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Swooping hawks now have this ability to hit flyers they pass over with haywire attacks. How does this work on the board, I have never used them and my list lacks AA.

Can I start them on the table on turn 1 - skyleap them into ongoing and then wait for the flyer to arrive, deep strike without scattering and then attack the flyer?

Zippokovich wrote:
Swooping hawks now have this ability to hit flyers they pass over with haywire attacks. How does this work on the board, I have never used them and my list lacks AA.

Can I start them on the table on turn 1 - skyleap them into ongoing and then wait for the flyer to arrive, deep strike without scattering and then attack the flyer?

You don't pass over anything when you deep strike.
You only have an 18" move, so it might be hard to close in on the flyer.

You're better off taking dark reapers.

You have to be able to move over them, so if you skyleap turn 1, then deepstrike turn 2, it wont be until turn 3 that you will be able to move over them.

If you go first, that might work out. For example:
T1: Hawks skyleap
T1: opponent does stuff
T2: Hawks come back in, preferably hidden
T2: opponents flyer comes in
T3: Hawks can now move over flyer.

However, you still have to "clear" the Flyer. Given the size of flyer bases, the Flyer would have to come on the board within about 12" of the Hawks in order for the Hawks to be able to move completely over it.

Only a stupid opponent (or one who has not been told about the Hawks rule, shame on you) would allow their Flyer to be that close to the Hawks.

The anti-flyer ability of the Hawks is SOOOOOO situational, that you may never get to use it, and even then it will most likely be very late-game as the Flyer may have been forced to move close to the Hawks for whatever reason (like being Stunned, or having nowhere else to move)

It's powerful if you can do it, but fairly easy for your opponent to avoid (since they have to clear the flyer's base, that 18" threat range is more like a 15" maximum). Could work as a sort of area denial, but I think it would be better to focus on using the hawks for other things.

Not an eldar player, but I'm curious. Would the hawks work on flyers in hover mode or flying monstrous creatures?

Hawks have been more an area denial to Land Raiders than a threat in the last 'dex. Now they'll do the same-ish to fliers, I'd bet.

Hawks are fantastic. They were my favourite unit in the previous codex, and got even better.

I've only had two games with the new one so far, but I was able to use it against BA. My opponent was playing that 3 stormravens w/ Tacticals formation that allows them to come on turn 1.

I had 4 hawks remaining, and managed to get a single HP after clearing the raven.

As mentioned, the key benefit is being able to limit their options in placing the flyer. I run 3 squads. I can easily space them out and cover a huge area of the board.

The benefits to Hawks are simply the huge amount of options they have. Against knights, i deploy them forward and in cover. Gives me a great big bubble of "keep your knights the feth away from me". Against IG, I keep them in reserve, and use their grenade packs before threatening tanks on turn 3.

They will always have a target in game (perhaps less so against bikers). For a cheap squad (6 man w/ exarch) you get an absolute multi-tool of a unit, they excels even farther in playing the actual objective. Nothing better than deep striking directly onto an objective on the last turn.

As the others said, it might be tough to actually get over the flyers, but when it works it should knock them out of the sky. For the cheap investment, it could be worth it. Even if you don't get to "drive-by" the flyer, your opponent will almost certainly be aware that you CAN, and that canprovide you some board control. Killing is great, but board control is the next best thing.

They are good anti flier, but as others have said they have a tough time doing it. It takes 8 hawks to kill a 3hp flier so your chances of 8 living long enough to do it are pretty low.

Belly wrote:
Hawks are fantastic. They were my favourite unit in the previous codex, and got even better.

Definitely. The anti-flyer rule will just be an extra perk for a unit that already has an incredible toolkit. The 18" move is a significantly more dramatic buff, specially for their anti-vehicle capability. A squad of hawks projects a huge threat bubble against vehicles.

Yeah, I'm now thinking they'll be hulling LandRaiders instead of just threatening to do so.

 Goldphish wrote:
They are good anti flier, but as others have said they have a tough time doing it. It takes 8 hawks to kill a 3hp flier so your chances of 8 living long enough to do it are pretty low.

Slightly misleading. Needing 4+ to hit and 2+ to glance, 8 will damn near guarantee a 3HP flier death (overshooting the 3HP mark by a hair). 7 undershoots it by something like .09, and 6 hits 2.5HP on the nose - both group sizes having a more than reasonable chance to bring down a flier.

Also - lol at *only* 18'' move. It used to be 12, they used to not be able to do this, and were still almost always taken.

I think that special rule makes them a great unit to deny a key position for an enemy flyer. Put them where you don't want that flyer to be.

Also I am pretty upset about this rule for the hawks. I was sure that Ork Stormboys would get something like this. This has been rumored for so long that stormboys would be able to attack flyers. Heck, they were shown doing so in the Space Marine video game, and that was pretty awesome. THQ had the right idea.

Galef wrote:However, you still have to "clear" the Flyer. Given the size of flyer bases, the Flyer would have to come on the board within about 12" of the Hawks in order for the Hawks to be able to move completely over it.

DanielBeaver wrote:It's powerful if you can do it, but fairly easy for your opponent to avoid (since they have to clear the flyer's base, that 18" threat range is more like a 15" maximum). Could work as a sort of area denial, but I think it would be better to focus on using the hawks for other things.

You do not have to pass over a flyers base for intercept to work. The rule says;

At the end of the Movement phase, a model with this special rule can make one Attack against an enemy Flyer or Flying Monstrous Creature that it moved over that turn.

This is not a shooting attack so the rules about wings, weapons, etc. not counting do not apply. Thus you just need to pass over a wing tip or nose cone to trigger this ability. It is the exact same reasoning the heldrake can capture objectives and vector strike with it's wing tips. FMC are a bit more difficult but this ability is less useful against FMC so it probably doesn't matter.

Swooping hawks went from a good harassment unit to a fantastic harassment unit. There are several factors that add together to make the unit very useful.
+The intercept attack is brilliant. You cannot jink these as they are not a shooting attack, making all those 2 HP (average damage for 5 swooping hawks) and high cover save flyers cry. It is also an annoyance to nurgle DP who tend to continuously jink for a 2+ cover save. The best thing about this attack is that you can move over a flyer, intercept it, then shoot an infantry unit, likely blind it, and then either charge them or battle focus into cover both of which could be to score an objective. The ability of this unit to accomplish multiple goals a turn with 18" movement 80-100 pts is amazing. The coolest part is that you could always jump them into reserves the next turn if they had to GtG to survive the previous turn.
+The exarch is a boss. Sunrifle to blind a unit. BS5 (or 6 if taken in formation) to land the grenade pack on target. Precision DS so you can land the unit just where they are out of LoS even on a board edge. Plus if you shoot at a vehicle a BS5/6 haywire grenade is nothing to ignore.
+The hawks 18" movement and skyleap being attached to their wings means an autarch can now take full advantage of them as escorts. The unit can be rather annoying with precision DS, a fusion autarch, and an exarch throwing a haywire grenade. The usage of HQ slots is not that big of a deal anymore thanks to formations and craftworld battle force. The autarch with wings and banshee mask is actually a pretty nasty melee bully.

Some rules questions that would be interesting;
*If you DS under a flyer hull do you count as moving over it? You count as moving and you do actually overlap it.