[HH1.0] Raven Guard Tactics

[Nova_chron]

So what consuls do people like to run for lower point games or to fill the HQ slot when taking Corax?

[Hesh Kadesh]

Vigilator or Forge Lord.

 

Forge Lord on bike can give a dirty S6 AP2 charge with enemie taking a -1 to saves, and sitting on a bike with a 2+/Jink or 4++ if you wanted to kit out, and sitting at extreme range plinking off s10 ap1 blast shots. Bodyguard of 3 Bikers and packing 2 Power Axes and a suit of Artificer Armour to keep him alive, scout and late game turbo onto objective to deny

 

Vigilator gives you scout. Scouting is less lustrous with mass infiltrate but it lets your assault marines rubber band provided that tue unit is in cohesion with the vigilator who only moves 6". Also brings stealth.

[nightwrench]

 

Is six infiltrating graviton rapiers to many?  Also has anyone tried 20 breachers with 4 grav guns and an attached vigilator?  That gives you the ability to make sure your 4 grav shots are in range of what you want to shoot.  It is 405 for the breachers (including AA and PW) and 3 grav are 225 and the bare bones tac squad in a rhino is 185 or basically 410 points.  So you are down 100 points with a vigilator to scout but you can give the +1 cover save and infra vision as well.

 

Also has anyone tried the Castallex with siege wreckers to handle things in hth or are the darkfire that much better for the points?

 

No. I often run 3 gravs in my alpha strike list at 2k. It's very powerful, but it's pretty lack luster if you run into a list that is mostly infantry. 

 

As for the breachers... They are always a head scratcher to me. For one, I'm not sure you need the vigilator. I get it, it's not a bad idea, but at 18" you can just sit down field 18" away and wait for the spartan, right? Either they are going to drive WAY around you or into range. In either case, you have won.

 

I would also consider melta bombs. 20 melta bombs fixes a lot of problems in 30k and give you some flexability. 

 

My bigger issue with them is cost. I quickly start comparing them to 10 termies with power axes and combi meltas

 

I don't think you need to upgrade to the siege wreckers. I like just giving them the extra attack. Sometimes I give them the dark fire, but their stock good is pretty solid. Depends if you want to hunt infantry or tanks.

 

 

My biggest concern is if the Spartan is 19 inches away after some bubble wrap by a unit to keep you more thatn 18 inches away. If you move you can not shoot the grav guns and you are set up to be charged bottom of 1.  I always have to read to see if bottom of 1 player can charge.   If so you need to be 25 inches away from the Spartan or 23 if able to be in cover which is fine then you get the ability to shoot on turn 2 unless the bubble wrap squad hits you.  I guess by then though you also have 2+ turns of heavy grav shooting that should ruin its day.  Honestly at that point if I was the Spartan player I would gun it 18 and so be it.  They have 2 hull points left from the heavy grav shots (if the immbolise themselves that is win). 

 

I had a 15 man breacher squad take way more firepower and hth then they should have in my last game.  Ended up taking 3 chaos bikes with the axe of khorne, flesh hounds and juggernaughts a demon prince and another summoned squad of hounds to run them down.  That is where I started thinking about trying them with 4 grav guns and a larger squad with a vigi.  He had his land raider with chaos lord and a bunch of other crap in it.  Actually took longer to kill as demonic possession gave it a hull point back. I was 20 inches away, know way to be 18 with the amount of flesh hounds he took.

 

I ended up calling the game top of 5 because he had an illegal list and had summoned another 700 points of crap in an 2500 point game.  We don't allow 40k players to use formations during our AoD campaign.  They have to use the AoD chart and he didn't. 

 

I have a 2500 game on Friday I will try the 20 breachers (I own them, squad that got me into 30k....rule of cool).  I will build the vigilator this week too and try it out. 

 

my biggest question I have is vets with TH and MB in a dread claw or a contemptor...

 

Anyone have a link to a good RG Air Cav list?  I  have some extra money I would like to spend on dread claws or air cav but I can't put a list together I like.  Also a guy in my league says he can destroy air cav with his deredo.  I actually have a rules question.  Does a deredo or contemptor get skyfire/inteceptor top of 1 if you DS a pod/claw?

