The Void Hawks

[Tyriks]

So, I had my first game with my RG last night.  1250 points against Tau.  I originally had made a list that squeezed a Talon SF into that, but scrapped it for a CAD so I could bring more models I have yet to field, so my list wasn't especially well planned out.  I didn't bring my Stormtalon because this opponent hasn't played with flyers yet, so he's afraid to, but we have a 1500 point game coming up that we agreed we would bring flyers to, so it should hit the table soon.  Short version: we brought glory to the Raven Guard.

 

I brought:

 

HQ - Celestine, a Librarian with no upgrades but a jump pack

Troops - 5 man tac squad, flamer/combi-flamer, in a stock Razorback; 5 man scout squad, camo cloaks, pistol/chainsword, riding a land speeder storm with assault cannon

Elites - Vanguard Vets, jump pack, pistol and claw on each

Fast Attack - Land speeder, dual melta; assault marines w/ jump packs and 2 flamers

Heavy - Contemptor w/ kheres; Thunderfire Cannon; trilas predator

 

I held the land speeder and assault marines in deep strike reserve.  He brought a cad with the optimized stealth cadre, cad was drone commander (in deep strike), 2 8 man fire warriors, a 4 man pathfinder, 4 marker drones, two devilfish (I think, the DT), a hammerhead, two squads of suits, one with burst cannons and one with fusion blasters, all suits in DS reserve.  The mission was the one where we each place one objective in our deployment zone, worth three points at the end to whoever is holding it.  Vanguard deployment.  I had first turn but he seized, which he regretted.  The game store was pretty busy so big terrain was scarce, so we had one big ruin in each deployment zone, some broken walls here and there, and big craters covering most of the ground.  We rolled for night fighting, which I think did nothing because all his stuff ignored it and basically only my flamers got into range turn one.

 

So, turn one he obliterated my scouts and their land speeder, scoring him first blood.  They were behind a little wall which did absolutely nothing due to marker lights.  Thankfully the rest of his shooting didn't do much, he put a wound on one of Celestine's girls but the stealth cadre was out of range of my vehicles and he had no more marker lights, so my vanguard/lib/Celestine unit had 3+ cover even when he had ap3 shots.  All his suits jumped forward to be in range next turn.  So, on my turn, everything jumped forward and destroyed all his stealth suits.  The thunder fire cannon hit one squad (which was out of range of the ghost keel by about one inch to get LoS on my models) and landed three perfect hits and one scattered to only hit one, which killed two and the razorback finished it off.  Then my vanguard horde charged the other and made short work of them.  Contemptor I think glanced a devilfish (I foolishly didn't put him in a drop pod, which I regret wholeheartedly).  Las pred I don't think ever successfully hurt a single vehicle but it did end up soaking up a ton of fire before crashing.  

 

Turn two he tried to deep strike behind my vehicles and scattered off the board, so I got to place his suits.  I put them in the very back edge of his deployment corner so they didn't get to do much all game.  He then almost did the exact same thing with the second squad of suits but thankfully listened to me and made sure they couldn't scatter off the board, which they would have if he hadn't moved.  This was the burst cannons squad, who were hoping to take out my tacticals holding my objective.  They didn't have LoS due to the scatter so they just moved around.  Fire warriors got out of a devilfish, and pretty much everything fired at Celestine.  Both geminae died and Celestine took a wound, but my librarian also died, giving him slay the warlord.  I should have made Celestine the warlord, but didn't want to just because she isn't a space marine.  Jump moves had the ghost keel trying to hide from Celestine.

 

My turn two I dropped my assault marines and land speeder in.  The assault marines tried to land behind the ghost keel to flame it so it couldn't get cover (which also put them in range to flame his objective which had fire warriors on it if the ghostkeel didn't need it) but it scattered away from the ghostkeel.  Land speeder tried to come in behind the hammerhead but also scattered hugely, meaning it landed right beside the assault marines (and his fusion suits).  The marines ended up flaming his marker drones since they were the only thing in range, killing three.  Land speeder blasted one of his fusion suits with melta.  Contemptor tore up the fire warriors that had come out of the devilfish, I did manage to get into combat with the ghostkeel (though I couldn't flame it with Celestine because he had an ability to make me fire snap shots).  Way overkilled it.  The marines also flamed the suits poking around them and then charged, killing one but leaving one last marine in range of the objective.  

