Heavy Support: Your preferances and tactics.

Hey, I'm a relatively new player have yet to foray into the foreboding world of heavy support choices. So I was wondering what peoples favorite choices were and how you would use them. I understand that there is a similar post to this. (heavy support the gold standard) But I feel this focuses the pros and cons of Razorwings vs. Ravagers and doesn't cover all of the choices. So if you could help me out on this I would be extremely grateful.

Razorwings are best employed as a one- or two-shot wonder against massed infantry; first chance you get, unload a couple Monoscythes on horde units like Ork mobs, Guard blobs and the smaller Tyranid gribblies and watch the limbs fly. Although they come with a pair of lances as standard, you get more synergy with its other weapons if you swap them out for disintegrators.

Ravagers, however, are among our best dark lance platforms, and are the cheapest way to get multiple darklights with some mobility. I prefer to leave the anti-infantry to my Venoms and Wyches, and have my three Ravagers slag armor from a distance while my Blasterborn close in for more armor kills.

Ravager
Ravager
Ravager

Add flickerfields and/or night shields to taste.

As much as I'd like to add in a razorwing (four S6 large blasts in one turn!) I just can't justify spending my HS slots on anti-infantry. Give the current mech metagame there aren't ever enough infantry models on the board to make monoscythes worthwhile. The other HS choices are okay I guess, but they don't compete with ravagers or razorwings. Talos and Chronos are perhaps useful in a WWP army that allows them to reach assault but not viable outside of one, voidravens are either undergunned without missiles or too expensive with them.

Couldn't you have a normal raider spam army with a wwp just for the talos? or does that just not work? I know having one just for one unit wouldn't be worth the points but if you had two or three would it be viable? Also do you have to fire all the missiles on a VR or RW at the same target or can you fire them at several different units?

In a general sense I would rate the Heavy slots thusly

Competitive
Ravager
Razorwing
Talos
Voidraven
Cronos
Not so Competitive

That said, none of them are "bad" per se (our Heavy Slot is actually one of our better slots, with lots of very cool choices. The thing is - there's a lot of question when it comes to favorite and how one would use them. The short answer is - it depends on what I have the rest of the list doing. Here's a couple of brief thoughts.

Ravager - all around affordable and solid. Is a good option to kill infantry or mech and does so at a cheaper price than either of the specialized fliers while gaining better advantage at using cover. There are very few DE builds that couldn't work with 3x Ravagers.

Razorwing - specialized infantry death via air delivery. Nothing quite says "scoop models off table na0w pl0x!" like 4 Str 6 templates, plus lances or dissies, plus some splinter fire on top of it. This is the only vehicle in our codex where I actually sometimes forget to fire stuff - because this baby is packing! It suffers due to limited value as a tank hunter (it's not one) and also being AV 10 and flying in the sky screaming 'shoot me first' at the top of its lungs. Also - often misplayed as people think it equates to swapping out with a 3 Lance Ravager for some insane reason. Finally, personal note, AV 10 feels *way* more survivable when it's closed top - probably only constant DE players really know what I'm talking about here.

Voidraven - When that Landraider needs to be a smoking ruin, the Voidraven is your man. It can play the missile anti-infantry game, but at a cost that is just not worth it for what you're getting. It is, however, the most reliable loadout we have for actually generating wreck results with regularity (The Ravager is more capable at preventing return fire - but the VR just ends the target). It suffers due to niche, the easy targeting problem, and the fact that, pointwise, it is a reasonable debate if it's worth upgrading from the Ravager for.

Talos - For its cost, I don't think there is anything in our dex which can match the damage output of the Talos in assault. It is a bit persnickity, due to no invulnerable save, but a T7 w. FNP Monstrous Creature tends to even make mighty Space Marines knock their knees together a bit. His drawback is his (relatively) limited speed and his competition for the anti-mech roles usually asked for from the Heavy slot. Is often seen in WWP lists.

Cronos - Magical Pain Token generator. There's almost assuredly some sort of build out there that breaks this guy. I personally tend to believe it's a WWP list featuring Talos, Beastmasters disregard, GW nerfed this one!, and Wyches/Bloodbrides out of a WWP. Other than that he's really just an anti-infantry weaker version of the Talos that can still perform some good work on vehicles that have 10 or 11 rear armor (I'd avoid any non-Ork Walkers though).

Rainbow Dash wrote:

there aren't ever enough infantry models on the board to make monoscythes worthwhile.

*cough*Lootas and Long Fangs*cough*
Especially Lootas.
Hated, hated Lootas. You can handle Fangs pretty well via Venom spam - but you'd need a lot of Venoms to handle the three blobs o' 15 Lootas in some foot Ork lists.

