Everyone gets all up in arms about flyers these days, and I confess, I get a little antsy in my pantsy when I'm playing a guy I know has one. But it's not because I think they're overpowered or broken. They aren't. I think they're perfectly balanced, and more often than not if they only have 1 flyer in their list I just ignore it because it only gets 3 or 4 rounds of shooting in, and if zooming it doesn't always have a target. I really don't see them as game breaking or any of that. But let me tell you why I'm apprehensive when I know there's a chance of a flyer.

Because the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft. They do have enough other things that they don't have to take them all the time, but just knowing they have them makes me wary, and when I bring a quad gun and shoot them down turn one I feel bad. On the contrary, I don't want to make a list that's too ignorant of flyers and get fisted by them.

So it's not that the flyers are too good, but that the counters to them are so hard I actually feel a little dirty when I take them, and I feel like that's not a good vibe to produce when you make a game that you primarily play with friends.

It's an interesting point well made. I can understand your feelings. It is a tricky one. I've only restarted with the hobby recently after a long break so have no experience of flyers and dont really know what its like to have one fielded against me and have it run around unchallenged.

The army lists i've been making and the force i'm building aren't built with them in mind at all. I'll maybe pay for that in some games but like you, I don't want to tailor my army for them. My army is quite fluffy and troop heavy. It's supposed to be mobile and I dont want to field an adl or quad gun or anything.

I'm also quite into asthetics and the look of the army and I just dont like the stormraven as a model, so I wont get one just so that it's there to shoot down enemy flyers.

I suppose I'm just gonna live with them, try avoid them as much as possible if I can. And if someone puts a flyer spam army up against me, I'll just quietly to myself call it a moral victory for me.

But I wouldn't worry about taking counters to them just because you think they're too hard. Your opponent would probably quite happily bomb your entire army with his flyer if they could. You shooting them down is the chance they take. All's fair and that.

eje005 wrote:the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft.

Well, the game has been designed to be this way. GW has made a new unit type that is either practically invincible, or comically easy to destroy with no middle ground whatsoever. That happy middle ground you're looking for just doesn't exist.

As such, if you don't want to take dedicated anti-flier (or fliers of your own) then you have literally no choice but to ignore them, as anything that you direct at them is just going to be wasted shots..

It's bad game design, but there you have it.

eje005 wrote:
So it's not that the flyers are too good, but that the counters to them are so hard I actually feel a little dirty when I take them, and I feel like that's not a good vibe to produce when you make a game that you primarily play with friends.

Don't feel dirty; you pretty much should be taking SOMETHING that can swat flyers. Just like you take something that is effective anti-tank. It's just another anti-X we have to deal with. In 5th it was pretty much Anti-Horde, Anti-MEQ/TEQ, and Anti-Tank. Any good TAC list had stuff to deal with these things, because you'd end up seeing them most of the time, if not all. Sure, if your anti-tank goes to waste against a foot-horde, then so be it; that's the game, and that's also the strategy behind a foot-horde not taking tanks. Waste some of your shots. As soon as flyers get accepted as a part of the game's meta, and not as some gamebreaking cheat-code, you'll more and more find yourself simply adding Anti-flyer to that aforementioned list. It's a changing game, and that's just one of the changes.

(Not all counters are that hard. Broadsides work awesomely against flyers; a broadside list is actually my flyer list's one loss (Mind you, this is because most of my meta hasn't adapted to flyers yet. If they had, I'd have far more losses than this). Not a single quad-gun, hydra, or any "hard counter." Just enough twin linked railguns where I had no safe place to fly. That's the achilles heel with most flyer-heavy lists; it's all your points in a few fragile, flying baskets. Knock the baskets out of the sky and there isn't much left in the wreckage to threaten you.

-Captain

 Ailaros wrote:

eje005 wrote:the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft.

Well, the game has been designed to be this way. GW has made a new unit type that is either practically invincible, or comically easy to destroy with no middle ground whatsoever. That happy middle ground you're looking for just doesn't exist.

As such, if you don't want to take dedicated anti-flier (or fliers of your own) then you have literally no choice but to ignore them, as anything that you direct at them is just going to be wasted shots..

It's bad game design, but there you have it.

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

jwr wrote:

Spoiler:

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

Problem is, unless you do this preemptively, which many people don't understand how to do yet this early in the edition, it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

-Cap'n

jwr wrote:The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms.

The problem is that, at least at the moment, AA doesn't cost half as much as airplanes. Often it costs more. If I'm going to reliably handle AV12 fliers from the ground as guard, I'm going to need a squad of 3 hydras, which costs 225 points. The flier they're going to try and shoot down likely costs about 130-150.

Plus, if my opponent doesn't bring fliers or skimmers, all those points spent on hydras are being spent on a unit that has really crummy firepower for its points.

Because of the way the game is currently designed, the only way you can handle fliers is either with your own fliers (who get skyfire for free), or to just ignore the fliers altogether.

It's rock-paper-scissors-ier than most other stuff in the game. I mean, lascannons will usually have SOMETHING at least vaguely worth shooting at when facing a horde, and you don't have to spend many points on lascannons to have enough anti-tank in your list.

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

A big issue with Flyers is that they're flying tanks, with firepower equivalent to or greater than ground tanks and greater survivability, for generally little or not cost increase. Part of this is that most used to simply be skimmers and were made Flyers without any adjustments. I'd reduce most of the AV12 flyers to AV11, AV10 should really be the standard for most aircraft.


Additionally, yeah, there needs to be a Gunship style rule so that you don't have ground attack aircraft excellent at interception roles, and likewise interceptor aircraft really shouldn't be effective ground attack aircraft. I'd probably swap out the text of "Strafing Run" and say that any aircraft with this rule engages ground targets at full BS but other aircraft only as snap-shots, while having and change the "Interceptor" text to apply to aircraft intended to engage other aircraft and allow firing at full BS and against ground targets only as snap-shots and having a better Jink ability against other aircraft, and then getting rid of the silly text in the Skyfire rule forcing AA guns to engage ground targets only with snapshots.

That'd much more clearly define roles for aircraft, make AA weapons more all around useful as half of the time they sit there useless, and we'd have fewer issues with aircraft in general. One could apply the above rules instead to specific weapons, like on the DE -raven fighter, it's missiles could have "Strafing Run" while its lances are "Interceptor" or the like.

As is, too many flyers (not all, but many) are just flying tanks that gain a ton of survivability.

 TheCaptain wrote:

jwr wrote:

Spoiler:

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

Problem is, unless you do this preemptively, which many people don't understand how to do yet this early in the edition, it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

-Cap'n

Really? You know you may play against Army X, Army X may have tanks/aircraft/etc, it's not kosher to show up with anti-armor/anti-air/anti-etc? Huh. As I said somewhere else around here, I don't play 40K (just read it and paint it), so I'm learning something new everyday.

jwr wrote:
Really? You know you may play against Army X, Army X may have tanks/aircraft/etc, it's not kosher to show up with anti-armor/anti-air/anti-etc? Huh. As I said somewhere else around here, I don't play 40K (just read it and paint it), so I'm learning something new everyday.

You bring anti-X/Y/Z because X/Y/Z exist in the game, not because you know that your next opponent likes to use X. You make a standard list that can handle all potential opponents, and bring it to all games at that point level.

List tailoring is TFG behavior because there's no fair way to do it. Let's say I list tailor against you. Now you'll reasonable insist that you should be able to list tailor against me. But now that you've done that I think I'll go back and change my list so that your tailoring isn't effective anymore. But now you want to do the same. And so on until one of us gives up and accepts the disadvantage of being tailored against. Since this unfairly penalizes the player who wants to play the game instead of sitting around writing lists all day the solution is for both players to bring standard all-comers lists written before they know what they're fighting against.

And then of course there's the financial aspect. Anyone playing 40k can build a single all-comers list, but it costs a lot more money to buy the extra models that allow you to list tailor against specific opponents. This puts people with a limited budget at a huge disadvantage and reduces the game to a question of who can afford to spend more money.

 Ailaros wrote:

jwr wrote:The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms.

The problem is that, at least at the moment, AA doesn't cost half as much as airplanes. Often it costs more. If I'm going to reliably handle AV12 fliers from the ground as guard, I'm going to need a squad of 3 hydras, which costs 225 points. The flier they're going to try and shoot down likely costs about 130-150.

Plus, if my opponent doesn't bring fliers or skimmers, all those points spent on hydras are being spent on a unit that has really crummy firepower for its points.

Because of the way the game is currently designed, the only way you can handle fliers is either with your own fliers (who get skyfire for free), or to just ignore the fliers altogether.

It's rock-paper-scissors-ier than most other stuff in the game. I mean, lascannons will usually have SOMETHING at least vaguely worth shooting at when facing a horde, and you don't have to spend many points on lascannons to have enough anti-tank in your list.

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

Makes more sense...I was looking at points costs from a couple of older sources I'm using as guides, and I honestly don't know the relative effectiveness of X avengers v/s a stormraven, for example, other than to transpose what happens in other games when someone flies helicopter and planes around SAM batteries.

 Ailaros wrote:

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

You're implying list tailoring is okay?

Flyers, like any other unit, always have a component of risk/reward to them. It's the nature of the game (and a product of the diverse nature of 40k) that everything has at least one hard counter that completely invalidates its existance. For example, normally a Land Raider is an all but indestructible fortress, completely immune to damage from weapons with a strength less than 8. However, for about 185 points I can bring a squad of 5 Sternguard in a drop pod, all with combi-meltas, DS them next to the Landraider T1 and reliably destroy it before it gets a chance to do anything (statistically, I'll score 3 hits with the combi-meltas, at least two will penetrate, and 1 will cause an explodes result. The math I'm using is somewhat simplified since I don't want to work out the exact results, but it is close enough for this discussion). In doing so I've taken out a unit about 60 points more expensive than my own (on average), and still leaves me with both a drop pod and 5 Sternguard, which can either act as a damage sponge for a turn or then go on to make back even more points. Seems kinda evilly efficient, right, especially considering that my opponent had almost no chance of interacting with the unit before it was deployed?

Yet at the same time it's not evil, because while it works amazingly against a certain type of target, it becomes less efficient against targets other than what it was engineered to kill. That same Drop-Guard unit would still do well against a Leman Russ, perhaps better considering that it has lower rear and side armour, but it would make back fewer points. If my opponent has no vehicles what-so-ever, my drop guard are likely not going to accomplish very much before getting chewed up and spit out by a horde. Part of what makes this balanced and fair is that while it destroys certain units, unless you are list tailoring there is a good chance that the unit won't be that deadly effective, and it could possibly even end up being useless.

The other factor you have to consider is that lets say you bring two 5 man drop-guard squads as your anti-heavy armour capabilities. You set up, deep strike, and take out two Land Raiders, happy as can be. Then, on your opponents turn, they shoot up your surviving sternguard (or don't since they are less dangerous without their combis) and then bring in a third Land Raider from reserves. What do you do now, since you literally have nothing which can harm it as it rolls around the battlefield, spitting out TH/SS Termies, Tank-Shocking everything, and blowing stuff up like it is going out of style? There in lies the other issue with hard counters, if an opponent is able to eliminate your counter, they are in a significantly better position. This is why a Necron Flyer list player will tell you that the first thing they do on Turn 2 is have their Doom Scythes hit anything that has any AA capability at all with everything they can, because once your opponent looses their ability to interact with fliers efficiently, the Necron player has a significant advantage.

