Unit Review: Ravenwing Black Knights (and Command Squads)

I love me my Ravenwing Knights. They did some quality work for me back in 9th edition. I ran a Ravenwing detachment for most of that edition, and the Black Knights were the centerpiece unit. Even when I broke down and started playing a Deathwing detachment, it still included my 10 Ravenwing Knights - and Sammael, as it happened. Sammael would tell them "Go forth and be awesome!" and with Weapons of the Dark Age they'd proceed to delete whatever I pointed them at.

Early in 10th edition, I found them to be pretty disappointing. On paper, their damage output should have been about the same within 9", but getting them there was a trick, and there's a vast gulf of difference between two 3-damage shots and three 2-damage shots. Plus, their melee profile took a pretty significant hit. So, after a game or two I shelved them, and my Deathwing Knights had a run on the table until I started playing a Firestorm list.

At the beginning of 2024, when we first started getting credible information about our codex supplement, the thing I was most excited about was the Ravenwing Command Squad. The prospect of being able to put a brick of nine Ravenwing Knights on the table with their overlapping abilities was, I thought, the most exciting thing we were getting from the supplement, and while most other DA players were painting up the contents of their Deathwing Assault boxes, I was working on getting two 9-bike bricks on the table. This culminated in running a list with a grand total of 27 bikes in it at some competitive events over the next couple months. Before I get into my experience with them, let's go over the abilities the units bring to the table. The next few pis are from 39K

The basic profile of the Black Knight is what you'd expect from an elite, non-Primaris mounted unit. 12" move, T5, 3 Wounds, OC 2. Not bad. The basic profile now gets a 5++ all the time instead of just against shooting attacks, which is nice. 

Next up are the ranged weapons.

The plasma talons are the main reason you'd take the unit. Being able to get three AP -2 Damage 2 shots per bike is a pretty potent ability. With 9 bikes, even getting 2 shots per bike is pretty effective.

There's also a grenade launcher profile, which I'm not bothering to show. I'm sure it's got some fans, but I don't find it very impressive, and taking them dilutes the whole point of why you'd take the squad. And, of course, they have bolt pistols, because Space Marines.

The melee profile of Black Knights is okay, but it's a far cry from when they could just obliterate anything with Rending attacks. Effectively they all have power weapons, which is not nothing, and a full brick can sling 24 of these attacks, plus the Champion's attacks. That's pretty good for chewing through chaff at least, and their datasheet ability does let them punch up.

On paper, this seems like a pretty good ability, but going from Damage 2 to Damage 1 really hurt Black Knights ability to engage the tougher targets the Anti-Big Thing 4+ rule would seem to suggest they should be good into. On the charge against a 3+ save opponent, if you can get every member of a 9-bike brick to swing (which is harder than it sounds), you're apt to get 7-9 unsaved wounds into the target - that's including the Champion's attacks. That doesn't even kill a Rhino. If it's a target with a 2+ save or a 4+ invulnerable, it will be even less. That is without Oath of Moment, but I don't know why you'd be charging a fresh Oath target instead of putting your plasma talons into it, so charging a fresh Oath target seems pretty unlikely. 

One of the fun features of 10th edition is that the datasheet abilities of attached units stack with each other, and this is where the combined Knight+Command Squad brick gets cool. The unit consists of an Ancient, an Apothecary, and a Champion with profiles the same as the Knights, except they have 4 wounds instead of 3. Also, the Champion has a master-crafted power sword, which gives him 6 attacks Damage 2, with the same Strength and AP as the Black Knights, so that does add some punch to the melee output. Then there are the datasheet abilities.

The Astartes Banner  really allows a brick of bikes to decisively take an objective. I'm not saying there aren't armies out there that can beat OC 27 on an objective, but they probably don't want those units anywhere near a Black Knight brick. 

