Additional author: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones
Fans of teen angst rejoice! Fresh out of the local Hot Topic and bursting into your room through an open window wearing their finest Thursday t-shirts, the Raven Guard have arrived! In the second wave of Supplements to the new Codex: Space Marines, we’ve got Raven Guard and Iron Hands getting new books of their own, packed with new stratagems, psychic powers, warlord traits, relics, and a new unit. Raven Guard players might have felt a bit of a sting when their Chapter Tactic was downgraded from the 2017 version, but the new rules have them screaming back into the fold with a fresh set of sneaky tricks. So dust off and load up your MCR The Black Parade CD, sit back, and join us on a journey through the newest supplement.
Special thanks to Dan “TheSexCannon” Boyd for furnishing us with many, many pictures of his Raven Guard.
Table of Contents
Army Rules
In addition to the faction rules laid out in Codex: Space Marines, Raven Guard get some additional rules of their own. But before we dive into those, let’s cover what you need to do to get access to them. We’ve covered this before in our Ultramarines and White Scars reviews, so if you already know this part, feel free to skip ahead.
Accessing These Rules
For most of 8th edition, you’ve only technically gotten access to the full suite of subfaction (i.e. “Raven Guard”) specific rules if your army has literally used the RAVEN GUARD keyword. Homebrew chapters could choose a trait, but wouldn’t get stratagem, trait or relic access (meaning that in tournaments people just used the main keywords).
That’s changed, and you can now get access to 95% of what’s in this book if you are a Raven Guard successor chapter. We broke those rules down in part 1 of our main book review, and importantly “successor chapters” in this case includes those using the “build your own” traits. If you’re going down-the-line Raven Guard, this is the tactic you get:
The Raven Guard were the only Chapter that saw a nerf to its Chapter Tactic in the new book, in part because an army-wide -1 to be hit applying to vehicles has been thoroughly proven to be a horrible mistake. The new trait gives units more than 12″ away the benefit of cover instead (something that makes traits like the Imperial Fists’ and Iron Warriors’ more useful), and gives them -1 to be hit if they are not a Vehicle and already in cover and more than 12″ away. Overall, though it’s technically a weaker ability than what they had (it certainly no longer feels like the definite “best” trait), it’s also one where extending it to vehicles (even just the cover bit) is extremely powerful. This is still definitely a strong one and at a minimum it’ll save you 2 CP for Prepared Positions in half your games. In general, this tactic favours putting lots of Primaris bodies on the board, as it massively increases their already considerable durability, making it hard to sweep you off the field. Do also take note that the requirement to get the -1 to hit isn’t “be in cover”, it’s just be on a terrain feature, so things like hills and Munitorum containers that explicitly don’t give cover still work to give you the -1. A big pile of Primaris Raven Guard standing very sneakily on a large, flat hill lots of crates is a difficult formation to shift.
Note: As Reddit user dode47 points out, hills not only have no cover rules, they explicitly don’t count as terrain features, so while Munitorum containers work for this, hills don’t!
If you want to instead pick your own trait we’ll go through what we think the best successor combos are a bit later on. For now, we just need to establish that Successor chapters can get most (or in fact with CP expenditure, all) of what’s here, and keep that in mind until we cover them in detail. The breakdown of how to get these abilities is as follows. N.B. This is exactly the same as in our other Codex Supplement reviews, so if you’ve already read that you can skip past.
