Deathwing or Ravenwing?

[CuddlesHeretics]

I was just thinking about starting a DA army, mainly a deathwing or ravenwing, with a few characters, and some of the nice veterans, can you guys give me some pointers?(:

[Chaplain Lucifer]

For lists you can peruse the Army Lists forum to see what is the style of list you like the most.. as for decision between DW and RW... that' s a tough one.. both armies are cool and both have different playstyles.. Do you like speed or do you like might? is this your second army and you're looking for a change of pace? these are the questions you should ask yourself if you're undecided. :)

[CuddlesHeretics]

My first one was a generic space marines force.

 

The ravenwing battleforce is the best value battleforce imho.

 

But Deathwing is just amazing, the colour etc and hey, terminators are the greatest, once again, imho. :)

[Brother Kovash]

If you've played vanilla marines before, I'd suggest going with the Deathwing to start. You don't have to go all out and order 6 boxes of terminators right now, simply pick a few up and try them out with your existing marine force.

 

I haven't really started a Ravenwing force yet so I can't comment on it. I plan on building one in the future.

[Isiah]

I'm gonna stick my head above the parapit here and say that the RW give you an easier army to win with more often. The 'pure' DW army is much harder to play (hence a firm fav with veteran gamers mostly) and will deliver less wins per games played.

 

DW are an army for those who play for the love of it rather then for those who expect to win more often than not. The army list is very restrictive, and in some game scenarios at 1500 points winning is nigh impossible.

 

The RW is actually more of a rounded force, but even here the list is still restrictive, but, more tactically flexible purely due to inherent speed in firepower. Forget cc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DW all the way :).

 

Cheers

I

[CuddlesHeretics]

The more terminators the better.

 

Life lesson 101.

[Brother Immolator]

I'm gonna stick my head above the parapit here and say that the RW give you an easier army to win with more often. The 'pure' DW army is much harder to play (hence a firm fav with veteran gamers mostly) and will deliver less wins per games played.

 

DW are an army for those who play for the love of it rather then for those who expect to win more often than not. The army list is very restrictive, and in some game scenarios at 1500 points winning is nigh impossible.

 

The RW is actually more of a rounded force, but even here the list is still restrictive, but, more tactically flexible purely due to inherent speed in firepower. Forget cc.

 

Brother forgive me but in my humble opinion i believe its the opposite.The RW are paper thin and die in droves!You need to really know what you are doing with them!Even the toughness increase doesnt help that much.They need complex planning and experience on the field to be used properly.I also agree that you must forget assaults with them,exsept perhaps against tau or gauard.

 

The dw on the otherhand are resilient if slow but each and every terminator can deal with a multiple list of foes.

 

I my self prefer a mixed force with vindie support.Its were the DA excel i believe.

 

And while you are it with ravenwing or deathwing i dont know why but i always enjoy hearing this :

LOL!

[Droma]

I think Isiah has a point as far as the so called "pure" lists go. However I think most people that do well play a 'mostly' DW force 4-6 termie squads and fill the rest in with support elements from the rest of the codex. I myself prefer 3 man melta biker squads with power fists, and then using either typhoon speeders or ven dreads to round out the list. On their own any of the pure theme lists are extremely hard to play with but combined they often do extremely well.

[Tanhausen]

Hi there.

 

In my experience, neither army is specially forgiving with your playing mistakes or the dice gods.

 

The optimal solution would be the arch-know doublewing... to whatever ratio feels good for you.

 

If I had to chose between one or another... I'll agree with Isiah. With pure RW I've had rocking victories...and crushing defeats. There is no middle point.

 

With terminators...most people are unable to deal with a double LR and say 26 terminators, 2 dreads and 1 vindi (more or less the list I use to play). At highly competitive areas, sure, they'll wipe the floor with your face. But else, you're bound to get at least 1/3 good games at a tournament.

 

My suggestion: go for double wing. 2 RW BF and a couple of sets of the AoBR terminators and you're more or less good to go.

 

Hope it helps!

[breng77]

I think that Right now DW is the much more viable tournament build. With the updated gear DW is much more survivable and presents a very bad match up for many armies. RW is a very difficult army to play as you can really only expect great results in the movement phase. Your shooting is decent, but you are terrible in the assault, and should you end up there, you are stuck until you either: win combat, or die.

 

Hint: Dying is the far more likely occurence.

 

That said DW has some very bad matchups these days in Horde armies (especially things like orks), Dark Eldar, and many Grey Knight builds. Generally anything that can force the army to roll lots of saves is bad. In general DW matches up well against mech armies, and armies that rely on low AP weaponry with few shots.

 

RW matches up well with armies that are bad in the assault, and heavy on mech. And generally does well in objective based missions (so long as you can stay alive) That said you will likely lose most kill point missions you play as a sold RW army is looking at 16 Kill points or so.

[Netfreakk]

Hello, it's been forever since I've posted here.

 

RW has some inate draw backs as well. Bikes are not able to go "upstairs" to second/third tiers on buildings.

 

Other than that here are some other insights from my experience:

 

DW is really slow and model count is limited, as stated previously any army that can just swarm you will either bog you down or out right kill you with the enormous amounts of wounds.

 

RW is like previously stated very fragile. They can deny objectives pretty successfully with their turbo-boost at the end of turn 5, but the limited model count and range of their weapons really limit their capacity to do any one thing efficiently. Against other marine forces you will find that the lack in model count will make CC a last ditch effort, but having only 6/9 shots from your bolters from 24" you will almost always be out gunned. If you can get your opponent to spread their army out and are able to focus your army against portions of theirs then you will find success, but after playing the same people a few times you'll find them less likely to do so, which will force a confrontation which will ultimately equal more draws / losses.

 

As people have stated, using both DW & RW will bring you more flexibility in what you can do, however you will have to be more careful with your tactics and overall strategy as you won't have the redundant amount of units. For example: when you sacrifice a bike to get a multi-melta shot off and it does not destroy that landraider or what not, you won't have another one. The DW&RW, however in my expereince compliment each other very well. being able to teleport on a beacon for that precision HF, or to protect your flanks with RW as you spearhead with your DW. the Dual Wing as I stated has more flexibility in their tactics.