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Okay, there's a lot of heat in these arguments so I'l try to explain my position.
I try to play 40k without "cheese" units. You know, I want to beat my opponents by outsmarting them, or by using better tactics. A lot of units in GW games are unbalanced and GW loves to create units that break the rules so everyone will run out and buy those units. Like everyone did when Grey Knights came out. Then they nerfed Gk. I don't like to do things that way.
To give you an idea of what I mean;
I play vanilla marines without Vulkan Hestan, and I play Khorne space marines without Kharne. Or Skulltaker.
When 6th ed CSM codex came out my friend wiped the floor with everyone at our club by using nurgle marines and Epidemius. I beat him with vanilla marines and soon everyone was winning against him so he rethought his army and no longer plays Epidemius. This is an example of a cheese list losing to smart tactics. I don't feel an Epidemius list is overpowered because everything has to work together and it's possible to counter. It's a "newb killer" but not broken.
Now here we are with two Helldrakes in another friends army and no one can beat him. Since the FAQ gave the baleflamer the "turret" rule, helldrakes cant be beat. Interceptor is not reliable enough to stop them. You can not take cover from the Baleflamer even inside a building, and he does not have to worry about direction of travel or what is his arc of fire. No scoring units can get an armor save and again no cover saves. In addition most units can't even fire at the thing. You just have to tolerate it flying around killing entire units each turn. And he has two. He doesn't even have to attack with anything else. Our group's best player was tabled by these Helldrakes (it's not me). That hasn't happened ever. The Helldrakes were responsible for 90% of the casualties! That is Cheezits inside a quesadilla-wrapped cheeseburger.

To those who say "it's not broke" I say "show me". Give me a vanilla counter or CSM counter that does not require me running out to buy my own Helldrakes.

You are playing one of the armies that the heldrake is made to kill. 3+ exspensive marines ^_^

I'd reccomend a bunch of cheap infantry, hordes or Guardsmen/Orks/Cultists, spread them out to reduce potential casualties.

Bring along your own fliers, Helldrakes can't really cope with them if they are packing Baleflamers, or just hide in Boxes, Rhinos etc.

 Tzarkahn wrote:
I'd reccomend a bunch of cheap infantry, hordes or Guardsmen/Orks/Cultists, spread them out to reduce potential casualties.

Bring along your own fliers, Helldrakes can't really cope with them if they are packing Baleflamers, or just hide in Boxes, Rhinos etc.

The heldrake will vector strike the rhino, destroying it, then burn the occupants.

I know that this is not the most constructive advice, but I figured that an army heavy with 2+ armour scoring units would almost not care about the helldrake at all. They have a 2+ armour save against the flamer, and they don't have a lot of vehicles to be vector striked either. Instead those units can concentrate on killing enemy scoring units on the ground, winning the mission by either capturing the victory points or getting killpoints.

Otherwise I'm not sure what you consider cheasy? Is any kind of purchased structure/defensive building cheasy? Otherwise an Aegis Defense line with the skyfire lascannon could probabably help you out a lot. You could man it with a Marine Captain in Artificer or Terminator armour and use his BS5, while completely ignoring the bale flamers.

 StormK wrote:
Give me a vanilla counter or CSM counter that does not require me running out to buy my own Helldrakes.

Let's think about it for a bit, from C:SM perspective. The main thing to do with flyers if you can't reliably kill them is ignore them. However, given that the heldrake, unlike many fliers that will pop a vehicle or just fly around doing nothing, is really really good at ground attack against marine infantry, that's probably not an option. As you pointed out in the 'heldrakes kill 90% of opposing list,' you're not going to be able to ignore them, especially if they're going 'Double Dragon' as there isn't much reason not to for Chaos right now.

Thus, I think you're going to have to confront them. Here we come up against another problem -- the heldrake is one of the more resilient fliers in the game. Front and side armor 12 combined with a 5++ save is pretty tough for a flier. Yet as we've established, there isn't an 'ignore the heldrake' option for vanilla marines, you're just going to have to engage it.