Successor Chapter Rules - Click to Expand This might seem to be needlessly complicating things, but there are actually some subtleties of who gets what in various soup scenarios. Basically: The takeaway is that you have to have a decent commitment to Raven Guard to get much out of this – you can add a Knight alongside your otherwise Raven Guard army and get everything except the Doctrines, but you can’t make a Supreme Command of Librarians from three different chapters and stick the best relic from each book on each. This is almost certainly what the rather more restrictive wording is intended to prevent, so good job, GW. The Raven Guard get a buff to attacking characters while Tactical Doctrine is active. This is a bit of a tough one to evaluate. It’s clearly a boon against large characters rocking 10+ Wounds that you’ll want to target from the get-go such as Knights and Lords Discordant, but it’s harder to determine how useful it will be if your opponent can effectively screen their characters from you. Space Marines have access to tools that bypass those screens, so a Raven Guard army going deep on this is likely to load up with a heavy dose of Eliminators, Scout Snipers and stalker bolt rifles (which can use the Target Sighted stratagem from Codex: Space Marines to snipe at characters for 3CP). The downside is that all of these have weapons that are Heavy profile, so you lose the AP bonus for Devastator Doctrine to get to the hit/wound bonus (Target Sighted being gated behind 3CP is also a big ask to get to use your bonus). However, both Eliminators and stalker bolt rifles have enough base AP that they’ll push many characters to their invulnerable save anyway, so this is potentially less of a problem than it initially seems. Eliminators and Scouts also both trigger their bonus MWs on modified 6s to wound, so get a lot out of the +1 here. It also doesn’t help you once you move to Assault Doctrine, which can be a blessing or a curse. If you’re using some surgical tools (such as a jump pack Captain) to go after characters in melee, you can get the bonus to hit and wound without having to commit the whole army to Assault doctrine, but if your army is melee-focused, you lose access to it when you do. Since the additional durability it lends to Primaris Marine battlepiles is one of the biggest strengths of the Raven Guard chapter tactic, and those largely want to be in Tactical, we think a few precision units backing up a largely tactical force is where it will see most use. It’s also a good defensive tool for that kind of army, as it means that melee threats with the CHARACTER tag are at a real risk of getting mulched by weight of fists (or some liberally scattered sergeant weapons) if they stray into your lines. The net effect of this doctrine is that you don’t need to devote your entire army to it, but it draws you towards the inclusion of a certain sub-set of units, and provides you with a potent countermeasure to many popular choices. The Raven Guard have a single named unit in their Codex, a Primaris update of Kayvaan Shrike, newly upgraded to be the Raven Guard Chapter Master. Shrike is a beast, and an absolute bargain at 130pts. Any dedicated Space Marine list wants a Chapter Master, and in general (thanks to the huge pile of exciting stratagems they now have access to) they’d rather pay a point premium for one than spend 2CP to upgrade a Captain. Of the chapters we’ve seen so far only Ultramarines have had access to this option (I guess Blood Ravens too if you want to be pedantic), and the premium here is much lower than on Calgar, immediately making Shrike look attractive before looking at any of the other words on his datasheet. Luckily, these are pretty great too, and Shrike is a bit of a monster. His statline is mostly standard for a Primaris Captain (at least once you realise the extra attack for his paired claws has been baked into it) with one exception – he’s got a jump pack, so has a move of 14″ and the FLY keyword. This is a great complement to Chapter Master, as it allows you to make sure he ends up where he’s most needed at any given time to maximise the use of his aura. Alternatively, you can use it to send him out hunting, as he’s no slouch at killing stuff either. Offensively, Shrike can do damage both at range and in combat. He wields a pistol called Blackout that has 18″ range, two shots at S4 AP-2 D2, deals mortals on 6+ to wound and can character snipe. Once the RG doctrine goes up this presents a very real threat of just one-shotting weaker characters, especially if he’s near a friendly Lieutenant so that he’s hitting on 2s with re-rolls and wounding on 2s or 3s re-rolling 1s. A few failed invulnerables is going to leave something in the dirt, and even if he doesn’t get the job done alone you’re very likely to be packing some other tools that can finish it. Melee is where he really shines though. As we saw in our White Scars review, what lightning claws really need to be relevant is D2, and wouldn’t you know it, Shrike has a pair that have just that (with a bonus point of AP tacked on). With 7 attacks on the charge and full re-rolls on hits/wounds, Shrike is going to inflict a hefty blow against anything with <T8, and will still chip a few points off something like a Knight. If hunting T8 models is your order of business, getting Might of Heroes on him will be a big help, as it