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So I was musing over the most obviously abusive list I could think of with the new rules and came up with something like this:

Company Command Squad+Astropath in a fortification with comm relay upgrade
Max Vendetta and Valkyries
Embarked troops for objective capping.

The primary problem is that there are very few anti-flyer units, and all them are easily destroyed by Lascannons. The vendetta is not only far more efficient at killing anything that can hurt it, but can be taken in 3x the numbers as anything else.

So the question is what can other codexs do to handle it? A few ideas I have outlined.

Guard allies can bring in Vendettas and Hydras, but they will be outnumbered unless combined with other anti-flyer units from the base codex.

Stuff that might actually work.

Necrons: Scythe Spam, ridiculous amounts of ground based gauss fire, sweep loophole may allow it to hit flyers
Eldar: mass scatter laser w/re-rolls, vibro cannon loophole
Dark Eldar: Voidraven+ lance spam
Orks: Dakkajets or mass Deffkoptas+ bomb squig loophole + mass lootas

Making the best of a bad situation

Daemons: thirsters+ flying daemons
CSM: max autocannons
Tau: twin-linked railgun+ twin-linked missile pods
Sisters: max retributors w/ heavy bolters
Grey Knights: twin-linked auto-cannon dreads + storm ravens+ psycannon spam
Blood Angels: storm ravens+ baal predators
Space Wolves: Njal
Space Marines: Storm Talon+ assault cannon razor backs
Black Templars: nope
Dark Angels: nope
Tyranids: Hive Tyrant gets 3 str 6 hits vs armor 12, at the low cost of 230 points. Yay.,

For armies lacking serious anti-air, its probably more effective to build for surviving lascannon spam and then unseating the squishy guardsmen to grab objectives rather than trying to shoot the Vendettas down.

Tyranids: also have access to several psychic powers that might be handy I think, such as mind controlling one vendetta and having it shoot another kind of thing. Also Hive tyrants also can get the 2 t/l devourers that are str 6. Not much more but it's something.

For dealing with the usual 3 Flyers as an Eldar player I thought of always taking a pack of 3 Guided war walkers with scatter lasers. 9 Vendettas are stupid scary. Taking 9 war walkers all with scatter lasers, or god forbid at 2000 pts taking a second FOC and allowing 18 War walkers all with scatter lasers. That actually sounds really fun but really stupid. 18 war walkers with scatter lasers have 144 S6 shots. 24 hit on roll of 6. 4 glance on a roll of 6. So you have 4 hull points worth of damage. That takes out 1 whole Vendetta and part of another. You just spent 1000 points. I hate feeling forced to take tons shots in hopes to hit on 6's JUST to deal with GW's new flyer addictions. In casual play I am very sure 9 vendettas will be frowned upon/ banned in play groups if it turns out to be UN-handleable.

Horde armies should do well against vendetta spam.

For anything MEQ both rifleman dreads and TL assault cannon razorbacks are woefully ineffective at dealing with AV12 flyers, especially at the numbers you can field them in the usual size of games played.

It's even worse for vanilla marines who can't take effective MSU squads to spam razorbacks, each squad + LT assault cannon razorback is around the 250pt mark depending on wargear, it's also over 200 pts to bring a small sternguard squad with an assaultback.

It seems like vendettas--with front mounted weapons firing in a 45 degree arc--would have trouble getting shots off when zooming.

I mean I haven't tried it on the tabletop yet, but with moving minimum 18" and only one turn of 90 degrees, keeping targets in your firing arc for more than one turn without having to spend two turns banking around seems kind of challenging.

I went hunting for anti-vehicle psychic powers, and I stumbled across the answer.

Objuration Mechanicum.

Its a power from the Telekinesis discipline that is a malediction with a 24 inch which automatically inflicts a haywire hit upon every vehicle in an entire squadron.


So countering Vendettas requires stuffing your army with psykers who have access to the discipline. Since you can choose your powers to tailor the opponent, it doesn't require overly gimping your army against other threats.

Tyranids: Tyrants, Zoathropes, Broodlords, Tervigons
CSM: HQ Sorcerer and thousand sons leaders
Loyalist Marine Factions: Librarians

scimitar wrote:I went hunting for anti-vehicle psychic powers, and I stumbled across the answer.

Objuration Mechanicum.

Its a power from the Telekinesis discipline that is a malediction with a 24 inch which automatically inflicts a haywire hit upon every vehicle in an entire squadron.


So countering Vendettas requires stuffing your army with psykers who have access to the discipline. Since you can choose your powers to tailor the opponent, it doesn't require overly gimping your army against other threats.

Tyranids: Tyrants, Zoathropes, Broodlords, Tervigons
CSM: HQ Sorcerer and thousand sons leaders
Loyalist Marine Factions: Librarians

Wouldn't an Imperial Guard Primaris Psyker have access to it too?

