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So played in my first 8th edition tournament yesterday, and had a great time with a lot of good guys. Maybe it was because ATC was just last week, but I didn't see any of the brutal spam I expected to, and for the most part the lists were very reasonable tournament lists. Challenging to face but nothing to ridiculous. I should probably preface by saying I was running Chaos Space Marines.

First game I played orks, and not a highly competitive ork list. No flyers, and really no spam. Just lot of boyz, and I won by a pretty large marging. In the second game I came up against Tau. Not the drone spam I'd expected, but 3 Ghost Keels, a Storm Surge, 3 Commanders, and a Tetra. There was a lot of Dakka. I'd expected this. I'm running Raptors and a dread claw so that I can get assaults off turn one if I'm lucky, and tie them up. I thought it was gonna be really challenging, but I stood a decent chance if I got at least three of them in combat.

I got three of them in combat, took some wounds off two ghost keels, and took the storm surge down to half. I felt pretty good, thinking I was only gonna eat the fire of half his army, until my opponent informed me of a rule I'd missed. FLYERS CAN FALL OUT OF COMBAT AND STILL SHOOT AT FULL EFFECTIVENESS

I'd thought nobody could shoot when they fall back unless they had a special rule. The fact that his entire army could pretty much ignore the fact that they had even been charged was broken. No -1 to hit, no negative repercussions, I just ate an entire Tau army's fire, even though I'd gotten three charges off. The sheer amount of dakka a Tau list can put out isn't the problem. The problem is when you take away any potential counter from a assault army. Flyers taking off away from combat makes sense. I could even justify them getting to shoot in my mind, but shooting at full strength without any negatives for having been caught in combat is broken.

As long as that rule exists, I feel assault armies are doomed to be virtually completely ineffective in 8th edition. What are y'alls thoughts?

***Edit, corrected the subject header, as someone pointed out I was talking about the 'Fly' keyword and not 'Flyers'.

Yes, fly is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. But so is being assaulted out of deepstrike on your first turn or having all your overwatch eaten by a rhino. With regards to tau, they pay a lot of points for having their powerful jump-infantry, by generally having expensive and fragile suits in 8ed. An exception to this is the tau commander, perhaps the mest well rounded and effective unit in the game.

I don't know that fly-back-and shoot is broken, as an Ork player I definitely find it annoying, but I probably lean in the direction of not-broken. What really crushes Orks is flyers with airborne and hard-to-hit. You cannot assault them, and you need a 6 to hit them. That is broken, at least against Orks. But then again, I don't think they should mess with the games core mechanics, just because of one factions limitations or one poorly balanced unit.

CC is very different to what it used to be now. The emphasis on killiness has gone up. You need to concentrate your forces to kill those units or to at least cripple them. BTW, raptors have FLY too.

You don't need a 6 to hit flyers with hard to hit. You just have to roll 1 higher than normal.

Example: ballistic skill 4+ would be ballistic skill 5+ when shooting at a hard to hit flyer

Sigh

Fly and Flyers are considered VASTLY different things in 8e

Tons of things have fly, it's considered obnoxious... but not really broken.

Flyers are the things have the Hard to Hit bonus, Insane mobility, and Insane Dakka.

You just need different tactics:
Against most armies the tactic is to tie up as much as possible to prevent the units from shooting you next turn, this has the downside that you aren't likely to kill anything since you are spreading your units out so much.
Against Tau you have to concentrate your assaults on 1 or 2 units to completely destroy them, sure you don't prevent several units from firing next turn but now you've removed two units rather than wounded 4 or 5.

It sounds like, if you had concentrated your assaults, you could have destroyed either the Stormsurge or the two ghostkeels.

punisher357 wrote:
You don't need a 6 to hit flyers with hard to hit. You just have to roll 1 higher than normal.

Example: ballistic skill 4+ would be ballistic skill 5+ when shooting at a hard to hit flyer

And what about Orks that has a ballistic skill of 5+? What do they need to roll when shooting at a hard to hit flyer?

I know the answer to this one! (raises hand)... they need to roll a 6 on a d6 to score a hit.

Yeah, shame all your turn 1 assaults couldn't completely destroy your opponent...better remove a rule that makes your strategy worse.

