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Everyone gets all up in arms about flyers these days, and I confess, I get a little antsy in my pantsy when I'm playing a guy I know has one. But it's not because I think they're overpowered or broken. They aren't. I think they're perfectly balanced, and more often than not if they only have 1 flyer in their list I just ignore it because it only gets 3 or 4 rounds of shooting in, and if zooming it doesn't always have a target. I really don't see them as game breaking or any of that. But let me tell you why I'm apprehensive when I know there's a chance of a flyer.

Because the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft. They do have enough other things that they don't have to take them all the time, but just knowing they have them makes me wary, and when I bring a quad gun and shoot them down turn one I feel bad. On the contrary, I don't want to make a list that's too ignorant of flyers and get fisted by them.

So it's not that the flyers are too good, but that the counters to them are so hard I actually feel a little dirty when I take them, and I feel like that's not a good vibe to produce when you make a game that you primarily play with friends.

It's an interesting point well made. I can understand your feelings. It is a tricky one. I've only restarted with the hobby recently after a long break so have no experience of flyers and dont really know what its like to have one fielded against me and have it run around unchallenged.

The army lists i've been making and the force i'm building aren't built with them in mind at all. I'll maybe pay for that in some games but like you, I don't want to tailor my army for them. My army is quite fluffy and troop heavy. It's supposed to be mobile and I dont want to field an adl or quad gun or anything.

I'm also quite into asthetics and the look of the army and I just dont like the stormraven as a model, so I wont get one just so that it's there to shoot down enemy flyers.

I suppose I'm just gonna live with them, try avoid them as much as possible if I can. And if someone puts a flyer spam army up against me, I'll just quietly to myself call it a moral victory for me.

But I wouldn't worry about taking counters to them just because you think they're too hard. Your opponent would probably quite happily bomb your entire army with his flyer if they could. You shooting them down is the chance they take. All's fair and that.

eje005 wrote:the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft.

Well, the game has been designed to be this way. GW has made a new unit type that is either practically invincible, or comically easy to destroy with no middle ground whatsoever. That happy middle ground you're looking for just doesn't exist.

As such, if you don't want to take dedicated anti-flier (or fliers of your own) then you have literally no choice but to ignore them, as anything that you direct at them is just going to be wasted shots..

It's bad game design, but there you have it.

eje005 wrote:
So it's not that the flyers are too good, but that the counters to them are so hard I actually feel a little dirty when I take them, and I feel like that's not a good vibe to produce when you make a game that you primarily play with friends.

Don't feel dirty; you pretty much should be taking SOMETHING that can swat flyers. Just like you take something that is effective anti-tank. It's just another anti-X we have to deal with. In 5th it was pretty much Anti-Horde, Anti-MEQ/TEQ, and Anti-Tank. Any good TAC list had stuff to deal with these things, because you'd end up seeing them most of the time, if not all. Sure, if your anti-tank goes to waste against a foot-horde, then so be it; that's the game, and that's also the strategy behind a foot-horde not taking tanks. Waste some of your shots. As soon as flyers get accepted as a part of the game's meta, and not as some gamebreaking cheat-code, you'll more and more find yourself simply adding Anti-flyer to that aforementioned list. It's a changing game, and that's just one of the changes.

(Not all counters are that hard. Broadsides work awesomely against flyers; a broadside list is actually my flyer list's one loss (Mind you, this is because most of my meta hasn't adapted to flyers yet. If they had, I'd have far more losses than this). Not a single quad-gun, hydra, or any "hard counter." Just enough twin linked railguns where I had no safe place to fly. That's the achilles heel with most flyer-heavy lists; it's all your points in a few fragile, flying baskets. Knock the baskets out of the sky and there isn't much left in the wreckage to threaten you.

-Captain

 Ailaros wrote:

eje005 wrote:the counters are so hard that it makes me feel like I'm list tailoring when I play against people I know have aircraft.

Well, the game has been designed to be this way. GW has made a new unit type that is either practically invincible, or comically easy to destroy with no middle ground whatsoever. That happy middle ground you're looking for just doesn't exist.

