What have your Raven Guard done lately?

[Nemisor]

had an event this weekend. 32 people, 5 rounds.

 

game 1: white scars - destroyed him, all 4 HQs killed start of turn 1 using master of ambush with 2 smash captains

game 2: trip crusaders - destroyed him, all knight dead turn 3, again 2 smash captains dropped a knight and plane turn 1

game 3: drukhari flyer/ravager spam - harder fight but ended 28-21 to me

game 4: deathwatch/assasins - as youd expect rinsed him. auspex scan + 6 x Inceptors + tact doctrines = win

game 5: IH repulsors x 4 - i got absolutely wrecked

 

came second, IH came 1st

Edited October 14, 2019 by Nemisor

[thewarriorhunter]

2 of each repulsor profiles or 3 and 1?

[Dracos]

Honestly I almost feel sorry for Iron Hands come Chapter Approved .... almost 

Edited October 14, 2019 by Dracos

[duz_]

Honestly I almost feel sorry for Iron Hands come Chapter Approved .... almost

Any increase to non unique IH units will impact us to though and CA is mainly ours adjustments :ermm:

[SyNidus]

had an event this weekend. 32 people, 5 rounds.

 

game 1: white scars - destroyed him, all 4 HQs killed start of turn 1 using master of ambush with 2 smash captains

game 2: trip crusaders - destroyed him, all knight dead turn 1, again 2 smash captains dropped a knight and plane turn 1

game 3: drukhari flyer/ravager spam - harder fight but ended 28-21 to me

game 4: deathwatch/assasins - as youd expect rinsed him. auspex scan + 6 x Inceptors + tact doctrines = win

game 5: IH repulsors x 4 - i got absolutely wrecked

 

came second, IH came 1st

Bloody well done. Any chance we could get a tourney report?

[Dracos]

I think you will see point increase for the special character but mostly a point bump for the CP of certain stratagems.

 

If the IH trend to mow over the Meta I don't see they have a choice but to address the situation for Match Play. They've done it for every Faction every unit that was doing so. Sometimes faster and some with a heavier bat than others but credit for doing something. Maybe the the Meta can adjust and find an answer. I hope so because I'd always rather see factions get better than nerfed. 

[thinkerofuselessthings]

had an event this weekend. 32 people, 5 rounds.

 

game 1: white scars - destroyed him, all 4 HQs killed start of turn 1 using master of ambush with 2 smash captains

game 2: trip crusaders - destroyed him, all knight dead turn 1, again 2 smash captains dropped a knight and plane turn 1

game 3: drukhari flyer/ravager spam - harder fight but ended 28-21 to me

game 4: deathwatch/assasins - as youd expect rinsed him. auspex scan + 6 x Inceptors + tact doctrines = win

game 5: IH repulsors x 4 - i got absolutely wrecked

 

came second, IH came 1st

 

I'm really interested in your second game. That's an amazing performance for our RG. Apart from smash captain what else in you list let you achieve this results?

 

If you would like to share your army composition and strategy I'll be very glad.

 

Generally speaking I'm finding an incredibile force on the tabletop. Raven Guard is really balanced, even if some discrepancy may be observed in the interaction of some rules. Infact while most of our gameplan is carried on turn one, our chpater rules start by the second. 

 

However I'm still missing how to play against an heavy mechanized force. As Nemisor stated in his last game, "I got absolutely wrecked".

[Nemisor]

 

had an event this weekend. 32 people, 5 rounds.

 

game 1: white scars - destroyed him, all 4 HQs killed start of turn 1 using master of ambush with 2 smash captains

game 2: trip crusaders - destroyed him, all knight dead turn 1, again 2 smash captains dropped a knight and plane turn 1

game 3: drukhari flyer/ravager spam - harder fight but ended 28-21 to me

game 4: deathwatch/assasins - as youd expect rinsed him. auspex scan + 6 x Inceptors + tact doctrines = win

game 5: IH repulsors x 4 - i got absolutely wrecked

 

came second, IH came 1st

 

I'm really interested in your second game. That's an amazing performance for our RG. Apart from smash captain what else in you list let you achieve this results?

