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I've been running 2vs2 games for 2 weeks in a row now and I play with another Chaos Space Marine Player... between us we have 2 Heldrakes and 2 flying Daemon Princes and they have a tendancy to dominate the air. I was thinking about bringing another one soon as they are awesome and my partner might do the same.

So up until when can we say we become cheesy? With 3 Heldrakes on the table? 4? It does force our opponents to rethink their game and bring flyer counters... Vendettas, Stormravens and anti-air... but 4? The Baleflamer is a serious anti-SM weapon and 2 of them usually clean up the board pretty fast! Now I want to have another one with the Hades Autocannon to deal with other flyers and vehicles... but Vector Strike is still great against infantry and light vehicles.

Also I have an Imperial Guard detachment with a Vendetta a veteran squad and a Primaris Psyker... would it be overpowered to put 2 Heldrakes and a Vendetta in the same list?

Same question for 2 Heldrakes, 1 Vendetta and 2 flying Daemon Prince... cheesy?

Just curious what the community think.

Flyers are tough to beat these days since most armies have no dedicated anti-air.
If you field 2 Hellturkeys, 1 Vendetta, and 2 DP FMCs, then the army will lack in another department, like troops.
Cheesy does not belong to my vocabulary.

The aren't cheesy is the answer. Three Heldrakes cost 525 points-- over 25% of a 2k list. It's likely they only get 3 passes each over the course of a game. The type of lists that fear them most are MEQ, and even then, Heldrakes probably max out at killing 5 MEQ per shot against smart opponents. Substantial damage? Maybe. If your opponent has 50 MEQ and an additional 50 IG in a blob, it really isn't a big deal.

People crying about flyers are just bad players who haven't adapted to 6th edition yet. Even the vaunted Cron Air isn't that scary if you build your list knowing it's out there. Coincidentally, a list that you proposed with 2 Drakes, 2 DPs, and a Vendetta would be abused by 10 Cron flyers. In the end, a list employing these elements has weaknesses as well.

I'd face it.

It's not an oversight on gw's part though, they put these big buffs out there so lots of people buy them, it won't be long before they release anti air options that inspire a buying frenzy to counter the saturated air heavy lists, then those guys need to revamp their lists to counter the counter, buy more of other stuff... repeat. Lol.

Though we know this already

I do like to have balanced lists... usually... so I probably won't have more than 2 at any time, same thing for the DP, 1 is just enought for what he does.

I was curious because one of my opponent who don't seem to have adapted to 6th edition was saying they were overpowered and that 2 of them on the table was almost cheesy... that he wouldn't play in a game against more...

He did lost a lot of marines in this game and had no troop left on the table to capture the objectives and his anti-flyer tactic didn't seem to work out.

I tend to agree that hey are not cheesy, they are good but they generally barely make their points back. But yes, against MEQ's they are an asset.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kitch102 wrote:
I'd face it.

It's not an oversight on gw's part though, they put these big buffs out there so lots of people buy them, it won't be long before they release anti air options that inspire a buying frenzy to counter the saturated air heavy lists, then those guys need to revamp their lists to counter the counter, buy more of other stuff... repeat. Lol.

Though we know this already

So true .

I'm curious as to why no one is fielding Hydra Flak tank...

Heldrakes are good, but with rear armor 10, you can glance it to death with bolters, let alone any real anti- air gun.

It's not overpowered or cheesy.

Cheesy is relative. If you play with a group of people who are mainly casual, who don't really know how to build balanced Take-All-Comer's list and who don't really have much exposure against flyers, then yeah, they would probably consider it cheesy.

But against more experienced players, players who know how to build balanced TAC lists, or in a tournament setting, they wouldn't consider it cheesy at all.

Proxy: Yes, if he is only taking tacs, they may seem "cheesy". In reality, it's just a horrible list. Things like devs, razorbacks, and dreads w/AC can knock the turkeys out cold.

As for 2v2, you are playing house rules anyway and basically doubling the FOC for your combined points. Plenty of answers in that.

As to hydras, the fact that they cannot groundfire nerfed them a bit. I still like them, though, since it is rare to face an army with no fliers these days.

Every codex needs something that is really good, and chaos got the helldrake the same way IG has vendettas, wolfs long fangs, necrons nightscythe. Its a really good unit, cheesy I dont think so.

Personally I consider using 3 of anything that isn't a troop unit, as cheesy and spammy. (Sounds like an unhealthy meal...)

2 is enough for redundancy purposes.

 jmurph wrote:
Proxy: Yes, if he is only taking tacs, they may seem "cheesy". In reality, it's just a horrible list. Things like devs, razorbacks, and dreads w/AC can knock the turkeys out cold.

I played against a Blood Angel list and a Grey Knight list, they had 2 of Dreadnought with dual twin-linked autocannons, a Dreadknight, 2 Bhaal Predators and a Razorback (listing anti-air options only)... there was a lot of shooting, but even on a TL weapon snapshots are still hard to get... maybe they were unlucky with these shots, we didn't lose a single HP on the 2 Heldrakes and I had to make 2 inv. save only...

