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Can you say hello to the greatest firing platform in the game?

I am surprised this isn't getting more traction. Today I ran a tau force with dark angel allies, stacked three units of broadsides on the shield with drones an the enemy didn't know what to do about it, belial an his terminators backed up by crises suits worked awesome.


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Imagine 15 long fangs or Lootaz up on that thing.

I must've missed this change. Care to enlighten me? I'd look myself but my phone doesn't download pdfs lol.

 l0k1 wrote:
I must've missed this change. Care to enlighten me? I'd look myself but my phone doesn't download pdfs lol.

It has no access or fire points an counts as open terrain, it has no armour value so it can't be targeted.nfor 75 points whatever is sitting on it gets a 4+ invuln save. No more parking in ruins for 75 points you have yourself a elevated shooting platform that offers more protecting than the fortress of redemption.

sounds like they really wanted to sell that $50 model guess they got tired of everybody buying the vs the $30 aegis defense line

the invul is kind of nice but can't be bumped up to say a 2+ by GtG behind barricades for the infantry. I have tried a few times subbing it in (via cardboard box) and I find that I like it mostly for tanks or if the enemy have long range flamer templates like GK's DK's or IG's hellhounds.

4+ invul storm talon is kind of fun on top of that thing. It's the one time I actually kind of like hover mode.

All great and all, but thing is, it never was a building.

I don't think it ever was considered a building and at any competitive level it has not been allowed to my knowledge.

Dan

Maybe if they sell enough fortifications they will put out Xenos/chaos versions.
I'm in.

Would an elevated ruin serve the same function?

Depending on how much terrain you use, it seems this might be redundant or it might vital.

 sudojoe wrote:
the invul is kind of nice but can't be bumped up to say a 2+ by GtG behind barricades for the infantry. I have tried a few times subbing it in (via cardboard box) and I find that I like it mostly for tanks or if the enemy have long range flamer templates like GK's DK's or IG's hellhounds.

4+ invul storm talon is kind of fun on top of that thing. It's the one time I actually kind of like hover mode.

Yes a cover save can be buffed, but they can also be removed by multiple means, the most common being templates and markerlights, but there are others.


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 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
All great and all, but thing is, it never was a building.

There was debate on it before the FAQ, otherwise why bother to FAQ it to begin with.


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 Dunwich wrote:
Would an elevated ruin serve the same function?

Depending on how much terrain you use, it seems this might be redundant or it might vital.

Yes an elevated ruin would serve that purpose, but can you fit 6-9 broadsides in that ruin, or 3 squads of devestators, or Long Fangs? Even with a good amount of terrain the landing bad is huge an it allows for awesome fields of fire.

As for being big itself an an easy Target... Fire away, waste your time trying to get past that 4+ invuln while the rest of my army advances.

I've only ever tried one once, and was surprised by the effectiveness of the 4+ in protecting my Dev squads from template doom.

Well, broadsides don't gain much beyond firing lanes and that can be dubious at best, cover against flyers from the rear though sounds nice once under it. Does the skyshield still have its original functions, like landing on it and stuff?

How about a skyshield + 9 Ork Lobbas + 6 additional Grots per gun?
That would last the whole game just on virtue of being so tough.

The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction into that thing.

I like that sentence better.

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

And then marbo kills them all from on top of the platform. But on another not I may actually buy one now to expand my collection of personal terrain.

I didn't realise this was the case, these have just become very appealing to me

I've been looking to pick up some aegis lines anyways and I did wonder if the skyshield would be worth the investment, I now think it very well could be

 White Ninja wrote:
And then marbo kills them all from on top of the platform. But on another not I may actually buy one now to expand my collection of personal terrain.

You might want to refresh up on the rules for marbo and the demolition charge.

First, you can space out your 6 vehicles so there is no where within 1" of a vehicle, preventing marbo from appearing "On the skyshield" That will force him to appear below the skyshield.

The range of the demo charge is 6". The skyshield sits 3" up from the ground. At best your going to be able to get 2 vehicles in your blast. Assuming that the blast does not scatter, there is still a 50% chance of the blast not effecting the manticore due to being on the skyshield. Compared to 2 manticores on the ground it seems a lot more effective to be on the shield.

Just like before, marbo will then get gibbed by the IG player. He is not an auto-win to solve the issue with the skyshield --- unless your opponent is an idiot and then you can use grots to do the job, right?

Here is the kicker about the skyshield -- its 75 points. If you were using an aegis line, Marbo could ignore the defense line by appearing behind it. The skyshield works vs flyers, outflankers, marbo, etc. Its an amazing buy.

Someone in our 40k group proposed this very thing, but we all agreed (including the player) that it wouldn't be allowed within the group. Which makes me wonder; who is even allowing it?

Competitive players? AFAIK, Skyshields and Fortresses haven't been allowed in competitive play (yet, though I doubt ever).

Casual players? Maybe the first time, because they don't know about it, but I sincerely doubt they'll play against someone doing that a second time.

That just leaves "Warhammer is serious business" type players, who accept such things in their game, probably because they accept something equally "broken."

Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

I ran a Tau list with 6 Broadsides and Deathwing allies using the pad last weekend.

Nothing on the pad was touched, my opponent didn't even really want to try to shoot at it. I had 6 broadsides with target lock up there with 2x drones a piece in front of the Broadsides, I basically wrapped the broadsides around the front an sides of the pad. the only large blast weapon he had was a vindicator and it posed no threat. Luckily we rolled purge the alien so there were no objectives. My two small squads of firewarriors deployed in cover and did well, I kept two units of suits hanging out with 2 units of deathwing terminators it was great fun. He had a 10x unit of tactical terminators and my railguns harrassed them all game.