 

If you would like to share your army composition and strategy I'll be very glad.

 

Generally speaking I'm finding an incredibile force on the tabletop. Raven Guard is really balanced, even if some discrepancy may be observed in the interaction of some rules. Infact while most of our gameplan is carried on turn one, our chpater rules start by the second. 

 

However I'm still missing how to play against an heavy mechanized force. As Nemisor stated in his last game, "I got absolutely wrecked".

 

 

 

sorry, i misspoke. that should say all knights dead by turn 3. ill work up a rundown for you guys shortly. 

[Nemisor]

this is going to be a wall of text so my apologies.

 

My list was: 2 x battalions and a spearhead 2kpts

 

smash captain with master of ambush

smash captain with mastercrafted TH, imperiums sword wl trait and the no overwatch trait

5 scouts with sniper rifles

5 x infiltrators

5 x infiltrators

5 x inceptors

3 x suppressors 

 

phobos cap

phobos lt

8 x intersessors with stalker rifles

9 x intersessors with a fist

9 x intersessors with a fist

 

phobos libby with shrouding and temporal corridor

TFC

eliminators with bolt rifles

eliminators with las fusils

eliminators with las fusils

 

Game 1 vs Whitescars: 31-17 to me

 

i got turn 1, deployed 2 smash captains 9 away from his deployment and he had left a smash cap, libby, bike cap and chaplin in a bunch so i moved and inch away, charged, killed the smash cap, killed the bike cap, bike cap fought in death and killed one of my smash caps who fought in death to kill the libby. then the last smash cap fought again to kill his chaplin. after that it was just clean up as he didnt have the punch to get into me after that.

 

Game 2 vs Knights: 37-13 to me

 

much the same really, i got first turn, 2 smash captains dropped a knight and a vendetta (?) 40 shot guard plane. then when i hit tactical doctrines due to the knights being characters i dropped 1 a turn until they were all dead turn 3. mopped up his last plane and guard battalion turn 4 and left 1 guy alive so i could score some extra points from the bounus. 

 

Game 3 vs Drukhari: 29 - 25 to me

 

the score looks tighter than the game felt. the smash caps dropped 2 ravagers i think before they got killed. but they worked as a good distraction allowing the eliminators and suppressors to drop some planes before they could all come to bear on me. dropped the inceptors and a squad of interssors in his back field to kill all his characters turn 3.

 

Game 4 vs deathwatch/assasins: 32 - 21 to me

 

the smash caps were a little disappointing this game. i think because the guy i played is a mate and weve been playing each other a bit for practice so he knew what they could do. but turn 2 when i went tact doctrines i just started running away with it. the inceptors dropped a veteran unit, then he teleported another one down within 12, i managed to kill  the squad of 8 with auspex scan which was hilarious. he had 9 assassins so getting headhunter was pretty easy. 

 

Game 5 vs IH: 21 - 26 to him

 

2 x executioners 2 x daka repulsors. not much i could do really. due to the gun drone like strat its pretty hard to get to the characters like ferrios and the guy with the iron stone. i knew i was going to lose so it was just a matter of scoring as many points as i could. fun fact: a cover save and -1 to hit isnt even a speed bump for repulsor spam IH. 

 

overall here are some things i learned.

 

master of shadows with smash caps can be really good, but i think i was lucky to get as many first turns as i did. also they are a bit of a trap as you pretty much hand your opponent 2 kills turn 1 and very CP heavy because you are tempted to fight twice alot. 

 

infiltrators are great for engineers while screening from DS. you can stack a -3 to hit on these guys with the chapter trait, smoke grenades and the strat.

 

suppressors dont fit with the RG tactic. they are better for other chapters.

 

Inceptors in tactical doctrine are brutal

 

intersessors do a really solid amount of damage in melee. a unit of 10 with a fist puts out some hurt. 