That leaves us with what we can engage it with. The one saving grace you have against it is that it's not very good at killing other fliers (ignore the codex image of it blasting a valkyrie with the baleflamer, that's not happening). Other than vector strikes, it has nothing to engage other fliers unless it takes the hades autocannon. While some people are starting to advocate for that, then they give up the ground attack power that the baleflamer has. So, from my thoughts, it seems like you've got to use your own fliers. Not your own heldrakes, although you may want them anyway in CSM because they are solid gold for the reasons above, but your own fliers optimized for air superiority. The ADL is fine, but you need more than one Hydra manned by dudes that die to one breath weapon. Thus, either the stormtalon with lascannons or one of the missile launchers or allying into IG for Vendettas would be your best options. I know it's a bit stupid telling you to get fliers to counter their fliers, but the heldrake is that good for CSM. Vendettas are probably the cheesier option -- with triple twin-linked lascannon fire and the ability to transport meltavets or some such, you engage the heldrakes with cheaper fliers that can take them out, while simultaneously keeping some scoring units off the field. The stormtalon is more expensive, but doesn't use allies, and is quite good at ground attack as well, so you're not just using it to hard-counter the heldrake.

For CSM, it's different. CSM's main flier is the heldrake, and as said before, heldrakes aren't actually that good against other heldrakes. What CSM can do is reduce the heldrake's efficiency. The heldrake is most points-efficient when killing Toughness 4, 3+ armor save dudes in cover -- this describes power armored marines really really well, which is why it's so good against loyalist marines of all stripes. As CSM, if you want to counter the heldrake with stuff other than the ADL, you should take dudes that aren't that statline. Cultists are an inefficient target for the heldrake; the opponent is wasting his points shooting at them instead of power armor, so they're a potential choice if you can make them fearless. Take a mob of dudes with a Khorne lord with the Axe of Blind Fury, so that they're still a huge threat. Or Nurgle Bikers/Slaanesh Bikers with Icon/Plague Marines of any kind. They're not wounded as easily as normal marines, and can either take FnP rolls against it, or are wounded on 4+. If we want to keep it Khorne'y, you probably won't want those options, so it's cultists and tactics. Get into CC or stay in your transports. Land Raiders are immune to heldrakes, so if you have them, use them. They're of course also our only assault vehicle, so put bersekers or terminators in them and go crazy. Deepstriking terminators keep their armor saves, and temicide is still effective against non-air vehicles.

The heldrake is probably the best thing in the CSM codex right now, especially in pairs. It's made to kill loyalist marines, and loyalist marines don't have much of a counter to it outside of their own fliers. The FAQ made them even more of an auto-take. Other people probably have better solutions to this than I do, but that was my advice.

A few things that might help you out:

If the Heldrake can't draw LOS to you then it can't Vector Strike you or flame you. If you can find a building or ruin with a roof then you can bunker things underneath it to keep yourself alive.

Heldrakes won't turn up until turn 2 at least and if you don't need your warlord trait for anything else you might as well try and get the -1 for reserves. The key for facing fliers in general is to limit their ability to hurt you. The ability for the Heldrake to hit things behind them makes this harder, but you can still make things difficult for them. The turn they arrive they will most likely line up about 12" from a unit to flame it nicely, which means the turn afterwards they will usually have to overshoot or hover to hit targets in the same area. Since overshooting doesn't really hurt them anymore they are probably going to end up behind you by turn 4. At this point they probably have to hover if they want to hit you again, and this is the best chance to hit them.

Powerguy wrote:
A few things that might help you out:

If the Heldrake can't draw LOS to you then it can't Vector Strike you or flame you. If you can find a building or ruin with a roof then you can bunker things underneath it to keep yourself alive.

