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When GW decided to start using aircraft in 40k I was really annoyed. There was just so much wrong with how they did it, especially given the scale of the game.

In the years since, I've done some thinking and this is how I would do air power in a 40k setting. Note that this should work with whatever version you want to use.

The mechanic is pretty straightforward. First, take a couple of sheets of paper and make five boxes on them.

Two are status boxes:
Ready
Recovering

Three are mission boxes:
Strike
Escort
Interceptor

Then go get yourself some Epic 40k scale aircraft. Or use tokens, coins, whatever it takes to keep the aircraft types separate.

As part of setup, put all the aircraft in Ready.

The rule introduced a new phase, and Air Phase that takes place at the start of each game turn.

During this phase, the players will secretly move aircraft from Ready to one of the three mission boxes. As the names suggest, Strike will attack ground units, Escorts will cover them, and Interceptors are there to protect your units from Strikes.

(There is no point putting aircraft in the escort box without strike aircraft.)

Once this is done, reveal your selections, and then resolve the phase.

Friendly interceptors will engage inbound strike aircraft. If the strike aircraft have escorts these have to be engaged first. Simple conduct a single round of shooting. Just to be clear, the sequence goes like this:

Interceptors engage escorts on a 1 to 1 basis. If there are more interceptors than escorts, the leftover ones shoot at the strike aircraft.

If there are no interceptors, the strike aircraft get through. If they have escorts, they can join the strike aircraft.

Surviving interceptors and escorts that were engaged are put in the Recovering box.

This next part I leave to your discretion.

You can either put any surviving strike aircraft (and unintercepted escorts) on the board and do their attacks during the shooting phase, or resolve them immediately.

Either way, once they've made their attacks put them in the Recovering box.

At the start of the next game turn, put them back in the Ready box.

OPTIONAL GW-TYPE RULE: Each aircraft should be rated for maintenance and reliability, and in order to move from Recovering to Ready, they must roll a die and exceed their rating, which you can just sort of make up. I'm going to say that Marines and Eldar are highly likely to be ready, Imperial Guard is middling, and so on. You might peg points costs to maintenance levels, so Orks could have low chances of getting ready, but they get lots more aircraft for the points.

Anyhow, that's it. If people like the idea, I might write it up.

It's a neat little idea. Kind of reminds me of the Death From the Skies dogfighting side game.

The thing is that this doesn't really address my main gripes with flyers in 40k, those being:

1. 40k isn't really the right scale for flyers to be participating.
2. In an effort to make flyers seem like they *do* fit 40k's scale, they've ended up making planes that don't really behave/feel like planes.

You can see this in the way the planes have to spend the game doing donuts (shooting with unimpeded accuracy all the while) or else zip off the table and miss out on participating for part of the game.

Your rules still have them basically doing donuts, but you've added in extra rules for a mini game that itself makes it seem like there are, in fact, *lots* of planes doing donuts right next to each other through the course of the battle. I'm also concerned that, if we have to pay for escorts and interceptors, you risk running into a situation where you screw yourself by either wasting points on unnecessary anti-air defense or by not spending *enough* points on anti-air defense.

For flyers to feel "right", they really need something more like Aeronautica. In the context of a 40k game, flyers should probably just be attacks from off-screen (similar to orbital bombardments) in the case of fighters/strikers/bombers, or fast transports that zip forward and then basically have to stop moving as they hover (in the case of transport ships like valkyries.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:
It's a neat little idea. Kind of reminds me of the Death From the Skies dogfighting side game.

The thing is that this doesn't really address my main gripes with flyers in 40k, those being:

1. 40k isn't really the right scale for flyers to be participating.
2. In an effort to make flyers seem like they *do* fit 40k's scale, they've ended up making planes that don't really behave/feel like planes.

I agree with you on both points, and my mini-system is an attempt to make them more realistic. Basically, you have a set amount of air assets and you assign them to various missions. That's how it works in real life.

As for the problem of people spending too many points or getting lost in the weeds of a sub-game, the idea would be that people would have a max amount of points for air support - and the option to use them on ground forces...

...Which makes them kind of like psykers or artillery support, but that's really what air power is.

Anyway, I thought it be a little more straightforward insofar as players who choose multi-role aircraft could decide to use them for strike, interception or escorts.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

I agree with you on both points, and my mini-system is an attempt to make them more realistic. Basically, you have a set amount of air assets and you assign them to various missions. That's how it works in real life.

I think the word "mission" is throwing me off a bit. It feels like the intent is that you reassign the flyers to whatever role you need between battle rounds (player turns?). Except that a game of 40k seems like it probably only represents a minute or two of combat, so it's not like your flyers are have 5 strategy meetings over the course of a 5 turn game.

As for the problem of people spending too many points or getting lost in the weeds of a sub-game, the idea would be that people would have a max amount of points for air support - and the option to use them on ground forces...

