Further Adventures with the Company of Hunters

Hello battle brethren! I've been continuing my effort at making the Company of Hunters work. It hasn't been great thus far, but I have been making it work better. Of course, after the GT at The Portal I practically had nowhere to go but up, but I do think I improved the list and am starting to use it better. 

The picture actually doesn't show the version of the list I've been using since the GT. I made some modifications following that event. Here's the short version.

Secret Missions Are Fun! V1.2

Azrael
Sammael
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manouevre (Warlord)
Ravenwing Command Squad: Recon Hunter
Techmarine

Outrider Squad: 3 chonky biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 chonky biker boys
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys

Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome biker boys
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome biker boys

Ravenwing Darkshroud
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator
Callidus Assassin

The big difference with this list from the previous version is the 3 Vindicators, which went in to deal with problems the Black Knights struggle with. That subsequently frees up the Black Knights to go after elite units, which they're better suited to dealing with than Monsters or Vehicles. Also I included Azrael in the list, because I wanted to be able to use strats more freely. He and the Assault Intercessors replaced the 3rd Ravenwing Command Squad and Outrider Squad. Sammy still gets attached to one of the Outrider squads, whereas the other just runs by itself so I can freely stick it in strat reserve as needed.

I was able to get in a practice game against Orks on Friday last week. My opponent, Brian, is a pretty new player. He ran a War Horde with Ghaz, Snikrot, assorted other characters, a Killrig, and diverse units of Ork Boys, Nobz, Gitz, and whatnot. My list played well enough into his that I didn't have to do any Secret Mission shenanigans. I scored 45 on Primary (Take and Hold) and did well on Secondaries. Brian struggled to hang onto points to score Primary. He took fixed Secondaries: Storm Hostile and Engage. He scored very well on Storm Hostile, getting 16 points from it, but only 4 points on Engage. 

As an aside, from my own experience I don't think Engage is a good Secondary to take as Fixed, and challenging to score as a Tactical Secondary if you draw it at the wrong time. It seems like it ought to be easy, as you just need units to be in the right locations and you can have them do what you want them to afterwards, but your opponent has some say in where you can put your units, and you risk overextending units and losing them for marginal points gains. I pointed out to Brian if he'd taken Assassinate, he'd have scored 15 points on it because he killed 3 of my characters, which was something that was going to happen anyway because I have to put them in harm's way to use them. 

I also had a league game on Friday against World Eaters. My opponent, Cam, is a regular down at the Clever Kobold in Groton CT, and I've played into his Sororitas. This was the first time I played into his World Eaters. He ran Angron, Kharne, a couple characters on Juggernauts, 9 Exalted Eightbound (a squad of 6 and a squad of 3), a couple 3-man squads of Eightbound, 10 Berserkers, 2 squads of Jakhals, and a Rhino. 

This was a challenging game. I went in with the right idea of screening out his Scout moves and his opening moves with my Infiltrators and my Darkshroud (since there was virtually no shooting for it to defend stuff against), but I didn't execute it well and wound up losing 2 of my Vindicators on Cam's first turn. I did not have a good enough 2nd turn to recover from that, and things cascaded from there. Cam crushed me that game 100-36, but I feel like if we re-racked and went again, I'd have done much better, having learned from my mistakes.

On Saturday I played in an RTT at TJ's Cafe & Games in Milford MA. It's a lovely store with a good crowd, good selection of merchandise, and as the name implies they serve food there as well, which is very convenient when you're spending the day there.

1rst round my opponent was Gil, playing a Chaos Daemons list. Chaos Daemons lists generally lean hard into the Greater Daemons, and Gil's was no exception. It was unusual in that he ran 3 Great Unclean Ones (one with Endless Gift giving it a 4+ FNP) and Rotigus, who is a named GUO. He also ran the Changeling, 2 units of Nurglings, a unit of Plaguebearers, 2 Beasts of Nurgle, 3 Plague Drones, and 3 allied War Dogs (2 Brigands and a Carnivore). That's a lot of plague beef to chew through. I took a look at that, contemplated taking Fixed Secondaries so I could take Bring It Down, and figured that was a trap and went with Tactical.

