Dark Angels Codex Review- Ravenwing

Having picked up the new 7th edition Dark Angels codex at the weekend (love that new codex smell!), I thought I would review one of my favourite armies from the book, the Ravenwing.

I have always loved the Ravenwing, but they suffered a little bit in the 6th edition codex, being outclassed by White Scars chapter tactics in the Space Marine Codex. With the new 7th edition Codices out, the Ravenwing have improved significantly, maybe even being better than their White Scars brethren in some respects. This review will go through the units available to the second company and how they have changed with the new codex.

SPECIAL RULES 

Ravenwing:

One big change to the Ravenwing in the new codex is that they now have their own special rule (which causes some problems with the formations, as we will see later). This allows any models bearing this rule to re-roll any failed Jink saves. This is quite a powerful ability, as it means that a Ravenwing biker will pass a Jink save 75% of the time, on average (compared to 67% for the next best thing, White Scars biker).

This ability even applies to the Ravenwing vehicles that can be fielded, giving them a bit more protection from enemy fire, albeit at the expense of their firepower. Not even White Scars skimmers gain this benefit, as the skilled rider bonus applies only to bike squads.

 

All Ravenwing bikers (Command squads, Black Knights and regular bikers) get Scout and Hit and Run as standard. Scout is a great special rule, allowing your battle line to rapidly redeploy to close with the enemy quickly or change your deployment, and will even allow units to Outflank; very handy for getting to the weaker side or rear armour of enemy vehicles without having to cross the board. Hit and Run is great for getting your bikers out of unfavourable combats or allowing them to charge in once again (after firing at the enemy unit of course). They also come with Teleport Homers as standard; great for your deep striking Deathwing support units, but not so useful in a pure Ravenwing army.

Hobby Sunday

I took a little break from Arkham Knight to do a little hobby work today.

 

The first task was to rebase some of my Ravenwing bikers. The bikes originally had square cavalry bases, but I swapped them out for the bike bases and flocked them to match my over Ravenwing bikers.

Battle of the Bikers- White Scars vs Ravenwing

Its time to pit the premier bike units of the 40k universe against one another. Its bike vs bike, (super)mano a mano.

With the recent release of both the Space Marine and Dark Angels codices, I thought I would take the opportunity to compare the two most pre-eminent bike-mounted units amongst the Adeptus Astartes; the Ravenwing and White Scars bikers. I will compare both units based on some random criteria I just made up in my head right now.

The price of play

Inspired by the frugal gaming posts on Warhammer 39999, I decided at the start of the year to record my spending on wargames.
 

I primarily wanted to do this in order to determine how much I was spending on my (sometimes expensive) hobby. You can see the page above for Hobby costs 2015, where I will be keeping track of how much I am spending each month on things to do with wargaming.

 

 

Battle Report 10- 1850 pts White Scars vs Space Marines

Today, I have a written battle report for my 1850 pts White Scars vs Space Marines from a blog wars tournament practice game.

I arrived for blog wars on the Friday night and met up with Luke, Peter and Daniel for some practice games. I ended up playing Luke's Howling Griffins Space Marines using the third blog wars mission (a modification of the maelstrom deck). As it was, on the day of the tournament, I once again ended up playing Luke in the third mission yet again! (Blog wars battle report 3). This practice game helped to adapt my tactics for the actual tournament, as you will probably see in the differences between the two battle reports.

 

As a reminder, Luke's army consisted of:

Inquisitor Coteaz (C)

Level 1 Librarian (L)

3 Grav Centurions (Cent)

Thunderfire cannon and techmarine (TC)

4 Bikers- 2 grav guns (B)

5 Scouts- Sniper rifles and camo cloaks (S)

5 Devastators- Lascannon and 3 Missile Launchers (D1 and D2)

2 units of 5 Sternguard- Combi-meltas (S1 and S2) in drop pod (DP1)

2 units of 5 Sternguard- Combi-meltas  (S3 and S4) in drop pod (DP3)

2 units of 5 tactical marines- one with meltagun  (T3 and T3) in drop pod (DP2)

2 units of 5 tactical marines- one with missile laucher (T1 and T2)

His warlord trait gave him infiltrate three units. His psychic powers were:
Coteaz- Misfortune, Foreboding and Prescience
Librarian- Shrouding, Psychic Shriek.

Dark Angels Army- Deathwing

I now come to the final part of my Dark Angels army, having previously shown the Green wing and Ravenwing, now comes the turn of the elite 1st company, the Deathwing.

The small, elite force.