As such, if you don't want to take dedicated anti-flier (or fliers of your own) then you have literally no choice but to ignore them, as anything that you direct at them is just going to be wasted shots..

It's bad game design, but there you have it.

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

jwr wrote:

Spoiler:

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

Problem is, unless you do this preemptively, which many people don't understand how to do yet this early in the edition, it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

-Cap'n

jwr wrote:The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms.

The problem is that, at least at the moment, AA doesn't cost half as much as airplanes. Often it costs more. If I'm going to reliably handle AV12 fliers from the ground as guard, I'm going to need a squad of 3 hydras, which costs 225 points. The flier they're going to try and shoot down likely costs about 130-150.

Plus, if my opponent doesn't bring fliers or skimmers, all those points spent on hydras are being spent on a unit that has really crummy firepower for its points.

Because of the way the game is currently designed, the only way you can handle fliers is either with your own fliers (who get skyfire for free), or to just ignore the fliers altogether.

It's rock-paper-scissors-ier than most other stuff in the game. I mean, lascannons will usually have SOMETHING at least vaguely worth shooting at when facing a horde, and you don't have to spend many points on lascannons to have enough anti-tank in your list.

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

A big issue with Flyers is that they're flying tanks, with firepower equivalent to or greater than ground tanks and greater survivability, for generally little or not cost increase. Part of this is that most used to simply be skimmers and were made Flyers without any adjustments. I'd reduce most of the AV12 flyers to AV11, AV10 should really be the standard for most aircraft.


Additionally, yeah, there needs to be a Gunship style rule so that you don't have ground attack aircraft excellent at interception roles, and likewise interceptor aircraft really shouldn't be effective ground attack aircraft. I'd probably swap out the text of "Strafing Run" and say that any aircraft with this rule engages ground targets at full BS but other aircraft only as snap-shots, while having and change the "Interceptor" text to apply to aircraft intended to engage other aircraft and allow firing at full BS and against ground targets only as snap-shots and having a better Jink ability against other aircraft, and then getting rid of the silly text in the Skyfire rule forcing AA guns to engage ground targets only with snapshots.

That'd much more clearly define roles for aircraft, make AA weapons more all around useful as half of the time they sit there useless, and we'd have fewer issues with aircraft in general. One could apply the above rules instead to specific weapons, like on the DE -raven fighter, it's missiles could have "Strafing Run" while its lances are "Interceptor" or the like.

As is, too many flyers (not all, but many) are just flying tanks that gain a ton of survivability.

 TheCaptain wrote:

jwr wrote:

Spoiler:

<speaking as someone who has played a lot of tactical board/tabletop games but not 40K>

Sounds no different than any other "mechanized" ground combat tactical game. Good AA makes it nearly impossible for aircraft to make back their points in kills. The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms. And, truth be known, any "real" 40K force would do the same thing. Scout report says the opponent may have a bunch of anti-tank aircraft? Leave a Landraider (or whatever) behind and bring along 3 Whirlwind Avengers. So, you think aircraft will be on the list, you put some AA on the board. Then, the opponent knows he has to take out your AA or you'll turn the tabletop into a skeet range. You know he has to take out your AA so you prepare to ambush his assault force. He should look at ambush points between himself and the AA he needs to kill. Etc. Works that way in every kind of tactical game that uses aircraft and AA. He's going to do the same thing. Try to get you to spend points on AA to counter a threat he may or may not bring.

Anyhow, while the "fight" between one or more aircraft and equal value in points of AA is never fair, the tactics and planning around aircraft and AA should make up for it. I don't know if GW was thinking that far ahead, but it's true of most tactical games

Problem is, unless you do this preemptively, which many people don't understand how to do yet this early in the edition, it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

-Cap'n

Really? You know you may play against Army X, Army X may have tanks/aircraft/etc, it's not kosher to show up with anti-armor/anti-air/anti-etc? Huh. As I said somewhere else around here, I don't play 40K (just read it and paint it), so I'm learning something new everyday.

jwr wrote:
Really? You know you may play against Army X, Army X may have tanks/aircraft/etc, it's not kosher to show up with anti-armor/anti-air/anti-etc? Huh. As I said somewhere else around here, I don't play 40K (just read it and paint it), so I'm learning something new everyday.

