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sand.zzz wrote:


contrary to popular opinion, the heldrake isn't that great. vector strike is d3 hits, but then you don't get to shoot in shooting phase. and I believe vector strike is just 1 hit (not d3) vs. FMC's, but I could be mistaken on that.

Not sure how you're getting the Heldrake can't fire?

The VS counts as firing one weapon, which means a zooming 'Drake can still fire a further three weapons in the shooting phase, and as it only has one weapon system, this poses no issue at all.

For clarification, it is D3 against zooming flyers and swooping FMCs, 1 against everything else.

 Alienoid wrote:
The soul grinder? What could I give him to fight against air?

Soul grinder comes with anti air. 3 shot auto cannon. Soul grinder can also have the a torrent, with can jack up units inside open topped, and will wreck his vehicles, even if there are barge lords.

Bastion with chaos daemons (I think the khorne ones have bs5) with a quad gun will probably work great. You could probably take the Imperial Defense Thing where you add an ADL with another quad gun.

That's what I want to add to my force anyway (to deal with storm ravens and hell drakes)

Took this from 1d4chan

Tower of Feth Off
Take a sorcerer (marked or unmarked) at ML 2 or higher give him a spell familiar and the Balestar of Mannon. Attach said sorcerer to a squad of havocs on an imperial bastion. Give the havocs 4 lascannons and upgrade the bastion to have an Icarus lascannon (for the havoc champion) to give you 5 lascannons, 1 of which is skyfire/interceptor (though the other 4 will have a solid chance of hitting flyers). Have the sorcerer roll all his powers from the divination table given by the balestar to get prescience as a primaris, and hope for perfect timing.

This way you have 5 lascannons that ignore cover and reroll to hit. (The sorcerer has to be attached to the havoc squad, otherwise perfect timing won't affect them.)

Deploy the bastion so that it is partly unreachable, while having a clear line of sight for the units within.

Now you have a tower of ultimate trolling and area denial, with long range, cover ignoring, hit rerolling 5 S9 AP2 shots.

 King Pariah wrote:
Took this from 1d4chan

Tower of Feth Off
Take a sorcerer (marked or unmarked) at ML 2 or higher give him a spell familiar and the Balestar of Mannon. Attach said sorcerer to a squad of havocs on an imperial bastion. Give the havocs 4 lascannons and upgrade the bastion to have an Icarus lascannon (for the havoc champion) to give you 5 lascannons, 1 of which is skyfire/interceptor (though the other 4 will have a solid chance of hitting flyers). Have the sorcerer roll all his powers from the divination table given by the balestar to get prescience as a primaris, and hope for perfect timing.

This way you have 5 lascannons that ignore cover and reroll to hit. (The sorcerer has to be attached to the havoc squad, otherwise perfect timing won't affect them.)

Deploy the bastion so that it is partly unreachable, while having a clear line of sight for the units within.

Now you have a tower of ultimate trolling and area denial, with long range, cover ignoring, hit rerolling 5 S9 AP2 shots.

I need to get a bastion and try this.

sand.zzz wrote:
CSM codex straight up sucks vs flyers. You will get worked by any list with strong flyers

Mmm... no. You still have all of the regular options to handle fliers that everybody else has, you just don't have a dedicated anti-flier unit. You can still handle fliers with regular anti-tank weapons, and you can still handle them by ignoring them and focusing on the ground game. A single class of unit does not invalidate an entire codex.

And as for the helldrake, ironically it's one of the best options here. It has skyfire, and 7th is kinder towards autocannons. It even has an invul save and IWND and still that AV12, which makes it far from hopeless against other fliers.

 King Pariah wrote:
Took this from 1d4chan

Tower of Feth Off
Take a sorcerer (marked or unmarked) at ML 2 or higher give him a spell familiar and the Balestar of Mannon. Attach said sorcerer to a squad of havocs on an imperial bastion. Give the havocs 4 lascannons and upgrade the bastion to have an Icarus lascannon (for the havoc champion) to give you 5 lascannons, 1 of which is skyfire/interceptor (though the other 4 will have a solid chance of hitting flyers). Have the sorcerer roll all his powers from the divination table given by the balestar to get prescience as a primaris, and hope for perfect timing.

This way you have 5 lascannons that ignore cover and reroll to hit. (The sorcerer has to be attached to the havoc squad, otherwise perfect timing won't affect them.)

Deploy the bastion so that it is partly unreachable, while having a clear line of sight for the units within.

Now you have a tower of ultimate trolling and area denial, with long range, cover ignoring, hit rerolling 5 S9 AP2 shots.

Wow yeah this is great! And it still provides lots of non-anti-air firepower. Those lascannons can be used all game against all sorts of stuff.

 Ailaros wrote:

sand.zzz wrote:
CSM codex straight up sucks vs flyers. You will get worked by any list with strong flyers

Mmm... no. You still have all of the regular options to handle fliers that everybody else has, you just don't have a dedicated anti-flier unit. You can still handle fliers with regular anti-tank weapons, and you can still handle them by ignoring them and focusing on the ground game. A single class of unit does not invalidate an entire codex.

And as for the helldrake, ironically it's one of the best options here. It has skyfire, and 7th is kinder towards autocannons. It even has an invul save and IWND and still that AV12, which makes it far from hopeless against other fliers.

