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@Octovol
Which is exactly why I'm hoping on scout deployment. Taking the mid field in deployment is something we sorely miss, and would greatly appreciate.

As far as Transuranic goes, it just not cut it for me without ability to move. I loved dropping them with a prenerf Stygies Infiltration, as I could have had a chance of securing LoS to shoot a thing. Now... All tables I play on are very densely packed in the middle, to the point I often cant see a thing turn 1. All they do for me is covering a line. But even when they do see, without a support of the other squad they rarely bring a wound from key characters you want dead. With a rise on importance of characters auras and abilities the role of snipers that can actually see and shoot is pretty cool to have IMO (Eliminators spams killing any Admech char in a turn are best example why)

Pteraxii article up


Arc Grenade Clusters look tasty.

they have a bombing run? Not what i expected but same basic principle. I was expecting the Helldrake fluff due to those talons where they just strike as they fly over.

The T3/2W/4+ and super-close range mentality really makes them sound easily picked off but man they feel mean.

"the Skystalkers use their wings to rapidly redeploy after hitting their target." wait wait wait what? did they give them jump-shoot-jump? o boy, the hate cometh...

I totally misread the grenade rules on my first pass, thinking it was a per-target-model like most other bombing weapons.

One roll per Skystalker is actually quite nice. A (presumably) MSU of 5 would be dropping 3 mortal wounds on average to a vehicle target. Might be tough to find opportunities to fly a unit over a vehicle and have room to land all 5 on the other side. These guys would also be fun for going after Flyers, they could leapfrog the target to bomb it and then charge with the claws, S5 keeps them from wounding on worse than 5+ and if you happen to have Machine Might active you are probably wounding on 4+.

It's not jump-shoot-jump, it's a Swooping hawks style 'Skyleap' from the sound of it. So they can fly high, leave the board and redeepstrike the following turn.

 dadamowsky wrote:
@Octovol
Which is exactly why I'm hoping on scout deployment. Taking the mid field in deployment is something we sorely miss, and would greatly appreciate.

As far as Transuranic goes, it just not cut it for me without ability to move. I loved dropping them with a prenerf Stygies Infiltration, as I could have had a chance of securing LoS to shoot a thing. Now... All tables I play on are very densely packed in the middle, to the point I often cant see a thing turn 1. All they do for me is covering a line. But even when they do see, without a support of the other squad they rarely bring a wound from key characters you want dead. With a rise on importance of characters auras and abilities the role of snipers that can actually see and shoot is pretty cool to have IMO (Eliminators spams killing any Admech char in a turn are best example why)

I actually love Arqs. Get a max squad of Rangers, pop the +1 to hit Strat, and have fun. I'm one of the only people that does the full squads of Skitarii though.

Madjob wrote:
I totally misread the grenade rules on my first pass, thinking it was a per-target-model like most other bombing weapons.

One roll per Skystalker is actually quite nice. A (presumably) MSU of 5 would be dropping 3 mortal wounds on average to a vehicle target. Might be tough to find opportunities to fly a unit over a vehicle and have room to land all 5 on the other side. These guys would also be fun for going after Flyers, they could leapfrog the target to bomb it and then charge with the claws, S5 keeps them from wounding on worse than 5+ and if you happen to have Machine Might active you are probably wounding on 4+.

I'm really unsure what all those "this unit, that unit" refer to. If it is indeed a 3+ per Pteraxii then I'm saying goodbye to the Smash Cap as Skystalkers are my new best friend in hunting planes down

 dadamowsky wrote:

Madjob wrote:
I totally misread the grenade rules on my first pass, thinking it was a per-target-model like most other bombing weapons.

One roll per Skystalker is actually quite nice. A (presumably) MSU of 5 would be dropping 3 mortal wounds on average to a vehicle target. Might be tough to find opportunities to fly a unit over a vehicle and have room to land all 5 on the other side. These guys would also be fun for going after Flyers, they could leapfrog the target to bomb it and then charge with the claws, S5 keeps them from wounding on worse than 5+ and if you happen to have Machine Might active you are probably wounding on 4+.