Tau have been nerfed and taxed the hardest in 8th edition for everything they currently have, so people complaining about them being "broken" and nerfing them harder comes off as ignorant.

The biggest reason flyers became strong is that all the twin linked weapons got double the shots; with the ease of access to reroll auras they effectively are twin linked at double the shots.

Well now Flyers don't count for seeing if you have units on the board for being tabled, that might change a few things.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Well now Flyers don't count for seeing if you have units on the board for being tabled, that might change a few things.

We'll go from seeing lists with 5-6 to lists with 2-3, probably.

GhostRecon wrote:

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Well now Flyers don't count for seeing if you have units on the board for being tabled, that might change a few things.

We'll go from seeing lists with 5-6 to lists with 2-3, probably.

2-3 flying units feels quite reasonable.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
Yeah, shame all your turn 1 assaults couldn't completely destroy your opponent...better remove a rule that makes your strategy worse.

Tau have been nerfed and taxed the hardest in 8th edition for everything they currently have, so people complaining about them being "broken" and nerfing them harder comes off as ignorant.

No, you infer ignorance. Yeah, Tau took a hit, but we all know riptides were OP in 7th. I have no idea what you mean by 'taxed'. I'm not even sure I'd consider them 'nerfed' but that's not my point.

I'm not complaining that Tau in particular are broken, my complaint is that units with the 'Fly' keyword can suddenly fallback and shoot without repercussion. I'm think a -1 to hit would be more appropriate. Yeah raptors can do it too, which is a little less problematic because of their limited firepower (save maybe flamers?) But those same raptors cannot then assault again that turn (allegedly their primary role).

I'm not complaining because I got tabled turn 1, or the fact that I didn't slaughter everything with turn one charges (do I sense some butthurt from someone that plays an army requiring me to suetup outside of 12" or eat MORE firepower?), but the fact that those units can then just jump back and unleash a ton of firepower without any negative modifiers strikes me as an issue. Like I said, it's not just Tau, I could see SM interceptors pulling the same shenanigans.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I modified the thread title, to match what I meant, I someone pointed out, this isn't a hate on flyers, who just got balanced out in the FAQ.

Most units with the "fly" keyword are fast and were almost certainly capable of denying you a turn 2 charge in previous editions, much less a turn 1 charge. They used to get 2-3 turns of shooting at you unanswered, but now the fact that they don't get 0 turns to shoot you makes them brokenly good?

8e shifted a lot of things around so direct comparisons are iffy, but when it comes to shooty vs. melee army match-ups, melee armies almost universally came out ahead.

If lists weren't running just Ghost Keels and Storm Surges, a bubble wrap of cheap drones easily denies me a turn 1 charge. Quite potentially denies a turn 2 charge.

RAW meant my opponent didn't even care about his deployment (he let a maulerfiend deploy 9 inches away turn 1), because he knew it didn't matter. I'm not advocating a massive change, but a -1 to hit for shooting would at least make opponents think about it.

(Although as I've read the Tau rules today, I did just discover there was also some slight rules mis-representation on his part...)

You went to a tournament without knowing the rules. Fly will be less effective against you in the future when you know what's coming ahead of time. Try to read all 8 pages before your next tournament.

It's hard enough to design rules for people who read them. You can't expect the designers to also ensure you get a balanced game without even paying attention.

Pink Horror wrote:
You went to a tournament without knowing the rules. Fly will be less effective against you in the future when you know what's coming ahead of time. Try to read all 8 pages before your next tournament.

It's hard enough to design rules for people who read them. You can't expect the designers to also ensure you get a balanced game without even paying attention.

So tell me then, what's the counter, since evidently you've got such a lock on things. You get the fact that I'm not complaining about the fact I missed that sentence, I'm disturbed by its existence. After talking to 6 different players there, no one had a hard counter for this. I'm restructuring lists in an attempt to mitigate some of it, but it still reads as a fundamental problem to me. I guess maybe it was just a one-off issue I had then, but I wonder if after SoCal open and LVO, more people suddenly realize that this is a problem.

It is really annoying that fall back is a no-fail mechanic and many units including every wing/jump pack type plus even some non-flyers and every ultramarine just don't care about the "penalty" for doing so. Given that melee units need to go through being shot while outputting little to no damage, suck overwatch, make random charges including some very risky ones if they want to try deep strike charges, I would think that at least a chance of failing to fall back would be appropriate.