I had a bad start. I committed hard to try and bring down one of Gil's GUOs with both my Ravenwing Knight bricks (I drew Bring It Down first turn). That failed to bring him down or even get particularly close to doing so, and as a result I lost both bricks without getting much return on the investment. From there I started playing a lot better, refocusing on bringing down easier targets, starting with the War Dogs because they were a much more significant ranged threat than the GUOs. By the end of the game, I'd managed to bring down almost everything that wasn't a GUO or a Beast of Nurgle, and even managed to bring down the wounded GUO.  I managed to pull off War of Attrition, which was good because I couldn't keep units on points with those GUOs plodding into them. The final score was 96-72 in Gil's favor.

2nd round I played against Grey Knights. My opponent John brought a list with 10 Paladins, 20 Terminators, Draigo, 2 Terminator Grand Masters, 2 Brotherhood Librarians, and a 5-man Strike Squad. I think my list was kind of a stat-check for John's, as the Ravenwing Knight bricks could rapidly get to where they could put their plasma into John's Terminators, and the big bricks of Terminators were good targets for my Vindicators' demolisher cannons. John also failed a key charge that was fairly short (5-6 inches as I recall) even with a reroll, which really hurt him. The final score was 76-31 in my favor.

3rd round I played into another Grey Knights list. My opponent Tommy brought a list with 3 Nemesis Dreadknights and a Grand Master Dreadknight, Draigo, 2 Librarians, 3x5 Terminators, a 5-man Strike Squad, and a unit of Inquisitorial Agents to be action monkeys. This list had a much more respectable ranged threat, and Dreadknights are significantly faster than Terminators.

I had a much harder time against this list. The psycannon carried by a Dreadknight is ideal for picking up Ravenwing Knights, and Nemesis Greathammers are not much worse, plus pick up vehicles pretty well. The flipside is that Dreadknights, at Toughness 8, are much easier for Ravenwing Knights to pick up, but one of those suckers hung on through at least 3 activations with 1 wound remaining due to Tommy getting lucky with his 4+ invulnerable saves. I also misplayed my first effort to pick up the Grand Master Dreadknight, blocking an easy Tank Shock charge when I was trying to clear for it. The final score was 92-70 in Tommy's favor. I did succeed in pulling off a Secret Mission, but in this case it was Command Insertion, though I shammed going for War of Attrition well enough to make Tommy think that was my intent.

Lessons Learned

The inclusion of the Vindicators was a major improvement in the list. I could rely on them to pick up my opponents' tougher units, which freed up the Ravenwing Knight bricks to go into elite targets instead of Monsters and Vehicles. Using the RWBKs this way has made me re-evaluate the Talon Strike strat. It lets plasma talons wound elite targets on 2's instead of 3's, and Ravenwing CCWs wound on 3's or 4's instead of 4's or 5's. Being able to use it in both the Shooting and Fight phases gives it a lot of flexibility.  The only downside is that you can't use it against a unit that doesn't have a character attached. I'd have liked to use it on Cam's Eightbound, but they were running around without characters. 

Ravenwing Knights are not as tough as their datasheet would lead us to believe. 3 Wounds 3+/5++ is fairly easy for a depressing amount of weapons to pick up. Most of what got put into them during the course of the 10 games I've played with them has been AP -2, which makes their invulnerable save irrelevant. I think they either need to be 4 Wounds or have a 4++ to be as durable as they ought to be. Alternately they need better damage output. I've really been ruing their CCWs being AP -2 D1 instead of AP -1 D2, and that's not even their primary mode of attack. I'd like them to have a datasheet rule that buffs their plasma talons in some way - Sustained Hits 1 against Infantry and Mounted units say, or rerolling Hazardous tests. 

I'd also like to see Ravenwing Knights get better character support. With Hellblasters, we can attach Azrael and a Lieutenant to the unit and really dial up their output, but there isn't anything we can attach to Ravenwing Knights that significantly buffs their plasma talon output. The best we can do is the Ravenwing Command Squad, which grants more plasma talon attacks, but unless we're willing to put them in a Gladius and give Fire Discipline to the Champion, that's pretty much it. Sammy doesn't really buff them in a significant way, and part of what he does do is made redundant when we play them in a CoH.

