The new DA

Hello everyone,

With the release of a new book comes the inevitable question of how your particular build of DE fares against the possible builds in this list.

I don't know if all of you have read it but I think, of the DA armies that will be fielded, you'll see:

Azrael, Belial or Sammael lists. I don't think you'll see too many straight up DA because each of these characters give strong buffs to the army.

From my read of the book, I have almost no fear of a Ravenwing army (Sammael heavy list) vs. Venoms it's a rough ride for the Ravenwing.

Incendiary whirlwinds are going to be annoying. If I were DA I would definitely take one because of how low it costs and in the world of Aegis everywhere is quite useful.

I might have a pretty tough time with a Belial list because there is just a lot of 2+ deepstriking in my face. With the obvious tactic of: run like hell and then shoot them up. It will still be messy but maybe 50-50 depending on the rest of the build.

Azrael is the one that perhaps scares me the most. While he costs the most, he also confers the greatest number of benefits. Depending on what my opponent takes, my only hope is to drop some templates on his squad.

Also be prepared for at least 1 maybe 2 of those dark shrouds, behind an Aegis line and buffing preds, these guys are going to be tough to take down.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours and have any of you had a chance to peruse the new book?

Haven't checked it out yet but 2 gaming friends had bought the book at the shop last weekend and 1 had some of the new model kits as well (advanced ordered). One comment was "they could've done more with this"......like GW dropped the ball again. But that same gamer likes lots of cheese, so figure it must actually be balanced...LOL

actually I think its true they probably could have done more. I mean the flyers look like they are cool but I do not like the cost they put on almost all the new kits: Knights, Land speeder Vengence, Talon etc.

I think for all the good that GW does there are inevitably stinkers in the codex. I'm looking right at you Mandrakes/Flayed Ones/Warp Talons/Pyrovores....

Yep, GW's pricing is a completely different issue... and seriously they are just nuts. Good though that most people will build their DA out of the ultra cheapo starter set DV Maybe one of the other kits for bits but that's about it.

Anyway onto what I think will give us the most headache:

Belial lists appear strong. No scatter T5 Terminators who can go "I'mma firin' mah LAZOR in CC" once a game and all the other 2+ which is twin linked in the turn they arrive could be a pain, but still they're just terminators and probably no more than 25... less if they go with LRs... some things will die but the rest of the game they'll just try to chase you.

I'm worried more about Ravenwing lists. The new derp-speeder confers shrouded to all units within 6" ... Ravenwing bikes get jink and the more Elite ones even get skilled rider. That means 2+ cover save... the bikes are a lot faster and cheaper than terminators... oh and do I have to tell you how nuts bikesquads with a twin linked plasmagun on each model is?
I'd watch out for these and take out the speeders asap... after that, yey, poison will deal with them.

After all they're just gimmicky marines, I guess we'll do alright.

Sounds like we might have to change the name of the game soon, from 40K to "Roll the Fewest Ones". Each new project gets more broken by the book.

Sathonyx wrote:

Sounds like we might have to change the name of the game soon, from 40K to "Roll the Fewest Ones". Each new project gets more broken by the book.

Don't worry our whole army can see in the dark.

Actually, the Land Speeder Shroud confers stealth, not shrouded, so the Black Knights will have a 3+ save and regular Ravenwing a 4+ one (upgraded to 2+/3+ if they turboboost). Against us it makes little difference since you'll generally want tos hoot them with splinters instead of lances anyway. The speeder itself may or may not have both stealth and shrouded (the bestiary entry lists it as having just shrouded and specifically emntiones the field it generates does not affect the speeder itself, but the armylist page has it listed with both stealth and shrouded), dpending on which part of the codex has an error. The book actually has a lot of pretty bad errors; among other things, the Black Knights weapons may or may not have rapid fire depending on where you look, and the Ravenwing Command Squad can take relic banners, which are not in the book (the banners are called sacred standards, and are listed as such on every other type of Command Squad).

Mhh, if it's just stealth then we don't care really. I don't think the book is downright broken by the way. It looks like they included a lot fun and characterful stuff in spite of some obvious... let's call it errors *cough* derp speeder *cough* and typos.

For us not too hard to deal with. They're few in numbers but powerful, I think they'd be quite fun to play both as and against... and I'm saying this about muhreenz... something must be wrong with me

I am waiting for my mandrakes to arrive off ebay. Infiltrate with a haemonculus,open a wwp on turn one. Bring the Duke and keep it safe behind a wall. Raiders pop out and rapid fire, grots and beasts charge etc. Might be nasty.

I played some games with the new DA over the weekend. Bikes are scary, but venoms out range them. True born cannons in venoms with night shields should be able to skirt and pepper 20 Splinter shots each. That'll kill a few

Raoiley wrote:

I am waiting for my mandrakes to arrive off ebay. Infiltrate with a haemonculus,open a wwp on turn one. Bring the Duke and keep it safe behind a wall. Raiders pop out and rapid fire, grots and beasts charge etc. Might be nasty.

Can't do that... Haemie can't infiltrate with them.

The five things that appeal most to this one after reading the new codex a little

1 - Poisoned Weapons - By far the best counter to all those Ravenwing we'll be seeing as there will be zero difference between them and tactical marines, save the cost. Also maintains their utility given the amount of high cover saves likely to be seen on the foot pounders.

