Playing a Ravenwing list

[Tanhausen]

Maybe I didn't manage to get my idea across: I'm not saying 1 MM LS can't open up a LR or that throwing ML at him is the best option.

 

IMO, the cheapest way out is double melta bikes, MM AB or meltabombs... which are designated tank hunters so to say.

 

Obviously, if you have no other way of stopping the LR+terminators, burning up a LS is quite cost effective to buy yourself another turn, I'll agree on that :)

[Mentat]

After looking at my original post again, maybe you misunderstood. By rush them up midfield, I didn't mean run them across the board at the land raider, I meant that when the land raider gets close they can rush up and melta it if need be. In the meantime they are sitting back, using their missiles and possibly multimeltas as well. I have lascannons, etc to try to shoot up the LR as it comes across the board (though they are usually shooting transports since the chance of stopping a LR without a short range melta shot is so low), and tac squads in razorbacks with meltas. I just find the speeders better because they are cheaper than almost any other melta platform and they move fast. I imagine that they would do the same thing in a Ravenwing army, stay back and pop transports, and deal with anything that gets past the attack bikes/bike melta squads.

[breng77]

While speeders are good at being melta platforms they are also very fragile, assuming that they can sit back and not take fire is somewhat unrealistic. I'm not saying don't use them, just don't assume they will be around. You argument for them stopping a land raider also assumes that the land raider does not have extra armor and has not popped smoke as soon as it is withing 24" of your land raiders (RW armies don't have a lot of long range fire, that can hurt a land raider, so they would have little reason to pop smoke.) The issue with using Speeders as melta platforms as well as missile platforms, in a RW army is that it makes target priority obvious for your opponent as the speeders are at that point the largest threat by far.

[Mentat]

Sorry, I don't think I was clear in my original post, but by move up mid field to hit the raider, I meant that when the raider gets to mid field, the speeders can move up within 12" and hit it if they need to. Also I was talking about the performance of the multi-melta armed speeder in general for taking out transports, the land raider part is just an extra bonus of having them around.

 

The only reason I answered a second time is that Tanhausen siad it makes no common sense and that the LS has a 10% chance of penetrating a land raider, which are both wrong. When I assemble my ravenwing, my primary anti-AV14 will be double melta bike squads and attack bikes, but the speeders will still be there to melta anything that gets through. Why wouldn't the enemy pop smoke when your bikes/attack bikes are close, then destroy them? Since the enemy will be actively trying to take out those melta platforms, it makes sense to have a backup plan. It doesnt make sense for me to instead pay for the bike squad and attack bike to get meltaguns in my army because the primary purpose of the typhoons in my army is the typhoon launcher. The bikes/AB are a little cheaper but can't shoot transports at 48". If I were taking bikes anyway, then yes it would make sense.

 

I have found the speeders to be durable (well 3 separate units they have to devote time to kill) as long as the rest of your army presents an appropriate threat to the enemy so that they don't have lots of extra shots to send its way. It is true that in Ravenwing, their target priority will be different.

[Tanhausen]

Tanhausen may be wrong or not, that he doesn't make a deal of: we're all fallable by nature and I have stood corrected a million times and hopefully will another million (means people take the time to try and help me out).

 

However, you have modified the situation and that's one of the things that the written word has: it stays the original way. Midfield is midfield, and rushing is moving as fast as possible regardless of other issues.

 

Surprisingly, most Ravenwing include quite a few bikes... you know, that's why its called RAS and RSS. But hey, we will wait until you build your list to see how the new RW is...

 

I'm not making any more comments in this thread.

[Mentat]

I didnt mean to be unclear in my first post (_if they need to_), and you are supposed to read what I meant, not what I typed. I was thinking of the LS in my army, and my army isn't ravenwing, in a ravenwing army your points are valid, and this is a ravenwing thread. I agreed with you that the multimelta can work on the typhoon for hitting transports, and I think even in a ravenwing army the 24" range MM can be a benefit, really the potential to hit a land raider is a secondary thing and I got fixated on that in these posts.

[breng77]

IMO MM Typhoons are not the best fit for a RW army, you need the extra anit horde provided by the HB (unless your local metagame is entirely mech). In other armies MM typhoons are a good buy ( I use them in my DW build at the moment, because I lack melta in that build). As for the durability of speeders, in pure RW it is not that high as they are one of your only if not your only vehicles meaning that against anti-vehicle fire, they can go down fast.

 

As for the smoke issue, unless you go first as RW and gamble (scout everything foreward and pray you don't get seized), your bikes are not likely to be all that close to a landraider, before it is at midfield. Remember, Melta bikes only have a melta range of 6" (ABs are better), so in order to be in melta range (18" at the start of your turn) You would also be in charge range of the contents of said land raider (unless your opponent is not smart enough to say more than 18" aways at the end of his/her turn, or to screen the land raider with cheap transports.

[Mentat]

I did use MM typhoons against horde orks twice yesterday *Not in a Ravenwing list though* and they did well, the extra MM shot definately helped in stopping 2 of 3 battlewagons I faced in the first game, and stopped the only battlewagon I faced in the 2nd game. I roll crappy, so I really like the extra chance for a S8 hit with +1 on the damage chart.

 

With Ravenwing, how do you deal with infantry-heavy ork lists that have an 18" charge on the 2nd turn (Ghazghul). They generally start 12" onto the board and move an average of 9" on turn 1, which means about 39" of range to assault by turn 2. With my normal mechanized force I have trouble keeping out of assault, and I can actually concentrate a couple of squads on one mob to deplete it enough to deal with. But add on a couple of battlewagons of nobz and a truck full of boyz. Doing the math with ravenwing, it seems like it would be tough to deal with this, since the bikes are so expensive. Terrain helps some but it can be sparse at the tournaments. We generally use a good amount of terrain at my house. I'm going to assemble my ravenwing soon and this is the enemy I will usually face.

[breng77]

With RW, I find outflanking helps against, orks. As does having some vehicles for the Orks to assault (I was playing my list with Predators and Speeders (Assault cannon HB at the time as this was prior to the new FAQ). If you can work it out so that the orks assault one of your vehicles, and then zip foreward to flamer them, it is devastating (I legitimately put 17+ wounds on a squad of 20 boyz that had to pile into one of my predators after they assaulted and wrecked the vehicle. So using vehicles for blocking is very helpful. As for Terrain, only LOS blocking terrain is good for RW, lots of area terrain = little space to turbo-boost. The other thing that bikes are decent at is killing weakend boyz squads especially if the klaw is not able to get into Close combat. If you get the charge, you regular boyz wound you on 6s, so if you can face a squad that has been hurt, you can often force them to run and either sweep them, or run them off the board.