GW eliminating certan First Born Units - Ravenwing in trouble

[FarFromSam]

Would any one here be troubled playing against regular sized bikers on an outriders base?  For reference, Chaplain who I've used in 9th as a primaris chaplain.

[jaxom]

@farfromsam, not at all! I think it makes a lot of sense, and it occurred to me as a likely future when I read the index and saw the Outrider and Bike squads were word-for-word the same for all the rules that matter.

[Helias_Tancred]

I wouldn't have a problem with it.

 

[Helias_Tancred]

22 hours ago, unrealchamp88 said:

I think the main issue with the retiring of models to eventually be replaced, is the lack of transparency from GW. If we knew when a kit would go to legends and be replaced with either a direct upgrade (Sterguard, Terminators etc.) or something analogous to (Outriders), then we could buy those kits and build them with the replacements in mind, knowing what wargear they'd eventually need or even building them so the kit can be easily edited once the replacement arrives.

 

 

The painfully realistic & pattern-proven side of me says that GW did this because giving them good rules in the index release would hopefully take a big chunk out of their remaining stock before announcing they'd go to Legends? Sales. Profit. Reduced loss. GW sorta lives in their own Nottingham echo chamber and often come up with ideas the rest of us see as sorta nutty, or poorly considered.

 

But I agree thats just one flip side of the coin, your statement is valid too. I'm sure some of that would happen as well.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Eilio Tiberius

[WrathOfTheLion]

12 hours ago, farfromsam said:

Would any one here be troubled playing against regular sized bikers on an outriders base?  For reference, Chaplain who I've used in 9th as a primaris chaplain.

I would certainly think not, especially as GW gives that as an example of what you should do in the article.

 

If it's a refresh of the old line and there's a direct successor kit, then I think they shouldn't even make legends rules, just tell you to do exactly as you said.

[ValourousHeart]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:02 AM, Cpt. Bannockburn said:

And what does the timing change, exactly?

 

Timing actually changes a lot.  Had they been sent to legends instead of being updated to the current datasheet.... then land speeders would have still been able to be taken in squadrons.  Between 4th and 8th editions Dark Angels have been able to take them in squadrons of 5.  My speeder collection took a hit when they reduced the squadrons to 3 speeders, and my bikes took a hit when they introduced the rule of 3.

 

But to drop them to units of 1 right before sending them to legends feels like getting kicked in the teeth after a cleat stomp to the groin.

[Karhedron]

Squadrons used to be necessary due to limited Force Org slots. In 10th edition there are no limits on how many fast attack units you take so no real need for Squadrons. There is the rule of 3 but you can still take 3 regular Speeders, 3 Typhoons, 3 Tornadoes and  still fit in your Vengeance, Darkshroud and as many bikes as you want. I guess you can't run 9 Tornadoes anymore but I doubt many people spammed them to that level. 

[Blindhamster]

On 7/26/2023 at 3:08 PM, farfromsam said:

Would any one here be troubled playing against regular sized bikers on an outriders base?  For reference, Chaplain who I've used in 9th as a primaris chaplain.

Nobody should ever complain about this, its still a chaplain on a bike, looks great!

[ValourousHeart]

19 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Squadrons used to be necessary due to limited Force Org slots. In 10th edition there are no limits on how many fast attack units you take so no real need for Squadrons. There is the rule of 3 but you can still take 3 regular Speeders, 3 Typhoons, 3 Tornadoes and  still fit in your Vengeance, Darkshroud and as many bikes as you want. I guess you can't run 9 Tornadoes anymore but I doubt many people spammed them to that level. 

 

Respectfully disagree.  Spam is what tournament players did with Attack Bikes and Talonmasters.  Having a 2000 point Ravenwing list that was split evenly between bikes and speeders was not spam.  I wasn't looking to field 9 Tornadoes, just 6.  In 9th that would have only been 420 points, about 1/5th of a 2000 point list.