 

Turn three both of his devilfish went after Celestine, killing the geminae I brought back and putting a wound on her (and I think killing a vanguard vet).  His drone commander came on, too, in my deployment zone right beside the suit locked in with my tacs.  He was trying to shoot at rear armor of the Contemptor but after the hammerhead failed to finish the predator he shot at that instead, finally killing it.  My land speeder got glanced by his melta (that's right, glanced, AFTER a reroll...) but jinking didn't help.  On my turn my assault squad got behind one devilfish, shot it a little and charged in, finishing it.  Celestine split off the vanguards, she charged the fire warriors on his objective and the vets charged his pathfinders (also in 3" of the objective).  I also dropped the thunderfire on the same squads, risking it scattering onto Celestine, but that didn't happen.  That softened them up enough to clear his objective.  My tac squad finally finished off his suit on my objective, also.  I think my razorback put down his last devilfish too (he had turned it around to fire at celestine meaning I could hit it's rear arc).  

 

Turn four his commander hopped over and shot up my tacs, killing all but the flamer and then charging in.  He thought his six drones would be enough to kill the last one, which they weren't.  His hammerhead did kill my cannon, but not the gunner.  The fusion suit also finished off my land speeder.  For my turn, Celestine stayed on the objective while the vets chased down that suit.  My contemptor barely made it into combat with the drone commander (11" charge, thank you Fleet!) just as the last tactical marine died.  I had the razorback flat out over to the objective because I was pretty sure that tac marine wouldn't last, so I parked it alongside the ruins claiming it from outside them.  Unfortunately this left it's rear arc pointed out at the hammerhead...

 

Turn five he tried to correct that and failed to wreck it.  The burst cannons took 2 glancing hits, the big gun hit but he rolled a one to pen.  At this point he only had the hammerhead and commander (with 4 drones left), I had celestine, two vets, a barely running razorback and the Contemptor without a scratch on the paint.  The Contemptor had whiffed badly in combat on the turn it charged and this turn, I think killing 3 drones between two rounds of combat.  I think the commander had a chance to hurt it in cc with something, because he chose not to use Our Weapons Are Useless and stayed in with it.  My turn five it finally made up for all of the failures by absolutely destroying the drones and the commander, securing the objective even if the game went on and he killed the Razorback.  The game did not go on.  

 

So, while it ended up being 8-3 and with him almost tabled, it actually was a pretty close game.  If the Contemptor hadn't successfully charged I never would have made it into combat, as he would have finished the tactical and jumped up a couple floors (the objective was on the middle floor so pretty much any spot in the ruin would claim it).  Without making it into combat I think he would have killed it.  I also think if he had made me go first I would have had a much worse first few turns, or if his dice had been on his side (he rolled so many 1s in critical situations that even I was hoping he would wreck my Razorback, haha).  It was a fun game, though.  I look forward to trying out a Talon sometime soon!

[Race Bannon]

That was a good read, grats on the win!

[Tyriks]

I had the afternoon off, so I spent several hours base coating my Stormraven blue.  It was meant for my BA but I just have never found a spot for it in that army, so it'll be joining the Void Hawks (the same might happen with my Land Raider Redeemer, but I'm holding off on that until 8th probably).  I think I have a rematch against the Tau in a week or two and he is finally ready to branch out to include flyers.  So, I would love to get this girl table ready in time for that!  I'm thinking maybe a Ravenhawk Assault Group (I only have one Stormtalon, so pretty much every other formation is out unless I just proxy the Stormraven as a second one).  Hopefully I'll get enough done to it to get pics up soon.

[Race Bannon]

Stormraven and Land Raider?!

 

Pics please ^_^

[Tyriks]

Well, the LR is about half painted in my BA colors at the moment... 

 

There's been an interesting update - I have a Stormhawk.  Had a little windfall and bought the kit to build that second Stormtalon, but I couldn't resist building the Stormhawk.  I knew I would want one eventually anyway, and once 8th hits I might not need a second Stormtalon.  Worst comes to worst it will at least make a better Stormtalon proxy than the Raven...  Not sure how to load it out yet, so I haven't built the weapons or attached the engines.  I might just prime the engines leadbelcher before I do, considering how much the raven's engines are proving difficult.  So now I'm leaning more towards a CAD in the rematch just to include the hawk, or I might go the proxy route and try the two talons with a speeder formation.  I've got time to decide.

[Tyriks]

So, I've been thinking about a chapter logo.  I didn't have any particularly inspired ideas, and I'm not gifted enough when it comes to graphic design to try to implement what I had come up with, so I sifted through all 39 pages of the decals in the downloads section looking for something fitting.  I found a few contenders: The easiest would probably be to take one of the Blood Raven options and just fill in the blood drop to make it all black.  It's clearly a bird but also clearly not the RG bird, so it would work.  However, I think some of the other options are more appealing.  I could go the more generic route and use the "Sable Sword" decals, which is just the outline of two crossed swords.  It would probably look good on the blue shoulders, contrasting nicely, but it doesn't denote anything particular about the chapter.  

