Detachment Review: Company of Hunters

My last list from 9th edition

Hello, battle brothers! With the release of the new codex supplement and everyone building new Deathwing armies with their contents of the Deathwing Assault box, I naturally figured now would be a good time to try a new Ravenwing list! I tend to be like that. Back in 9th edition when Deathwing was all the rage because of the perma-Transhuman effect, I was playing a Ravenwing list, and even when I decided if I couldn't beat them join them, the ultimate iteration of my Deathwing list still featured Sammael, 10 Ravenwing Knights, and a couple Talonmasters. My final 9th edition list returned to majority Ravenwing, built around the idea that putting a Ravenwing Ancient around 3 units of 3 multimelta Attack Bikes might be good. 

I dabbled with some of the Ravenwing stuff at the beginning of 10th edition, but was underwhelmed with how Attack Bikes and Ravenwing Knights performed. My lists featured a 10-strong Deathwing Command Squad and 5 Deathwing Knights for a while. Then when Codex: Space Marine released, I started using a Firestorm Assault Force. I've been pretty happy with it, but with our supplement's rules in force, I wanted to try using big combined bricks of Ravenwing Knights and Ravenwing Command Squads. Being able to chuck 27 S8 AP-3 D2 shots seems like it ought to be good.

It barely all fits on my display board!

This lead me to doing some deep thought about what detachment to use. There were 3 contenders - the Firestorm Assault Force, the Gladius Task Force, and the Company of Hunters. What makes the Firestorm Assault Force attractive is its detachment rule, plus the Champion of Humanity upgrade. However, fatally, the Firestorm doesn't have any mechanism that lets a unit fall back and shoot. I can't afford to have my Ravenwing Knight bricks lose a round of shooting because my opponent touched them with something they can't immediately beat down, so that eliminated the Firestorm. That led me to weighing the pros and cons of the Company of Hunters vs the Gladius Task force, and I thought you might be interested in my thoughts about our RW detachment.

The obvious place to start is with the detachment rule, Masters of Manoeuvre (gotta love that British spelling!). The rule reads:

Adeptus Astartes units from your army are eligible to shoot in a turn in which they Advanced or Fell Back.

That's actually a pretty good rule, and it does show that rules development team understands that a Ravenwing force is going to be engaging in close up firefights and getting stuck in whether they want to our not, so having the detachment rule natively be able to let them bounce out and shoot without having to spend CP for it is valuable. The Company of Hunters is a contender on the strength of this alone.

Now let's look at the Enhancements, all of which have the caveat: Ravenwing models only.

Master Crafted Weapon: Melee weapons equipped by the bearer have the [Precision] ability.

Mounted Strategist: The bearer's unit is eligible to declare a charge in a turn in which it Advanced or Fell Back.

Master of Manoeuvre: (paraphrasing for brevity) The bearer's unit can exceed the points limit for Strategic Reserve and come in a turn earlier than ordinarily allowed.

Recon Hunter: Models in the bearer's unit have the Scouts 9" ability.

The winner out of this collection is Recon Hunter. If there's a unit to build a Ravenwing army around, it's the big bricks of Ravenwing Knights. We're aiming to get them within 9" to trigger their plasma talons' Rapid Fire 1, and Recon Hunter would definitely help with that. The next most attractive is Master of Manoevre. Not that I think I'm going to be putting more than 500 points in Reserve, but being able to have a unit come out of Strategic Reserve Turn 1 is powerful. My reservation here is they'd come in outside of their 9" Rapid Fire 1 range, and so would miss out on getting to put their full firepower into a target when they arrive. These two Enhancements definitely have play.

On the other hand, I'm not enchanted with either Master Crafted Weapon or Mounted Strategist. Master Crafted Weapon is only situationally useful, and if it's ever important for a character to have Precision, one can always play the Epic Challenge strat. I'd only ever pay for Master Crafted Weapon if I was at 1990 points and stuck for any other way to spend the last 10. Mounted Strategist, on the other hand, is an enhancement looking for a unit. The best close combat unit the Ravenwing have is Sammael, and he already comes with this ability. I could see sticking Sammael in a unit of Outriders and sending them up one side of the board, but nothing else we've got wants to be charging all the time. Sometimes it's better to charge than to be charged, but other times charging is just a way to get your units killed in your turn. Again, its an expenditure I'd only make if I had no other way to spend 15 points, not a build-around.

Now let's look at Strategems. I'm going to omit Armour of Contempt because we already know it's good. All of them are 1 CP, which is nice. They're all keyworded to Ravenwing units, and the first 2 are also keyworded to Mounted units. Paraphrasing for brevity.