The reality is nothing. Flyers are broken, and they are more broken the more you can take of them.

Fortifications help a little bit, honestly, but not enough..

Orks with lootas are actually a reasonable solution, since they only hit on 5+ anyway.

A tournament I know is considering using 6th but banning fortifications and allies..........and IG airforce will rule the day. (I'd say Necrons, but truth they won't have time to buy all the models)

I just refuse to build a list that is set up to try to be able to beat that one guy who thinks it will be funny to run 9 vendettas. I'd rather lose to him and have a competitive list against everyone else then tailor my list to expect a guy to do that.

jeeeeeeez.

I currently have four vendettas, so I probably shouldn't say this.....

Missile launchers, the one thing almost everyone has, for like 10 points, can be spammed and can kill any flyer.

Long Fangs? Check
Bring it down! on heavy weapon squads? CHECK!
All tactical squads w/ missile launcher? CHECK.
Havocs? Guardians?

You can see where I am going. They all get relatively cheap anti tank, anti flyer, and hoard weapons!

No one actually has the flak missile type.

I have three vendettas and they rarely last a whole game. They are relatively fragile. Now with three glancing hits and boom, they won't last too long. I only hope they soak up a lot of fire that allows me to unload on the other guy. I'm probably going to start using Creed and a lot of HWTs as my antiflyer. With the new squadron rules I may actually try this and dust off my rough riders now that they actually got a boost.

Razgriz22 wrote:I just refuse to build a list that is set up to try to be able to beat that one guy who thinks it will be funny to run 9 vendettas. I'd rather lose to him and have a competitive list against everyone else then tailor my list to expect a guy to do that.

Why not just tailor your list to that one guy when you expect to play him? And use your regular list against everyone else?

Last I looked, troops can't be in transports to claim objectives at the end of the game. So they need to come out of the vendettas.

Vendetta armies are a rock/sissior/paper combo. Sure, they might do great vs a mech' army, but what happens when they see 170 ork boys. Then shooting down 15 a turn down with lascannons is not enough -- not even counting return fire.

As mentioned, foot armies can do really well vs them too. Sure 1/6 of the weapons may hit, but if I have 18 MLs, then I'm getting 3 hits a turn, which will eventually crack AV 12 vehicles.

Its a strong list, but not an auto-win.

Flavius Infernus wrote:It seems like vendettas--with front mounted weapons firing in a 45 degree arc--would have trouble getting shots off when zooming.

I mean I haven't tried it on the tabletop yet, but with moving minimum 18" and only one turn of 90 degrees, keeping targets in your firing arc for more than one turn without having to spend two turns banking around seems kind of challenging.

You don't have to spend 2 turns 'banking around'. Just zoom off the board into 'ongoing reserves'. Then come on again for another attack run.

scimitar wrote:So I was musing over the most obviously abusive list I could think of with the new rules and came up with something like this:

Company Command Squad+Astropath in a fortification with comm relay upgrade
Max Vendetta and Valkyries
Embarked troops for objective capping.

I can not poke holes in your theory and tell you why it will not work unless you build a list.

Otherwise it is hypothetically possible to do well with such a army.

Blackmoor wrote:

scimitar wrote:So I was musing over the most obviously abusive list I could think of with the new rules and came up with something like this:

Company Command Squad+Astropath in a fortification with comm relay upgrade
Max Vendetta and Valkyries
Embarked troops for objective capping.

I can not poke holes in your theory and tell you why it will not work unless you build a list.

Otherwise it is hypothetically possible to do well with such a army.

Oh, come on. It'd be fun
Like for example that if the fliers are your only vehicles that you are using, you can only target 3 targets a turn.
And 3 Vendttas and 3 Valks(depending how you do the squadrons) will have a pretty narrow selection for targets.
Sure you can shoot the 3 TL lascannons at a Orc horde. Or use MRPs on a Landraider. You get my point.

Spamming flyers will be a competitive list for a bit, while we wait for new codexes. When new codexes comes out a lot of weapons are going to be given skyfire (mainly every missile launcher and probably a lot more) and more ways of generally of dealing with flyers I think they will be like nob biker lists of 5th.

Sir_Prometheus wrote:No one actually has the flak missile type.

Anyone with a generic missile launchers now has that type. (Sorry Tau)

Anything else to add?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lets also keep in mind that if they move more then 6 inches they can only deploy with a deep strike, which before 6th was regarded as highly suspect at best. It's still shooting at BS 3, even with twin linked this is SLIGHTLY better then BS 4. (BS 4 is 67%, BS 3 twin linked is 75%)

So as a vendetta player, which again I'm not sure why I'm helping here lol, turn 1 and 2 will mostly be deep striking vet units onto objectives and heading off the table to reposition.
The rest of the turns will be diagonal path straffing runs against targets.

