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I was under the impression that Aircraft were bad... but I was testing out a new Custodes list (with a whole Lotta proxies) and I was bombarded by Ork Deffkoptas and fighterbombas (one of which had a 4+ Invulnerable save and hit like a ton of bricks, the other one kept dropping bombs and erasing my Sisters in the backfield).

I was told flyers were no good. Sure they can't hold objectives, but they sure annoyed the crap out of me, and made me focus on them when I should've been focused on the seething hordes of footslogging Orks.

The game was a draw. My Custodes were too slow. I think I might need to add some of the expensive jump pack troops or Jetbikes.

I would argue if you were surprised and admit you did some tactical mistakes (it sounds like you would have won, had you concentrated on the footsloggers) and still fought to a draw, than those flyers are not overpowered but merely leveling out the playing field to some degree

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I would argue if you were surprised and admit you did some tactical mistakes (it sounds like you would have won, had you concentrated on the footsloggers) and still fought to a draw, than those flyers are not overpowered but merely leveling out the playing field to some degree

Oh, I did make my share of mistakes - it happens whenever I try a new list.

Next time I'll ignore the aircraft. It was just annoying to be outranged.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I was told flyers were no good.

This is the garbage put out by 2 groups of players:

1) people who don't want Aircraft in the game.
If they can convince you they are bad, you won't buy them. If enough people don't buy them, GW will eventually stop making them.
If GW doesn't make them, then their rules will fade away/into Legends.
And once in Legends a good # of people won't use them & will try and stop to stop others from using anything Legends.
Eventually, no more Aircraft.

2) people who don't understand how to USE Aircraft.
There's alot of these people.
Obviously since they can't use the models effectively the units must be bad....
This is likely who told you this.

Even the lowly & overcosted Helldrake can be effective.

After the performance I saw today, I am giving thought to their use.

The only issue I see is their giant base makes it difficult to park in dense terrain games.

But that's just a guess... there aren't a whole Lotta Aircraft in Knights and Custodes armies.

Even though I want one of those Avengers that the Astra Militarum uses. Looks so frigging cool!

I guess the Ork players would have to weigh in, but I think the Wazbom Blastajet is unreliable. Which makes it "bad" in a tournament situation.

You've (probably) got 2 D3 Blast attack weapons hitting on 4s probably rerolling 1s. If you roll well that's a good number of hits. If you don't? Well... bad luck.

But not being able to hold objectives is a major weakness.

I mean there are people dedicated to making the Voidraven work. But I feel 2 Ravagers will do better most of the time.

Tyel wrote:
I guess the Ork players would have to weigh in, but I think the Wazbom Blastajet is unreliable. Which makes it "bad" in a tournament situation.

You've (probably) got 2 D3 Blast attack weapons hitting on 4s probably rerolling 1s. If you roll well that's a good number of hits. If you don't? Well... bad luck.

But not being able to hold objectives is a major weakness.

I mean there are people dedicated to making the Voidraven work. But I feel 2 Ravagers will do better most of the time.

The one that did the most damage to me was the Blitza-bommer.

I hated this: Boom Bomb: Each time this model ends a Normal move, you can select one enemy unit it moved over during that move and roll one D6: on a 4+, that unit suffers D6 mortal wounds.

It killed my Caladius Assassin and wrecked my Sisters of Silence. That Ork player rolled sooooo.many 5's

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
The one that did the most damage to me was the Blitza-bommer.

I hated this: Boom Bomb: Each time this model ends a Normal move, you can select one enemy unit it moved over during that move and roll one D6: on a 4+, that unit suffers D6 mortal wounds.

It killed my Caladius Assassin and wrecked my Sisters of Silence. That Ork player rolled sooooo.many 5's

Well yeah but that's sort of the same thing.

I mean 50% chance for the ability to do anything.
Then if you roll a 1-2~ for damage its kind of inconsequential.