Vindicators really like being in a detachment that allows them to freely advance and shoot. That increases their threat range pretty significantly. It also doesn't hurt to be able to freely fall back and shoot. Vindicators don't need to do that to freely shoot their demolisher cannons, but it does let other units target what was trying to tie them up, and prevents opponents' units from banging on them in my turn. The main threat to the Vindicators I've encountered has actually been melee. Most of my opponents have dealt with them by pushing melee units into them and punching them to death. I think the list needs a counter to that, and what I've landed on is including Lion Dad. He's got the movement to keep up with the Vindicators, he can get his Lone Op by sticking close to the Techmarine, who gets HIS Lone Op by sticking close to the Vindicators. The threat of having Lion Dad Heroically Intervene into whatever my opponent might like to send in to punch my Vindicators should at least complicate their efforts if not stymy them outright.

As previously mentioned, Talon Strike is a decent strat if we're using Ravenwing Knights right. It's not phenomenal, but I never regretted spending a CP on it. I've gotten at least some use out of Hunter's Trail, High Speed Focus, and Rapid Reappraisal as well. The one I haven't tried to use is Death on the Wind, and I've been wondering of maybe I'm selling it short. On the surface, forcing Battleshock tests in the shooting phase seems marginal, but we only need a shot to hit to trigger eligibility for the strat, and if we have a Ravenwing unit within 6" of the unit we're trying to Battleshock, they take the test at -1. That's still usually going to be a 50-50 chance, but if we can run in a disposable unit and plink a hit off something, we might be able to deny it the ability to score next turn which allows us to put more attention into something else that might score. I'm not saying it's a great plan, but it might be a reason to use Invader ATVs. They're only 60 points a pop, so 3 of them wouldn't cost much, and 1 isn't a huge investment to try and make DonW work. They don't even have to commit their main gun to trigger the strat. They can just plink the intended target with their twin bolt rifle and put their multimelta or gatling cannon into something we're actually making a serious effort to kill. I'm not saying it's a great plan, but it may be a reason for some of us oldheads to convert our Land Speeders into ATVs.

Here's the next version of this list.

Secret Missions Are Fun! V1.3
Lion Dad
Azrael
Lieutenant
Ravenwing Command Squad: Master of Manouevre

Techmarine
Outrider Squad: 3 chonky biker boys
Outrider Squad: 3 chonky biker boys
Hellblaster Squad: 10 plasma boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Ravenwing Black Knights: 6 awesome biker boys
Vindicator
Vindicator
Vindicator

I made the points for Lion Dad by dropping Sammy, the Darkshroud, and the Assault Intercessors. Dropping the second Ravenwing Knight brick afforded the points for the Hellblasters and the Lieutenant, giving Azrael something sexier to do, and also giving me something a little more effective to put into combat than the Ravenwing Knight brick. Likely it will give me more shooting output too, as it's easier to get Hellblasters within 24" of their target than it is to get 9 Ravenwing Knights within 9", and as a little fringe benefit the CoH detachment rule will let Azrael advance and shoot, which is not ordinarily the case.

As previously mentioned, Lion Dad will hang out around the Vindicators, presenting a Heroic Intervention threat for anything that wants to run up and punch my tanks. If I don't need him to protect my tanks, I'm sure I can find other uses for him.

The amount of bikes I have in my detachment for Ravenwing bikes keeps getting smaller. I still have the one BK brick with MoM to come out of reserves earlier, plus the 2 Outrider squads. I'm actually a little tempted to run this list as a Gladius because then I could give Fire Discipline to the Ravenwing Champion, but that denies the jank with the Outriders and War of Attrition, so I'm keeping it as a CoH for now. When and if I decide I've gotten to the point where I'm using it as well as I can but still not getting good performance out of my lists, I may switch over to something else. I might try the ATV+DotW jank, or I might run an Ironstorm with Lion Dad and a lot of Dreadnoughts and tanks, or I may run a list where everything has an invulnerable save, which would pretty much just be modest variation on the currently popular lists with DWKs and ICCs.

That, honored battle brethren, is where I'm at with the Company of Hunters. I'll keep you posted on how the next version of the list performs. If you've made it this far, you'd probably like to Follow my blog for more of this kind of thing. Plus, I encourage everyone reading this to check out Dank List Wargaming over on YouTube. Until next time, may we all acquit ourselves with distinction for the honor of the Lion!