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Becous we don't have any dedicated ant-air except stormraven gunship what are your thoughts and experience whit it?
Do you use it as transport or just a gunship and what load out ?

The best loadout is Multimelta front with Plasma cannon turret and Hurricane bolter sides. The plasma cannon and bolters fire at inf, the MM fires at vehicles with POTMS. Plasma cannon also has the AP2 for the +1 on damage table vs vehicles so it can double as anti-vehicle. Assault cannon also works, but often you are removing hull points rather than destroying a vehicle. Id also rather the better anti-meq to the better anti-horde that assault cannons provide.

I don't like the plasma cannon on the storm raven. Anything that has any chance of putting hits on my 200+ pts flyer is a no no. I don't even think the plasma cannon is that great of a weapon anyway.

I go with multimelta, assault cannon, hurricane side sponsons. The stormraven is not reliably anti AV 14 or AV 13 anyway, and adding the plasma won't change that. It kills AV 12 and below like its going out of style.

The stormraven must start in reserve, so I never put passengers on it. This is two fold: I don't want to piecemeal my army and I don't want the stormraven to be a bigger target than it already is.

Frankly, I've been considering allying with Vanilla dex to get null zone, riflemen dread, and yes, the more efficient storm talon.

It depends on the army list. My load out is most often multi melta and TL las cannons.

It is also a very useful as an assault platform. Out of ~20 games I've only had it get shot down with troops on board once. A backfield assault with a small squad of death company and a death company dread really disrupts anything your oppenant is trying to do.

Hmm maybe plan of putting some HTH scouts on board is not horrible then.

Martel732 wrote:
Hmm maybe plan of putting some HTH scouts on board is not horrible then.

Well to assault out of the raven you have to go to hover mode. Which means if you dont have enough localised threat then it will likly get blown away. If you are forcing the enemy to choose between killing a CC dread, a CC death company squad, and a hovering stormraven you are putting them on the defensive. Plus death company are cheap for a very effective CC unit. You would be suprised just how much a 6 man DC squad with 3 power axes can kill.

Also if its a bad idea load up the stormraven with troops and a dread because of enemy match up, army list, or even going first.... dont do it! :-)

I'm still scared to fly around 500 points in a single target. Knowing if she gets shot down that I loose three 2 to three units. A killing blow pretty much.

Or it doesn't show up in time. That's another killer.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't like the plasma cannon on the storm raven. Anything that has any chance of putting hits on my 200+ pts flyer is a no no. I don't even think the plasma cannon is that great of a weapon anyway.

The chances of stripping a hull point are once every 12 times you fire it (1/6 chance of Gets Hot + 1/2 chance of saving it). Considering that a Stormraven is generally in reserves half the game (unless you put it in hover mode) it should only lose a single HP every 3 or 4 games, unless you get extremely unlucky.

I suppose that's true.... I just seem to be very unlucky with gets hot!.

Re-read the "Gets Hot!" special rule in the book...twin-linked weapons may re-roll their 1s. So, you actually have only a 1/36 chance to overheat.

makes it even better. god i cant wait for christmas for mine to get here.

For what I'm using my Stormraven for (anti-flyer), the assault cannon is still better. But I do have the turret magnetized in case I change my mind. I'm still more comfortable risking las/plas razorbacks

I go with multi-melta and assault cannon. Very effective anti-tank, especially with the pair of S8 AP1 missiles it fires.

And go ahead and hover. If you're firing at the hovering storm raven, you aren't firing at the dread and marines I just dumped on you.

-Matt

Well, ideally the marines and dread will be in HTH, so the only thing left to fire at will be the Raven. Hovering Ravens likely = dead Raven against any opponent with good target prioritization.

I've had better luck with it as a gunship with TL lascannon, hurricane bolters, and typhoon launcher, but I think the loadout largely depends on what you're using it for. I say MAGNETIZE ALL THE THINGS. The biggest problem that I've had with it being a transport is that if it gets shot down, pretty much everything inside is guaranteed to die unless it has an invulnerable save.

That's why I don't transport anything in it right now. I've *considered* hand to hand scouts for lulz, but seems like kind of a poor scheme.