One game its going to be great - as you activate and then blow up assassins (or other similar independent characters) or half an infantry squad etc, but in other games it will not go off at all.

Also, you might want to read up on the aircraft movement rules. They are a little janky, and understanding them with help you mitigate their effectiveness. Or get the most out of them if you take to the sky.

 Nevelon wrote:
Also, you might want to read up on the aircraft movement rules. They are a little janky, and understanding them with help you mitigate their effectiveness. Or get the most out of them if you take to the sky.

I will. This was my first time facing them.... in a very, very long time.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
After the performance I saw today, I am giving thought to their use.

The only issue I see is their giant base makes it difficult to park in dense terrain games.

But that's just a guess... there aren't a whole Lotta Aircraft in Knights and Custodes armies.

Your custodes have 2 of thier own.
+ All Imperial forces have access to Corvus Blackstars from the Agents list.

Most arent terribly more difficult to park than large Knights, & larger vehicles.
Note I didnt say no more difficult. Primarily because you DO have to take into account where you'll end your NEXT move.
A few like the Helldrake, the varios Orks, & my Marauder Bombers do have hefty wingspan though.

A lot of the issues with min/maxing is that it treats everything less than optimal as garbage, when in reality its a sliding scale where something might not be the best use of points, but its probably worth at least 70-80% of what you get out of it. In a 2000 point list, if you take 200 points of "bad" models, you're playing something like 1940-1960 points which is hardly a significant handicap; its just not optimal.

Realistically unless you're trying to win Adepticon or something, as long as you have a solid 1500 point core to your list, you can really play around quite a bit with that last 500 points without a significant detriment even into meta lists. If you've got a pet model you wish would see the table more, know its almost certainly "good enough" to see play as long as you don't go all in and compromise the rest of the list around it.

 LunarSol wrote:
If you've got a pet model you wish would see the table more, know its almost certainly "good enough" to see play as long as you don't go all in and compromise the rest of the list around it.

So... no Warhound Titan?

 BorderCountess wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
If you've got a pet model you wish would see the table more, know its almost certainly "good enough" to see play as long as you don't go all in and compromise the rest of the list around it.

So... no Warhound Titan?

Just needs 900 pts of the right support....

 BorderCountess wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
If you've got a pet model you wish would see the table more, know its almost certainly "good enough" to see play as long as you don't go all in and compromise the rest of the list around it.

So... no Warhound Titan?

You had a Warhound this whole time?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
If you've got a pet model you wish would see the table more, know its almost certainly "good enough" to see play as long as you don't go all in and compromise the rest of the list around it.

So... no Warhound Titan?

You had a Warhound this whole time?

Technically. I haven't built it yet. It's been... a while.

I'd be tempted to build it for our upcoming Crusade league (running Chaos Knights as my 'primary' faction), but we're using the Nachmund Gauntlet book, and, well... even the most forgiving Primary wave has a 1600-point deployment limit.

ccs wrote:
This is the garbage put out by 2 groups of players:

1) people who don't want Aircraft in the game.
If they can convince you they are bad, you won't buy them. If enough people don't buy them, GW will eventually stop making them.
If GW doesn't make them, then their rules will fade away/into Legends.
And once in Legends a good # of people won't use them & will try and stop to stop others from using anything Legends.
Eventually, no more Aircraft.

Aircraft are super hard to balance at this game scale. Which is a shame, because the models are cool and some people are rightfully proud of theirs. I'd hate for them to be relegated to Legends.

One major issue with them (now somewhat mitigated by the max number of aircraft) is that their large bases block ground movement. It also sucks to be an aircraft that cannot find a spot on the table between all the units and terrain. Neither of these issues make any sense at all from a logical standpoint.