pushes his wound rate >50% against normal T8 stuff and to 75% against characters when the doctrine is also up, at which point he’s doing some serious damage (not being massively far from being able to one-turn a Knight if you use Honour the Chapter). As a PRIMARIS unit he’s also eligible to use Gene-Wrought Might, making him auto-wound on an unmodified hit roll of 6 for the phase, which is probably worth considering popping if you’re planning to fight twice into a key T8 target. He also really likes charging, doing a MW when he charges 50% of the time, and has a 6″ re-roll charge bubble for himself and any RAVEN GUARD PHOBOS or JUMP PACK units. He can make use of the Strike from the Skies strat to advance and charge as well, allowing him to cover huge distances. The only thing you have to be careful with on Shrike is that he isn’t any tougher than a regular Primaris Captain, which given he can be a key part of your army and has an offensive statline that can encourage taking risks means you do sometimes need to be more cautious with him than you’d like, aiming to surgically deploy him into fights he’s going to win. This is admittedly very on-brand for Raven Guard, but if you do find him in a situation that’s less safe than you’d like (or you need to tank a Knight attack to get to a second fight) don’t forget that you can use Transhuman Physiology so that only unmodified 4+ rolls can wound him for a phase. The final point of interest on Shrike is that he has the PHOBOS keyword, which opens up some possible interactions with the Obscuration Discipline and the Vanguard Warlord traits. In practice this may not prove to be super relevant – there’s a bunch of shooting accuracy boosts and shooting hit mods which Shrike doesn’t even slightly need – but there are a couple of things worth looking at. He’s eligible for redeploy via Lord of Deceit which means if, for some reason, you want to yeet him into the enemy lines turn 1 (which sounds mad but he’s 13 points cheaper than a smash Captain so maybe not if you can land the right kill) you can move to catch an opponent out on their positioning. Continuing the vein of yeeting him, he can be targeted by Temporal Corridor, so you could plausibly set up a Phobos Librarian mid-board with Concealed Positions, advance Shrike to them, have them do an epic high-five (being careful to ensure the claws are retracted at the time) and fire Shrike into the enemy lines, where he blows the advance and charge strat and goes wild. This probably isn’t the best use of him, especially given that the Doctrine won’t be up yet, but it’s at least worth being aware of as a possibility, and can be more practically used in a battle that’s gone “wide” to allow him to return from fighting something in one direction and then zoom off in another. On a much more pedestrian note, you can pick him for the “Fire and Fade” equivalent, which can have its uses – it allows him to get off some shots with his pistol and then move to wherever his aura is best used. Raven Guard have an extremely good relic swap for the rifles that PHOBOS characters have, so setting him up with a sniper buddy doesn’t seem wildly implausible. Overall, Shrike is a beast, and a huge attraction towards playing down-the-line Raven Guard (not that much was needed given the strength of their chapter tactic). Expect to see him in a lot of lists. Raven Guard have an exceptionally powerful relic to swap in for these characters in Ex Tenebris, making them vastly more attractive than normal. The various Lieutenants are especially improved, as it allows them to contribute from a gunline and the relic gives +1 to hit, mitigating their (normally rather pedestrian) BS3+. Raven Guard have a bunch of ways to set up charges out of Deep Strike, and can use the Shadowstep psychic power to redeploy a Chaplain with the Canticle of Hate up to add +2″ to their charges. There are other ways to boost charges (and remember that they don’t stack), but +2″ is a big difference in a single package, especially as the Raven’s Blade stratagem can give a full re-roll on it. If you’re planning to use the Master of Ambush warlord trait to redeploy something horrendous into your opponent’s face turn 1 (see later) a Canticle of Hate Chaplain is a good choice for the delivery mechanism as well. Raven Guard have some of the best mobility support for these outside of Blood Angels, having an on-board redeploy psychic power in Shadowstep, and stratagems for boosting and re-rolling charges out of deep strike. Thunder hammers are certainly pricey now, but increased reliability in delivering the bearers helps to offset the cost. When going after character Knights in Tactical Doctrine, smash captains in pure Raven Guard are also extremely good, essentially getting the benefits of being both Space Wolves and Blood Angels when it comes to killing power. They also have access to a few neat tricks among relics, with the Armour of Shadows helping them survive through to a second fight, and a few other options to increase their output. All early indications are that the price hike hasn’t killed the smash Captain, so since he’s super great here, go wild! Intercessors are already great for their cost with all the buffs the Space Marine codex has given them, and Raven Guard make them shine all the brighter. The chapter tactic is superb on them, substantially increasing their already considerable durability, and there are some other nice things you can do with them as well, most notably: All Primaris Marines are good in Raven Guard but Intercessors probably see the biggest boost. Wings Note: Every time one of these supplements has dropped TheChirurgeon has been all up in our editor’s chat being like “but what does this mean for SNIPER SCOUTS?”