Competitive dark angels ideas

[Madmonkeyman]

Ha that a good point with those tanks charging ! Those powers combined with dark shrouds really can take superheavies out the game. Especially guard and admech.

[Madmonkeyman]

So I usually end up playing a few games on the top tables at tournaments. The meta at the top tables seems to be full of Dark reaper elder altioc and double chaos primarchs. I don't really have an answer for these at the moment looking at the codex.

 

As for dark reapers the only small positive is that they will find it hard to target characters till everything else is dead. Obviously the character rule is getting toned down a bit but still very effective .The altioc stuff is only minus to hit in shooting so close combat or auto hit stuff is good.

 

Against double primarch it's really rough as they are so fast. Against one it's ok

As you can focus fire mortarian or just hold Magnus up.We don't have anyway to get past invuns easily which makes trying to kill a powers up Magnus in one turn almost impossible .

 

Does anyone have any ideas.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Madmonkeyman

[Madmonkeyman]

Think the flak missle and hellfire stratagem is useful. But not enough by its self obviously.

[breng77]

I think dealing with magnus is a lot about going first and or denying his +1 invul save power.  Against a 4+ re-roll 1s there is a decent chance that a 6 man inceptor squad with a captain and lieutenant can kill him in 1 turn 50% of the time (average damage output after his save is 18 wounds with the plasma strat.).  Now it may not be possible to get within 18" of him on turn 1.  Even with 3+ re-roll 1s it is pretty likely to put a hurting on him anyway as you still average 9 damage, so with a few other things helping out he might be at least crippled if not dead. 

[Madmonkeyman]

Trying to shoot past a powered up Magnus is just painful. Think you need to do about 110 damage to kill him with a 3++. Obviously nearly half that with a 4++. Trouble with plasma is most opponents put him next to a changeling turn one so is -1 to hit.

 

Agree a big plasma bomb with flakk and hellfire may just about do it.

 

If only dark angels were a bit more 'chaosy' so we could get that death hex power !!!

Edited December 18, 2017 by Madmonkeyman

[hermanista]

Pulling in a non Dark Angel librarian for Null zone is pretty tempting *And heretical to our cause really*

[breng77]

The issue with null zone is range (6" I believe).

 

As for the changling yeah, I'm hoping he gets super fixed in the daemon book, perhaps to only effect infantry.

[dtse]

Patrol detachment of black templars for 4+ rerollable deny

 

 

Otherwise just load up on plasma and hope for the best.

 

Or run a Falchion

[Madmonkeyman]

So now that I've played a game with the dark angels. Got to say they are really fun . Just a quick note- only in death does duty end stratagem on tallon masters is amazing. 18 shots when they die! Really catches people out.

 

Speed of the raven on the dark tallon is also good for getting that 4++

 

Still think we need to have a way to get round invuns . Snipers / hellfire / flakk / rift cannons and do a bit though

 

What have other people found good?

[Loar]

Biggest issue I've run into is playing against 2-3 eldar hemlocks with ravenwing.  Not getting first turn there is basically nothing you can do that prevents them from alpha'ing off all your black knights.  You can try and screen but they can move the whole board length and 16 inch autohitting  guns will find their targets still (unless you are adding a cheap guard detachment or something for bodies, scouts still aren't enough to screen a big enough bubble to prevent that).  Only other thing i can think of is to have Azrael to start them with the ++4 invuln for that first turn before they can jink, but thats a really expensive option to have to always be taking.

[dtse]

Unfortunately alpha strike is a thing. Mitigate beat you can with screen to stop assaults and shroud and azrael tomake things as hard as possible to kill. And that’s why big expensive things just don’t do that well in this edition because alpha strikes are so deadly

[breng77]

The hemlock thing also depends on terrain.  If you have good LOS blocking terrain, scouts can be enough because you only need to block off the areas where your bikes are visible.

[depthcharge12]

Disclaimer: These are observations :)

 

From the batreps trickling out, it seems everyone wants to run exclusively Ravenwing and they get creamed. Darkshroud gets singled out and then min sized RavenKnights get shot to oblivion or assaulted because they overextend themselves.

 

Hellblaster superfortress of Plasma death (10/5 blasters with Az and lieutenant) don’t seem to do much with one shot each even with the extra damage. You may get in 1 round of rapid fire but usually the enemy is assaulting you by then. Honestly, PlasCan dev squads are looking more tasty with extra shots and bonuses from the sgt alongside some meatshields.

 

I think in our haste to optimize the Codex, we have forgotten to utilize the units that were giving us a bunch of leverage (predators, dreads, etc). Sure they don’t get the 4++ from Az anymore but they still do quite well. Perhaps we should mix the darkshroud with some predators and/or lasdreads?

 

 

Honestly I see most lists swinging back towards greenwing with specialized wing support.

