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Pretty much as the title says, what have you experiences been with (or against) this flyer and wouls you rate it.

Since the Ace Combat fever has bit me again since the last time I played against an Ultramarine AirCav I've been looking at these guys.


Please bare in mind any comparisons made should be made outside of any formation based bonuses please


To those not familiar with them:

They are 2 hull point flyers with paper thin armour but also stealth for improved jinking, they are equipped with 2 Bright Lances and 2 Shuriken Cannons all for 15 points less than a Crimson Hunter and they can be taken in Squadrons of 3. As a side note the can be equipped with purchasable holofields at the regular cost.

would you take, and how would you run them?

I am very tempted to buy one or proxy one to see how it goes. On paper it seems like a very efficient flyer killer which is also made out of paper just like our crimson hunters .

Have you tried proxying one?

Not yet, but the temptation is to run a crimson death formation with 2 full squadrons of Nightwing flyers accompanied by 6 squads of Windrider guardians just for how it would look on the table

 Torus wrote:
Not yet, but the temptation is to run a crimson death formation with 2 full squadrons of Nightwing flyers accompanied by 6 squads of Windrider guardians just for how it would look on the table

Dont forget to play the Imperial theme music from Star wars while you deploy all these flyers

Looks like a fun 1850 list xD


Autarch Skyrunner, Fusion Gun, Banshee Mask, Shard of Anaris 140
Windriders (4) Scatterlasers 106
Windriders (3) Scatterlasers 81
Windriders (3) Scatterlasers 81
Windriders (3) Scatterlasers 81
Windriders (3) Scatterlasers 81
Windriders (3) Scatterlasers 81
Nightwing Squadron (3) 375
Nightwing Squadron (3) 375
Crimson Death Formation
Crimson Hunter Exarch 160
Crimson Hunter 140
Crimson Hunter 140

I ran a pair of Nightwings one time and was pretty underwhelmed. They only managed to kill a couple Fire Warriors throughout the entire game and my opponent ignored them so it's not like I was jinking a lot or anything. I think they would have done better against something like a Battle Company because I imagine they'd do well against light vehicles.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I ran a pair of Nightwings one time and was pretty underwhelmed. They only managed to kill a couple Fire Warriors throughout the entire game and my opponent ignored them so it's not like I was jinking a lot or anything. I think they would have done better against something like a Battle Company because I imagine they'd do well against light vehicles.

Thats kinda surprising, I would have imagined 12 strength 6 shots with pseudo rending and 4 bright lance shots a turn would have had more on an impact (especially against t4 battlesuits)

I took out most of the regular battlesuits with venom span in the first and second turn. The nightwings only really had riptides and fire warriors to shoot at by the time they arrived. I tried both targets and consistently failed to damage the riptides at all and then struggled to get enough kills in to even force morale checks on the fire warriors. I still won the game convincingly enough, but I don't attribute any of it to the nightwings.

I have not used them in the revised rules but used them a year or 2 ago when they could jink for a 2++

Loved it! Vector dancer plus the weapon payload meant I killed any light vehicle, flyer or small squad I pointed it at. Combined with the option for 2++ jink, my opponents never bothered to shoot at it and potentially see the shots wasted!