 

Did I just talk myself out of breachers?

Edited November 23, 2015 by nightwrench

[Caillum]

Vigilator gives you scout. Scouting is less lustrous with mass infiltrate but it lets your assault marines rubber band provided that tue unit is in cohesion with the vigilator who only moves 6". Also brings stealth.

Vigilator is ok, but any power-armoured Raven Guard IC can take Cameleoline.

 

Seriously Nova_chron, Alvarex Maun is the key. Find a Consul to go with him and work backwards:

- you want Maun starting on the board, so a Tactical Blob is the safest place to keep him.

- you want the Tactical Blob to do something, so it needs chainswords and an Apothecary.

- you want it to stick around, and a Chaplain gives it Zealot, so he's your man.

 

You will have 600 points tied up in this squad, but it'll be hard to shift with Zealot, 3+ armour save, 3+/4+ cover save, 5+ FNP and 26 wounds. It forms the centre of your Decapitation Strike list, allowing everything to Deep Strike accurately in a 48"-wide circle. Drop Pods and Flyers will come in reliably too. Schnickt. Decapitated enemy.

 

Design your full Decap list and take elements of it in smaller games, using a Chaplain as your Warlord. Sorted. :)

[GreyCrow]

It's interesting, but you're going to have to make sure to go first :p Even with the ROW's benefits for that, players aren't immune to surprise Seize rolls (especially against Alpha Legion). So having a couple of extra units on the board just to make sure that there are some other units just to avoid a tabling :p

[Nova_chron]

how is it a 46 inch bubble and yeah Maun looks badarse and i'll be taking him for sure (i think i just cursed myself to a life of assembling and painting drop pods). Ive soreted my initial 1000 points or so with him, two mor deythan squads, a tactical blob and a 10 man rhino or drop pod unit, trying to decide where to go from there picking up betrayal at calth so i will have a contemptor I may try to trade the terminators away for some more bodies with some guys I know but I'm not sure anyone has what i would be looking for. if I'm not running decap strike is maun still worth taking or would I be better off with a different HQ seeing as he realy benefits reserves and deep strikers but I feel like thats mostly all he is good for...

[nightwrench]

Circle.  He is the center 24 inches from him gives you a diameter 48.

[Nova_chron]

It says 18 for his stratovox last I saw... Unless I'm missing something Edited November 23, 2015 by Nova_chron

[Hesh Kadesh]

 

Vigilator gives you scout. Scouting is less lustrous with mass infiltrate but it lets your assault marines rubber band provided that tue unit is in cohesion with the vigilator who only moves 6". Also brings stealth.

Vigilator is ok, but any power-armoured Raven Guard IC can take Cameleoline.

 

Seriously Nova_chron, Alvarex Maun is the key. Find a Consul to go with him and work backwards:

- you want Maun starting on the board, so a Tactical Blob is the safest place to keep him.

- you want the Tactical Blob to do something, so it needs chainswords and an Apothecary.

- you want it to stick around, and a Chaplain gives it Zealot, so he's your man.

 

You will have 600 points tied up in this squad, but it'll be hard to shift with Zealot, 3+ armour save, 3+/4+ cover save, 5+ FNP and 26 wounds. It forms the centre of your Decapitation Strike list, allowing everything to Deep Strike accurately in a 48"-wide circle. Drop Pods and Flyers will come in reliably too. Schnickt. Decapitated enemy.

 

Design your full Decap list and take elements of it in smaller games, using a Chaplain as your Warlord. Sorted.

 

Along comes a Typhon. No Cover save there. If they don't exist in your meta/local scene, you can tailor otherwise, but against anything that's anything, unless you have a guarantee to going first and a 450pt investment or so, that unit is catastrophically damaged.

 

Decapitation Strike works because it brings so many lethal units into range quickly. Blobs died a death, with the exception of a certain triple Spartan spam list, primarily for World Eaters, Sons of Horus and Night Lords, but they weren't really all that effective. No point in trucking half way across the board to leave your backlines open for the sake of rolling all the dice.

