How to deal with a Stormraven?

[hannibal]

Ok so the Stormraven is av 12 all round and 3 hull points and is a flyer with the hover and transport rules,

my opponents are now starting to use them a lot and I'm off to a tourney soon and expect to see a lot of these,

Do I try and destroy it or ignore it and concentrate on the rest of the army in the first couple of turns?

Av 12 and snap fire make it hard to destroy with shooting and assault is out of the question

also whilst the Stormraven can only move 6 before the unit disembarks they can then move up to 6 and then charge up to 2d6 which is still a big distance,

has anyone come up with some effective tactics yet?

[halos]

Stormravens are kinda tricky to deal with yeah.

If it's carrying a dangerous combat unit (as you would expect) then you can't really ignore it. Av12 all-round makes it difficult to take out and impossible with lucky potshots from most Nid guns at S5 or less.

Grey Knight ones are doubly dangerous on account of their missiles not even needing to roll to wound in order to start knocking wounds off of Psykers.

Your first defense is to limit their line of attack, block LoS to choice targets and force the Raven to come on from a specific point or angle in order to deal any real damage in the first turn.

Secondly you want to stop it disgorging it's troops into your lines. The second it moves over 6" it's cargo can't charge. Therefore try and surround it with cheap trash broods, either fully surround it for 6" (bearing in mind no part of it's base may fall within 1" of one of your models) or provide it with a single choice for disembarkation, preferably at a spot surrounded by gant screens.

Finally now that it is no longer a threat you can try and take it down if you wish. The only real options for damaging a Stormraven are Dakkafex (not recommend, 6s, to hit and 6 to glance with a 5+ jink are not good odds), DakkaFlyrants (not bad, you can get lucky with glances, and even forcing it to jink reduces the damage it can do) or Hive Guard, which are hard to hit with (try using old Adversary to boost the odds marginally) but do ignore jink and have a reasonable chance of damaging the Raven if they get a hit.

Once the Stormraven is trapped it has two choices; keep zooming and try to either turn around or fly off table and try again. This limits the number of guns it can bring to bear, and stops it putting out units. Or it can drop into Skimmer mode and try and move to a more advantageous angle. This is good for you as it means you can surround it with gants and smash it with a MC for an almost guaranteed kill with the bonus of destroying the embarked units as well.

So, that's how I would do it, and such tactics really only works with a single Raven, but if there are more than one in the opposing list then there shouldn't be too many ground forces to chew through at least.

[fragile]

Jan 25, 2013 18:50:57 GMT hannibal said:

Do I try and destroy it or ignore it and concentrate on the rest of the army in the first couple of turns?

Av 12 and snap fire make it hard to destroy with shooting and assault is out of the question

also whilst the Stormraven can only move 6 before the unit disembarks they can then move up to 6 and then charge up to 2d6 which is still a big distance,

has anyone come up with some effective tactics yet?

Ignore it, unless you have no other option for shooting it. Flyrants can glance it to death and HG can get lucky Pens... But overall its best to ignore it.

If the SR drops into Hover Mode to drop its troops, you should pounce on it with MCs or HG.

[retnab]

Exactly as fragile said. If it does only move 6" to drop troops down, then your MC's can assault it that turn. But most of time time it's a bit of a waste shooting at it with ground units.

[t⊗theark]

Yeah, if it's dropping something off, than there's you chance to deal with it. You can chase it down with the tyrant or try to hide important stuff behind its moving arch and ignore it as best as possible.

[maugrim]

Jan 25, 2013 19:28:40 GMT halos said:

Secondly you want to stop it disgorging it's troops into your lines. The second it moves over 6" it's cargo can't charge.

Slight correction point: If it is in "Hover" mode, the instant it moves over 6" the contents can't get out without using the Storm Raven's special disembark rule (which makes the passengers count as Deep Striking with further penalties). If it is in "Zoom" mode, they can *only* get out by using the special disembark rule.

[halos]

Oh yes you're right.
Although in my defense the passengers still can't charge if they can't disembark!

[grarik]

Jan 26, 2013 15:02:04 GMT halos said:

Oh yes you're right.
Although in my defense the passengers still can't charge if they can't disembark!

Unfortunately the stormraven has the assault vehicle special rule, so unless I'm mistaken about the rule, they can assault on the turn they disembark

[infornography]

Jan 27, 2013 12:08:22 GMT grarik said:

Jan 26, 2013 15:02:04 GMT halos said:

Oh yes you're right.
Although in my defense the passengers still can't charge if they can't disembark!

