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So how does a Ravenwing army (at low points level, like 1k) deal with Thunderwolf Cavalry?
Had a game yesterday and met this things the first time ever, so I had basically no idea what they can do.

My list was basically a RWCS with all goodies, 2 Land Speeders Typhoon and 2 Bike Squads á 4 Bikes with 2 Grav and a Combi Grav with 2 MM Attack Bikes.
He had said TWC and 3 Drop Pods with 10 guys inside (2 meltas each).

The first turn went like this:
Opponent: "I'll charge."
Me: "alright, overwatch!
*rolling of dies*
Opponent: "That's enough, I'm in.. So that's 23 attacks plus the wolf lord...."
Me: "U WOT M8?!"


With about 1/4 of my list being evaporated in one turn of melee combat I had two choices - either evade the TWC at all costs and risk being shot to pieces from the 3 Grey Hunter Squads that podded in around the table or focus everything I have on these things in hopes of bringing them down. I decided for the later and left the Wolf Lord with 1 wound and an empty table on my side. Well, that didn't work to well.
It was Maelstrom Mission 2, where you draw cards according to the number of objectives you hold, so hiding would be suboptimal.
In hindsight it was a) stupid to go first against a basically empty table with TWC hidden out of LoS and b) deploy normally and not clump up to overwhelm a side of the board and give me breathing room to move.

So in general, what is the consensus? Evade the TWC as good as you can, eliminating the rest of his army, taking losses and eventually get cought and wiped? Focus everything on these beasties in order to establish dominace and have the threat out of the way?

Assuming he has Storm Shields on them, you probably want to try to fire as many bolters as possible into them and focus your plasma on the guys on foot who have no Invuln, but really it's not a good match up for you.

Maybe in this case, you'd be best off if you could run from where the pods came down and force the TWC to fight you without their friends.

TWC are kind of a broken unit. 4 base attacks on a model under 50 points is kind of absurd - to go along with the fact that they have 2W T5 and access to storm sheilds and thunderhammers.

The best thing to do here is focus everything on the wolves - The grey hunters can be ignored do to the fact that you reroll 2++ saves on them. You have to focus your plasma at the wolves first ususally because hell have a 2+ save wolf lord out front tanking. At this points level he probably can't afford a rune preist so it will just be their toughness and invo saves you need to break.

It's going to come down to what order you shoot things in. volume of fire is the only thing that brings this squad down - but I'll tell you - once you inflict a few casualties on this squad it becomes less obnoxious - then you just gotta deal with grey hunters...esentially tactical marines....(easy)

They didn't even really need their friends The amount of attacks coupled with better saves than me AND the S10 took care of pretty much everything. Bolters are ineffective since he would just take the few wounds on the Wolf Lord with 2+ and start LoS once he got low.
One squad of Grey Hunters decided to assault Sammael and the RWCS.. A decision he regretted pretty fast
in hindsight, engaging them is a bad idea unless I can pile in everything I have to overwhelm them with saves. In pieces they'd tear my units apart one by one; I think however I didn't have enough firepower to bring them down at that point.
LS being downed by Drop Pods, one unit already destroyed in melee left me just to weak to deal with any of those. Oh and the simple fact that terrain is of basically no benefit to me whereas having a toe in terrain gives him a 4+ cover.

So consensus is focus fire with everything I got.
Tough matchup indeed!

You were missin ravenwing support squad.
This means you can charge with no overwatch.
You gain combined overwatch with 3+ speeders and darkshroud all at bs2 or higher.
You gain shrouded.
And you still should Be hitting in melee before the twc gets to swing with your Knights.

Twc is a top tier list the ravenwing setup you had wasn't optimized.

Yeah it's a tough matchup for anyone that doesn't have ridicules firepower.

Another solution is to get invis on your blackknights and tie them up all game. Continuously charging and overwatching with hit and run. You'd need 2 libby to do this reliably.

gungo wrote:
You were missin ravenwing support squad.
This means you can charge with no overwatch.
You gain combined overwatch with 3+ speeders and darkshroud all at bs2 or higher.
You gain shrouded.
And you still should Be hitting in melee before the twc gets to swing with your Knights.

Twc is a top tier list the ravenwing setup you had wasn't optimized.

Don't own enough yet, just 2 speeders. Besides, at 1k points limit, this becomes costly very fast, but I agree: a RWSS would have helped immensly.
If I go to a FLGS 1k game event, I don't intend to run an optimised list for tourney play.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Yeah it's a tough matchup for anyone that doesn't have ridicules firepower.

