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Eldar scatter bikes.
Deathstars.
Decurions.
Knights of all kinds.

Seems like a lot of common lists are focused on the ground game again.
Is anyone even worried about the sky anymore?

If someone shows up with a few flyers in their army it's never really a worry. You can either weather their few attacks or use what little anti-air you might have brought to take care of them.
But what would happen now if someone were to show up with 6 to 10 airborne threats?
Would they have their asses handed to them, or would their opponents be stuck with nothing that can handle that amount of flying death?

PenTyrant is still a tough list to beat.

That said, the durability/offensive output of some ground forces means they can put up a good fight against it.

Yeah it never really went away, pentyrant has been around since shield of baal. And it's one of the most powerful lists in the game. Nobody else really has flyers good enough to makeep that work, as FMCS are naturally far far better than flyers.

Yes, true, but how many of them are in your typical list?
Enough to handle, say, ten enemy flyers without ground support?

And while most armies are resilient enough to weather shots from a few flyers, what about an army consisting of almost nothing but? If they can't really do much to hurt them back, that's a battle of attrition that doesn't seem like it will go well in the end.

FMC-spam still works. Alan "Pajamapants" just won 3 GT's in a row with his Daemon Flying Circus. And while not as impressive, I've just won 2 RTT's in a row with my BAO Pentyrant Tyranids. The flyers will perform, that's a given. However, the key to the army is the supporting units, what you surround your flyers with. If you can pair them up with good, complementary units, then you can create an anti-meta matchup nightmare for most opponents. However, a flyrer-spam army is and will always be a RPS (rock-paper-scissors) type of army so there is always the possibility that you may encounter an army that will give them problems. Fortunately for flyer-spam armies, about 75% of the time, they will be the counter to other army builds.

What about non-FMCs?
I'm playing around with the idea of a New Cron Air list that uses 8 to 10 Scythes (4 NS/4 DS or 7 NS/3 DS).
Looking at the current meta, there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot that will be able to handle that. Yes, if someone comes prepared, that list would be screwed, but like you said, it's not a very common threat anymore. Chances that someone would be able to handle that amount of flyers with your average list would be pretty slim.
Only thing I've gotta figure out is how to best keep my ground forces alive beyond the first turn in the face of some of these new Alpha strikes (probably gonna have to use fortifications of some kind... too bad you can't stick fortifications ON fortifications. An Imperial Bunker sitting on top of a Skyshield Landing Pad would be hilarious!)

Having a skyshield with the flyer on turn 1 upgrade should help a flyer heavy list survive am alpha strike. Some other units would benefit from the invul save too.

I have wondered how well a list with 2 or 3 crimson deaths would do.

I intend to have 3 full Big Mek Gunz batteries in my collection. Lobbas (of course), KMK's and Traktor Kannons. How much I bring, how they are deployed and which I bring will depend on the size of the game and whom I'm playing but I l also want them on display with the rest of my army. The Ork Traktor Kannon is devastating to Flying vehicles and creatures. If a flyer is zooming it will be immobilized on a glance or pen in addition to effects rolled, if it's a creature swooping and takes 1 or more wounds it suffers a -3 to it's grounding test that turn. But even if either is hovering it's still a Str8 AP3 hit with Skyfire. A full battery is 5 shots with half of them having a chance of hitting and only really needing one hit most of the time unless attacking AV13-14 hoverers.

 skoffs wrote:
What about non-FMCs?
I'm playing around with the idea of a New Cron Air list that uses 8 to 10 Scythes (4 NS/4 DS or 7 NS/3 DS).
Looking at the current meta, there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot that will be able to handle that. Yes, if someone comes prepared, that list would be screwed, but like you said, it's not a very common threat anymore. Chances that someone would be able to handle that amount of flyers with your average list would be pretty slim.
Only thing I've gotta figure out is how to best keep my ground forces alive beyond the first turn in the face of some of these new Alpha strikes...

It could work depending on a few factors:

1. Mission Type. In Eternal War missions where the flyer-spam army is going 2nd, it will be very strong. In Maelstrom missions it can still do well, depending if the objectives are scored at the end of each player turn (book missions) or each game turn (ITC format). However, in Progressive-style missions (i.e. Nova, ATC, ETC) where you have to wait a turn before you score an objective, it will have problems.