You bring anti-X/Y/Z because X/Y/Z exist in the game, not because you know that your next opponent likes to use X. You make a standard list that can handle all potential opponents, and bring it to all games at that point level.

List tailoring is TFG behavior because there's no fair way to do it. Let's say I list tailor against you. Now you'll reasonable insist that you should be able to list tailor against me. But now that you've done that I think I'll go back and change my list so that your tailoring isn't effective anymore. But now you want to do the same. And so on until one of us gives up and accepts the disadvantage of being tailored against. Since this unfairly penalizes the player who wants to play the game instead of sitting around writing lists all day the solution is for both players to bring standard all-comers lists written before they know what they're fighting against.

And then of course there's the financial aspect. Anyone playing 40k can build a single all-comers list, but it costs a lot more money to buy the extra models that allow you to list tailor against specific opponents. This puts people with a limited budget at a huge disadvantage and reduces the game to a question of who can afford to spend more money.

 Ailaros wrote:

jwr wrote:The opponent is going to spend points on aircraft in the *hope* that you won't spend half the points of his aircraft on AA platforms.

The problem is that, at least at the moment, AA doesn't cost half as much as airplanes. Often it costs more. If I'm going to reliably handle AV12 fliers from the ground as guard, I'm going to need a squad of 3 hydras, which costs 225 points. The flier they're going to try and shoot down likely costs about 130-150.

Plus, if my opponent doesn't bring fliers or skimmers, all those points spent on hydras are being spent on a unit that has really crummy firepower for its points.

Because of the way the game is currently designed, the only way you can handle fliers is either with your own fliers (who get skyfire for free), or to just ignore the fliers altogether.

It's rock-paper-scissors-ier than most other stuff in the game. I mean, lascannons will usually have SOMETHING at least vaguely worth shooting at when facing a horde, and you don't have to spend many points on lascannons to have enough anti-tank in your list.

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

Makes more sense...I was looking at points costs from a couple of older sources I'm using as guides, and I honestly don't know the relative effectiveness of X avengers v/s a stormraven, for example, other than to transpose what happens in other games when someone flies helicopter and planes around SAM batteries.

 Ailaros wrote:

TheCaptain wrote: it counts as list tailoring. Which is uncool.

Or not.

You're implying list tailoring is okay?

Flyers, like any other unit, always have a component of risk/reward to them. It's the nature of the game (and a product of the diverse nature of 40k) that everything has at least one hard counter that completely invalidates its existance. For example, normally a Land Raider is an all but indestructible fortress, completely immune to damage from weapons with a strength less than 8. However, for about 185 points I can bring a squad of 5 Sternguard in a drop pod, all with combi-meltas, DS them next to the Landraider T1 and reliably destroy it before it gets a chance to do anything (statistically, I'll score 3 hits with the combi-meltas, at least two will penetrate, and 1 will cause an explodes result. The math I'm using is somewhat simplified since I don't want to work out the exact results, but it is close enough for this discussion). In doing so I've taken out a unit about 60 points more expensive than my own (on average), and still leaves me with both a drop pod and 5 Sternguard, which can either act as a damage sponge for a turn or then go on to make back even more points. Seems kinda evilly efficient, right, especially considering that my opponent had almost no chance of interacting with the unit before it was deployed?

Yet at the same time it's not evil, because while it works amazingly against a certain type of target, it becomes less efficient against targets other than what it was engineered to kill. That same Drop-Guard unit would still do well against a Leman Russ, perhaps better considering that it has lower rear and side armour, but it would make back fewer points. If my opponent has no vehicles what-so-ever, my drop guard are likely not going to accomplish very much before getting chewed up and spit out by a horde. Part of what makes this balanced and fair is that while it destroys certain units, unless you are list tailoring there is a good chance that the unit won't be that deadly effective, and it could possibly even end up being useless.