 

deepstriking intersessors is a great idea. and may be the only way i use them in future, possibly in tandem with inceptors and a JP captain or shrike.

 

TFC are a must have for every marine army

Edited October 14, 2019 by Nemisor

[Bluflash]

Just confirming, you mean Master of Ambush, not Master of Shadows, yeah?

[Nemisor]

Just confirming, you mean Master of Ambush, not Master of Shadows, yeah?

 

yeah sorry. ive only had 3 coffees this morning

[Brom MKIV]

 

Just confirming, you mean Master of Ambush, not Master of Shadows, yeah?

 

yeah sorry. ive only had 3 coffees this morning

 

Haha what a coincidence I've only had 3 wines..

 

Hey man I dig your list btw! Unorthodox and thematic. Few questions if you don't mind..

 

How did the incursors do? I can't seem to find a reason for them over infiltrators. 

What did you use the libby for typically? 

How useful did you find RG CT, vs successor. In this case especially I think fussilades and/or artisans would be strong. I like artisans and wwor currently. Anyway nicely done.

[jpwyrm]

this is going to be a wall of text so my apologies.

 

My list was: 2 x battalions and a spearhead 2kpts

 

smash captain with master of ambush

smash captain with mastercrafted TH, imperiums sword wl trait and the no overwatch trait

5 scouts with sniper rifles

5 x infiltrators

5 x infiltrators

5 x inceptors

3 x suppressors

 

phobos cap

phobos lt

8 x intersessors with stalker rifles

9 x intersessors with a fist

9 x intersessors with a fist

 

phobos libby with shrouding and temporal corridor

TFC

eliminators with bolt rifles

eliminators with las fusils

eliminators with las fusils

 

Snip!

 

Inceptors in tactical doctrine are brutal

 

intersessors do a really solid amount of damage in melee. a unit of 10 with a fist puts out some hurt.

 

deepstriking intersessors is a great idea. and may be the only way i use them in future, possibly in tandem with inceptors and a JP captain or shrike.

 

TFC are a must have for every marine army

Great job Nemisor! I have some questions too.

 

- I'm guessing you fielded bolter Inceptor right?

- You say Intercessors were good in melee, did you used the Veteran Stratagems? Also, since you are dropping them at optimal range, would you consider auto bolt rifles instead of the normal rifle?

- Somehow I can't bring myself to pay for lasfusils... Did they worked so well for you compared to the regular sniper rifle?

[Nusquam]

Also interested in the lasfusils.

 

And I woudl buy a TFC if they were not sold out everywhere...

[Nemisor]

By incursors do you mean inceptors?

They did really well. In tact doctrine they go to ap-2 which is the sweet spot for anti infantry fire.

 

With the intersessors i didnt use the vetran strat. With 3 attacks each when charging or being charged, combined with them having 2 wounds each i found them to have a really good balance of damage output and survivability.

 

I dont use the assault variant because again i love the ap2

 

With regards to the fusils they were great. Drop the sgt shooting to hit and wound most stuff on 2. Reliably putting 6 damage on things. Some games youd want 3 bolt rifles, some youll want las. I figure between the scouts, stalker rifles, phobos captain and 1 squad of bolt eliminators i had the snipers covered

Edited October 15, 2019 by Nemisor

[Brom MKIV]

I meant incursors but I misread your list. All the names look alike to me. Edited October 15, 2019 by Brom MKIV

[SyNidus]

That’s awesome! Great stuff Nemisor.

 

- i noticed your assassination was usually done with smash captains. Did your snipers play much of a role? And if so, what did they do?

 

- your main CC comes from the smash captains. Did you feel like you needed more assault punch? Like a squad of vanguard vets?

 

- did your librarian using those powers do much? Or would you have gotten more utility from umbramancy?

 

- also, what did your TFC do that made it such a great addition to your list?

 

- did you really need that many deepstriking intercessors? Would the same effect be achievable with a single 10 man squad deepstriking?