Heldrakes won't turn up until turn 2 at least and if you don't need your warlord trait for anything else you might as well try and get the -1 for reserves. The key for facing fliers in general is to limit their ability to hurt you. The ability for the Heldrake to hit things behind them makes this harder, but you can still make things difficult for them. The turn they arrive they will most likely line up about 12" from a unit to flame it nicely, which means the turn afterwards they will usually have to overshoot or hover to hit targets in the same area. Since overshooting doesn't really hurt them anymore they are probably going to end up behind you by turn 4. At this point they probably have to hover if they want to hit you again, and this is the best chance to hit them.

LOS is not required for vector strike and with the turret rule for the baleflamer he now shoot 360 degree's. However if you can hide behind a wall and he cant see you then your safe. He would still need to see you with the model to wound you for shooting purposes.

 StormK wrote:
Now here we are with two Helldrakes in another friends army and no one can beat him.

To those who say "it's not broke" I say "show me". Give me a vanilla counter or CSM counter that does not require me running out to buy my own Helldrakes.

Wow....I never would have guessed people said CSM were broken OP. Their a mid-tier codex at best.

I played at a tourney this past weekend and brought two helldrakes.
In game one, my opponent brought a BA stormraven. He blew up one helldrake and knocked the baleflamer off the other.
In game two, my opponent ignored the helldrakes and ate the rest of my army with his DE beast-cheeze pack of doom.
In game three, my opponent had all paladins. The helldrakes could not do much against them. He shot one down with his 3 psydreads.


Helldrakes are good, but they are not an auto-win. If your playing C:SM, bring some stormtalons. Ally in a vendetta if you need to. If you don't have that in your kit, then your vulernable to a CSM player with them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
[The heldrake will vector strike the rhino, destroying it, then burn the occupants.

That does not always work.

A vector strike does an average of 3 STR 7 hits. Each STR 7 hit has a 1/6 chance of glancing the rhino and a 1/3 chance of penetrating. This means with your 3 vector strikes your going to take off 1.5 HP and have one roll on the damage chart. Only one roll on the damage chart is a explosion.

Simply put, your chances of destroying with a single vector strike are not guaranteed. In fact, I would place them under 50%.

Now your helldrake has placed itself where its showing its AV 10 arse at your opponent, who will hop out and shoot it with PGs, autocannons, or anything else it can.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Thariinye wrote:
The ADL is fine, but you need more than one Hydra manned by dudes that die to one breath weapon.

I've found limited luck flaming the quad-gun. Flaming a squad next to it means that another squad will just walk up to it. My opponents have been putting crap units on it (grots, scouts, etc)

I've been actually vector striking the quad gun. Two vector strikes will take it out on average.

Thariinye wrote:
Thus, either the stormtalon with lascannons or one of the missile launchers or allying into IG for Vendettas would be your best options. I know it's a bit stupid telling you to get fliers to counter their fliers, but the heldrake is that good for CSM. Vendettas are probably the cheesier option -- with triple twin-linked lascannon fire and the ability to transport meltavets or some such, you engage the heldrakes with cheaper fliers that can take them out, while simultaneously keeping some scoring units off the field. The stormtalon is more expensive, but doesn't use allies, and is quite good at ground attack as well, so you're not just using it to hard-counter the heldrake.

Ding!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Powerguy wrote:
Heldrakes won't turn up until turn 2 at least and if you don't need your warlord trait for anything else you might as well try and get the -1 for reserves..

This is why any CSM player who is bringing dual/triple helldrakes should invest into the comm relay.

Going from a 2/3 chance of getting your drakes in to a 8/9 is critical. Even if that is lowered by the warlord trait, your still sitting at a 75% chance per drake to come in.

 StormK wrote:
Our group's best player was tabled by these Helldrakes (it's not me). That hasn't happened ever.

