DA: RW help

[Blood Angel]

Hi.
I inherited (traded) into a pretty large DA army with multiple ways it can be played. I think most of the Deathwing stuff is pretty self explanatory and running as a mixed army is also pretty easy for me to grasp. Because of the nature of Raven Wing with jinking, Flat out and such, and the changes in 7th I have a couple of questions regarding outfitting these guys. I got a Apothecary, Librarian and Chaplain on bikes. I have 3 squads of 6 bikes each and I have some left over bikes to make what I will with them. I have a box of Black knights/Command squad of which two of the three black knights are built. one with dual Plasma talon and one with grenade launcher. From what I've been able to gather, the regular bikers should have dual bolters, the Command guys should have Plasma anywhere they can and the black knights have corvus hammers and plasma talons.
Is there any need at this point for any of them to have grenade launchers? Also, Command
Squad, Banner or no, Champion or no, and I have Samual, but is there a list that night use a generic leader for RW and if so, what how to equip them. Also, there are two bikes per 6 bike squad with Plasma Rifle. I understand that you can combat squad them to 2x 3 bike squads and the plasma rifle is good, and other than that, all the regular bikes have bolt pistols in hand and each SGT of each 6 bike squad had a power weapon and one has Pfist.

I'm wondering if there is a downside to having them this way (any of it) and If there are any suggestions while I'm pulling arms and weapons off of them what would be a good way to equip them and why.

I also was toying with the idea of taking all the Landspeeders and making them all Typhoon as if I use them as scoring units, I want to keep them far enough out that if I'm in range to use any of the other weapons, I'm too close to the enemy anyway.

Any thoughts? I have bikes enough to make banner bearer, Champion, alternate leader if it would ever come up.

[Tomgar]

Hey there! Good to see more DA stuff on here :D

I find the RW Grenade Launchers to actually be pretty handy, the special grenades debuff enemies and make them easier prey to be charged by your Black Knights or characters like Sammael. They're also great for coordinating with Deathwing Knights for the same reason, especially with the teleport homers. As far as generic characters, Librarians can be very handy on bikes with Divination powers, buffing up your other units and acting as a really solid support HQ. Chaplains are good in a Black Knight or Command Squad too, Hatred, S5 and Rending is pretty potent.

As far as giving them plasma guns, I'd definitely give melta guns to a couple of them for anti-tank. Plasma spamming is fun but you'll need something to take out heavy armour like Land Raiders and the like. Your Landspeeder idea is pretty solid, Heavy Bolter and Typhoon Missile Launchers are a good combo and make them pretty versatile units at range, hopping from cover to cover.

Couple of final thoughts: You may want to invest in a Darkshroud. These things help make Ravenwing as good (better imo) than White Scars with the buff to jink. Also, the Standard of Devastation is always fun with bikes since it means their bolters are firing 4 twin-linked shots each at a range of 24". Ouch.

Anyway, hope this is of help! Purge the Fallen, brother.

[gensu11]

Pretty much agree with everything Tomgar said. Concerning the melta vs plasma issue. If new models are an option, rather than taking the plasma guns off of already built models, each squad can have an attack bike and a land speeder. I'd put my melta guns on those, leave the plasma on the individual bikes.