The other factor you have to consider is that lets say you bring two 5 man drop-guard squads as your anti-heavy armour capabilities. You set up, deep strike, and take out two Land Raiders, happy as can be. Then, on your opponents turn, they shoot up your surviving sternguard (or don't since they are less dangerous without their combis) and then bring in a third Land Raider from reserves. What do you do now, since you literally have nothing which can harm it as it rolls around the battlefield, spitting out TH/SS Termies, Tank-Shocking everything, and blowing stuff up like it is going out of style? There in lies the other issue with hard counters, if an opponent is able to eliminate your counter, they are in a significantly better position. This is why a Necron Flyer list player will tell you that the first thing they do on Turn 2 is have their Doom Scythes hit anything that has any AA capability at all with everything they can, because once your opponent looses their ability to interact with fliers efficiently, the Necron player has a significant advantage.

So yes, if your opponent is running a couple of fliers, the counters to them hurt HARD, but these hard counters suffer when you bring too many, meaning that you effectively give yourself an X points handicap, or too few, meaning that your opponent can just address them and use the remainder of his units unmolested. So if you are playing in a competitive environment and you know that everybody is going to be spamming Vendettas and Scythes, go ahead and counter as hard as you want. You are playing a game, and being able to adapt to the meta-game is just good strategy. However, if you are playing in a more casual environment and are worried about providing too hard of a counter, perhaps try to limit yourself to only playing a take all comers list, or alternatively suggest that your group have pairings which aren't decided until after lists are finalized?

jwr wrote:
Makes more sense...I was looking at points costs from a couple of older sources I'm using as guides, and I honestly don't know the relative effectiveness of X avengers v/s a stormraven, for example, other than to transpose what happens in other games when someone flies helicopter and planes around SAM batteries.

I wouldn't be too eager to draw conclusions from one game and apply them to another. There's no reason to believe that you're talking about some fundamental relationship between aircraft and ground-based AA instead of just finding that the relative point costs are out of balance in a particular system, or a particular system has a to-hit roll for SAMs that is too easy, or some other system-specific detail.

To me people seem to think that zooming=immortality. Many times when I have my dakkajet up in the air people won't even bother to shoot unless they have skyfire.

I once downed a stormtalon with a couple of big shootas.

Fliers aren't a big deal, a few of them here and there in a list doesn't cause big problems, it's when your entire list is fliers when the lack of AA currently in the new edition shines. Also the nercon deathray is the stupidest gun in the game, a precision, auto hit, multi target railgun? Really?

Personally, I find the issue is that there's so few Skyfire weapons you can just slip into an army. There's the Aegis line or your own flyer, basically. Chaos got a bit of a boost with flakk missiles.

The thing is, you can fall hard the same way against vehicles. If you don't bring enough anti tank, and your opponent is running a mechanised army, you'll lose. If you bring far too much anti tank, you'll tear them apart, but then if you suddenly face an infantry horde, you're up gak creek.

While it's easier to find that good balance with anti tank, you can't yet with Skyfire because the options just aren't there. When more codices are released with Skyfire units, we'll get a better guage on flyers themselves.

TheCaptain wrote:You're implying list tailoring is okay?

I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

Plus, if you're fighting against a list that's been tailored against you, specifically, then you're going to be up against a greater challenge. Man up and face it. Plus, it's not like there are very many ways to increase your challenge level in this game, given the relatively low ceiling to player skill and the fact that the rest of the game is designed to be balanced.

Vaktathi wrote:A big issue with Flyers is that they're flying tanks, with firepower equivalent to or greater than ground tanks and greater survivability, for generally little or not cost increase. Part of this is that most used to simply be skimmers and were made Flyers without any adjustments.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. Apart from being poorly designed, fliers were also poorly executed. They have more guns, and can go further without having to snap fire anything, and they still have 3HP? I would have thought that all that extra armor would have made flight impossible. Etc.

The way that they executed makes just about as much sense as the game designers saying "hey, see that leman russ? It's cool, but we should make it so that it's invincible against shooting attacks, and can only be killed in assault... if you roll a 6 to hit. And let's not make it any more expensive". Really, really shabbily done.

