MrBill's Ravenwing (and friends) WIP

[Mr Bill]

I figured I should take a parade shot since they were still out and the lights were still up.

 

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff131/mrbill2u/RavenwingParade_zps0ed223b3.jpg

[Isiah]

Wow, awesome sauce. They look very impressive en masse.

 

Cheers

I

[Galthan Ironsturm]

Brilliant !

 

Really beautifull effect !

[Larhendiel]

They look formidable, wow, such a force!

[Dark Rage]

An impressive force, very nice.

[Mr Bill]

Thank you all for the kind words. This weekend I am scheduled to play my first game of 7th ed ever... which will also be my first game with Dark Angels ever. My whole goal is not to be the guy holding up the tournament with stupid questions

[Mr Bill]

The brooding space bikers won 2/3 games today.  I cannot complain  :)

[JJD]

They look great lined up like that. Would be great to hear more of a break down on your games

[Mr Bill]

I won't be very good at breaking down the games since this was my first time playing in a few years.  I was rather unsure of what I was facing most of the time, so the lists may be totally off.

 

Game 1: Daemons - Khorne Lord with a daemon weapon on a unikhorne (or whatever those things are called), Khorne Lord of Skulls, Bloodthirster, 2 units of bloodletters and 2 units of kultists

 

Maelstrom game (the one where you draw a number of cards equal to the # of objectives you control each turn)

 

Deployment - Corner deployment.  He went first and lined up with the thirster and Lord of Skulls on his left flank.  The lord was with the kultists holding objectives in cover on his right with letter holding the center.  He reserved one unit of letters.  I put 2 attack bikes and 2 mini units of RAS with twin plasma on my right flank to speed bump the big bads and lined up everything else left to sweep through his troops.  DW termies were declared to be doing a turn 1 DW assault.  I scouted everything forward and into cover.

 

Turn 1 - thirster and LoS barrel forward, roast some bikers, charge in and level another.  First blood to daemons and 1 mini RAS unit down.  RW turn 1 I drop the DW termies on an objective right in front of the thirster and LoS, then screen them with a speed bump unit of RAS with plasmas.  The Attack bikes performed admirably and got 2 pens to strip 5 hull points of of the LoS.  My left flank maneuvers to scare the kultists and I shoot 5 of them dead.  

 

Turn 2 - Bloodletters drop in on an objective off in no-man's land off my right flank to get one of his maelstrom objectives.  He skirts sideways with the LoS to get a good flamer template of doom shot in.  The terminators love it, 2 black knights and 4/6 RAS eat it.  Thirster eats a RAS squad and the center bloodletters squad eats through a unit of black knights but suffer a lot of casualties for their trouble.  RW turn 2 sees the LoS lose another couple hull points to meltas and 5 terminators assault in and kick his ass.  They all die in the resulting explosion.  Sammael shoots then charges some kultists and mows them all down to clear off another objective.  Billy Badass (my interrogator chappy on a bike with MoR, auspex, Meltabombs and displacer field) shoots and charges the bloodletters.  He. Is. A. BEAST!!  The blood letters are all shot to poop or die in gruesome, bloody combat.  I get a good consolidate roll and consolidate back to another objective to try and get out of the assault range of the bloodthirster.  

 

turn 3 - Khorne lord on a unikhorne with a batch of kultists assaults Sammael.  He challenges, Sammael accepts.  He strips 2 wounds off of Sammael and the command squad eats 5 kultists.  The thirster gets a good assault roll to make it over to Billy Badass.  Billy rips out his mace and beats down a bloodthirster  *gasp*.  I lost the last of my attack bikes and RAS here somewhere, not sure where.  RW turn 3 I draw "kill your opponent's warlord" and "Issue a challenge". Billy Badass charges into the existing combat and intervenes in the unikhorne fight.  Unikhorne rolls a 5 for his daemon weapon and swings like a billion times.  He strips 2 wounds off of Billy, but the displacer field pays for itself like 7 times over.  Billy raises his mace once again and there goes a Khorne Lord on a Unikhorne *gasp*.  We are tied for VPs at this point, so I turbo boost my speeder towards the remote objective on the far side of the table.

 

turn 4 - Letters try to assault the speeder.  They fail.  bottom of 4 I go to pick up the dice and my opponent starts hinting that we don't need to continue on.  I am kind of dense and haven't played for a while so I miss his hints.  He finally says "you win!! we really don't need to continue!" and I get it.  RW win 1.  