The Narthecium we all know and love. It allows you to bring back a destroyed bike a round, which can include the Ancient. This lets you pull some wound allocation shenanigans, putting 3-damage attacks on the Ancient to eat a couple of them, then bringing him back with the Apothecary.

The Champion brings three different abilities to the unit. For starters, there's never a bad time to have more movement. Free Heroic Intervention can be quite handy in a unit that wants to be within a 9" range envelope.  And, though it's not shown here, the Champion has the Character keyword, so he can be given enhancements. I've been finding Fire Discipline from the Gladius detachment to be particularly fun.

So, when you combine a 6-man Ravenwing Black Knight squad with a Ravenwing Command Squad, you get a high-mobility, high-OC package with at least moderately good close combat output and good-to-fantastic shooting output. It can drown an opposing unit in hard-to-make saves with 2 damage shots. We've all had occasions where we've hit something with a few lascannon shots that statistically should have gone through, but our opponent happens to spike a few lucky saves. They're far less likely to do that against a torrent of supercharged plasma.  Also, the combined unit takes a significant amount of effort for your opponent to pick up, is a good target for buffing stratagems and abilities, and they even have the Grenades keyword, so you can get some Mortal Wound output out of them. They're also helped by the recent change to the Hazardous rule. The Ancient can eat 2 failures because he's 4 wounds, and if you happen to have them near Lion Dad, his No Hiding From The Watchers aura gives a pretty good chance of reducing or outright negating losses from Hazardous.

That said, there are some downsides to the unit. For one, it has a big footprint. This can situationally be an advantage (you can completely cover an objective with them), but it can be challenging to move them around. They wind up competing for space with vehicles in your deployment zone and moving around the board. They can't go through walls like Infantry can, so you're obliged to move around terrain, which can hamper your ability to bring their offensive power to bear. They're also pretty short-ranged, particularly if you're trying to get them into Rapid Fire range, so they require at least one turn to move them into staging positions. The recent imposition of a Pivot tax also hurts them. I have found it's generally possible to keep them oriented in the direction you deploy them in and basically have them Tokyo Drift around the board instead of turning the models, but sometimes it's unavoidable, which can cost movement. Also, they heavily rely on mass-2 Damage output, so their output is really hurt by -1 Damage or half-Damage abilities.

They're also expensive. A full brick costs 310 points without enhancements. That's a lot of points to sink into a unit. You could get a lot of other stuff for that investment. That could be 2 Gladiators, or a Squad of Deathwing Knights and an attached character, or Lion Dad. You have to be pretty sure you're happy with what they're doing for you if you're going to shell out those kinds of points. 

If you were to ask how I rate the Black Knight brick as a unit, I'd say they are decent. If I'm being honest with myself, I don't think they are an A-tier unit. I think they're B-tier to high C-tier, primarily because this edition is not kind to Mounted units, and they are too many points. I think the combined price for the brick ought to be about 250 points instead of 310 - say 150 points for the 6-man Black Knight squad and 100 for the Command Squad. Alternately, give the Black Knight squad a sexier Datasheet ability. What they could really use is an inherent ability to ignore damage modifiers. That would be much more useful to them than the Knights of Caliban ability, and it could even be dubbed Weapons of the Dark Age, which would make at least me squee with glee. 

As it currently stands, the Black Knight+Command Squad brick is a useable unit, but it's not necessarily the most competitive use of your points. I stand by my opinion that it was the most exciting Dark Angels-unique option available to us at our book's release, but after the most recent Balance Dataslate, melee Dark Angels built around Deathwing Knights and Inner Circle Companions is the most competitive build. Also, using more than one brick can be problematic. They tend to get in each others' way on the table. I think they work best in combination with Infantry, which can move through terrain the bikes have to go around. If you want to use more than one of these bricks, you'll really need to keep the challenges of moving them in mind, with your other unit choices not competing with the Black Knight bricks for the movement lanes they're going to need to use. Hopefully they'll get some love in future updates, but until that happens, at least you're not handicapping yourself too badly if you want to use them.