Indeed, I've barely used my assault cannons at all yet so I see shooting as mostly a nice utility feature.  So I'm preferring one assault cannon at this point but I'm just trying to fling out ideas to see if it sparks anything better at this point.  But maybe you're right about 375 point terminators but I say we give that one assault cannon a go for now and if we find something wrong when we start testing it we have an easy fallback of two assault cannons.

As for BA in Space Hulk I don't ever remember them getting their own supplement featuring a kick arse story by Bill King, they may be on the box but Space Hulk is all about the Deathwing baby.

*likes his own reality much better*  

So is everyone willing to give the one assault cannon Deathwing at least a trial run at this point to see if bringing the cost down is feasible?

Willing to test termies with one AsCan?  Absolutely!  

For a really painful thought, did you know that GW pulled the 2nd AsCan out of a 5man termie squad in the 5e codex (one heavy weapon per 5 marines now)?

The Black&White list (one placed 2nd in UK GT heat 2 this year) uses Ravenwing to call down Deathwing assaults, so shifting the DA termies to a more Engagement-focused role would reflect what they do in 40k.

Should we add something to the Ravenwing to represent teleport homers, or is that too fiddly in Epic scale?

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Yes and you need a full 10 men Tactical Squad to even have acsess to Heavy Weapons too

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Sounds good to me then.  With the 50 points we'll save on two detachments that's enough to get another character or upgrade an existing one to a Supreme Commander.  It also makes it easier to justify sacrificing one to hold up a Warlord Titan in the game tomorrow.  I'll give the list a go tomorrow against my friend's AMTL again and see how it goes.

And looking at it further I'm thinking it would be best to just keep the names Deathwing Dreadnought and Mortis Dreadnought and just have them refer to the standard versions with Fearless tacked on.  At most just use the 5+/5+ Plasma Cannon on the Deathwing Dread (same stats with a different name for flavour).

And the Lion makes a good point about the RW/DW interplay in the new list, it does mirror the combined elite infantry assault that the DA have been known for.  Using terminators as the main punch while bikes/speeders keep the enemy in disarray in order to keep the heat off the terminators (with basic infantry providing secondary punch and fire support for the forward RW/DW detachments).  I'd leave the teleport homer rules out myself as it still feels a bit forced in in the fluff.  The Deathwing and Ravenwing already have many reasons to support each other in Epic so there is no need to give players and extra carrot to force combined arms.

I have to say that I think I'm more or less happy with the list.  The Deathwing are a more focused assault force than the codex versions without being really specialized like the Salamanders.  The Ravenwing provide good power in engagements with bikes providing good assault and firefight punch and attack bikes acting as close quarters fire support.  Speeders perform as force that works well at surprise attacks out of nowhere with shooting that can put the hurt on Infantry and even cut off armoured units.  I especially like the return of the Ravenwing to a more 2nd Edition stat set (hard to kill because of their speed and highly maneuverable because of scout).

The small change to the tactical squad gives it a slightly CQB feel with improved punch against armoured targets.  They'll be great at holding objectives that the wants but they can be outranged if not well supported.

The Characters have a unique feel to them with Fearless making them feel very tenacious.  Even when the detachment goes down they will be able to live on and fight for glory.

The MM raider available to the Deathwing gives a nice close support feel to the LR that fits with the elite CQB feel of the list and even the plasma pred helps to support this (even if it is kind of frivolous).

==========New Ideas!==========

Now I did some thinking and I'm wondering if there is anything we can do to emphasize the fleet based nature of the Dark Angels?  It would seem a shame to leave that out at the Epic scale where fleet support is an important aspect.  Maybe allow them to take a cheap Escort-class ship that can carry a couple of Thunderhawks (2-3 maybe) and some squads to drop on the enemy for a low-ish price but with only little to no armament (weak precision strike or a small bombardment)?

How would people feel about this:

Hunter Class Frigate

Type:  SC
Weapons:  
- None
Transport:  May carry 10 of the following units:  Space Marine Tactical, Assault, Devastator, Bike, Scout, Terminator, Dreadnought; Plus 10 of the following units:  Rhinos, Land Raiders, Razorbacks, Whirlwinds, Predators or Vindicators; Plus 2 Thunderhawks and enough Drop Pods to carry the remaining forces.