 

Putting 600pts into a unit which sits there firing 20 S4 Bolter shots a turn is kind of defeating the point. You might as well just play with 600pts less and play with 2 less objectives on either side. 

 

"Hard to shift" is relative to the weapons available. If an army doesn't come with a list to take out mass MEQ's or TEQ's in 30k, it deserves everything it gets, especially those with FNP. Typhon happens to be the most capable at both, with S10 Ignores Cover, 7" blast and 48" range, although Medusa, Firestorm Redoubts, Melta Predators and similar make wonderful chunky paste out of tacticals objective humping. 

 

Remember, you're bringing Maun for him to bring units into play. Reducing the units you can bring down to keep Maun alive is counter intuitive.

 

Give him a Jetbike for a 2+ T5 majority save with 3++ Jink against necessary if you and your opponent agree with keeping him with Cameleoline (I and mine disagree, based on the Fact that FW are incapable of writing their own rules properly, and, as per entries which have their own options, these are included within their own options list). 

 

Having said that, Maun is getting territory encroached by the Damocles. Not only does Maun lose the ability to reroll failed Drop Pods if Corax is present, but the Damocles has the 24" range reroll scatter. The Counter Attack buff is okay, but not brilliant. You're bringing down shooty squads. Who cares if 6 man Mor Deythan have counter attack? A further 6 WS4 S4 attacks is 0.5 dead. No Scatter is sweet, but reroll scatter is similarly sweet.  Maun doesn't have a TL'd S8 Lance Barrage - presumably you have Nuncio voxes in the army somewhere giving it some additional accuracy, because nothing like BS4 TL'd 5" Blast landing on something.

 

The Deep Strike Mishap and enemy reserves manipulation comes into it. Forcing enemies onto a 4+ when you're in on a 2+ is usually enough, and functions with Corax present.

 

Basically, you get more for a little bit more from Vigilator+Damocles than you do from Maun. The two are roughly even though.

[nightwrench]

Does anyone have a good air cav tactics or thread?

[Slips]

Couple Options:

 

Deredeo. 3 Of them in HS. SHUT THEM DOWN.

 

Xiphon Interceptors.

 

Normal or Contemptor Mortis Dreadnoughts.

 

Fire Raptors

 

These units are the most likely to provide solid Anti-Air solutions for you. They're pretty self explanatory in explanation and can do other things on the battlefield too. Not as efficiently but, they can.

[Caillum]

Whoops, Strato-vox is 18" not 24" radius. Still, a 36"-wide circle is big...

 

Fair point Hesh, but if people only ever ran their lists with Typhons, then all this discussion in the tactics forum becomes a moot point. Shall we rename it to "how to beat Typhon + 6 grav Rapiers with XIXth Legion?" ;) Yes, Typhons are brilliant, cheap and an answer to a lot of problems. But if you want to field anything else in LoW, then you are out of luck. I totally agree that it is still the best option though, but if you're NOT up against a Typhon but instead Meltapreds, Medusae or Scorpii, then you'll at least get a solid cover save. Everything else you'll get armour/FNP.

 

Vigilator should keep his Cameleoline if he takes a jump pack - every other Legion would, why not Raven Guard? But they can't take Bikes/Jetbikes so not sure what you mean there. Love the Vigilator, but feel RG get less out of him. Damocles is solid too, but a bit redundant with Maun... If you take them both instead of him, you'll need Corax/Praetor then, or no Decap. That's either all 3 HQs taken up for around 400 points, or 2 and your LoW for around 650 (and no Typhon). :/

 

Thought about Maun in a Mor Deythan unit, but feel you'll be using them to nope a unit early, so you'll give up Slay The Warlord pretty easily. Where would you put him?

[GreyCrow]

Thought about Maun in a Mor Deythan unit, but feel you'll be using them to nope a unit early, so you'll give up Slay The Warlord pretty easily. Where would you put him?