I think the best solution would be to make their positioning heavily abstracted, such as a table quadrant, so that they can be moved aside as needed to let units maneuver under them. Instead of using inches for weapon range, they can only target and be targeted by units in their own quadrant, and it's assumed they have LoS on any unit in that quadrant that isn't fully within an enclosed building. If they're transports, they can deep strike units anywhere in the quadrant they occupy, subject to other limitations (like minimum distance from enemy units).

Or even treat them as "tokens" that are on the table mostly so you don't forget about them (and to show off your painting skills). They wouldn't have any stats or weapons and wouldn't be targetable, but there would be a universal stratagem called "Air Support" or something like that, with a MW-dealing effect that depends on how many aircraft you have on the table.

.

-Guardsman- wrote:

ccs wrote:
This is the garbage put out by 2 groups of players:

1) people who don't want Aircraft in the game.
If they can convince you they are bad, you won't buy them. If enough people don't buy them, GW will eventually stop making them.
If GW doesn't make them, then their rules will fade away/into Legends.
And once in Legends a good # of people won't use them & will try and stop to stop others from using anything Legends.
Eventually, no more Aircraft.

Aircraft are super hard to balance at this game scale. Which is a shame, because the models are cool and some people are rightfully proud of theirs. I'd hate for them to be relegated to Legends.

One major issue with them (now somewhat mitigated by the max number of aircraft) is that their large bases block ground movement. It also sucks to be an aircraft that cannot find a spot on the table between all the units and terrain. Neither of these issues make any sense at all from a logical standpoint.

I think the best solution would be to make their positioning heavily abstracted, such as a table quadrant, so that they can be moved aside as needed to let units maneuver under them. Instead of using inches for weapon range, they can only target and be targeted by units in their own quadrant, and it's assumed they have LoS on any unit in that quadrant that isn't fully within an enclosed building. If they're transports, they can deep strike units anywhere in the quadrant they occupy, subject to other limitations (like minimum distance from enemy units).

Or even treat them as "tokens" that are on the table mostly so you don't forget about them (and to show off your painting skills). They wouldn't have any stats or weapons and wouldn't be targetable, but there would be a universal stratagem called "Air Support" or something like that, with a MW-dealing effect that depends on how many aircraft you have on the table.

.

If you want that, go play Bolt Action.
The only way you get airplane support in BA is by purchasing a forward Observer. Your "aircraft is a 1 shot token (no model needed, just any old bit/token will do) with some abstract rules. You don't even get to decide what type of air support you get - it's random & you could get either bombing or ground attack.
I never leave home without an observer in my list, but I despise this type of abstraction. But unlike your brainstorm, the BA designers realize that AA IS a thing.

I will gladly deal with 40ks limits of where I can place my model - & my opponent can just suck it up as far as occasionally being move-blocked.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Aircraft are super hard to balance at this game scale.

As a consequence of being wholly inappropriate for this game scale, yes.

It's like trying to shoehorn WW1 dreadnought engagements into a skirmish game. You're dealing with an aspect of conflict so far outside the realm of what's normally being depicted on the table that any sort of 'realistic' representation of capabilities would be ridiculous, and contorting it to fit within the context of a company-sized engagement over a few hundred yards of terrain produces aircraft doing donuts at 40mph while preventing infantry from moving underneath.

They're super cool models. They also don't belong in 40K as conventional units. The FW rules that treated aircraft as off-board assets that enter, make an attack run or interception, and depart were clunky but more appropriate than the current model of treating supersonic jets like flying tanks.

The fundamental problem with Aircraft are their design space. Since range in this game is generally more than enough to reach your targets, the primary purpose of movement is to reach objectives and engage in melee. Aircraft being high movement models that cannot hold objectives or engage in melee are therefore kind of pointless.

Taking up table space is ultimately what makes GW not really want them to be good though. Even being able to move through them, the sheer size of their bases mean that its trivial to lock most infantry in place with them which ends up being the primary way to leverage their movement advantages. It's obviously not how they should function so the answer for the time being has been to make them generally mediocre to minimize their impact on the game.