I agree with you tho, in a single 2k list 3 Heldrakes and 2 DP's make for a very unbalanced list.

In a 2vs2 format with 1500 pts each player, 2 Heldrakes are not that much, it's when paired with another player with 2 other flyers that it can get a bit difficult for MEQ troops to survive and the 2 armies I faces do struggle to find the points to put troops in their list.

I like the consensus so far, too many Heldrake is not overpowered, it's just really unbalanced and the list will lack in other areas.

JGrand wrote:The aren't cheesy is the answer. Three Heldrakes cost 525 points-- over 25% of a 2k list. It's likely they only get 3 passes each over the course of a game. The type of lists that fear them most are MEQ, and even then, Heldrakes probably max out at killing 5 MEQ per shot against smart opponents.

I'd say 1-3, actually. If you deploy your models at max coherency in a circle, it's pretty tough to rack up flamer kills against them.

And yeah, if we're talking about spending up to half your points on a combination of a handful of flying units, that seems like there are going to be two big problems. The first is that once they DO start getting shot down (which they will. I shot down a helldrake with a single hit from a lascannon not two weeks ago), then there's probably not much else going on in the rest of the list, and the second is that you're probably not bringing very many troops choices. If your opponents decide to double down on winning the ground war, you're probably going to be screwed.

 minigun762 wrote:
Personally I consider using 3 of anything that isn't a troop unit, as cheesy and spammy. (Sounds like an unhealthy meal...)

2 is enough for redundancy purposes.

It's a good rule, I don't think I have 3 of anything (except for troops) so I guess I'm appying it already.

In this case it seems that it's the game format that's the problem... but it's quite fun to play that way and sometimes very challenging.

 minigun762 wrote:
Personally I consider using 3 of anything that isn't a troop unit, as cheesy and spammy. (Sounds like an unhealthy meal...)

2 is enough for redundancy purposes.

agreed



back on point, A bunch of helturkeys and DP arent cheasy. You will have trouble against vehicle spam and hordes. As a xenos player I consider a bale flamers to be just a snazed up heavy flamer, and even then a regular flamer is still pretty devistating. Helturkeys dont really bother me.

Conversely my CSM list has a helturkey and a vendetta and they work well but rarely do they win the game for me.

The Helldrake would be scarier if he had the ability to fight in cc like a Dread or so. Just flying around with a baleflamer will not always do enough damage. Look at Termies.

Well if you were fighting against another chaos list with allied guard and vendettas your hell drakes wouldn't do much of anything. Especially if everyone was in a rhino and his heavy support units were tanks and obliterators.

The bale flamer is good, but only against the right targets. It won't scratch predators, obliterators, leman russ, etc. And a vendetta will put it down fast.

 JGrand wrote:
The aren't cheesy is the answer. Three Heldrakes cost 525 points-- over 25% of a 2k list. It's likely they only get 3 passes each over the course of a game. The type of lists that fear them most are MEQ, and even then, Heldrakes probably max out at killing 5 MEQ per shot against smart opponents. Substantial damage? Maybe. If your opponent has 50 MEQ and an additional 50 IG in a blob, it really isn't a big deal.

They are 510pts, not 525. Even if 3 passes where true, with each killing 5 Marines each of those passes, that's 45 Marines dead. So exactly how is killing all but 5 of the Marines in that proposed list at the end not a big deal? Guard blobs are great, but not when they are all that's left.

You say that people who cry about flyers are just bad players, I would argue that people who think they can ignore the Heldrake are bad players.

Kevlar wrote:
The bale flamer is good, but only against the right targets. It won't scratch predators, obliterators, leman russ, etc. And a vendetta will put it down fast.

Thing is, what tournament list doesn't have the right type of target for the Baleflamer? If my Dreadknights can always find a target for their Heavy Incinerator at a tournament, then the Heldrake will most definitely do so. As for the Vendetta, Vendetta puts 1HP on average against a Heldrake. That's not putting it down fast.

Godless-Mimicry wrote:Even if 3 passes where true, with each killing 5 Marines each of those passes, that's 45 Marines dead. So exactly how is killing all but 5 of the Marines in that proposed list at the end not a big deal?

Firstly, the helldrakes need to survive. They're difficult to handle, not impossible.

Secondly, they're not going to be killing any marines if they're in transports.

Thirdly, 5 is a little high against a player who REALLY spreads out. Against better displacement, they're going to struggle to make their points, back, even assuming the first two don't give you problems, which they probably will be.

Fourthly, yeah, they're good against marines, but that's kind of it. As mentioned, a horde army isn't going to care about an Ap3 flamer any more than they're going to care about an Ap5 one, and mech-heavy lists won't care if you flamer their vehicles.

In the end, we're talking about something that has a niche role. It's good in that niche, but that doesn't mean it's good against everything.

They are 510pts, not 525. Even if 3 passes where true, with each killing 5 Marines each of those passes, that's 45 Marines dead. So exactly how is killing all but 5 of the Marines in that proposed list at the end not a big deal? Guard blobs are great, but not when they are all that's left.