So what am i fearing? Like I said before, missile spam will hurt. Twin linked las will hurt. FOR 85 POINTS you can have a 96 inch range Aegis line, which also has interceptor to use against tanks..... lol I'm sorry if I'm not too exited about the flyer "buff". yes it's fun to have new rules, but GW did alot to balance it folks.

sfshilo wrote:

Sir_Prometheus wrote:No one actually has the flak missile type.

Anyone with a generic missile launchers now has that type. (Sorry Tau)

Anything else to add?

Sure. Source? Right now, the new BRB doesn't agree with you.

Cursed Dice wrote:I have three vendettas and they rarely last a whole game. They are relatively fragile. Now with three glancing hits and boom, they won't last too long. I only hope they soak up a lot of fire that allows me to unload on the other guy. I'm probably going to start using Creed and a lot of HWTs as my antiflyer. With the new squadron rules I may actually try this and dust off my rough riders now that they actually got a boost.

6s to hit is going to increase their survivability by a lot.

sfshilo wrote:

Sir_Prometheus wrote:No one actually has the flak missile type.

Anyone with a generic missile launchers now has that type. (Sorry Tau)

Anything else to add?

Wrong. Read the rulebook, it's exceedingly clear on this subject.

sfshilo wrote:

Sir_Prometheus wrote:No one actually has the flak missile type.

Anyone with a generic missile launchers now has that type. (Sorry Tau)

Anything else to add?

Where are you getting this from?

FifteenHours wrote:

Flavius Infernus wrote:It seems like vendettas--with front mounted weapons firing in a 45 degree arc--would have trouble getting shots off when zooming.

I mean I haven't tried it on the tabletop yet, but with moving minimum 18" and only one turn of 90 degrees, keeping targets in your firing arc for more than one turn without having to spend two turns banking around seems kind of challenging.

You don't have to spend 2 turns 'banking around'. Just zoom off the board into 'ongoing reserves'. Then come on again for another attack run.

So you start in reserve, then 2/3 of the time you zoom on the table and take your shot in turn 2.

Then in turn 3, everything moves out of your firing arc, so you fly off the table.

Then in turn 4 you zoom back on and take another shot.

Then you don't want to fly off the table in turn 5, because if the game ends you count as destroyed. So you either have to bank around or hover.

Seems like a lot of points for two volleys of fire.

But like I say, I'll have to see it on the table to be sure.

Kaldor wrote:

Razgriz22 wrote:I just refuse to build a list that is set up to try to be able to beat that one guy who thinks it will be funny to run 9 vendettas. I'd rather lose to him and have a competitive list against everyone else then tailor my list to expect a guy to do that.

Why not just tailor your list to that one guy when you expect to play him? And use your regular list against everyone else?

I just meant in a tournament style set up when you dont know who your playing. Also pre tailoring lists is slightly mean. But so is 9 vendettas

Razgriz22 wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

Razgriz22 wrote:I just refuse to build a list that is set up to try to be able to beat that one guy who thinks it will be funny to run 9 vendettas. I'd rather lose to him and have a competitive list against everyone else then tailor my list to expect a guy to do that.

Why not just tailor your list to that one guy when you expect to play him? And use your regular list against everyone else?

I just meant in a tournament style set up when you dont know who your playing. Also pre tailoring lists is slightly mean. But so is 9 vendettas

Anyone running 9 Vendettas at a tourney is more than likely going to lose. That's over half a 2k list tied up in flyers that are not on the board every turn. Everythng else in the army will more than likely be minimal in its upgrades and the strategy of that player will be to utterly depend on the 2 rounds of TL LC shooting. Better make em count!

MLs' will have Flakk Missiles soon. Spamming AC's and (krak) ML's will suffice.

Where's everyone getting the idea that you can take Flakk missles?

Stormrider wrote:

Razgriz22 wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

Razgriz22 wrote:I just refuse to build a list that is set up to try to be able to beat that one guy who thinks it will be funny to run 9 vendettas. I'd rather lose to him and have a competitive list against everyone else then tailor my list to expect a guy to do that.

Why not just tailor your list to that one guy when you expect to play him? And use your regular list against everyone else?

I just meant in a tournament style set up when you dont know who your playing. Also pre tailoring lists is slightly mean. But so is 9 vendettas

Anyone running 9 Vendettas at a tourney is more than likely going to lose. That's over half a 2k list tied up in flyers that are not on the board every turn. Everythng else in the army will more than likely be minimal in its upgrades and the strategy of that player will be to utterly depend on the 2 rounds of TL LC shooting. Better make em count!

MLs' will have Flakk Missiles soon. Spamming AC's and (krak) ML's will suffice.

Not eldar Missile launchers... they are categorized differently.

Keep in mind half of your army, not counting flyers has to start on the board. And if you have no models on te board at the end of a turn, you lose.