Thursday 25 February 2016

Raven Guard List

I think the list worked really well. Being able to get the alpha strike off reliably, whether I go first or second, and not needing to worry about getting seized on, is huge. All I sacrifice for it was 2 land speeder storms, and 2 Multi Meltas. Swapping out the Assault Squad for a bike squad is an improvement. Having a fast OB Sec unit is great, and with the Techmarine and the Chaplin, it’s no slouch in combat against anything short of a dedicated combat unit. And making the Techmarine the Warlord, give me a re-eoll on the Strategic Objective table, which is the only one worth taking with this list IMO.


It’s the tactical flexibility of the list that I enjoy. It has an answer to most things, and you can play it very differently, depending on what your facing. If your opponent is a shooty army, with nothing too horrible in close combat (and importantly) no interceptor, you can drop down and murder stuff. On the other hand, if your opponent has a death star, or lots of interceptor, I can hold my Vanguard off the table, keep up on Malestrom using the rest of the army, and bring the Vanguard in on turn 4 to do what needs to be done. 

It has 3 big weaknesses however.

·         Flyers, particularly Tyranid FMC spam. I can get away with 2 or 3 flyers, but more than that (Tyranid FMC spam), or Helldrakes ruin my day.

·         Intercepting Tau. Sadly, I think we will see more and more Riptide wings and Stormsurges over the coming months as people buy and build their Tau!!. The plan (deep strike into ruins for a 2+ cover safe) is risky, and success was mixed. I think I need a better plan.

·         Attrition on the Vanguard. At the end of the day they are still only T4, 1 wound models with a 3+ save. The biggest problem is attrition through unlikely stuff – dangerous terrain, and worse, overwatch.

There is nothing I can do about the weakness to flyers, without changing the army completely. I think I just need to accept that more than 3 Hive Tyrants is going to be a really tough game.

As for intercepting Tau, the only thing I can think of is to give them something else to worry about. Now that I’m taking a CAD for the drop pods, I could take another pod and swap the Dev squad in the battle company for Grav Centurions. Bringing them down, along with the Vanguard, give the Tau player something else to worry about, taking some of the heat off my Vanguard. Can I find enough points however?

As for attrition, the only thing I can think of that would work for dangerous terrain tests is rolling on Strategic for move through cover and stealth in ruins. Overwatch is trickier – what I really need are the points to get 3 more naked Vanguard in one of the squads. That would mean I would have 10 men, and could combat squad to have one 5 man squad of naked vanguard to eat over watch. Again however, I don’t think I’ll be able to find the points without compromising the rest of the list.

More time with Battle Scribe required.

EYIG

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