Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Can your army ignore flyers without taking anti air?
How big of a threat are these aircraft and does an army that relies on them suffer any exploitable weaknesses?

I'm just wondering how people in general are coping with this perceived threat.

As more and more armies get access to flyers, it will become increasingly important to be able to combat them.

Vendetta and drakes can both do a significant amount of damage to the right targets if left unchecked.

The ability to "ignore" flyers means to be really, really tough. I ignore all flyers, except Vendettas. When I see those suckers, I plot their destruction with intense hatred. Night Scythes though make me laugh. The - Ap means Nids frankly don't care about Night Scythes... And Flyrants can wreck them. Stormravens have some mean firepower but are expensive, focusing on the rest of the army is more effective. Heldrakes are only good at killing infantry, they're weak against MCs (unless they can line up a Vector Strike... beware!) Vendettas though are chap enough to not be a point sink, and can really hurt... so they get double Flyrant duties when I see them.

Depends on the flyer.
Stormravens, Vendettas, or Helldrakes kinda have to be dealt with (Stormravens being situational as they have more uses than a gun platform) but the rest i usually ignore unless i can hit it with a reliable shot. Like if i see a Doom Scythe and i have a quad gun sitting around youre damn right im shooting at it, but if all i have is Lootas i'll usually ignore it if i see a bigger threat i need to deal with on the ground.

Depends on your list and what flyers we're talking about.

If you're playing a static gunline then no, you can't.

If you're playing a more mobile army then yes, get into that sweet spot where they only get 1 good turn of shooting at you.

This is if we are talking about vehicle flyers. FMC's are not as easy to ignore.

Yeah i tried to ignore vendettas,
I lost

True, but I'm more interested in what has happened to you or what you have seen happen during gameplay.

I have used most of the flyers available and have had them shot down or rendered useless just as many times as they have made their points back.
I've played against many flyer based armies and I think while they are awesome and fun, they are not invincible. At some point they need to fly off the board, go in to hover mode, jink save or just drop off troops.

Still wondering how people are coping outside of the theory.

Vendettas Hurt a LOT (3 TL LasCannons with AV-12 in the Air ouch). And if the player is smart its going to Grav Chute a Group of vets or shock troopers on you ..
a squadron Valkaries can be devastation to a horde army.. (AV-12 is harder to shoot down)

Ork Dakkajets if ignored will chew your troops and light vehicles up..(9 TL Str 6 Shots 18 on the Waagh)
They are however the easiest to shoot down ..
Havent been up against some of the others but the stat lines of the Stormtalons tells me it will be bring pain to a horde army ...
We shall see soon what the Tau will be flying.

Best AA for Orks = Lootas as they are multipurposed and bring weight of fire to overcome the snapshots..
Best AA for Guard = Vendetta..second best = Hydra

the quad Gun is okay ..the icarus is okay..

Neither Orks nor Guard suffer from the use of flyers
they do not create a weakness for either army ..

Have no info on what the tradeoff is for Beakies and others to bring flyers

One, yes... two... may be... more no.

If you play a marine army that's not deathwing and your opponent has a helldrake, you simply can't ignore it

same with 3 vultures, 60 S5 shots a turn twinlinked hitting on 3s, you cant just ignore that.

Opening up forgeworld means guard, crons, chaos, vanilla, and soon new tau can all do air superiority. I think now you cant just ignore them anymore, unless maybe you are nids who lack any AA and no allies.

As I dark eldar I try to outmanouver them.

Question 1: Can you ignore flyers:

No you can't. There are too many flying vehicles and flying monstrous creatures that can function as more than just mobile gun platforms (assault, disembark troops/contesters, block path with flying base, kill your troop unit, ...etc)! However, being able to cause grounding tests or forcing the vehicles to jink may be more than enough for at least a few turns and the rest of your firepower can be dedicated as usual towards ground targets after that.

2. Experience: Flyers are still relatively new to 6th Edition, but they are not as cheap or as powerful as the 5th Edition Rhinos (may they never make a comeback) with the possible exception of the Vendetta. There are a few battle reports out there where people have been pounded by them for 4+ turns and were still able to hold their objectives, but I can't imagine it being a very fun game not to be able to fight back! Flyer on flyer dog fights become a bit dice dependent so my advice would be to just have a lot of shots and a good supply of twin linked weapons (good for flyers, good for overwatch)!