...Which makes them kind of like psykers or artillery support, but that's really what air power is.

I'm just thinking back to when flyers were first introduced and you had to ask yourself whether you wanted to take flakk missiles on your missile launchers or not. If you did and your opponent didn't bring a flyer, you wasted the points and were at a (small) disadvantage over your opponent as a result. If you didn't take them and you *did* face flyers, then the flyers ended up being unreasonably annoying to shoot down. And I guess the third unpleasant possibility is that flyers are actually reasonably durable on the tabletop now, so may as well ignore the interceptors and just take more gun in your army that can deal with flyers and non-flyers alike. None of the above are a good result, right? The only way it works out well is if you *do* take anti-air assets and your opponent *does* take air assets and they balance out in such a way that they basically negate each other.

To clarify are you picturing players spending points on escorts/interceptors? Also, I'm a little unclear on why there's a distinction between escorts and interceptors. If I load up on interceptors, don't I functionally have both more protection from enemy interceptors and more interceptors of my own?

I feel like trying to represent air superiority is probably something better handled on a campaign or mission level or something of that nature. And again, planes doing donuts just feels weird in 40k. Tanks already feel really cramped on a 40k table. Planes quadrouply so.

Again, we agree on many of the fundamentals. My thought was that if people want to do some sort of air power element to a 40k game, it should be more exciting than flying figure eights over the battlefield and picking off targets.

You're also correct that there's a discontinuity between sortie times and turns.

One way to resolve that is to shift the the time frame to allow one sortie for every two game turns. At the extreme, one could just get one sortie, and have to select what it should be: are you asking for top cover, ground attack, or what?

For the record, I think that air assets should be resolved in the same manner as off-board artillery, orbital bombardment, etc., but people seem to like them, so this is my solution to integrating them in a game.

For the record, I think that air assets should be resolved in the same manner as off-board artillery, orbital bombardment, etc., but people seem to like them, so this is my solution to integrating them in a game.

That's fair!

As with superheavies, flyers seem like an idea that doesn't fit well into 40k and really works better in a game with smaller models. (Aeronautica and Titanicus both seem nifty.)

Problem being rules must faciliate models being on board. Otherwise would hinder sales and that is something GW will never go with.

tneva82 wrote:
Problem being rules must faciliate models being on board. Otherwise would hinder sales and that is something GW will never go with.

GW could sell a ton of Epic scale models, though. Nothing like clearing out the back catalog!

That's thinking too small. Sell smaller kits of Aeronautica models so that players suddenly find they have most of what they need to play Aeronautica!

When GW decided to start using aircraft in 40k I was really annoyed.

They have been in the game since 3rd edition under FW rules.

The original problem with the FW rules is the planes interrupted your enemies movement phase as they made an attack run. many of the other rules worked just fine. the introduction of the flyer rules in 6th/7th ed were not bad and helped put them in their correct player phase, but they lacked some of the better rules FW had.

Our group combines the 2 and it works just fine in our oldhammer games. we stayed with air assets starting in reserve, keeping the flying high rules (-12" range penalty) as a counter to always being visible from the ground. we also retain the "jump infantry can assault flyers" rule as well as the chaff/flare launchers, all pintle mounted weapons having the AA ability aside from dedicated AA like the hydra or eldar firestorm. other aircraft that also choose to target air that turn shoot at normal BS when dogfighting. we kept the ability to fly off the table and come back on next turn (if they game ends while they are off table they count as destroyed for victory conditions). we also balanced the needing 6+ to hit for non-AA weapons VS the 4+ jink save(when allowed) by reverting "vector lock" back to immobilized which also destroys the flyer. effectively making them hard to hit but easy to kill. additionally when the flyer crashes it is a 5" blast +2d6 scatter, anything under it or passengers that were ridding aboard take a S10 AP1 hit with rolls to wound/pen armor as normal.

Most flyers are AV 10 with a few "upgrades" being as high as AV12 so they are not hard to bring down especially given the number of AA units in the game.

.hydra
.FLAKK truk
.firestorm
.skyray (when used as originally designed)
.contemptor/doredeo dreadnoughts
.stalker
.hunter
.other flyers/flying monsterous creatures
.land riader helios with hyperios missiles
etc...

We also reverted back to the FW rules that allow all those AA mounts to choose what to shoot at (ground or air targets) at normal BS at the start of the turn. so you are not "wasting" points on any particular part of the army.

Even that aside i have taken down my share of flyers just needing 6+ to hit with things like twin linked las cannons.

 aphyon wrote:
They have been in the game since 3rd edition under FW rules.

Yep. I've been nursing this grudge for a long time.

What my system does it allow interception, and if there are multi-role fighters, you can kit them out as counterair and then use them as ground attack. I think it gives more options in that respect.