Storm of Death

So my first project for the summer was to either be Sanguinary Guard or Death Company. Well, I took the plunge and bought the whole Death Company army…. With 3 very important exceptions…

Storm Ravens.

They don’t fit in to a lot of builds.

They require a different mind set.

After a few test games I was looking for a way to more reliably deliver my raving lunatics into CC where they rape and pillage to their crazy hearts content.

The obvious was happening – anyone who ran a well built army and knew what they were doing simply shot the crap out them on the way in and then I had fun for a couple of turns before I lost.

So how to do it?

Drop Pods? Limiting my squad size if I want IC’s attached as well. Reduces effectiveness and survivability. On the plus side I only have to take one round of shooting…10 marines with FNP…no, they won’t survive a concentrated round of shooting…

Rhino? No, if it were me facing DC rhino’s I’d just blow them out of the water then calmly, coldly gun down the poor bastards as they ran in…

Razor? Hell no. Capacity.

Land Raider? Are you kidding? A good sized DC squad plus a LR…rock indeed, but you know the rule – 2 LR>1LR… because again, you’d just gun it down however you can…because pretty everyone and their mother brings multiple tools for downing LR’s – just in case.

Storm Raven? No, Venerable…you’ve looked at these before! They don’t fit in…well maybe not with a traditional army…but if we are going for unconventional…

So it can transport 12 dudes. Cool. 10 DC is a good number, plus an IC or Astoroth (as we can’t lose his JP).

It’s fast, a skimmer and has two very important features for the DC army;

1) It has an assault ramp.

2) It has PotMS.

So assault ramp means we have a 20”+base size assault radius, we’ll call it 20.5”. So no first turn assaults but we can get turn 2…if we survive!

PotMS means we can turbo boost and then fire off a TLMM or a TLLC or TLPC or even a Typhoon launcher for 2 S8 shots…if in MM range then lets use that to pop open a transport…

Rinse and repeat x3 and we have 3 targets for our boys to muller next turn.

Problem is of course, that we only have 3 targets on the board.

I know, this is not good.

However, when with JP’s…we only have 2 targets! So it’s a 50% increase in the dilution of fire! Genius!

No it isn’t. It’ll still be shot down if you don’t cripple the most dangerous anti-tank with your 3 PotMS shots and if you can’t roll 4+ cover saves (from turbo-boost).

Well, screw it. It’s a list designed to scare the crap out of people and have them adjust mid-game how they play their army by running stuff they don’t expect..

So the list…which has won its first 2 games by the way…they both happened to be Annihilation missions though.

First one vs a couple of dudes who wanted to practice for a doubles tournament…I on 10-3 on KP’s.

Second vs Nids, won 4-2…killed the easy stuff then backed off and just shot from range to wear the game out. Boring, but I won.

Astoroth

Death Company x10, 3x Power Weapons

Death Company x10, 3x Power Weapons

Land Speeder Typhoon, HB

Land Speeder Typhoon, HB

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles, Searchlights

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles. Searchlights

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles. Searchlights

1493.

I really enjoyed playing it, but I was very, very scared of Tyranid warriors w Prime all carrying lash whips and boneswords….whats the point of being a complete combat bad ass if you get pwned by these mindless morons?

So how do I fix this?

I’ve just been doing the thinking.

The opponent knows that in the above list, one Raven is empty. So the target dilution (which is already a joke) doesn’t really help.

The typhoons are too easily killed.

How do I cope with lash whip warriors and other beasts in CC?

Answers?

Fill the 3^rd Raven

Throw down something they can’t chew through.

The all new and boxfresh DC to be debuted next Tuesday will be:

Astoroth

Death Company x9, 3x Power Weapons

Death Company x9, 3x Power Weapons

Death Company x5, 3x Power Weapons, 1x Hand Flamer (just cause I can’t waste 5 points!!)

Death Company Dreadnought – Blood Talon

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles, Searchlights

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles. Searchlights

Storm Raven, TLPC, TLMM, 4xBloodstrike Missiles. Searchlights

This is bang on 1500 and fun. The little DC squad just support the dread and runs a blocking move for him if necessary. The others do what they do, the dread smacks up threats to the DC regular such as Nid Warriors w L/BS and Bloodletters etc…basically stuff with Power Weapons and good initiative or tricks.

We’ll see.

Now to build the Storm Ravens………hmmm……