One thing to consider: Getting tabled is 10x times more likely in 6th edition than 5th. 6th edition is brutal. Saying "I got tabled because a unit is over powered" is pure denial of this trend. Don't get so hung up on getting tabled. It's not as rare or special as it used to be.

As for the helldrake, you need to get you some units with interceptor and lay into it when it comes onto the table. Vendetta's can kill it without much trouble. Keep your scoring CSM squad with a missile launcher (or autocannon) and plasma gun in their rhino and shoot from the inside.

On the top of my head, as CSM :
- Havocs with AC. Cheap, only hits on 6.
- Havocs with ML and skyfire missiles. One round of steady shooting should do the trick.
- Terminators. 2+.


Finally, if you're very angry - Khorne-like angry : land raiders. They can shoot the drakes out of the sky, and almost nothing can open them. You can get into CC, and once you're on his units, the template is not worth anything.

Let's say you're even angrier than that, and you want to use cheese of your own.

Huron + terminators + dedicated land raiders. Give infiltrate to these guys. Yes, that's a turn one assault. Turn 2, send the LR chasing the helldrakes. Best of it : I find it very Khorny to have land raiders filled with raging terminators ambushed behind small trees.

To those who say "it's not broke" I say "show me". Give me a vanilla counter or CSM counter that does not require me running out to buy my own Helldrakes.

Right, so in addition to the advice others have given you, you need to realize something. The Heldrake has become popular because, quite frankly, most of the other units in the new dex kind of suck. It's all CSM players have if they want to be more than just bottom/mid-tier. The rest of their army isn't going to be that tough. The key here is managing distance and speed. Space Marine armies tend to be mid-range shooting armies. Take advantage of that and get in your opponent's face as quickly as possible. If you stay close to your opponent's units it becomes very difficult to use the bale flamer. You run the risk of getting charged, but if you're smart about your placement and you pick your targets well it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Where I am there's a necron player who brings no flyers, no AA guns, no allies and none of what many would consider "cheese" units. He consistently smacks around CSM armies with multiple drakes using the technique above. Manage your distance and mass your firepower.

After that, you can bring a ADL and Quad gun. These are certainly NOT cheese by any means.

Honestly, the drake is very good, but if it's dominating to the point that you honestly think it's broken, you may need to look at your tactics.

Torrent weapons fire like template weapons, except they can be placed 12" out instead of in base.
Template weapons cannot be fired into the 3rd floor or higher of a ruins if the shooting model is outside the ruins.

Unless your opponent is loading up on blastmasters, cluster up on upper levels. You'll be safe from the flames, giving you a little more time to deal with them.
And what's the best way to deal with them?
Quadgun, manned by dakka dreadnought.

With my blood angels, I leave the shooters up high, dreadnought with the quad, and have the 3 units of Sanguinary Guard ignore the flyers and go to town.

-Matt

Heldrakes are the one unit that gives that codex any competitive punch at all. I've stopped playing my CSM simply because I don't want to hinge my games on one unit. It was bad enough when all we had was Plague Marines, Lash Sorcerors, and 9 Obliterators lol

Anyway...any IG player with a pair of Vendettas should be able to handle Heldrakes no problem. Sounds like a meta problem rather than a "this unit is broken" problem.

I feel your pain man, I really do. I play footdar and tau, so my scoring units are even squishier, and RELY on cover saves to live. That stupid turkey can roast ANY of my troop choices in a single shot. Crisis suits get eaten alive, as the torrent and fast mobility can get around JSJ and shield drone placement. Not really anything I can do about it with the eldar, at least the tau can TL railgun it, sometimes.I feel your pain man, I really do. I play footdar and tau, so my scoring units are even squishier, and RELY on cover saves to live. That stupid turkey can roast ANY of my troop choices in a single shot. Crisis suits get eaten alive, as the torrent and fast mobility can get around JSJ and shield drone placement. Not really anything I can do about it with the eldar, at least the tau can TL railgun it, sometimes. Hellturkeys love to eat expensive models in power armor for breakfast.

