Pulling this discussion into it's own dedicated thread. It's a good one to have and the unit is used by more than BA.
THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE BA LIST OR CHANGES WE'RE SAYING WE'RE MAKING TO THE LISTThis is a frank legacy free discussion on the unit itself in isolation of any list. People happy with BA in their tests can keep their ire packed away. In addition, calling for hacking up the BA will be considered off topic.
I see it as there are several axis of discussion around Storm Ravens as a unit in general.
-Why is it Skimmer/AV and not an AC in the first place?
-What is the intended role of the Storm Raven as envisioned as a Skimmer/AV, especially in the Blood Angels list?
-Why does it have the stats it does now?
Let's give a start with stating the current stats as they are in BA 2.4:
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Stormraven Gunship AV 35cm
A: 5+
C: 6+
F: 4+
Twin Heavy Bolter 30cm AP4+
Twin Assault Cannon 30cm AP4+/AT4+
2x Bloodstrike Missiles 60cm AT3+, Single Shot
Planetfall, Reinforced Armour, Skimmer, Transport: (May carry 1 Dreadnought; plus 1 Blood Angels Terminator unit or 2 of the following Blood Angels units: Assault, Death Company Assault, DeathCompany, Tactical, Devastator, Scout or Tactical)
editorial note: Please excuse the explicit use of BA specific units versus more generic sizes. Simply note the relative difference between guys in power armour and guys in terminator armour an move on
To Skimmer or Not To Skimmer...that is the question==============
Frankly I don't know for sure but I've got a pretty good idea. Many of you may have been around for the initial discussion on the vehicle so feel free to correct me or point out what's the deal. E&C would be nice to state the initial reasoning.
My general hypothesis is that due to the Aerospace rules as written originally, the formation has to fit completely in a single unit per 4.2.5
Quote:
are only allowed to transport units from another formation as long as the whole formation can fit inside the transport aircraft
This means that either you can't use them as transports (gunships only), you have to use a useless / terrible formation size (2), or they have to be a single formation which means they really don't get to move (or must disengage in entirety).
IIRC, and this was so long ago back in my lurking days I might not remember correctly, the Thunderbrick Transporter had not gone approved and standardized the escape clause in the unit notes we all use now didn't exist.
Quote:
[XYZ] counts as a single War Engine for transport purposes
I should also point out that the existing pattern for vtol-esque assault transporters dejur was AV|WE/Skimmer such as is used by the Valk and Vulture so it made sense to go that route.
Shoulda/Gooda/Coulda aside, that's my understanding of the reasoning.
Storm Ravens, what's is go for? [hums War By Edwin Starr]==============
What's the intended purpose of the Storm Raven in general, and especially in the Blood Angles list actually?
I'm going to admit that it has an rather schizo place right not. Is it the primary anti-AV hunter pack or is it the assault transport? The reason I mention it is that unfortunately as it stands (more so in prior versions), giving it weapons that pack such a hard hitting anti-armor package AND being able to deliver a nasty Devestator or worse, Terminator group into an Assault can make them crazy to deal with shifting. Reducing the shooting to reckon for T+1 activation shooting after an assault starts to make them unappealing as an armour hunter. I've got a feeling E&C was trying to bridge both by giving a nasty rocket attack but limited them to one-shot in hopes that it would balance. I'm not sure it really works in practice.
I think thematically and for game-play purposes that the assault transport role is more important for several reasons. One is that the iconic image of a Storm Raven is that of flying in and disgorging a group of marines into FF. Yes you can take them to shoot up things as a gunship but that's not the mental image for them. They're more like an Air Cav Huey from Vietnam in that respect. Two, it's easier to find an anti-armour/titan role in a list that it is to make the unit be a good for everything / jack of all trades and be balanced. For argument's sake that'd be more in line with a single missile attack, no one-shot business, a good FF (they've got hurricane bolters strapped on) or EA and allow something like predator annihilators in a list. Third, bookkeeping is horrible with them. Originally they had 4 one shot attacks each on formations of 4 (Been reduced to 8 shots in total now-still annoying). I found that it became common to just shoot the whole wad in one go, even it was overkill because I wanted to be done with it. That's not clean and elegant.
Why a duck?==============
Kyrt asked a ggood question yesterday: Why does this have these stats. The terse but not intended to be snarky reply is,
well, because that's what XM inherited from E&C. Upending the list and booting it down to Experimental was decided against (people may or may not agree with that choice-not cogent to this thread). In addition, these basic stats were shared with other lists so a more conservative approach was taken by in viewing change because causing churn there by fiat isn't kosher.
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