. I don’t know why, but I hope he’s happy now. Sniper Scouts are a cheap detachment filler at 13PPM, and once the Raven Guard doctrine goes up present an actual serious threat to enemy characters. Three stationary squads of these in the RG doctrine comfortably pick off a Farseer without help, and give plenty of other things fits too. If you can get them into re-roll bubbles that output only increases, and they even strip quite a number of MWs off big character targets. There is a mild tension with them that you ideally want them stationary on turn 2, which does tend to mean putting them somewhere where they can get shot up, although thanks to the +1 to hit from the doctrine while character sniping they’re still fine if they have to move. The camo cloaks might look attractive but we think they’re mostly a trap – how cheap these are is part of their appeal, and we don’t think they’re worth it over Primaris stuff once you hit 16PPM with the cloaks. Marines desperately want to make a dual battalion (or even a brigade) if they can, so having cheap Troops you actively want in your lists is a real advantage for Raven Guard. The Invictor is just great all around all the time, but Raven Guard’s ability to bring forward other stuff to support it makes it even cooler. We think it’s highly unlikely you’re waiting for our endorsement to slam them in Raven Guard armies, but if you were, go right ahead. Double shooting Aggressors absolutely melt stuff, and the dream is to get to do this turn 1. Raven Guard have several options that can make that a reality against an incautious opponent, as the Infiltrators stratagem and the Master of Ambush warlord trait both give you ways to pull if off, positioning them in firing range prior to the first turn. These options are all “optional” (i.e. you don’t have to leave them out in the wind and risk getting seized on), and Raven Guard Aggressors are a nightmare to shift from cover anyway, so if you go second moving them up into some mid board ruins can give you a very potent defensive bastion. Take everything we said about Aggressors and amp it up to 11. Assault Centurions are mind-bogglingly deadly for their cost if you can get them into position, which has always been the hard part. We explored some options to do this with White Scars, but Raven Guard do it even better. If your opponent is foolish enough to deploy a Knight on the line, redeploying a unit of these with Master of Ambush should equal a dead Knight. If they realise you can do this and backline all their Knights? Great, just put these in deep strike with Strike from the Shadows and leap out on them with a re-rolling charge later on. Even if your opponent has a pretty hefty screen up front sending these down their throat can be worth it – mounting flamers and hurricane bolters gives them 42 average flamer hits and 72 bolter shots, which is a hefty toll of dead Guardsmen. They’re also tough enough to soak up a counterpunch from armies that don’t have hefty mortal output (do be wary of those). Much like with Aggressors, even if you can’t profitably go straight for the throat with them, starting with these set up in a central ruin is going to be appallingly bad news for your opponent in a lot of tournament missions, as getting to precious central objectives is going to require prising these from their cover, which is a tricky feat to pull off. The spectacular point cut and extra wound that Assault Centurions got in the codex has left them poised to be great, just waiting for the right mobility tools. People have already been getting them to perform in White Scars, and the tricks Raven Guard have for an initial strike with them are substantially better, at a cost of being less good at getting them around once they’re on the board. Our money is on Raven Guard getting the nod as the best option, so expect to see plenty of tryouts done with these on tournament tables. Being able to advance and charge with the jump pack builds of these is a nice bonus, but ultimately these aren’t quite as great as they are in White Scars – there’s nothing in Raven Guard to really leverage the extremely cost-effective dual chainsword build (which has been accepted by the ITC as legit) in the same way as Scars. There’s still plenty of support for them, and another thing worth at least thinking about here is running these on foot, as the USP Raven Guard do have compared to Scars is the ability to just straight up deep strike a unit with Strike from the Shadows. At only 140pts for a full squad (or 144 with a couple of storm shields scattered in) that’s at least quite funny, but without the easy access to strength or damage boosts Scars get it still just looks a bit lacklustre. It’s a truly eye-watering number of attacks at the price point though, so maybe, just maybe, there could be a place for it in some strange build. Raven Guard have two big things going for these guys: This may not get them the nod over other options, but it’s worth considering. Much like Suppressors, if you drop these into