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So I've been looking over the Death From the Skies book, and noticed how much better the Vendetta is than the Stormtalon in pretty much every way. Aside from BS4 on the ST, the VD has better armor, weapons, and abilities. For fewer points.

Wait, what?

I feel this is a case of pure laziness on the part of GW to not even consider other armies when making things to sell for phat duckets (meaning lots of money). There is no reason whatsoever to ever take a Stormtalon when you have such a vastly superior substitute in the VD? I mean, for +20 points, you get +2 Armor to front and side, three TL lascannons, -1 rear armor, -1 BS, transport capacity, and access to decent missiles (not that you'll ever take them). You can also make them a squadron, which allows for three in an allied detachment, which is insane.

So, I propose (for those who use hombrew rules in their games), that the Storm Talon have the following Statline to replace its current one:

Stormtalon....................100 points
BS...FA....SA....RA....HP
..4....12.....11....11.....2

Unit Type: Vehicle (Flyer, Hover)
Composition: 1 Stormtalon
Wargear: 1 Twin-linked Assault Cannon, Twin-linked Heavy Bolter, Ceramite plating

Options:
May replace the twin-linked Assault Cannon with one of the following:
- Twin-linked Lascannon................10 points
- Twin-linked Multi-Melta.................10 points
- Twin-linked Plasma Cannon.......10 points

May replace the Twin-linked Heavy Bolter with one of the following:
- Twin-linked Lascannon...............10 points
- Twin-linked Plasma Cannon......10 points
- Skyhammer ML..............................10 points
- Typhoon ML....................................15 points
- Twin-linked Assault Cannon......15 points

Any better? heck, we could even do away with FA 12 and put it back to 11, and it'd still be better.

I get your feeling (heck, I play Dark Angels ...) but I have a simpler solution with houserules would be to change the Vendetta to 180 pts or something around that

Along the same lines, the Drake thingy and the Night Scythe should have price increases as well, one having been designed before they actually playtested flyers rules, and the other one having been FAQed without any balance in mind

Well on the bright side we now have the Stormraven which is closer to the Vendetta.

But still the Vendetta is still stupidly cheap and can be taken in squads.....

If only they made the Stormraven at least 25 points cheaper, that would make it less insulting.

The raven is the right price though, its the vendetta that needs to be more expensive, the talon isnt bad at points, but i will say that the DA flyers are badly costed in comparison to almost all other flyers.

 McNinja wrote:
So I've been looking over the Death From the Skies book, and noticed how much better the Vendetta is than the Stormtalon in pretty much every way. Aside from BS4 on the ST, the VD has better armor, weapons, and abilities. For fewer points.

Vendettas are better than nearly every unit in the entire game. You don't balance around the farthest outlier.

^This.

I dunno. I quite like my Stormtalons. They don't cost many points, and there's not much I'm putting in the slots they take up as it is. 3 of them with TL Assault Cannons and Skyhammer missiles takes up only 375 points, and they dish out a lot of pain for their points. And if they get shot down, then so be it. That's fire that isn't being relegated towards my other units, allowing them to get revenge for their fallen brethren. As with any unit in this game, it all depends on how it gets used.

^ this for me, I think the talon is a good flyer. Is it spammable, yes, at 110 w/ HB its cheap enough to spam and the upgrades are pretty cheap. Is it durable, no, but thats ok, flyers are harder to hit in general, and one needs Str 6+ to reliably damage them which is not all that common. Could they be better, I can't think of any other thing to add to it. If you want a more durable flyer, buy a Stormraven and pray that GW balances the other flyers at some point in their codex releases

 McNinja wrote:
So I've been looking over the Death From the Skies book, and noticed how much better the Vendetta is than the Stormtalon in pretty much every way. Aside from BS4 on the ST, the VD has better armor, weapons, and abilities. For fewer points.

That, uh, isn't right. The Stormtalon costs 110 points (less than the Vendetta) and has BS4 (more than the Vendetta) against air and BS5 (substantially more than the Vendetta) against ground. Further its armament is very different and they fill different roles. That said, there is an imbalance there (albeit a less extreme one than you said)-- but the solution lies with hiking the price on the Vendetta, not dropping the price on other things.

TanKoL wrote:
I get your feeling (heck, I play Dark Angels ...) but I have a simpler solution with houserules would be to change the Vendetta to 180 pts or something around that

Along the same lines, the Drake thingy and the Night Scythe should have price increases as well, one having been designed before they actually playtested flyers rules, and the other one having been FAQed without any balance in mind

Why? The baleflamer is powerful, yes, but easily mitigated by taking flyers of your own, or just deploying troops with an eye to what's going to happen.
At 170pts it's pretty balanced in the flier realm and it's the only really shining thing in the new chaos dex. What would you increase its points to? 180? I could swallow that, but beyond that you start closing in on stormraven terrain and unless you're going to let it carry twelve chaos marines (some of whom it might eat if it's hungry) and a dreadnought, and give it four more guns I can't really agree.
The night scythe has slightly better than toilet paper armor, can't go into hover mode and only has one gun (albeit a cool one). The transport capacity is cool, but fairly redundant and useless in most Necron armies. The new talon is actually on par with it, especially given the talon's small profile and concurrent ability to gain real cover behind buildings.
Given the incredible versatility of all five space marines book, I don't see much of a need to tinker with anything here. Much less to increase the points of fliers in other codexes.

In the end, it's probably a much better idea to just forget all this and agree that GW doesn't give a flying feth about balance. As they said, they wanted a "cinematic game" and disapprove of inherently competitive formats. If you really want to play a balanced game, go play chess.

That's true. If GW did care a bit, it'd be cool, but I suppose not. Also, I totally forgot about Strafing Run.