That being said, if you're fighting non-fly units, you can possibly keep them in by surrounding a guy with your final pile-in.

As for the rest, what I've gathered from my experience is that chaff melee units like bland assault marines are nigh worthless. They hit with their combat pillows and then their enemy just walks off chuckling. Hard-hitters that you can count on to wipe or completely cripple the target seem to be the only worthwhile melee units in the game right now.

The fly is included in unit's price usually. For example, ghostkeel's damage output is quite mediocre. Let's take an ion raker + burst cannon ghost one.

If it has moved, the raker firing 6 shots is gona hit 2 times and kill around 1 raptor. 2 burst cannons are gona hit 4 times and also kill around 1. So, it's statistically 1-3 dead raptors from a ghostkeel that was forced to move. A ~150 pt primarily shooty model that's statistically killing ~40 pt is not that amazing.

Commanders are of course shootier and killier but they're less tough, yet cost ~ the same depending on the loadout.

Now the problem might lie in raptors. They're not particularly killy. I'd say that they do more damage with shooting than in mellee if you take meltas or plasmas. But...they've got Fly too. So, you can use this rule to your advantage either.

You built your list and conducted yourself without understanding the rules of the game. Your experience offers nothing but a firm warning to read the rules.

faq changes things a bit...no more flyer only spam lists

 zedsdead wrote:
faq changes things a bit...no more flyer only spam lists

Not what the topic is about. It is about units with the Fly keyword, not flyers.

Shhhh! Nobody tell this guy what Harlequins can do! Or Ynnari, for that matter...

Kajaki War Pig wrote:

No, you infer ignorance. Yeah, Tau took a hit, but we all know riptides were OP in 7th. I have no idea what you mean by 'taxed'. I'm not even sure I'd consider them 'nerfed' but that's not my point.

I'm not complaining that Tau in particular are broken, my complaint is that units with the 'Fly' keyword can suddenly fallback and shoot without repercussion. I'm think a -1 to hit would be more appropriate. Yeah raptors can do it too, which is a little less problematic because of their limited firepower (save maybe flamers?) But those same raptors cannot then assault again that turn (allegedly their primary role).

I'm not complaining because I got tabled turn 1, or the fact that I didn't slaughter everything with turn one charges (do I sense some butthurt from someone that plays an army requiring me to suetup outside of 12" or eat MORE firepower?), but the fact that those units can then just jump back and unleash a ton of firepower without any negative modifiers strikes me as an issue. Like I said, it's not just Tau, I could see SM interceptors pulling the same shenanigans.

The FLY Keyword is built into the cost of a unit. Tau Battlesuits of all kinds went up significantly in points cost compared to their 7th edition counterparts.

In an edition where Turn 1 charges are easier than ever before, multi-charging has no penalty, and you can consolidate/pile into combat it would be broken if you couldn't get out of being locked in combat. The ability to shoot after doing so represents the old Hit And Run/JSJ rules. I would hardly describe it as "broken" for units to have this ability in an army that has practically no CC potential.

Kajaki War Pig wrote:

Pink Horror wrote:
You went to a tournament without knowing the rules. Fly will be less effective against you in the future when you know what's coming ahead of time. Try to read all 8 pages before your next tournament.

It's hard enough to design rules for people who read them. You can't expect the designers to also ensure you get a balanced game without even paying attention.

So tell me then, what's the counter, since evidently you've got such a lock on things. You get the fact that I'm not complaining about the fact I missed that sentence, I'm disturbed by its existence. After talking to 6 different players there, no one had a hard counter for this. I'm restructuring lists in an attempt to mitigate some of it, but it still reads as a fundamental problem to me. I guess maybe it was just a one-off issue I had then, but I wonder if after SoCal open and LVO, more people suddenly realize that this is a problem.

Maybe try taking down multiwound models with units that are more powerful than glorified Assault Marines? Warp Talons with an Icon of Khorne come to mind...

 niv-mizzet wrote:
It is really annoying that fall back is a no-fail mechanic and many units including every wing/jump pack type plus even some non-flyers and every ultramarine just don't care about the "penalty" for doing so. Given that melee units need to go through being shot while outputting little to no damage, suck overwatch, make random charges including some very risky ones if they want to try deep strike charges, I would think that at least a chance of failing to fall back would be appropriate.

