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Is there a best way to kill a tooled Falcon?

Once the thing has moved... I can maybe kill one... MAYBE. If there is 3...ick.

Do you just have to be plain lucky? As the statistics simply roll out... It seems to me you just have to get lucky.

Or you could just play Necrons and laugh at the Eldar players.

Other than that, yeah you need to get lucky.

Stun it/shoot it in the back.

Falcon's are really really easy to stun. This means the only thing it can do reliably is to deliver cargo. Depending on the cargo and your army setup you can simply stand by it's rear hatch when it tries to deliver said cargo (works for assult cargo, not shooting cargo) or get arround it after it drops off its shooting cargo. This is usually doable with a good mobile firepower unit.

10 or so rapid fire weapons to the rear + rapid fire plasma and such will bring it down fairly quickly (many many glancing hits)

A properly tooled falcon can't be stunned as it will treat stunned as shaken. Falcons are best dealt with by shaking and ignoring. The triple falcon list isn't too bad for me to face as I can generally glance and then I don't care what the low die is. They attempt to deny points and you can do the same. For me I also play eldar and just use those vibro cannons to shake the bad boys.

Orion

Posted By cypher on 09/17/2007 10:41 AM
Stun it/shoot it in the back.

Falcon's are really really easy to stun.

Shake.   Stun /= Shake.

If you could reliably Stun them, they'd be much easier to kill.  Hell, the Holofield wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if they'd left Spirit Stones as they were in the previous codex- only a 50/50 chance to negate or downgrade Stunned to Shaken.  If you could ever actually Stun the suckers, they wouldn't be broken at all.
 

Posted By cypher on 09/17/2007 10:41 AM
10 or so rapid fire weapons to the rear + rapid fire plasma and such will bring it down fairly quickly (many many glancing hits)

I don't know about "fairly quickly".  Your more-or-less standard unit of 10 marines or CSMs with 8 bolters and 2 Plasmaguns is going to average 3.5 Glances, which is great, but still unlikely to drop a Holofielded Falcon moving over 6”.

Sorry, meant shake

My most common anti-falcon squad is a fish of fury. They eventually have to expose their rear and then they usually die.

12 FCW = 4 glances. You still need an average of 9 to get the kill or immobilize.

Still, 4 glances from one squad is quite good. Shooting the rear is definitely one of the best ways to go if the Eldar player lets you do it (which likelihood is increased if he's dropping off Harlies or Fire Dragons close to your army).

Most good Codex: Falcon Grav Tank players will be pretty conscientious about neutering any return fire that is going to rear-arc them before dropping anything off. You only get rapid fired in the butt once before you start defending yourself.

I've seen a lot of mecha-tau games vs. Eldar and never seen Eldar lose.

Best way for most armies to deal with falcons is: glance it, kill as much juicy stuff as you can, repeat.

Here's an excel for you: http://www.freewebs.com/onlainari/falcon.xls

Just enter the BS, S, and number of shots for the weapon, and the spreadsheet will do the rest.

You can use if for up to four weapons from one squad at the same ballistic skill, or up to two weapons each for up to two different ballistic skills from one squad.

I'd be more interested in minimising the "nothing" value, all you want is to shake the thing.

Dealing with Falcons requires a lot of skill and a somewhat optimized list, since there is no single unit that easily beats Flacons. Id suggest a smart mix of the following (some has been mentioned):

- First turn shoot it with Lascannons etc before it has moved.

- Realise that the cargo is killing you, not the Falcon. So neutralize the cargo by smart positioning.

- Ignore it and shoot the "damage dealers".

- Stun it and switch targets when you have to fear flanking manuvers (for example against Predators side armour).

- Deep Strike and shoot it from behind (chaos Termis or Oblits for example).

- Play with more troops. He may contest objectives, but so will you.

I have worried about it for a while, and have been perfecting my 'dice' technique.

When I make a roll, I 'accidently' roll on off the table by my Eldar opponent. When he bends down to pick it up, I grab a Falcon and shove it under my shirt, and hope he doesn't notice.

It hasn't worked yet, but I am getting closer. A bit more practice....

we're about to implement a house rule stating that for every piece of vehicle wargear added to a falcon, the opponent of said falcon player is allowed to punch the falcon player in the throat.

Codex Falcon Grav Tank is on my moratorium list along with Nids and any IG army with more than 1 barrage weapon.

Any chance you can elaborate a bit on this, Raider? I play Eldar, and I can't imagine any way that any kind of positioning could neutralize six harlies in a falcon.

He was probably referring to the block-the-ramp effect which can be achieved by flooding the Falcon's rear quarter with bodies.

This can do some degree of annoyance-damage to the Harlies, since their Falcon needs to move in order to get its speed-shield, but they need to disembark before it moves if they are to make their assault. You essentially are able to either render their deployment ineffective (by forcing them to deploy after the falcon moves) or stop them from disembarking.

However, this is only a delaying tactic, and a fiendishly difficult one to pull off, at that.

-Adso

Another trick  is to shield valuable targets with tarpits (Carnifexes protected by Gaunts). Or you can pull back depending on distances to delay another turn. Or spread out so theres only one unit to assault with nothing to consolidate into afterwards.


Another situational thing is close combat. Of course the odds arent great, but at times it can be an unexpected and reasonable approach. The idea here is that Holofields are rather bad against penetrating hits ( a reroll on a 1/3 chance to not die/fall down isnt much improvement). Theres of course only a 1/6 chance to hit but compared to the odds at range this can be bareable at times, given a unit that provides multiple high strength/rending attacks (Death Company for example.)

No such luck. SMF works against CC attacks.

Hmmm, these tactics are non-issues where I play:

1) Block the hatches: not if the hatches are covered by vypers, bikes or other grav tanks. When the eldar player's turn comes, the bikes move out of the way, and the harlies disembark.

2) Feed em a tarpit unit: What Eldar player doesn't plan the assault three turns ahead? Fly around the gaunts and hit the carnifex from the other side.

3) Pull back to delay: only if you've got jump packs. A non-fleeting infantry unit within 3" of the front end of a falcon has a mathematically zero percent chance of moving out of range of a harlequin assault from that falcon regardless of terrain. It's basic geometry.

4) Spread out so there's only one target: Only if your Eldar player took tactics lessons from captain obvious. The skilled player will fly past the lone target and hit the guys clustered in the back. Or, if it's a juicy lone target, he'll use the falcons to block off any potential counterassault until the assaulters can reembark.

Also, as Tegeus Cromis said (in translation) you can still only glance a skimmer moving fast, even in close combat.