So yes, if your opponent is running a couple of fliers, the counters to them hurt HARD, but these hard counters suffer when you bring too many, meaning that you effectively give yourself an X points handicap, or too few, meaning that your opponent can just address them and use the remainder of his units unmolested. So if you are playing in a competitive environment and you know that everybody is going to be spamming Vendettas and Scythes, go ahead and counter as hard as you want. You are playing a game, and being able to adapt to the meta-game is just good strategy. However, if you are playing in a more casual environment and are worried about providing too hard of a counter, perhaps try to limit yourself to only playing a take all comers list, or alternatively suggest that your group have pairings which aren't decided until after lists are finalized?

jwr wrote:
Makes more sense...I was looking at points costs from a couple of older sources I'm using as guides, and I honestly don't know the relative effectiveness of X avengers v/s a stormraven, for example, other than to transpose what happens in other games when someone flies helicopter and planes around SAM batteries.

I wouldn't be too eager to draw conclusions from one game and apply them to another. There's no reason to believe that you're talking about some fundamental relationship between aircraft and ground-based AA instead of just finding that the relative point costs are out of balance in a particular system, or a particular system has a to-hit roll for SAMs that is too easy, or some other system-specific detail.

To me people seem to think that zooming=immortality. Many times when I have my dakkajet up in the air people won't even bother to shoot unless they have skyfire.

I once downed a stormtalon with a couple of big shootas.

Fliers aren't a big deal, a few of them here and there in a list doesn't cause big problems, it's when your entire list is fliers when the lack of AA currently in the new edition shines. Also the nercon deathray is the stupidest gun in the game, a precision, auto hit, multi target railgun? Really?

Personally, I find the issue is that there's so few Skyfire weapons you can just slip into an army. There's the Aegis line or your own flyer, basically. Chaos got a bit of a boost with flakk missiles.

The thing is, you can fall hard the same way against vehicles. If you don't bring enough anti tank, and your opponent is running a mechanised army, you'll lose. If you bring far too much anti tank, you'll tear them apart, but then if you suddenly face an infantry horde, you're up gak creek.

While it's easier to find that good balance with anti tank, you can't yet with Skyfire because the options just aren't there. When more codices are released with Skyfire units, we'll get a better guage on flyers themselves.

TheCaptain wrote:You're implying list tailoring is okay?

I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

Plus, if you're fighting against a list that's been tailored against you, specifically, then you're going to be up against a greater challenge. Man up and face it. Plus, it's not like there are very many ways to increase your challenge level in this game, given the relatively low ceiling to player skill and the fact that the rest of the game is designed to be balanced.

Vaktathi wrote:A big issue with Flyers is that they're flying tanks, with firepower equivalent to or greater than ground tanks and greater survivability, for generally little or not cost increase. Part of this is that most used to simply be skimmers and were made Flyers without any adjustments.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. Apart from being poorly designed, fliers were also poorly executed. They have more guns, and can go further without having to snap fire anything, and they still have 3HP? I would have thought that all that extra armor would have made flight impossible. Etc.

The way that they executed makes just about as much sense as the game designers saying "hey, see that leman russ? It's cool, but we should make it so that it's invincible against shooting attacks, and can only be killed in assault... if you roll a 6 to hit. And let's not make it any more expensive". Really, really shabbily done.

There are a lot of ways to fix this. I like Vaktathi's idea of making it so that ground units can only snap fire against fliers, but fliers can only snap fire at ground targets (outside of hover mode). It doesn't make sense that a pilot can control his vehicle in a 600 mile per hour dive and have exactly the same accuracy as if he were sitting still on the ground. Just like how you can have ground targets upgrade to handle air targets (hydras, flakk missiles, etc.) you could have upgrades to let air targets handle ground targets.

 Ailaros wrote:
I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

That's not true at all. List tailoring is creating your list to defeat a specific opponent. Making a list that accounts for general things like "marines are popular" is just understanding the metagame.

Plus, if you're fighting against a list that's been tailored against you, specifically, then you're going to be up against a greater challenge. Man up and face it. Plus, it's not like there are very many ways to increase your challenge level in this game, given the relatively low ceiling to player skill and the fact that the rest of the game is designed to be balanced.

And if you're at a disadvantage to start with? Should the horde ork player be happy playing against a gunline opponent (already TFG in your opinion) who list tailored specifically to dominate horde orks?

Yeah, I'd agree with this. Apart from being poorly designed, fliers were also poorly executed. They have more guns, and can go further without having to snap fire anything, and they still have 3HP? I would have thought that all that extra armor would have made flight impossible. Etc.

Sure, but only if we make them true flyers. They can be AV 10-11 with 2 HP, but subtract 72" from all weapon ranges to represent the fact that they're bombing you from several thousand feet above the battlefield, and restore the old "go anywhere they want" rule to represent the fact that a flyer can move off the battlefield and come back in pretty much any position it wants. Oh yeah, and forget about hitting on 6's, skyfire lets you hit on 6s, and if you don't have skyfire you hit on 6s but have to re-roll successful hits. Twice. In fact, you might as well remove flyer models entirely and just have them be off-table sources of army-destroying bombs.

The simple fact is that GW took away all the "realistic" defenses of a flyer, so the only solution was to give them "unrealistic" AV/HP to compensate.

There are a lot of ways to fix this. I like Vaktathi's idea of making it so that ground units can only snap fire against fliers, but fliers can only snap fire at ground targets (outside of hover mode). It doesn't make sense that a pilot can control his vehicle in a 600 mile per hour dive and have exactly the same accuracy as if he were sitting still on the ground. Just like how you can have ground targets upgrade to handle air targets (hydras, flakk missiles, etc.) you could have upgrades to let air targets handle ground targets.

That's a terrible idea. Why should a dedicated ground attack aircraft like a Vulture be limited to hitting ground targets on 6s? And why should hitting air targets with guns (incredibly difficult IRL) be harder than strafing ground targets (easy IRL)?

If anything ground attack aircraft need to be more deadly to represent the fact that a load of 500lb bombs is going to obliterate your entire army, not just do less damage than a barrage of mortar shots. Likewise my Vulture with hunter-killer missiles should do what a real anti-tank gunship does, and destroy 5-6 heavy tanks with its load of six missiles, not fire all six into a Rhino and hope to get lucky and strip a hull point, all in a pop-up attack from behind cover that leaves no time to shoot down the Vulture before it makes its kills and drops back behind cover.

Peregrine wrote: List tailoring is creating your list to defeat a specific opponent. Making a list that accounts for general things like "marines are popular" is just understanding the metagame.

You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

Peregrine wrote:Sure, but only if we make them true flyers. They can be AV 10-11 with 2 HP, but subtract 72" from all weapon ranges to represent the fact that they're bombing you from several thousand feet above the battlefield,

No, just make it so that you can't shoot them, period. It doesn't make sense that a guy with a meltagun would ever be able to hit something that was on a bombing run a thousand feet above.

Of course, this is what happens when you base game balance on what one person's version of "realistic" is...

 Ailaros wrote:
You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

Except there's a huge difference. Building a list based on the general metagame is symmetrical since both players can do it just as well. List tailoring against a specific opponent is NOT symmetrical since in the end only one player can do it (or at least do it as effectively), especially when you include factors like how much each player can spend on models. Building a list based on the metagame leads to balanced games. List tailoring against a specific opponent usually involves one player using a standard all-comers list (often because it's the only one they're capable of bringing) while the other player uses a tailored list and wins easily.

No, just make it so that you can't shoot them, period. It doesn't make sense that a guy with a meltagun would ever be able to hit something that was on a bombing run a thousand feet above.

You're right, it doesn't. The fact that you can shoot down a flyer with weapons like that is why they have tank-level AV/HP instead of their "realistic" durability. If you want to bring flyers down to "realistic" durability then you also have to give them realistic immunity to most weapons.

Of course, this is what happens when you base game balance on what one person's version of "realistic" is...

You mean on how aircraft work in the real world. 40k's aircraft are laughably ineffective for game balance reasons.

 Ailaros wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:You're implying list tailoring is okay?

I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

Ailaros, sorry, but you're taking an understanding of the term "list tailoring" contrary to what everyone else seems to understand it as. No offense intended whatsoever, but come on. You should know what is implied. Sure, as far as the english language is concerned, "list tailoring" can refer to including meltaguns because you expect to face tanks at some point in the future with your list, and including a LRBT because, more likely than not, your opponent is going to have troops that need killing. But come on, if you think that's what we mean here, you're wrong. I don't think you're that daft though, just being kindof contrarian for the sake of argument.

To clear it up, like Peregrine says, it's tailoring against a specific list you know your opponent is fielding. Like "Oh, I'm playing Ailaros next, I better pull out my vendettas and replace them with MRP Valkyries. He uses a bunch of infantry. Better leave behind my missile launchers and swap them out for heavy bolters too." That is purposefully giving yourself an advantage with insider knowledge, and really isn't fair unless both parties are up to it, at which point it becomes silly. "Oh, player A is bringing rock? I better bring paper." To which Player B re-tailors "Crap, now he's bringing paper, guess I'll swap my rock for some scissors." It becomes ridiculous, and you're no longer playing with your army, you're playing with the army that you think will beat your opponent's army.

If it's still not clear, allow me to put it more concretely.

Today I played a 500 point game; both I and my opponent had no knowledge of eachother's list. As a result of a lucky Quad-gun shot, and the hard work of my Demolisher, I tabled the kid turn 5. Solid, clean game. Soon as the game ends, another gentleman offered me a challenge. I accepted, only post-deployment, the gentleman made me aware he noticed I ran a demolisher behind a gunline, and for that reason he added in two land-speeders with multimelta. I was tabled turn three, because he tailored his list to hard-counter the centerpiece to my list, the Demolisher. This is no show of skill, Ailaros, however low you may consider the skill-ceiling to be in this game. This is inside-knowledge being used to a player's advantage, and that is what we all mean by list tailoring.

(Granted, like you, the guy seemed to have no idea it was unfair, and was a gentleman, as well as enjoyable to play against. Not the point.)

Hope that helped.
-Cap

So far, I haven't had a huge problem with flyers. The last flyer I faced got shot down by a twin-linked meltagun second turn it was on the board, and I think it only killed like 2 marines. If there had been 2 or 3 of them it would have been a bigger problem, but then again I also probably wouldn't have had the land raider full of termies to deal with, so it may have all evened itself out.

Really it depends partly on luck and partly on quantity. 1 flyer isn't a huge deal for most armies, but when you start getting 2 or 3, you're gonna want some anti-flyer, or you'll start to feel the pain.

Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

 GimbleMuggernaught wrote:
So far, I haven't had a huge problem with flyers. The last flyer I faced got shot down by a twin-linked meltagun second turn it was on the board, and I think it only killed like 2 marines.

The last flyer I faced was an Ork Fighta-Bomma that tried a bombing run, caused a penetrating hit on itself and exploded in the air. Truly all fliers aren't equals.

The Necron flying circus with three Doom Scythes and as many Night Scythes as you can fit in is a lot deadlier, and nothing I wish to face at all. Without Interceptor guns I'll lose at least three heavy hitters on the first turn with no chance to do anything about it. And the stupid things also have a nasty tendency to fall over and smash my models for real.

 illuknisaa wrote:

I once downed a stormtalon with a couple of big shootas.

That's because you're Orks. You believed you could do it, so you did.

Plus, hitting on 6's when you need 5's normally doesn't really bother you so much, does it? XD

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

 60mm wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

This is true. A Flyrant is just about the only (massively cost inefficient) answer to fliers. The sad thing is, that one of the more common fliers (read Vendetta) completely blows this poor thing out the air, at a fraction of the points cost.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 60mm wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

This is true. A Flyrant is just about the only (massively cost inefficient) answer to fliers. The sad thing is, that one of the more common fliers (read Vendetta) completely blows this poor thing out the air, at a fraction of the points cost.

And thus is the issue with flyers. GW handed out supreme beatsticks to some armies and left others royally screwed. Most players are gentlemen and won't abuse it thankfully, but the National League of TFGs really doesn't need opportunities like this :-/ Someone on The Tyranid Hive just finished a tourney where an all-out Necron flyer spam took first place, winning every single game by a long shot.