[thewarriorhunter]

I'm going to my FLGS 40k night tomorrow. Very excited since I haven't rolled dice since Labor Day.

 

It'll either be Kill Team or a 750 40k game. I haven't had enough time to digest all of our stuff but I do want to try out a melee Libby bomb for fun to see how it goes:

 

Librarian in Phobos Armour:

 

Umbral Form, Spectral Blade

 

Camo cloak, Force sword

 

Shadowmaster

 

The Raven Skull of Korvaad

 

The thought is to have him infiltrate up the board, buff himself up so he's got the invuln and STR9. He avoids overwatch with shadowmaster so he can get into combat. On the charge he's now at 5 STR9 AP-3 attacks. The Raven Skull let's me re-reoll the hit, wound, or damage roll (is that for a single attack or all of the attacks, anyone know?) I'm thinking I'll be rerolling the hit or damage rolls most likely because he'll probably wound on 2's against most things. As a bonus if the libby dies then whatever unit killed him is now +1 to hit whenever I attack it because 'vengeance'.

 

I don't expect it to work because the psychic phase doesn't seem to care about me, but if it does it's going to be amazing.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Played a game yesterday against a mostly guard list.

 

I was running double battalion:

Shrike (hero of the chapter)

Ph.Captain w/ oppressors end (master of ambush, champion of humanity)

Pri. Lt w/ ex tenebris

Chaplain (+1 to wound prayer)

 

5 Melee scouts x3

5 Sniper scouts x3

 

3 assault centurions w/ hurricane and flame

5 company veterans w/ plasma and a combi plasma x2

 

Eliminators w/ bolt rifle x3

6 dev centurions w/ grav and hurricane

 

Thunderfire cannon

 

Drop pod

 

His list was, I think:

 

Tank commander w/ demolisher x3

Harker

Platoon commanders? x3

Psyker

Engineseer

 

10 guardsmen x6

 

Hellhound w/flamers x3

 

Manticore x2

 

3 mortars

 

BA smash captains x3

 

 

We played an ITC mission with 4 objectives (1 in each corner) so it was alternating deployment with a roll off to see who went first. As I'd be getting the +1, I put assault centurions into deepstrike and had the devs deployed on the table so I could master of ambush them up. Everything else either deployed to block my backfield from smash captains or took up ruin levels to prevent assault. I got the first turn and won the roll off for order of operations so I master of ambushed the devs and phobos captain up and then Infiltrators Shrchapterbe in position to support them.

 

My turn 1, I moved the dev blob up, with shrike in position to try and net a juicy charge into either of his 2 screened tank commanders or his mortars and 2 foot commanders if the roll was short. I forgot my pod with 10 plasma on the reserve table.

 

Shooting phase, I killed about 40 guardsmen, and his tech priest from the hurricanes, thunderfire and variety of sniper weapons. 2 of his foot commanders took some damage from indirect eliminators but we're still alive. I used grav amplification and reduced one of his tank commanders to 1 wound and the other to 3.

 

Assault phase, I declared a charge against all of his mortars, foot commanders, remaining guardsmen and tank commanders with shrike to ensure I could fight someone; rolled a 6+1 for charge, command rerolls it into a 12" charge to get 4 guardsmen and the 3 wound tank. The plan was to kill the tank and pile into the second, using honour the chapter to kill it and the guardsmen. What happened was no mortal wound and only 2 successful wounds, of which he saved one. He piled in the his guardsmen so I couldn't slingshot after honour the chapter, which I still used to finish off the tank.

 

Morale, all but 1 guard from the straggling squads ran away.

 

His turn 1.

 

Moved to shoot shrike with all hellhounds and to get the remaining tank commanders in range for the centurions. Also moved his only deployed smash captain to position for an out of los 9" charge on the dev cents.

