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Howdy all, finally read the da book to cover, looked up all the main rule book usr rules, rechecked weapons ect, so I figure I would share my thoughts.

First, I want to say that in general I am a huge fan of force multipliers. For example, a null zone vanilla librarian costs 100 points, but the effect versus some armies to make them reroll saves increases your squads damage output by well over 100 points. Blood angel priests do the same, granting several units Fnp and furious charge to increase their survivability and damage output over 50 points worth. Yes this hinges on keeping your force multipliers alive and well positioned, but when it works you basically are playing with more points than your enemy.

With that said, the dark angels book is crammed full of force multipliers of many different kinds, meaning I am in love with them. Sure, the units on their own don't stack up to space wolves or grey knights base units, but with the force multipliers working you can exceed the under costed units with synergy and good maneuvering.

Top contenders for force multipliers are the several awesome banners ranging from +1 attacks to terminators in 6, feel no pain to 12, and salvo bolters that out dakka noise marines within 6. The old scouting teleport homer bikes combined with turn 1 terminator deeps strikes remains, but now Belial does not scatter at all with his squad and comes with his own homer, meaning you could forgo the bikes if you wanted and put a massive terminator unit led by Belial anywhere on the table, and reinforce them turn 2 with the rest of the terminators. Cheap level 1 librarians with divination are great buffing units for an hq on the cheap, but the special librarian is not too expensive either and gives you 1 higher ws in 6 inches, as well as getting a mastery of 3. The warlord table is all fairly decent, and includes furious charge or Fnp to the warlords unit. This is important because azrael let's you pick your warlord power, meaning you can always have furious charge if that is what your build needs, plus he keeps his helm so provides his entire squad with a 4+ invulnerable save.

What's more, there is another way to grant invulnerable saves in a limited bubble if you don't want the great azrael leading your force. Add In the dark shroud which gives stealth to all units in 6 inches, the tech marine ability to bolster any terrain you did not purchase, and you can get 2+ cover saves in a ruins for your units.

The book also has a few nasty debuffs in it. Black knight bikes get rad grenades as a shooting blast that lowers an enemies toughness by 1, though as a blast weapon you can't over watch with it sadly. They also get stasis for lowered init and ws. The bomber has an upgraded version that is -3, making most unit ws1 init1. Finally, eziekel has the super version as a psychic power that permanently lowers a wounded target by 3. Sure it has to go off, but that can really take the sting out of big daemons or hive tyrants when successful.

Moving on from the synergies, I like what they did with vehicle pricing for the most part. Whirlwinds are now cheap enough that I would gladly take them, though i think they missed an opportunity to include the antiair missile for them. Heavy bolter spam got harder as bolter razors and predators went up, but all the other options are either the same or cheaper--a positive change. Dreads can finally take the Mortis pattern, but sadly they still don't seem to know how to price dreadnought weapons on an av12 platform, and didn't make a special Mortis load out like I was hoping for. The land speeder vengeance is a massive failure, as its range is the same as a demolisher, it has 3 less str on its gun, is more expensive, and much more fragile. Yes it gets jink, but cover is not impossible for vehicles like the vindicator anymore, and av10 with 2 hull points and a short range expensive gun that can kill you is all kinds of stupid. Either I missed something big, or you will only ever see that kit making dark shrouds.

The flyers are meh. I like the look of them, but the cost is very high both in points and in dollars. You can get strafing run with both, and both are geared to kill infantry, but the dark talons punch comes from 2 hurricane bolters while the niphilim gets 7 s6 shots. 6-12 S4 shots with a s5 large blast is not that great for clearing infantry, while s6 is not that great at busting tanks. If you drop the mega bolter for the twin las you can engage more targets with the fighter, but that is one heck of an expensive twin linked las cannon. They needed either a massive point reduction or an extra rule like tank hunter to make them work.

