David Ely - The Ravenwing, the Dark Angels' Cavalry

Or, “Can I Make My Assault Marines/Inceptors/Infiltrators/Stormtalon Ravenwing?”

The Dark Angels’ Ravenwing company is as mysterious in the lore as it is misunderstood in real life. There are two common misconceptions about the Ravenwing I wanted to clear up in this piece. First, the Ravenwing are the Dark Angels’ cavalry company, not their fast attack company. Second, I’ll touch on the role of aircraft within Space Marine chapters and the Dark Angels in particular.

The Veteran Cavalry Company

To get your head around the role that the Ravenwing serve within the Dark Angels, it’s important to consider two things. First, the purpose of actual cavalry. Second, the way they work alongside the Deathwing.

In warfare, horse-mounted cavalry were used for specific reasons. They could perform shock assaults into massed infantry who weren’t able to combat knights on horses. They could outflank retreating soldiers to prevent them from regrouping. They could channel enemy movement, preventing them from accessing strategically-valuable locations on the battlefield. It was a particular job, different than that of on-foot reconnaissance (Scouts and Phobos units in 40K) or, later, paratroopers (jump pack units). Both involve mobility, but the cavalry is its own role.

As a general rule, battle plans did not call for cavalry to dismount and fight on foot. Horses were an expensive resource. They would ride in, (hopefully) accomplish their task, then ride off. If hand-to-hand fighting were needed, there were footsloggers to do that. In 40K, part of the Ravenwing’s job is to track down the Fallen and ideally corner them, and then drop teleport homers to call in the Deathwing. It’s the 1st company that would directly engage the Fallen, not the Ravenwing.

Let’s look at the history of the Ravenwing’s life throughout the development of Warhammer 40,000. While Deathwing Terminators are probably the Dark Angels’ most recognizable unit, the Ravenwing were one of the very first aspects of the chapter to be established. White Dwarf 96 (December 1987):

Number seven company is a specialised recon and attack company, known as the ‘Raven Wing’. Instead of the usual Dark Angel motif, Brothers of the company sport a black wing overlaid by the company number on the right shoulder armour. Equipped and trained for high-speed reconnaissance, the Raven Wing specialises in hit-and-run warfare and search-and-destroy missions.

When the chapter’s full story was written for Codex: Angels of Death in 1996, the Ravenwing, now the second company, received a new mission, fitting in with the Dark Angels’ new backstory (p30):

The Ravenwing is the name of the 2nd Company of the Dark Angels Chapter. It is a highly specialised formation used for scouting and assault missions where speed is more important than heavy firepower. To this end, all of the Space Marines in the company ride on bikes or land speeders, which are organised into special units called squadrons, each consisting of up to five vehicles.

Instead of the usual dark green panoply of the rest of the Chapter, the Ravenwing’s vehicles and armour are painted jet black, and it is this which gives the company its unique name. Equipped and trained for high-speed missions, the Ravenwing excels at hit-and-run warfare and search-and-destroy operations. The last type of combat mission is highly important to the Dark Angels because when they are operating against any of the Fallen, it is vital that not one of the enemy escapes to fight another day.

The 4th edition codex (p17) adds:

Although only the company’s highest-ranked officers know it, the Ravenwing’s primary role is to hunt down and capture the Fallen Dark Angels. Therefore, the members of the 2nd Company are granted limited knowledge of the secrets of the Dark Angels — much more than the 3rd to 10th companies, but far less than the Deathwing and the Inner Circle. Detached Ravenwing squadrons range far and wide, their overall mission dictated by the Inner Circle. Intelligence is gathered, leads tracked down, and word passed back to the Chapter’s shadowy masters. Then, the order is given, the target is assigned, and the Ravenwing descend upon their victim.

The Ravenwing might go decades with little or no success achieved in tracking down their targets. […] very rarely, the Ravenwing might locate a concentration of targets, perhaps an entire band of Fallen Dark Angels. At this point, they will call in the Deathwing, who will teleport from orbiting spacecraft.

From the very start, Games Workshop establishes that the Ravenwing primarily deploys on bikes or land speeders. The company’s role is that of a cavalry force: mounted reconnaissance, fast assaults, and prolonged pursuits. While there are other Space Marine units that also fill these roles, like assault marines or Phobos squads, they have never been part of the Ravenwing*. The reason for this is mostly tradition, but it makes some degree of sense when you consider their more secretive role. The Dark Angels need guys on bikes who can quickly pursue their quarry. A Phobos squad might be able to range forward and scout, but couldn’t engage in the same level of chase and wouldn’t be expected to carry a teleport homer it might never need, where this equipment could easily be stored on a bike. Assault marines can engage quickly but don’t have the same range and independence as a bike.

It might be helpful to just think about the Ravenwing purely on an organizational level. When a battle brother reaches a certain level, he’s promoted to the cavalry company. There are lots of jobs where the cavalry isn’t needed, and they don’t use the Ravenwing for that. And of course in any given story, anything the author wants to happen, can. The novel, Ravenwing, sees battle brothers dismount and follow a target on foot. Eye of Ezekiel shows a squad of Ravenwing on an entirely foot-slogging mission. You can easily write a story where a Ravenwing squad would need to deploy in an unconventional manner, but when it’s over, they’ll be back on their bikes.