I'm really unsure what all those "this unit, that unit" refer to. If it is indeed a 3+ per Pteraxii then I'm saying goodbye to the Smash Cap as Skystalkers are my new best friend in hunting planes down

The enemy unit is always described with : enemy. So its going to be max 1MW per Pteraxii model. I dont think big units will be worth though, they seem pretty squishy and have abysmal leadership...

Yeah unless theres some pretty gnarly stratagem related tactics i think MSU is the way to go for these guys.
And we have other, presumably cheaper ways to get Wrath of Mars out there. Which is the biggest one i can think of that would want a full squad.

A smaller squad can also pass over a unit easier. Assuming they goto 10 max, thats quite a footprint to try to fly over something without advancing.

I will be a party pooper but my nose tells me the Swooping Batmans are supposed to work similarly to Swooping Hawks. Meaning it will/should be read as "a D6 per model of a unit that Pteraxii fly over"; with plausible further restriction capping number of dice at Pteraxii models alive.

Hawks wording:

Swooping Hawks can fire a spread of grenades when they are set up on the battlefield using the Children of Baharroth ability and as they fly over enemy units in their Movement phase. To do so after the unit has been set up using the Children of Baharroth ability, pick an enemy unit within 12" of them. To do so after the unit has moved, pick one enemy unit that they flew over. Then, in either case, roll one dice for each model in the enemy unit (up to a maximum of one dice for each model in the Swooping Hawks unit). Each time you roll a 6 the target unit suffers a mortal wound.

"This unit" refers to the Pteraxii, until any FAQ clarifies otherwise.

If you want to argue about it? Go to You Make Da Call.

Ok, I won't argue about rules when I like your interpretation more actually

Having the batmen work as a roll per model in their unit would make sense with the weapon being arc grenades that are meant to hunt vehicles. The alternative, swooping hawk style, would be near useless for what the lore would imply is it's ideal role.

That said, either version can be good and have its own benefits, basically just decides if they're good for antihorde or chipping a few wounds onto something without worrying about the wounds being stopped. As it appears to be, it seems good for killing off something like an enemy dreadnaught with a wound or two left tying up units for example.

normally i would debate that, but its actually cleanly written...which is a bit of a shocker.
And like MrMoustaffa said, if its meant for vehicles theres very few it would actually hurt since MOST vehicles are not in a unit (deffkoptaz, killakanz, grot tanks, robots, ironstrides, dragoons, i think Guard have one that doesnt split...i cant think of anything else).
A random mortal wound on a vehicle, even a trukk, big whoop. Potential 5? Ouch. It wont kill a vehicle but it can easily be that bit that caused it to die in the end.
No idea how many times ive had Neutron Lasers reduce a vehicle down to 2 wounds and only thing i had left that even could hurt it was out of range, already shot, or another Neutron laser lol

It's important to note as well the timing of the Arc Grenades.
Start of the Shooting Phase. Chipping some wounds off a vehicle incidental to moving your Pteraxii into a better firing position opens up some interesting avenues for popping transports and dealing with the contents using the Pteraxii themselves(who have a 24" range on their Assault weapons).

Flyer speculation time

Looking at the fliers I think they will have the following weapon loadouts

Twin Cognis lascannons

48" range
Heavy 2
S9
AP-3
D6 damage

Twin Heavy phosphor blaster

36" range
Heavy 3
S6
AP-2
1 Damage

Twin heavy stubbers

36" range
Heavy 3
S4
AP0
1 damage

We think 150 -170 points yeah?

The real question will be BS3 or BS4 after moving

Really hoping they get a rule to ignore heavy penalty.

What do you lads think?

Depending on the points, I’m real tempted to take a big squad of these dudes. I do run Mars, but I just feel like a huge squad of winged dudes would look boss. Also 50 shots coming from 24” away? Sounds pretty tasty.

At least we pretty much know how many points a min squad of skystalkers will be. 5 sweeping hawks are 65 points and these are just better versions of them in everything except movement. So I reckon we're looking at 70-75 points per squad.

Sterylizors are gonna be pricey though. Flying Ruststalkers with incendine combustors? I reckon we're looking at 25 each.

 Ideasweasel wrote:
Flyer speculation time (...)