Finally, the meat and potatoes. The Ravenwing and deathwing. Here i admit I am biased to terminators, as in 5th I ran 25 of them and only 4 to 7 bikes as my main force in the old codex. The rules have changed enough in 6th that these forces play pretty different now. The bikes in particular take a hit. What makes bikes good is the fast speed and toughness combined with a low cost. Chaos bikes are great, as are attack bikes in normal marine lists. Here however you are paying for teleport homers, scout and hit and run on every bike. This drives the cost up to the point that bike armies become far too elite for a t5 marine. Scout does not let you charge if you go first, meaning the scout mobility is limited to deploying teleport homers only. You don't need 15 teleport homers in a list, that's just overkill. So right off the bat the teleport homer built in price begins to hurt. Then we look at what the bikes can do. They have bolters base, and can upgrade to plasma melta ect. All of these require you get close. At point blank range your bikes will fold quickly due to low numbers and assault vulnerability-you have to survive a combat to hit and run. Add to this that normal bikes or Calvary will get to you as fast as you can get to them, and the scout ability becomes like the teleport homers-great for a couple units but not something you need to buy for your whole army.

The black knights seem to cover all these weaknesses by becoming more elite. A short range plasma gun in place of bolters give you a reason to scout forward, plus with the skilled rider they get you can jump into terrain without fear for more protection. You also can take the special ranged grenades for giving the rest of your force better chances to wound with rad grenades. The rad grenade debuff also let's your plasma guns instant death trouble units like paladins. Finally, since all additional models get the plasma, and the black knight with built in plasma costs the same as a ravenwing with purchased plasma gun, buying additional knights for a squad grants more good weapons while ravenwing bikes only grant bolters. I didn't even mention that the black knights get s5 rending base in close combat. Really the only reason to take standard bikes is if you think your opponent will be leaving a land raider open for you to melta or multimelta with the attack bike.

As for the terminators, here I really think Belial is necessary if you want to run termies successfully. The reason is because both terminator types are best in close combat. Yes the standard ones can get shooting weapons, but besides the 2 heavy weapons you get the rest is just storm bolters. Regular tacticals in a rhino bring bolters to bear, termies need to do much more to justify 3x the cost of a tactical marine. So since getting into close combat is the priority, Belial combined with death wing assault lets you no deep strike scatter in on turn 1 with a 10 man termie squad in tow. Both knights and regular termies in my opinion are equally good in close combat, so the main difference becomes if you want to shoot on your turn in. Regular termies get twin linked on the deep strike turn, making assault cannons or cyclones a good choice, and with split fire you can put a twin linked assault cannon or cyclone into 2 different transports. Split fire also gives you multiple options for assault, letting you fire a single storm bolter on your chain fist model at your intended charge target while the heavy weapon fires at a distant vehicle.

The knights on the other hand are t5 for at least the turn they deep strike in, and have no qualm about running since they don't shoot. They are also ws5 which adds up quickly, and the whole unit gets to precision strike meaning the ap2 wielding models, who usually swing at init 1, have a good chance to be killed by maces before swinging. Knights are harder to manage in my opinion, since you need to spread out to avoid blasts but maintain base contact in an unbroken chain to keep t5, which is a big deal to keep the knights alive under fire. Also, managing when to use the smite attack can be tricky some times I have no doubt. Knights are also not troops, but I don't see this as a problem as I rather like the tactical squads and scout squads, and feel that terminators don't need to be troops in this edition.

In closing, a brief nod to the characters. While I mention that Belial, azrael, eziekel and standard librarians are all good force multipliers, the rest of the characters are passable but don't really jump out. Captains suffer from not being named characters, interrogator chaplains are pretty pricy and fearless is already on inner circle, leaving only hatred as their buff; the special war gear is a bit pricy, like shrouded on a character if not joined to a unit for 50 points. There are some good invulnerable saves you can get, but I don't see the point since bikes get cover via jink and infantry are better protected by azraels invulnerable. I imagine that a bike build with a good armor save to lead black knights as a bullet sponge would work well as a non librarian character, as that may make the black knights tough enough to deliver lots of plasma death starting from turn 1.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. I'll be putting a list together soon to try some stuff out, and of course try and update the thread as yours suggestions come in. I can eventually do a unit by unit breakdown in place of my initial reactions for units, but I want game experience before then. Thanks to those who stuck with this! I know it's a bit lengthy!

