3+ will still cause a wound.

So Str8 vs T4 usually wounds on a 2+, but now a natural 2 fails, so a 3+ will be needed to wound.

They do not "always fails!" they only fail if they roll a natural 1 or 2. Anything else will be successful.

well, it makes Deathwatch Hellfire Rounds worse so basically you'd choose vengeance or Kraken for the AP sometimes instead.

It's a neat rule, but not that good, when you get down to it.

It helps Infantry tank Plasma and that is about it.

Most optimal usage of it is against people that get bonuses to wound, since this cares about the unmodified roll. This means when fighting Chaos, the Blood Ravens will be more resilient to Obliterators using Veterans of the Long War, and they'll be more resilient to Blood Angel Smash Captains. Those are the primary uses of this trait.

Not a fan. As said before it's not that radically useful. Their special character is pretty meh (I'd pay a bit more for calgar 10/10 times), their stratagem is meh, their relic is meh and they don't even get a warlord trait (just fekkin lazy). Their stuff could be good if librarians were incredible, but they're not. Who cares if your libby knows one extra power that he can't even cast? How many powers are worth even knowing? I'd take the Iron Hand trait over it any day and they're already not considered an especially good trait.