So my general answer to the question of, “can I make my [infantry squad] Ravenwing?” is, no, the Ravenwing is a cavalry company. But it’s a big galaxy and surely there are missions where they have a reason to deploy on foot. It’s just not the norm. If you want to paint your Incursors as Ravenwing, no one will stop you, but I’d recommend coming up with an in-story reason explaining why they’re there and using them for a particular campaign to tell that story. If they’re showing up on the table at every one of your games, you’re diverging from how the Dark Angels tend to work and, I’ll suggest, misunderstanding the difference between cavalry and “fast attack.”

On a game design level at 40K’s scale, our models tend to represent generical versions of the army we’re playing. The rules are written this way, and the current game doesn’t offer much facility for flexibly here outside of the Crusade system. In older editions, it would have been possible for Games Workshop to include a table that lets you, say, add 10 points to an infantry squad so they could be considered Ravenwing Veterans on Foot. (Though, I’ll point out, this was never done.) But in reality the way different Space Marine factions are distinguished is by giving them access to special units. For Dark Angels, that’s Terminators and different kinds of bikes and speeders. Could a Ravenwing unit be ordered to deploy as Inceptors? Sure. But in-game to represent that GW would have to include an entirely different datasheet for that unit, which would also imply it’s a common way for the Ravenwing to operate. If the rules were good, most players would wind up using only Ravenwing Inceptors, which would dilute the idea of them as cavalry specialists. It’s not that it couldn’t ever happen, it’s that not providing rules for it means the game never implies it’s common. To crib the theme from THe Incredibles, the more special, customized units you start to offer, the less special any of them wind up being. Good design requires focus.

Ravenwing Aircraft

2012’s sixth edition added aircraft to most armies. Page 20 of that year’s Codex: Dark Angels says, “the majority of the Space Marines in the company are deployed to battles on bikes, with the remainder piloting some form of Land Speeder or fighter aircraft.” Regarding atmospheric fighters, page 50 says:

To pilot such swift attack craft, the Dark Angels have naturally turned to the Ravenwing — for the 2nd Company cultivates the skills needed for such rapid manoeuvres. Ever since its founding, all members of the Ravenwing have been trained to pilot any of the vehicles their company utilises in battle; however, it is the oversized 2nd and 3rd squads that have traditionally served as the front-line pilots.

This edition adds two Ravenwing-specific airplanes: the Nephilim Jetfighter and the Ravenwing Dark Talon.

On the Nephilim Jetfighter, the codex says that while they are “sometimes given the task of escorting Thunderhawks to their drop sites, the main role for the Nephilim is as an interceptor to establish air superiority over the battlefield, allowing their brethren to concentrate on ground targets with little concern for aerial assault.”

The Dark Talon’s job, in contrast, is to attack ground sources, with the added task of transporting captured Fallen:

In addition to its mighty arsenal, the Dark Talon carries a static-crypt holding cell. It is into these awful confines that the Dark Angels’ captives are loaded so that they might be ferried up to the orbital fleet and, ultimately, to the dungeons of the Rock and the attentions of the Interrogator-Chaplains.

2016’s Death from the Skies supplement, page 10:

The Dark Angels are unusual amongst the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes in that their aircraft are not piloted by the Techmarines of their Armoury. Instead, these agile hunting craft are flown into battle by the expert operatives of the Dark Angels 2nd Company, the Ravenwing.

It goes on to say that the pilots are trained to “fly the infamous Nephilim Jetfighters and Ravenwing Dark Talons that make up the Dark Angels air force.”

Is this passage meant to be saying that the chapter’s air force is entirely comprised of those two types of planes? We know it isn’t, because Thunderhawks were mentioned in the 2012 codex. The answer comes in 2017’s Codex: Dark Angels, which depicts a green, 5th company Stormraven on page 61. Page 126 provides its rules, which do not include the Ravenwing keyword.

Taken together, my conclusion is that while the Ravenwing do maintain a set of aircraft, they are not the entirety of the Dark Angels’ air force. Troop transports are greenwing or Deathwing. Other craft meant to escort these transports or intercept enemy fighters are likely greenwing, which are piloted by Techmarines per Death from the Skies (Stormhawks etc).

The role of 2nd company aircraft, then, would mirror that of their better-known ground forces: engagements where veteran pilots are needed, and anything involving the Hunt. Dark Talons transport the Fallen; Nephilim protect the Dark Talons. A random Stormraven carrying some tactical squads has no role in the Hunt, so it would be Greenwing. (But one carrying Deathwing could well be operated by the 1st company in the same way that it maintains its own Land Raiders.)

(Undefined in any book I’m aware of is how exactly bikes and land speeders get to the surface from their voidships. There are presumably Thunderhawks or other drop ships that carry these, which may be maintained by the Ravenwing and their assigned Techmarines.)

* Referring to 40K lore here. The Ravenwing were later retconned to have been one of six “wings” of the 30K Legion. That version of the Ravenwing included infantry, tanks, etc. and served a different role than its modern descendant.

More Dark Angels stuff I’ve written: