Stormraven Tactics

Bell of Lost Souls has an Article on Stormraven Tactics up today. It's rather timely as we had a good discussion at work on how to improperly use a Stormraven. Namely, I'm planning to do it wrong. This is what I'm told. If you aren't familiar with what my overall army strategy is for my Blood Angels, here it is:

Librarian with Sword and Blood Lance flies with an Assault Squad with flamers. The idea is that he can handle their tank popping issues. There are two more squads of Assault Maries each with a pair of meltaguns. Each squad is 10 strong, so they can combat squad if desired for non-kill point missions.

There are two Stormravens each holding 5 Assault Terminators (all Lightning Claws) and an attached Terminator armored Sanguinary Priest. This gives the priest some extra survivability and they look cool. Since the Blood Chalice provides that nice 6" bubble of Furious Charge and Feel No Pain, they don't need to be tied to any squad and can even stay in the 'Raven to give the bubble out 6" from its nice large base. Properly placed, this can have great effect. The bird can move 12", drop terminators, and they'll assault. They'll lay down fire on anything not tied up in assault first.

I'm still deciding on the final load-out of the birds. Because the goal is to keep them up close to deliver Assault Terminators and provide bubbles of joy, I'm thinking of using Hurricane sponsons and the Assault Cannon, but I haven't decided on the nose weapon. Multimelta sounds great for the extra tank popping, but Heavy Bolters are a greater volume of fire with a better range. I won't be using the Typhoons with the sponsons because of the cost. My current prevailing thought is Multimeltas. I'm also giving them Locator Beacons to drop the Assault Maries in right where they need to be, and in case I need to use Skies of Blood.

So when it comes down to deployment, I'm thinking of starting on the board with my ravens. Positioning will be based on the situation. My Assault Squads will be in reserves to drop in via deep strike. First thing my ravens will do is target tanks with Blood Strike missiles from long range. If no tanks, or at least no dangerous tanks, the guppies move up 12"-24" while still firing a BS missile or 2 at prime targets. Once within 24" of targets, the Assault Cannon and Hurricane Bolters can kick in (and/or the Multimelta). Let us not forget that Hurricane Bolters are defensive weapons. The next turn they should be able to drop terminators and take things out.

Of course, this assumes the guppy doesn't get shot down. It's bound to happen, but the good news is that they've already moved Terminators up a lot faster than they would have otherwise and that's always a plus!

Now where I'm told I'm doing-it-wrong, is that I don't have my priests in the Assault Squads. I have to have them there or I automatically lose. My guppies WILL be shot down before they do anything useful, then my terminators will be killed by power weapons/low AP and my Assault Squads will just get shot off the board. Boom, Roasted. This, however, is not a problem! I haven't won a game yet, so I think I might be hospitalized if I were to win. Basically this elaborate (not really) strategy I've devised is a way to make sure I'll lose. I'm sure people will tell me I'm doing-it-wrong by not using TH/SS terminators as well. C'est la vie!