Dark Angels Review: Ravenwing Black Knights

For the simple fact that they're packing plasma, I think these guys can be great.  But there's much more to them than the plasma talon (twin linked 18" range plasma guns essentially): the S+1 rending attacks are nothing to be sneezed at, coupled with everything that we've come to expect from more generic ravenwing assault squadrons, such as teleport homers, save that the options are much more limited.

The options themselves are only four in number: more bikes, a grenade launcher, a power weapon and the good old melta bombs.

For the power weapon, there might be a temptation to replace the corvus hammer with a power lance.  I think this could be quite viable as the ravenwing knights should be getting the charge everytime in the hands of a good player.  Supported by the corvus hammers elsewhere in the unit, I don't see this as a big loss really.  Melta bombs can be good, but obviously situational.  The grenade launcher is interesting with its ability to launch stasis, rad charges, frag and krak.  The rad charge will reduce the toughness of opponents by 1 for the duration of the turn.  This could be incredible against S5 corvus hammers to be honest.  So I'm rather tempted by these.

Lets look at a couple of builds:

Ravenwing Black Knights, 1 ravenwing grenade launcher (126 points)
Strictly a support option, albeit a rapidly moving and annoying one!  Do they fit in land raiders?  I think they can -- that could be an interesting option!

Ravenwing Black Knights, 6 members, 2 ravenwing grenade launchers, 1 power lance, melta bombs (269 points)
I think ten models is probably overkill, so I've gone for 6 here. With 6 members, this squad is small enough to zip around the place, and large enough to be truly scary against the right opposing unit.