Old/New Player needs orientation advice

[Akhazriel]

Hi folks,

 

as I wrote in a previous topic, I came back to the hobby recently with quite a big DA Army I bought years ago.

One "Problem" I have with my Army, is that it (was) is nearly purely GW Infantry.

For fluff/lore reasons and also to get the most out of my DA I want to expand a bit on DW and RW as well as some vehicles.

This is the point where I'm a bit lost in the edition with Primaris popping up everywhere. I never quite jumped onto the Primaris Bandwagon, but I also don't hate them. I just think that you cannot fully trust em ;)

What is clear to me is, that RW is still viable and I already bought some RW units (now I have 10 bikes, 2 attack bikes and 2 Landspeeders).

What's not so clear is, if I should buy TDA for my DW. I got a offer from an acquaintance to buy 10 Terminators, but I became quite insecure with all the talk about DW not being efficient anymore and I don't want to pump money into minis I'm not gonna play, because they're unearthly bad.

Also, since I already have so much Infantry (around 60 tac Marines, 20 Devastators and some Veterans), I'd like to know your opinions if it is necessary to buy Primaris Marines. I'd really hate if all my normal Marines become more or less obsolet and will do little more than accumulating dust on my shelves.

 

So, I guess it boils down to:

1. Does it make sense to expand my DW and if yes, what to buy best (Terminators, Knights, "Characters" like Ancients/Champions)?
2. Will I have to eventually buy Primaris and "stomp" my basic Marines?
3. How, if at all, should I expand my army?

 

My Army so far:

 

-- HQ --

• Azrael
• 5 Company Masters (yup, 5), with different loadouts
• (Interrogator) Chaplain
• 2 Librarians

-- Troops --

• ~60 Tactical Marins with various Special Weapons and Heavy Weapons
• 7 Scouts (ranged, Sniper Rifle, Camo cloak, Heavy Bolter)
• 7 Scouts (CC)

-- Elites--

• 12 Deathwing Terminators (mixed weapons, Assault Cannon, Heavy Flamer)
• 15 Veterans with various Special Weapons and CC
• 2 Company Ancients (1 with standard)
• 2 Apothecary
• 1 Techmarine
• 2 Dreadnaughts

-- Fast Attack --

• 10 Assault Squad Marines
• 10 Raven Wing Bikes
• 2 Raven Wing Attack Bikes
• 2 Raven Wing Land Speeders

-- Heavy Support --

• 23 Devastators with Various Heavy Weapons
• Predator
• Land Raider

-- Dedicated Transports --

• 1 Rhino

 

 

[UtariOnzo]

The primaris units that give you the most bang for buck are inceptors and hellblasters, hellblasters especially work well with Azrael bubble lists. Intercessors are ok for backfield objective camping or just holding a point on the line for you, but aren’t strictly one for one replacements to tactical squads.

 

Devastators are still ok for flak missiles , but predators seem to be the go to for anti tank lascannon support.

 

All in all, you can get some mileage out of standard tactical squads, especially if you go mechanised, with Primaris units acting as walls (intercessors/hellblasters) or chaff sweepers (inceptors) to compliment that. Ravenwing by far is the superior wing however, and unfortunately the Deathwing are not doing so well mostly as a result of deepstrike rules and terminators overall being quite lacking in a highly mobile meta.

 

Tl;dr add primaris units to taste, stick to greenwing/ravenwing

[Knight Angels]

do you play mostly casual or competetiv?

dw is NOT "unearthly bad"

[Hantheman]

Quite, the standard you play will decide a lot. I've had a LOT of fun with a pure deathwing army when it's non-competitive. I don't win every game, but that's not the point. 

[Hellunder]

I’d say that regardless if you want a fun or competitive army I wouldn’t buy more vanilla terminators. If you want to have fun with deathwing you want some deathwing knights, beautiful models and they hit very hard if the make the charge (which they usually don’t) they also got quite a good points drop lately so I’d say they’re more effective than vanilla termies.

[Neuralshock]

Good choices to have for this edition include scouts (both w/ HB and ML) and hellblasters, as were mentioned before. Black knights, while expensive and easily focused down and eliminated, are cool/interesting units to have. Kitbashing both a Talonmaster and Sammy in Sableclaw will perform well on the board too. I have 3 Dark Talons but I've used them once last year.