2. 2nd Turn. This type of army is usually more prone to having problems when going 1st due to its more fragile scoring units and the way it grabs objectives.

3. Terrain. A terrain-heavy map will give this build problems, especially if there is adequate BLOS terrain (or even ruins for enemy units to go-to-ground with). On the other hand, a terrain-lite map will make it a shooting gallery for the flyer-spam army.

Overall, CronAir is a RPS build that will give many other builds problems. Due to the declining popularity of the flyer-spam army, so too does the popularity of skyfire go down (also contributing to this is the change to the Skyfire USR). That in essence makes a flyer-spam army actually more difficult to deal with. In casual games at your local gaming store, your CronAir build will probably be unstoppable. However, be careful to examine the mission criterias of tournament. Most of the other top builds will have a way to play against flyer-spam, and it doesn't always involve shooting them down. Sometimes, playing against them means that you build your list to be able to withstand their firepower or to be able to outmaneuver them.

As a guy who is all theory hammer while I build up my new ork Army, I arrived at this conclusion for Orks. Air Armada is 5 flyers, with the ability to leave to board and restore hit points and bombs. I figure that's gotta be pretty survivable and annoying to deal with.

Also with the waaagh plane special rule, combining with formations that allow for multiple waaagh means an extra 11 shots a turn. Not too shabby for the humble orks.

I think flyer list is a great idea. I think multiple vulture gunships from the elysian list would be brutal. Half of them DS turn one in zooming mode and have vector dancer as a bonus to get around terrain heavy lists. OP could be onto something here.

I know I plan to have at least one of each type of Ork jet maybe more. I expect to run into more flyers too when I move down near Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto next week. Haven't seen codices since 3e and 4e but now in 7e I see pretty much every army has some. I'm preparing to have em and deal with them.

It depends on how competitive the people you're playing against are.
Most armies may have a minor amount as support in some fashion. That's not what I'm talking, here. I'm talking about a list composed of more than 50% flyers. Most people might have resources to deal with a few. Doubtful many people will be prepared for a full strength air force.

My plan A is to completely ignore flyers. Most can't do anywhere near enough damage to justify their cost.

I think the problem with flyers is that they can't grab objectives. Most deathstars can quite easily weather the fire from 8-10 flyers, especially if some are starting off the board or having to forego a turn of shooting because they're out of position. At that point, they just need to grab a couple of objectives to take the game - and they'll make short work of any flyers that go into hover, or any small ground units the other player can squeeze into his list

 The Shadow wrote:
I think the problem with flyers is that they can't grab objectives. Most deathstars can quite easily weather the fire from 8-10 flyers, especially if some are starting off the board or having to forego a turn of shooting because they're out of position. At that point, they just need to grab a couple of objectives to take the game - and they'll make short work of any flyers that go into hover, or any small ground units the other player can squeeze into his list

Sometimes they forgo more than one turn of shooting. Disastrous.

I don't know. Dakkajet shoots 9 shots at Str6 AP4 at BS3 instead of the Ork BS2 and can shoot 12 shots during Waaaaaagh! It's going to take something down by volume of dice. I wish our bomma had more bombs because it's one of our few Armourbane weapons and it's in a big blast rofl but it needs more bombs. Burna jet I want to try. It has more ammo and it's one of our few Ignores Cover models. The others are templates so having the ranges skorcha weapons would be nice to clear out ruins and stuff. I intend to give it a try.

Ill ignore it because there are ground forces to kill.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
I don't know. Dakkajet shoots 9 shots at Str6 AP4 at BS3 instead of the Ork BS2 and can shoot 12 shots during Waaaaaagh! It's going to take something down by volume of dice. I wish our bomma had more bombs because it's one of our few Armourbane weapons and it's in a big blast rofl but it needs more bombs. Burna jet I want to try. It has more ammo and it's one of our few Ignores Cover models. The others are templates so having the ranges skorcha weapons would be nice to clear out ruins and stuff. I intend to give it a try.

