Raven Guard Rhino, Progress Report One

The next model I'm adding to my Raven Guard army is a Rhino. I discovered that one of the massive weaknesses of my current list is protection and mobility for my Tactical Squad and/or Sternguard Squad. So, a Rhino was in order. It doesn't hurt that it was also a model I had in my piles of unbuilt stuff that I want to get painted this year.



I spent a good while carefully assembling the model, and then magnetizing the doors and dozer blade. The dozer is from an Astra Militarum tank, either a Chimera or a Russ if I remember right. I prefer these to the silly spike rams that come with Marine tanks. I sank three 1/8" magnets into the mounting bar and matched them with equally sized magnets sunk into the underside of the Rhino body. I used quarter inch magnets for the doors, which allows this model to be a Predator in the future by attaching magnets to the inside of the sponsons.

The gunner also got some extra attention. I used old, metal arms on him and attached hands from the current Devastator Squad. I'm trying to make the gunners/crew of my Raven Guard tanks look a little more interesting than just the two-hands-on-gun pose. Plus, I'm saving all those gun arms for my magnetized Landspeeder gunners.

 

It will be a little while before this sucker gets primed, as the current string of blizzards here are impeding my ability to prime models. It's just too cold in the garage for spraying, and I've fallen out of love with my old brush-on primer method.

 

Despite the fact that I haven't been painting much, I have been drafting up a bunch of Raven Guard army lists. I'm trying to find a list that is both effective and fun to play. To that end, I came up with the following 1750 list:

 

Bladewing Assault Brotherhood (gives some fun deployment and redeployment options)

• Chaplain with jump pack
• 10-man Assault Squad with jump packs, two flamers, and a lightning claw sergeant
• 10-man Assault Squad with jump packs, two flamers, and a lightning claw sergeant
• 5-man Vanguard Veteran Squad with jump packs and a mix of power weapons and shields

Speartip Strike (gives some interesting rules for "suppressing and harassing" enemy units, plus a ton of speeders)

• Three separate squadrons of two Landspeeders, each with a multimelta and Typhoon missiles
• Two separate squads of three naked Scout Bikes

Ravenhawk Assault Group (deepstriking Stormraven with some Sternguard and a Dreadnought, all of which reroll to wound against a selected enemy unit for the game)

• Stormraven with lascannon, multimelta, and a searchlight
• Dreadnought with a multimelta and powerfist
• 5-man Sternguard Squad with combiplasmas

Altogether, twenty-six jump infantry, six bikes, five infantry, a walker, a flyer, and six Landspeeders. Fast, flexible, and with lots of options. The only part I'm not really sold on is the Ravenhawk formation. It's intended to pick a hard unit or monster and nuke it on arrival. But I'm not really sure about keeping up to 461 points in mandatory reserves. I've had reserve rolls seriously hamper my armies of late. I'd love to finally field a Stormraven, but am not sure this is the right formation for me. I'm thinking maybe I'll switch to a Storm Wing (two Stormtalons and a Stormraven, all arrive with a single roll, Raven gets Strafing Run) or a Raptor Wing (two Stormtalons and a unit of Landspeeders, speeders spot enemy units for the flyers to get rerolls to wound or Armor Penetration, flyers automatically arrive Turn Two). The Storm Wing suffers the same heavy points investment in Reserve, but has some stronger shooting. I can't decide, but that's ok. I am going to start with the Brotherhood and work downwards.

 

Well, I'm off to wire some junction boxes. Wish me luck and non-electrocution!