 

Piranha is the Tau equivalent of a Land Speeder, and it got to keep squadrons of 3 in 10th edition.  Same with Imperial Guard Sentinels, units of 2.  GSC Achilles Ridgerunner are also able to squadron.  All three of those are similar to the Land Speeder, how they are boxed, and how they are used in their respective armies.  So it isn't like GW is opposed to vehicle squadrons.

 

The Tornado is THE ICONIC Ravenwing unit, so much so that it is the template for Sableclaw and Talonmasters.  Let this sink in for a minute.  You are able to field the same number of Talonmasters as you are normal Tornadoes.

 

We could then comment on the exceedingly rare Darkshroud which getting 3 seems excessive compared to a max of 3 Tornadoes.  Same for the Vengeance Speeders, 3 seems excessive.  Are you starting to see my point or should I also bring up the Nephilims and Dark Talons?  How about RW Champions, does 3 Company Champions seem excessive when you can only field 3 of the most iconic Ravenwing unit ever?

 

The bike situation is even more asinine.  These numbers where somewhat justifiable in the past.  Notice how after Legends kick in RWBK become 44% of the Ravenwing.  Being able to field twice as many RWBK as Outriders makes no sense.  Aren't RWBK supposed to be the elite RW bikers, and not the run of the mill RW bikers?  Have we sacrificed all semblance of proportionality?

 

 

[Berzul]

I guess we should expect, with some trepidation, that GW will make something new for the Ravenwing? To balance out this decision. Perhaps they will release Ravenwing Outriders along side regular Outriders.

 

Or perhaps (and this is the most controversial, but also more likely scenario, I think) they will do to the Ravenwing what they did to the Deathwing.

 

What I mean is, just like the Deathwing is now officially not all TDA, but rather, whatever Tacticus or Gravis models you want to put in there (Bladeguard being the most notorious), perhaps the Ravenwing will now officially become not all Bikes, Speeders, and Aircraft. Rather, the Ravenwing will now include infantry. Most likely in the form of all the Phobos marines, as well as new Jump Pack Primaris Marines that might get released in this edition.

 

Therefore, from a certain point of view, Black Knights and other more special Speeders will remain rare. As the vacuum left in the 2nd company will be filled up with just a bunch of "light" infantry.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Yeah, they'll wreck 30ish years of cool flavour to sell toys in the blink of an eye.

[ValourousHeart]

2 hours ago, Berzul said:

I guess we should expect, with some trepidation, that GW will make something new for the Ravenwing? To balance out this decision. Perhaps they will release Ravenwing Outriders along side regular Outriders.

 

That could be interesting.  Are you thinking something along the lines of Reivers and Hounds of Morkai?  Where it is just a rebranding of the same unit, but a slight altering of the rules and unit composition?

 

2 hours ago, Berzul said:

What I mean is, just like the Deathwing is now officially not all TDA, but rather, whatever Tacticus or Gravis models you want to put in there (Bladeguard being the most notorious), perhaps the Ravenwing will now officially become not all Bikes, Speeders, and Aircraft. Rather, the Ravenwing will now include infantry. Most likely in the form of all the Phobos marines, as well as new Jump Pack Primaris Marines that might get released in this edition.

 

Therefore, from a certain point of view, Black Knights and other more special Speeders will remain rare. As the vacuum left in the 2nd company will be filled up with just a bunch of "light" infantry.

 

I guess I've been viewing that change to Deathwing from a different perspective.  TDA has always been described as very rare, with Dark Angels being the only chapter that had enough to deck out their full first company.  So it always seemed to be an eventuality that Dark Angels would be forced to begin fielding non-TDA units as more and more of their TDA became unrepairable.  This would only be exacerbated with the doubling of the chapter size with Cawl's reinforcements.

 

That was different from the role of the Ravenwing, which was required to run their target to ground like hunters or hounds.  Which meant that they needed to be faster than their prey.