 

There are some interesting winged icons in there - Star Phantoms (made before the official icons were included in IA9, apparently), Doom Eagles, Death Eagles, or Doom Warriors could work.  I think for most of those, I'd probably have to put a backdrop on them, like a white circle with a black border, because the black won't be very visible on my blue armor.  I'm still considering all of those.  Finally, though, I could just change the color on the Flame Eagles decal (I'd probably do some black and some white/gray, put the light ones on tacticals and such and the darker ones on vets since they have light gray shoulders).  This is pretty persuasive to me because the icon would be pretty spot on.  The "flames" around the bottom would make it pretty ethereal looking, I think.  So, I'm leaning heavily towards that, but I'm not 100% convinced.  I'll see if I can do the color swap later and that might make up my mind for me.  

 

I hope to get this underway soon so I can do squad markings and such and seal the stuff I have done.  I never sealed any of my BA because I was waiting to try to put off figuring stuff like this out, and as a result noticed some scratching from the carry case.  I don't want that again!  

[Tyriks]

So, I had a rematch against Tau today.  I've been too busy for much hobby progress but I have a decent amount of time off this week so I'm hoping to change that soon.

 

The battle, we decided, was a followup to the previous one.  Since he had killed my warlord, we were hunting down the survivors because they took a trophy from him that we wanted back.  We had a hell of a time finding a place to play, which cut our time short, which I think worked out in my favor.  To suit the story, we put a lot of the objectives in the middle of the table in a circle, with one in each deployment zone so it lined up, saying we shot down his cruiser and the objectives were the debris.  It was the maelstrom mission where you keep objectives hidden, which was new to both of us and a bit weird.  We also played with mysterious objectives.  

 

I brought the Talon Strike Force with a BDC (each tac squad was flamer/combiflamer in a rhino, devs had 3 grav because I ran out of points, melta attack bike, cataphractii capt with the devs), Ravenhawk AG (Kheres contemptor, no other upgrades) and SSKT (2 cc scouts squads and 5 man VV with pistol/claw).  He brought their decurion with an optimized stealth cadre and some other formation whose bonus never mattered.  I deployed first and went first.  

 

Turn one, the RAG came on and the devastators, but I foolishly forgot the VV didn't need to roll so they didn't come in.  The cataphractii with devs in a pod works crazy well.  They obliterated his ghostkeel (and on his turn the captain almost soaked all 24 pulse shots that came in to get revenge).  The storm raven messed up some drones, I think (it honestly did very little the whole game besides soak firepower and deliver the cargo).  I think taking out that ghostkeel won me the game, he rolled to see what its shooting would have accomplished next turn and I think my obsec rhinos (which scored me a lot of points in the long run) would have been trashed.  I did feel a little bad afterwards though because I realized he's fielded the model 3 times (twice against me) and it hasn't actually done anything yet.  On his turn one he tried to kill all my scouts to keep my SSKT from landing without scatter, but I had 1 guy in one squad and 3 in the other and both held morale.  He did kill the captain and two non grav guys in the dev squad.

 

Turn 2, the scouts moved together to give the VV a spot to land and they charged his warlord.  I didn't realize he had given it 2+ armor or I might not have, but they still managed to kill him at the end of his turn by killing enough drones to make him run and running him down.  The SR dropped the contemptor and sternguard down.  Sternguard picked on his stealth suits and killed one, I think.  I had to choose between the ap3 round which was not in rapid fire range or pretty much any other round that was, so I chose whichever one was mathematically going to wound more and I think I should have gone for ap3.  My scouts wrecked his land speeder rip off thing (piranha?) and the contemptor absolutely tore into the fire warriors that had felled my captain.  The shooting was inconsequential but fleet helped him make a 10" charge, he hit and wounded with all 5 attacks so he swept the whole squad.  I seriously love contemptors!  At this point he briefly thought about calling the game because my army was essentially untouched and he had lost a ton of stuff.  On his turn, though, our luck changed.  His stealth suits dropped the contemptor, two units of suits came in (though one landed on my models so I got to place it, and it went way in the corner away from the action), he killed all but one devastator, who broke morale.  I think I also lost most of the sternguard this turn.  