We once believed Admech obviously has an invulnerable save, and then Skorpius came out. So let's just say I'm counting on no Heavy penalty, but I won't bet on it (neither on the invuln)

Octovol wrote:
At least we pretty much know how many points a min squad of skystalkers will be. 5 sweeping hawks are 65 points and these are just better versions of them in everything except movement. So I reckon we're looking at 70-75 points per squad.

Sterylizors are gonna be pricey though. Flying Ruststalkers with incendine combustors? I reckon we're looking at 25 each.

Yeah, while I was thinking of doing a squad of 10 Sterylizors, I fear it’ll be a huge point sink. But then, 10d6 of -1AP after deep striking is pretty nasty, their melee seems pretty sweet too.

This is ultimately going to boil down to how many points they cost, as well as what stratagems they get--especially an attack twice or a redeploy stratagem. Pteraxii are pretty much directly competing with Electro-Priests (drop in or run up to a threat, cripple it, force your opponent to waste time over-killing your unit), so they need to cost 12-15 points or it's better to stick to the Boat Priests strategy. That being said, having Fly and innate Deep Strike would go a long way to making them viable, especially if your build does not use Boats or wants to keep the Boats focused on capping objectives. (Vanilla Rangers would be best for this.)

It's all about the points cost. I'm not very encouraged, they honestly seem like a halfway house in a lot of ways - 2W 4+ isn't enough to really keep them alive, but it is enough to increase their points cost; their shooting isn't really good enough to kill much, but it's also not terrible; their melee isn't very threatening, but again it's enough to suck up a few points. I feel like they're paying a lot of points to be all-rounders and aside from intercessors all-rounders don't see much success in 40k.

I'm a bit less enthusiastic about the Skystalkers when I took another look and realized the pteraxii talons, despite being named for the template of both units, are probably Sterilyzor exclusive. So Skystalkers are not as versatile as I thought - probably good as they would otherwise be marginalizing the ground sicarians quite a bit, but still a shame. It would have been nice to have an alternate threat to Flyers, and they were also looking to be very effective at cracking transports and blending the contents in the same turn. They can do that decently enough still, but getting a charge off with those talons made it look like they'd be hard pressed for a target that would survive everything they could throw at it.

That...would be a massive letdown. But would also be incredibly weird as theyre both modeled with talons. GW in this edition more than ever likes to slap rules on any noticable wargear they can, its why Killakanz have 3 different melee weapons for...reasons lol.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
That...would be a massive letdown. But would also be incredibly weird as theyre both modeled with talons. GW in this edition more than ever likes to slap rules on any noticable wargear they can, its why Killakanz have 3 different melee weapons for...reasons lol.

That's actually what sealed it for me: take a closer look at the Sterilyzors legs vs. the Skystalkers. Sterilyzors have that large bladed talon with the additional piston support on the back, Skystalkers lack it entirely. As you said, GW likes to slap rules on any noticeable wargear, so something like a nastier looking claw on otherwise identical units undoubtedly has unique rules.

im having a hard time telling if its actually different or its the angles playing tricks.
But now that you mention it, it does look like that back of the foot talon is different. Slightly.

If they seriously make the fletchette ones literally flying infiltrators with a little extra range....wtf was the point? Admech isnt marines, we shouldnt be getting units that are literally a superior version of another yet lol.
They have to have some other rule that hasnt been revealed yet. Thats just weird.

You are right, they are different. One just has chicken legs and small talons, the other has pistons supporting a large bladed back talon. So yeah, it seems safe to say the flechette dudes won’t get the melee benefits.

I think this basically seals it for me, I think if I take them, I’ll be taking the Flamer guys.

Honestly, as long as both are Fast Attack rather than Elite choices? I'm happy.

I can definitely see a place for the Skystalkers as a harassment unit when the enemy may have vehicles in the backfield...and I'm kind of enjoying the idea of going after Character keyworded vehicles with sWoOpInG!11!

Only melee option that seems to be confirmed for the Skystalkers is the taser goad on the alpha. Definitely feels like a bit of a waste for the whole unit to have 2A but no proper melee option. Even more so if the charge +1 A rule is not exclusive to the Sterilyzors.

Primaris are rocking 2A even on Eliminators. The 2A for the Skystalkers is likely to showcase they're Sicarian equivalents, not that they're assault troops.

So far, nothing points to "Swooping Strikes"(the +1A) being on Skystalkers.