[1750] - Raven guard successor - TAC?

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**XeonDragon**

Hi all

Looking for your thoughts on a 1750 point battalion list for a Raven Guard successor chapter (master artisans, stealthy) that I will be using in an upcoming tournament. Local meta is marine-heavy, with some chaos marines thrown in. Tables are a little on the small side for the points, so my recent experience suggests melee will feature more than most games. That is, hanging back shooting things off the table not as much of an option as might be usual.

List is restricted to what I have built and painted. This is what I have settled on so far:

HQ
1. Captain (warlord), Combi-plasma, chainsword (teeth of terra), master of tri-fold path (Feigned flight, Imperium’s sword)
2. Libarian (Chief Librarian), combi-plasma, force stave, spectral blade, shadow step, might of heroes, psychic hood.
3. Primaris Lieutenant, bellicose bolt rifle.

Troops
3 x 5-man intercessor squads, two with assault bolters, auxiliary grenade launchers and veterans, one squad with stalker bolt rifles. All sergeants have chains words.

Elites
1. 5-man boltstorm aggressor squad
2. 2 x 5 man terminator squads, sergeant with storm bolter and power sword, 3 with storm bolters and power fists, 1 with cyclone missile launcher, storm bolter and power fist
3. 1 venerable dreadnought with twin lascannon

Heavy Support
1. Eliminator squad (all bolt sniper rifles)
2. Eradicator squad

That is what I am fairly settled on. What I am not sure of is which of the following options to take to flesh out the last 198 points of the list:

1. A quad las predator with HK missile and bump the stalker bolt rifle intercessors to a 6 man squad
2. A squad of 6 hellblasters or
3. A devastator squad (sergeant with combi-plasm and chain sword, 4 x grav cannon and grav amp) + drop pod with storm bolter.
4. A squad of 4 plasma inceptors, and drop 1 of the auxiliary grenade launchers from the a squad of intercessors.

Idea behind the list is a TAC list. I expect to be charged, hence veteran intercessors, aggressors and terminators. I am hoping the venerable dreadnought and eradicators can take care of vehicles, monsters, even if the aggressors or terminators needs to pitch in with melee. Eliminator squad is anti-character. Librarian and captain are anti-character and heavy infantry mop-up.

Other options include whirlwind, tactial marines, sniper scouts, venerable chaplain dreadnought, twin las razorbacks (x2), Rhino (x1), infiltrators (x2), but leaning towards using what I have listed above.

Stuck on whether to take quad las predator for more anti-tank, or take hell blasters. Also thought about taking drop pod with grav devastators for early board control/carnifax distraction.

Anyway, all feedback or suggestions welcome!

**Dukeofstuff**

If you take 5 devastators and plop them down, that's a spot your enemy will focus shooting on, and they don't shine in melee. So only do that if their gravy guns are going to be THE WIN on turn 1.

If you can get a chaplain, however .. screw the leiutenant as unneeded, and take him.
Give him canticle of hate (+2 on charge and consolidate aura) and I believe you can spend a cp to give him a SECOND canticle, perhaps the +1 A, +1S, +1D to melee. then equip him a master crafted power fist, you have a real melee monster who is easily the equal of the captain .. and give him as warlord trait ..
Make him master of ambush, so that on turn zero, he just plain starts next to the enemy deploy zone with his aggressors OR his terminators in tow, your choice, ready to charge at +2 after they infiltrate forward, move normally, shoot, and then say "now it comes!".

You don't actaully need that much to make your captain able to retreat from combat and charge again, as a warlord trait, because that's a strategem he can spend cp for. Consider shadowmaster, instead, blocking (potentially) overwatch for the whole shooting match of oyur side.

That's my advice. Then, if you wanted to, you could pour in a pair of light melee based tac marine units and a drop pod .. give each squad 2 stormbolters (cheap) and a power fist or powerclaw.

Now your chaplain can help the rolls of ... 1, 2, 3 (tac, tac, aggressor) and himself (4) and the captain (whom you shift to the front with umbramancy from the librarian,). That's a storm of charges, not all of them needing even 9 inches, and you will probably get most of the various units into combat if you are a bit careful. So the enemy has a lot of 3+ save melee madness to deal with, RIGHT AWAY, and at least 3 units that can beat the snot out of armor charging on turn zero.
Its a storm of raven succesors and they are all attackign in melee on turn 1 .. after the aggressors and bolters of the various units try to sweep as many screens as possible away.

I don't know if your army has points for this, but that's what I would try to do.

If this ends up not seeming like a wise idea, you don't HAVE to do any of it. Master of Ambush into some ruins that make great cover with no line of sight forward instead. Don't decide to umbramancy the captain forward itno melee range. You don't HAVE to master of ambush, and you don't HAVE to suddenly drop a drop pod of happy tac marines at the edge of the enemy's 9 inch bubble ready to charge at +2. They can hang in orbit for the first turn and come in when and where you wish, or they can drop directly next to a center field objective. Or you can snag that "all 4 sides of the board" victory condition with them (and have a drop pod hold one objective as well.) so you could possibly just at the last second, tuck everyone in cover halfway across the board in the midfield on some objectives, and make the enemy try to come to you with your stuff hiding in non line of sight from their start location. Surprise! They were expecting something else, eh?