Now basically the Hunter was chosen because BFG fluff has it being a design used heavily by Dark Angels.  It can carry a couple Thunderhawks and it can be used to Drop Pod in units without the price premium payed by normal marine forces (meaning it will be more common to see fleet based Dark Angels) but it lacks the punch of the Strike Cruiser or Battlebarge and it can't carry full Landing Craft (though it has vehicle capacity just in case something like the Thunderhawk Transport is used, mostly a background choice though).

So it fits the fluff (Dark Angels are fleet based and make heavy use of the Hunter in all their fleets) and it makes for a unique feature in Dark Angels list (greater access to fleet assets).  How much should this be worth.  It carries only a fraction of what the other marine ships do but enough to make it worthwhile (maybe 100-125 points making it 75-100 points less than the Strike Cruiser).  Finally should it get at least some kind of an attack like a 1-2BP Orbital Bombardment or a MW3+ TK(1) attack (for reference it has Torpedoes and a Weapons Battery equipped in BFG so the small OB seems to make more sense).  I think it would be kind of cool to have the ability to field drop-podding/planetfalling detachments for a low premium.  Would that completely screw the balance or is it a cool little add-on that will make fleet-based armies easier to make in the Dark Angels list.

So should this be added to the list or is what we have good enough?

Err...the only Space Marine ships which carry Thunderhawks are the BattleBarge and the StrikeCruiser.

Escort-sized ships usually carry only one squad of Space Marines.

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There is an escort which can carry a detactment. I think it may even be able to land itself. Still I'm sure it could fit a thunderhawk somewhere.

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Yes all Escorts can land itself but Escort-sized ships are only crewed by one squad of Space Marines.
Maybe they have a single Thunderhawk but not enough to justify an Ordnance Marker in BFG

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Oh I was just saying I don't think they should have an escort. The Ravenguard I think were looking at those sorts of options. Stuff like one formation dropping a turn from a squadron of escorts entering the sky above, with a 1-2bp barrage etc.

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Hmm, fluff indicated that it was only the Nova Class that carried a startlingly small number of troops with it as the Imperial Navy gets testy if Marine ships have no troop carry capacity (as that is the only reason they still get their own fleets).  From the sounds of it the other escorts could all carry small strike teams but weren't equipped to quickly deploy them in the middle of battle.

In any case it is the Nova that only carries a single squad, but the idea doesn't sound to be an overly popular one so I say we let it go.  Does everything else sound good then?  Anything people think absolutely needs to be added to this or anything that absolutely doesn't need to be in there?

The Nova is the only Space Marine vessel which is equipped with Lances. That's what upsets the Imperial Navy

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How nefarious!  How dare those upstart marines make use of ordained Imperial Navy *pew pew pew* weaponry!  They should be happy with their short ranged guns dagnabbit.

Alright, I got a chance to try the list out in a 1700 point game tonight against the AMTL again.  Same lists we had in the battle report I posted in the batrep section (minus the points from the cheaper terminators and characters which brought things down by 45 points to put us right on 1700 instead of 1750).  He didn't bring his t-bolts and hadn't built his second warlord so I enquired if he wanted to take some AA on the Warlord he had but he simply said "you'd likely just avoid it anyways."  Which was true.

The game went more or less the same as last time with the exception of me playing a little more aggressively and losing more terminators than last time.  Instead of waiting for the warhounds to spread out I hit them while they were grouped together and nearly wiped them all in a turn (but the one that survived was still alive at the end of the game).

I made a few more bad judgement calls than I would have liked but in the end I won on turn 3 instead of turn 4 but with more casualties due to bad planning.  Fearless on characters well and truly rocks and it saved my Librarian from dieing along with his devastators in an assault that went...  poorly.

The big event of the game was the Deathwing vs. the Warlord.  In the first round my Terminators lost only one stand but managed to take out three DC on the Warlord,  the end score was 2 to 4 and I managed to bomb my resolution roll and we bloody well tied!  The next assault came along and he killed one more and I took two more DC off for a score of 2 to 3 (should have been 2 to 4 come to think of it because he had three BM's and I only had one, damnation!) but alas I rolled snake eyes for resolution and my terminators broke but because of fearless I denied him BTS!  So they remaining stand of Deathwing including my Chaplain really cleaned up that game and lived to tell the tale (they also got me Blitzkrieg, woot!).

