Welcome to the 5th and final part
of my Dark Angels codex review. As I've taken a rather unusual approach to this
review, I wasn't sure what would be most appropriate to put in this final part.
I've only briefly mentioned the Lion's Blade up til now as I thought it best
discussed once I had got to grips with the constituent parts of it rather than
up front. Instead of army lists I will just write some brief thoughts on the
different 'wing' combinations that can be used to make up a mono-DA army and
how they interact now. First things first, let's look at the Lion's Blade:
Lions Blade Strike force
Like the Codex Marine detachment,
this allows you to build a 'detachment of formations' for cumulative perks. All
of the formations available in the Lion's blade are individual ones from the
book that I've already covered, except for two which I'll come to.
The core element, of which 1 minimum
is required per detachment, is the already strong demi-company. As with codex
Marines, you can double up on this to get a full battle company (one half with
Chaplain, the other with Master), in which case you will get not only objective
secured and fire discipline, but the same perk as Codex marines in the form of FREE dedicated
transports for the battle company. Further to this, the almighty supreme fire
discipline rule applies to the entire detachment and allows all models with
grim resolve to (unless jinking) simply fire overwatch at their regular BS.
Wow!
Each core choice also allows you
to take one optional Command choice, in this case a Selection from the Inner
circle, nam0ely Azrael, Belial, Sammael, a Company Master, Interrogator
Chaplain or Librarian. We then come to the auxiliary elements, of which there
are 6 and of which 1+ must be taken. 5 of them are already covered, namely the
Hammer of Caliban, 3 Ravenwing Formations and Deathwing Formation. The last is
simply 1 1-5 unit of scouts with no perks. I think that this Strike force,
while lacking as many options as its codex marine cousin, is actually a lot
less restrictive. Now we will take a look at how we can put together armies
(around 2K) using the Lion's blade in most cases. Bear in mind now that
Deathwing/Ravenwing elements can no longer be troops a CAD is no longer an
option for these as mono-lists.
Triple-wing
Naturally, the best way to
Utilise all the formations through the Lion's Blade is with all 3 wings being
involved. A solid Green core of a battle Company is a great start which should
take up a quarter of your points minimum. A minimum Deathwing Formation will
allow you to get a Terminator Librarian and take you up to about half your
points. Add in a Ravenwing support and attack squadron plus some scouts and
upgrades and that should give you a well-rounded synergistic army. Alternatively,
using the Deathwing/Ravenwing Strike forces alongside each other plus either a
Greenwing Lion's blade or demi-company is another way but the Lion's blade for
everyone proabably works best. Dont rule out a CAD alongside it though. A
couple of cheap units of scouts and a
cheap HQ will get you access to Black knights and individual battle tanks, both
of which are unavailable in the Lion's blade a it stands.
Greenwing
The best way to play Pure
Greenwing seems to be keeping it simple. A full but minimised battle Company
should provide you with lots of units that have both full BS overwatch and free
transports, which after some upgrades should still leave you enough points at
2K to squeeze in a Hammer of Caliban and maybe a unit of scouts or Inner Circle
member. Alternatively, a couple of cheap scout units in a CAD is a good way to
access individual tanks, same as for black Knights as mentioned above.
Deathwing
Harder to work through this one
due to the limitations of the Deathwing list as discussed before. The best way
to do it would seem to be by taking a Deathwing strike force detachment and
putting 3 Venerable Dreadnoughts into drop pods. Unlike the formation, the Drop
pods will enter play on turn 1 and so you should have at least 2 Venerable
dreadnoughts and Drop pods on the board that have to survive a turn of fire
before your army can arrive, albeit piecemeal. Not great, but it seems the only
viable way left to run mono-Deathwing.
Ravenwing
Three approaches here. Either
just use a mixture of attack/support/silence formations, which means no HQ
choices or black knights. The second way is to use the Ravenwing strike force,
which will mean you have to take Sammael (at least until they FAQ the bike HQ
Ravenwing thing) but are free to choose between units at your leisure, though
without some of the perks of the formation. The third and probably best way is
a mixture of the Strike force (for your Knights and HQ, and maybe less rigid
air support) and then the Formations for everything else. This is my preferred
build TBH.
Deathwing and Ravenwing
The old classic combo, this work
pretty darn well still and TBH seems to be how the rules for Deathwing have
been written to reflect. Any combo of the Ravenwing options above (so long as
an attack squadron or Strike force is in there) plus the Deathwing Strike force
should be a winner. The Deathwing redemption force doesn't rely on the
Ravenwing element but gives you less flexibility for little reward (unless
you're fighting CSM that is).
Greenwing and Deathwing
You could run it as a CAD in
itself, but it's better to run as either a Lion's blade with Demi/battle
company and redemption force or to break it up into individual
formations/detachments representing the individual elements, of which a CAD
could be part for the Greenwing but it's not really the best option unless you
want to run say a predator and a vindicator in there.
Ravenwing and Greenwing
Again, could be run as above but
would probably be best running it as a Lion's blade with formations or as a
pair of detachments / detachment plus formations. You could even run the
Ravenwing detachment and just add a demi-company to it.
Conclusions:
Despite a few gaffes with the
Deathwing/Ravenwing strike forces, I'm pretty impressed with the book overall
and believe it has propelled the Dark Angels back up there to be on par with
their brothers. It's a shame that Ravenwing stand out as being the strongest
build (with greenwing a close second) and Deathwing lagging somewhat. Of the 7
combos discussed above it would have been nice if all 7 have equal merit, but
it seems not to be the case. The book itself is pretty enough, and while there
are only a few new fluff pieces in there it's great that most of the numerous
errors and oversights from the previous edition have been addressed. Now we
have the long wait until the next 40K release, whenever that may be. Until
then, time to get on with some hobby! Cheers.
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