cover then anything not nearby is going to have a bit of trouble shifting them. They also present the threat of popping in and assassinating an unsuspecting character, as the footprint of a 3-model squad isn’t huge, meaning your opponent might mess up their screening. These are still a bit heftily priced for what they do, and Raven Guard are quite likely better off spending the points on Aggressors and using their tricks to position them, but these are very cool and if you want to use them they’re certainly at least fine here. Y i k e s. Eliminators are already very, very scary to play against, and Raven Guard really just push them to absurd heights. To start with, their camo cloaks kick in based on having the benefit of cover rather than because they’re in terrain, so the chapter tactic lets them deploy in your main gunline (if you’d rather have the re-rolls than the scouting) and still enjoy their 1+ save. That already makes them more dangerous than normal, but once the Doctrine goes up things just get a bit silly. I think a huge proportion of Raven Guard armies will start with three squads of these, and they’re going to be absurdly painful to play against for anyone who enjoys their characters being alive. Unlike in most Marine armies, when the Doctrine is up you’re often going to want the sergeant to participate in the shooting rather than give orders, as you’ll frequently already be hitting and wounding on 2s and the increased chance of dealing a mortal wound on Mortis rounds outweighs the accuracy buff. Stuff you point three squads of these at from Raven Guard just dies, especially if you put them in a battle pile with re-roll bubbles. Another nasty trick you can tack on to one squad is to give the sergeant Korvidari Bolts via the Favour of the Ravenspire stratagem. These allow him to shoot at extra range and with no-LOS with all three profiles (so, relevantly, the Mortis profile), substantially increasing the threat of untimely death even to characters that hide out of LOS. If you play Raven Guard, get these. Perma-cover is really good for tanks. If that’s all you want you can build out a successor chapter with Stealthy and Master Artisans, but bringing vehicles to back up your Raven Guard, especially if you’re packing Shrike, is definitely going to be fine. Raven Guard Librarians have access to the Umbramancy Discipline. It has two powers that are pretty meh, two that are OK, and two that are great and you’ll end up taking a lot of the time. Like all the other supplements, Raven Guard characters are fleshed out with a full set of warlord traits to pick from, supplementing the trait they got in the main Marine codex (which is reprinted here). Remember when reading these that the Hero of the Chapter and Master of the Trifold Path exist, allowing you to either add a trait to an extra non-named character, or supplement your actual warlord’s first trait with an extra one. The Raven Guard’s warlord traits are slightly underwhelming overall – a lot of them are very clever or cool abilities, but they suffer from being highly situational and often being replicable via other means that need less commitment. However, Master of Ambush is a massive exception to this – it’s extraordinarily powerful and opens up a bunch of new strategies that are really only available to Raven Guard. While they did used to be able to replicate it waaay back when, the “top end” of what a powerful Marine INFANTRY unit can now do is vastly higher than it used to be, and buying into a full squad of something like Assault Centurions also represents a vastly smaller proportion of your points. Even the base case of “just” putting ten Veteran Intercessors in your opponent’s face T1 has its attractions, and the possibilities are soooo much bigger than that. Expect to see this one everywhere, and a few of the better among the others pop up here and there. Like the other supplement factions, Raven Guard have access to two groups of relics: Relics of the Ravenspire, which are exclusive to the Raven Guard chapter unless you use a stratagem to give one to a successor, and Special-Issue Wargear, which successors have access to. The Relics of the Ravenspire are: There’s some good stuff in here. It isn’t quite as wild as the White Scars or Iron Hands selections, but there’s a good set of things for boosting up murder-characters, with Ex Tenebris standing out as something that aligns extremely well with what the army wants to do and providing a hefty capability boost. The Raven Guard Special-Issue Wargear includes three repeats and five new choices. Raven Guard get a set of special bolts actually worth thinking about on a unit you’ll want to take, and other than the Shadowmaster Cloak everything here is at least decent, with some crossing over into good. Raven Guard get 16 of their own stratagems. This is a heck of a set of Stratagems, providing a lot of tools for surprising your opponent and making their lives a lot more fraught and risky in a highly appropriate manner. One thing that’s important to clock is that a lot of this isn’t really “locked in” to only working well with the doctrine or the main Raven Guard tactic, and we’d expect to see quite a bit of experimentation with Raven Guard in soup lists on that basis. Between the stuff here and Master of Ambush they’re basically best in breed among the Marines for throwing a single souped up