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So, as the title suggests I'm getting a dark angels army but don't know quick to pick (deathwing, ravenwing or both)
.not looking for OP competitiveness, just a fun balanced list

well, DW is the cheapest (if you use ebay) but, imo, you get the most bang for your buck on a mixwing army. they always seem to do better this way, (ofc for best results hope for first turn)

Dark Angels allows you to build an army around whatevefr you want.
If you want to laugh at helldrakes and enjoy elites with low counts but massive power, take some termies. If you prefer mobile hard hitting they go Raven. If you want a fun and good army taht isnt either of those combine them and use what is one of the most balanced codexes with a huge amount of synergy

I highly recommend that you consider DW/RW. The tactical opportunities and durability is nothing to laugh at in the hands of a good player.

I don't play them myself, but I shake my head when I play against a DA player with a good list who doesn't take full advantage of all the special rules present in his book. As stated above, the synergy is nice and you can make it great.

I'm partial to bikes... always had. (have a large ork warbiker army).

For DA... I'm building a primarily RW army, with one unit being DW terminators (likely the Knights), to smash face if needed.

However, for just starting out, a DW army is a great starter/learning army for 40k.

 Brometheus wrote:
I highly recommend that you consider DW/RW. The tactical opportunities and durability is nothing to laugh at in the hands of a good player.

I don't play them myself, but I shake my head when I play against a DA player with a good list who doesn't take full advantage of all the special rules present in his book. As stated above, the synergy is nice and you can make it great.

on that note, here is a fun fluffy army, (if you want it more competitive drop belial for a terminator libby, and drop 5 termiantors from the 10 man squad for more bikes)

Belial- 190
Sammeal- 200
DW command squad w/ champion, DW banner, apotchecary, PC, 3 TH/SS- 330
5 man RW command squad w/ banner of devastation, champion, 1 GL- 270
10 man DW w/ 3 TH/SS PC, PC chain fist – 490
5 man DW w/ 1 TH/SS AC, chain fist- 250
5 man RW bike squad 1 melta - 144
5 man RW bike squad 1 melta - 144

I slapped 2 sets of DV starter sets together, and a command squad and called it a day!

So, if I got a couple of full ravenwing attack squads, added a couple deepstriking termie squads, and had sammael leading the army. Would this be a viable list

Depends on who you play, obviously. The strongest DA lists are Black Knight Spam (20+ BKs in a list) or LRC spam (4 LRCs, Dakka Banner, 4++ techmarine on bike.) followed by Ravenwing SoD with Iron Hands allies.

Death Raven is somewhat mid tier.

20 plus BK's sounds devastating!

Ravenwing seems to offer everything you'd want: toughness, speed, plenty of scoring units, devastating firepower and a lot of deployment options coupled with at LEAST average melee ability against most foes.

I would advise against mixing, but that's because I always advise against mixing. When you add another type of unit to your list, you just give your opponent a chance to justify whatever firepower they brought to deal with that unit.

Consider this simplified example: Chaos Space Marines using Chosen with plasmaguns and Helldrakes with baleflamers.

If you brought a strict Deathwing army, those Helldrakes would be bouncing off your 2+ armor to little effect. If you brought a strict Ravenwing army, the plasmaguns would be stuck rolling against your cover saves. But if you bring both, they get to use their firepower against the most vulnerable target.

yes, but you lose your own synergy by not taking those mixed units. you have all bikes, vs a ton of ap 3, sure you have a 4+ cover save, but what about tau? if you have no DW your army will usually die very quickly, and very horribly. also, you deepstrike your terminators, why, oh why, would you place them near a unit that greatly threatens them. You have to use your units, vs their proper targets as well. the bikes are hard hitting T1 -T2, anything after that is gravy.

Corollax, if you bring all one type of unit then when someone brings a hard counter to it you get rolled, what you said literally works both ways. It is about how you use your units, Im with raiden on this, mix is always better cause it gives you options. Oh sure that chosen squad can threaten my termies, so i dont have them near the chosen, and when my bikes go in to clear the chosen he sweeps his turkey in on them....wait oh i forgot i use variety so now i just use my AA option to deter that turkey or i realize that the turkey is not focused else where and i can freely move the rest of my units since the turkey wants my bikers blood, this allows me to put the termies against a unit they can bully. Also my termies will out range the chosens plasma and so long as the bikes pop their transport before it gets into plasma range i can just gun them down with the termies.

All Deathwing are not competitive but can offer some very cool models. There's nothing quite as awesome as seeing 30 terminators fully painted on the battlefield (until they are promptly swept off the table due to masses of fire).

All Ravenwing can be very cool as well, and it is a lot more viable play-wise I find.

Personally I like the synergy between Deathwing and Ravenwing, and I always have. It is a very in your face type of army that can bring a lot of medium range firepower and solid objective taking capabilities. Adding in some "green" models to those types of lists keeps it flexible but you may find that you want the extra bikes and/or terminators, especially considering that DA tecticals, devs, and assault marines are nothing special even compared to regular Codex marines.

However, I find that you can create a lot of pretty cool/decent builds with anything in the book if you are willing to sacrifice a little playability. For example, I have a 1500 all droppod/deep strike list, a 2000 point RW/DW list, a list that uses DW/RW and veterans, and a Dakka Banner Deathstar crusader leading some Ravenwign bikes. None are the best ever, but they all offer different playstyles when I want.