The Landing Pad for the price is the best fortification there is hands down, and for those that harp on the A Line an the Quad Gun usually you are putting units on the Pad that have a reasonable chance at hurting flyers. Gonna run a Wolf/DA list tonight that has 13 missile Launchers and 2 Lascannons up on the pad with 2 Rune Priests to cast prescience, thats 15 shots with rerolls flyers are not gonna wanna go near it. Then I have a beefed up Cav unit and 2 units of deathwing terminators to go out an hunt.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

The same could be asked to Tournament Organisers.

As for casual setting, it's not so much allowing as simply saying "sorry dude, I just don't want to play against that." Sure, anyone could say that to anything, but casual 40k is a lot like playing apocalypse; both players tend to go in knowing to have fun, while trying not to abuse the rules too much.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

Exactly. If you want to go "oh this is broken, I'm going to spam/work it as hard as i can and milk it for all its worth", but then the game devolves into who's going to spend chunks of money of getting the models ready for the army they spent chunks of time trying to nut out the best army list so you can beat up on a bunch of people who aren't trying as hard as you to win a game of plastic toy soldiers, who are instead trying to have fun...which really isn't fun unless your an incredible hole, so you start playing tournaments to see if your army you have so invested in can beat others who have invested so much....

 Shadelkan wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

The same could be asked to Tournament Organisers.

The same could be asked indeed. Its part of the rules. Its fairly trivial. The players who are trying to win these events have the money to spend, the time to waste. That's what 40k comps are about in a way, right? The "best" players are always going to be the ones with the money and time to invest in competitive plastic soldier games, which are inherently unbalanced and also has a rules set written by a bunch of blokes without an editor it seems, so why not allow the flavor of the month? I mean, we're already milking the rules/codices for the best of the best. The most efficient killers, the most efficient defenses, the most efficient tactics. Oh but not that one, I don't like that one! I don't want the tournaments to turn into "skyshieldand co vs Skyshield and co", so we are going to say you can't use it because its not what 40k is to us.

I ran a Bastion at Tacticon 2 weeks ago. Yes TOs are allowing it. Stop making silly assumptions.

 Jihallah wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

Exactly. If you want to go "oh this is broken, I'm going to spam/work it as hard as i can and milk it for all its worth", but then the game devolves into who's going to spend chunks of money of getting the models ready for the army they spent chunks of time trying to nut out the best army list so you can beat up on a bunch of people who aren't trying as hard as you to win a game of plastic toy soldiers, who are instead trying to have fun...which really isn't fun unless your an incredible hole, so you start playing tournaments to see if your army you have so invested in can beat others who have invested so much....

 Shadelkan wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Why wouldn't you allow something explicitly allowed by the rules? Especially something that is fairly trivial like this?

The same could be asked to Tournament Organisers.

The same could be asked indeed. Its part of the rules. Its fairly trivial. The players who are trying to win these events have the money to spend, the time to waste. That's what 40k comps are about in a way, right? The "best" players are always going to be the ones with the money and time to invest in competitive plastic soldier games, which are inherently unbalanced and also has a rules set written by a bunch of blokes without an editor it seems, so why not allow the flavor of the month? I mean, we're already milking the rules/codices for the best of the best. The most efficient killers, the most efficient defenses, the most efficient tactics. Oh but not that one, I don't like that one! I don't want the tournaments to turn into "skyshieldand co vs Skyshield and co", so we are going to say you can't use it because its not what 40k is to us.

Man, you're all over the map here. What side are you actually supporting?

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

wait you can move vehicles onto the sky shield, that makes no sense it doesn't even have a ramp. Jumping crisis suits and flyers I can understand bun freakin tanks.

 Spartan089 wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

wait you can move vehicles onto the sky shield, that makes no sense it doesn't even have a ramp. Jumping crisis suits and flyers I can understand bun freakin tanks.

Hydraulic Suspensions. And if we've talking about the IG, that's what the meat and commissars are for.

 Spartan089 wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

wait you can move vehicles onto the sky shield, that makes no sense it doesn't even have a ramp. Jumping crisis suits and flyers I can understand bun freakin tanks.

Getting onto or off of a Skyshield is just difficult terrain.

 Spartan089 wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
The skyshield is a 12" * 12" platform.

On that building you can stick 6 IG chimera/russ chassis tanks comfortably, giving your fire support element a 4+ invlun save from shooting. Imagine what 6 manticores could do lobbing death and destruction from that thing.

wait you can move vehicles onto the sky shield, that makes no sense it doesn't even have a ramp. Jumping crisis suits and flyers I can understand bun freakin tanks.

I dunno about vehicles, I wouldn't run vehicles on the platform although you can technically deep strike a Land Raider onto it so I don't see why they couldn't start the game deployed on it. Getting the vehicle up or down would be difficult though.

I ran a Space Wolf Long Fang-Dark Angel force tonight, had 3 squads of Long Fangs, Cavalry with wolf Lord, 2 Rune Priests, 2 small Hunter squads and Belial and his 2 units of Deathwing and it did really well. Although I took some hits I rolled the Warlord trait that made my Wolf Lord scoring and the mission was the relic, the outcome was never really in question but he managed to swiss cheese my army pretty good. He just couldn't get through Belial an his Deathwing and the Cavalry after passing off the relic to the hunters did fairly well although the Lord took two early wounds and reduced their effectiveness. The Long Fangs with Rune Priests swiss cheesed an entire unit of Terminators Frag Missiles are pretty good against AV2 armour when they have to make 15+ saves each turn .

Funny thing was, that the Long Fangs very rarely needed the 4+ invuln, it was more useful as a shooting platform. It was more important to the 6 Broadsides in the last game I played with the Landing Pad.