There are a lot of ways to fix this. I like Vaktathi's idea of making it so that ground units can only snap fire against fliers, but fliers can only snap fire at ground targets (outside of hover mode). It doesn't make sense that a pilot can control his vehicle in a 600 mile per hour dive and have exactly the same accuracy as if he were sitting still on the ground. Just like how you can have ground targets upgrade to handle air targets (hydras, flakk missiles, etc.) you could have upgrades to let air targets handle ground targets.

 Ailaros wrote:
I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

That's not true at all. List tailoring is creating your list to defeat a specific opponent. Making a list that accounts for general things like "marines are popular" is just understanding the metagame.

Plus, if you're fighting against a list that's been tailored against you, specifically, then you're going to be up against a greater challenge. Man up and face it. Plus, it's not like there are very many ways to increase your challenge level in this game, given the relatively low ceiling to player skill and the fact that the rest of the game is designed to be balanced.

And if you're at a disadvantage to start with? Should the horde ork player be happy playing against a gunline opponent (already TFG in your opinion) who list tailored specifically to dominate horde orks?

Yeah, I'd agree with this. Apart from being poorly designed, fliers were also poorly executed. They have more guns, and can go further without having to snap fire anything, and they still have 3HP? I would have thought that all that extra armor would have made flight impossible. Etc.

Sure, but only if we make them true flyers. They can be AV 10-11 with 2 HP, but subtract 72" from all weapon ranges to represent the fact that they're bombing you from several thousand feet above the battlefield, and restore the old "go anywhere they want" rule to represent the fact that a flyer can move off the battlefield and come back in pretty much any position it wants. Oh yeah, and forget about hitting on 6's, skyfire lets you hit on 6s, and if you don't have skyfire you hit on 6s but have to re-roll successful hits. Twice. In fact, you might as well remove flyer models entirely and just have them be off-table sources of army-destroying bombs.

The simple fact is that GW took away all the "realistic" defenses of a flyer, so the only solution was to give them "unrealistic" AV/HP to compensate.

There are a lot of ways to fix this. I like Vaktathi's idea of making it so that ground units can only snap fire against fliers, but fliers can only snap fire at ground targets (outside of hover mode). It doesn't make sense that a pilot can control his vehicle in a 600 mile per hour dive and have exactly the same accuracy as if he were sitting still on the ground. Just like how you can have ground targets upgrade to handle air targets (hydras, flakk missiles, etc.) you could have upgrades to let air targets handle ground targets.

That's a terrible idea. Why should a dedicated ground attack aircraft like a Vulture be limited to hitting ground targets on 6s? And why should hitting air targets with guns (incredibly difficult IRL) be harder than strafing ground targets (easy IRL)?

If anything ground attack aircraft need to be more deadly to represent the fact that a load of 500lb bombs is going to obliterate your entire army, not just do less damage than a barrage of mortar shots. Likewise my Vulture with hunter-killer missiles should do what a real anti-tank gunship does, and destroy 5-6 heavy tanks with its load of six missiles, not fire all six into a Rhino and hope to get lucky and strip a hull point, all in a pop-up attack from behind cover that leaves no time to shoot down the Vulture before it makes its kills and drops back behind cover.

Peregrine wrote: List tailoring is creating your list to defeat a specific opponent. Making a list that accounts for general things like "marines are popular" is just understanding the metagame.

You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

Peregrine wrote:Sure, but only if we make them true flyers. They can be AV 10-11 with 2 HP, but subtract 72" from all weapon ranges to represent the fact that they're bombing you from several thousand feet above the battlefield,

No, just make it so that you can't shoot them, period. It doesn't make sense that a guy with a meltagun would ever be able to hit something that was on a bombing run a thousand feet above.

Of course, this is what happens when you base game balance on what one person's version of "realistic" is...

 Ailaros wrote:
You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

Except there's a huge difference. Building a list based on the general metagame is symmetrical since both players can do it just as well. List tailoring against a specific opponent is NOT symmetrical since in the end only one player can do it (or at least do it as effectively), especially when you include factors like how much each player can spend on models. Building a list based on the metagame leads to balanced games. List tailoring against a specific opponent usually involves one player using a standard all-comers list (often because it's the only one they're capable of bringing) while the other player uses a tailored list and wins easily.

No, just make it so that you can't shoot them, period. It doesn't make sense that a guy with a meltagun would ever be able to hit something that was on a bombing run a thousand feet above.

