Importance of Turn 1 AV?

So how important is it that we have a means of taking out amour on our first turn? I ask as I am trying to ascertain the merits of running a DL Ravager over say Venom+HWG Wyches or a Voidraven Bomber.

It sort of depends on your army - but it's important if the enemy has either a vehicle that is good at hurting your army, or a vehicle that is important as far as moving vital parts of his army. Taking out those vehicles quickly manages to hurt him severely.

Take, for instance, your Venom/HWG army - if I go first and have long range lances and shoot apart the Venoms that have the Wyches in them I am dramatically affecting your army's ability to hurt my mech and can now fly around shooting at you while your army probably will have limited long range shooting. That has disabled your army, and enabled my army a strong advantage.

There are DE armies that do not need it, and the meta is starting to shift (oddly) to a point where there may be less vehicle intensive builds to where this will matter less - but certainly the ability to shoot and hurt the opponent on Turn 1 will always be of some strong value to an army as fragile as ours...it's just we may need to start having more Venoms and Dissies and less Lances.

My thoughts,
Thor.

It depends on what your army is currently made up of and of course your own playstyle.

Ravagers hit T1.
HWG Wyches (generally) need a full turn to move into position.
Voidraven has to abide by the Reserves rule.


Ravagers with Lances are a beast against MC's too. 2's To Wound on anything Str6 or less, ignoring armour.

I personally am about to playtest 2 units of Wyches, 2 Ravagers (both with DL's) and a Voidraven. My local meta calls for me to bring these units and use them accordingly, but they also work with the rest of my army.

They are by no means "standout hero's" but play vital roles in my army.

But to answer your title question, its pretty damn important to be able to take out AV on T1, esp if thats one of the most dangerous targets to your army.

I still rely on my lances to do my heavy AA part. I just can't bring myself to field wyches to hunt down Tanks. They should go against CC Units and kill or stall them. And the real advantage of lances as your main AA is that you can shoot at T1.

You need to hit them hard, at T1 if possible, and then never let him recover.

I would take a DL Ravanger and a Jetfighter(or a Bomber) for a good start. Also DL on raiders.
Vipers are really good at what they do, but there are other ways to do it, that grant you a pain token.

I'm all for the tokens..

I play an army without any ravagers and a minimal amount of dark lances (the stock ones on my raiders) and it works fine, it is just really important that you make sure to use terrain and leave as much of your army away from where they can get shot at i.e. behind BLOS terrain so that you can keep casualties on first turn to a minimum, or you can go the opposite route and provide so much target saturation your opponent will think the only other army you've ever touched is orks. Another thing that is worth experimenting with a little bit to keep units safe that first turn when your opponent might have more shooting than you is the WWP, it can turn a small BLOS terrain that normally would keep one guy hidden or only a little bit of a ravager into a pretty decent hiding spot since it becomes impassable terrain, and it lets you bring in some foot units far up the field, be wary of the no assaults coming out of a WWP though as it can be dangerous. More often than not though you can get by without anything to kill AV first turn reliably, just make sure you have stuff that will definately take out AV that second turn and you have ways of dealing with that first turn damage you will definitely sustain whether by having an overwhelming number of targets or a disparate number so it is near impossible to get any of them

I currently run 2 flyers, so the only long range AT that's around on turn 1 is a Ravager. I find having one very useful, as my experience with Blasterborn hasn't bee that good in this edition (they tend to get blown up really quickly) and the flyers may not arrive when I need them or be able to fire every turn due to the movement restrictions. Tho after encountering a bunch of Marine horde armies I start feeling like I need some disintegrators as well. Perhaps I'll switch my Razorwing's lances for dissies (with dissies and missiles it is a serious threat to any hordes), tho that would hurt its ability against other fliers. Or I'll just try if a good assault unit like Beastmasters can deal with MEQ effectively.