I routinely ignore fliers.

Fliers that can't carry infantry are strategically pointless. They're basically heavy support choices that always arrive late and never score. Given the poor quality firepower conversion on non-skyfire weapons, it's not worth even targetting them, most of the time.

Just focus on the mission, kill the ground units. Especially the scoring ones.

With fliers that carry scoring units, that's a slightly different game. In that case, I'll sometimes pot-shot them if targets of opportunity come by. However, like all scoring units, they have to get out to score, and if you've done a good enough job mopping up the rest of everything, then they should still be vulnerable at the end of the game.

Plus, if you DO manage to pick a non-necron flier out of the sky, it's basically instant death for the dudes in side. Necron ones aren't worth shooting at, though. Just wait until the dudes get out.

In any case, yes, by and large, you can afford to ignore fliers. You might need to change your on-table play a bit, but you certainly don't need to spend points to handle them if you don't want to.

Personally, I haven't brought a weapon with skyfire in something like 4 months, and I've shot down plenty of fliers since then with lascannons and meltaguns, and never has a flier made the difference between a win and a loss for me.

tuiman wrote:same with 3 vultures, 60 S5 shots a turn twinlinked hitting on 3s, you cant just ignore that.

Opening up forgeworld means guard, crons, chaos, vanilla, and soon new tau can all do air superiority. I think now you cant just ignore them anymore, unless maybe you are nids who lack any AA and no allies.

Uh, sorry, but how are you getting your Vultures to hit on 3s?

Vultures are BS3, just like every other Navy flier. They hit on a 4+.

I ignore fliers fairly easily, or take them down with opportunistic meltaguns when they hover. That's with Sisters.

One of the many broken things about vultures (thus why they're not in the guard codex) is that they get both vector dancer and strafing run for free.

That said, there are plenty of people who can ignore that. Any vehicle with AV of 12+, for example. Even AV11 isn't going to be glanced to death every time by a punisher, and even if a vulture DOES blow up a rhino, whoopdee doo, they blew up 35 points worth of wrapper.

Because of a seething hatred of helldrakes, they are removed with extreme prejudice.

If you can get to the par of the table the flyers can't shoot then you may be in for a chance

Depends on the army, as others have said. If you are MEQ or TEQ, no. If you are hordes, maybe. IF you rely on vehicles or small squads, no. If you have other AT and can deal with ground tanks, maybe. If i play eldar, no. If i play corsairs, probably no. If i play DKOK, yes. Not much kills 11-wound T7 artillery.

Stunning a flyer and forceing a crash result because they can't legally place thier model, now that is hilarious.

Yes, I tabled 2 opp's in a row at 1000 and 1250, both using double Heldrakes that I only was able to damage once they went to hover, which all 4 eventually did, in a last ditch attempt to kill things. Honestly, their movement phase attacks do more damage then their flamers.

Kill all the things on the ground.

Vendettas would do even less to my lists.

 PipeAlley wrote:
Yes, I tabled 2 opp's in a row at 1000 and 1250, both using double Heldrakes that I only was able to damage once they went to hover, which all 4 eventually did, in a last ditch attempt to kill things. Honestly, their movement phase attacks do more damage then their flamers.

Kill all the things on the ground.

Vendettas would do even less to my lists.

Spending 340 points on flyers at 1000 points is pretty risky. That's one third of your army that might not show up until the game is already decided. Lower point levels always favor the horde.

It's kind of situational. If you play a horde, you don't really need to worry about vendettas. Dark eldar flyers might give you a serious problem though.

Overall I would say that flyers are more of a problem for elite armies that have expensive troops in power armor. The other issue is that flyers can hit anything on the board unless you're very careful, that (along with other things) makes it hard to get across the table in safety. Unless you have flyers of your own that transport units, moving around is pretty hard.

 Grey Therion wrote:
Question 1: Can you ignore flyers:

No you can't. There are too many flying vehicles and flying monstrous creatures that can function as more than just mobile gun platforms (assault, disembark troops/contesters, block path with flying base, kill your troop unit, ...etc)! However, being able to cause grounding tests or forcing the vehicles to jink may be more than enough for at least a few turns and the rest of your firepower can be dedicated as usual towards ground targets after that.