You're right, it doesn't. The fact that you can shoot down a flyer with weapons like that is why they have tank-level AV/HP instead of their "realistic" durability. If you want to bring flyers down to "realistic" durability then you also have to give them realistic immunity to most weapons.

Of course, this is what happens when you base game balance on what one person's version of "realistic" is...

You mean on how aircraft work in the real world. 40k's aircraft are laughably ineffective for game balance reasons.

 Ailaros wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:You're implying list tailoring is okay?

I'm explicitly stating that everybody always list tailors all the time. The extent to which one engages in the activity is irrelevant. To be against list tailoring necessarily makes one a hypocrite as it's basically impossible to make a halfway decent 40k list without ANY knowledge WHATSOEVER of what one might come up against in a game.

Ailaros, sorry, but you're taking an understanding of the term "list tailoring" contrary to what everyone else seems to understand it as. No offense intended whatsoever, but come on. You should know what is implied. Sure, as far as the english language is concerned, "list tailoring" can refer to including meltaguns because you expect to face tanks at some point in the future with your list, and including a LRBT because, more likely than not, your opponent is going to have troops that need killing. But come on, if you think that's what we mean here, you're wrong. I don't think you're that daft though, just being kindof contrarian for the sake of argument.

To clear it up, like Peregrine says, it's tailoring against a specific list you know your opponent is fielding. Like "Oh, I'm playing Ailaros next, I better pull out my vendettas and replace them with MRP Valkyries. He uses a bunch of infantry. Better leave behind my missile launchers and swap them out for heavy bolters too." That is purposefully giving yourself an advantage with insider knowledge, and really isn't fair unless both parties are up to it, at which point it becomes silly. "Oh, player A is bringing rock? I better bring paper." To which Player B re-tailors "Crap, now he's bringing paper, guess I'll swap my rock for some scissors." It becomes ridiculous, and you're no longer playing with your army, you're playing with the army that you think will beat your opponent's army.

If it's still not clear, allow me to put it more concretely.

Today I played a 500 point game; both I and my opponent had no knowledge of eachother's list. As a result of a lucky Quad-gun shot, and the hard work of my Demolisher, I tabled the kid turn 5. Solid, clean game. Soon as the game ends, another gentleman offered me a challenge. I accepted, only post-deployment, the gentleman made me aware he noticed I ran a demolisher behind a gunline, and for that reason he added in two land-speeders with multimelta. I was tabled turn three, because he tailored his list to hard-counter the centerpiece to my list, the Demolisher. This is no show of skill, Ailaros, however low you may consider the skill-ceiling to be in this game. This is inside-knowledge being used to a player's advantage, and that is what we all mean by list tailoring.

(Granted, like you, the guy seemed to have no idea it was unfair, and was a gentleman, as well as enjoyable to play against. Not the point.)

Hope that helped.
-Cap

So far, I haven't had a huge problem with flyers. The last flyer I faced got shot down by a twin-linked meltagun second turn it was on the board, and I think it only killed like 2 marines. If there had been 2 or 3 of them it would have been a bigger problem, but then again I also probably wouldn't have had the land raider full of termies to deal with, so it may have all evened itself out.

Really it depends partly on luck and partly on quantity. 1 flyer isn't a huge deal for most armies, but when you start getting 2 or 3, you're gonna want some anti-flyer, or you'll start to feel the pain.

Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

 GimbleMuggernaught wrote:
So far, I haven't had a huge problem with flyers. The last flyer I faced got shot down by a twin-linked meltagun second turn it was on the board, and I think it only killed like 2 marines.

The last flyer I faced was an Ork Fighta-Bomma that tried a bombing run, caused a penetrating hit on itself and exploded in the air. Truly all fliers aren't equals.

The Necron flying circus with three Doom Scythes and as many Night Scythes as you can fit in is a lot deadlier, and nothing I wish to face at all. Without Interceptor guns I'll lose at least three heavy hitters on the first turn with no chance to do anything about it. And the stupid things also have a nasty tendency to fall over and smash my models for real.

 illuknisaa wrote:

I once downed a stormtalon with a couple of big shootas.