I believe you might not be giving basic bikers a chance. given the idea of force multipliers, if can give a biker unit (or two) the 2/4 salvo buff to their twin linker boltguns, the amount of fire power these guys output will be amazing, and on a very mobile platform. Scoring units that can cover a huge amount of ground can cause problems for many armies, and make the tactical choices much harder for your opoonent. And this is where bikes excel (Although jetbikes do it much better) Scouting also allows for a shifting deployment that can often cause your opponenet to over emphasize one flank over and another, allowing you to deny him enemies on the strong flank, and hit is weak flank quickly, before he can recover.

I don't know what units/character can take the banners, but if you can get the following combined together and fora decent price that force multiplication is amazing.

-salvo banner
-fnp banner
-Telepathy on ML2 lib (For invisibility and other amazing powers)
-Scoring bikers

Good read, shame about bikes as was looking at doing a ravenwing list, does codex marines still do it better?

From what I understand the the salvo banner costs 1 point more than 6 tac marines, goes away if the model carrying it dies, and can only be carried by a 1 wound meq in a 5 man meq squad or a 1 wound teq in a 5 man teq squad. The real question is how do you keep it alive.

Here is one idea for the meq banner.

Stick 4 squads of tac marines, 2 on each side of a venerable land raider crusader near in layered lines like they are British redcoats. Banner is inside the venerable land raider.

Venerable = same thing as venerable on a dread.

Three words:

Land Raider Crusader

I plan to run mine in a unit with azrael that advances to midfield with 1-2 units of tac marines. Where there is an aegis line waiting for them. Sitting comfortably at about 18ish inches out and unleashing the fury.

Maybe a dark shroud(interesting to see if it can be hidden behind a landraider) with the rest of the points going into pure CC/High AP offense.

Should leave me about 700 points to go to town with in an 1850

Leth you read my mind for a list I have been slowly kicking around.

As for not giving ravenwing bikes a chance, perhaps that is fair. You pay about 160 for 6 naked ravenwing bikes. That is quite a bit. Yes, they benefit greatly from the salvo banner. However, using the salvo banner on them means you probably are not using the scout and teleport homer and hit and run abilities. Plus, upgrades for them are fairly expensive, as getting a decent cc weapon necessitates upgrading your sarge to get the base 2 attacks, making even a power weapon a 25 point investment.

Compared to tactical squads, who for 140 get 10 bolters (that are not twin linked granted) and dont have the mobility of bikes, I still dont see spending 160 on bikes if you are going the salvo bolter banner. Part of the issue is that you want your squads clustered kind of close to have many units use the banner, but this imposes on the mobility of the ravenwing somewhat since they will be staying so close together.

Finally, hopefully illustrating that I weighed heavily on the ravenwing before casting judgement, suppose you do take 2 full ravenwing squads with attack bike and the salvo banner. What are you really doing with 14 scout moves? What about the 14 teleport homers? Granted the 14 bikes get 56 salvo bolter shots, with twin linked making that more like 75 shots, but 12 inches for scouting does not really change all that much on the table-especially considering how fast the bikes are naturally. For over 400 points with no upgrades at all (not including a banner squad in that of course) I feel you can make better use of the salvo banner with 3 tactical squads.

Anywho, I will definately play some games with salvo bikes is what this is telling me, to confirm my suspicions. This may be one of those instances where the true value of the mobility can not be quantified via a paper impression such as I am doing.

DevianID wrote:
Plus, upgrades for them are fairly expensive, as getting a decent cc weapon necessitates upgrading your sarge to get the base 2 attacks, making even a power weapon a 25 point investment.