Foot armies became more popular in 6th, and then what do you know, the 1st 6th codex gets a unit that flies and is designed to kill infantry in the open!?

As far as what you can do against it-mech up. I put my fire warriors back in devilfish, and that took care of that problem real quick. I was running wave serpent spam, until the psychic power nerf(GW really has to watch those old codices. Better make sure nobody would consider playing Eldar until they get the new power dex). Land raiders can't be touched by a hellturkey, and have weapons capable of hurting the bird. Godhammer lascannons are pretty good, as well as crusader assault cannons. Since you are snap shooting anyways, you can move a full "12, and POTMS any weapons that wont hurt it(hurricane bolters, heavy bolters ETC) into another unit. Keep your marines inside.

Another option is spamming MSU razorbacks with TL lascannons or assault cannons. Not incredibly survivable, but the drake cant touch them, and they can shoot back if need be. If you lose one or two, big deal. You have more. Rifleman dreads are okay, but I dont trust 4 TL snap shot autocannons to do much to an AV12 flier with a 5++. Ironclad dreads are tough to hurt, and can wreck havoc in the backfield if podded in.


Although, I agree between the turret for the baleflamer and vector strikes ignoring cover, helldrakes got an unnecessary boost in power.

"Unit X counters my list, but is extremely lacklustre against many other lists or armies, therefore it's OP."

Cool, when I see a heldrake my vendettas blow it out the sky without a second thought. Just because it counters marines doesn't make it over-powered, it means it's working as intended.

Hell drakes are good at killing MEQ, but doesn't perform that great against IG when they bring vendettas or crons when they have a lot of Tesla destructors.

Distributing your squad on different levels on ruins help as well, more than once I've been only able to burn 3- marines due to them being on different levels and only being able to target the most crowded level. That isn't a counter but makes the helldrake less effective, also as mentioned above your own flyers/ADL or lots of shots will take him down.

How would the current DA codex counter them, using no allies?

Im going to be running a fair bit of plasma:

2x Tac squad (5 man) with plasma gun
2x Termie squad with plasma cannon
Contemptor with claws & plasma blasters

IM also going to be running a rifleman dread.

WIll any of that stuff be effective at all?

I may from time to time proxy my Stormtalon as a Nephilim w lascannon.

IM nto too worried about countering the Drake, just wondering if my planned list has the ability to deal with it if needed.

Not very effective, no. The plasma cannon's can't target a flier because they are blast weapons.

The plasma guns are only giving you 2 shots each, and you need 6's to hit a flier. With only 2 on your list, that's 4 shots (at 12" range) at a 6 to-hit per round, or 2 shots (12-24" range) per round. Not very good odds.

The only Centemptor Dreadnought loadouts that will help would be the 2x Kheres Assault Cannons. While stationary, it has Skyfire and interceptor, so you can shoot it down at BS5 when it comes on the table. Just hope for those rending hits!

The regular dread with 2X TLAC's is a decent start, though.

It's actually a pretty big gamble to go double flamer helturkey, given how weak it makes them vs other flyers. Two flamer helturkeys don't have much of a shot vs a single stormraven or vendetta. And when was the last time you saw a single vendetta? IG > Helturkey all day, every day.

 kronk wrote:
Not very effective, no. The plasma cannon's can't target a flier because they are blast weapons.

The plasma guns are only giving you 2 shots each, and you need 6's to hit a flier. With only 2 on your list, that's 4 shots (at 12" range) at a 6 to-hit per round, or 2 shots (12-24" range) per round. Not very good odds.

The only Centemptor Dreadnought loadouts that will help would be the 2x Kheres Assault Cannons. While stationary, it has Skyfire and interceptor, so you can shoot it down at BS5 when it comes on the table. Just hope for those rending hits!

The regular dread with 2X TLAC's is a decent start, though.

