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Which of the two SM flyers is better, the Fire Raptor with it's auto cannons and TL rape cannon or the Storm Eagle with it's 20 man transport capacity and vengeance launcher.

They serve wildly different roles. I prefer the Storm Eagle, since it is a bit more versatile due to transport capability.

The fire raptor is a much superior gunship. If you want to deliver a sizable unit consider a caestus assault ram. The storm eagle is nice in larger games where you have a suitable unit to fully utilize the transport capacity.

As an owner of a Storm Eagle, I have to say the Fire Raptor. I much prefer gunships to flying transports, especially when you don't have any alternative disembarking rules (a la Stormraven or Vendetta).

As noted, they serve different roles, and as such aren't quite directly comparable.

The Fire Raptor is a fearsome anti-infantry//anti-MC/anti-light-vehicle muppet mower. If there's anything out there that's AV10 or AV11 (or even AV12), it'll kill it real dead real quick, and anything not sporting enhanced toughness and/or a 2+ armor save is going down very fast indeed.

The Storm Eagle is a transport. That said, it's weapon loadout is either simple anti-light infantry, or fearsome anti-tank if you want to invest the points. It can transport a lot of dudes to wherever they need to be and provide some fire support, it's also better at engaging stuff like Land Raiders, Monoliths, and Russ tanks as it can take two TL'd Lascannons and a TL'd Multimelta to engage heavy armor with (or go full ham and pay ~300pts for the Roc version with a turbo-Krak missile launcher), or keep it cheap with the nose mounted TL heavy bolters and just run the blast missiles it comes with.

If you need muppet mowing and anti-MC firepower, take the Fire Raptor. If you need a transport or anti-tank, take the Storm Eagle.

Personally, I like the Chaos Fire Raptor better than the loyalist one, as you can swap the sponson heavy bolter batteries for reaper autocannon batteries and that really enchances its effectiveness against armor and MC's.

Personally I prefer the Fire Raptor. The sheer amount of damage it can put out. And you're forgetting its missiles. With PotMS you can fire a missile and its avenger cannon and turret weapons at full BS. And strafing run to boot.

You'd only consider the Storm Eagle because its also a transport, its weapons are dopey. If you want 2 Str5 Ap4 large blasts use 3 Whirlwinds. That's 9 HP's. You can put better weapons, but then you're upping the cost of a already expensive transport, so just go Roc Pattern. See the problem? Just go Fire Raptor and watch your opponents face as he removes handfuls of MEQ and a vehicle a turn.

It depends on the army you're playing as and what you need in your list.

I use my storm eagle constantly, I use it to transport a Chaos Lord and a mountain of possessed, not much survives that charge. Lacking PoTMS makes it a little harder to use since if you're firing at a tank the vengeance launcher is largely wasted and vice versa if you're using the LCs and MM.

The fire raptor is a beast for light tank hunting and messing with infantry, IA13 let's it buy an upgrade that I think is called infernal ammunition which gives it's guns rending which is bananas. It costs around the same as a think but sweet mother of feth is it sweet.