I ... hate. when this stuff gets used against me, so much so that my current army is almost entirely started in flyers or the very tiny corner of the board, or in deepstrike, so that I can crush the heck out of the person who ahs done it to me game after game.

Anyway. Just a suggestion.

**XeonDragon**

Thanks so much for taking the time to write all that out, it was really interesting and thought provoking. I've had success in the past with tactical marines 'glass cannon' squads, so I might look into that. I am leaning slightly towards the grav guys, because with the gravitic amplification strat and armorium cherub they can easily pump out 15+ wounds to MEQs when they drop. That's a entire squad gone. When you throw in the combi-plas, you can with a *little* luck 1-shot a vehicle as well.

But yeah... the chaplain idea has got me thinking

thanks!

Dukeofstuff wrote:
If you take 5 devastators and plop them down, that's a spot your enemy will focus shooting on, and they don't shine in melee. So only do that if their gravy guns are going to be THE WIN on turn 1.

If you can get a chaplain, however .. screw the leiutenant as unneeded, and take him.
Give him canticle of hate (+2 on charge and consolidate aura) and I believe you can spend a cp to give him a SECOND canticle, perhaps the +1 A, +1S, +1D to melee. then equip him a master crafted power fist, you have a real melee monster who is easily the equal of the captain .. and give him as warlord trait ..
Make him master of ambush, so that on turn zero, he just plain starts next to the enemy deploy zone with his aggressors OR his terminators in tow, your choice, ready to charge at +2 after they infiltrate forward, move normally, shoot, and then say "now it comes!".

You don't actaully need that much to make your captain able to retreat from combat and charge again, as a warlord trait, because that's a strategem he can spend cp for. Consider shadowmaster, instead, blocking (potentially) overwatch for the whole shooting match of oyur side.

That's my advice. Then, if you wanted to, you could pour in a pair of light melee based tac marine units and a drop pod .. give each squad 2 stormbolters (cheap) and a power fist or powerclaw.

Now your chaplain can help the rolls of ... 1, 2, 3 (tac, tac, aggressor) and himself (4) and the captain (whom you shift to the front with umbramancy from the librarian,). That's a storm of charges, not all of them needing even 9 inches, and you will probably get most of the various units into combat if you are a bit careful. So the enemy has a lot of 3+ save melee madness to deal with, RIGHT AWAY, and at least 3 units that can beat the snot out of armor charging on turn zero.
Its a storm of raven succesors and they are all attackign in melee on turn 1 .. after the aggressors and bolters of the various units try to sweep as many screens as possible away.

I don't know if your army has points for this, but that's what I would try to do.

If this ends up not seeming like a wise idea, you don't HAVE to do any of it. Master of Ambush into some ruins that make great cover with no line of sight forward instead. Don't decide to umbramancy the captain forward itno melee range. You don't HAVE to master of ambush, and you don't HAVE to suddenly drop a drop pod of happy tac marines at the edge of the enemy's 9 inch bubble ready to charge at +2. They can hang in orbit for the first turn and come in when and where you wish, or they can drop directly next to a center field objective. Or you can snag that "all 4 sides of the board" victory condition with them (and have a drop pod hold one objective as well.) so you could possibly just at the last second, tuck everyone in cover halfway across the board in the midfield on some objectives, and make the enemy try to come to you with your stuff hiding in non line of sight from their start location. Surprise! They were expecting something else, eh?

I ... hate. when this stuff gets used against me, so much so that my current army is almost entirely started in flyers or the very tiny corner of the board, or in deepstrike, so that I can crush the heck out of the person who ahs done it to me game after game.

Anyway. Just a suggestion.

**StrikerTommy**

Will you be revising the devestators now that grav amp strat isn't in the new book?

I run raven guard successors too so I am interested to see what works well.

**XeonDragon**

Yes and no - but mainly no. Grav cannon and amp is 10 points. It is 4 shots of S5, AP-3, damage currently 1 or D3 vs 3+ save units (most likely target). I have seen a rumour it is going to a flat 2 damage. In contrast, a heavy bolter (also 10 points) is 3 shots of S5, AP-1, damage 2. So if I am going to take a 10-point heavy weapon on devastators (or tactical marines for that matter) a grav gun wins out over the heavy bolter every time. I don't see the reported new 30" range vs 36" for the heavy bolter being a deciding factor.

I will, however, probably look towards multi-meltas if I can afford them in my list points-wise, as they are the new hotness with an extra shot, change to melt-damage rules etc.

So, in short - yup, I will still take them but probably go 50/50 grav and melta devastators from now on.

StrikerTommy wrote:
Will you be revising the devestators now that grav amp strat isn't in the new book?

I run raven guard successors too so I am interested to see what works well.