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Love sableclaw vector strike - its the "drive be closer" meme but for real.

 BrotherGecko wrote:

Then the hammer of caliban predator w/ twl las and hb sponsons and a landraider.

that a single predator? Formation requires a unit of three. I made this mistake playing with the leaked pics.

axisofentropy wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:

Then the hammer of caliban predator w/ twl las and hb sponsons and a landraider.

that a single predator? Formation requires a unit of three. I made this mistake playing with the leaked pics.

Meant that to be predators as in 3 lol, apologies.

So, here's a question I'm asking myself at the moment : From reading the codex, it seems pretty clear to me that with the loss of the dakka banner, basic marines really have no place in a competitive setting.

It looks to me as if the codex is pretty much Ravenwing > Deathwing > anything else.

What are your toughts on the matter? Is there any way to make green wing viable, or do we just never use them again?

Lastly, considering what seems to be (with every precaution taken considering this is still early) a very ravenwing oriented codex, what are our best choices for allies?

Well with 2 Demi companies at 1850pts I've built a list that has 550 free points. 50 marines in 10 squads and 10 razorbacks all objective secured seems to be extremely good. Then I just support it with a raider and 3 whirlwinds with shred, tankhunter and monster hunter.

Looks to me like ravenwing or battle companies are the way to go with a very distant second is deathwing in this edition.

Deathwing are too slow, too expensive and not particularly tough compared to mass transports or jinking ravenwing.

Yeah I think the Lion's Blade (2 demi companies) option with support (either ravenwing or other) will be at least as solid as pure ravenwing.

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Well with 2 Demi companies at 1850pts I've built a list that has 550 free points. 50 marines in 10 squads and 10 razorbacks all objective secured seems to be extremely good. Then I just support it with a raider and 3 whirlwinds with shred, tankhunter and monster hunter.

Looks to me like ravenwing or battle companies are the way to go with a very distant second is deathwing in this edition.

Deathwing are too slow, too expensive and not particularly tough compared to mass transports or jinking ravenwing.

Oh I can see that working out at 1850, I have more trouble seing it at 1500 tought. I assume you are taking full lascanons right?

Ravenwing are nigh-invincible to shooting, so you should make them as tanky as possible in CC as well.

Iron Hands Chapter Master + Obsec bikes.
Skyhammer + Ravenwing makes for a strong double punch, especially if you come in on turn 2.
Conclave of Librarians on bikes make fantastic allies as well, chapter of your choice.

Other than that mono-ravenwing is a perfectly fine and tier 1 build- the msu spam itself cripples a lot of armies who lack the ability to handle so many 2+ / 3+ rerollable cover saves
and targeting efficiency in from the small units.

Razgaros wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:
Well with 2 Demi companies at 1850pts I've built a list that has 550 free points. 50 marines in 10 squads and 10 razorbacks all objective secured seems to be extremely good. Then I just support it with a raider and 3 whirlwinds with shred, tankhunter and monster hunter.

Looks to me like ravenwing or battle companies are the way to go with a very distant second is deathwing in this edition.

Deathwing are too slow, too expensive and not particularly tough compared to mass transports or jinking ravenwing.

Oh I can see that working out at 1850, I have more trouble seing it at 1500 tought. I assume you are taking full lascanons right?

Honestly not sure, looking at a mix of las/plas and asscans. Probably something like asscans on the assault razors and las/plas everywhere else.

For 1290pts running 2 Demi companies I can get 10 5 man squads. 6 grav guns for the tacs (1ea), 8 heavy bolters for the devs (4ea) and 4 flamers for the assault (2ea). Plus 10 razors with 8 las/plas and 2 asscans. And I master with relic blade and combi plas (DV master) and a no frills chappy.

Then you could spend 55pts on a scout squad for you aux choice and blow the rest beefing up the demi companies or whatever you want.

So how about smashfecker, 10 black knights, Sammy and a interomancy / telepathy liby for a unit?

 Formosa wrote:
So how about smashfecker, 10 black knights, Sammy and a interomancy / telepathy liby for a unit?

More librarians are needed, they have more utility than additional Black Knights. Ravenwing Psyker Conclave!

Although you could join 10 Black Knights to 5 Librarians, Sammael and Smashfather...

For me the best thing so far is the Ravenwing Support Squad. 3 typhoons and a Darkshroud is amazing. The crazy part is the ability to overwatch another unit, and at BS 2.

The question is does the stealth rule apply to the speeders in the unit?

Um.. If the shroud puts out the bubble and it cannot be affected by its own bubble, then yeah the rest of the unit would I think, but then the shroud would also get it because 1 model confers to the rest of the unit....That's mighty confusing

Soss wrote:
For me the best thing so far is the Ravenwing Support Squad. 3 typhoons and a Darkshroud is amazing. The crazy part is the ability to overwatch another unit, and at BS 2.

The question is does the stealth rule apply to the speeders in the unit?

Yes, the unit has both Stealth and Shrouded provided both the Darkshroud and at least one other Land Speeder are alive.

Darkshroud has Shrouded. Other Speeder gets Stealth. Both those rules apply to an entire unit as long as one model in the unit has them.

Is pure Ravenwing better than Skyhammer + Ravenwing? I can't decide if the alpha strike potential outweighs the sheer durability of pure RW.

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Is pure Ravenwing better than Skyhammer + Ravenwing? I can't decide if the alpha strike potential outweighs the sheer durability of pure RW.

It's a tough call. Though i think the think the Skyhammer would be a massive distraction to keep fire off of your RW units. Second turn, you can have your entire army in the enemies deployment zone and everything firing at full BS.

So good

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Is pure Ravenwing better than Skyhammer + Ravenwing? I can't decide if the alpha strike potential outweighs the sheer durability of pure RW.