In a way, Dark Angels can essentially be White Scars, Ultramarines, Grey Knights (all termiantors) or all three fromt eh same book. Problem is that DA are not better than any of those regular marine styles (maybe with the exception of White Scars).

- VardenV2

I have ravenwing and deathwing combined and my competetive (un defeated in 10 matches) army list is:

Hq: Belial with Th/Ss

Troops: 2x 5 terminators (one with assualt cannon chainfist) and one with 3x Th/Ss and 2x lightning claws, plus cyclone missile launcher l(belial attached)
10 man tactical squad with plasma cannon, plasma gun, and serge with plasma pistol and chainsword

Elites: 5 man vet squad, serge with powerfist and storm bolters 2x bolters 2x Ss and power swords

Fast attack: 2x ravenwing bike squads one with plasma and chainsword and one with melta 1x black knight squad with corvus hammers

Heavy support: vindicator

The vindicator with S10 pie plate really catches people off guard as do the black knights

What points cost is that list at? Judging from what I see it would be around 1850-2000 right?

I am curious, is there a reason you use swords on the vets instead of power claws? The claw is better with a shield, because you aren't getting the extra attack anyway. However, if you do it for cool factor that's fine, because I am sure they look snazzy.

Greenwing_ftw's list is a good list, especially for starting out. You can get about 50% of that list from DV sets sold on ebay. So definitely take that into consideration

- Vardenv2

RW is much more versitile imho, since you want to mix though I'd say only one squad of DW just to take advantage of teleport homers and azrael as hq so by doing this both count as troops

3ish 5 man RW bike units, 2-3 DW terminators, 1-2 Black knights/ command squad.

Don't forget RW land speeders if you are taking some bikes. I think Typhoons and dual MM can be super good for their cost. And they look really cool swooping in behind your bikes.

Plus 1/6 chance they count as scoring.

- VardenV2

 VardenV2 wrote:
Don't forget RW land speeders if you are taking some bikes. I think Typhoons and dual MM can be super good for their cost. And they look really cool swooping in behind your bikes.

Plus 1/6 chance they count as scoring.

- VardenV2

if you take them as part of the squad they are automatically scoring (if the RW squad was scoring)

 Solosam47 wrote:
Corollax, if you bring all one type of unit then when someone brings a hard counter to it you get rolled, what you said literally works both ways. It is about how you use your units, Im with raiden on this, mix is always better cause it gives you options. Oh sure that chosen squad can threaten my termies, so i dont have them near the chosen, and when my bikes go in to clear the chosen he sweeps his turkey in on them....wait oh i forgot i use variety so now i just use my AA option to deter that turkey or i realize that the turkey is not focused else where and i can freely move the rest of my units since the turkey wants my bikers blood, this allows me to put the termies against a unit they can bully. Also my termies will out range the chosens plasma and so long as the bikes pop their transport before it gets into plasma range i can just gun them down with the termies.

If someone brought an entire army of your "hard counter", that's not a TAC list. TAC lists have diversified offense to deal with a number of different targets. What you've described isn't appropriate for a tournament, and I'm not going to build my armies around an army doomed to fail in a tournament environment.

You've also made an error of judgment in equating homogenous defense with homogenous offense. Just because I've brought an army that has identical defense profiles doesn't mean that those same units can't bring a variety of weapons. Vendettas and Vultures are both AV12-12-10 flyers. ...But one brings lascannons and the other brings punisher cannons. I get the luxury of addressing several targets with a single defensive profile. This is what I mean by "defensively homogenous" yet "TAC".

 VardenV2 wrote:
What points cost is that list at? Judging from what I see it would be around 1850-2000 right?

I am curious, is there a reason you use swords on the vets instead of power claws? The claw is better with a shield, because you aren't getting the extra attack anyway. However, if you do it for cool factor that's fine, because I am sure they look snazzy.

Greenwing_ftw's list is a good list, especially for starting out. You can get about 50% of that list from DV sets sold on ebay. So definitely take that into consideration

- Vardenv2

Its just short of 1600 points actually mate, and the reason i didn't take power claws are 1. the dark angel company veteran set is not actually that good and comes with very few options and no claws plus sword and storm shield looks good and perform well anyway so meh might aswell, also i have swapped one of the bolter guys for a melta and yes about half was from dark vengence, its a great starter set that i highly recommend! also just purchased a land speeder today mwaha

Use ravenwing for competitive games, and DW if you fancy a fun fluffy game.

DW or mixed lists have nothing on RW at the moment.

Corollax In other threads I can agree with your views 100% but in this case I can not, diversity is needed in DA, even the once great ravenwing is now running with C:SM to fill its shortcomings and most of the time its C:SM thats the primary with DA as allies

the problem is that becuse the DA codex came before the SM codex, they missed out on a lot of gubbinz like centurions and grav weapons and hunters/stalkers.

 OnlyWar wrote:
the problem is that becuse the DA codex came before the SM codex, they missed out on a lot of gubbinz like centurions and grav weapons and hunters/stalkers.

This wouldn't be a problem if the DA equivalents they were replaced with were actually usable... /rant

You can always ally in those elements if ncessary. If you want them to be greenwing just paint them the same and use UM tactics.