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Hey guys. Just wanted to open up for discussion, In the new edition of warhammer, is an army viable if it has no flyers? People at my local game store are saying that his edition is all about psychers and flyers. Does that mean an army is not viable or competative if it has no flyers?

No.

In almost every possible situation a list with no flyers at all is inferior to a list which makes effective use of flyers.

Flyers are somewhat expensive, therefore GW has declared you MUST have them... lol

Would a list with a strong anti flyer element be able to make due without fliers?

Well, I played a game with my Tau against a BA player the other week. He had a Mephiston, Assault Marines and a Stormraven.
Neither of our lists were extremely competetive, but I won by a fair way that game (In fact, I should haven won on turn two when I wiped out all of his soldiers on the table. We said we'd play on ayway, though).

That has been my only experience against flyers so far, and I took a decisive victory, with the Stormraven falling to missile pods on turn 4. From that, I don't feel that flyers are an auto-win in 6th edition.

That being said, I do agree that Flyers are certainly quite powerful, and often a list using them will be stronger than one without. It all depends on how you use your available resources, though.

In the most competitive of environments? No. In any sort of friendly environment? Yes, you can get away without having them. My BT has won games with 2 flyers on the field.

 Necroshea wrote:
Would a list with a strong anti flyer element be able to make due without fliers?

No, for two reasons:

1) Flyers give you mobility you can't get anywhere else. Even a single flyer gives you the ability to hit priority targets wherever they are on the table, and that's a tool you want to have available.

2) The best anti-flyer unit is usually another flyer. You can bring ground-based AA to do some of the job, but in the end you also want to bring AA flyers.

You need a means to shoot them down at the very least.

Depends on if you have a lot of anti-flyer in your army. Flyers are an answer to flyers for some armies. Others seem to have a rough time with it.

Depends on your local meta. It's the same as with every certain type of army...if you face something that has be countered, you need to get a viable counter for it.

Unless you play lamers in dire need of compensation who spam flyers, you are easily off with a ADL or anything lascannon-ish with TL.

If you do spam WAAC flyer spam lists...pick your opponents.

This brings up a question I have: do Space Marines have any Anti-Air?

 guyperson5 wrote:
This brings up a question I have: do Space Marines have any Anti-Air?

ADL / IG allies.

ForgeWorld offers Hyperios Whirlwinds and Hyperios FLARAK systems. Both are a bit expensive money-wise, though, and still worse than any kind of Hydra emplacement.

With the FLARAK system, you have to buy a command node and up to three Rak emplacements. All counts as automated artillery, T7 W2. If the command node is destroyed, though, the whole system shuts down. You get intercept rules, but the range is rather low with...24 or 36" I think, and you get only ONE BS2 TL S8 AP3 shot.

Hydras get their four BS3 TL S7 AP4 shots, which I'd vastly prefer...but alas.

Furthermore, Hydras are part of the core rules whereas Forgeworld requires agreement with your opponent...and if he spams flyers...it's unlikely to happen.

With the FLARAK system, you have to buy a command node and up to three Rak emplacements. All counts as automated artillery, T7 W2. If the command node is destroyed, though, the whole system shuts down. You get intercept rules, but the range is rather low with...24 or 36" I think, and you get only ONE BS2 TL S8 AP3 shot.

Not quite. They're only T6, but the command platform just gives them split fire, if it dies the rest of the platforms shoot normally (and you don't even need to buy the command one). And you can take a unit of 1-4 of them as a fast attack choice. Considering the dirt cheap price they're actually not bad AA, and considerably better than the AA Whirlwind.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Furthermore, Hydras are part of the core rules whereas Forgeworld requires agreement with your opponent...and if he spams flyers...it's unlikely to happen.

Not true. FW rules are 100% official and intended for standard 40k, "opponent's permission" was removed years ago.

Flyers are potent and helped me expose weaknesses in objective games, but it's rare someone isn't just able to auto shoot down my flyer with a quad gun (gd armor 10...)