 

Although from a game mechanic POV I can see where the addition of some infantry, possibly in impulsors or with alternative deployment options, could shore up the weaknesses Ravenwing has with standing still on objectives and giving up a turn dealing damage.

[Berzul]

4 minutes ago, ValourousHeart said:

TDA has always been described as very rare, with Dark Angels being the only chapter that had enough to deck out their full first company. 

 

As much as this may read as me being dismissive of Games Workshop due to personal disliking of them or their decisions, I will insist that it is not the case. What I say here I say honestly and sincerely.

 

I don't think Games Workshop is going to be making decisions, moving forward, based on such deep adherence to the lore.

 

I think that, overall, Games Workshop has made it known that the Deathwing is no longer TDA, not because of some in-universe reason based on the availability of the suits of armor, or something to that effect. Rather, because they were aware (either from the start, or quickly thereafter) that Dark Angels players would be hesitant to pick up units if they could not place them in their armies, in a clear and cut way. That is to say, the order of events here was, I believe, that they wanted to introduce the units and get people to buy them, but in the specific case of the Dark Angels they faced the problem of their unorthodox Chapter Structure, added to the fact that they had no new units in the pipeline to be specific to the Deathwing. So, they figured the easiest way to go about getting Dark Angels players to buy the models and not reduce their expenditure of money by 1/3rd (that is to say, by buying less things because they would not buy stuff for the Deathwing side of their collections) would be to just remove the in-setting rules that said that Deathwing was all Terminators.

 

I have no way of proving this, but from what my years of work as a consultant for game publishers have taught me, I feel confident in guessing that this was the case, or close to the case.

 

That being said, and in a similar fashion, I would venture the guess that Games Workshop will just take the easy route of adding new things to the Ravenwing. From what is already there, or whatever else that might be coming. Changing up the lore, so as to allow us players to expand our collections without the need for that many new chapter specific units that may replace what has already been removed.

 

Now, that being said, I think you on the right track here, and I'd agree with you:

 

15 minutes ago, ValourousHeart said:

from a game mechanic POV I can see where the addition of some infantry, possibly in impulsors or with alternative deployment options, could shore up the weaknesses Ravenwing has with standing still on objectives and giving up a turn dealing damage

 

Adding infantry in transports feels like a quick and easy solution to expand the options of the Ravenwing from what is already in the codex, without sacrificing speed as a core thematic element of the army, even if it takes a but away from other thematic elements of it.

 

As for this:

 

16 minutes ago, ValourousHeart said:

That could be interesting.  Are you thinking something along the lines of Reivers and Hounds of Morkai?  Where it is just a rebranding of the same unit, but a slight altering of the rules and unit composition?

 

God, I hope not... I really hope they will make something truly the chapter's own. But, it might just be that they will make a special datacard for an Outrider squad, similar to how they went about with the Hounds of Morkai, and call it a day. Wouldn't put it past GW to go with something like that. 

[FarFromSam]

Phobos armor is dumb.  It has all of the benefits of regular armor,  no draw backs, but gives the benefit of infiltrate/denial/scout/ stealth etc.  Why isn't every marine in phobos?  (Dismissing how uninspired/bland/soulless the anesthetics.)

 

Back on topic, I hope they don't do that to RW RG, WS fill those roles we have a unique set up all our own.

 

 

[Karhedron]

I don't see the point of adding infantry in transports to the Ravenwing, you might just as well run them as Greenwing. I can see Inceptors potentially as they have the speed to keep up with the bikes.

 

At the end of 7th edition, Ravenwing had the following units IIRC.

1. Sammael
2. Talonmaster (used to be Sammael in a speeder)
3. Bikes
4. Attack bikes
5. Landspeeders (3 flavours)
6. Vengeance
7. Dark Shroud
8. Nephilim
9. Dark Talon
10. Dark Knights
11. Command Squad

Now that Landspeeders, Bikes and Attack bikes are off to Legends, we look to have the following at the start of 10th.

