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Obvious title: if your goal is to remove enemy aircraft from the table what is your choice? Thunderbolt with a rack of AA missiles? Xiphon? Something else?

Xiphon it is. Hits other hard to hit flyers at 3+ with 4 lascannons and 3 shots from its rockets. Also hits "ground" units like JP infantry, eldar hover tanks, eldar jet bikes, demons with wings, tyranids with wings, etc. that have the FLY keyword on 2+.

I have fielded Thunderbolts, Lightnings, Avengers, Valkyries, Vendettas and Vultures in this ed.

Nothing ever came close to Vultures in point efficiency and anti-everything output.

They may just be a little op for their cost... They may not be dedicated air superiority fighters but they sure are the most versatile and cheap Flyers around at the moment.

Yeah my xiphon does perform well. To be honest it’s an example of a forgeworld unit that’s obviously too good, especially when compared to the stormhawk.

I’m not sure about the thunderbolt. It throws out a ridiculous amount of firepower, but not especially accurately. Looking at it though, it may well be the more dangerous of the two, at least to enemy flyers.

I’m not sure if skystrike missiles are meant to be single shot. Things like that have tended to be reclassified as launchers on the GW planes that have them.

In general the FW indexes are so badly written that they might have just forgotten to write that the missiles are one use only.

Morkphoiz wrote:
Nothing ever came close to Vultures in point efficiency and anti-everything output.

What are you using for your Vultures? The punisher cannon option (the most popular one) isn't impressing at all, dealing ~1.5 wounds per turn to a typical flyer even in the best-case scenario of not moving at all to avoid the -1 BS penalty on its heavy weapons.

Mandragola wrote:
In general the FW indexes are so badly written that they might have just forgotten to write that the missiles are one use only.

Alternatively, it follows the precedent of GW making hellstrike missiles on the Valkyrie no longer one-shot weapons.

Morkphoiz wrote:
I have fielded Thunderbolts, Lightnings, Avengers, Valkyries, Vendettas and Vultures in this ed.

Nothing ever came close to Vultures in point efficiency and anti-everything output.

They may just be a little op for their cost... They may not be dedicated air superiority fighters but they sure are the most versatile and cheap Flyers around at the moment.

You must be playing them wrong, vultures are pathetic. Against enemy air fighters (which is the point here) they are pathetic².

 Peregrine wrote:
Alternatively, it follows the precedent of GW making hellstrike missiles on the Valkyrie no longer one-shot weapons.

they also changed it so you can only fire one of them at a time.. something FW seem to have forgotten on their profiles.

momerathe wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Alternatively, it follows the precedent of GW making hellstrike missiles on the Valkyrie no longer one-shot weapons.

they also changed it so you can only fire one of them at a time.. something FW seem to have forgotten on their profiles.

Yeah exactly. So a Nephilim had 6 missiles and could fire all of them once in 7th, but can fire 2 per turn in 8th. The Thunderbolt has 6 missiles and can keep firing all of them over and over again.

So the thunderbolt is unreasonably good at the moment. It might be nerfed, but it might not be because FW really doesn't have much capacity for rules writing right now.

This produces a couple of problems. IG don't have a fighter plane that isn't broken so banning FW (which I think is necessary in competition) leaves them without one. But a choice between giving people a broken unit or no unit isn't a good place to be.

The thunderbolt cant hover. So, the 6 skystrike missiles hit other hard to hit flyers on 4+. And its only S7, which wounds other T7 flyers at 4+. And its 280 pts. Still inferior to the xiphon, which is only 210 pts. hits other hard to hit flyers at 3+, and wounds them (T7) on 3+, because of lascannons.

p5freak wrote:
The thunderbolt cant hover. So, the 6 skystrike missiles hit other hard to hit flyers on 4+. And its only S7, which wounds other T7 flyers at 4+. And its 280 pts. Still inferior to the xiphon, which is only 210 pts. hits other hard to hit flyers at 3+, and wounds them (T7) on 3+, because of lascannons.

I just ran the numbers and I think you're right. The Thunderbolt's problem is its inaccuracy. The Xiphon has (effectively) potms and a flat +1 to hit flyers with all its weapons. The Thunderbolt has no potms and only its missiles get +1 to hit flyers. So the thunderbolt's lascannons and autocannons only hit enemy planes on a 5+, which significantly reduces its damage output. It hits on a 4+ with its AA missiles, but these are pretty bad against stuff that can't fly.

It works out that the Xiphon does substantially more damage to just about all targets. The only place the Thunderbolt really shines is against two wound targets like jetbikes, which the xiphon wastes wounds against.

So on the whole I think I need to reassess my thoughts on the thunderbolt. 280 points and only does 4.63 wounds on average to a T7 3+ save flyer, like the xiphon. The xiphon does 6.52 and only costs 210.

Part of the Xiphon's strength is that it can still shoot things that don't fly on a 3+. It's particularly good at killing repulsors!