2 - Liquifiers - The other obvious answer to power-armoured cover-save loving fools.

3 - Beastmasters - A unit of Khymera to take the hits and Razorwings to dish them out should have a fair bit of success tarpitting those expensive units at a guess, or distracting their foot Marines to save the transports

4 - Eldar Allies - Show your disdain for cheap as chips psykers with your very own pet Farseer! Using Pathfinders to pick out their banner bearers/flakk rocket carriers/command squad apothecaries/etc.etc. seems fairly tempting too.

So, uhm, 4. Was going to add fliers to the list, until I remembered they'll probably have a lot of flakk missiles on the field, at which point the temptation drained away...

Ah, but those flakk missiles don't have Interceptor. I can see a Razorwing being very useful against a Greenwing army clumped around the dakka banner, though without the rest of the army taking out the Devastators, the plane goes down in the next DA shooting phase.

Agreed that would be useful, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of armies going mainly Ravenwing/Deathwing and using cheap 5 man squads with missile launchers to hold objectives/be AA batteries. It's that sorta thing which would get me down.

Maybe that just means lots of fliers....

That's what I'm expecting too, really. But I can't see five-man tactical squads being very good AA for those lists; each one goes down very quickly if we (or any army with decent shooting) focus on it (barely requires more than one squad, IME,) they won't take many, and two or three flakk missiles isn't particularly frightening. But I could see those being pretty common in 'wing armies for the reasons you stated.

I had a game against a Ravenwing army from the new codex, the reports bellow if anyone is interested (pictures as usual):

BR18: The Black Buzzards VS Ravenwing - 1500pts

Balisong wrote:

Raoiley wrote:

I am waiting for my mandrakes to arrive off ebay. Infiltrate with a haemonculus,open a wwp on turn one. Bring the Duke and keep it safe behind a wall. Raiders pop out and rapid fire, grots and beasts charge etc. Might be nasty.

Can't do that... Haemie can't infiltrate with them.

Can you explain? My local gw employee gave me the tactic idea... I don't see why it doesn't work..

Raoiley wrote:

Balisong wrote:

Can't do that... Haemie can't infiltrate with them.

Can you explain? My local gw employee gave me the tactic idea... I don't see why it doesn't work..

The rulebook specifically says so:

Quote :

An interdependent character without the infiltrate special rule cannot join a unit of infiltrators during deployment. - BRB page 38, infiltrate, last paragraph

Always take what a GW employee says with pinch of salt, they rarely know the rules accurately, at least in my experience.

So I went to my friend's place to witness the new DA in action. It was DA vs. Chaos/Necrons. The list was a Belial list with a very large blob of termies.

A couple of take aways, the Darkshroud can be very tough to take out but it is a landspeeder so the best why to deal with it is massed high strength (Chaos was using Autocannons, etc) to force a lot of saves.

If I ever face this army, everything has to stay mounted as much as possible because in close combat it is very difficult to overcome so many termies.

I've become more convinced that a Ravenwing army would have very low odds against DE as poisoned is a hard counter to them.

Currently, even with the FAQ, there is some monkey business with the characters that I expect to be FAQ'd out in the near future so once that's ruled on one way or the other I have no idea how to handle Azrael.

I'm going to be facing a 1750 DA opponent tonight. I'll do my best to take notes and do a batrep. I promise to at least give a summary. Wish me luck.

So i got my hands on the codex today and have been going over it with a mate. One thing that jumps out at me is that they seem to want ot tie units together. Things like Dark Shroud confer Stealth, Bikers with Jink + Skilled Rider (remain inside the Stealth bubble) who also carry Teleport Homers - allowing you Terminator Deepstrikers to enter with no scatter if within 6" of a bike. And to cap it off, Deathwing Assault is now a player choice of arriving via deepstrike on either a T1 or T2.

So here's the strat: boost everything forwards, keeping the Stealth bubble in tact, T2 your Termies arrive no scatter in behind a bike wall, gaining a 4+ cover to your lances, whilst the bikes only need to move an inch to get the same save. Oh and Azrael making them all score too

Fast moving and with cover saves up the wahzoo......sounds like our stuff, only with better armour sv's

1++ wrote:

Fast moving and with cover saves up the wahzoo......sounds like our stuff, only with better armour sv's

And uglier!

And are there anything really good in an assault?
Lots of high quality low number atacks. Sounds like Arena fodder to me.

Terminators are Terminators, and therefore good in assault. Black Knights are ok in assault (s5 ap- rending), and can make themselve sbetter by firing grenades that drop enemy toughness by 1. Deathwing Knights are nasty against low- to medium save armies, and on their "feat turn" (once per game they can up their strenght to 10 and ap to 2), but I don't think we'll see as much of them as regular Termies, as they aren't troops, can't take any ranged weapons and, except for the one "feat turn", are quite bad against non-Chaos MEQ and any Terminators (their weapons are notmally juts ap4, ap3 agaisnt Chaos Marines).

It's the rad launchers that scare me. Reduce our toughness to 2 and then open fire with all their salvo 4/2 S4 bolters, wounding on 2+, no armour (in most cases) and no FNP. Nasty!