I think the major advantage with flyers is the versatility, but in all honesty they are pretty easily countered even without AA support, ESPECIALLY if you are crafty commander. For example I have kill dozen of vendetta/valks using just shoota boyz already because people under-estimate the power of orky shooting and don't have the proper mindset for how to fight as a flyer (namely thinking 2-3 rounds ahead of time and hoping you deployed your flyers 2nd not first)

The way strength 4 and 5 weapons beat valks/vendettas is simple they will come up with a barrage of gunfire but because of forced movement and the size of my blobs theya re forced to generally show me rear armor and i glance and pene it to death. normally 1 30 boy squad is enough to tear down the vulnerable armor but if i have nothing better to shoot down I will use lootas as well. Sometimes just volume of gunfire is all you really need that and knowing at what arcs the enemy is forced to show you their rear armor.

Anything with ignore cover is a nasty Quad gunnery operator because no jink save may be taken against the shots... so presto good to carve a knife through the enemy.

If you don't have flyers i wouldn't fret, ultimately you are faced with a few options the most prudent is to simply ignore the flyer this is pretty simple to do but i understand it can't work for some armies. Another option is to tear it out of the sky with every gun you got... not a smart idea but depending on how tough you are you might actually have little if any problems then but i suggest this only if you are a tough army like orks or cron. the final option is to castle and reinforce objectives, basically defensive postures like refused flanks or cover hugging.

When the enemy is everywhere they need to be you must make sure they cannot be where it is you don't want them.

These are just some general rules of thumb but besides demons, tau, eldar, SOB black templar and space wolves almost every other army should be being outfitted with a flyer shortly.

Considering Demons, SOB and black templar are pretty darn dated i would say these armies are merely a matter of time and for now are best designed to be with allies since they have ample other ways to pick up flyers as is.

Tau have so many high powered guns even 1 lucky shot spells doom for nearly any flyer, even basic footsoliders are highly dangerous to flyers.it's a hurdle but considering their immunity to night fighting is so easy and their ability to remain mobile, durable and have great firepower makes it that they are good options to ignore the flyer entirely and continue to play the game with just a few more shield drones than normal.

Eldar has such a sickening amount of re-rollables and amazing AA gunnery operators that i can't feel bad for their lack at this time... and shudder for what i am sure their codex will be bringing to ruin everyone's day.

Space wolves are combat gurus and their troops remain amazing, the fact they can dedicate some serious firepower to two seperate targets through long fangs should be enough to clearly make the difference and reinforce or ignore flyers entirely.

Refusing to play a flyer list is also a perfectly fine way of dealing with them. It's not even all about being smashed by units you can't effectively deal with, flyers frequently fall over and smash your pieces for real.

Eh, flyers are overrated. Except Doom Scythes. >> Doom Scythes are just evil.

Basically for the most part, unless you're talking about the Necron answer to JotWW above, you can pretty much ignore a flyer as it buzzes round the table. They're hard to kill, but in general terms don't pack much in the way of firepower unless you're running some crazy tank-heavy list (and this is sixth...), or lack cover or power armour. Most flyer weapons are only AP4 or 5.

 Necroshea wrote:
Would a list with a strong anti flyer element be able to make due without fliers?

no . because there is few anti flyer defenses [hydras and fortifications] and all of those can be focus fired by flyers . while stuff with interceptor[fortifications]can kill a single flyer per turn , it doesnt help when there are 4-5 of them coming on the table and stuff without interceptors just becomes the first target and dies from tons of fire.

Frankly, often you can just ignore the flyers, especially single-plane lists.
I think at the end of the day, more than 2-4 flyers draws a lot of points from important things, like durable troops for objectives and such.

I run DE with 1 or no Razorwings and do fine, and I've also got a Tau army (so no flyers), and they do perfectly fine too.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Eh, flyers are overrated. Except Doom Scythes. >> Doom Scythes are just evil.

