Expanding my army

[Kallaisbananen]

So I'm looking at expanding my army right now, been holding back until I got my hands on the new codex and looked through it. 

 

Now I have some questions that I thought maybe I could get your input on.

 

At the moment I got the Dark Vengeance package and I was looking at expanding into a Ravenwing army. But I'm more and more getting an urge to get a squad of Deathwing Knights, much because the look like the could wreck havoc in close quarter if they get a nice drop. 

 

I like the idea of running somewhat smaller battles, up to around 1500 pst. Less units, quicker battles, and what I believe more towards those crucial strategic decisions. But I wouldn't be alienated towards larger battles as well.

 

I havent got my head around the formations though. Question 1: Is it possible to run the formations in the codex independently or do they have to be taken as part of the Lion's Blade Strike Force? Is a "Strike Force" the same as a "formation" rulewise or is the formations parts of "Strike Forces"?

 

Question 2: In what kind of points game do you think the DW Knight will be viable? Would they be viable in a 1000 pts game of would the be considered too expensive and bring too few wounds to the table compared to cheaper units?

 

Question 3: Same as before but with Belial. Bringing Sammael/Sableclaw in somewhat lower points battles seems worth it as to run a Ravenwing Strike Force or just as the HQ to go to for his maneuverability. When would Belial start to be useful? First when you start to combine Ravenwing and Deathwing? Or when you don't use the Ravenwings and their teleport homers and instead aim to use his Tactical Precision-rule?

 

Question 4: The Librarius Conclave formation; can I put those librarians that it will bring in different squads in another formation? As I said before, I haven't really gotten my head around how to use the formations. 

 

Thanks for answers. 

[march10k]

1.  You can run them separately.  To illustrate...if you run a tactical squad as part of a combined arms detachment, it overwatches on 5+.  If that same tactical squad is part of a demi company, it overwatches on 4+.  If that demi company is part of a Lion's Blade, the tactical squad (the only way to get a tactical squad in a Lion's Blade is as part of the demi company) overwatches on 3+.  If there were no way to field a demi company outside of a Lion's Blade, why give it 4+ overwatch?  It would always automatically be upgraded to 3+...

 

2.  It depends...in formations, the threshold is higher, I wouldn't do a redemption force or a DWSF below about 1750, but I would certainly insert a unit of knights into a 1200 point CAD...maybe 1000, but that's really pushing it.

 

3.  I've used Belial as my first, often only, HQ 99% of the time for the last ten years...he's a challenge monkey now...you don't need him to run either deathwing formation, he doesn't really do that much for you other than murder stuff in melee...his no-scatter deepstrike is ok, but it kind of runs against the grain of his new role of beatstick...if you're dropping in 5+ melee termies, do you really need an expensive single model to do your killing for you?  I would see a role for him slipping out the side door of a crusader to charge in and savage an enemy command squad while the squad on board charges out the front to wreck another unit's face...which is really only ever going to happen in a CAD, since neither formation lets you drop a crusaderload of butt-whooping on the table. I won't field him this edition.

 

4.  Don't really know the conclave, but I assumed that they'd form a squad of their own?