Interesting notes:

- Didn't even use the assault cannon all game so being down one isn't a huge issue.  The Deathwing just cleaned up in assault and even when they lost they stayed around and were able to get evac'd so that they could later claim a game winning objective.  At this point I can't see making a list without them (not sure if that's a bad thing or just my termie-love showing) but some Ravenwing close support would have helped (that said I forgot to have my other squads provide supporting fire, another bad mistake...  then again they did avoid taking BM's when the DW broke so it isn't all bad).

-  The shortened range on the Tacticals really hurt in this game because the Titans never really got close to them, so for the second game in a row they were straight up objective grabbers.  I really need to play against a list with infantry and so none WE vehicles to really give them a good test.  Here's hoping he adds Skitarii soon so I have some soft targets to fight.

In any case comparing the 400 point double assault cannon Deathwing to the single assault cannon version is no contest in my mind.  It may hurt against armies with more soft targets but they perform so well in assault that I never found myself needing to use their ranged weapons much.  Then again against an all Titan AMTL list most of my shooting was left at home in favour of avoidance and combine assaults.  All in all the changes to the list felt a lot tighter and I was a little less weary of losing my terminators than in my first game (I need to change the list up so my Tactical squad becomes the more expensive formation though, much easier now that I don't have to throw on over 100 points of upgrades).

Here's hoping he builds the rest of his stuff next week so I can throw down a 3000 point list with some Ravenwing attack bikes and an extra terminator squad (and hopefully a Supreme Commander, had the game stayed at 750 I could have fit one in this time *pout*) along with some more squads on the ground to take objectives with.  In any case I'm hoping to test Deathwing and Ravenwing together to see if the list really does promote synergy between them.

So the current list has my approval right now, but that is only the experience of one so hopefully some others can try it out and post some feedback as well.  Pretty please.  

Hmm.
So either the statement that SpaceMarines arehidelously underpowered against WE heavy armies isn`t true
OR
Dark Angels are hideously overpowered.

I suggest to play against a non-experimental army the next time. Preferably a well established ones like Orks or Steel Legion.

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Well, this variant list pushes the Marine player to get closer, which is where Marines in general are best.  Also, that game was only a 1750/1700 pointer, which may have caused some skewing of the point system anyway.

Now to see if the effect holds for Orks or IG.

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Indeed and, as I said, he had no AA weaponry.  I was expecting the 3000 point game yesterday so he could field a t-bolt formation and add some AA to his second Warlord but he apparently got nothing else built.  So overall it was a good way to compare the the first list I used against him and the current one but as an actual test for the list it was poor at best.

Unfortunately my only current opponent consists of him so I'm afraid that until he gets a few more units so that proxying becomes more of an option I'll need to test things out against AMTL.

In any case I'd love to play against an Ork or IG list...  at least I don't have to avoid a foot wide area around any of their units but unless I start up a second army that wont be happening any time soon.

Mainly the feedback was just posted to talk about the little differences I found between playing both times as I used two different DA armies each time.  If nothing else this game sold me on fearless characters over ones with Inv. saves when a situation goes tits up (poor 'ole devastators).  

The main reason he's losing seems to be that he loses track of claiming objectives and slips into some kind of "kill 'em all" mindframe that allows me to simply claim objectives on turn 3 and win while he's busy shooting at me.  The inclusion of AA will help but he has never been the most objective minded player, hopefully that will change with a few more games and he'll realize that killing me only matters if he kills all of me and if he can't do that he should focus on objectives and work on denying me some.

So hopefully others can get a more informative play test in soon.  

Hopefully people will see this edit.  I've pretty much just taken The_Real_Chris's proposed list and filled in the bits that needed it.  The Mortis is just a new name for the TLLC/ML Dread, I decided not to use the LS Storm in the list (but it would be easy enough to add in if people wanted it, it just didn't feel very DA-ish to me as I'd like to keep most of the rapid assault capacity in the Ravenwing for the list.  Again it's not a final decision or anything I just took it out of this particular version).  I cleaned up a few of the entries (mostly just the stuff TRC missed when he quickly made the list the first time) but everything else is more or less the same.

So take a look and let's see what changes need to be made or if anyone can spot some basic imbalances in the list.  Then hopefully we can start roping in interested testers (because lord knows I wont be of much use with only one regular opponent using an experimental list   ).