Another solution is to get invis on your blackknights and tie them up all game. Continuously charging and overwatching with hit and run. You'd need 2 libby to do this reliably.

If only I had a way of bringing a Libby... Stupid Ravenwing rule RAW still forces me to take Sammael.

People overrated the Storm Shields. You should go in with as much AP2 as possible. Grav and Plas is your friend. They're only 2 wounds and have a 3+/3++.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
People overrated the Storm Shields. You should go in with as much AP2 as possible. Grav and Plas is your friend. They're only 2 wounds and have a 3+/3++.

They do die when you shot them up - rockets and heavy bolters works well.

gungo wrote:
You were missin ravenwing support squad.
This means you can charge with no overwatch.
You gain combined overwatch with 3+ speeders and darkshroud all at bs2 or higher.
You gain shrouded.
And you still should Be hitting in melee before the twc gets to swing with your Knights.

Twc is a top tier list the ravenwing setup you had wasn't optimized.

The speeders don't have grim resolve. Their own overwatch isn't boosted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The wolf lord shouldn't be able to tank everything if you shoot at him from multiple sides which shoulsn't be hard with multiple bike squads.

THey get grim resolve in the Support Squadron.

EDIT: Something that might be worth a shot is assaulting the Grey Hunters then using hit and run (during your turn) to get the bikes away from the TWC and onto farther objectives. The bikes, counting hit and run are much faster than the TWC.

I have played with my White Scars versus a heavy TWC army. Your number one advantage is speed since you can turbo boost while they can only run - so you've got to use your better mobility to your advantage. If they deploy spread out across their DZ you can focus fire on one unit at a time. I like the rad launcher since it'll auto drop their WS and initiative by one if you hit them. Of course you'll be saving that for towards the end of the game since you want to avoid melee as long as possible.

So basically keep a safe distance and focus fire on one unit at a time. You will fold real fast in close combat versus those TWC so play keep away. In my game I won since I was able to thin out their squads before they finally reached assault the last two turns. You can sacrifice one squad if necessary by spreading it out to block them off from the rest of your army. Grav and the plasma talons will work great since they wound on 2-3+ and ignore armor saves.

effreem wrote:
THey get grim resolve in the Support Squadron.

EDIT: Something that might be worth a shot is assaulting the Grey Hunters then using hit and run (during your turn) to get the bikes away from the TWC and onto farther objectives. The bikes, counting hit and run are much faster than the TWC.

But the time he's in there he's taking mass str 10 ap 2 hits.... not much can survive that.

DirtyDeeds wrote:

effreem wrote:
THey get grim resolve in the Support Squadron.

EDIT: Something that might be worth a shot is assaulting the Grey Hunters then using hit and run (during your turn) to get the bikes away from the TWC and onto farther objectives. The bikes, counting hit and run are much faster than the TWC.

But the time he's in there he's taking mass str 10 ap 2 hits.... not much can survive that.

Charge the grey hunters...not the thunderwolves. Then hit and run away from the twc, towards objectives if needed.

Easy, just focus your entire list on his TwC (To be fair, I don't like speeders ) I'd just grab 2 min bike squads of black knights, your command squad, 3 4 man units of normal bikes. Scout everyone towards his wolves, then move to block charge path to anything but normal bike squads( shouldnt be to hard) you probably get some good shots off as well. Should take out at least one model. Let him charge your bikes, maybe do another wound from overwatch, unit dies, then just converge and bring them down. Focused fire+ mop up charge from your units should finish them off. And remember, in combat the player receiving wounds places them, so you can toss expendable bikes (ie normal bikes and the sgts now after firing combi)

Proceed to overwhelm one unit at a time. Don't split up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This tactic had always worked well for me.


Whether drop pod marines, or bikes, or terminator deepstrikes.


Space marine armies are all about focusing the hammer blow. You strike one spot in your opponents line, destroy it, then move on. Its why I still feel like deathraven armies will do well.


- take 3 terminator squads (at 1750+ pts) just take the two needed at 1500.

If you get 1st turn, set your bikes up in the middle. Scout towards the strongest point in your enemies line. (Many players will spread out. This is good )

T2 you crush that section.

I see.
May main mistake was deploying spread out AND going first combined with not knowing what they can do and getting too close.
Next time I face that list I'll clump up in a table edge, forcing his pods do either do nothing or sit mostly useless there. Next turn I'd run off as fast as my wheels carry me, getting close to the TWC, unload (in this case) 12 plasma, 2 MM, 18 grav shots and some bolters and drop them. Once they're gone, he either is spread out with his pods or sitting in a corner footslogging in a maelstrom game.