I said a maximum of 5 each on a maximum of three passes. They aren't guaranteed to get that. In addition, 50 MEQ is a very low number these days. I personally wouldn't run a marine list with less than 60 plus a guard blob. The game is troop based.

You say that people who cry about flyers are just bad players, I would argue that people who think they can ignore the Heldrake are bad players.

People crying about flyers are bad. Period. Ignoring them is a very valid option. It works versus the much tougher Cron Air. It can work against three expensive flyers as well. As Aliros explained a post ago, there are other factors that mitigate what they can do as well. Transports, model spacing (this also dictates where they can move), bubble wrapping, or even presenting targets that they can't deal with all beat Helldrakes.

 BarBoBot wrote:
Heldrakes are good, but with rear armor 10, you can glance it to death with bolters, let alone any real anti- air gun.

It's not overpowered or cheesy.

Fun fact: One in six boltgun shots will hit, and one in six will glance, and one in three will be saved by "Daemon".
It will take 54 shots at rear armor to score a glance, on average. This means that you'd be expected to need to fire 162 shots at rear armor - before its "It Will Not Die" restores any Hull Points. This while it moves 18-36''. To say that boltguns are even a tiny bit reasonable against Heldrakes is hilariously laughable.

A 170 point price tag and inability to deal with 2+'s or hordes is what makes the Heldrake reasonably balanced. They're anti-MEQ specialists, and while this scares the heck out of GW (hence its price tag) and MEQ players (hence the "cheese" battle cries) they're also left harmless against lists that do not feature heavy use of MEQ.
And even if you ARE MEQ? Frankly unless you happen to be fielding a whole crapton of S7+ firepower that can shoot zooming fliers at BS, you're best off just spreading your men, taking your lumps, and focusing on everything else in your opponent's army instead.

Sure, but a single non-skyfire lascannon hits 1/6 of the time, pens 1/2 of the time, and wrecks 1/3 of the time. That's one in 36 shots, on average.

That sounds bad until you consider that your opponents likely have a way of twin-linking them (bringing it to 1 in 18 shots), and are likely bringing way more than 1. In my particular case (foot guard), I bring 10 in 1,000 points. If my guardsmen take orders, I'm likely able to put down a penetrating hit per turn, and that's just with my troops choices.

Plus, even if you don't wreck it, a weapon destroyed result will pretty much make that thing useless.

Plus, even if you don't wreck it, a weapon destroyed result will pretty much make that thing useless.

Not to mention that forcing a jink also renders it useless.

Also, you do have to be a bit careful, given that the weapon's range is pretty short. Not REALLY short, but short enough that if you're getting close enough to attack stuff, you're probably flying close enough to get attacked by meltas and multimeltas as well.

 JGrand wrote:

Plus, even if you don't wreck it, a weapon destroyed result will pretty much make that thing useless.

Not to mention that forcing a jink also renders it useless.

Unless it's a Daemon, and never needs to jink.

Personally, I'm of the mind that bringing more than three flyers is a bit of a TFG move, unless you're playing in an actively competitive environment (a tournament or tournament style gaming club), or you let your opponent know ahead of time that you're running a list that spams flyers.

Maybe it's just because I like noise marines and defilers, but I think people are missing out by not considering the hades autocannon.
It's one of the best anti flyers Chaos has plus it's good for busting tanks or artillery.

I feel like people are forgetting that if they spread out all their units in order to avoid templates, they're also exposing themselves to fire from other sources. If I spread out my 20 man blob of marines to avoid the baleflamer, a bunch of them are now going to be out of cover, making them more vulnerable to focus fire from things like plasma guns, assault cannons, and other weapons that can put your marines down. Sometimes a unit can make its points back while still hardly killing a thing just by forcing an opponent's movements or drawing tons of fire, two things a hell drake can easily do.

Still, a helldrake is a hefty investment, and really not all that difficult to take down, and as said before, any transport will completely block the flamer, though it can still vector strike, and you have the whole first turn (at least) to blow up transports to get at the squishy guys inside.

I'm bringing a Heldrake as an ally just so MEQ players can know how my Firewarriors feel when they bring heavy flamers.

I think it's decently priced and balanced, though I'd probably take the autocannon if it's going as anti-air. But thing looks very resilient. I also think people are putting too much faith in their transports. I've never had trouble taking down anything outside of a landraider, and even then I wouldn't be wasting an AP3 weapon on what's in a Landraider since it's probably 2+.

Unless it's a Daemon, and never needs to jink.

True, the Helldrake has an advantages in this regard. Still a huge issue for most flyers though.

GimbleMuggernaught wrote: If I spread out my 20 man blob of marines to avoid the baleflamer, a bunch of them are now going to be out of cover

Not necessarily.

This may be true for terrain you hide IN, but not for terrain you hide BEHIND.

3 helldrakes with flamers is nonsense against anyone with MEQ or worse troops.

Taking these at point values under 1500 is stupid.

Any helldrakes without the flamer are better at anti-tank and flier, which is supposed to be their role.

More than 3 fliers at 2k or under is a big no no for playing friendly games.