Are you saying CSM AA is as good as Tau, Eldar, IG, SM, Orks? Because its objectively not.
Vendettas, Stormravens, AA tanks, Tau Skyfire.. all superior to an autocannon heldrake. IWND and AV 12 are your counterpoints? Come on dude. If you had said Fire Raptor then I'd have to say yea you have a point. But anautocannon heldrake isn't the unstoppable force of air superiority you seem to think it is. All of the armies I mentioned above can easily take down a heldrake in a single turn. You can't vector strike an enemy air unit and then shoot it in the same turn, unless you're tail mounted autocannon is accrptable to you opponent. After that vector strike and ensuing shooting phase, you're getting shot down. At least that's how heldrakes get handled where I play. Or they just get ignored.

sand.zzz wrote:Are you saying CSM AA is as good as Tau, Eldar, IG, SM, Orks?

No. I'm saying that it's good enough to get the job done. Less than best isn't a synonym for useless garbage. And, once again, there are ways to handle fliers strategically. You don't need dedicated anti-flier weapons before, and nothing has changed that you suddenly need them now.

And of course the helldrake isn't unstoppable. I just said it's one of the better options for if you want dedicated anti-air, as it has several things going for it.

Well I've seen my heldrakes severely outclassed quite a bit lately. I'm not too high on them right now and am looking at the bastion with las havocs and a MoT sorcerer, or a fire raptor gunship as alternatives. Can a heldrake work as AA, sure it can. If its working for you then that's great. They just haven't been earning their points back for me lately.

Isn't the sorcerer unable to manifest any psychic powers whatsoever while embarked in the fortification?

I'm pretty sure in the current edition the only thing you can cast from inside vehicles are witchfires.

My CSM anit-air is 2 allied Night Scythes and an Annihilation Barge.

CSM really don't do anti-air well.

If Heldrakes with Hades Autocannons still had 360 fire arc they would be good as D3 vector strike then 4 S8 shots into rear armour, but alas the Baledrake spoiled all the fun.

 Spellbound wrote:
Isn't the sorcerer unable to manifest any psychic powers whatsoever while embarked in the fortification?

I'm pretty sure in the current edition the only thing you can cast from inside vehicles are witchfires.

Can you offer a page # for this, I cant find it in the brb. It wouldn't necessarily break the strategy though, the sorcerer could be placed in cover directly behind the bastion, and still be able to get prescience on the havocs. perfect timing would be out though, I believe the sorcerer has to be attached to the squad for that one.

This is assuming that for the purposes of psychic powers, a building counts as a vehicle. The only rules which I know of where this is the case is determing glances/pens against a fortifications AV.

But yea, a page # would be great.

I've got the digi book, so not sure if page references line up, but under the rules for buildings it states that embarking and disembarking are treated the same as for transport vehicles, but nowhere I can find explicitly states if the rules once embarked do or don't apply.

I would play it yes, but RAW it appears to be something else that has fallen through the gaps.

Page 82, under "Psychic Powers and Transports"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's on page 25 as well, in the psychic powers section. "Psykers and Transports"

Buildings aren't transports, they're buildings, in a rules sense, not being patronising.

The building rules tell us to treat them as transports "when embarking and disembarking" but nowhere (that I've seen) does it say what to do while they're embarked.

Logically, the same rules should apply, but that is only an assumption at this point.

Ok this is in the stronghold assault book right?

No, the main BRB.

 Spellbound wrote:
Page 82, under "Psychic Powers and Transports"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's on page 25 as well, in the psychic powers section. "Psykers and Transports"

Fortifications don't count as transports in every aspectof the game. I'll check the SHA book when I get home, I believe there's a section in there regarding buildings/transports.

Can't see it.

sand.zzz wrote:

 Vomikron Noxis wrote:
The vengeance weapons look great, but marines can't fire them. They're automated fire (closest target, BS2) only. Twin linked makes up for that a lot though.

Yea the bs2 is probably the reason for a twin linked skyfire lascannon in an av 14 shell - is only 75 points. Taking the bs into consideration, its almost mandatory you take two. 150 points.

Still cheaper than a heldrake. They will live longer and (arguably) do more damage. I'm inclined to suggest placeing both of them near each other to ensure they shoot at the same target. That's more of a gametime decision though.

CSM don't have a lot of AA options, for me this is the best value for the points.

I think in the Stronghold Assault book you can buy an upgrade to raise the BS for auto fire to 3. Might be worth it with two twin-linked lascannons.

Also I think you can buy a regular Ikarus cannon in addition, that can be manned by someone. But I have to check this when I get home.

 Vomikron Noxis wrote:
The vengeance weapons look great, but marines can't fire them. They're automated fire (closest target, BS2) only. Twin linked makes up for that a lot though.

They're not automated fire, they have the Sentry Defence System special rule:

Sentry Defence System: A building with this special rule can use automated fire against enemy units, even if it
is unoccupied. In addition, enemy units can shoot at and charge a building with this special rule, even if it is
unoccupied.

I don't see any rule prohibiting marines from firing the gun.

That's the point really. They ONLY use automated fire because they are emplaced weapons on a building that may never be occupied. If you could occupy the building then you could fire them manually, but the damn thing has no doors.