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Am I doing something wrong? I seem to have major problems with flyers. When I play against them, they seem to destroy me. I run a decent amount of infantry, transports, helbute, and predators usually I have access to a bunch of other stuff, daemon prince, bloodthirster, warp talons are the only dudes with FLY that I own. I've had my helbrute deleted T1 EVERY game I play against one.

I may be a bit salty....but I'd like some suggestions on how a melee army deals with them.

I play Khorne and your best tools are either Heldrakes of Vindicators. My personal choice is a Vindicator.

It is essentially a 24" range, triple shot Meltagun. With a max damage potential of 18 and high -AP, that tank is by far your best bet for anti flyer, and it is only 146 points.

So, fight flyers with flyers and big guns is what I'm getting.

 vaklor4 wrote:
I play Khorne and your best tools are either Heldrakes of Vindicators. My personal choice is a Vindicator.

It is essentially a 24" range, triple shot Meltagun. With a max damage potential of 18 and high -AP, that tank is by far your best bet for anti flyer, and it is only 146 points.

When a siege howitzer is the best anti-flyer....
I ma not criticizing the post, mind it.

Flyers is a very broad category. Which models in particular?

So far, necrons doom scythe and the eldar wraith fighter.

Having your biggest, most menacing model deleted turn 1 is perfectly normal. The same often happens to those scary flyers.

The Hemlock Wraithfighter is a good model, but it's expensive and not too durable. Don't freak out if it kills a bunch of stuff turn 1, it's not guaranteed to have made back its cost.

Flyers are also hard to hide. Use this to your advantage by focussing it down before it gets to do anything, or by killing it after it has unloaded on your forces.

The same is true for many flyers, lots of dakka, expensivem not that tough.

Weapons that auto-hit are also handy against flyers although catching them in flamer range can be a challenge. Rather than planning for it, just remember to take the opportunity to flame aircraft if they make the mistake of finishing their move near your infantry.

Then laugh as their concealed, supersonic Wraithfighter gets hit automatically just like any other schmuck.

I had lots of trouble hitting the hemlock, -2 to hit is real. I'll definitely bring lots of dakka from now on. I'm still in a bit of a learning curve from 4th to 8th.

The bigger issue people have is with the StormRaven.
It is basically a flying LRCrusader (with less armor but harder to hit).

A Vindicator would do a reasonable job shooting one of those down but the trick is getting in range.
The mobility of flyers will make it difficult unless you have it do guard duty with other "choice" models.

The suggestion of fighting flyer with flyer is a good method, hopefully kill or wing it bad enough to be taken down by "opportunity fire".

Look at what you have with "auto-hit" or a high quantity of hits.

I hope your flyer "hate" works out.

Another trick i've seen is a winged Daemonic prince with duel claws.

Since he's below 10 wounds, if you perch him behind cultists, you can march up the board without a care in the world, and the fact he has 12" move lets him get very close suprisingly fast to charge on the flyer in question.

If you're worried about taking it out in one go however, bare in mind your Prince CAN count towards your Warlord.

Slap the reroll wounds on 1 (or use the any roll if space marines if you're facing some primaris or something), and give him the artefact that allows a Khorne devoted Character to advance and charge in the same turn, AND reroll their own charges.

That's a minimum threat range of 15", and a maximum of 24", with 8 attacks, -2 AP , 2 Damage, 2 WS and rerollable hits and wounds.

And unlike a Heldrake or Vindicator, your profile never becomes anything below "damn scary".

For extra shenanigans, keep some bikers handy to run up beside him after the charge, to screen any enemy shooting against him during their next turn. They can't hit what they can't see!

The maximum thread range of a Khorne DP with the artifact is 30" (12+6+12) btw.

Against the Hemlock Wraithfighter though, it might die on the charge because that thing ******** autohits... But if the Prince wont die, the Wraithfighter will.

Trollbert wrote:
The maximum thread range of a Khorne DP with the artifact is 30" (12+6+12) btw.

Against the Hemlock Wraithfighter though, it might die on the charge because that thing ******** autohits... But if the Prince wont die, the Wraithfighter will.

MATH IS HARD :p

24 is going to be the average, give or take.

I use the Be'Lakor figure for my DP. I like it a lot more than the new DP model and I play wysiwyg. I have considered getting the plastic kit for dual claws, but it won't be for a while....if at all. I also don't have any cultist dudes, I have think they are a waste of points.

Quite honestly I'm not buying many more models. I don't play that big of games so having a slew of dudes is moot. I'll probably pick up a flyer and call it good until angron comes out.

 chimeara wrote:
I use the Be'Lakor figure for my DP. I like it a lot more than the new DP model and I play wysiwyg. I have considered getting the plastic kit for dual claws, but it won't be for a while....if at all. I also don't have any cultist dudes, I have think they are a waste of points.

Quite honestly I'm not buying many more models. I don't play that big of games so having a slew of dudes is moot. I'll probably pick up a flyer and call it good until angron comes out.