 

My god Caillum, you are brilliant ! Although Hesh is right (a single unit on the board is way too risky. Lose the initiative and you're wiped clean off at 2k + points games, with your Pods scattering all around), you got me thinking about how to beat Typhons with Armoured Ceramite with Mor Deythan.

 

Picture this, 10 Mor Deythan with combi-plasmas and a Siege Breaker, infiltrate/scout/outflank in Rapid Fire range and pop Fatal Strike Turn 1. 20 shots hitting on 2s rerolling yields 19.44 hits, Rending on 6s rerolling thanks to Tank Hunters will yield 5.94 Hull Points on AV14. Best point is, that unit is 390 points including the Siege Breaker and you'll be able to nope other targets if the enemy doesn't have a Typhon Also buildings.

Back it up with any unit capable of reliably inflicting a single hull point of vehicles and that's a dead Typhon. Example Contemptor on pod with Double Grav.

 

That combo being capable of inflicting 6 hull points on AV14 with Armoured Ceramite is absolutely insane. That's also a dead Spartan with the Primarch in the open.

 

Edit : The icing on the cake is that you can put a combi-plasma on the Siege Breaker too and he'll get the benefit from the Mor Deythan's Sudden Strike rule too, so that's 2 extra shots just to make sure !

 

Edit 2 : If you really want to field Maun and you're scared he might get killed, just take a Darkwing Storm Eagle for the Mor Deythan and put him in. Thanks to the Bleeding Edge, he will automatically arrive Turn 2 and will not scatter.

Just make sure the rest of your army has killed the nasty interceptors and you're good to go.

 

That's an expensive investment for sure, but I guess this is warranted against Lords of War ;)

____

 

If you field this formation, call it the GreyCrows in my honour And remember, you heard it here first ! ^^

 

I ran the simulations with melta, but they don't have enough weight of fire to be reliable.

Edited November 24, 2015 by GreyCrow

[nightwrench]

Couple Options:

 

Deredeo. 3 Of them in HS. SHUT THEM DOWN.

 

Xiphon Interceptors.

 

Normal or Contemptor Mortis Dreadnoughts.

 

Fire Raptors

 

These units are the most likely to provide solid Anti-Air solutions for you. They're pretty self explanatory in explanation and can do other things on the battlefield too. Not as efficiently but, they can.

 

Sorry not anti air but if I wanted to run air cav with RG.  I looked but did not see any threads in army lists or here.

Edited November 24, 2015 by nightwrench

[SkimaskMohawk]

Really awesome potential for that combo GreyCrow....but the Siege Breaker only confers to Heavy weapons...

 

EDIT: Wait the Tank Hunter rule itself gets spread as long as one model in the unit has it, brb while I look at the mechanics of ICs in units to make sure it works

 

EDIT 2: Reread the Art of Destruction and the Siege Breaker doesn't actually have the USR, it just gets applied to his attacks, so indeed, his squad needs Heavy weapons to qualify

Edited November 24, 2015 by SkimaskMohawk

[Caillum]

Sorry to burst your bubble GreyCrow, but Art of Destruction only applies to Heavy weapons. And my intention was never to have only one unit on the board 1st turn. That's crazy. :)

[GreyCrow]

Darn it, I missed that ! It seemed very OP !

 

But I just checked in the BRB : Tank Hunters, a unit that contains at least one model with this special rule can reroll the penetration roll.

 

So, Rules as Written, the Siege Breaker confers that to any unit he joins. To make this "legal" (albeit dodgy), you just need to add a single Missile Launcher to the Mor Deythan, he will have Tank Hunters and then he will have that rule. Because he's part of the original squad, he'll still transfer.

 

That's abusing the rules for sure though.

 

Edit : Darn it you're right, it's not the model it's his attacks that have the rule. I regret nothing though, it was worth it  10 men Lascannon squads with Siege Breaker it is then.

Edited November 24, 2015 by GreyCrow

[Caillum]

Don't even go there... ;)

[GreyCrow]

As a side note, is Armoured Ceramite really that common ? Because it messes up a lot closer range armies that rely on high quality short ranged special weapons.