Unfortunately the stormraven has the assault vehicle special rule, so unless I'm mistaken about the rule, they can assault on the turn they disembark

Only during a normal disembark, the Shadow Skies ability explicitly denies the ability to assault after disembark.

As far as what to do about them... 2 flyrants with 2 twin linked devourers each are statistically likely to take out one storm raven in a turn. They will cause it pretty much exactly 3 hull points on average so it isn't a super high livelihood, but it is more likely than not. Otherwise we just have to try to nail them when they go to hover mode which is usually going to be outside the range of most of our anti-vehicle options. Your best bet to catch it there is again, a flyrant going into glide mode and assaulting it if close enough.

Storm Ravens, and especially grey knight storm ravens, are the single biggest threat to our army in the game right now. Those mindstrike missiles can destroy many of what otherwise would be our most durable and expensive units. Those psibolt ammo boosted hurricaine bolters can easily finish the job and it still has psibolt ammo boosted twin linked heavy bolter and assault cannon. Just all around one of these things, regardless of it's passengers can decimate our forces. Anything that is twin linked at BS4 and wounds our infantry on 2 or 3+, ignores our armor, and fires 12 shots a round with just two guns, then 3 twin linked shots at even better strength, and then 4 more twin linked shots at even higher strength than that is going to seriously hurt us. They are a huge part of why I am such an advocate of the twin dakka flyrant list.

[jifel]

Hm... either get a crossfire with two Flyrants (that'll average 3 glances, forcing him to Jink or die) or ignore it, and use gant bubbles. If he wants to assault, he'll have to hover, then just assault it. Gant screens help against whatever deathstar is inside. As a gunboat it's very nice, and hard to deal with, but you really have to either ignore it or hit it with everything all at once. If there's two, just use board control to limit where he can go.

[hannibal]

Thanks for the responses guys,

zooming flyers with big guns are what really scare me if he drops into hover mode to disgorge his assault unit then that gives me a chance to deal with it with an MC or hive guard,

when my opponent brings it on from reserve does he have to zoom it or can he hover it on?
similarly it he zooms and suffers a locked velocity can he switch to hover mode?

i might be being a bit naive but when people talk about board control to control where he comes on how exactly do I do this? He will often come on turn 2 or 3 before I can get to his board edge and he can move on from any point of his table edge at any angle and move 18 inches which means he has lots of chocie of where to come on and where to go.

[Anggul]

Try to get Objuration Mechanicum on your Zoanthropes and shoot them with Flyrants. Also a highly conditional one that I got was rolling a Skyfire Nexus on an objective in Big Guns Never Tire so my Dakkaifex could deal some serious damage to them. Hive Guard can also take pot shots if they have nothing better to fire at, they have a decent change of doing damage if they hit.

[halos]

Jan 27, 2013 20:19:13 GMT hannibal said:

when my opponent brings it on from reserve does he have to zoom it or can he hover it on?
similarly it he zooms and suffers a locked velocity can he switch to hover mode?

i might be being a bit naive but when people talk about board control to control where he comes on how exactly do I do this? He will often come on turn 2 or 3 before I can get to his board edge and he can move on from any point of his table edge at any angle and move 18 inches which means he has lots of chocie of where to come on and where to go.

Preeetty sure they have to arrive as Zooming, although now that I think about it I'm not 100%. Certainly I've never seen anyone bring a flier on as a skimmer.

Board control requires a bit of luck, a bit of tactics and a bit of psychology. If you've got lots of LoS blocking terrain you can hide MCs behind them, forcing him to come in from an angle which gets them in line of sight, dictating the angle. You can try baiting by leaving a gant brood fairly unprotected for the raven to swoop down upon. It's a little tricky to dictate I admit, you more have to minimise possible locations he can fly to if he wants a decent target and hope the plane takes the bait.

You can, of course, almost as easily react to the Raven's appearence rather than trying to dictate. Tervigon spawning gets a big radius, and Flyrant's are pretty mobile too.

[WestRider]

Jan 27, 2013 20:19:13 GMT hannibal said:

when my opponent brings it on from reserve does he have to zoom it or can he hover it on?
similarly it he zooms and suffers a locked velocity can he switch to hover mode?

- When it first comes on, it can be either Zooming or Hovering. If it Hovers, it has to move more than 6", tho, just because of the size of the Model. If it Zooms off the table and comes back in from Ongoing Reserves, it has to Zoom back on. I can't think of any situation in which it would be a good idea to bring a Storm Raven on in Hover Mode.

- Flyers with Locked Velocity cannot switch to Hover Mode. It's in the Main Rulebook FAQ.