Edit: Before the rant, I'd better put something in about the actual topic of the thread!

I personally hate the Flyer rules, and I'm speaking as someone who has loved following military aviation since I was a small child. The average 40k battlefield is far, far too small to field Flyers on. Even a 12'x6' board is really too small to field even ground attack craft like Vultures in any meaningful way.

Ruling the sky means ruling the ground. In real life, aircraft like the Harrier GR-1 render fortified emplacements moot, and ground-attack planes like the A-10 Warthog shred armoured vehicles. The only reason tanks are even viable, tactically speaking, is because it's nigh impossible to maintain 100% air superiority. Heck, a Stuka can appear out of nowhere and destroy three or four vehicles in a convoy before the tanks even have a chance to alert their AA support. So the Flyer rules - especially their awful mobility and lack of designation-by-role - are absolutely awful at representing them. A Vendetta shouldn't be able to dogfight a Nightwing and come out on top! Yeah, some things, like the Night Scythe are designed around a weapon system that's equally good against all targets, but most Imperial stuff just... isn't.

 Ailaros wrote:

You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

At this point, I'd just like to point out that the battle report linked from that article on list tailoring, the "tailored army list" was also a "massive cheating army list".

Take the humble Immolator, for example, of which that list contained many. The Immolator has, and has always had, two Heavy Flamers. When the Witch Hunter book was released, these were altered to be a single Twin-linked heavy flamer, which it has remained ever since. At no point has it ever been possible to arm an Immolator with "2 TL heavy flamers".

For a second example, you have listed him as fielding the following;

Celestines
- with 2x flamers, heavy flamer, brazier of fire
- Immolator with 2 TL heavy flamers

Sisters of Battle
- with 2x flamers, heavy flamer, brazier of fire
- Rhino

Again, ignoring the Illegalator, these squads break the rules! Both Celestian and Battle Sister squads may only take two weapon options: A special weapon and a heavy weapon. If they choose not to take a heavy weapon, they may take a second special weapon.

So, between the double-armed Immolators, the infantry squads with too many special weapon choices, and... hang on, I'm not sure, but I think Inquisitorial Retinues were limited to Heavy Bolters, Plasma Cannons and Multi-meltas, and at that, only 3 heavy weapons total.

A little list tailoring is to be expected in friendly games between experienced players. The key to making it fair is to make sure that you have some rough idea as to what the opponent has so that when they deploy a unit designed to ruin your specific day, you have a counter built into your list. Encouraging general list-tailoring encourages stronger general list-building, because a good list will cover all of its own weaknesses, thus negating the advantage that a tailored list could potentially afford.

 Peregrine wrote:


Sure, but only if we make them true flyers. They can be AV 10-11 with 2 HP, but subtract 72" from all weapon ranges to represent the fact that they're bombing you from several thousand feet above the battlefield, and restore the old "go anywhere they want" rule to represent the fact that a flyer can move off the battlefield and come back in pretty much any position it wants. Oh yeah, and forget about hitting on 6's, skyfire lets you hit on 6s, and if you don't have skyfire you hit on 6s but have to re-roll successful hits. Twice. In fact, you might as well remove flyer models entirely and just have them be off-table sources of army-destroying bombs.

The simple fact is that GW took away all the "realistic" defenses of a flyer, so the only solution was to give them "unrealistic" AV/HP to compensate.

If you want to play *real* bombers in the game, it would be a barrage orbital bombardment that fires off once during the battle. Real bombers don't go zigging four times in two minutes over the same small skirmish, 40 feet in the air. That's not how bombers work. 40K flyers are clearly not designed to represent that kind of thing.

I'm not sure why they look like planes at all, they seem to be a lot closer to attack helicopters in both the role they play and the way they act. A fighter or bomber played realistically would make an appearance for one round, hit with some serious weaponry, and then be gone for the rest of the game.

 Hollowman wrote:

I'm not sure why they look like planes at all, they seem to be a lot closer to attack helicopters in both the role they play and the way they act. A fighter or bomber played realistically would make an appearance for one round, hit with some serious weaponry, and then be gone for the rest of the game.

The Stormtalon is a bit of a move in that direction, it clearly looks like a close air support gunship rather than a fighter.

The reason we have flier models now is the same reason we have long-range artillery: it's obviously represented better as an off-board calldown, but GW wanted to sell models.

 Hollowman wrote:
If you want to play *real* bombers in the game, it would be a barrage orbital bombardment that fires off once during the battle. Real bombers don't go zigging four times in two minutes over the same small skirmish, 40 feet in the air. That's not how bombers work. 40K flyers are clearly not designed to represent that kind of thing.

I'm not sure why they look like planes at all, they seem to be a lot closer to attack helicopters in both the role they play and the way they act. A fighter or bomber played realistically would make an appearance for one round, hit with some serious weaponry, and then be gone for the rest of the game.

Err, that's kind of my point. Flyers in 40k are not a realistic representation of what "real" aircraft would do, so it's ridiculous to complain that having the same AV/HP as a tank is "unrealistic".

 Peregrine wrote:

Err, that's kind of my point. Flyers in 40k are not a realistic representation of what "real" aircraft would do, so it's ridiculous to complain that having the same AV/HP as a tank is "unrealistic".

I agree with that - but I also don't agree that flyers are underpowered, as you implied. I don't like the flyer rules, and I don't really think they work for game balance or realism. That said, I think lower AV and hull points for most flyers would be a step in the right direction on both fronts.

 Hollowman wrote:
I agree with that - but I also don't agree that flyers are underpowered, as you implied.

I implied no such thing. As a concept they're just fine, and the only problems are with the individual unit rules where some flyers just have terrible rules independent of their unit type.

What I did say was that realism-wise they're too weak in firepower. A "real" load of 500lb bombs (like a Thunderbolt carries as secondary weapons) would be an army-destroying event, but instead they're only STR 6 AP 4 small blasts, or worse than a Griffon's light mortar. However, if you look at the model you find that the bombs are actually larger than the STR 10 AP 2 large blast shells the Medusa fires. Likewise for hellstrike missiles, etc. However, for obvious reasons this is not represented accurately in a tabletop skirmish game.

That said, I think lower AV and hull points for most flyers would be a step in the right direction on both fronts.

You mean a step in the direction of killing flyers entirely. With lower AV and less HP they'd be even more vulnerable to dying before ever getting a shot any time interceptor guns are on the table, and way too easy to kill in general.

...Most Flyers are already AV10/SP2, changing that would make them even easier to wreck...

I've found that the biggest issue is that people don't know how to deal with flyers or play flyers in 6e since it's relatively new and we're still getting used to it; I run an airborne Guard detachment attached to my Grey Knights army, and I've found that if my enemy fields an emplaced anti-aircraft gun all I have to do is run one Interceptor squad with a Daemonhammer or two and some psycannons over next to it and shred it early (if they can't reach it that generally means it's too far back to hit my flyers when they reach the table), before my Valkyries take the field. If your enemy is having too much trouble with your quad-gun shooting down their flyers, feel free to point out to them that the gun is quite destroyable (T7/W2/Sv3+) and they've always got a turn or two to whack it with whatever starts on the table before the flyers come on.

Most flyers in codexes are 3HP av11+; doom and night scythes, stormtalon and raven, vendetta / valkyrie and the new heldrake. Only orks and one DE fighter get the joy of AV10.

Now when you include IA you get more 2HP creatures

How are AA guns with 48" (72 with the icarus) range out of range of your flyers that have to move min 18" onto the table? Sure if you want to come in at such an acute angle you dont shoot first turn, do so....

 AnomanderRake wrote:
...Most Flyers are already AV10/SP2, changing that would make them even easier to wreck...

Actually, GW hasn't published a single flier with AV10 and 2 SP.

As Nos said, currently, most fliers in the game are AV11/12 and 3 SP. If we count variations only once, there are 3 flyers with AV12 (SR, Heldrake, Valkyrie/Vendetta), 3 with AV11 (NS/DS, Stormtalon, Voidraven) and 2 with AV10 (Razorwing, Dakkajet/Blitza-bommer/Burna-bommer). Of these, only Stormtalon has 2 SP, all others have 3 SP.

 Ailaros wrote:
The way that they executed makes just about as much sense as the game designers saying "hey, see that leman russ? It's cool, but we should make it so that it's invincible against shooting attacks, and can only be killed in assault... if you roll a 6 to hit. And let's not make it any more expensive".

Don't forget the other things too.

Lets make it have to start in reserve, and only be able to effect the game for 3-5 turns.

By default, forcing the flyers to start in reserve limits their point-effectivness vs a unit starting on the board.

I really wouldn't mind flyers if everyone was given reasonable ways to tackle them, which GW dropped the ball on big time.

AnomanderRake, it's easy for you to say that T7 W2 3+ isn't hard to shoot apart as GK. Not everyone has access to powerful guns. My already overpriced Flyrant will get torn to pieces by quad-guns and not even the Tyrannofex has ap3. Our strongest AA capability is s6 and we can't use quad-guns.

Flyer implementation was very sloppy and lopsided. Some armies can swarm flyers, some don't really have any. Some armies have great AA, some have practically none. The ridiculous part is that the aies with the good flyers, by the same token have the good AA. So some armies got the rock and the paper while others just got a big finger from GW. Very frustrating when you aren't one of GW's pet-armies.

 labmouse42 wrote:
By default, forcing the flyers to start in reserve limits their point-effectivness vs a unit starting on the board.

Really? I've found it to be the other way around. Reserves means you're not taking shots at he start of the game, and once the flier becomes available the player has had a good while of looking at the field and can choose the right targets for it. Barring a lucky Interceptor shot there's no excuse for a Doomscythe that doesn't manage to make it's points back on the turn it enters the game.

I just don't get the flyer hysteria. Yes, flyers will destroy your 5th edition lists, but we're not playing 5th any more. Lots of firepower in exchange for 3-4 turns worth of firepower and limited/predictable movement. Good 6th ed lists can deal with flyers by either fielding their own or just ignoring them. As scary as a Night Scythe or Vendetta looks to your MSU mech army, the T7-9 Tyranid MCs, swarms of Orks and multi-wound Eternal Warriors really don't care.

6th is all about scoring units, either killing their or protecting yours. Somebody investing heavily in flyers will be light on scoring, and a strong ground presence beats a flaky air force any day.

Indeed - out manouvering air lists, by essentially walking under their arc of sight - you know where it will be after its next movement after all, unless it wants to hover - massively limits their effectiveness. It just means thinking a couple turns ahead

 Chumbalaya wrote:

6th is all about scoring units, either killing their or protecting yours. Somebody investing heavily in flyers will be light on scoring, and a strong ground presence beats a flaky air force any day.

Someone on The Tyranid Hive just posted about a Tourney they attended where an all-out Necron flyer spam took first place easily simply because no one could shoot that many down and the Necrons had enough firepower to blow everything down. Near end of game they unload their 5 man units to score and win because not much is left standing.

MCs get murdered by Vendettas that cost less than half their price btw, don't see how even an IA'd MC wouldn't be afraid of mass TL Lascannons on super-cheap flyers . . .

People who bring "One Trick Pony" lists deserve a "One Trick Pony" defense. I don't get the whole concept of list tailoring being bad. From a realistic(LOL) standpoint, it is Warhammer "40.000". I would think that every Space Marine Chapter has a knowledge base of every IG General in the universe and would generaly know what that guy has to fight them with. I would imagine every planetary invasion is preceeded by scouts and spearhead attacks.

It is the player A's fault if he brings a overpowered list that has a GLARING weakness. It is player B's fault if he does not exploit that weakness. List tailoring is a good thing for it prevents the POWERGAMER List. I think that all battles should give each side a chance to tailor their list to the other guy's list.