You don't need to upgrade to Vet Sgt to get a power weapon.

DevianID wrote:

Anywho, I will definately play some games with salvo bikes is what this is telling me, to confirm my suspicions. This may be one of those instances where the true value of the mobility can not be quantified via a paper impression such as I am doing.

Indeed. I think you would get more mileage for Salvo out of the Tactical squads as well but I don't think dakka is everything for the Bikers anyway. Sure having 14 teleport homers is overkill in the sense that you only need one to not scatter but you end up creating a no scatter zone around the entire squad. I think the advantage is right there in that while your opponent knows it's coming, you make it harder for them to plan for it effectively. Plus the mobility versus vehicles and objectives of course. Unless you bring in Belial to cancel out scatter but I get the impression that he doesn't like to tag along on Ravenwing's scouting anymore.

Either way it seems like they've become cheaper than they used to be so I might have to experiment with more of them. Normally just brought the one for the homers but not even needing that necessarily adds some flexibility to list making.

One thing I noticed.
Cypher is back (sort of)
Company Master, Bolt pistol, Plasma Pistol, Displacer Field.
With the Gunslinger rule, it's not a bad facsimile.

DevianID wrote:
Leth you read my mind for a list I have been slowly kicking around.

As for not giving ravenwing bikes a chance, perhaps that is fair. You pay about 160 for 6 naked ravenwing bikes. That is quite a bit. Yes, they benefit greatly from the salvo banner. However, using the salvo banner on them means you probably are not using the scout and teleport homer and hit and run abilities. Plus, upgrades for them are fairly expensive, as getting a decent cc weapon necessitates upgrading your sarge to get the base 2 attacks, making even a power weapon a 25 point investment.

Compared to tactical squads, who for 140 get 10 bolters (that are not twin linked granted) and dont have the mobility of bikes, I still dont see spending 160 on bikes if you are going the salvo bolter banner. Part of the issue is that you want your squads clustered kind of close to have many units use the banner, but this imposes on the mobility of the ravenwing somewhat since they will be staying so close together.

Finally, hopefully illustrating that I weighed heavily on the ravenwing before casting judgement, suppose you do take 2 full ravenwing squads with attack bike and the salvo banner. What are you really doing with 14 scout moves? What about the 14 teleport homers? Granted the 14 bikes get 56 salvo bolter shots, with twin linked making that more like 75 shots, but 12 inches for scouting does not really change all that much on the table-especially considering how fast the bikes are naturally. For over 400 points with no upgrades at all (not including a banner squad in that of course) I feel you can make better use of the salvo banner with 3 tactical squads.

Anywho, I will definately play some games with salvo bikes is what this is telling me, to confirm my suspicions. This may be one of those instances where the true value of the mobility can not be quantified via a paper impression such as I am doing.

I was under the understanding that the salvo banner only gave the salvo rule to ravenwing units, can tacticals benefit from it as well?

I've only seen bits of the book and don't have it yet, so this is probably just my own ignorance.

"All friendly Codex: Dark Angels units within 6" of the banner treat their Boltguns as Salvo 2/4 weapons"

 marv335 wrote:
"All friendly Codex: Dark Angels units within 6" of the banner treat their Boltguns as Salvo 2/4 weapons"

/groan

Thanks...I think?

DevianID wrote:
Compared to tactical squads, who for 140 get 10 bolters (that are not twin linked granted) and dont have the mobility of bikes, I still dont see spending 160 on bikes if you are going the salvo bolter banner. Part of the issue is that you want your squads clustered kind of close to have many units use the banner, but this imposes on the mobility of the ravenwing somewhat since they will be staying so close together.

From my game experience splitting up your force is a really bad thing to do. I don't see how this hinders the Ravenwings maneuverability at all. In fact I'd say its better for all of the Ravenwing bikes to stay together. It brings all of your guns to bear on a small part of your opponents army and usually you'll take little to no damage in return (if they are spread out). Ravenwing is looking really good.

I'm not sure how to feel about Deathwing though. The increase in cost is meh, and now they have Split Fire which is great, but I'm not sure how I feel about it all.

Well, I'd like to throw my whole army against one flank of the enemy. This could work when the enemy sets up first. Set up the RW Bikers on one flank, move them forward, and then bring down the DW Termies. If the army has enough fire power, it should be doable.
I did this in the 4th ed with my vanilla SM army. Lots of Termies with assault cannons. But there, assault cannons had rending on rolling to hit and not on rolling to wound. Ouch.

2 things I noticed in the book, is the 2 point per marine cheaper cost (with vetSerg upgrade) price reduction across all standard marine squads, Tac, Dev, Scout. May not seem like much, but since all Vet Serg. get access to the Armory this puts them on the same footing as GH for raw versatility and lets you do way better bolter brigands than C:SM.

On the flip side if you want to meched up Termi's you are goin to pay through the nose for the landraiders do to a mandatory 30ppm price upgrade to all deathwing transports.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, I'd like to throw my whole army against one flank of the enemy. This could work when the enemy sets up first. Set up the RW Bikers on one flank, move them forward, and then bring down the DW Termies. If the army has enough fire power, it should be doable.
I did this in the 4th ed with my vanilla SM army. Lots of Termies with assault cannons. But there, assault cannons had rending on rolling to hit and not on rolling to wound. Ouch.

This apporach just got better. The Deathwing assault lest you choose, whigh squads arrive on turn 1 AND which squads arrive on Turn 2, with no requirement for any Turn 1 arrivals.

Looks like alot of units have the Flakk missile option too

5 man tac squad with a flakk missile laucher looks like a cheap and effective way to add an allied detachment, you have a small scoring unit that can still take a pot shot at flyers. Add a cheap libby with divination and thats your hq covered, then ally in some cool stuff like deathwing etc.

Havnt managed to get my hands on the new Dex yet as it was delayed, hopefuly ill get it on monday.

Love the Multiwing synergy that dark angels has always had (well at least tried to) and i cannot wait to starting useing this dex. The major thing that our last one missed that this seems to cover is upgradability! Options are always nice to keep it interesting.

Can someone please let me know what the differences in this dex are between the standard chappy and the interrogator? and possibly if you think they are viable options in this edition.

Also the special issue wargear ive been hearing about specifically displacer shield and the likes, who can these items be given too?

Thanks

Liking Grim Resolve. This is the kind of thing I was after to make standard DA a bit different from say... Ultramarines.

Bit confused about the bit about not being able to voluntarily fail a morale check though. I know Combat Tactics allow Vanilla Marines to fail a morale check, but as DA don't have Combat Tactics this wouldn't apply anyway.

I haven't played much 6th Edition. Under what circumstances can you voluntarily fail a morale check?

Overall, I like the book. It's different enough from Vanilla Marines to justify its existence without being over the top (thinks Space Marines riding giant wolves).

If you're fighting something that you can't harm, you can normally voluntarily fall back from combat, like if your 5 Tacticals get assaulted by an AV13 Soul Grinder. Since their krak grenades can't scratch it, any other Marines can just flip it the bird and voluntarily break from combat. Your DA will test against their unmodified leadership and probably stand around getting beaten to death.

Odd that a legion that prides itself on tactical brilliance can't make the smart decision when circumstances demand it.

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
If you're fighting something that you can't harm, you can normally voluntarily fall back from combat, like if your 5 Tacticals get assaulted by an AV13 Soul Grinder. Since their krak grenades can't scratch it, any other Marines can just flip it the bird and voluntarily break from combat. Your DA will test against their unmodified leadership and probably stand around getting beaten to death.

Odd that a legion that prides itself on tactical brilliance can't make the smart decision when circumstances demand it.

Ah yes, I remember.

Well you never know when a Soul Grinder is concealing vital information about the Fallen somewhere on its personage.

