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My guess would be the next would be marines and chaos, but I think Eldar would be much more interesting than marines. Perhaps they will do marines and neurons to tie in with the new edition of 40k.

Either/Or wrote:
My guess would be the next would be marines and chaos, but I think Eldar would be much more interesting than marines. Perhaps they will do marines and neurons to tie in with the new edition of 40k.

It anyones guess currently. before we got taros, I would've said Astartes vs Astartes, but for obvious reasons that's not happening. As much as I want marines, I'd prefer Aeldari vs Aeldari, cuz I wonder if there would be Harlequins for a rare 3 adversary box.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Heeey guys big surprise the Tau gak is worse and more expensive than the imperial stuff.

The thunderbolt is definitely the elephant in the room with all the new stuff including the new imperial stuff.

Either/Or wrote:


No, I mean lascannons. The Lightnings have either multilaser or lascannons. Don’t know if they used to have auto cannons, but the new models have lascannons by the text description and to my eye the model as well. I don’t, however, disagree that less missiles and instead all the gun options for each plane would have been better. I hope there is errata for thunderbolt point costs as both Lightnings and Avengers don’t seem worth the points vs thunderbolts.

Then I don't know what are you on about, look at the sprue it's literally 3 pair of lascannon next to each other. Oh and the new weapons does seem to be multilaser, not autocannon, and you got 1 of that per sprue.

If you were buying other kit, you will have load and load of spare missile bits, gun bit like the multilaser however, you won't. It's dumb if someone want to build 10 Lightning with multilaser, they have to buy 5 boxes.

And you don't just load up every planes you built full of missile because things got expensive and point limit.

Chopstick wrote:

Either/Or wrote:


No, I mean lascannons. The Lightnings have either multilaser or lascannons. Don’t know if they used to have auto cannons, but the new models have lascannons by the text description and to my eye the model as well. I don’t, however, disagree that less missiles and instead all the gun options for each plane would have been better. I hope there is errata for thunderbolt point costs as both Lightnings and Avengers don’t seem worth the points vs thunderbolts.

Then I don't know what are you on about, look at the sprue it's literally 3 pair of lascannon next to each other. Oh and the new weapons does seem to be multilaser, not autocannon, and you got 1 of that per sprue.

If you were buying other kit, you will have load and load of spare missile bits, gun bit like the multilaser however, you won't. It's dumb if someone want to build 10 Lightning with multilaser, they have to buy 5 boxes.

And you don't just load up every planes you built full of missile because things got expensive and point limit.

I think perhaps you are unclear which weapon is which. The product description even says you can only make 2 “lightning fighters” which are the lascanon version. The others have multi lasers, so I think you can make all three with multi lasers (“lightning strike fighters”). I agree regarding missiles, as I said I would rather they had included enough lascannons instead of that many missiles.

From GW: “ This kit allows you to build both Lightning Strike Fighters, packing twin multi-lasers, and Lightning Fighters, armed with deadly twin lascannons... The set includes:

- 6 plastic Imperial Navy Lightning Strike Fighter miniatures (2 of which can be built as Lightning Fighters).”

Either/Or wrote:

I think perhaps you are unclear which weapon is which. The product description even says you can only make 2 “lightning fighters” which are the lascanon version. The others have multi lasers, so I think you can make all three with multi lasers (“lightning strike fighters”). I agree regarding missiles, as I said I would rather they had included enough lascannons instead of that many missiles.

From GW: “ This kit allows you to build both Lightning Strike Fighters, packing twin multi-lasers, and Lightning Fighters, armed with deadly twin lascannons... The set includes:

- 6 plastic Imperial Navy Lightning Strike Fighter miniatures (2 of which can be built as Lightning Fighters).”

Look like you are correct, they changed the lascannon design, and they also changed the name of the variant. The Lascannon Voss lightning was always called Lightning strike
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-WW/Imperial-Navy-Voss-Pattern-Lightning-Strike-Fighter

Still a dumb (or perharp greedy) design choice if someone want to build squadron of other variant.

Either/Or wrote:
My guess would be the next would be marines and chaos, but I think Eldar would be much more interesting than marines. Perhaps they will do marines and neurons to tie in with the new edition of 40k.

There was an early rumor that there was six factions where planned at start. My guess is that the two of the next three are craftworld eldar and space marines. Eldar and marines both have a lot of unique styled models, high demand, and aren’t tied to one era. Tyranids are maybe a half step behind those two. Chaos it would depend on if they are repainted marines with hell talons and hell blades aircraft or heldrakes and new creatures. I don’t think necrons have enough to make a full faction with only two aircraft right now.

So far though, it looks like they're sticking to just the Forge World designs for aircraft. Wouldn't say no to a plastic Heldrake, but I think we'll be seeing just the Talon and Blade, maybe with variants thrown in with different weapon loadouts. On the bright side, YMMV obv, no Stormtalon or Stormhawk either, but instead the Thunderhawk and Xiphos.

I'm hoping that they're sticking to the current release schedule of humans versus aliens. With Navy now more or less completely out of the way, aside from the dreaded resin kits and an objective sprue containing Basilisk AA guns, we can move on to pitting Space Marines and CSM / Heretic aircraft against xenos.

The "easy" factions were done up first, for the current armies out and about they already had quite an amount of art assets left over from the previous incarnation of the game.

Chopstick wrote:

Either/Or wrote:

I think perhaps you are unclear which weapon is which. The product description even says you can only make 2 “lightning fighters” which are the lascanon version. The others have multi lasers, so I think you can make all three with multi lasers (“lightning strike fighters”). I agree regarding missiles, as I said I would rather they had included enough lascannons instead of that many missiles.