Basically for the most part, unless you're talking about the Necron answer to JotWW above, you can pretty much ignore a flyer as it buzzes round the table. They're hard to kill, but in general terms don't pack much in the way of firepower unless you're running some crazy tank-heavy list (and this is sixth...), or lack cover or power armour. Most flyer weapons are only AP4 or 5.

Ehem, you obviously haven't played vs. IG flyer spam yet. Imagine Nightscythes' nastiness x 5

You don't need flyers to compete, you need anti-flyer to compete, but it just so happen for most armies that their anti-flyer units are flyers.

 Ovion wrote:
Frankly, often you can just ignore the flyers, especially single-plane lists.
I think at the end of the day, more than 2-4 flyers draws a lot of points from important things, like durable troops for objectives and such.

I see people say this all the time and it makes me wonder if they have ever actually seen the points value of most flyers? As for 'singleplane lists', that's a fluffy non-competitive army you are most likely talking about, as competitive players know that taking just one is pointless, so not really a point in a 'how to beat this' style thread, as fluffy lists are generally beatable regardless.

ServantofChaos wrote:
Does that mean an army is not viable or competative if it has no flyers?

If you need flyers to be viable / competitive, does this mean that Space Wolves are an uncompetitive army unless they ally, as they can't take flyers from their own Codex? No.

Of course the game is playable without flyers. Look a tony kopach's nova winning 6th list. he has 0 flyers and no typical anti air(ie. aegis, bastion). And he beat out a few lists that were flyer heavy. I have 0 anti flyer in my list and do fine against them by using tactics. Forcing exactitude in how my opponent uses flyers, and playing the mission.

Flyers are not the end all be all and are certaintly not required.


They are a powerful element in the game that currently has few counters except other flyers.

If your list has plenty of anti-flyer(lots of TL Str7+) then you can still do just fine.

again this doesnt fix a thing unless someone uses 1 flyer , but then it isnt a proper flyer list. good flyers lists will have mass flyers entering on turn 2 and the first thing they do is hit those anti aircraft units and in case of necron and IG they do it realy good.

Chancetragedy wrote:
Of course the game is playable without flyers. Look a tony kopach's nova winning 6th list. he has 0 flyers and no typical anti air(ie. aegis, bastion). And he beat out a few lists that were flyer heavy. I have 0 anti flyer in my list and do fine against them by using tactics. Forcing exactitude in how my opponent uses flyers, and playing the mission.

This. The top games in the NOVA Open and Invitational made obvious that armies with no flyers, and even no specific anti-air units, can certainly compete against and win vs. armies with several flyers or even a large number (like 8-9) of flyers. Of the four army lists at the Final games of the Open and the Invitational, one had Flying Monstrous Creatures (a Daemons list), and the other three had no flyers at all (two SW/IG lists and a Necron/GK list). If you look at the top performers/finishers at NOVA, many of them had no or very limited flyers.

Now, the NOVA quadrant mission and objective-placement rules (ground level only) skewed things a little, making life tougher on flyers than the basic core rulebook missions, but honestly not all that much so. Even in regular 40k, a heavy-flyer army has a crapton of points sunk into units that can't generally hold or contest objectives, and their Scoring units are flimsy and limited in number. A good way to counter these armies is often simply to have a high model count army which is durable and can absorb the hits the flyers deal out, maintaining scoring units at the end to win on objectives which little units of Necron Warriors or IG Veterans are simply too weak to take away from them at the end of the game.

Depends on the situation, the scenario, and your opponent's list. Generally speaking, though, 6e is a much faster game and more reliant on mobility than 5e was, so if you don't like flyers you might pick a list with access to speedy transports and jetbikes/jump infantry.

I've had no issues without fliers. I do not use any psykers either for that matter. One flier I have been fielding and it has not been that hard to destroy it without fliers or skyfire.

 gaovinni wrote:
I've had no issues without fliers. I do not use any psykers either for that matter. One flier I have been fielding and it has not been that hard to destroy it without fliers or skyfire.

That's because you're only using one flyer. Now try using at least 2-3 of them, if not more.