2. Experience: Flyers are still relatively new to 6th Edition, but they are not as cheap or as powerful as the 5th Edition Rhinos (may they never make a comeback) with the possible exception of the Vendetta. There are a few battle reports out there where people have been pounded by them for 4+ turns and were still able to hold their objectives, but I can't imagine it being a very fun game not to be able to fight back! Flyer on flyer dog fights become a bit dice dependent so my advice would be to just have a lot of shots and a good supply of twin linked weapons (good for flyers, good for overwatch)!

Thanks for the post support Grey Therion, some good food for thought. My necrons already trust to rolling sixes for success so for me its just a matter of knowing when is the right time to start firing in to the air.

Part of it depends on your army.
If your spamming grey hunters than vendettas as not as big of a risk. They might kill some MEQ each turn, but provided you hug cover you should be fine.
If your bringing GK paladins though, vendettas are really bad news.

If your bringing those GH, then dual/triple helldrake is bad news.
If your bringing those GK paladins drakes are just an inconvience.

Other armies don't care about either. Triple land raiders are darn tough, and are immune to vendettas and necron scythes. They can even cause vendettas problems.
120 daemons don't care about either helldrakes or vendettas.

If your army simply can't ignore the enemy by its build, then you need a solution to handle them. This might be flyers of your own, it might be AA guns like a quad gun, etc...

Generally , it depends hugely on what kind of punishment your willing to take , if you opponent is decent he will build his list to incorporate flyers in combine arms with the rest of your army , I play a full mech IG Army ( 20 games 1 loss 3 draws , my ass armor isn't as effective anymore ) and I use Vendettas to provide air support for my advancing chimera wall , if you play a horde army . Sure you can ignore Vendettas , but Valkyries with rocket pods will ruin your day ( same cost as vens. ) it is mainly target designation - i usually use my vanquishers to take out the opponents transports for first blood followed by Vendettas bitch slapping his HQ for slay the warlord , it's entirely meta dependent and if your enemy is wise enough to know how to use there flyers effectively , if your opponent is smart , don't ignore them , if he's stupid sure

 Furyou Miko wrote:

tuiman wrote:same with 3 vultures, 60 S5 shots a turn twinlinked hitting on 3s, you cant just ignore that.

Opening up forgeworld means guard, crons, chaos, vanilla, and soon new tau can all do air superiority. I think now you cant just ignore them anymore, unless maybe you are nids who lack any AA and no allies.

Uh, sorry, but how are you getting your Vultures to hit on 3s?

Vultures are BS3, just like every other Navy flier. They hit on a 4+.

I ignore fliers fairly easily, or take them down with opportunistic meltaguns when they hover. That's with Sisters.

The Vulture has strafing run, boss.

And no; if your opponent is good, you won't be able to ignore flyers.

If flyers could be ignored, they would be useless.

I guess it would depend on what the best tactical decision would be at that point in the game. I have won a game while largely ignoring a stormraven (bloody game), but in a recent game I popped it asap.

As a Necron player who only fields 2-3 flyers at the most I'd say this as a rule of thumb when fighting the Necron...

- If you have Skyfire/Interceptor - shoot them down. They only have AV11.

- If you don't have Skyfire then leave Night Scythes alone - do not leave a Doom Scythe alone as it has a bit more firepower.

Like somebody else said, the Necron flyers don't have any AP aside from the Death Ray on the Doom Scythe and you don't want that hitting you anyways.

 TheCaptain wrote:

If flyers could be ignored, they would be useless.

This made me laugh. So correct and so simple.

 Budikah wrote:
As a Necron player who only fields 2-3 flyers at the most I'd say this as a rule of thumb when fighting the Necron...

- If you have Skyfire/Interceptor - shoot them down. They only have AV11.

- If you don't have Skyfire then leave Night Scythes alone - do not leave a Doom Scythe alone as it has a bit more firepower.

Like somebody else said, the Necron flyers don't have any AP aside from the Death Ray on the Doom Scythe and you don't want that hitting you anyways.

I hate Doom Scythes!!!!! Any tips on what you'd hate to see in your enemies army against your necron fliers. I haven't got the money to chuck into fliers yet with me collecting Heresy Models. Any tips from a necron point of view would be great.

Thanks.