It is actually a really tough question.

RW + Skyhammer lets you turbo boost turn 1 and then land the skyhammer + have everything in range to open up on the opponent turn 2. The nastiest part of this is that even reserves strategies may not help against this.

Pure Ravenwing is vastly more durable than a skyhammer and really doesn't need anything from any other force as they have good melee, grav guns (unit of 3 bikes w/ 2 grav guns), MM attack bikes, plasma talons, and AA. There really isn't much need to play games with reserves as the majority of alpha strike lists will find a ravenwing force with darkshroud support to be more than they can handle due to the MSU nature of it and the 3+/2+ rerollable saves. Really the biggest benefit allies can bring is being something on the board turn 1 as the RW have to all go into reserves together or deploy together.

IMO the libby conclave with white scars libbies on bikes actually makes a great ally for a RW force. They give the attack bike and bike squads skilled ride thus letting them get up to the vaunted 2+ rerollable cover. They can also roll up shrouding and invisibility which can quickly make you extremely durable. This also lets you take more grav and MM in the form of bike squads and attack bikes which are massively cheaper than the black knights. Admittedly you sacrifice some pretty good melee abilities for this.

BTW has anyone figured out how a nephilim deploys as "normally". I have been assuming it goes into reserves despite the rest of the force deploying but that may be wrong.

We've been playing that it goes into reserves and doesn't affect the rest of the force.

So I just played against a ravenwing knights squad with the librarian conclave attached and it was brutal. A 2+ re-rollable jink save with feel no pain from endurance is pretty much completely unkillable for my space marines, or at least I havent figured out how to do it. Not to mention they still have plasma talons and the librarians shooting attacks as well. Any ides on how this can be countered?

Culexus can stop them for a turn or so, but with all the twin-linked plasma, hammer of wrath and automatic hit and run it isn't too hard for them to gun him / run him down.

Drop pod grav devs with Tigurius rolling perfect timing, or drop WWP D-scythe (harder to pull off as most likely the Bikestar will always be in close combat.) Thunderwolf star with Conclave support
works too, although it's more vulnerable to shooting.

They just don't really have a hard counter, this is why they are an amazing unit. Killing the Darkshroud with Ignores Cover is more vital.

They don't have a counter in the current top meta builds. Which is good for the game.

If faced with fast assault units or hordes they fold, in close combat they are 1W R5 3+ models for 40 points.
BS2 overwatch will help you only a little with this.
Their worst nightmare are canoptek wraiths.

Is there a prevailing opinion as to which heavy weapon for Deathwing termies is the best? I know the assault cannon is pretty solid, but what about the others (Plasma Cannon, CML, Heavy Flamer)? Are they any good? The reason I ask is because I recently got a second DV Deathwing squad from eBay, and I'm thinking of doing a conversion to swap out the assault cannon for something else. I'm thinking plasma cannon or CML, but what is the best? I am planning on running a DeathRaven list in the future.

I could find a place for heavy flamer (in a DS squad that can come in precisely, or an assaulty one in a land raider), cyclone (nice and versatile), or assault cannon (also very versatile). In some ways the cyclone is a better generalist weapon than the AC (the massive range helps), and we now have split fire so you don't have to worry any longer about wasting SB shots every time you shoot the cyclone. Not so convinced about the plasma cannon.

can't use your BS2 or higher overwatch with a plasma cannon which is a new concern.

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Culexus can stop them for a turn or so, but with all the twin-linked plasma, hammer of wrath and automatic hit and run it isn't too hard for them to gun him / run him down.

Drop pod grav devs with Tigurius rolling perfect timing, or drop WWP D-scythe (harder to pull off as most likely the Bikestar will always be in close combat.) Thunderwolf star with Conclave support
works too, although it's more vulnerable to shooting.

They just don't really have a hard counter, this is why they are an amazing unit. Killing the Darkshroud with Ignores Cover is more vital.

Imperial Knight Acheron anyone? Those rerollable jink saves don't work very well against a giant S7 ap3 template....

With Conclavestar casting invisibility on a 2+ it's hard to get any template weapons off save the first turn.

Acherons are also pretty rare, availability speaking.

Wraiths are common but Necrons have no way of negating psychic powers aside from allying a Culexus, so the Ravenstar beats up on DLord+Wraiths and Orikan + Lychguard pretty hard. Obviously Lychguard rerolling 1s is a hard beast to kill, but I believe the Command Squad has sufficient weight of fire + close combat attacks to put them down. With Interromancy you can possibly get up to 6 attacks on the charge including HoW, roughly 60+ saves with Preferred enemy and prescience re-rolls.

Necrons also have very limited access to Ignores Cover so the rest of the army that isn't close combat does zip in terms of damage output (already low in Decurion.)

Eldar also have huge problems against unless they tailor, having to roll Perfect Timing.

Although now that I think about it... it might be nice to bring Ravenguard allies for that whole +1 to nightfighting and shrouded t1... Since DA don't have chapter tactics then Ravenguard ICs could confer shrouded right?

Probably could save you points since realistically you want the cover saves for the first turn anyways and you are going to want a Librarian conclave from C:SM

When everyone talks about the Conclave... are we talking about the DA Librarius Conclave? Or the new SM Conclave?

I'm talking about the new C:SM conclave.

If you want the DA psychic powers you could probably just run one or two on bikes for that primaris.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
I'm talking about the new C:SM conclave.

If you want the DA psychic powers you could probably just run one or two on bikes for that primaris.

Okay... cool.

I wanna do that ConclaveStar too... but, with the DA's Conclave to keep in the "family".

Anyone have suggestions to fit Ezekiel?

Probably a small CAD with commandsquad+Drop pod+ ezekiel. Then add in the DA Conclave+RW Formation.