I've tried it as a transport and gunship, but I haven't had much luck using it as a transport since it has to go into hover mode and then the earliest you assault is turn 3 because you came in from reserves even if you hover on-I use it as a gunship to kill stuff

Either a cheap scoring unit, or just dedicated AA/Tankhunting IMO.

You can't ever assault something til T3 at the earliest, assuming it came on T2. 1/2 the game wasted

I ran TL-Assault Cannon, Hurricane bolters and MM. It lets it cover almost any role I need it to and to do the role well. Because if I pay 200+ points for a unit, it better be able to do a lot!

Martel732 wrote:
I don't like the plasma cannon on the storm raven. Anything that has any chance of putting hits on my 200+ pts flyer is a no no. I don't even think the plasma cannon is that great of a weapon anyway.

I go with multimelta, assault cannon, hurricane side sponsons. The stormraven is not reliably anti AV 14 or AV 13 anyway, and adding the plasma won't change that. It kills AV 12 and below like its going out of style.

The stormraven must start in reserve, so I never put passengers on it. This is two fold: I don't want to piecemeal my army and I don't want the stormraven to be a bigger target than it already is.

Frankly, I've been considering allying with Vanilla dex to get null zone, riflemen dread, and yes, the more efficient storm talon.

Dont agree with that, recently played against 3 land raiders I had 2 storm ravens with MM, turn two both come on and 2 land raiders were dead, 36inch move with a 12 inch 2d6 pen range means you should be able to get within range of any high armour, the assault cannons acutally did quite well as well i think one LR blew up to a AC and one to a MM.

I use them as purely gun ships, sometimes I'll put a combat squad in there but wouldnt put anything expensive in there as they are pretty much dead if and when the SR blows up, and it makes the SR quite a target.

My 3 storm ravens are modeled with TL AC, Hurricane bolters, 2 with TL MM and one with typoon missile launcher.

Martel732 wrote:
Well, ideally the marines and dread will be in HTH, so the only thing left to fire at will be the Raven. Hovering Ravens likely = dead Raven against any opponent with good target prioritization.

If you have fired twice with the SR, and put a CC squad and a CC dread in the H2H, it has been worth its 200 points.

Just because you got lucky with them once, doesn't mean they are *reliably* anti AV 13 or AV 14. A single multimelta shot does has less than 25% chance of killing a LR. I'm not gonna do the math for the assault cannon, but it can't be good.

removed. i read wrong.

Multimeltas destroy land raiders a little easier than that. They are twin - linked, you should be able to get i range and the fact that if you have an assault cannon, which works for anti infantry and does well blowing up most vehicles (LR or Monolith are the exceptions). Turret mounted lascannon or assault cannon is the way to go. With PtMS you should be aiming at side armor against vehicles, you can reliably take hull points off or crash most flyers with either. Plasma cannon is too unreliable imo, as a smart player with not bunch his troops up to get more than one hit or it will scatter and do nothing. It also is useless against flyers unless I'm reading the flyer rules wrong. In theory, you ought to get a rending result our of 4 shots 75% of the time which will pierce all flyers armor with +1 on the penetration roll. The BA SR has missile shots as well that work well as anti armor/flyer weapons

g0atsticks wrote:
removed. i read wrong.

i think he was talking about the raven shooting at a Land raider, not the other way around.

Twin linked multi melta has an 83% chance to hit, 56% chance to pen, and a 50% chance to explode the LR. (.83*.56*.5) = .24. A 24% chance to explode the LR. Which is pretty good, compared to most other weapon systems in the game, but I can't call it *reliable*. Especially when its on a vehicle that costs nearly as much and must start in reserve. By the time the Stormraven shows up, it may have already dumped terminators all over the intended target.

That being said, the storm raven is absolute murder on other flyers. Especially if you've got a commlink or divination power or warlord trait to make sure it shows up in a timely manner. The Bloodstrike missiles are particulary nasty against AV 12 and below becasuse of AP 1.

I'm not saying the Stormraven is bad, I'm saying that reserves are a risk and that there are better ways to counter AV 13 and AV 14.

 Praxiss wrote:

g0atsticks wrote:
removed. i read wrong.

i think he was talking about the raven shooting at a Land raider, not the other way around.

Yeah for some reason I read LR shooting SR. One of those moments.

I thought flyers came in on turn 2 automatically?

No, they work exactly same way as normal units when entering from Reserves. Ongoing Reserves are obviously different.