1. Sammael
2. Talonmaster (used to be Sammael in a speeder)
3. Outriders
4. Invader ATVs
5. Stormspeeders (3 flavours)
6. Vengeance
7. Dark Shroud
8. Nephilim
9. Dark Talon
10. Dark Knights
11. Command Squad

There may be a few I have forgotten but overall it looks like Ravenwing will have a similar number of options to what they had before Primaris dropped.

[Helias_Tancred]

Id prefer to either see a separate Ravenwing Outrider and Black Knight model kit, or we get some serious upgrade sprues? I do not want my Ravenwing bikes to be just black outriders. They need to BE Ravenwing. I'd also expect hooded/robed figures in them, or the bits to make those on our bikes? I also will use Ravenwing Black Knight beakies if they don't provide them in the new kits or upgrade sprues? I'm just glad that I'm sitting on a heap of Dark Angel bits, several RW upgrade sprues,  several sprues of company vet bits, etc. 

 

 

[Orion]

13 minutes ago, Eilio Tiberius said:

Id prefer to either see a separate Ravenwing Outrider and Black Knight model kit, or we get some serious upgrade sprues? I do not want my Ravenwing bikes to be just black outriders. They need to BE Ravenwing. I'd also expect hooded/robed figures in them, or the bits to make those on our bikes? I also will use Ravenwing Black Knight beakies if they don't provide them in the new kits or upgrade sprues? I'm just glad that I'm sitting on a heap of Dark Angel bits, several RW upgrade sprues,  several sprues of company vet bits, etc. 

 

 

Here's your brand new Ravenwing outriders! Tada!

 

[Tacitus]

Where on War-Com is that?  I even tried searching for for Ravenwing and couldn't find that. 

[Orion]

37 minutes ago, Tacitus said:

Where on War-Com is that?  I even tried searching for for Ravenwing and couldn't find that. 

Just google image searched Ravenwing Warhammer Community and it came up

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/01/27/field-an-all-bike-army-with-new-rules-and-stratagems-for-the-ravenwing/

[ValourousHeart]

7 hours ago, Berzul said:

I don't think Games Workshop is going to be making decisions, moving forward, based on such deep adherence to the lore.

 

I 100% agree.  And I think that buy in happened because Blade Guard were great looking models, so the sale was easy.  I'm saying this a someone who resisted Deathwing for years.  But when they released Blade Guard, I was hooked, and now have the humble beginnings of a Deathwing collection.

 

8 hours ago, Berzul said:

That being said, and in a similar fashion, I would venture the guess that Games Workshop will just take the easy route of adding new things to the Ravenwing.

 

It used to be clear to me that Ravenwing is a gun line army.  But that doesn't appear to be the case any more.  We seem to be in the middle of an identity crisis.

 

There used to be a nice balance between Tactical Marines, Assault Marines and Bike Squads.  5 Assault Marines had the same number of attacks as 10 Tactical Marines, but half the shots.  5 Bikes had the same number of shots as 10 Tactical Marines, but half the attacks.  The off stat has changed over the years, but the good stat generally stayed with that 2:1 ratio.

 

Now 5 Assault Marines and 10 Tactical Marines share a similar balance.  20 attacks for both but 5 and 20 shots.

 

5 Bikes on the other hand get half the shots and half the attacks as 10 Tactical Marines.  To increase that to the 15 attacks with chainswords, we have to give up our pistols, so we were still behind because we didn't catch up and Tactical Marines still kept their pistols, so had the chance to push further ahead.

 

Outriders get both pistols and chainswords.  So that gives 5 Outriders half the shots of 10 Tactical Marine and equal the attacks.  But we lack any of the upgrades that either Tactical or Assault Marines get.  So again under perform compared to those upgrades.

 

Now without Speeders we've lost our last trump card in the shooting category.