Pre-game

Player A shows his list to Player B

Player B shows his list to Player A

Player A and B can then change up to 25% of their list to tailor to the other guy, not counting squad loadouts as part of the 25%.

Would make for much more competitive games.

x13rads wrote:


Pre-game

Player A shows his list to Player B

Player B shows his list to Player A

Player A and B can then change up to 25% of their list to tailor to the other guy, not counting squad loadouts as part of the 25%.

Would make for much more competitive games.

There's nothing to stop you from doing that. It just seems that it's unnecessary. As many people have already pointed out, people who can bring flier defence, do. People who can't...can't. Giving me 25% of my points to change to your lack of anti-flier means I'm just going to bring another flier, since I know you can't spend those 25% on enough AA.

On the idea it makes for competitive games, I disagree. It makes for rock paper scissors.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Most flyers in codexes are 3HP av11+; doom and night scythes, stormtalon and raven, vendetta / valkyrie and the new heldrake. Only orks and one DE fighter get the joy of AV10.

Now when you include IA you get more 2HP creatures

How are AA guns with 48" (72 with the icarus) range out of range of your flyers that have to move min 18" onto the table? Sure if you want to come in at such an acute angle you dont shoot first turn, do so....

I stand corrected on the flyers point; the Ork Attack Fighta, the Lightning interceptor, the Nightwing interceptor, the Remora drone, the Barracuda fighter, the Raven interceptor, and the Hell Blade fighter are all AV10/SP2, but those aren't the aircraft you're likely to see on the table, so my point isn't as valid as I thought it was.

I was simply observing that any 48" range AA gun that's close enough to the table edge to shoot at my Valkyries as they come on is also close enough for my Interceptors to hit with psycannons or daemonhammers on turn one or two (30" teleport shunt plus 24" psycannon fire on turn one, 12" move plus 24" psycannon fire plus average 7" charge range on turn two).

 60mm wrote:
Someone on The Tyranid Hive just posted about a Tourney they attended where an all-out Necron flyer spam took first place easily simply because no one could shoot that many down and the Necrons had enough firepower to blow everything down. Near end of game they unload their 5 man units to score and win because not much is left standing.

MCs get murdered by Vendettas that cost less than half their price btw, don't see how even an IA'd MC wouldn't be afraid of mass TL Lascannons on super-cheap flyers . . .

Got a link? I'd love to see what sort of tourney this was before the sky starts falling. Scythes can tear up light armor and small units, but they are seriously limited by their movement rules and larger units tend to shrug off anything less than an entire air force's worth of Tesla.

Best an army can manage is 3 Vendettas, which is a significant investment. If those Vendettas all show up on turn 2, if the Tyranid player isn't smart enough to have cover or move to within the Vendettas' minimum range, if all their shots hit, if all their hits wound (S9 vs T8/9 isn't a guarantee) and if all their cover and FNP saves fail, then MCs get destroyed And, of course, gaunts and gargoyles really don't care about 9 lascannon shots.

So yes, if your army is centered on one or two MCs or you bring a bunch of Rhinos and 5-man squads, flyers will kill you. The problem isn't the flyers, it's you using an outdated army in this edition.

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

Vendettas don't have a minimum range.

 somecallmeJack wrote:

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

Great article about list tailoring. I've always been of that opinion, but Ive never managed to articulate it so clearly.

 somecallmeJack wrote:

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

Yeah, see, I addressed this already. Just because someone decides to redefine something to fit their personal opinion, doesn't mean it is right when abiding by the common definition of the matter.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Vendettas don't have a minimum range.

They actually have some serious limitations on movement and shooting, as do all flyers. They must start in reserve, they must fly off the owning player's board edge, they must move at least 18", they can only turn 90 degrees and their weapons only have a 45 degree firing arc. Sure, you can hover after you arrive, but then you just become another AV12 skimmer that nobody should have a problem knocking out.

Oh, I'm not denying that Flyers are limited on their firing arcs and targetting, but there's no 'minimum range' limitation.

Sorry, I've just had people fiercely trying to argue that if you're within a certain distance of a flyer, it can't shoot you because of the 45 degree vertical firing arc rule and refusing to believe otherwise until I get one of my planes out and physically demonstrate that aircraft can pitch up and down (even on the models - if you don't glue the flight stands in, it's easy enough to angle them forward or back ) that it really bugs me when people insist on said mythical "minimum range".

The other thing is that yes - Vendettas in particular can Hover. Hovering may surrender all of your defensive bonusses, but if you absolutely 100% have to kill that land raider that's parked in front of you and you've got no choice but to overshoot it unless you Hover - Hovering is a good choice.

I think he was referring to minimum movement rather minimum shooting range. The use of "range" was a little confusing in that context and I understand where you're coming from. since I've had someone try to claim the 45 degree arc of fire is up/down as well as left/right which just isn't true.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
I just don't get the flyer hysteria. Yes, flyers will destroy your 5th edition lists, but we're not playing 5th any more. Lots of firepower in exchange for 3-4 turns worth of firepower and limited/predictable movement. Good 6th ed lists can deal with flyers by either fielding their own or just ignoring them. As scary as a Night Scythe or Vendetta looks to your MSU mech army, the T7-9 Tyranid MCs, swarms of Orks and multi-wound Eternal Warriors really don't care.

6th is all about scoring units, either killing their or protecting yours. Somebody investing heavily in flyers will be light on scoring, and a strong ground presence beats a flaky air force any day.

You can't ignore a flyer list. One or two flyers, you can ignore. A good flyer list will decimate you if you lack the weaponry to bring them down, and many lists cannot bring more than a single quad gun to reliably bring down flyers. That dies first, and then troops start dying. Sure, some armies have the bodies or the firepower to ignore or kill flyers, but some armies do not. No army can prepare itself to face serious flyer lists without damaging it's ability to take on most other lists.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Oh, I'm not denying that Flyers are limited on their firing arcs and targetting, but there's no 'minimum range' limitation.

Sorry, I've just had people fiercely trying to argue that if you're within a certain distance of a flyer, it can't shoot you because of the 45 degree vertical firing arc rule and refusing to believe otherwise until I get one of my planes out and physically demonstrate that aircraft can pitch up and down (even on the models - if you don't glue the flight stands in, it's easy enough to angle them forward or back ) that it really bugs me when people insist on said mythical "minimum range".

The other thing is that yes - Vendettas in particular can Hover. Hovering may surrender all of your defensive bonusses, but if you absolutely 100% have to kill that land raider that's parked in front of you and you've got no choice but to overshoot it unless you Hover - Hovering is a good choice.

Ah, so youre changing the model during the game? What gives you permission to do that?

The 45 degree arc is entirely legitimate, and your attempts at cheating by changing your models position when you have no permission to do so in order to circumvent this is not exactly a great game plan.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Ah, so youre changing the model during the game? What gives you permission to do that?

The 45 degree arc is entirely legitimate, and your attempts at cheating by changing your models position when you have no permission to do so in order to circumvent this is not exactly a great game plan.

Uh.. what?

The rules say that if a weapon on a model can be moved to point at something, that puts it inside its firing arc.

Therefore, trying to claim that I'm cheating by moving the bits of my model is... somewhat ridiculous, don't you think?

I'm not "changing the model's position". The base stays exactly where it is. What is it with people trying to call me a filthy cheater today just because they want their stupid fanon nerfs to be law?

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Uh.. what?

The rules say that if a weapon on a model can be moved to point at something, that puts it inside its firing arc.

Therefore, trying to claim that I'm cheating by moving the bits of my model is... somewhat ridiculous, don't you think?

I'm not "changing the model's position". The base stays exactly where it is. What is it with people trying to call me a filthy cheater today just because they want their stupid fanon nerfs to be law?

Chill.

By tilting the model, you're changing the model's position, effectively moding its 45 degree firing arc. Simple as that. Under your logic, if I never move the base, and turn my valk around on it, I could fire at stuff behind it. Unfortunately, that's not how it works.

Lesson to be learned here: since the rules never specify where the Vendetta's lascannons are or how they're mounted, put them on turret mounts that can shoot straight down. Problem solved.

 TheCaptain wrote:


Chill.

By tilting the model, you're changing the model's position, effectively moding its 45 degree firing arc. Simple as that. Under your logic, if I never move the base, and turn my valk around on it, I could fire at stuff behind it. Unfortunately, that's not how it works.

No. If you take the thing off its base and turn it around, you're repositioning the model because the flight stand is moulded to only fit in the slot on the bottom of the valk one way round. If your valk fits either way, you've built the model in a nonstandard way which I believe comes under 'modelling for advantage'.

Simply tipping the nose up or down on its mount is no different from turning the turret on a predator.

As for the turret idea, I believe that's what the forge world vendetta conversion actually did. It looks dumb.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:


Chill.

By tilting the model, you're changing the model's position, effectively moding its 45 degree firing arc. Simple as that. Under your logic, if I never move the base, and turn my valk around on it, I could fire at stuff behind it. Unfortunately, that's not how it works.

No. If you take the thing off its base and turn it around, you're repositioning the model because the flight stand is moulded to only fit in the slot on the bottom of the valk one way round. If your valk fits either way, you've built the model in a nonstandard way which I believe comes under 'modelling for advantage'.

Simply tipping the nose up or down on its mount is no different from turning the turret on a predator.

As for the turret idea, I believe that's what the forge world vendetta conversion actually did. It looks dumb.

Right, show me where tipping the model is allowed?

I know you can turn the gun to draw LOS on a Turret mounted weapon, however nowhere could I find permission to tilt/tip/lean/etc the model to squeek extra range in

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Simply tipping the nose up or down on its mount is no different from turning the turret on a predator.

First of all, the flight base is just a Plus sign shape. If fits forwards or backwards; try it.

Secondly, tipping a model is nothing like rotating a turret. Rotating a turret is allowed because it's a mobile armament. It's a turret.

Vendetta guns are fixed, wing-mounted guns. No rotation or swiveling. We're lucky they even get the 45 degree thing.

Tilting your model's position on the base is equivalent to modifying it's modeling for your own tactical advantage. Which is not okay.

 TheCaptain wrote:
First of all, the flight base is just a Plus sign shape. If fits forwards or backwards; try it.

It's a plus shape, but not a straight vertical one. I don't know about the Vendetta (since the only one I have is the old all-resin kit), but my Vultures won't fit on their stands unless they're facing the correct direction. If you try to put it on backwards the slanted parts don't line up right and it won't work.

(Of course tipping it up or down doesn't work very well either, you can get a few degrees of elevation if you're willing to risk having the model fall off and break, but not enough to significantly change your minimum range.)

Vendetta guns are fixed, wing-mounted guns. No rotation or swiveling. We're lucky they even get the 45 degree thing.

Where does it state that? It's probably intended to be that way, but if we're to the point of discussing the legality of repositioning your model on the base then you might as well just take advantage of the fact that GW never specifies how or where the guns are mounted.

The FW conversion kits has them as hull mounts.

Furyou Miko - again, you are changing the orietntation of your model, and have no permission to do so

Are you altering the weapons mounting? No, you are chanigng the entire MODELS orientation

That is cheating. Pure and simple

 Peregrine wrote:
Lesson to be learned here: since the rules never specify where the Vendetta's lascannons are or how they're mounted, put them on turret mounts that can shoot straight down. Problem solved.

No way and if Anyone saw that they would never play you they are forward mounted straight shots hoever the side mounted heavy bolter are not.

Indeed - its a good way to not get friendly pick up games (MFA on something as undercosted as a vendetta? Please!) and would have your model played as stock in any tournament i run or know of.

Considering that vertical ascent and descent isn't taken into account by the in game movement of the aircraft, insisting that a vehicle cannot fire because it's current position puts it's front arc beyond it's target is ignoring the fact that it could be diving at that time, and pulling up at the beginning of the next movement phase. Frankly, I see no reason why a flyer should be able to shoot something directly in front of it's base.