 

Shrike got flamed down by the Catachan hellhounds. The wounded tank commander hit once, I failed my save and he did...1 damage. The full strength one shot, got 6+1 shots so he command rerolls it into 12, the end result being 10 wounds. I passed 6 out of 10 and he rolled...1, 1, 4 and 2 for 1 total centurion. He then shot them with the 2 catachan manticores, doing another total...3 damage. Total of 2 centurions down now.

 

His charge phase, he used the BA strat to roll 3d6 for a 2+2+3. Command rerolled a 2...into a 1.

 

He conceded.

 

 

 

So my thoughts on the game. A lot of my success was due to going first and being able to blast a lot of his force with grav cents. Even forgetting about my plasma squad I had him in a critical position by the end of the turn, even with my poor luck on shrike and the grav shots going into his tanks ( I believe on average each volley should have killed their respective tank, but I don't know the math on fishing for damage). My opponent had awful luck on his damage rolls though, and his list wasn't well prepared to deal with the turn 1 shooting threat, as he didn't have any units that could take up space like scouts, sentinels or the like.

[L30n1d4s]

@SkimaskMohawk

 

Great report, good to see pure RG do so well! One note, looking at your list, if you are willing to give up the Chaplain and a few small upgrades, you could easily take three HB attack bikes for Fast Attack (and grabbing Objectives) and then have a full Brigade, netting you 2 additional CP.

[Nemisor]

That’s awesome! Great stuff Nemisor.

 

- i noticed your assassination was usually done with smash captains. Did your snipers play much of a role? And if so, what did they do?

 

- your main CC comes from the smash captains. Did you feel like you needed more assault punch? Like a squad of vanguard vets?

 

- did your librarian using those powers do much? Or would you have gotten more utility from umbramancy?

 

- also, what did your TFC do that made it such a great addition to your list?

 

- did you really need that many deepstriking intercessors? Would the same effect be achievable with a single 10 man squad deepstriking?

 

yeah the snipers did well from turn 2 on, its amazing how often you'll put a couple of mortals on something

 

as for assault punch i dont really feel like i need any. im dropping them both in my next version of the list due to the cp sink and the free kills they give away.

 

i still think the phobos powers are better. shrouding is great. temporal corridor wasnt that good, im going to swap it for hallucination. 

 

TFC is great for clearing small units out of los, like enemy engineers etc but also knocking the last wound or 2 off a tank, and slowing down units with the strat is great. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

@SkimaskMohawk

 

Great report, good to see pure RG do so well! One note, looking at your list, if you are willing to give up the Chaplain and a few small upgrades, you could easily take three HB attack bikes for Fast Attack (and grabbing Objectives) and then have a full Brigade, netting you 2 additional CP.

Oh for sure, the chaplain is a bad fit for my list (or at least badly implemented). I kind of didn't read catechism of fire properly and plunked him to support my back line, and then realised my thunderfire was behind a wall and my eliminators wanted to shoot the characters. In retrospect, I could have given him master of ambush and fiddled around with my other hq slots to have a full buff bubble with shrike, chap and lt. The math would have been brutal getting through the screens and hopefully would punched through the tanks completely (just checked, averages about 13 damage against geq with hurricanes and then I want to say 19 damage per tank). But that's only if the power goes off, and being very committed to that turn 1.

 

The only thing about the brigade is that I'm a little concerned about the amount of drops I already have. Also I hate the attack bike models; though I wonder if I gave outsiders the appropriate weapons and base if that'd be acceptable.

[L30n1d4s]

If you like the look and are willing to put in a lot of conversion work, here is what another B&C player did to convert attacks bikes to a different aesthetic (pictures are toward bottom of the page):

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/349395-hiros-raptors-chapter-project/page-2

[SkimaskMohawk]

Yea I've seen his and they do look cool, just doesn't quite fit. I'll give the attack bikes a shot via outriders

[thewarriorhunter]

I love the outrider bikes, I wish they weren't so costly because they look much better IMO. I was looking for a cheap unit last night to pad out my list and I saw how cheap attack bikes are. I've got one that might have just jumped up the paint queue to be a distraction/objective grabbing unit.