Hunter's Trail: Sticky an objective in your Command Phase

Talon Strike: Shooting or Fight phase, +1 To Wound rolls vs an Infantry Character or Mounted Character unit

Death on the Wind: Shooting phase, force a Battleshock test on a unit hit by an attack. -1 penalty on the test if a Ravenwing unit is within 6" of the target unit

High Speed Focus: opponent's shooting phase, -1 to hit target unit for the phase

Rapid Reappraisal: End of opponent's Fight phse, target unit goes into Strategic Reserve

Honestly, I don't love any of these stratagems. None of them are terrible, but I can't really call them good either. Between Death on the Wind and Rapid Reappraisal, I can't decide which is least useful of the batch. DotW relies on the Battleshock mechanic, which is unreliable at best, and most of the time if we're going to shoot at something, we're going to be trying to make sure it's not still on the table when we're done. Furthermore, to make inflicting Battleshock useful, the unit in question would have to be the only enemy unit on an objective we can't get a unit onto. The best use I can immediately think of for it would be to have a Darkshroud spritz something with its heavy bolter to trigger this strat, because a Darkshroud isn't apt to kill anything. As far as Rapid Reappraisal goes, with the inherent mobility of Ravenwing units, a unit would have to be really out of position for me to want to spend CP on this. 

Moving on to the others, High Speed Focus would be more attractive if we didn't have the Darkshroud. As it is, I could see using it on a unit that wound up overextended beyond the Darkshroud's stealth bubble, or maybe to counteract an opponent using a +1 to hit effect to counteract the Darkshroud's effect, but it's too situational to be unambiguously good. 

Talon Strike could have been good if it allowed +1 To Wound vs an Infantry or Mounted unit, or on a Character unit, but making usable only against a specifically Infantry Character unit or Mounted Character unit makes it far too situational for my taste. Plasma Talons aren't really going to need +1 to wound against most Infantry or Mounted units, and I'm not too likely to be spending CP to buff the output of Outriders.

That leaves Hunter's Trail as potentially the most useful stratagem out of the lot (not counting Armor of Contempt), and that's just sad. Sure, being able to sticky objectives is very useful, but it's not a build-around ability. Chances are, if I can afford to sticky an objective and move off it, I can probably find a way to put a cheap unit on it to score it. Again, I can see situations where it could be useful, but it's not a strat I see myself using every game.

I suppose it'll come as no surprise at this point when I state the Company of Hunters just doesn't do it for me. The total package of Detachment rule, Enhancements, and Stratagems just do not synergize well with the existing Ravenwing units. What I find disappointing about this is that the Stormlance Task Force definitely synergizes well with Thunderwolves and the plethora of mounted characters available to Space Wolf players. You might argue that the Stormlance was designed to boost Outriders enough to make them a viable choice to play and that those rules benefiting Thunderwolves so much more is an unintended consequence, but c'mon - Stormlance, Thunderwolves? You expect me to believe that's a coincidence? You'll have a hard time convicing me someone in the Rules team didn't have Thunderwolves in mind when they were composing the Stormlance. 

It wouldn't have taken much to make the Company of Hunters a good detachment. One legitimately good stratagem added to its Detachment rule and (good) Enhancements would have been enough. If they swapped out Talon Strike with Weapons of the Dark Age, I'd be all about that. Even if it didn't confer +1 Damage to all attacks, they could have given us something in the spirit of WotDA - Devastating Wounds maybe, or Sustained Hits 1. Unfortunately, the detachment doesn't have that build-around strat, so regretfully I decided to pass on it.

For my new list, I wound up going with the Gladius Task Force. Combat Doctrines aren't as good for my purposes as Master of Manoeuvre, but I figure they will serve well enough. I can go into Devastator Doctrine when I want to try and get my RW Knight bricks within Rapid Fire range, Tactical Doctrine when I want to bounce out of combat and shoot, and Assault Doctrine if I need to cover a lot of distance to flip an objective. One of my RW Champions is definitely getting Fire Discipline, and because I might as well spend the points on something, the other is getting The Honor Vehement. The set of strats is much more useful than the Company of Hunters ones, and can be used universally instead of just on Ravenwing units, which matters because my list is mostly Ravenwing, but it's not all Ravenwing.

In conclusion, the Company of Hunters has some interesting elements to it, but I don't think it's the most effective detachment we have available for playing a Ravewning heavy list. It's a missed opportunity on GW's part. Maybe they'll tweak it in a Balance Dataslate, but I think we're waiting until 11th edition for the detachment the Ravenwing deserve.

Edit: I wish the Compay of Hunters was as well designed around Ravenwing Knights as the Stormlance Task Force is around Thunderwolf Cavalry. I know the Stormlance is not a Space Wolf detachment, but it plays into Thunderwolf spam so well, you'd have a hard time convincing me its design wasn't heavily influenced by a Space Wolf fanboy.