 

If you like deathwing, build them, but terminators don't last too long on the board to make them worth their salt. My advice, paint up your tac squads real pretty and sell half of them because they occupy a middle ground of not being survivable and not damaging enough to make them an efficient choice of troop. The 3+ save isn't that hard to beat.

[JJD]

Hi Akhazriel

 

It looks like your in a similar position as I am. I’m not a competitive player but I also want to be in with a chance to win. I have come to accept that the writing is probably on the wall for space marines so I plan on concentrating on Primaris for green wing from now on.

 

Bolter drill makes intercessors a solid troop choice but you can’t beat scouts for filling out a battalion so I plan on painting up a couple of squads of both. Scouts won’t look too out of place next to primaris as they should be smaller.

 

Hellblasters have the potential to be great with Azrael and a lieutenant. I’ve only played my once and they were great.

 

Inceptors look to have potential and I will look to get some down the line.

 

Ravenwing is fun to play so as others have suggested I’d look at getting a talon master and Sableclaw and some black knights. I recently finished my sable claw so I will make a talon master at some point. I also plan on getting a dark talon to try out. I also plan on getting a dark shroud to protect them.

 

As a slow painter I’m concentrating on models I will actually play and I’m afraid terminators just aren’t much fun this edition. They just die too easily and don’t do much in return.

 

My to do list is something like

 

Scouts 2x5

Intercessors 2x5

Sableclaw

Dark talon maybe two I’ll have to see

Dark shroud

Inceptors with plasma1x6

See where things go with new primaris

 

Pray to the holy emperor that when primaris take over there our Dethwing and Ravenwing stay unique.

[Grand Master Raziel]

Hey there Akhazriel!

More or less +1 to what other people have already stated. Power armored OldMarines are in a not-terrific place right now, but some of them still have their uses. If you're playing an Azrael-castle, Devastators are not terrible, though the mortal wounds shenanigans through strats and cherubs has been FAQed out.

 

Not everyone will agree with me on this one, but a case can be made for Assault Marines, depending on the kind of list you run. Primarily, as a screen with Fly. One of the major tricks played by those of competitive mindsets is to lock a unit in close combat by pinning an individual model with three models, so the base can't be moved out. This can't be done on a unit with Fly, however. So, Assault Marines, if you keep them cheap, can serve as a screen for other units you don't want locked in combat. Thinking the Azrael-castle here. They also do double-duty as slot-fillers if you're playing a brigade, as they're not too terribly expensive.

Another case can be made for Company Vets - they can take bullets for more valuable characters, and you can get a minimal 2-man squad of them for a mere 30pts, so if you're building a brigade, they can help you fill slots cheaply.

As far as Troops go, Scouts are the go-to, because they're cheap and have the special deployment rule, which lets you push out your area of control to keep Deep Strikers away from more valuable units. With sniper rifles, they can be handy mortal wound-deliverers too.

Ravenwing is indeed one of the ways to go with our dex. Hardly anything with the Ravenwing keyword is bad, and if it's Ravenwing, it tends to be among the best units in our dex. Bikes, Black Knights, the Dark Shroud, and Sammy and the Talonmaster are all go-tos, and the Dark Talon still has it's defenders, though I think it's just a tad bit overpriced now.

 

Again, this is not an assessment everyone agrees with, but I've been finding Land Speeders with Typhoon Missile Launchers to be valuable units. I've been using a unit of 3 of them as my heavy damage dealers, and they've consistently been pulling their weight. 

As far as Deathwing goes, Deathwing Knights have some play in the competitive seen as a bully unit that's hard for opponents to deal with, but threatening enough that they can't just ignore them either. And, as previously mentioned, gorgeous models. A 10-man squad of them would make a nice centerpiece unit to an army.

 

As to Primaris units, the picks of the litter are Hellblasters, (plasma) Inceptors, Intercessors, Eliminators, and the other Vigilus-Primaris guys, the ones that are like a Scout squad and an Intercessor squad had a kid with most of the best rules of both. Hellblasters and plasma Inceptors are good units to use Weapons of the Dark Age with, and Hellblasters are the primary offensive punch of the Azrael-castle.

 

The main value of Intercessors is to stand on an objective that's in the open (happens a lot in ITC missions). They have more staying power than Scouts or Tacs, and have a longer range with their bolters. Between Bolter Drill and their inherent AP-1, they have some value on offense as well. 