Obviously, the problem is that this is a narrativistic interpretation. Others prefer to play to the exact letter of the rules, and fair play to them, but I feel that this leads to a bit of a farcical situation where these flyers drive around on a flat level like ground vehicles.

I'm not modelling for advantage.

The kit is designed to do that.

In any case, saying that an airplane can't point its nose up or down is straight-up stupid.

No, the kit is not designed to swivel up and down.

You have no permission to alter the attitude of the entire model just because you say you can

Following the rules in an abstract game based around abstract rules is not stupid. Not following them without mutual consent IS cheating.

htj - there are indeed rules for divebombing - check them out. (ork) When people are willing to take the chance of fiery, explosive death they can swivel their model (not weapon mounting, remeber - the whole entire model, something not allowed anywhere in rules) to try to point at the ground.

This is one of the few clearly designed in ways to limit the absurd nature of flyers in 40k - that they have a limited fire arc up AND down. Circumventing this by altering the position of the *model* in a way not allowed by th erules is cheating, unless both players agree it is allowed

Is it clearly designed? I've not noticed anything saying that the 45 degree arc is in effect vertically as well as horizontally, but I don't claim to be 100% on the rules. If there is such a ruling, I'll gladly accept it. Also, does the Ork rule explicitly state that the 45 degree rule is not in effect when it is used?

To be fair, most of the "nerd rage" about fliers come from a few poorly adapted rules from 5th to 6th. The fliers that most of the rage centers around are the vendetta and secondarily the night scythe.

The night scythe because of the dedicated transport rule that allows it to be slammed, and the vendetta that was originally released in 5th, when flier rules were but a twinkle in the GW marketing department's eye. Back in 5th, the vendetta was an impossible to hide tank, so AV12 made sense to keep the suckers alive. That said, they were still obscenely good for their points. Now they've got flier rules tacked on for free and they're ludicrous.

Personally, I've found it unnecessary to play lots of dedicated anti-flier because a) I play orks, which can bring down the odd av11 flier that gets run for novelty and b) I learned my lesson about playing the one guy in our club that brings eight flier bases as calks and vendettas back in fifth when I played a game against twenty-odd AOBR terminators. "Ok, this one is draigo and this one with his arm up has a psycannon and this dreadnought is a psyfleman"

Everyone else in the club is fine.

Yes, there is such a rule - we wouldnt have continually referenced it otherwise. Its why being on such a large flight stand is a blessing and a curse - means when you see you can generally avoid cover saves, as you are rarely shooting through one unit into another, but it means that once you get too close you cannot see them.

The Ork dive bomb rule just demonstrates that diving towards the ground isnt a 100% safe, risk free proposition. Have a read of the rules for it.

Right, your going to have to help me out here. I know about the 45 degree fire arc from mounted weapons, but the depiction I've seen in the book only show it horizontally applied. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm asking where it is.

I don't have access to the Ork dive bomb rule, so I can't check it out myself, unfortunately. Does it remove the 45 degree ruling or doesn't it?

Furyou Miko wrote:Sorry, I've just had people fiercely trying to argue that if you're within a certain distance of a flyer, it can't shoot you because of the 45 degree vertical firing arc rule and refusing to believe otherwise until I get one of my planes out and physically demonstrate that aircraft can pitch up and down (even on the models - if you don't glue the flight stands in, it's easy enough to angle them forward or back ) that it really bugs me when people insist on said mythical "minimum range".

That sounds awfully dodgy. Good luck getting that to fly in a major tourney

Hollowman wrote: You can't ignore a flyer list. One or two flyers, you can ignore. A good flyer list will decimate you if you lack the weaponry to bring them down, and many lists cannot bring more than a single quad gun to reliably bring down flyers. That dies first, and then troops start dying. Sure, some armies have the bodies or the firepower to ignore or kill flyers, but some armies do not. No army can prepare itself to face serious flyer lists without damaging it's ability to take on most other lists.

A good flyer list isn't shooting anything if you've got the midfield properly controlled when they arrive. Get inside their minimum movement/shooting range and they can't do a thing. If you can't handle a flyer army, then you need to improve your list and/or play.

 htj wrote:
Right, your going to have to help me out here. I know about the 45 degree fire arc from mounted weapons, but the depiction I've seen in the book only show it horizontally applied. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm asking where it is.

I don't have access to the Ork dive bomb rule, so I can't check it out myself, unfortunately. Does it remove the 45 degree ruling or doesn't it?

I am currenty in cambodia, slightly far from my rulebook. However, stick a thread in YMDC (or easier - use google to search dakkadakk by using site:dakkadakka.com in the search terms) if you dont believe me

I also dont have the WD with me. It was more a throw away comment on the fact that claiming something is "narrative" when we have a ruleset for a narrative effect (divebombing) that entails risk to claim it is "narrative" to do the same but without any risk misses the point.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 htj wrote:
Right, your going to have to help me out here. I know about the 45 degree fire arc from mounted weapons, but the depiction I've seen in the book only show it horizontally applied. I'm not saying it's not there, I'm asking where it is.

I don't have access to the Ork dive bomb rule, so I can't check it out myself, unfortunately. Does it remove the 45 degree ruling or doesn't it?

I am currenty in cambodia, slightly far from my rulebook. However, stick a thread in YMDC (or easier - use google to search dakkadakk by using site:dakkadakka.com in the search terms) if you dont believe me

I also dont have the WD with me. It was more a throw away comment on the fact that claiming something is "narrative" when we have a ruleset for a narrative effect (divebombing) that entails risk to claim it is "narrative" to do the same but without any risk misses the point.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, nos, I've seen you post enough to know that you're normally accurate on rules. I'm asking you if you can tell me where it is. You can't, you're in Cambodia, fair enough. I'll have a look around, or failing success there, have a look when I get home.

I disagree about the narrative effect of the Ork rule though. Orks are famously reckless, hence a risk when they divebomb to a crazed extent, but there is no reason to suggest that a flyer isn't diving at a less acute angle when it fires. If it's got a 45 degree vertical arc when firing, it would only need to be dipped 45 degrees in order to shoot below it. And if the Ork rule doesn't explicitly override the 45 degree angling, and in fact makes no alteration to it's ability to fire, this says way more about the nature of the pilot than it does the nature of the flight path.

As I said - try google search, with site: dakkadakka.com in the search terms bar - you should see plenty of references. I just hate not being able to cite, knew i should have put the paperback in my hand luggage

Hmm, finding huge amounts of opinion and very little citation. Screw it, nearly finished work, I'll have a read when I get home.

I really ought to get Dark Vengeance, those little rulebooks are so handy.

 htj wrote:
I've not noticed anything saying that the 45 degree arc is in effect vertically as well as horizontally, but I don't claim to be 100% on the rules.

It's on page 72 of the BRB - vehicle weapons and LOS. "In the rare cases where it matters, assume that guns can swivel vertically up to 45 degrees, even if the barrel on the model itself cannot physically do that!"

 Furyou Miko wrote:
In any case, saying that an airplane can't point its nose up or down is straight-up stupid.

Saying a space marine model couldn't lie down to get out of LOS is stupid too.

But it's the rules. Of a game we play. With plastic toys that are SUPPOSED to be glued to get her and set in a static-modeled position.

It's 40k. Everything is stupid. Deal with it and stop trying to weasel yourself into a little advantage; that's how you get people whining about you. If you really need to tilt your model to get kills, you're likely not very good, and you must cause a rules debate every time you do it.

That sounds super annoying.

Here is my problem with flyer spam.

They are more resilient than people think they are and should be for point cost.
Majority of armies don't have the tools to bring them down
Not fun to play against the army when you can't damage it.

You have a 16% chance to hit a flyer and if your weapon is strength 6 you only have a 2.8% chance to Pen and 2.8% chance to glance for a total of 5.6% of doing something to the flyer. Now they have a 33% chance of evading that item before you roll to pen so you have 1.8% chance of destroying that flyer with one single shot.

If you look at say an auto cannon single shot it’s going to have a 2.*% chance to glance and a 5.6% to Pen. Which is better but to destroy a flyer it’s going to come down to a low number much like above. Now you start looking at massing those numbers of shots, you will notice that it gets ridiculously high as 24 shots say from Scatter laser War walkers will only have a 10% chance of destroying it before saves. Which means you’re going to end up glancing flyers to death before you can bring it down with a destroy result.

Which comes to the point you say, why not grab units that have sky fire? Well sky fire is too limited to the older codexes as Elder have to grab a fortification which doesn't result in the tools you need. You don't have them available to you. On top of that if you do have those tools they are so limited that the spam army might lose one Flyer but the 7 or 9 other flyers will be able to concentration their firepower on the one or multiple units and kill it.

Then goes back to the point of you are playing an army that you don't have access to the tools to deal with it, if you did bring some items you have a chance of dealing with it. Which means I am sitting here for 2 hours at the mercy of my opponent and I have nothing I can do about it expect hope I somehow break the bell curve in math (isn't going to happen) because when I shoot at it I don't do anything.

You can play and cover the areas but there is still a lot of fire power coming out from those nightscyhtes 54 Telsa shots is still a lot to deal with in a 2000 point game as it on average kills 13 marines a turn if they can bear all their arms on units. When Necrons can drop models out on turn 5 they have a chance of winning on objectives. If you’re playing Kill points you’re not going to be able to win as they will have two or three kill points and you might have one as the sheer number of firepower to bring down one flyer will have to be your whole army.


Also armies having one flyer isn't an answer to that type of list as even if its AV 12, they have too many high strengeth shots to bring it down.

Darkwynn wrote:
Here is my problem with flyer spam.

They are more resilient than people think they are and should be for point cost.
Majority of armies don't have the tools to bring them down
Not fun to play against the army when you can't damage it.

You have a 16% chance to hit a flyer and if your weapon is strength 6 you only have a 2.8% chance to Pen and 2.8% chance to glance for a total of 5.6% of doing something to the flyer. Now they have a 33% chance of evading that item before you roll to pen so you have 1.8% chance of destroying that flyer with one single shot.

If you look at say an auto cannon single shot it’s going to have a 2.*% chance to glance and a 5.6% to Pen. Which is better but to destroy a flyer it’s going to come down to a low number much like above. Now you start looking at massing those numbers of shots, you will notice that it gets ridiculously high as 24 shots say from Scatter laser War walkers will only have a 10% chance of destroying it before saves. Which means you’re going to end up glancing flyers to death before you can bring it down with a destroy result.

Which comes to the point you say, why not grab units that have sky fire? Well sky fire is too limited to the older codexes as Elder have to grab a fortification which doesn't result in the tools you need. You don't have them available to you. On top of that if you do have those tools they are so limited that the spam army might lose one Flyer but the 7 or 9 other flyers will be able to concentration their firepower on the one or multiple units and kill it.

Then goes back to the point of you are playing an army that you don't have access to the tools to deal with it, if you did bring some items you have a chance of dealing with it. Which means I am sitting here for 2 hours at the mercy of my opponent and I have nothing I can do about it expect hope I somehow break the bell curve in math (isn't going to happen) because when I shoot at it I don't do anything.

You can play and cover the areas but there is still a lot of fire power coming out from those nightscyhtes 54 Telsa shots is still a lot to deal with in a 2000 point game as it on average kills 13 marines a turn if they can bear all their arms on units. When Necrons can drop models out on turn 5 they have a chance of winning on objectives. If you’re playing Kill points you’re not going to be able to win as they will have two or three kill points and you might have one as the sheer number of firepower to bring down one flyer will have to be your whole army.


Also armies having one flyer isn't an answer to that type of list as even if its AV 12, they have too many high strengeth shots to bring it down.