Completely agree with Thor, but would also add that a Razorwing's Dissies and missiles can work against light armour if need be. Not the best allocation of these resources, they are simply excellent in anti-infantry, but not horrible either.

Thor665 wrote:

*cough*Lootas and Long Fangs*cough*
Especially Lootas.
Hated, hated Lootas. You can handle Fangs pretty well via Venom spam - but you'd need a lot of Venoms to handle the three blobs o' 15 Lootas in some foot Ork lists.

Ah, good point on the Lootas. I suffer from an unusually MEQ-heavy environment, and have played against Orks... once, I think. With my Tyranids. So I don't really have much experience with them.

Lootas are evil, sheer volume of shots means they turn DE into burning swiss cheese. The more I use Razorwings the more I like them, my dark lances suck anyway so loosing a single one from a rav offers no discernable AT difference in practice.

I greatly appreciate the flexibility of the wing, and the pie plate storm is golden. I only come unstucksometimes because DE AT is weak , so vs meched opponents there is no guarantee The razor will have anthing worthwhile to pie when it arrives/before it dies.

I would argue that the fault lies not with the Razor, there arw frequently times when my armys inability to open tanks has caused other units to fail.

I use 2 Ravagers and a Razorwing. True, the Razorwing has one less lance than Ravagers, but the large blasts are very useful at wiping out large infantry units or when you absolutely, positively must have the unit of long fangs/lootas/whatever dead. I also like having some versitility in the list instead of just all lances, all the time. It still has two lances so it can also do anti-tank after havign expended it's missiles (I've found most people are a lot less likely to shoot it after it's blown it's load, even though it can still be pretty dangerous).

Either 3 Ravs or 2 Ravs + Razorwing (I don't play WWP)

You've never tried a 3 Razorwing build? You should try a 'counts as' sometime and give it a whirl. It's a lot of fun, and very competitive. Just remember to adjust the rest of your army more towards anti-mech when you do.

Razorwings and reavers, reserve the wings, bomb up the table with three units of melta reavers, open some tins so when the razors turn up they can simply 'nuke it from orbit"

Sorrowshard wrote:

Razorwings and reavers, reserve the wings, bomb up the table with three units of melta reavers, open some tins so when the razors turn up they can simply 'nuke it from orbit"

I`ve did it & I LOVE IT....my opponents on the other hand have diffrent feelings.

If they release the voidraven I will probably have to but it... I personally feels it could do some crazy destruction, even though it is perhaps not the best of choices. In fact, same with the Cronos.

I have in any case had some very good success with my Dissie Razorwing. It seriously obliterates any infantry it targets, and as pointed out it can be used with smaller successes on vehicles too.

I am giong to run two Razorwings and a Voidraven in my army lists. I really love the model for the Razorwing and the kit is cheaper than a Ravager so I am cool with that. I know Ravagers are more optimal but really does it matter. Voidravens sound and look cool ruleswise so I am going to try and convert one from a Razorwing and play with it.

Do something because you think its cool not because its like 10% better.

Just make sure the rest of your army can pick up the slack on killing vehicles.

@Thor I know I plan on running mostly raiders so I will have Dark Lances from there and some Reavers with Heat Lances so I think I can mech fine but that is what playtesting is for.

I run 2 Ravagers with DL, and find them pretty good, I can't run three because of our comp rules. That said I'm going to be trying a 3rd in a 1750 list (different comp) but with dissies to upset all of those marine players, I'll see whether that gives btter flexibility over 3 DL ones.

I used a Razorwing with great success in my 2000 pt list last week, but it did better than you'd think because it didn't get everything shooting at it as soon as it appeared. Like Gobsmakked I run with dissies, also I don't upgrade the missiles, the normal ones seem to work well enough.

Again I believe it depends on what type of list you are running.
For talos and cronos I feel you would need to be running WWP or they will be too easily avoided and never make combat. In a list with these choices then you need to make sure your AT is coming from other sources, reavers, scourges, raiders.
The ravager and or razorwing choices are more flexible in the list you can run with them. They do not need the WWP to be effective, their rnge enables them to engage the enemy from distance quite easily.

I run either 3 DL ravagers or 2 Ravagers and a razorwing.
I also believe in the mantra above of never being able to have to many darklight weapons.

Thor665 wrote:

You've never tried a 3 Razorwing build? You should try a 'counts as' sometime and give it a whirl. It's a lot of fun, and very competitive. Just remember to adjust the rest of your army more towards anti-mech when you do.

I might. But I still like me a couple of Venoms, so I haven't really splurged on Razorwings...