 

Eliminators are pretty obvious. You can stick them out of sight and have them put pain on characters.

Build-wise, there's basically two things that have some semblance of being competitive. There's the Azrael-castle, generally centered around one or more big squads of Hellblasters with Azrael to grant them a 4++ and rerolls, but some folks have some success using Devastators instead. This can be done as a brigade or double battalion.  The other major build option is a Ravenwing-heavy outrider paired with a small battalion of Scouts and characters to generate some CP for the outrider. Some folks like to take a blend of both. It seems to me like trying to do both in one list makes it hard to do either well, but I haven't tried it, so I can't comment from experience.

[MaxB]

General advice would be to decide on some goal for your venture into Dark Angels. Competitive matched play? Casual games? Building a cool looking collection?

 

My take on your questions...

 

1. Does it make sense to expand my DW and if yes, what to buy best (Terminators, Knights, "Characters" like Ancients/Champions)?

Up to you depending on your goals for the army. I'd only expand with some Deathwing Knights because they look amazing, and you already have some normal guys. Belial looks cool too.

       

2.Will I have to eventually buy Primaris and "stomp" my basic Marines?

Nope. Tac marines aren't great, but most people use scouts for troops anyway. All the new Primaris and Vanguard are really nice to paint though. And there's some competitive options like Hellblasters, Inceptors, maybe some of the Vanguard.

 

3. How, if at all, should I expand my army?

Up to you depending on your goals for the army. You have enough to play some games first and get a feel for how they play - see what unit types you think you are missing (fast, dakka, cc, etc) or whether you even enjoy playing them!

 

Some fun, Dark Angel themed, but still effective units that could be good to add - Dark Talon, Dark Shroud, Black Knights, Talonmaster/Sammael in Sableclaw.

 

Max

[Akhazriel]

Thank you all for your kind and helpful answers.

 

I had a game recently against primaris deathwatch. I built the infamous Azrael castle with 2 Devastator squads. Some Scouts and tacs as troop choices and I also brought a 5-man squad of DW terminators. What shall I say, the other guy who boasted about how you can't win without primaris got totally stomped by my "measly mini marines". Also the Terminators were amazing with the new bolter drill rule.

 

To clarify, I'm mostly a casual, "fluff" player, so I don't mind if a unit is not the absolute best, especially if I already have the unit.

So, minding your advice and those of other players I spoke to irl, I will definetly get some Terminator Knights, Black Knights and of course the Darkshroud. Also, maybe some Landspeeders and some rhinos/razorback for the fun/style factor :). For the rest I will take my time to get some experience in the new edition and what synergizes well.

Also, I don't want to sell anything, because as of now, I more or less have a full company and I think that's just amazing :D

[Hellunder]

Nice work! I think vs other marines DA can surely compete. Ohh and btw: Since you had 12 termies you should definitely convert one of them to a deathwing ancient if you get the dw knights box.

[Grand Master Raziel]

On the subject of the eventual fate of OldMarines, I think it would be a spectacularly bad PR move for GW to ever stop supporting them outright. I doubt we'll see much new for them, as their line is pretty much complete, but I don't think GW will try and squat them either. What I think will eventually happen is that GW will pull together all the Primaris stuff into a cohesive faction that represents Astartes going forward, but they're not there yet. I expect all the new releases will be geared towards that end, BUUUT GW will continue to provide rules for the OldMarines range.

 

One other reason I'm confident GW will continue providing rules for OldMarines is because the setting spans 10,000 years, and Primaris Marines have only been around for a teeny tiny fraction of that. OldMarines were the combatants for the vast majority of that time scale, so if one wanted to play a thematic game set during pre-Primaris times, there needs to be rules for OldMarines that can be used with the current core rules set. I don't think they'll make it their top priority or put their best people on it, but it'll be done.

I guess that's my way of saying I don't think you have to worry about your OldMarines becoming completely useless, though the smart money is on all future Marine releases being Primaris.

[Knight Angels]

if you mostly play with the same like-minded people you could try to convert the rules from normal to primaris marines without actualy needing the primaris stuff.

we did this and the game is so much better now with all marines having at least 2w,2a. (its +1w, +1a +3pts for all marines on foot an +1a, +1pt for bikers)

 

of course you will have to discuss a whole lot to get to that point