Raven guard List ponderings

I’ve been spending a bit of time with my marine dex recently trying to figure out how to best represent my beloved Ravenguard on the table.

So what do I want from the masters of the shadows. My vision of the Ravenguard has always been the special forces team operating behind enemy lines appearing only when the enemy was least expecting it then applying maximize force to achieve there goal and melting back into the shadows.

This is somewhat backed up by the fluff this section copied from lexicanum

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Raven_Guard

“The Raven Guard are known for hitting weak points in enemy defences hard and they perform lightning strikes upon locations of tactical importance to cripple their enemy. The Raven Guard disdain the notion of recklessly charging into enemy ranks. This differentiates their tactics from those of the Blood Angels. The Raven Guard rely heavily on their Scouts for pinpointing enemy positions and to scout for good drop sites. Because of their hit and run tactics they also make extensive use of Assault Squads. The Tactical Squads of the Raven Guard are often deployed via Thunderhawks or Drop Pods. The favorite weapons of the Raven GuardCommanders are the Lightning Claws and it is a common sight that their command squads also come equipped with these weapons in addition to theirJump Packs.

Raven Guard Captains are fiercely independent, and it’s incredibly rare for the chapter to fight as a whole. Individual companies are completely autonomous and are quick to lend their aid to Imperial commanders across the galaxy, with or without the sanction of their Chapter Master. Such behaviour has led to some to question the Raven Guard’s soundness, but most recognise that such fluidity of command proves the presence of formidable discipline, not its absence.^[4a]“

Due to their specialised combat style, the Raven Guard makes less use of heavier vehicles and tanks (such as the Land Raider and Predator) than most chapters.^[3]

Unfortunately 40k inherently doesn’t represent this style of warfare very well one due to the restraints of making a balanced game and the nature of the missions and deployment. There have been some excellent articles on asymmetrical warfare done by blogger much more competent than me I’d recommend reading some of Cedric thought provoking articles at the House of Paincakes

http://www.houseofpaincakes.com/search/label/the Ballbusch experience

In 5th edition I managed to build a list that I felt suitably put this across but it relied heavily on Shrike’s infiltrating and handing out fleet to the rest of the army, Using a librarians Gate of infinity. Synergising that with homing beacons to drop veterans Sternguard and Terminators into the right places and using lots of scouts based units infiltrating and scout moving.

Unfortunately come the sixth edition dex Shrike no longer gives fleet to the rest of the army and is limited to infiltrating jump pack units only. Librarians can no longer reliably get Gate of Infinity. So what has GW given us to replace it

Strike from the Shadows – This provides units that aren’t Bulky (or larger) with both Scout and Stealth on the first turn,

Winged Deliverance – This provides jump infantry units with the ability to re-roll their charge distances regardless of whether or not they used their jump packs in the movement phase,

Well a bit of a mixed bag the strike from the Shadows rule seems promising at first glance until you start looking at it alongside the fluff parts. Ravenguard utilise scout troops extensively unfortunately scouts already have scout and can get stealth cheaply with camo cloaks. This rule would lend itself very nicely to a Rhino rush style list lots of tacs scout move up to bolter range too flood midfield with power armoured bodies. In the few games of sixth I played this was the type of list I ran. However and it’s a big however this doesn’t fit my vision of Ravenguard driving a bunch of APC straight down the throat of your enemy isn’t especially sneaky.

The Winged deliverance rule well its a nice bonus but we all know how utterly mediocre Assault Marines are. However Vanguard version got usefully cheaper this edition and moved to the Elite FOC slot and Shrike needs a jump pack units to infiltrate so This will be my starting point.

Shrike’s gotta go into the list I love the model and it was Shrike’s fluff that got me back into the game.

Troops gonna go with a whole bunch these and one of the best bits of the new codexi was Landspeeder Storms becoming dedicated transports unfortunately the capacity is only 5 but I think this gives an opportunity I’ll take the seargent with 5 cc or shotgun troops and 4 snipers with the hvy weapon combat squad then I’ve got a hunter killer team roaming about in a storm and an objective sitter unit for 1 foc. So we’ll take 3 of those.

The fluff talks about tactical squads deploying from thunderhawks unfortunately the thunderhawks not in the dex and I don’t have the cash for a Forgeworld one but the dex does have its baby brother the Storm Raven so i think Ill load up two of them with a tactical squad each this means I can drop an objective secured unit any where on the board and also gives me some decent mobile fire power shoring up a lack of armour and ranged punch.

While were on the subject of flyers I think I’m gonna stick in a storm Talon too let’s saturate the skies they also make an excellent anti flyer defence Air superiority FTW.

With all these flyers arriving by deep strike I want to get a Homing beacon into the list unfortunately there are only two available in the whole Dex. The teleport beacon is much more ubiquitous but only works with Termies. So the choices are on the Drop pod which is unfortunately immobile and on the scout bikers now they get a lot of flack as the poor choice in the Fast attack slot but this USP I believe makes up for it.

So the list

Shrike.                                                                                185

Scout. 10 man vet sarge more bomb 4 sr hb hfs lss.         187

Scout. 10 man vet sarge more bomb 4 sr hb hfs lss.         187

Scout five man vet sarge per fist LSS                                 135

Tactical Squad 10 man flamer multi melta.                         155

Tactical Squad 10 man flamer multi melta. .                       155

Storm raven mm.                                                                 200

Storm raven mm.                                                                 200

Scout Bikers locator beacon                                                  64

Storm talon. Skyhammer missile .                                       125

Van vets 7 man 3 x lc 2 x ss 1 x th jp. Mb                            255

1848

I think this list should play the way I want and be able to take on lots of threats probably not gonna win nova with it but that’s not my goal. Any tactical geniuses out there please feel free to drop any suggestions I’m not saying ill do it but I’d love the discussion

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