Cultists are one of the best units in the codex. They're by a large margine the cheapest unit in the book, allowing them to easily get CP points, and they are the best unit to screen your characters with.

Eh, I always keep my characters in my berserker squads. Or the Terminator Lord in a Terminator squad. Regular troops are in transport, terms DS.

I'm gonna get some games in this week and try moar dakka.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 vaklor4 wrote:
I play Khorne and your best tools are either Heldrakes of Vindicators. My personal choice is a Vindicator.

It is essentially a 24" range, triple shot Meltagun. With a max damage potential of 18 and high -AP, that tank is by far your best bet for anti flyer, and it is only 146 points.

When a siege howitzer is the best anti-flyer....
I ma not criticizing the post, mind it.

Yes, and flamers.
Eighth edition rules are a complete joke.

Smite

Own the psyker phase. D3 mortal is nothing to sneeze at.

 Karhedron wrote:
Weapons that auto-hit are also handy against flyers although catching them in flamer range can be a challenge. Rather than planning for it, just remember to take the opportunity to flame aircraft if they make the mistake of finishing their move near your infantry.

Then laugh as their concealed, supersonic Wraithfighter gets hit automatically just like any other schmuck.

Had a game the other night where a Storm Raven strayed to close to a group of Bloat Drones (granted a foolish mistake the player made)

6D6 auto hits at S6, -1AP is brutal and made short work of it. (had Arch-Contaminator nearby for extra lols)

Also for Chaos, Heldrakes are very effective against them. 30" Move makes it very hard for enemy flyers to hide from them. Bale Flamer does D6 auto hits at 2 dmg a piece and then charging in hitting on 2+ thanks to claws

Most flyers can't score, so that's a balancing factor. Only comes up in maelstorm, though.

 jeff white wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 vaklor4 wrote:
I play Khorne and your best tools are either Heldrakes of Vindicators. My personal choice is a Vindicator.

It is essentially a 24" range, triple shot Meltagun. With a max damage potential of 18 and high -AP, that tank is by far your best bet for anti flyer, and it is only 146 points.

When a siege howitzer is the best anti-flyer....
I ma not criticizing the post, mind it.

Yes, and flamers.
Eighth edition rules are a complete joke.

Flamers: very very efficient against super-sonic jet fighters, useless against people that come to hit you on the head with an axe if they run at you from far away. Makes sense...

Aim generic D6 heavy weponry there way. Going from hitting to 3 - 4s isn't so bad if you have a chaos lord with re-rolls close to it or presence on it, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Side note - Sicaran Battletanks aren't bad at all at handling flyers.

duWhee wrote:
Smite

Own the psyker phase. D3 mortal is nothing to sneeze at.

He would, buuuut he's a Khorne player. No such foolish weaklings in his forces.

Ignore flyers, focus on everything else. It's typically the best tactics against them unless you also field 1-2 flyers or have decent anti tank and no scary monsters, tanks or walkers to shoot at.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 vaklor4 wrote:
I play Khorne and your best tools are either Heldrakes of Vindicators. My personal choice is a Vindicator.

It is essentially a 24" range, triple shot Meltagun. With a max damage potential of 18 and high -AP, that tank is by far your best bet for anti flyer, and it is only 146 points.

When a siege howitzer is the best anti-flyer....
I ma not criticizing the post, mind it.

Yes, and flamers.
Eighth edition rules are a complete joke.

Flamers: very very efficient against super-sonic jet fighters, useless against people that come to hit you on the head with an axe if they run at you from far away. Makes sense...

I haven't thought about using flamers versus flyers. what a joke . and as pointed out, useless when charged from far away or behind a corner

 Lance845 wrote:
Flyers is a very broad category. Which models in particular?

G5 airplane... and lots of money... playaaaaaaa!

Even flying melee isn't a great answer to most flyers because they can stay away from you, and while the Hemlock has to get close it has some pretty vicious Overwatch. Daemon Princes aren't bad but you're still likely to take ~4 wounds when you charge, so it's more-or-less a wash.

Probably the single best thing in the Chaos codex for killing flyers is the same as the single best thing for killing most other big targets: Obliterators. Ultimately if you're BS3+ you really just want to power through Hard to Hit rather than trying to find some workaround, and Obliterators definitely have the power. They're also pretty resilient against Hemlocks since they have an invulnerable save and an odd number of wounds. If you fully buff them (Prescience, Veterans of the Long War, a Lord or Prince close by, and you're willing to spend a CP to re-roll a bad damage roll), they expect almost 10 wounds on T6 3+ Hard to Hit. Combined with the Slaanesh stratagem, one unit has a great chance of killing one flyer and crippling another.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Flyers is a very broad category. Which models in particular?

G5 airplane... and lots of money... playaaaaaaa!

Hahahaha that's hilarious!

Side note, while I appreciate others suggestions I can't step outside World Eaters. No psykers and no other mark of chaos figures or strategems.

Me thinks I've got an idea and will put it into action later this week. Thanks for all the advice guys!

The other thing to deal with flyer spam is an opponent auto loses if they have no ground troops.