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I'm sorry if this thread has been done before but was wondering everyone's thoughts about the introduction of Aircraft, Flying MC, and the must have "items" to counteract them in 40K? When I came back into the 40K scene about a year ago everyone was telling me that the game has drastically changed and one of the main points of the change was the introduction of Fliers! Is this overly exaggerated or has it indeed but a positive or negative effect on the overall game? Thanks

Mr. Raynor

I don't really like them. There are some great flier models (the Imperial Thunderbolt has my heart) but flyers are the sort of thing where now you need to have some means to counter them in your army list, no matter what. This leads to a lot of armies taking aircraft just to take down other aircraft. The balance of them is also kind of frustrating, since on one hand you've got the stupidly durable and deadly Heldrake, and on the other you've got the Dark Talon, which is kind of an aerial wet fart for a similar points cost.

I'm probably just being crotchety since it's one more thing being added to the game that changes the dynamic, and frankly I think changing the dynamic of the game is a good thing. It's just unfortunate that it also means most armies have an ADL or flier in them, which kind of leads to armies looking the same.

In other words: I'm conflicted, don't like airplanes, but do like change.

Sure, they're a good thing.


The important thing is to not view flyers as bombers and fighter-bombers strafing the battlefield from thousands of feet up. None of the current 40k flyers fit that profile.

In reality, flyers are most similar to ground attack helicopters and other close air support. Stuff that things on the battlefield can actually fire back at. That's why you can actually shoot at them with man portable weapons.


The flyer rules themselves are also not the problem. the problem is 2 specific flyers. The Vendetta and the Heldrake.

The Vendetta was stupidly undercosted in 5th. Nothing changed when 6th rolled around.

The Heldrake is a little silly for the point cost. But then again it is only 1 weapon destroyed result away from uselessness.


As more codices are updated to 6th edition, along with Skyfire and flyer options, the balance will shift back.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Sure, they're a good thing.


The important thing is to not view flyers as bombers and fighter-bombers strafing the battlefield from thousands of feet up. None of the current 40k flyers fit that profile.

In reality, flyers are most similar to ground attack helicopters and other close air support. Stuff that things on the battlefield can actually fire back at. That's why you can actually shoot at them with man portable weapons.


The flyer rules themselves are also not the problem. the problem is 2 specific flyers. The Vendetta and the Heldrake.

The Vendetta was stupidly undercosted in 5th. Nothing changed when 6th rolled around.

The Heldrake is a little silly for the point cost. But then again it is only 1 weapon destroyed result away from uselessness.


As more codices are updated to 6th edition, along with Skyfire and flyer options, the balance will shift back.

Don't forget the Necron Scythes of doom.

Right, I just played against them last night

Again, thats a problem with the specific model. Not the flyer rules themselves.

at least the Necron ones have paper armor.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Right, I just played against them last night

Again, thats a problem with the specific model. Not the flyer rules themselves.

at least the Necron ones have paper armor.

Yeah, nobody else's fliers seem to stack up to the four of fury.

I think as a whole, adding flyers is a good thing. It adds a new dimension to the game and opens up new play styles.

That said, it still feels like codices are catching up since there are not many with Skyfire at the moment and thus cause more flyers or ADLs on the table to address them. Many people in my local meta don't care much for flyers and view them and ineffective or weak; however, those that run them regularly see them as a bit too strong bc of the lack of anti-air locally.

At the moment I like them; however, I have a feeling that as the meta continues to change with each new book, so too will people's opinions on flyers and how to address them. I only have a Dakkajet at the moment and the only true critique i have of it is that my enemies that don't have skyfire can't shoot it down. The fact there has to be a unique answer to them is the only thing that needs adjusting. I would have rather seen them with higher AV or better Jink saves and not need skyfire but that doesn't exactly fit the fluff of what zooming flyers actually represent so who knows.

 Grey Templar wrote:

at least the Necron ones have paper armor.

*Glares at the Vendetta*

Yeah, I think the main problem is with the Flyers themselves, not with the Unit Type. If all fliers were like the Crimson Hunter for example, which is neither fantastic nor rubbish, then I think flyers would be much more welcomed. It's another dynamic to the game though, which is good because, as far as tactics and planning goes, there's another element to consider, which makes it more challenging, which is great in my opinion.

The thing that annoys me though is ADLs. Especially with Flyers being around, they're almost a no-brainer and as most people (myself proudly not among them) can't be bothered to convert ADLs specific to their army, many battle lines end up looking far similar than they should.