 

Turn 3 I had a few of my tac squads just run or flat out to get objectives.  I scored 4 points this turn, which put me well in the lead.  Other than that though I didn't accomplish much.  The VV consolidated towards his stealth suits and were able to charge, losing two to overwatch but killing all the suits.  My SR was jinking but still managed to hit his hammerhead with a melta shot, though jink spared it.  On his turn he finished the sternguard, wrecked two rhinos, and crashed the raven, which fell into the hammerhead's rear armor and caused the only hull point it lost all game.  His kroot came on and picked on a tac squad but failed to kill any due to lucky rolling.  He also finished the last devastator which had thus far been trying to immobilize vehicles.  

 

Turn 4 I flamed a breacher squad to death (this was probably the most efficient rolling I've ever accomplished), my scouts both charged devilfish and hurt both but wrecked neither, and the vets ate a squad of drones.  On his turn I lost one tac squad entirely and most of a second, and all but one scout, leaving me with 2 vanguard vets, one untouched tac squad and their rhino, and a drop pod.  But the place we had found to play was closing soon so we decided to wrap up.  I won I think 10-5 but had we played on I am fully confident I would have lost, and maybe gotten tabled eventually.  It was a brutal game!  I left my attack bike model at home, so I tried to proxy something as it but forgot about it every single turn so it never once moved or did anything.  

 

I will say, RG chapter tactics are pretty underwhelming, but the TSF is cool.  The rules for the TSF itself would have been a total waste if not for the reserves on turn one.  But I think our choice of auxiliary choices is very nice.  Next time I might try only bringing a mix of auxiliaries instead of the TSF proper.  I don't have any more games coming up in the next two weeks though so I might change my mind.  I also definitely want to find or build a table and get some terrain on it (I have some ruins already, but not enough) because looking for a place to play took way too long, and I think that changed the outcome of the game.  

[Claws and Effect]

The chapter tactics were underwhelming because you didn't bring many units that could take advantage of them.

 

One 5 man jump pack unit and all your infantry was in vehicles so they didn't get 1st turn Shrouded. You couldn't have made their CT less useful for your forces if you tried.

[Tyriks]

The chapter tactics were underwhelming because you didn't bring many units that could take advantage of them.

 

One 5 man jump pack unit and all your infantry was in vehicles so they didn't get 1st turn Shrouded. You couldn't have made their CT less useful for your forces if you tried.

Nah, they've always been underwhelming.  I wasn't talking about just this game.  And I did have scouts on the board with cloaks in terrain, meaning they technically had a 1+ cover save, which doesn't matter at all against Tau (which is about half of my regular opponents right now).  Compare our tactics to all the others - most of them don't require you to use specific stuff (Salamanders do, but even White Scars are extremely useful without bikes) and most other chapters have more formations utilizing that stuff (again, look at WS).  At 1500 points, I'm just not going to be able to fit many jump packs in if I'm using the TSF competitively.  

 

And, even playing the LBSF with my BA when I've got 30+ jump packs on the table, being able to use a jp in movement and assault phase wouldn't account for that much.  Most of the time it just means you get HoW, which admittedly can change a combat but that's pretty rare.  Like I said though, I think our selection of auxiliary choices for the TSF makes up for it.  The only one we don't have that I'm eager to try (Skyhammer as heck) wouldn't get any benefit from the TSF anyway, so no harm in just bringing it alongside.  

[Race Bannon]

Well, have you tried using WS formations as RG? Or are we talking about the CT?

[Tyriks]

I mean, I'm not trying to complain about it or anything, just sharing my thoughts.  I enjoyed playing with the TSF even if the chapter tactics did nothing for me at all.  I'll probably play around eventually with using other formations or tactics or whatever, but I don't have plans to.  Honestly until 8th hits I might just try to get my models painted and keep using what I've got, and spend my hobby money on buying/building a table/terrain so we aren't dependent on FLGS availability anymore.  And I do have a fair-sized painting backlog built up already!  

[Tyriks]

Alright, Race, ask and you might eventually receive.  This is what I've been working on lately.  I'm going crazy trying to base coat these!  I've done 3 coats on the Stormraven and every time I put it under the light I see more of the old red poking through!  I've gone through most of a pot of Kantor Blue between these models.  For now I just want to get all the hulls blue, and then I'll worry about everything else.  The blue is almost all done now, thankfully.  

 

http://i.imgur.com/9Tolr3eh.jpg

 

The Land Raider has 2 coats on most of this side but not even a full one on the other because I ran out of paint.  I'm going out of town this weekend so I'll probably wait to get more until I get back.  Most of this red is not visible in normal lighting but it always seems to show up in the game shop, so I'm determined to eventually get all of it.

