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How much of your point allocation should you spend on an AA platforms if you don't know what you'll be up against? How effective are non-AA weapons against air, and how effective are AA weapons against non-air? In particular I'm wondering about AdMech Onager Dunecrawlers, but I'm interested in general.

I rarely bring any dedicated AA and I rarely notice its absence. AA weapons normally work off the FLY keyword meaning they are good against skimmers and jump infantry as well as actual aircraft.

For Admech, I would probably prefer some Ironstrider Ballistarii with Autocannons. The weight of fire means they will normally get some decent hits in, even if the target is at -1 to-Hit for going supersonic.

AFAIK a few of my friends have made good use of "Anti-air" weapons because, generally, a lot of competitive units use the Fly keyword and not necessarily because flyers are super widespread. Often, they represent some of the best weapons particular factions have with autocannon-style midstrength low-Ap multidamage weaponry that's ideal for taking down lighter vehicles.

The biggest problem anti-air weapons tend to have is that they're less efficient against non-fly targets, and your opponent's army may well have zero flying things. Certain armies, notably eldar, are nearly guaranteed to have tons of FLY, others, like admech, gsc, etc have no FLY anywhere in their roster. So the ones you really want to look for are those that are generally efficient even when you have no FLY targets.

Personally I use a couple of Trakktor Kannons in my ork army, because an autohitting krak missile is almost never a bad thing, and then you run into situations like eldar crimson hunters where they're like -3 to hit super big tough lads and you just dumpster them from across the board with autohitting 48" range melta damage rerolls.


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 Karhedron wrote:
I rarely bring any dedicated AA and I rarely notice its absence. AA weapons normally work off the FLY keyword meaning they are good against skimmers and jump infantry as well as actual aircraft.

For Admech, I would probably prefer some Ironstrider Ballistarii with Autocannons. The weight of fire means they will normally get some decent hits in, even if the target is at -1 to-Hit for going supersonic.

onager Dunecrawlers with icarus arrays are commonly used anti-air weapons because they're actually pretty points efficient against non fly stuff as well. Ironstrider Ballistari are one of their worst units in general. You'd basically never take those in a list that has onagers and kastelans available for dakka firepower. if you include a broad-spectrum data tether you can functionally ignore its -1 to hit against non-FLY units by using the 1cp skitarii stratagem that gets you back up to hitting on 2s anyway.

Two Onagers, one with a Neutron laser and one with an Icarus with a tether is an extremely strong choice for admech TAC lists. You've got a solid spread of coverage, benefit from the emanatus forcefield rule, and you're ready to shred everything from the heaviest vehicles to the lightest skimmers.