 

It will be interesting on how GW addresses this identity crisis.

 

7 hours ago, Karhedron said:

I can see Inceptors potentially as they have the speed to keep up with the bikes.

 

Please no... they are so ugly.

 

7 hours ago, Karhedron said:

There may be a few I have forgotten but overall it looks like Ravenwing will have a similar number of options to what they had before Primaris dropped.

 

My comparison was not specifically about the diversity of units we could take, but relative number of each we could field.  The rule of three I believe dropped toward the end of 7th.  So for most of the edition Ravenwing could field more than 3 copies of a unit.

 

The 7th edition codex also had Formations like the Ravenwing Strike Force, Ravenwing Attack Squadron and Ravenwing Support Squadron.  This was also the time of the Demi Company.  The game rules didn't restrict the number of formations, but most events did... almost always to 2 formation forcing the environment to exclusively play demi companies.  Because they never considered that while demi companies could easily fill a 2000 point list with just 2 formations, other formations like the Ravenwing Attack Squadron were exceptionally tiny... with a max of 670 points or could be as small as 95 points.  They should have done a more nuanced reading of it, and ranked the formations based on average size and limited the number of copies of each formation by that.

 

The hard cap of 2 really screwed over certain codices.  But it was clear that TO set up their events for their friends' to win.

[Gillyfish]

Hmm, I guess what this means for me is that I probably can't play 40k anymore, at least not in the pick up games I used to play. I don't own any Primaris. Mainly because I have a ton of unassembled normal marines and tanks and had kids in the intervening period (also Titanicus came out so my attention was diverted...)!

 

Am I right in this assumption though, does it effectively mean that someone with a purely oldster marine force can't play anymore, or is that still possible?

[Cpt. Bannockburn]

3 hours ago, Gillyfish said:

Am I right in this assumption though, does it effectively mean that someone with a purely oldster marine force can't play anymore, or is that still possible?

 

Not really, there is absolutely no requirement for opponent's consent in playing Legends units outside of organized tournaments, and GW explicitly encourages using these units. 

That said, some playgroups may treat is as such, so it should just be checked. OTOH, I would certainly not want to play against someone who has a problem with that.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Cpt. Bannockburn

[Karhedron]

15 hours ago, Gillyfish said:

Am I right in this assumption though, does it effectively mean that someone with a purely oldster marine force can't play anymore, or is that still possible?

 

No, running an army of old marines is still perfectly possible. In  the specific case of Ravenwing, there are several things to bear in mind.

1. Bike units haven't gone to Legends yet. At least until the Codex drops, they are fully legal.
2. Only the classic Bike Squad is going to Legends as it is a very old model (2nd edition IIRC). The Ravenwing bike kits are much newer and are still for sale so Ravenwin Bikes, Black Knights and Ravenwing Command squads may actually be staying (this is speculation on my part).
3. GW have officially stated that if you do not want to run Legends, you can simply treat the old models as their new Primaris equivalents. So Bikers can be fielded using the Outrider rules and Attack Bikes can count as Invader ATVs. Landspeeders are a bit harder as the loadouts do not map clearly onto the new Stormspeeders.

So there are still ways to run Ravenwing perfectly well, even if you don't own a single Primaris model.

[Gillyfish]

Bannockburn, Karhedron, thank you for the replies, that's very helpful. So it sounds like games may still be possible, maybe with some level of 'counts as' or just as current list/Legends combos as required. I mean some of my models are truly ancient; half of my assault squad are lead, as is one of my dreads and I could try including some RT era beakies and a furioso style RT era dread if I really wanted to, but that might just alarm my opponents.  

[Karhedron]

Yes, using "counts as" might once have been slightly frowned upon but GW has now officially endorsed it which takes some of the sting out of moving these guys to Legends.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/07/24/space-marine-range-update-bikes-land-speeders-and-more-are-soon-zooming-off-into-the-sunset/