 

Thoughts:  Holy poop it is scary facing Lords of War in a tournament.  This is all new to me since the last time I played was 5e.  I am so thankful I took the DW termies.  They work SOOOOOO well with the Ravenwing.  I am now considering giving them more chanfists!  Billy Badass earned his name in this one.  Killing 2 Chaos Daemon HQs in one game?  Yeah, he gets MVP.

[Mr Bill]

Game 2:  Orks - killpoints.  he has a stompa, 15 lootas, another evil looking shooty dread-thingy, some shoot boys in a trukk, choppa slugga boys wit a warboss and a unit of grots with 2 mekboys and a big mek with KFF playing canasta in the stompa-belly.  Dawn of war deployment, he tries for night fighting and fails.  I go first, deploy center heavy.  He drops lootas in a ditch centerfield, put the stompa just to his right of them and the shoota boys n a trukk just right of her.  Evil looking shooty dread-thingy and choppa boys hide off to his left.  I scout everything left to try and deal with the stompa.

 

Turn 1 - Termies drop behind a ruin to get ready to hop out and yell "Boo!" at the stompa.  I need first blood, so I start shooting the trukk.  It has a bit of debris in front of it that gives it a 5 up.  He makes 6 5 ups on that trukk before I finally pop it.  That was my turn 1.  I shot a trukk.  This is not going to end well.  On his turn one wide swaths of bikes just start popping to stompa fire.  This never lets up.  He seriously stompas my whole army to pulp.  I am not even going to bother writing more.  Stompas win at life.  After he destroys my entire army except like 2 guys he looks across the table and says "We'll call it a draw" and handshaking ensues.

[elmo]

I figured I should take a parade shot since they were still out and the lights were still up.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff131/mrbill2u/RavenwingParade_zps0ed223b3.jpg

Makes me all emotional...

Great work and they look excellent "On Parade"

[Mr Bill]

Game 3 - Necrons - 2 big freaking scarab swarms, 2 floating spiders, 2 units of 9 t-1000s with a bigbad in boats and 17 t-1000s in a liquid metal pyramid with some other big bad. I seriously have never fought necrons before so I pretty much have no clue what is going to happen except that some version of "I'll be back" will likely come into play.

Deployment - We roll hammer and anvil. It is late in the day and I am fat. I ask to just do dawn of war so we can sit and be lazy. Opponent agrees. He goes first and deploys in a very symmetrical "boat, spider, swarm, swarm, spider, boat" pattern and thinks it is so pretty he reserves his pyramid full of Robert Patricks. I deploy strong left and leave only a token speedbump force of RAS with plasmas, attack bike and speeder on the right side. I scouts everything forward except the speeder, which I land on a hill for everyone to see to try and draw some fire.

Turn 1 - he shoots the speeder. I make a bunch of jink saves. One swarm assaults into Sammael's squad and fails to do anything. The other swarm assaults a mini RAS with plas and kills 2 dudes. I hit-n-run out of both combats. RW turn one sees the termies come in right in front of his boat on my weak side. I move my units to ensure there will only be one good spot to land the evil pyramid full of Robert Patricks, then I unload on the swarms. I shoot the swarms both dead. I hold up my driver's license and say "multi-melta" in my best imitation of Milla Jovovich and proceed to pop both of his futuristic metal floating viking boats to drop a bunch of t-1000s on the ground.

turn 2 - his pyramid of Robert Patricks shows up in the spot I carved out for him. He is surrounded by 2 Command Squads, a unit of black knights, 2 attack bikes with MMs and a unit of RAS with 2x meltas. He drops crazy flamer templates on me, tries to suck me into the void and lays down a withering amount of fire. I pass every single test and make every single save. He looks nervous now. My turn 2 sees me move the termies up and punch his t-1000-s on my weak side. Between the termy shooting, the Assault bike and the RAS with plasmas I end up killing them all after assault. Except this one jerkface with a 2up save and an evil freaking AP2 scythe. I position the entire rest of my army into a semicircle around his Robert Patricks and start the slaughter. I open with a rad grenade to make them all T3. I then unload about 1600 points of RW shooting into his unit of Robert Patricks with his super Robert Patrick boss. They all die.