So assuming it comes on turn 2, and assuming you waaagh!!!, and assuming you're never left in a bad position where you can't shoot a good target thanks to being a zooming flyer, and assuming you never get hit or have to jink, you shoot 39 bs3 s6 shots before the game might end on t5 with the jet being non-scoring. With twinlinked, that means 29.25 hits, and 24.35 ap4 wounds against t4. If you found a squishy target, great. In fact, that could really pound some skitarii. That's only 8.13 dead marines/eldar bikes though. (Assuming they aren't getting more than standard protection. They could be shrouded and jinking or have fnp!) Shooting at the same wraithknight all game only yields 1.08 wounds. I don't think either of those armies would have an issue with simply ignoring the flyer.

As for how effective flyer spam is, it really depends on the missions. In ITC, I would never run a supersonic flyer ever. Being able to drop late game and score or contest after thinning enemy forces is important.

 skoffs wrote:
Eldar scatter bikes.
Deathstars.
Decurions.
Knights of all kinds.

Seems like a lot of common lists are focused on the ground game again.
Is anyone even worried about the sky anymore?

If someone shows up with a few flyers in their army it's never really a worry. You can either weather their few attacks or use what little anti-air you might have brought to take care of them.
But what would happen now if someone were to show up with 6 to 10 airborne threats?
Would they have their asses handed to them, or would their opponents be stuck with nothing that can handle that amount of flying death?

If your format uses the mysterious objectives the 1/6 chance that any objective is a skyfire nexus still presents a high degree of "ruh-oh" I'm done to a flyer based army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
My plan A is to completely ignore flyers. Most can't do anywhere near enough damage to justify their cost.

This ^^
"play the mission, hold the objectives, lose a unit a turn.... win the game"

As a Necron player, the idea of a metric gak-ton of twinlinked Tesla still makes me giddy. Yes, Night Scythes have gone up in price, but Doom Scythes have come down. Add to that the incredibly underrated Deathbringer Flight formation and you have a serious amount of firepower, especially if you're bringing four of each.

But granted, even if I was able to bring enough hurt to threaten my opponent's forces, there is still the issue of scoring.
All it would take is getting my meager amount of Immortals and Tomb Blades wiped out and there would be nothing left for me to do, even with eight croissants on the table.

I've never seen more than 4-5 flyers on a board but that was pretty clunky at times and suffered against board control lists.

Maybe I'm mistaken but it seems rather difficult to position that many not to mention objective missions will be pretty rough. Its an interesting idea though, whats your list?

I ran 6 night scythes until the new dex came out and did great with them, but the loss of special weapon crypteks and the inability to reimbark with the 7th ed book pretty much wrecked that. I still take two night scythes in every list though.

dominuschao wrote:
Its an interesting idea though, whats your list?

Initial idea was but I've since ditched that plan in favor of something with a little more survivability against alpha strikes. Still working on it. Will probably have to include a fortification of some kind. Haven't settled on what yet.

Working on an Elysian list after the plastic Falshirmjaegers from WL come out. It will have 4 Valks, 2 vendettas, 2 Vultures, plus a horde of drop troops. I am really enjoying the increasing lack of dedicated AA in lists these days.

I was thinking about doing the exact same type of thing! something like

CAD

FA
-Stormtalon:skyhammer Missiles
-Stormtalon:skyhammer Missiles
-Stormtalon:skyhammer Missiles

HS
-Fire Raptor:AutoCannon
-Fire Raptor:AutoCannon

Formations
-Storm Wing
-Stormraven: TL:LC, MM
-Stormtalon:Skyhammer
-Stormtalon:Skyhammer
-Storm Wing
-Stormraven: TL:LC, MM
-Stormtalon:Skyhammer
-Stormtalon:Skyhammer

This costs exactly 1650 points, leaving 200 points for an HQ and troops.

2 fire raptors, 7 talons, 2 ravens. It's quite a bit of firepower and I don't think anyone will have enough dedicated AA to handle 11 fliers.

BTW, if you are thinking about spamming flyers, consider running Helturkey allies. They're good for scatterbikes, Ravenwing, Necrons and a host of other bothersome ground units.

These armies can't cut it in maelstrom missions.

im thinking an awesome one would be sky silencer spam. your basically guaranteed STWL unless its pask or a flyrant and you get to just appear and eat everyone. you need to have some kind of board presence to start but its not that bad when you consider two sets of silencers is only 690p

What's stopping you being tabled easily if 80% of your forces are in the air?