With a little imagination it shouldn't be too hard to make your own races ADL.

One eldar player I know uses a weapon platform with a quad-shuricat as his quad-gun. For the ADL he has little force fields of clear blue plastic coming out of little eldar generators.

A funny thing to realize is that in the original Rogue Trader rules, there were fliers. The 6th's inclusion of them is just GW bringing back something that was there originally.

One thing I've learned about 40k over the years and through each edition ...players hate change. Anything new, that seems powerful, and is not in your army - is the worst thing GW has ever done. Rinse and repeat.

Admittedly I sincerely hated flyers at first; but I like the direction things are headed now and I think yes, they are good for the game.

I think flyers will be fine in general once all armies get access to AA, flyers of there own.

the only thing im upset with new flyers are the Tau one being so butt ugly compared to the forgeworld one. and not to mention the rules differences too.

My only real problem with flyers is, that too many players just grab one, assemble it bad and paint it even worse. Sometimes even ask me if I am ok when they put them on a paper box since they are missing the proper base.
What I really enjoy is, when some veterans come along with their well painted/assembled flyers on self made bases. I dont like the height of the default base it should be double the height. Only good thing about the "low height" is the fact that you can kill them like Luke Skywalker in "The Empire Strikes Back" did it with the AT-AT. 8" height means popping nades from below is possible and sometimes really worth it

 Gorbad wrote:
My only real problem with flyers is, that too many players just grab one, assemble it bad and paint it even worse. Sometimes even ask me if I am ok when they put them on a paper box since they are missing the proper base.
What I really enjoy is, when some veterans come along with their well painted/assembled flyers on self made bases. I dont like the height of the default base it should be double the height. Only good thing about the "low height" is the fact that you can kill them like Luke Skywalker in "The Empire Strikes Back" did it with the AT-AT. 8" height means popping nades from below is possible and sometimes really worth it

It's not just flyers though... unpainted armies in general.

And our next exciting addition to 40K will be SPACESHIPS having battles... Fleets... and they would be all Gothic and stuff.. Oh wait... EOL..

I don't mind Fliers being in the game but the one thing I don't like is that they are so hard to just land a hit on them from the rest of your army that you almost always have to auto include an ADL w/QG, have a lot of TL weapons, or a flier of your own. If these were true fliers then they would in the higher altitudes of the skies only to come down to make a strafing run. Some of these fliers do look the part of say a Thunderbolt Warthog but most look to be upper atmospheric fighters. Maybe, IC and Characters with higher BS could potentially have a greater chance then someone with standard BS? Just a thought.

Mr. Raynor

Well, if people want variety in ADL models, there are some lovely ones from Wargamma: http://www.mrdandy.com/wargamma-linked-barricades/

I just don't like seeing the same things in every list. No-brainer choices (beyond generic things like basic Troops units) are really boring to me.

Flyers should be a good thing in 40k, but they aren't. The problem lies not in the concept, but in the execution, which suffers from two problems. First is the lack of options to defend against flyers. Perhaps even a worse problem, however, is the balance among the flyers themselves, which is terrible even for 40k standards. Flyers suffer from an enormous variation in both offensive and defensive capability that is neither reflected in their points cost or FOC availability. Some are just plain better.

Defensively, flyers range from the AV12, 5++, possessed, it will not die Helldrake to the AV10 Crimson Hunter and Wraithfighter, while offensively they can range from the Vendetta and Voidraven Bomber to the Nephilim and Razorshark fighters. Some carry the absolute best weapons available to an army, such as the Voidravens str 9 lance weapons or the Doom Scythe's deathray, while others carry a couple of autocannon equivalents. This is never reflected in the units cost, and flyer capability often has little bearing on the strengths of the rest of the army. Why do the Necrons, which are a slow and ponderous, albeit resilient, army, get the best flying transport in the game? Why do the Eldar, which have always been able to field powerful and resilient fast skimmer tanks, which were far and away the closest thing to actual flyers before the addition of flyers, only able to field flyers out of tissue paper? Shouldn't they have some of the strongest flyers in the game? Why do the Tau, known for their terrifying ranged weaponry, again skimmer tank mounted, field flyers with some of the weakest armament in the game?