That being said, if you're fighting non-fly units, you can possibly keep them in by surrounding a guy with your final pile-in.

As for the rest, what I've gathered from my experience is that chaff melee units like bland assault marines are nigh worthless. They hit with their combat pillows and then their enemy just walks off chuckling. Hard-hitters that you can count on to wipe or completely cripple the target seem to be the only worthwhile melee units in the game right now.

I think its more that the right tool is needed for the right job. There's plenty of situations where bland assault marines might be completely successful. But too many people want to be able to just bring their one hammer tool and treat everything like a nail. Unfortunately that's not always the case, sometimes you need a screwdriver or a wrench. In my opinion, if you think you have to rely on hard hitters that can completely wipe or cripple every target, you're still falling into the same trap, except you're upgrading your hammer into a sledgehammer.

I mean, I can just shoot your tank with 500 lasguns if I want to (quantity has a quality all its own after all), but it'd be a lot more intelligent for me to shoot it with a couple lascannons instead. Right tool for the right job.

Fly units can be hard to pin down, which is why I don't bother. I try to eliminate a unit or two rather than tie them up. Units that can fall back with no penalty that don't have fly are a little easier to handle by surrounding them or not giving them room to fallback effectively.

 Kajaki War Pig wrote:

Pink Horror wrote:
You went to a tournament without knowing the rules. Fly will be less effective against you in the future when you know what's coming ahead of time. Try to read all 8 pages before your next tournament.

It's hard enough to design rules for people who read them. You can't expect the designers to also ensure you get a balanced game without even paying attention.

So tell me then, what's the counter, since evidently you've got such a lock on things. You get the fact that I'm not complaining about the fact I missed that sentence, I'm disturbed by its existence. After talking to 6 different players there, no one had a hard counter for this. I'm restructuring lists in an attempt to mitigate some of it, but it still reads as a fundamental problem to me. I guess maybe it was just a one-off issue I had then, but I wonder if after SoCal open and LVO, more people suddenly realize that this is a problem.

There is no hard counter and there shouldn't be hard counters. Hard counters are solid walls that turn one tactic into nothing. Soft counters allow tactics to still function. If you are looking for a hard counter you are looking for a broken game.

 Kajaki War Pig wrote:
So tell me then, what's the counter, since evidently you've got such a lock on things. You get the fact that I'm not complaining about the fact I missed that sentence, I'm disturbed by its existence. After talking to 6 different players there, no one had a hard counter for this. I'm restructuring lists in an attempt to mitigate some of it, but it still reads as a fundamental problem to me. I guess maybe it was just a one-off issue I had then, but I wonder if after SoCal open and LVO, more people suddenly realize that this is a problem.

If youi're Space Marines...

Guns?

Space Marine outshoots Tau at the moment, so... yea

The fly special rule is consolation for Tau having zero close combat ability. If they didn't have something like that then the charge from deep strike rule would need to be removed. Going into a game vs Tau you should expect to have loads of fire coming your way and play accordingly, not demand rules to be changed so you can run up the board and remove units when you charge them.

 Brotherjanus wrote:
The fly special rule is consolation for Tau having zero close combat ability. If they didn't have something like that then the charge from deep strike rule would need to be removed. Going into a game vs Tau you should expect to have loads of fire coming your way and play accordingly, not demand rules to be changed so you can run up the board and remove units when you charge them.

Oh trust me, I did, and always have when facing Tau. I suppose there's a strong point to be made for the fact that the units charging weren't beefy enough (none of them were raptors), and some poor die rolling didn't help. Don't knee-jerk to what I'm saying here, I know points went up because they have fly, I don't disagree with their falling back and flying away. Hell even the shooting aspect makes sense, but I remain true to the fact that there is no negative for this, which I still think seems off.

A lot of folks are acting like I am taking issue with the fall back rules, and I'm not. But since for some reason flyers are an exception to the rule and allowed to shoot, I believe they should have a -1 to hit. Just like firing assault weapons while advancing. Or heavy weapons while moving. I'm not saying Tau specifically need to be nerfed, they just happened to be the one I was playing at the time.

That is a good point about the hard counter not being a thing... I agree there. I guess I just feel like their should be some negative side effect if you end up charged.