That's because you're Orks. You believed you could do it, so you did.

Plus, hitting on 6's when you need 5's normally doesn't really bother you so much, does it? XD

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

 60mm wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

This is true. A Flyrant is just about the only (massively cost inefficient) answer to fliers. The sad thing is, that one of the more common fliers (read Vendetta) completely blows this poor thing out the air, at a fraction of the points cost.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 60mm wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Bring a ADL with a Quad-Gun. Works well vs flyers, light transports and infantry alike...can't argue you only brought it to take down flyers.

Unless you play nids, you then have basically no AA options.

This is true. A Flyrant is just about the only (massively cost inefficient) answer to fliers. The sad thing is, that one of the more common fliers (read Vendetta) completely blows this poor thing out the air, at a fraction of the points cost.

And thus is the issue with flyers. GW handed out supreme beatsticks to some armies and left others royally screwed. Most players are gentlemen and won't abuse it thankfully, but the National League of TFGs really doesn't need opportunities like this :-/ Someone on The Tyranid Hive just finished a tourney where an all-out Necron flyer spam took first place, winning every single game by a long shot.

Edit: Before the rant, I'd better put something in about the actual topic of the thread!

I personally hate the Flyer rules, and I'm speaking as someone who has loved following military aviation since I was a small child. The average 40k battlefield is far, far too small to field Flyers on. Even a 12'x6' board is really too small to field even ground attack craft like Vultures in any meaningful way.

Ruling the sky means ruling the ground. In real life, aircraft like the Harrier GR-1 render fortified emplacements moot, and ground-attack planes like the A-10 Warthog shred armoured vehicles. The only reason tanks are even viable, tactically speaking, is because it's nigh impossible to maintain 100% air superiority. Heck, a Stuka can appear out of nowhere and destroy three or four vehicles in a convoy before the tanks even have a chance to alert their AA support. So the Flyer rules - especially their awful mobility and lack of designation-by-role - are absolutely awful at representing them. A Vendetta shouldn't be able to dogfight a Nightwing and come out on top! Yeah, some things, like the Night Scythe are designed around a weapon system that's equally good against all targets, but most Imperial stuff just... isn't.

 Ailaros wrote:

You're making an arbitrary differentiation here. List tailoring is using information about what you're likely to face when making your lists. How good your information (from the vague "maybe there might be vehicles?" to the more specific of "I'm playing against eldar tonight", to the most specific "I'm playing against Bob playing this list tonight"), is irrelevant. One could easily make the argument that using only information about generalities and not about specifics is a failure to do your research, not the sign of a moral player.

At this point, I'd just like to point out that the battle report linked from that article on list tailoring, the "tailored army list" was also a "massive cheating army list".

Take the humble Immolator, for example, of which that list contained many. The Immolator has, and has always had, two Heavy Flamers. When the Witch Hunter book was released, these were altered to be a single Twin-linked heavy flamer, which it has remained ever since. At no point has it ever been possible to arm an Immolator with "2 TL heavy flamers".

For a second example, you have listed him as fielding the following;

Celestines
- with 2x flamers, heavy flamer, brazier of fire
- Immolator with 2 TL heavy flamers

Sisters of Battle
- with 2x flamers, heavy flamer, brazier of fire
- Rhino

Again, ignoring the Illegalator, these squads break the rules! Both Celestian and Battle Sister squads may only take two weapon options: A special weapon and a heavy weapon. If they choose not to take a heavy weapon, they may take a second special weapon.

So, between the double-armed Immolators, the infantry squads with too many special weapon choices, and... hang on, I'm not sure, but I think Inquisitorial Retinues were limited to Heavy Bolters, Plasma Cannons and Multi-meltas, and at that, only 3 heavy weapons total.

A little list tailoring is to be expected in friendly games between experienced players. The key to making it fair is to make sure that you have some rough idea as to what the opponent has so that when they deploy a unit designed to ruin your specific day, you have a counter built into your list. Encouraging general list-tailoring encourages stronger general list-building, because a good list will cover all of its own weaknesses, thus negating the advantage that a tailored list could potentially afford.