There is of course hope this will be sorted out in the future, but I am pessimistic, because the situation is currently such a mess that doing so would be exceedingly difficult. For instance, if the price of a Vendetta is raised to 180 or even 200 points, it would still put every 6e codex flyer sans the Helldrake to shame, and I don't see GW actually reducing any of its capabilities. Similarly, how can GW balance anti-aircraft firepower in an environment in which the Helldrake and Crimson Hunter both exist and cost approximately the same. Give every army a fighting chance against the Helldrake, and Crimson Hunters will be shredded in the space of a turn. Keep AA capabilities weak to give the Crimson Hunter a fighting chance, and the Helldrake remains nigh invulnerable. And seeing how both of these units were recently released, neither will be due for an update for a very long time.

the Vendetta at 200 points without transport capacity and no squadrons would be a definite deflation. All things I could see happening.

GW's sold plenty of Vendettas, now they need to sell something else.

I have mixed feelings about them.

A lot of people aren't really prepared to take them out which makes the ones that are good simply too good. It's not that bad if you're fighting someone like me and you're up against a single Razorwing, which isn't really a danger if you're MEQ and don't give that much of a gak about S6 AP5 blasts...

But then someone pulls out Valks/Doom Scythes/flamer Helldrakes and suddenly that flyer is no longer just 'a nuisance' but an extremely dangerous unit that can just run your forces over (seriously, Doom Scythes dropping auto-hit S10 in a line is the bane of my existence when your Raiders are even remotely close together).

Some armies get really hosed over in terms of the Skyfire distribution. Tau has a lot, SM can get some, Dark Eldar has none aside from taking a flyer themselves, and even then, 2 lances on an 11 11 10 flyer isn't really what I'd call an optimal 'anti-flyer' unit considering a Doom Scythe or a Valk will shoot the gak out of it.

It's not even the fact that Doom Scythes are nasty or anything like that, it's just the fact that a lot of armies are literally powerless against flyers. I watched a game today where a single Doom Scythe basically rolled over this kid's Space Wolf army entirely based on the fact that he had literally nothing to hit them with.

When you have to literally tool your list to even affect a specific type of unit, that's not good. Even if I took a ton of Dark Lances I could still hurt horde armies. I actually have to tool my list to even affect a flyer, much less kill it.

If they weren't as expensive but were just a skimmer with a high base cover save that ignored terrain, I think they would be somewhat balanced. But right now, playing an army that has literally no way of getting Skyfire without either taking a 150 point Icarus battery (which can be shot down and somewhat easily, might I add) or having to take a Razorwing fighter which is somewhat subpar against anything that doesn't really care about AP5 blast weapons, the prospect of being essentially tabled because my book doesn't have things that let me affect a certain unit type in multitudes is not balanced at all.

Well, the biggest problem with fliers is the rules. Aircraft were so painfully awfully executed, that I'd be tempted to agree that fliers should be removed from 40k until they can reintroduce them with a better rules set.

On the one hand, there's a bunch of stupid contradictions. Because they fly fast, they're difficult to hit, but when some aircraft shoot at ground targets, their BS goes UP. They're immune to close combat (which is absurd - imagine they made a class of units that was immune to shooting), and then some of them can attack units in close combat, without being in close combat. They can fire basically all their weapons no matter how much they move as if they were a superheavy, except they move up to 36" per turn, and when you cause a vehicle immobilized result they're not immobilized. And despite being so fast that they're difficult to hit, they can do a 90 degree turn on a pin head and some of them can do that TWICE.

A combination of rules that make no sense whatsoever with regard to realism and rules that have terrible game balance make fliers bad for 40k at the moment. The fact that new codices are torturing themselves to find ways to handle anti air that aren't either useless (CSM or demons) or absurdly overpowered (tau) show just how badly the core mechanics are.

Honestly, if they had wanted to have the effects of fliers, they should have done it like the effects of off-board artillery or orbital bombardments. Make them a battlefield effect, rather than a unit in and of themselves. If they just wanted to sell more models, then they could have just kept them as skimmers, and no harm would have been done.

Hopefully when 7th edition rolls around, flier rules will actually make sense. Given that buildings came out in 5th and 6th did nothing to fix them, though... doesn't fill me with hope.

I can't stand them. I like ground combat, I don't want to suddenly have to add a bunch of new crap to my army just because someone brings a few fliers. I don't have to completely reorganize my entire army if someone brings a tank, but suddenly if I don't have a bunch of AA I'm just dead. That's lame. I'm almost to the point that I refuse to play against them. Not that they're cheap, but because they're fething annoying.

Love them and hate them. I love the models and the fluff, and started my flyer collection in 5th. They're my favorite part of my army, and I would be very sad if they were removed. On the other hand the execution of the concept is kind of awkward, and the sheer incompetence of whoever is in charge of balancing them is almost unbelievable. And then you have the complete stupidity of some of the rules, like taking engine damage locking a plane at full throttle, or a stunned flyer auto-crashing because a single grot was standing exactly 18" away and blocking the mandatory move.