First point: The only flyer I agree is underpriced is the Vendetta. As far as the other two spammable flyers go ('spammable' meaning you can get more than three in one FOC), Valkyries are expensive and cannot deal with vehicles, Night Scythes look fancy but they're running around with a S7/AP-/Assault 4 gun, meaning that they can't actually do a lot of damage. Most other flyers are limited to 3 in a list, mitigating the amount of damage they can do. As far as their ability to take damage, let's compare an Ork Flakkatrukk (75pts) to a Night Scythe (100pts): 30% chance to down it outright in one turn of shooting (33% chance to hit and 50% chance to get a glancing hit, 16.5% chance to glance off every shot, subtract that from 1 to get an 83.5% chance for the flyer to not be glanced every shot, square that to get the chance of the Flakkatrukk missing twice out of four shots for 69.7%, meaning there's a 30.3% chance of the Flakkatrukk downing the Night Scythe in one turn of shooting from hull points alone, ignoring the chance of downing it off the damage tables off every shot). Flyers are much more resilient than normal vehicles providing you attack them with single-shot high-Strength weapons that you'd attack normal vehicles with, you're supposed to go after them with mid-Strength high-rate-of-fire weapons. What happens when I pit my twin-Scatter-Laser War Walker (a mere sixty points) against that same Night Scythe (100pts): 30% chance for the one War Walker to down the flyer (17% chance to hit and 33% chance to glance, making it a 5.6% chance for each shot to glance, now subtract that from 1 and take the 6th power of the resulting number to represent the chance of missing on six of eight shots to get 70.7% chance of it surviving, meaning it's got a 30% chance to go down). The lesson: You kill flyers by throwing a large quantity of fire at them, so find something in your list that gives you a large quantity of long-range mid-Strength shots. They're not necessarily absurdly durable for their cost.

Second point: This ignores Imperial Armor Aeronautica; Saber batteries, the Whirlwind Hyperios, the Flakkatrukk, and the Firestorm tank are all very easy to convert from plain old plastic bits lying around, as a matter of fact, meaning that the only armies left out in the cold on the anti-aircraft front are the Tau (who have access to allied detachments and are likely to access anti-aircraft upgrades in their new Codex anyway) and the Tyranids (who I agree are screwed). Everyone except the 'Nids has easy access to at least one nasty anti-flyer weapon.

Third point: You can't damage it because you didn't bring any anti-air weapons. That's your fault, not theirs. Am I allowed to whine about how unfair Land Raiders are because I left behind my Bright Lances in my Eldar army? No. I suck it up and build a better list next time.

I'm also pretty curious as to why you're factoring in Evade saves for everything any flyer does ever. Evade is a conscious choice the flyer must make to gain a Jink save at the expense of only being able to fire Snap Shots next turn, not something they automatically get. And your foe with the Necrons is doing something funny; 54 Tesla Destructor shots from those Night Scythes has to come off 13.5 Night Scythes, which is technically impossible because you can't get half a Night Scythe, and even if it's only 13 that's still at absolute minimum a 2,355pt list, who are killing a little under thirteen Space Marines per turn assuming the absolute best circumstances for them (read: everyone's lined up out in the open doing nothing) and the army has no heavy tanks. So either your math is off or the other guy is cheating, and you're griping about flyers being broken because you're facing off against a man who's cheating and using a list at least 25% larger than he's allowed.

 AnomanderRake wrote:


First point: The only flyer I agree is underpriced is the Vendetta. As far as the other two spammable flyers go ('spammable' meaning you can get more than three in one FOC), Valkyries are expensive and cannot deal with vehicles, Night Scythes look fancy but they're running around with a S7/AP-/Assault 4 gun

The scythe is, what, 100 points?

and it's s7 Assault 4 TESLA.

100 points is like, ridiculously cheap.

Furyou being accused of using shady practices for her advantage? I don't believe it!!!

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I'm not modelling for advantage.

The kit is designed to do that.

No it isn't. The only reason you can move it up and down is because the parts aren't made to absurdly tight tolerances and you can shift them a bit out of alignment without having the whole thing fall apart. There's absolutely nothing in the design of the model that suggests it's deliberately created to allow you to assemble it with the base off-center in the socket.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:
Here is my problem with flyer spam.

They are more resilient than people think they are and should be for point cost.
Majority of armies don't have the tools to bring them down
Not fun to play against the army when you can't damage it.

You have a 16% chance to hit a flyer and if your weapon is strength 6 you only have a 2.8% chance to Pen and 2.8% chance to glance for a total of 5.6% of doing something to the flyer. Now they have a 33% chance of evading that item before you roll to pen so you have 1.8% chance of destroying that flyer with one single shot.

If you look at say an auto cannon single shot it’s going to have a 2.*% chance to glance and a 5.6% to Pen. Which is better but to destroy a flyer it’s going to come down to a low number much like above. Now you start looking at massing those numbers of shots, you will notice that it gets ridiculously high as 24 shots say from Scatter laser War walkers will only have a 10% chance of destroying it before saves. Which means you’re going to end up glancing flyers to death before you can bring it down with a destroy result.

Which comes to the point you say, why not grab units that have sky fire? Well sky fire is too limited to the older codexes as Elder have to grab a fortification which doesn't result in the tools you need. You don't have them available to you. On top of that if you do have those tools they are so limited that the spam army might lose one Flyer but the 7 or 9 other flyers will be able to concentration their firepower on the one or multiple units and kill it.

Then goes back to the point of you are playing an army that you don't have access to the tools to deal with it, if you did bring some items you have a chance of dealing with it. Which means I am sitting here for 2 hours at the mercy of my opponent and I have nothing I can do about it expect hope I somehow break the bell curve in math (isn't going to happen) because when I shoot at it I don't do anything.

You can play and cover the areas but there is still a lot of fire power coming out from those nightscyhtes 54 Telsa shots is still a lot to deal with in a 2000 point game as it on average kills 13 marines a turn if they can bear all their arms on units. When Necrons can drop models out on turn 5 they have a chance of winning on objectives. If you’re playing Kill points you’re not going to be able to win as they will have two or three kill points and you might have one as the sheer number of firepower to bring down one flyer will have to be your whole army.


Also armies having one flyer isn't an answer to that type of list as even if its AV 12, they have too many high strengeth shots to bring it down.

First point: The only flyer I agree is underpriced is the Vendetta. As far as the other two spammable flyers go ('spammable' meaning you can get more than three in one FOC), Valkyries are expensive and cannot deal with vehicles, Night Scythes look fancy but they're running around with a S7/AP-/Assault 4 gun, meaning that they can't actually do a lot of damage. Most other flyers are limited to 3 in a list, mitigating the amount of damage they can do. As far as their ability to take damage, let's compare an Ork Flakkatrukk (75pts) to a Night Scythe (100pts): 30% chance to down it outright in one turn of shooting (33% chance to hit and 50% chance to get a glancing hit, 16.5% chance to glance off every shot, subtract that from 1 to get an 83.5% chance for the flyer to not be glanced every shot, square that to get the chance of the Flakkatrukk missing twice out of four shots for 69.7%, meaning there's a 30.3% chance of the Flakkatrukk downing the Night Scythe in one turn of shooting from hull points alone, ignoring the chance of downing it off the damage tables off every shot). Flyers are much more resilient than normal vehicles providing you attack them with single-shot high-Strength weapons that you'd attack normal vehicles with, you're supposed to go after them with mid-Strength high-rate-of-fire weapons. What happens when I pit my twin-Scatter-Laser War Walker (a mere sixty points) against that same Night Scythe (100pts): 30% chance for the one War Walker to down the flyer (17% chance to hit and 33% chance to glance, making it a 5.6% chance for each shot to glance, now subtract that from 1 and take the 6th power of the resulting number to represent the chance of missing on six of eight shots to get 70.7% chance of it surviving, meaning it's got a 30% chance to go down). The lesson: You kill flyers by throwing a large quantity of fire at them, so find something in your list that gives you a large quantity of long-range mid-Strength shots. They're not necessarily absurdly durable for their cost.

Second point: This ignores Imperial Armor Aeronautica; Saber batteries, the Whirlwind Hyperios, the Flakkatrukk, and the Firestorm tank are all very easy to convert from plain old plastic bits lying around, as a matter of fact, meaning that the only armies left out in the cold on the anti-aircraft front are the Tau (who have access to allied detachments and are likely to access anti-aircraft upgrades in their new Codex anyway) and the Tyranids (who I agree are screwed). Everyone except the 'Nids has easy access to at least one nasty anti-flyer weapon.

Third point: You can't damage it because you didn't bring any anti-air weapons. That's your fault, not theirs. Am I allowed to whine about how unfair Land Raiders are because I left behind my Bright Lances in my Eldar army? No. I suck it up and build a better list next time.

I'm also pretty curious as to why you're factoring in Evade saves for everything any flyer does ever. Evade is a conscious choice the flyer must make to gain a Jink save at the expense of only being able to fire Snap Shots next turn, not something they automatically get. And your foe with the Necrons is doing something funny; 54 Tesla Destructor shots from those Night Scythes has to come off 13.5 Night Scythes, which is technically impossible because you can't get half a Night Scythe, and even if it's only 13 that's still at absolute minimum a 2,355pt list, who are killing a little under thirteen Space Marines per turn assuming the absolute best circumstances for them (read: everyone's lined up out in the open doing nothing) and the army has no heavy tanks. So either your math is off or the other guy is cheating, and you're griping about flyers being broken because you're facing off against a man who's cheating and using a list at least 25% larger than he's allowed.

okay, so let me get this straight that your first point to counter my argument is you should go look in the Forge world book for the Flak truck? Which is silly because majority of tournaments don't allow forge world yet so keep it into the realm of possibility.

Second, don't correct my math when you don't understand your own math. I used and even pointed out that high strengthen weapons are the best chance of hitting flyers. your fitting the average and not doing it correctly. All your stating that you have a chance of glancing the flyer. That is it.

Break down of the math follows as is in attachments.

Even with your 24 warwalker example twin linked you only have a 18.5% chance to destroy it if he doesn't evade. He he does evade you have a 12.7% chance of destroying him.

so your 160 unit of three war walkers can barely touch the flyer, now look at the 110 Night scythe which your forgetting the TELSA Rule that on a 6 it includes two extra hits which is where you get the 54 hits from 9 nightscythes. The Telsa has a 27% chance of doing a Hull point which is more of a threat then anything else because the war walker has two hull points which means on average it can kill one war walker when it fires at it.

You can't use Forgeworld as your only example to bring the tools because that isn't a commonly open option.

Third point... I HAVE NO CONSTRUCTIVE RESPONSE -Mannahnin, that is all I got because your other two points don't hold water and you have no idea what your talking about.

Darkwynn wrote:
okay, so let me get this straight that your first point to counter my argument is you should go look in the Forge world book for the Flak truck? Which is silly because majority of tournaments don't allow forge world yet so keep it into the realm of possibility.

Then the problem isn't that flyers are too powerful, it's that major tournaments refuse to use the actual rules of 40k as published by GW and remove the counters that are supposed to keep flyers under control. The solution isn't to cripple flyers, the solution is to stop adding house rules that break the game.

You can't use Forgeworld as your only example to bring the tools because that isn't a commonly open option.

Sure it is. FW is part of standard 40k just like any codex is. Your personal dislike of FW options isn't relevant to overall game balance, any more than it would be relevant to base an analysis on how "overpowered" Land Raiders are on your personal dislike of melta guns.

Darkwynn wrote:

You can't use Forgeworld as your only example to bring the tools because that isn't a commonly open option.

Yes you can.

What you can't do is rule out stuff that is perfectly legal in standard 40k because certain tournaments have rules against it.

Third point... you are an idiot, that is all I got because your other two points don't hold water and you have no idea what your talking about.

Easy there princess; play nice.