DevianID wrote:
This drives the cost up to the point that bike armies become far too elite for a t5 marine

But you do not have to pay an extra 10 pts for the Sergeant, unlike normal C:SM. The actual cost of the final squad compared to C:SM bike squads is only a few points difference.

A few points for the ability to 'hit and run' out of a bad combat, scout, teleporter homers, and have a hidden land speeder. Yes please! In one squad you can bury 2 PGs and 3 MMs. Within 12" of an opponent, it is going to deliver 7 shots that will turn marines into piles of smoldering boots.

I predict bike armies are going to be kitted out as ravenwing until a new C:SM codex is released.

DevianID wrote:
Scout does not let you charge if you go first, meaning the scout mobility is limited to deploying teleport homers only

Respectfully, no. Being able to scout lets you move out of fire zones, or place yourself into a better fire zone.

More importantly scout gives outflank! How many C:SM players have gone over Khan vs Captain because of the outflank ability. Deathwing gives you that for free!

DevianID wrote:
plus with the skilled rider they get you can jump into terrain without fear for more protection

More importantly, skilled rider gives the unit +1 jink save.
This means that when stealthed and moving flat-out, the squad has a 2+ cover save.

DevianID wrote:
Compared to tactical squads, who for 140 get 10 bolters (that are not twin linked granted) and dont have the mobility of bikes

Bikes are 50% more resiliant to small arms fire than foot marines, so your 6 bikes will stand up to bolters as long as 9 foot marines.
The bikes also have a 5+ jink save, they also are relentless. They also have hammer of wrath.

I can tell you never played a bike list. Being able to move 24" each turn is huge. Its awesome for late-game objective grabbing. I have won many games by just boosting around the board, then going to the objectives on turn 5.

haven't played much 6th Edition. Under what circumstances can you voluntarily fail a morale check?

When you have to make a morale check, e.g., when a unit has 25% losses vs shooting.

 wuestenfux wrote:

haven't played much 6th Edition. Under what circumstances can you voluntarily fail a morale check?

When you have to make a morale check, e.g., when a unit has 25% losses vs shooting.

Really? I thought this was just a Space Marine thing. Are Combat Tactics now useless?

 labmouse42 wrote:


A few points for the ability to 'hit and run' out of a bad combat, scout, teleporter homers, and have a hidden land speeder. Yes please! In one squad you can bury 2 PGs and 3 MMs. Within 12" of an opponent, it is going to deliver 7 shots that will turn marines into piles of smoldering boots.

I predict bike armies are going to be kitted out as ravenwing until a new C:SM codex is released.

I thought the attack bike and speeder had to split off like the current rules. So no mixed unit of speeder and bikes. No book on hand though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 wuestenfux wrote:

haven't played much 6th Edition. Under what circumstances can you voluntarily fail a morale check?

When you have to make a morale check, e.g., when a unit has 25% losses vs shooting.

Only if you have combat tactics can you volunatrily do that.

Outside of Combat Tactics its the these weapons are useless thing. So for krak armed units AV13 walkers and T10 models.

A mate of mine is claiming that normal tactical sergeants can take things like chain fists and plasma cannons....

 winterman wrote:
I thought the attack bike and speeder had to split off like the current rules. So no mixed unit of speeder and bikes. No book on hand though.

I just read it again. You are correct.

That's a mixed bag of beans. Being seperate makes them more vulnerable, but it means they can target different targets than the bikes.

Is an Aegis Line considered terrain for the purpose of the techmarines bolster ability? If so, that'd be a really nice place to stick some dreads.

 Scrollax wrote:


Can someone please let me know what the differences in this dex are between the standard chappy and the interrogator? and possibly if you think they are viable options in this edition.

Also the special issue wargear ive been hearing about specifically displacer shield and the likes, who can these items be given too?

Thanks

Could someone with the dex please answer my questions, as I'm not gunna get to look at the dex till Monday and I really can't that long!

lol calm down, I'm sure someone with the codex will get round to it