 Ailaros wrote:
Because they fly fast, they're difficult to hit, but when some aircraft shoot at ground targets, their BS goes UP.

Actually, this is something that should be used MORE. Strafing run should be used to make ground attack aircraft good at killing ground targets without also making them too good at killing other aircraft. In the absence of this kind of rule you get stupidity like the Vendetta being better at dogfighting than the Thunderbolt.

They're immune to close combat (which is absurd - imagine they made a class of units that was immune to shooting)

No, it's perfectly sensible.

Aircraft being immune to close combat is the only option that makes any sense, because there's no way a guy with a chainsword is going to do even the slightest thing to inconvenience a plane flying overhead.

A class of units that is immune to shooting would make no sense fluff-wise, it would be a pure game mechanics unit that has to resort to "it's magic, don't question it" to "explain" the immunity.

The former adds realism to the game and helps represent the fluff appropriately, the latter just punishes shooting out of "fairness".

I do agree that vector strikes are just plain stupid and should force the unit into combat.

They can fire basically all their weapons no matter how much they move as if they were a superheavy, except they move up to 36" per turn

Blame the stupidity of the rules for deciding how many weapons you can fire based on how fast you moved. Flyers that can only fire some of their weapons make no sense when many of those weapons are mounted as a fixed array fired with a single trigger pull (for example, a Thunderbolt's autocannons and lascannon), so they have to be given enough full-BS weapons to work appropriately at the one speed they're allowed to move at.

Actually I don't agree with the close combat acclamation. Strictly speaking, orks! The space marine game had ork jump units banging on flyers to wreck them. Why not let jump units fight in cc with flyers? What about a FMC? Flies smashes into the front and start ripping it apart. (I do admit it would make no sense for.... guardsman to start whacking a zooming plane though).

In terms of fliers... mixed bag. I like the concept of them. Elysian gravchute air-cav army has always sounded immensely entertaining yet I cannot help but feel the current rules for flying is.... sloppy to say the least.

Well, we'll allow the codex Death from the Skies in our next RTT. Some incentive for a battle (dogfight) between flyers.

Jump and jetpack infantry should be able to engage fliers normally a la the valkyrie ride scene of space marine, because stormboyz gunning into a stormraven and stickin it with Tankbusta bombz definitely fits the action movie feel Gw seems to want to promote.

 Ailaros wrote:


Honestly, if they had wanted to have the effects of fliers, they should have done it like the effects of off-board artillery or orbital bombardments. Make them a battlefield effect, rather than a unit in and of themselves. If they just wanted to sell more models, then they could have just kept them as skimmers, and no harm would have been done.

They did.

There have been some truly brilliant rules for recreating verisimilitude of a larger battlefield "surrounding" the actual models on the table in 5th Edition, for example the addition of Deep Strike to Blood Angels Land Raiders to simulate this baby in "regular 40K"

Yet they were almost universally ill-received by the 40K community. Now we've got the "in-your-face" rules this community deserves.

Fliers are not a must for me by any means, I have extremly seldom used a flying hive tyrant, and it did not impress me that much. But then again none of players I play with really embraced the fliers. A few of them have a few, mainly the Ork players. But I find that they are by no means horridly broken or that difficult to shoot down. Sheer weigth of fire will kill any fliers

 Trondheim wrote:
Fliers are not a must for me by any means, I have extremly seldom used a flying hive tyrant, and it did not impress me that much. But then again none of players I play with really embraced the fliers. A few of them have a few, mainly the Ork players. But I find that they are by no means horridly broken or that difficult to shoot down. Sheer weigth of fire will kill any fliers

I have this lovely 18 vendetta list for you to fight at 3k points.

I've never played before 6th edition, but to me, flyers as a whole are fine. Yeah there are some overpowered units, but you might as well just quit 40k if that's your problem. It really shouldn't matter that it forces you to bring new things to your army, because if it did, why don't you complain about AV 14 spam? Or someone who brings 150 infantry models? Your list probably can't handle those without bringing specific changes, so why are flyers different? And really, flyers aren't even hard to beat. With enough interceptor weapons you can completely negate them, and often times you can just completely dominate the ground game and ignore the flyers, maybe even table them by turn 3 if the flyers don't come in.

Once every codex has their own flyers and AA options, flyers will be completely fine. The only thing I might want to see is maxing their AV at 11.