... then he'd probably play Raven Guard. It's fairly obvious that the Raven Guard chapter of Space Marines are based (very loosely, admittedly) on his famous poem. I'm not really a "classical literature" person, so I don't much care about this - but I do think that the Raven Guard are the coolest and most interesting of all the loyalist Space Marine chapters.
I've been reading a lot about their background and history, and what I'm finding is that people often seem to confuse their style of warfare with that of the Blood Angels (and what a soppy bunch of Edward "Sparkly Vampire" Cullen wannabes they are). This is not correct. The Blood Angels are berserk, frothing close-combat specialists, whose doctrine is based around getting into a melee as fast as possible and staying there to chop things up into bite-size giblets. As such they make extensive use of jump packs, turbo-charged and deep-striking tanks (wrong, on so many levels - thanks Mat Ward), flying robots and blood-drinking.
The Raven Guard, now, they're a different breed entirely. Rapid, precision strikes are not to be confused with just charging into combat as fast as possible; hit-and-run tactics, not to be confused with turbo-charged tanks or bikes. Instead, the Raven Guard (while they do use Jump infantry a lot of the time) rely heavily on scouts, stealth, infiltration and (for reasons to do with their history) veterans - precise application of force at strategic locations. Basically, it's the kind of warfare doctrine that is utilised by contemporary, real-world special forces units. No frothing or blood-drinking involved.
With that in mind, a Raven Guard army in 40k, if based on their background and doctrine, would include:
- scouts (lots of), especially snipers
- infiltrating or outflanking troops (Shrike's confers Infiltrate on the squad he's with)
- power armoured veterans
- limited heavy vehicles (Land Raiders, Vindicators, etc. are rarely used)
- fast (possibly outflanking) vehicles - bikes, Land Speeders, Land Speeder Storms
- transports
- dreadnoughts in drop-pods.
Being as I am, a lover of characterful armies that aren't built for the sole purpose of playing smash-face with nasty men, I'm trying to build my own Raven Guard army that sticks to their background and combat method as closely as possible.
Photographs of the burgeoning Raven Guard force (mostly WIP) that I have so far are below, starting with a wounded space marine objective marker:
An assault squad sergeant with lightning claw:
A Shadow Captain with no jump-pack in Mark-VI Corvus Pattern power armour with power fist (check out the green stuff chapter symbol on the fist - I'm quite proud of it):
A librarian (Dark Vengeance Dark Angels librarian with the Dark Angels icons removed - I'm planning to green-stuff another RG chapter symbol in its place, much like the one on the captain above):
Veteran scout sergeant (the Telion model with the Ultramarines symbols filed off, purity seal added to mask some scarring that happened when I filed the symbol off his gun)
And finally, some photos of one of my pet rats who came to investigate my hobby table:
Painted pics to follow in due course (not of the rat though, I'm not painting her).
Cheers
NS
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