 

http://i.imgur.com/hE4edWuh.jpg

[Tyriks]

Also, I'm considering painting my vehicles mostly just blue and leaving the gray off.  Not sure yet if I will do this.  Even if I do I might replace it with black or just have less of the gray.  I can't get the gray quite smooth enough, so I think it looks a bit better to minimize it at least.  The black looks pretty good though, and it fits the idea of trying to be stealthy, especially on vehicles since they're easier to spot.

[Tyriks]

I was talking to an old friend earlier this week who was asking about Warhammer.  He said he used to buy models from a game like 40k to build and paint, but he never played so he couldn't remember what it was.  He dug out his models today and sent me some pics because I told him I'd help sell them, and it is Space Marines from about 15 years ago, meaning I am about to get one of those crazy old rhinos!  I think it's the original design, looks like this:

http://www.ozdestro.com/uploads/1/3/0/1/13014732/3886623_orig.jpg

 

I'm pretty pumped, though I'll need to find an excuse to include it in my army... After all, it'll pre-date my chapter by about 9000 years!

[Race Bannon]

Nah, that's the Deimos pattern essentially. Maybe call it the Phobos Rhino? :lol:

 

Treat that model well dude. It will deserve the love.

[Tyriks]

What's the difference?  I definitely want to do it justice, even if I never have cause to put a relic like that on the table, it'll be awesome to have!

[Tyriks]

I'm out of town at the moment, so very little painting has been done, but I have had a lot of time to work on fluff/chapter hierarchy.  I did bring a couple models but haven't had any time to paint, though that may change.

 

So, their name is derived from a bird species on their world (which I think I am pretty settled on Cronus, though I might spell it differently), called Void Hawks by the locals.  They are the apex predator of the world due to having slight psychic mutations, allowing them to teleport short ranges to catch prey or evade predators.  They have exceptionally long lives, and are somewhat intelligent, so older ones are very dangerous as they learn how to use their mutations to more effectively hunt, such as teleporting their claws right into your throat or popping in, hurting you and then vanishing.  Neophytes of the chapter must hunt them down before being considered battle ready.  The battle brothers of the Void Hawks tend to distrust their psykers since they see them as having some distant kinship with these awful beasts.  

 

I have a huge list of character names, mostly based on Greek heroes and myths, though not all have a use yet.  Some names were too recognizable so I used the Etruscan variants.  I'm not sure yet how I want to structure the Librarius, but I have some thoughts.  I might just assign Librarians to specific companies since they distrust them, the idea being that they are subordinate to the captains and aren't allowed to spend much time together.  But maybe they just have Chaplains who act as Wardens did during the Crusade who keep an eye on them.

 

Chapter Master: Minos Kharon

Master of Sanctity: Aeschylus Phaeton

Chief Librarian: Telemachus Atun

 

Captains: Ares Vikare, 1st Arcadoc Company; Adon Thantus, 2nd Ettic Company; Seidon Hades, 3rd Ionic Company; Capanus Uthste, 4th Humeric Company; Admetus Kallanikos, 5th Doric Company; Epaphras Hecaton, 6th Aeolic Company; Tyndareus Prumath, 7th Etrusic Company; Phonos Androktai, 8th Kypric Company; Antiochus Tyrrhen, 9th Achaeic Company; Castor Aril, 10th Latic Company.

 

Chaplains: Kratoth Zelos, Othrys Phaon, Palles Ajax, Nestor Lynkeus, Askepos Velparon, Creon Helios, Epimenides Musaeus, Manelos Telamon, Argos Euphorion, and Hekt Asklepios.  

 

I have about a dozen other names, so far unused.  These will likely wind up being a couple Librarians and then some Squad Sergeants.  I doubt at this point that I will model all of these, but maybe I will as my army grows.  I like building HQs so I might get around to it.  For the moment, I'm planning on building chunks of the 1st and 2nd Companies, with a bit of the 8th thrown in for jump-heavy lists.  I'm using the Deathwatch Raven Guard model as the 8th Captain, named after some spirits of murder and battlefield slaughter since he will likely be using Swiftstrike and Murder (at least for as long as we have them).  The Start Collecting box captain will likely be the 1st company option.  

[Tyriks]

Got some painting done yesterday.  This is still very much a WIP but it's starting to come together.  Decorations on the front of sarcophagus will likely be copper/bronze/gold or something, maybe just a much lighter silver if that looks distinct enough.  

 

http://i.imgur.com/BdPPXM3h.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/rDc0Sdeh.jpg

 

This is what I had in mind when I said I might swap the gray for black on vehicles.  I like the way it looks on infantry but I like this a lot more on bigger models, I think.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Venerable Dreadnought looks good. Well done.

[Tyriks]

The Venerable Dreadnought looks good. Well done.

Thanks!