Thanks for the reply, its about what I figured. Im using the rifleman dread for a bit of anti-aircraft & anti-troop ability.

Riflemen also open those pesky rhinos and chimeras reasonably.

The FAQ made Heldrakes ludicrously strong, game-breakingly so. It's stupid (GW could have instead made the CSM dex competitive rather than prop it up with a broken unit so every CSM army looks identical), but it's not changing any time soon. We're in it for the long haul, or at least until the next FAQ

For Vanilla Marines, your best anti-flyer options are Storm Talons, fortifications, TL weaponry and allies. Storm Talons can knock Drakes out, but they can tear up those 2HP with Vector Strikes. Quad Guns and Icarus Lascannons are too easy to knock out. Riflemen Dreads still work quite well, or any TL weaponry with a high RoF and medum to high S. You also have access to BA Storm Ravens and Vendettas, which are probably the 2 best anti-flyer units around.

You're basically going to have to incorporate some BA (a Divination Librarian, 3 spare DC and a Raven is an easy inclusion) or IG (power blob and vendetta, the usual) or find another route.

If anything, the FW fans should be really happy about the drake changes. I used to think that FW had balance issues (Mortis Contemptors and Saber Platforms in particular), but now that GW has screwed the pooch I wouldn't feel guilty about throwing down a pair of Mortis Contemptors.

 Lord Yayula wrote:
Distributing your squad on different levels on ruins help as well, more than once I've been only able to burn 3- marines due to them being on different levels and only being able to target the most crowded level. That isn't a counter but makes the helldrake less effective, also as mentioned above your own flyers/ADL or lots of shots will take him down.

Wow. I think Joey may have cheated me. I had ten scouts w/ sniper rifles holding an objective on the second and third floor of an admin building. He flamed the 6 on the top floor on turn two, then, next turn soul blaze killed 3 on the floor below. I argued that you can't target multiple levels of a building but he told me soul blaze affected the unit regardless "'cause it's magic".

I think soul blaze goes off after the fact. The actual template attack would only hit one level, but soul blaze keeps hitting the squad in general. I think that's how it works. It works this way because of the rules for soulblaze, not because its "magic".

Soul blaze would kill the ones on another level, but helldrakes dont have soul blaze.

My new army I'm working on is Death Korps of Krieg allied with Marines Malevolent. Taking IG allied AA was my first thought. For CSM I initially discounted cultist but they are a great screen for my Chaos termie lord with brand of Skalathrax.

Thanks for all the great posts! This thread got more attention than I thought it would. When it comes to "sky fire" or "interceptor" weapons the list is dreadfully short. I have an ADL with quad gun that I use for SM and CSM but it did nothing for me. I think that was just my own fault for not giving it a squad at deployment. (Lots of reserves this game). I am planning on getting either a super heavy tank or a tank squad for my DKOK. which IG tanks can deal with fliers?

Soulblaze killed 3 scouts?, damn... that must have been some really lucky shots. With soulblaze you roll on 4+ it does D3 hits of Str4 Ap5, so you get to save... that means he rolled a 4, followed by a 5-6, followed by 3 4+, and then you failed those 3 saves.

Scouts are sv4+ aren't they?

 StormK wrote:

 Lord Yayula wrote:
Distributing your squad on different levels on ruins help as well, more than once I've been only able to burn 3- marines due to them being on different levels and only being able to target the most crowded level. That isn't a counter but makes the helldrake less effective, also as mentioned above your own flyers/ADL or lots of shots will take him down.

Wow. I think Joey may have cheated me. I had ten scouts w/ sniper rifles holding an objective on the second and third floor of an admin building. He flamed the 6 on the top floor on turn two, then, next turn soul blaze killed 3 on the floor below. I argued that you can't target multiple levels of a building but he told me soul blaze affected the unit regardless "'cause it's magic".

Its a bit wierd that jump/jet packs, jet bikes and skimmers can all target any level of a ruin however flyes cannot?