 

I can understand how it prevens melta spam, but it makes melta just so unreliable because of how widespread armoured Ceramite can be.

[xera32]

Only Alpha Legion can do that trick GreyCrow using their RoW. Killing flare shielded spartans in the face with some plasma guns makes me happy.

As for AC, it is common right up until people are trying to squeeze in some special weapons, or that extra upgrade on a HQ. Then it tends to get stripped out of lists. Melta is still useful for taking out vindicators, contemptors/dreads, predators (things that AC is expensive for little gain), and multi wound T4 models.

Edited November 24, 2015 by xera32

[defl0]

Does anyone have a good air cav tactics or thread?

 

It's a tricky question. You can build effective air cav with maun + decapitaing strike, or with angel's wrath or just straight up, but it largely depends on what you consider air cav. 

 

That said, if you want to go flier crazy, I think you don't go with decapitating strike. Fire raptors are just too efficient not to load up on. 

 

 

This is your 1320 pts. core at higher point levels.

3 X primaris-lightning strike fighter w. 3 kracken missiles, ground tracking auguries

3 X Legion Fire Raptor Gunship w. reaper autocannon battery

 

You could go other ways with the lightnings, but this about as good as you get with tank hunting. 

 

After this your choices get harder. 

 

You can start with boots on the ground to trash things like deredeos.

 

Another option is going angel's wrath with hit & run on assault marines with a chaplian and melta bombs. Expensive but really effective. 

 

Finally if you want to go air cav, as in a transport fliers will guys inside perspective, you would normally want to go with storm eagles or dark wings, but you quickly run out of points at 2000 pts. So the anvilus is a weird but interesting option. 

 

Personally, I think you just gun boat the list at 2k.

 

Maun

2 X Storm eagle w. vengeance launchers.

2 x 10 tacs

2 X primaris-lightning strike fighter w. 3 kracken missiles, ground tracking auguries

3 X Legion Fire Raptor Gunship w. reaper autocannon battery

 

The list definitely has issues with ground control, but it's very strong against a lot of armies in a lot of missions.

 

If you want true air cav, lets start with the only strength of air cav. assaulting melta bombs, delayed mor deythan squads or using termies. So build a list around one or two of those units. You run out of points after that. 

[Nusquam]

I was thinking the Tank Hunter upgrade rather than the third set of krakens. You'll likely be shot at after you dump four missiles into a target, forced to jink, then fly off to come back on next turn for another attack run. By then it's turn 4 at the earliest and whatever else you wanted dead has run amok. With Tank Hunters the likely one attack run is optimal. Then once it's payload is spent it can come back on and hit side armor with its lascannon which is also benefiting from TH. And saves a few points.

[GreyCrow]

Only Alpha Legion can do that trick GreyCrow using their RoW. Killing flare shielded spartans in the face with some plasma guns makes me happy.

 

As for AC, it is common right up until people are trying to squeeze in some special weapons, or that extra upgrade on a HQ. Then it tends to get stripped out of lists. Melta is still useful for taking out vindicators, contemptors/dreads, predators (things that AC is expensive for little gain), and multi wound T4 models.

 

That's a sound analysis, it makes sense that players would capitalize armoured ceramite on their heavier stuff and assault transports.

[defl0]

I was thinking the Tank Hunter upgrade rather than the third set of krakens. You'll likely be shot at after you dump four missiles into a target, forced to jink, then fly off to come back on next turn for another attack run. By then it's turn 4 at the earliest and whatever else you wanted dead has run amok. With Tank Hunters the likely one attack run is optimal. Then once it's payload is spent it can come back on and hit side armor with its lascannon which is also benefiting from TH. And saves a few points.

 

yup. That totally works too. you might as well take both once you've paid that much...

 

Also one thing I didn't mention about is that the darkwing has out flank. I discovered that the otherday. It's really actually a very powerful rule. as you can usually stay out of the a deredeo dread LOS and take it out shooting it's side armor. So it's an interesting Anti Anti Air tactic especially with some reserve manipulation. To delay the rest of the force. 

[Slips]

Another GreyCrow special...

Now now, no need to be snarky.