unit of your choice right at the enemy in a way that’s hard to stop, and it seems reasonably plausible that a smaller Raven Guard detachment or successor detachment tuned to exploit this might fit into a wider Imperium force. Luckily it’s time to look at successor Chapters now, so we can cover this in more detail. The most appealing part of Raven Guard, looking in from the outside, is their box of tricks to let INFANTRY units of various stripes deep strike or redeploy, so we’re naturally looking for successor traits that complement this well. The most promising combination that shines out from the list is: Hungry for Battle is the mandatory part – combined with Strike from the Skies you suddenly have a jump pack unit charging on 7s out of deep strike without needing to do any of the fiddly work with a Chaplain, and adding a re-roll to this with Raven’s Blade makes getting a smash Captain in pretty reliable, whether coming from “true” deep strike or being moved via Shadowstep. It’s also good for things that don’t have jump packs, as the options for getting +charge on these in pure Raven Guard are less easy to access. We can certainly imagine this combination being used effectively in a Marine detachment that’s part of a larger army. When you look at a new book that’s part of one of the game’s “superfactions” you need to be on the lookout for anything they let you do that’s unique or novel within that, and the ability to put something as dangerous as a full Centurion squad right up in your opponent’s face turn 1 with very low “risk” is pretty novel – the closest alternative feels like Custodes Bikes, and those can be avoided by people who know what they’re doing. Combined with their excellent support for Smash Captains, which are frequently tapped into Imperium lists from Blood Angels and the fact that stacking Stranglehold with the Callidus Assassin is fairly filthy, we can see a detachment built with this set of tactics comprising a smash Captain, Librarian, one horrendous monster unit like Centurions/Aggressors and a third character to make up a Supreme Command turning up in a soup list, as this successor combo feels genuinely more useful to what that detachment is trying to do than the mainline one. The other mildly amusing possibility is to really lean in to the sniper options and take Master Artisans with Long Ranged Marksmen, but it feels like a force of pure snipers gets so much out of the Raven Guard trait and a paid-for Chapter Master that it won’t go anywhere. Long Ranged Marksmen also theoretically combos with deep-striking flamestorm Aggressors or Assault Centurions, but in practice we think the bolter build of the former is still going to be superior, and for the latter hitting melee is a critical part of the payoff, so you don’t necessarily want to flame everything nearby off the board! Raven Guard have a bunch of powerful things you can do with them, and in some ways their lists are among the easiest to build out of new Marines. The core tension you’re often facing with new Marines is wanting to have a dual battalion to get lots of CP to power your nonsense, but that eating into a lot of the points you want to spend on payoff units. The great news for Raven Guard is that Intercessors and Sniper Scouts are among your payoff units, making this dead easy to do without sacrificing power. We’ll present two lists here, one pure Primaris (as there are a bunch of people who like that, and Raven Guard support it exceptionally well) and one mixing in some Marine classics to show off their other tricks. Army List - Click to Expand Battalion – Raven Guard – 1054pts HQ Shrike – Warlord – 130 Phobos Lieutenant (Gun Build), Relic – Ex Tenebris – 81 Troops 3×5 Intercessors w/bolt rifles – 255 Elites Primaris Ancient – 69 Boltstorm Aggressors x6 – 222 Heavy Support 9 Hellblasters – 297 Battalion – Raven Guard – 946pts HQ Primaris Chaplain, Relics of the Chapter – Benediction of Fury, Hero of the Chapter – Master of Ambush – 77 Phobos Librarian – 101 Troops 5 Intercessors w/stalker rifles – 85 5 Infiltrators – 110 5 Incursors – 95 Elites 2x Invictor w/flamer – 262 Heavy Support 3×3 Eliminators – 216 (one with Korvidari bolts) 2000pts Total, 10CP after spend. This list presents a horrendous amount of Primaris muscle that your opponent has to deal with, and has some extreme redeploy/deep strike threats in the form of the Aggressor and Hellblaster squads, the former likely pressing forward accompanied by the Invictors early on if you think you’re going first. If not, then you want to aim to push them into some mid board cover, hopefully with the warsuits lurking too. The Intercessor core can form a traditional Marine battle pile, with the Eliminators either deploying with that or heading into mid board cover to threaten to do bad things to enemy characters. Shrike makes sure he positions himself wherever his aura is going to have the greatest impact, while also presenting a potent counter-charge threat against any planes or enemy murder characters that dare to trouble your lines. Wings Note: Combined with my disappointing outing at the LGT, after racking up 30,000+ words about Space Marines in the last few months this is the list that has finally broken me – I have a substantial portion of this on sprue/assembled ready to be attacked with Contrast once this and the Iron Hands review are in the pipe. I like Space