 Peregrine wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:
okay, so let me get this straight that your first point to counter my argument is you should go look in the Forge world book for the Flak truck? Which is silly because majority of tournaments don't allow forge world yet so keep it into the realm of possibility.

Then the problem isn't that flyers are too powerful, it's that major tournaments refuse to use the actual rules of 40k as published by GW and remove the counters that are supposed to keep flyers under control. The solution isn't to cripple flyers, the solution is to stop adding house rules that break the game.

You can't use Forgeworld as your only example to bring the tools because that isn't a commonly open option.

Sure it is. FW is part of standard 40k just like any codex is. Your personal dislike of FW options isn't relevant to overall game balance, any more than it would be relevant to base an analysis on how "overpowered" Land Raiders are on your personal dislike of melta guns.

First you assume that I dislike Forgeworld which I don't. Saying that major tournaments refuse to use the actual rules of 40k is false. That is a perception and view by you. There are other people in the community that view them as not part of the 40k core rule set but as a supplement. Who is right? It doesn't matter in this discussion. If you go to a tournament that only uses the core rule set and does not allow Forgeworld what options do you have? very little to zero. GW has not pushed enough units to handle flyers across the core sets or books. By saying using Forgeworld is the only answer proves that the basic rule mechanic and how flyers work are broken till GW releases updated books to the core armies.

Darkwynn wrote:
Saying that major tournaments refuse to use the actual rules of 40k is false.

No, it's indisputable truth. Removing FW is just like how tournaments often refuse to allow double FOCs (and no, that 1999+1 idiocy isn't fooling anyone) or certain fortifications. The clearly stated rules of the game as published by GW say something is legal, TOs feel that it shouldn't be there and add house rules to remove it.

There are other people in the community that view them as not part of the 40k core rule set but as a supplement.

I don't care what the community thinks. The only people who have an opinion that matters work for GW, and they have made it perfectly clear that FW rules are part of the 40k core rule set. Any ruling otherwise is a house rule.

If you go to a tournament that only uses the core rule set and does not allow Forgeworld what options do you have? very little to zero.

Then tell the TO you're not going to attend the tournament until they stop having house rules that remove your AA options. It's not GW's fault that you're willing to play in a tournament where the options they gave you are house ruled away, just like it's not GW's fault if you can't handle Land Raiders because you're playing in a tournament where melta guns are banned.

GW has not pushed enough units to handle flyers across the core sets or books. By saying using Forgeworld is the only answer proves that the basic rule mechanic and how flyers work are broken till GW releases updated books to the core armies.

The Imperial Armour books are core rules. Should GW put them elsewhere as well? Sure. But that doesn't mean you can just throw out certain elements of the core rules and "prove" that there isn't enough AA.

 TheCaptain wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:

Easy there princess; play nice.

I don't know if I have to when the person calls out the following:

Ignorance of math but is claiming he is right
no understanding of the rules that is going on, then says you are incorrect
Is being foolish and is clearly fault of their own.

That actually is the definition of please avoid negative characterizations of other posters. -Mannahnin

Darkwynn wrote:
GW has not pushed enough units to handle flyers across the core sets or books. By saying using Forgeworld is the only answer proves that the basic rule mechanic and how flyers work are broken till GW releases updated books to the core armies.

Forgeworld is a subsidiary company of GW.

Their books say they should be considered official with the usual limitations of codices, and are for use in standard 40k play.



>MFW people still don't understand this as GW telling them "you can use this in 40k."

Saying otherwise is like telling people they can't use their White Dwarf list because "Hur, the BRB doesn't say anything about magazines."

Part of GW. Endorsed by GW. Says you can use it.

Suuuuuper simple.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darkwynn wrote:

 TheCaptain wrote:


Easy there princess; play nice.

I don't know if I have to when...

Yeah, yeah, you still have to.

 Peregrine wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:
Saying that major tournaments refuse to use the actual rules of 40k is false.

No, it's indisputable truth. Removing FW is just like how tournaments often refuse to allow double FOCs (and no, that 1999+1 idiocy isn't fooling anyone) or certain fortifications. The clearly stated rules of the game as published by GW say something is legal, TOs feel that it shouldn't be there and add house rules to remove it.

There are other people in the community that view them as not part of the 40k core rule set but as a supplement.

I don't care what the community thinks. The only people who have an opinion that matters work for GW, and they have made it perfectly clear that FW rules are part of the 40k core rule set. Any ruling otherwise is a house rule.

If you go to a tournament that only uses the core rule set and does not allow Forgeworld what options do you have? very little to zero.

Then tell the TO you're not going to attend the tournament until they stop having house rules that remove your AA options. It's not GW's fault that you're willing to play in a tournament where the options they gave you are house ruled away, just like it's not GW's fault if you can't handle Land Raiders because you're playing in a tournament where melta guns are banned.

GW has not pushed enough units to handle flyers across the core sets or books. By saying using Forgeworld is the only answer proves that the basic rule mechanic and how flyers work are broken till GW releases updated books to the core armies.

The Imperial Armour books are core rules. Should GW put them elsewhere as well? Sure. But that doesn't mean you can just throw out certain elements of the core rules and "prove" that there isn't enough AA.

so by your same logic I should just ignore you because your opinion doesn't matter as you are part of the community and have no authority in the matter. As for these rules of the game please tell me in what section of the rulebook does it say how to run a tournament? Or Forgeworld is part of the core rule set? Or as a TO how I should setup my tournament to run because there isn't any rules in that book that state that. Also as a TO GW has walked away from the tournament scene with no support. So to say they even support, have comments on the tournament scene or what is what is absurd. The community defines the tournament scene in North America period. The only section Forge world mentions in the BRB is about adding it to Campaigns and its an advertisement in the back of the book.

Darkwynn wrote:

As for these rules of the game please tell me in what section of the rulebook does it say how to run a tournament? Or Forgeworld is part of the core rule set?

Rulebook says codices override rulebook.

FW Books say their entries are to be treated with the same rules as codices.

Codices override rulebook.

FW Books override rulebook.

FW books count as codices.

Logic. Words. Facts. Boom.

That is incorrect its still the choice of the TO to use it. Next we are going to have people say Horus Hersey should be allowed and we have people stating that its supposed to be used. Forgeworld has even said its a supplement to the 40k universe like their other books. Forgeworld is like a hot debate in the poltical campaign and no matter what you say GW still hasn't come out and said you can use it because they don't draw the line. The book still says with opponents permission and your example with the White dwarf calls out as a supplement and a official update to the core rule set books which actual spreads the gap.


Standard play of 40k right now is defined by the TO's and their tournament that they run.

Darkwynn wrote:
so by your same logic I should just ignore you because your opinion doesn't matter as you are part of the community and have no authority in the matter.

You're right, you should ignore my opinion. Fortunately my personal opinion here isn't the issue, and I'm simply reporting the facts as stated by GW.

As for these rules of the game please tell me in what section of the rulebook does it say how to run a tournament?

It doesn't, therefore games of 40k played in a tournament are no different than games of 40k played anywhere else. If you choose to change the core rules of the game (removing double FOC or FW, etc) then you're playing the game with house rules.

Or Forgeworld is part of the core rule set?

At the beginning of every single Imperial Armour book since IA:Apocalypse 2.

The community defines the tournament scene in North America period.

And the community has chosen to define the tournament scene as "40k with house rules". That doesn't make their house rules part of 40k.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darkwynn wrote:
That is incorrect its still the choice of the TO to use it.

Of course it is, but the fact that the TO has a choice to impose or not impose a particular house rule doesn't make it any less of a house rule.

Next we are going to have people say Horus Hersey should be allowed and we have people stating that its supposed to be used. Forgeworld has even said its a supplement to the 40k universe like their other books.

Absolutely false. FW has explicitly stated that Heresy rules are NOT part of standard 40k and are meant to be played as a separate Heresy vs. Heresy game.

Forgeworld is like a hot debate in the poltical campaign and no matter what you say GW still hasn't come out and said you can use it because they don't draw the line.

Except for the times that GW has come out and said you can use it. Pretending that they haven't doesn't change the facts.

The book still says with opponents permission

No it doesn't.

Standard play of 40k right now is defined by the TO's and their tournament that they run.

No it isn't.

FW is legal, Pregrine and The Captain are right. Darkwynn, which IA do you own that you are pulling your ideas from? I tend to find that people opposed to FW being legal haven't actually read FW books.

Darkwynn wrote:


That is incorrect its still the choice of the TO to use it.

Yes, and if you choose to change the rules of the game you are playing with houserules

FW rules with the 40k stamp ARE official rules for use in standard games. If you change those rules you are de facto playing with houserules - even if that is that standard it does not alter that.

Also, you missed the title - "sans nerd rage". You calling people idiots, for pointing out that you are evading everytime and including that in your maths, is priceless, nerd rage

The more recent Forgeworld books still contain a statement, along with the statement that the units are intended to be used in standard games, that you should make sure your opponent is comfortable playing against them.

For many players, this is taken as a statement that opponent's consent should still be obtained, though GW is encouraging their use.

The last few months have seen a rise in interest in using Forgeworld stuff in regular games, for multiple reasons. There are good and legimate reasons both for and against its inclusion, as well as bad and spurious arguments on both sides. Brow-beating people is not going to win friends or influence people in either direction.

As a reminder, keep it polite, folks.

 60mm wrote:
FW is legal, Pregrine and The Captain are right. Darkwynn, which IA do you own that you are pulling your ideas from? I tend to find that people opposed to FW being legal haven't actually read FW books.

I actually own all of them. We have a large library for Wargames con. I also won gladiator and other tournaments using forgeworld so I am very familiar with them. If you even look at the Horus heresy book it also has rules straight out of the warhammer 30,000 series that we put out 5 years ago.

I also still get a chance to keep in touch with the studio from time to time because of it. If you ask the. About Forgeworld or even playing the game they are going to look at you funny and just say play the game.

 Mannahnin wrote:
For many players, this is taken as a statement that opponent's consent should still be obtained, though GW is encouraging their use.

Many players might take it that way, but that's not what it says. I've noticed that when people quote the "make sure your opponent is happy" line they don't quote the adjacent statement about Apocalypse units where it explicitly says that you need your opponent's permission to use them in a special non-standard game of 40k. The language about 40k units is very different, and clearly a deliberate choice to avoid "must have permission" while still recognizing that some people dislike FW and won't play against it.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:
For many players, this is taken as a statement that opponent's consent should still be obtained, though GW is encouraging their use.

Many players might take it that way, but that's not what it says. I've noticed that when people quote the "make sure your opponent is happy" line they don't quote the adjacent statement about Apocalypse units where it explicitly says that you need your opponent's permission to use them in a special non-standard game of 40k. The language about 40k units is very different, and clearly a deliberate choice to avoid "must have permission" while still recognizing that some people dislike FW and won't play against it.

You mean a picture such as this?

https://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=672&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=forgeworld+approve+for+40k&oq=forgeworld+approve+for+40k&gs_l=img.3...10153.14160.0.14805.17.17.0.0.0.0.144.1242.16j1.17.0.cpsugrpq1..0.0...1.1.hbPmkrTtUiA#biv=i|39;d|qOH_sAv7SdAUeM:


Sadly, you share that same picture with 50 people your going to get 25 people for and 25 people against. It's just like it was before with opponents permission. Nothing never made them unofficial for 40k but people still didn't know about it so they have a section with permission which breaks down anything about it being used I. Standard games of 40k also doesn't help when they say "standard" in quotes. It still goes to the TO that is running the event if they will allow forgeworld. Now for the sake of argument what do people do with out access to Forgeworld which is the real discussion here that still has not been answered on any level.

It also doesn't help that GW release Whitedwarf updates which even confuses the player base even more as those make it seem errata changes to the forge world books are just new units. If they wanted them to be official rule changes they could just put updates in forgeworld books such as the latest Daemon update.