[dtse]

Yup. My latest list has dropped ravenwing. Too squishy and expensive. And gone back to predators for killshot and a unit of hellblasters. Hellblasters alone won’t kill T8 reliably at range. You still need strong guns on durable platform and killshot is an awesome strategem to make lascannon damage more reliable.

 

So yes. We are back to gunline. But trying out Inceptors, aggressors as chaff clearing options but I’m afraid razorback is still good

[breng77]

I've had reasonable success with some RW stuff, but not a pure list.  You need chaff/scouts so that you can avoid some alpha strike.  Sammael is quite good at horde killing, as is the talon master and having fast untargetable units are very useful.  1 Unit of bikes making use of the advance and fire strat are good at clearing some chaff, I've allied in White Scars scout bikes to use their similar stratagem to get double the chaff clearing.   I don't think the dark shroud is great outside a gunline because it is the obvious first target, if you can hide it out of LOS and still get benefit, great, but in the open it dies much too fast -1 to hit and 4++ only goes so far. Plasma inceptors are very good at killing their targets, IMO better than helblasters because they are safer from alpha strike.  Because of range I'm not as impressed with helblasters, they are decent with Azreal though.  I think that 3 predators can work ok, as they give you multiple vehicles to be targets.  My worry is that if you go second killshot goes away fast.

[Loar]

Yup. My latest list has dropped ravenwing. Too squishy and expensive. And gone back to predators for killshot and a unit of hellblasters. Hellblasters alone won’t kill T8 reliably at range. You still need strong guns on durable platform and killshot is an awesome strategem to make lascannon damage more reliable.

 

So yes. We are back to gunline. But trying out Inceptors, aggressors as chaff clearing options but I’m afraid razorback is still good

 

So why even play DA then instead of Ultramarines or Ravenguard?  Outside of the plasma strat which isn't enough on it's own it seems people are going back to just using generic SM codex stuff that every chapter has access to

 

I really wish GW took some time to add in a couple more DA specific stratagems that set DW/RW apart, why RW don't have an outflank strat is beyond me. 

 

I will say I've had success with a Techmarine on a Bike in my Ravenwing lists.  It can follow around your main force and heal up your Talonmaster and/or Sammel in Sableclaw.  I've also had him keep my Dark Shroud alive for another turn and bump up a damaged Dark Talon a tier after it got alpha'd.  All for under 90 points, keep him cheap and he's very effective.

Edited December 22, 2017 by Loar

[dtse]

Because all my stuff is dark angels. Because I like dark angels. Because I like the fluff. Lots of reasons why I don’t play ultramarines or ravenguard. I’m just saying that unfortunately our codex did not give us many new competitive ways to play

[Madmonkeyman]

I think there is some fun stuff in it. Going to take it to a one day tournament in Jan. See what happens .........

[lhavoc]

How about Agressors? Double fire and Reroll 1’s when you stand still

[dtse]

My current list has 9 boltstorm aggressors in a space wolves detachment to outflank them. They might also be useful as a charge deterant and with auspex scan but you can just drop 12.01” away and you can shoot them instead of charging them so I still think ravenguard/SW is still the way to go

[Grand Master Raziel]

What do people think of Company Vets as a possible competitive unit?  Every member can take some sort of plasma weapon, but one can also take a couple naked members to absorb casualties.  They have 2 attacks each and can take chainswords for free, and every member can also pack a cheap power weapon.  The sergeant has 3 attacks.  Plus, they can ride in a Rhino, Razorback, or Drop Pod to get them into position.

[Helycon]

What do people think of Company Vets as a possible competitive unit?  Every member can take some sort of plasma weapon, but one can also take a couple naked members to absorb casualties.  They have 2 attacks each and can take chainswords for free, and every member can also pack a cheap power weapon.  The sergeant has 3 attacks.  Plus, they can ride in a Rhino, Razorback, or Drop Pod to get them into position.

Make it a combi-plasma ;)

[breng77]

I find the issue I have with vets is their max squad of 5. If you could put 10 in a pod they might be worth it. 5 with plasma guns will run you 145 points throw in a pod you are at 230. For 177 I can get plasma inceptors who shoot better, have higher toughness and have more wounds. Now you could put 2x5 in the pod for 375 but at that point I can get 6 inceptors cheaper. So you would really need to emphasize their melee potential as well. Edited December 25, 2017 by breng77

[Ania Redfang]

What do people think about giving the talonmaster the shroud of heros? Couple with a DarkShroud for -2 to hit, keep him in front of your Ravenwing characters. At least until they change the character rules...

[Madmonkeyman]

Think most people are already adopting the new character rules. They are around me anyway.

 

Don't think it's a great idea as a tallon master is to expensive and -2 isn't that hard to get past. The great thing about tallon masters is that they are characters and are hard to target. Apart from that they just have 6 wounds

And will die easily . Just hid some scouts out of line of site, fly a dark tallon in their face or if you want to go crazy then use a cellexus as he is way way better , at least till they change the rules :-)