Marines now. All hail the checks notes God Emperor. Army List - Click to Expand Battalion – Raven Guard – 1358pts Shrike – 130pts Phobos Lieutenant (Gun Build), Relic – Ex Tenebris – 81 Troops 10 Intercessors w/bolt rifles, thunder hammer (Veterans) – 186 2×5 Infiltrators – 220 Elites 5x Centurion Assault Squad w/hurricane bolters – 260 Primaris Ancient – 69 Relic Contemptor w/ Las – 190 Heavy Support 3×3 Eliminators w/Instigator Bolt Carbine on Sergeant – 222 Battalion – Raven Guard – 641 Smash Captain, Warlord – The Imperium’s Sword, Master of the Trifold Path – Master of Ambush – 143 Librarian w/jump pack, force stave – 116 Troops 3×5 Sniper Scouts – 195 Heavy Support Stalker – 95 Thunderfire Cannon – 92 2000pts Total, 10CP after spend. This list makes use of what is probably the single best thing to push with the Master of Ambush power, which is Assault Centurions. The rest of the army forms a bit more of a static gunline, ideally wanting to camp on terrain in Shrike and the Lieutenant’s auras, throwing out a massive amount of sniper fire, backed up by a bit more solid anti tank from the Contemptor, and the powerful harassment shooting. Bringing two squads of Infiltrators lets you build a nice anti-deep strike bubble around this. Speaking of deep strike, the full squad of Veteran Intercessors goes in deep strike, ready to come out and bully something at a critical juncture. Finally, there’s a smash Captain. Use him wisely (or throw him straight at their juiciest target after his pre-game redeploy, you do you). Of the supplements we’ve reviewed thus far, the Raven Guard probably took to grow on us, as it doesn’t have the in-your-face brute strength of some of the others, but as you dig in and see how it all fits together it becomes apparent just how potent this book is, especially attached to a very powerful chapter tactic. It’s also got some great tools for people looking to build out into Imperium armies, and we expect lots of experimentation with them in these as well. Given this book has literally made Wings buy some Space Marines, I think it’s fair to say it’s got a lot of potential, and we’re very excited to see what the community does with it. As ever, if we’ve missed your favourite unit, included some howling rules error or if you just want to share pictures of your cool bird bois you can reach us at contact@goonhammer.com or via our Facebook Page.
Doctrine – Surgical Strikes
The Unit
Kayvaan Shrike
Notable Core Units
Primaris Characters with Sniper Weapons
Chaplains
Smash Captains
Intercessors
Sniper Scouts
TheChirurgeon’s Note: That’s because they are RAD AS HELL, you joyless jerk. Also because they’re the cheapest Troops that Marines can field with “Heavy” weapons.
Invictors
Aggressors
Assault Centurions
Vanguard Veterans
Suppressors
Inceptors
Eliminators
Vehicles in General
Psychic Powers
Wings Note: I’m not super convinced. As with many “buff this psyker” options, the fact that Librarians start out way worse in a fight than Captains makes this a bit questionable, and the fact that in order to go after Knights properly you need to invest in something that boosts your Leadership makes this a bit less good than it initially sounds, especially as for slamming the hell out of a character Knight, the RG doctrine means a “traditional” smash Captain is deadly reliable. If you are going for this, I’d also argue for always picking the force sword rather than the force stave – I think more circumstances will arise where having AP-3 lined up against something you don’t beat the leadership of matters more than where S11 rather than S9 will matter, especially as when going after T5 characters you’ll still end up wounding on 2s. I think this is one of the better attempts at this kind of ability we’ve seen and could have legs, but would guess that it’ll turn out to be too intensive in CP and traits to quite get there over just buying a hammer guy.
Warlord Traits
This has neither of those drawbacks, and the possibilities are thus considerable. Screens got you down? Surprise – six Aggressors are here, and they look mad. Opponent deployed some Knights right on the line? Here comes a Chaplain with six Assault Centurions to really ruin their day. Want to throw two smash Captains in your opponent’s face turn 1? Have a smash Captain with this bring his buddy, who is also a smash Captain, along for the ride. Want to do something incredibly stupid that won’t survive the two-week FAQ? Give this to a Land Raider Excelsior – the travel partner has to be INFANTRY but the user doesn’t, so you can bring a clown car of all your favourite characters and 6 Assault Centurions to run buck wild on your opponent’s army.
Even just used sensibly this ability is exceptional and allows for some potent tricks, and good enough that detachments built around it could see play in soup armies. Do note too that there’s no requirement to deploy the user and the transported unit together, so if you just want to throw a unit and don’t want to commit the character you can just place them back in your lines. A+Relics
Relics of the Ravenspire
Special-Issue Wargear
Stratagems
Successor Chapters
Army Lists
List One – Prime Time
List Two – Drill Baby Drill
(you can bump this up to 6 and shuffle other stuff if you aren’t playing ITC, taking 5 is to avoid handing over max Gangbusters)Final Thoughts
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