 

My Deathwing were inspired by the Captain that featured in the 3rd edition codex that featured a white armour colour scheme instead of the traditional bone colour that the Deathwing wear.

Dark Angels Terminator Captain.

 

 

Dark Angels Army- Ravenwing

With the new codex about to drop, I thought I would spend a few posts showing my very own Dark Angels army. Yesterday, I covered the so-called Dark Angels Green Wing, today, it is the turn of the enigmatic second company of the Dark Angels; the Ravenwing.

Regulators.....Mount up!

 

 My Ravenwing army came about by pure chance. For years, I had only a single squad of bikers and a landspeeder as the representatives of the Chapter's fast attack force. The bike squad was purchased when the first Ravenwing upgrade sprue was released, but they had not been added to due to the expense of fielding an all bike army.

Plenty of Plasma.

Ravenwing bikers.

Bike-mounted glory.

Anti-tank unit.

Dark Angels army- Green wing

With the new codex about to drop (already pre-ordered mine!), I thought it might be time to show my own Dark Angels army. Today I will be focusing on the main body of the Dark Angels army, commonly referred to as the Green Wing.

The army arrayed for battle.

Dark Angels were my very first Warhammer 40k army. It all began with the contents of the 3rd edition boxed set, a tactical squad and a landspeeder. I chose the Dark Angels as I had seen the army in White Dwarf several times and liked the colour scheme, as well as the different coloured armours for the Ravenwing and Deathwing. My collection has been expanding with each new edition of the game and I was happy to see the original chapter get some love from the Dark Vengeance boxed set. There is a mix of classic models (check out the old school Rhino and Whirlwind) and some newer ones as the collection has expanded.

 

Proper Battlefield Maintenance- annual terrain repairs

Battle has ended for another year, the combatants shake hands and begin their slow journey back to distant lands.

The ruins are more ruined.
The trees stand bare, like autumn has hit them in one fell swoop.
Hills lie barren and exposed, those madmen ranting about not earth underneath, but instead a white, fluffy packing material have been quickly silenced by the Inquisition.
This year’s conflict has hit the battlefield hard, now begins the time to renew.

Hi everyone, today I am here to talk to you about a yearly ritual that I have been observing for some time now. One of the strange things about attending a university gaming club (other than the fact I haven’t been a student for a long, long time) is that the club breaks for the summer. This gives me time to take stock of existing projects on the go or what I want to achieve in the next year. It also means that I get to do some spot repairs on the terrain in the club, to prepare them for the coming year of gaming.

My terrain philosophy is to produce something that is functional and looks decent on the tabletop. I don’t want to spend hours upon hours constructing intricate ruins, accounting for every brick that is out of place, only to have a terrain piece that is more hazardous to my own troops than the enemy (the dreaded wobbly model syndrome). I want terrain that is nice but that my models stand on, after all, they are the ones that get the most time and effort spent on them. It would be great (if a little unfair) to have terrain that swallowed up my units making me and the enemy forget about them until that crucial turn, but that is not what terrain is for. It takes long enough to pack up armies after a game without having to worry about scouring the ruins for an errant Ork that has been left behind (like a foul smelling and belligerent Macaulay Culkin).

White Scars- New Codex Changes Review

I finally got my new Space Marine codex in hand last night and spent an hour or so admiring some of the art and miniatures and having a look over the new rules. I'm not going to review the entire codex, there will be plenty of people doing that in the coming weeks, but thought that I would take a look at some of the changes that will most directly affect my most recent army; the White Scars.

 

1. Mounted Assault

The new rules for mounted assault means that any bike-mounted independent character can turn your bike squads into troops. This is a change from the last codex where only a bike-mounted Chapter Master or Khan on Moondakken had the ability to do this. Want a White Scars army led by a bike-mounted Librarian bolstering his forces with arcane powers or a bike-mounted Chaplain inspiring his troops to victory (I just like the aesthetic of a Chaplain on a white bike, something about the contrast of black and white), well now you can! This now gives you access to a cheaper HQ unit if you want to cram even more bikes into your army.

The other big change is that the bike squads no longer have to be a minimum of 5, but can be the standard minimum three instead. Whether this will lead to three-man grav bombs (2 grav guns and combi-grav) running around the board is anyone's guess. I will probably stick to 5-man squads (or even extend them) as even though bikes are still fairly durable, you want a couple of extra bodies available for casualties before you start to lose your special weapons.

 

The ability of HQ units to make bikes troops has given me hope for the Ravenwing and Deathwing in the new Dark Angels codex, as many codices were losing the ability to change the unit type of certain squads (I'm looking at you, Orks!)