turn 3 - He tries to suck Billy Badass into the void. He fails. He tries to assault with his spiders. He fails. His evil scythe AP2 dude kills a terminator and dies, but then gets up again. I shoot both spiders dead. Leeloo's mult-meltas strip 2 hull points off the liquid metal pyramid. Billy Badass charges the strong side t-1000s and kills them all except this other jerkface with a 2up save and an evil freaking AP2 scythe. He has 3 models on the board. 2 jerkfaces with a 2up save and an evil freaking AP2 scythe and his pyramid.

turn 4 - He says "Make a wounds test or Billy Badass is removed from the game". I make my wounds test and beat him down. Both of his jerkfaces die. I say "multi-melta" 2 more times and the pyramid goes away. Ravenwing table Necrons. Fun times

[Mr Bill]

Overall my impressions of the day were as follows:

 

I love my interrogator Chaplain on a bike.  Not only is he fluffy, but he is a dominant force on the battlefield.  He will continue to be my go-to warlord for Ravenwing

 

This army excels at maelstrom missions and fails at kill points unless I can find an opportunity to table my opponent.  I didn't remember all of my maelstrom cards, but it seemed like in both of the maelstrom games the space bikers just crushed at fulfilling whatever the cards said.  With 7 objective secured units on the table and everything in my army either deepstriking turn 1 or capable of moving over 12" turn I was able to rip out tons of points from those cards.  

 

DW termies in a Ravenwing army - Wow.  Just wow.  One unit was all I needed, but every single battle seemed to have a perfect spot for them on turn 1.  Having a unit of precision guided terminators in an army where every single other model has both scout and a teleport homer felt almost like cheating.  Twice they were called in for Lords of War duty, so I may end up trying to find points for 2-3 more chainfists for them.  They will be right along Billy Badass as a permanent fixture in this army.

 

Darkshroud: I seriously did not miss it.  T5 with a 3+ armor save is a pretty good save.  Any time ANYTHING that was AP3 or better targetted me I jinked.  With 7 objective secured units I never minded losing wounds out of my troops.  The 3+ jink on knights was good enough.  Things that tended to really hurt ignored cover anyways.  I am just not sure I am willing to pull points from other places to squeeze one in. 

 

Ravenwing are consistently underestimated.  I cannot count the number of people who made comments like "nice fluffy list!  It takes a real man to field a fluffy army out of a bottom tier codex!  Nice paint job!"  or "Dark angels suck" or "See?!?!  This other guy hung up his Dark Angels because he is weak and is fielding naked orks instead".  

 

Model count hurts.  I had 39 models on the table.  One turn of luck spun this army on a dime.  Vs the orks having him get lucky on saves turn one and then get good shooting in against me when the dice decided to not want to make saves really pulled the rug out from under me.  Turn 2 the stompa put 4 AP 4 wounds on the termies.  I failed 3/4 2+ saves which gutted the effectiveness of that unit.  

 

It REALLY matters where you place guys in the unit.  I am accustomed to 5e where it is the placement of the unit that matters, not the placement of guys within the unit.  So many time I would have a situation where I failed 2 saves and it was my 2 meltaguns that I had to pull because of it.  I must get better at this. 

[Centurio]

I have been playing a pure Ravenwing army ( http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/289508-ravenwing-tournament-report/ ) . I have found that they excel at destroying armor and superheavies, killing monstrous creatures (Black Knights with Rad grenade), and dealing with hordes. They are also great at scoring in Maelstrom of War. In short, they have something for everybody. The primary weakness is, as you said, the low model count and the problems a bad string of armor saves can cause. Your army looks great, I am just starting to get mine painted.

 

Good hunting !

[Mr Bill]

This army and everything in my "build more dark angels" box has gone to auction.  

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Warhammer-40K-Painted-2000-Point-Dark-Angels-Army-TONS-OF-EXTRAS-/151998656183?hash=item2363d36eb7:g:foIAAOSwB4NW05zF

[Mr Bill]

I am sad to see this army go  :(

[jbaeza94]

I am sad to see this army go :(

I saw your earlier post, followed your link. I'll tell you what, those are very beautiful models. I love the forgeworld bikes personally. I hope you receive a just amount, hopefully another Unforgiven can honor your work.

[Mr Bill]

Thanks, Brother.  When the post disappeared I checked the forum rules.  Oops !

[Liberame]

You sold/selling your Ravenwing? Another nice collection going away...