I'm assuming the "picture" in your broken link is the statement from the beginning of the book about FW rules being official.

Darkwynn wrote:
Sadly, you share that same picture with 50 people your going to get 25 people for and 25 people against.

You mean you're going to get 25 people who can read, and 25 people who think that "I don't like FW" magically makes the words mean something different.

Nothing never made them unofficial for 40k but people still didn't know about it so they have a section with permission which breaks down anything about it being used I.

Nothing except the official statement from GW that you had to have special permission to use FW stuff, a policy which no longer exists.

It still goes to the TO that is running the event if they will allow forgeworld.

Of course it does. Nobody is disputing that TOs have the right to allow or not allow FW. GW isn't going to send someone to hold a gun to your head and make you play 40k "the right way". However, that doesn't change the fact that any TO who removes FW is adding their own house rules to the game.

Now for the sake of argument what do people do with out access to Forgeworld which is the real discussion here that still has not been answered on any level.

The same thing that people without access to a particular codex do.

(And I don't see why there's any access problem when the rules and models are available for sale just like any other GW product.)

Darkwynn wrote:

https://www.google.com/search?um=1&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=672&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=forgeworld+approve+for+40k&oq=forgeworld+approve+for+40k&gs_l=img.3...10153.14160.0.14805.17.17.0.0.0.0.144.1242.16j1.17.0.cpsugrpq1..0.0...1.1.hbPmkrTtUiA#biv=i|39;d|qOH_sAv7SdAUeM:

Link doesn't work.

Now for the sake of argument what do people do with out access to Forgeworld which is the real discussion here that still has not been answered on any level.

They use allies. Or purchase forgeworld books and units, remedying the whole "without access to Forgeworld" thing.

You're welcome.

So in short you have no response that is valid or realstic and you are trolling at this point?

Darkwynn wrote:
So in short you have no response that is valid or realstic and you are trolling at this point?

"You won't answer my ridiculous questions! TROLLLLL!!!!"

No.

I'm merely highlighting the ridiculousness of your stance.

Resources available for solid AA are:

-Play as a codex with solid AA
-Ally with a codex with solid AA
-Use FW Units

You asking "How do I AA without using FW" is like me asking "How do I play IG competitively without Vehicles?" It's a needless handicap whose only substantiation is that a large portion of the community doesn't accept FW rules because of an outdated, obsolete GW policy that has since been redacted.

Telling Peregrine and I, as well as Dakka itself, that "FW isn't fair play because some people don't like it and some TO's don't either" is just as absurd. Some people refuse to play games with special characters. It was a common practice in older editions. Similarly, in older editions, FW was treated as an expansion. Both things are now falling out of practice.

To the TO's thing, some tournaments don't allow double force-org, and that IS in your precious rulebook. So it really doesn't validate anything.

Calling someone a troll because they've proved you wrong looks ridiculous; I suggest resorting to something a little...classier in the future.

Nope, I see one troll and one only

Using allies is a realistic answer, and valid. Using FW is a realistic and valid answer.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Nope, I see one troll and one only

Using allies is a realistic answer, and valid. Using FW is a realistic and valid answer.

This. I like this. A lot.

 TheCaptain wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:
So in short you have no response that is valid or realstic and you are trolling at this point?

"You won't answer my ridiculous questions! TROLLLLL!!!!"

No.

I'm merely highlighting the ridiculousness of your stance.

Resources available for solid AA are:

-Play as a codex with solid AA
-Ally with a codex with solid AA
-Use FW Units

You asking "How do I AA without using FW" is like me asking "How do I play IG competitively without Vehicles?" It's a needless handicap whose only substantiation is that a large portion of the community doesn't accept FW rules because of an outdated, obsolete GW policy that has since been redacted.

Telling Peregrine and I, as well as Dakka itself, that "FW isn't fair play because some people don't like it and some TO's don't either" is just as absurd. Some people refuse to play games with special characters. It was a common practice in older editions. Similarly, in older editions, FW was treated as an expansion. Both things are now falling out of practice.

To the TO's thing, some tournaments don't allow double force-org, and that IS in your precious rulebook. So it really doesn't validate anything.

Calling someone a troll because they've proved you wrong looks ridiculous; I suggest resorting to something a little...classier in the future.

Which your avoiding my question entirely no codex out there has solid AA and that is my point. You keep going back to forgeworld which hasnt been allowed in the 5 largest GT's. You still haven't disproving my fact about proving what is solid AA in any codex because there isn't any. All you keep doing is brow beating the idea of forgeworld,which isn't reality nor has become norm. Either provide the argument with facts or,your trolling.

 60mm wrote:
I tend to find that people opposed to FW being legal haven't actually read FW books.

There's several reasons for me to be wary if someone wants to field FW, or someone tells me to buy FW stuff.

Firstly the books and FW units cost a fair bit of money. When I've already bought a 40K rulebook, a Codex and an army to go with it I kind of hope all the things needed for a working army would be present. Telling me to buy FW AA units if my army can't deal with a flying circus - that certain base armies can field easily enough - is IMO very odd. Why should I have to plug the holes in the basic Codex with FW stuff?

That's just a part of the bigger problem ofc, the money-hungry hobby this is. Our Necron player easily dropped the money on seven Doom/Nightscythe kits. He might make enough money that 252€ doesn't hurt him, many of us don't. FW Hydras (not that I'm interested in playing IG) cost more apiece than a 'scythe, and I'd need an extra book to use it too!

And ofc, seeing how people can hardly bother bringing FAQs for their rulebook/Codex there's no reason to assume they'll bring one for their FW stuff either. So I'll have to keep track of even more stuff and print even more documents if I want to be sure all the stuff is being used correctly.

Forgeworld has not yet come into wide acceptance for competitive play. At least in the US.

I suspect that we'll see it coming increasingly to be seen as a more normal part of 40k, but that position is still clearly in the minority in terms of the general crowd of tournament-goers and tournament organizers.

Which your avoiding my question entirely no codex out there has solid AA and that is my point. You keep going back to forgeworld which hasnt been allowed in the 5 largest GT's. You still haven't disproving my fact about proving what is solid AA in any codex because there isn't any.

The main kind of AA we've got so far is taking our own aircraft, and/or high-volume, twin-linked shooting. Allying in a couple of Night Scythes and an Annhilation Barge will certainly help some armies. Or a Vendetta and taking a Quad Gun. For Eldar, the combination I've seen recently is a Bastion with Quad gun, manned by a Fire Dragon Exarch with Crack Shot and Tank Hunter. Pretty nasty.

One of my friends is running Grey Knights with SW allies, and his AA is a couple of psyflemans, an aegis with quad gun, and a stormraven of his own.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Forgeworld has not yet come into wide acceptance for competitive play. At least in the US.

I suspect that we'll see it coming increasingly to be seen as a more normal part of 40k, but that position is still clearly in the minority in terms of the general crowd of tournament-goers and tournament organizers.

Hasn't even Europe, I know the Polish hate even the idea of Forgeworld. Majority of the British don't use it either and from my knowledge was not allowed in the heats.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Forgeworld has not yet come into wide acceptance for competitive play. At least in the US.

I suspect that we'll see it coming increasingly to be seen as a more normal part of 40k, but that position is still clearly in the minority in terms of the general crowd of tournament-goers and tournament organizers.

Which your avoiding my question entirely no codex out there has solid AA and that is my point. You keep going back to forgeworld which hasnt been allowed in the 5 largest GT's. You still haven't disproving my fact about proving what is solid AA in any codex because there isn't any.

The main kind of AA we've got so far is taking our own aircraft, and/or high-volume, twin-linked shooting. Allying in a couple of Night Scythes and an Annhilation Barge will certainly help some armies. Or a Vendetta and taking a Quad Gun. For Eldar, the combination I've seen recently is a Bastion with Quad gun, manned by a Fire Dragon Exarch with Crack Shot and Tank Hunter. Pretty nasty.

One of my friends is running Grey Knights with SW allies, and his AA is a couple of psyflemans, an aegis with quad gun, and a stormraven of his own.

But Ragnar that isn't enough against a Necron flyer spam army which is the problem. You can only take small limited units of those and in a competitive game among the top tables it isn't enough. Quad guns with fire dragon exarch has a 50% chance and will most likely cause glancing hits on it instead. The other flyers will go for the AA gun and tear it apart. I have done plenty of test games and even took a list similar like that to Feast. Played a Necron list and brought down zero flyers with it.

Had 6 war walkers, reapers with quad to leverage crack and unit of broadsides. Quad only put a two glances, war walkers got damaged down to a single unit and three doom scythes dropped the death arrays on the broad sides till there was one guy left. The thing is even if the units were up and running they still only had a small chance to bring down one flyer. The problem is the needing to hit a flyer with a 6 on top of having to follow up,with a high roll it doesn't work out.

I look at chaos they have the Helldrake, it can come in on the second turn after the flyers come on but it will get shredded hp from Telsea because of the twin link and they will cause enough glances to bring it down. It has one turn till three night scythes tear it apart. GW has to either errata more units to have sky fire at a correct point cost otherwise we are not going to see a answer or response to the Necron flyer problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCaptain wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:
your trolling.

Poor spelling and accusations of trolling are both against Dakka's rules.

and IG has awesome AA, princess.

Which is? Because I don't know if your playing the same game I am. I think I have enough creditability to know what IG has and doesn't have.

Darkwynn wrote:
Because I don't know if your playing the same game I am.

Or I'm doing it differently. (Possibly better? Possibly?)

I think I have enough creditability to know what IG has and doesn't have.

Uh no. No, evidently not.

Because Camo-net hydras.

and

Vendettas.

Darkwynn wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:
Forgeworld has not yet come into wide acceptance for competitive play. At least in the US.

I suspect that we'll see it coming increasingly to be seen as a more normal part of 40k, but that position is still clearly in the minority in terms of the general crowd of tournament-goers and tournament organizers.

Hasn't even Europe, I know the Polish hate even the idea of Forgeworld. Majority of the British don't use it either and from my knowledge was not allowed in the heats.

You're assuming everything has to be in the context of tournaments as well. That isnt the whole game, not by a long shot

It is becoming much more widely used in the UK, and not quite sure what you mean about "the heats"? what tourney has heats any more?

Necron flyers are definitely an issue at the moment. Thankfully GW FAQing the Doomscythe to not be able to hit other flyers has reined those in a little.

I agree that right now Skyfire options are a bit too few and usually too expensive (like Flakk missile havocs). I do think that we're at the high-water mark for how powerful flyers can be, and that as more codices come out with more AA options, they'll get reined in further and become less and less of an issue.

For now, the big counter-flyer tactic seems to be spamming durable units, blocking portions of the board and absorbing the hits. Like Tony's, Nick's, and Alex F's armies all did at at NOVA, and like the recent Tyranid psychic swarm armies we've been seeing do.

Perhaps it's because I remember the days of the 3rd ed Siren Prince, the Ulthwe Seer Council, and the 4th edition Falcon/Harlequin spam, that this level of unbalance doesn't freak me out too much. Of course, back then here in the US we also used Composition scoring to control those at a lot of events.

 TheCaptain wrote:

Darkwynn wrote:

 Mannahnin wrote:

Which is? Because I don't know if your playing the same game I am. I think I have enough creditability to know what IG has and doesn't have.

Uh no. No, evidently not.

Because Camo-net hydras.

and

Vendettas.

Sigh and you have proven my point. Hydras won't hold up to the numbers and you won't get pass an opponent who doesn't have flyers with that point sink. You also can't get enough vendettas in a list to counter the number of night scythes. So do you have another great idea?

I am the guy who created leaf blower and has won at least 6 major GT's in the US with IG....


Grr stupid phone wrecking the format of the post.