From GW: “ This kit allows you to build both Lightning Strike Fighters, packing twin multi-lasers, and Lightning Fighters, armed with deadly twin lascannons... The set includes:

- 6 plastic Imperial Navy Lightning Strike Fighter miniatures (2 of which can be built as Lightning Fighters).”

Look like you are correct, they changed the lascannon design, and they also changed the name of the variant. The Lascannon Voss lightning was always called Lightning strike
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-WW/Imperial-Navy-Voss-Pattern-Lightning-Strike-Fighter

Still a dumb (or perharp greedy) design choice if someone want to build squadron of other variant.

Yeah that seems like a pretty silly mistake with the name, really. The "strike" variant was the ground-attack variant because that's the ground-attack version with twin lascannons - the Avenger, the other ground attack fighter, is also a "strike" fighter because of the same role. It makes no sense to change the interceptor variant to the "strike" name...surely that can't be an intentional thing and is a mistake?

A little surprised Space Marines haven't made an appearance yet, though no doubt they will. Really hoping we get the Xiphon in plastic. I'd like to see Eldar too, they have some great looking flyers.

SM and Eldar were mentioned in one of the early Twitch streams.

They did tease about plastic thunderhawk awhile back after all.

Although I'd prefer Chaos or new faction like Necron or Nid over SM. SM bring nothing new to the table.

When they're doing the Thunderhawk, here's hoping they'll also do a transporter, that would be ace.

Chopstick wrote:

Either/Or wrote:

I think perhaps you are unclear which weapon is which. The product description even says you can only make 2 “lightning fighters” which are the lascanon version. The others have multi lasers, so I think you can make all three with multi lasers (“lightning strike fighters”). I agree regarding missiles, as I said I would rather they had included enough lascannons instead of that many missiles.

From GW: “ This kit allows you to build both Lightning Strike Fighters, packing twin multi-lasers, and Lightning Fighters, armed with deadly twin lascannons... The set includes:

- 6 plastic Imperial Navy Lightning Strike Fighter miniatures (2 of which can be built as Lightning Fighters).”

Look like you are correct, they changed the lascannon design, and they also changed the name of the variant. The Lascannon Voss lightning was always called Lightning strike
https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-WW/Imperial-Navy-Voss-Pattern-Lightning-Strike-Fighter

Still a dumb (or perharp greedy) design choice if someone want to build squadron of other variant.

Well, the 40K lightning only has the lascannon option, no multilaser included. It would be nice to see some of these additions in AI be reflected in the larger models- adding a multilaser to the lightning kit would be trivial.

 Soundtheory wrote:
A little surprised Space Marines haven't made an appearance yet, though no doubt they will. Really hoping we get the Xiphon in plastic. I'd like to see Eldar too, they have some great looking flyers.

The FW Marines flyers are cool - the COdex ones look like gak

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Soundtheory wrote:
A little surprised Space Marines haven't made an appearance yet, though no doubt they will. Really hoping we get the Xiphon in plastic. I'd like to see Eldar too, they have some great looking flyers.

The FW Marines flyers are cool - the COdex ones look like gak

Hey, I love my Stormtalon....but it's not exactly the prettiest one.

Xiphon, Thunderhawk, Sokar & Fire Raptor are what I really want.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:


Well, the 40K lightning only has the lascannon option, no multilaser included. It would be nice to see some of these additions in AI be reflected in the larger models- adding a multilaser to the lightning kit would be trivial.

No, the original Lightning Pattern carry the long barrel Autocannon on its belly, and 4 missile on wings, the strike variant removed the autocannon and put 2 missile in place instead. The Voss pattern Lightning have more wings missile, but instead of underslung gun like the old pattern, they put tacticool landing spike in place instead.

If one follow the design intention of the old ligtning, the normal Voss pattern ligtning would have ditched 2 missile and replace it with guns, or ditched the landing spike and added more gun, not ditching the lascannon and replaced it with a very weak weapon. Lacannon had always been the mandatory "reliable for everything" weapons for Imperium fighters (Thunderbolt, Lightning, Avenger, and even the SM Xiphon). Whoever design these new pattern configuration completely miss the idea (or just disregard) of the original designer.

 BrookM wrote:
When they're doing the Thunderhawk, here's hoping they'll also do a transporter, that would be ace.

Especially if it came with Rhinos\Land Raider as cargo...

It's certainly a good match for the game, as obviously some good opportunities for escort missions etc. Mind you, it's not a small model if it's scaled correctly.

Tavis75 wrote:
It's certainly a good match for the game, as obviously some good opportunities for escort missions etc. Mind you, it's not a small model if it's scaled correctly.

Which is exactly as it should be. That will be fabulous.

It doesn't really seem like they treat Aeronautica as a priority, but I hope GW share some tidbits of information on what will be coming next sooner rather than later. I'd hate to see the game sputter out and get canned just because they didn't have the bandwidth to properly grow it.
Space Marines vs Chaos Space Marines would probably bring in quite a few players given that they are two of the best selling tabletop armies so that might be the best next step.

I really do wonder how they'll approach Space Marines though because, while I do want to see the Thunderhawk in new AI, I think it'd be a massive mistake to make it their primary option purely out of tradition given all the air superiority fighters and more agile drop ships which have been released since the original AI. And that's before even considering Chapter specific aircraft for Space Wolves, Dark Angels, and Deathwatch...

This could even be where they first introduce a model for the Primaris marines' Overlord Dropship though that might overlap too much with the Thunderhawk for both to be in wave 1.

Jack Flask wrote:


I really do wonder how they'll approach Space Marines though because, while I do want to see the Thunderhawk in new AI, I think it'd be a massive mistake to make it their primary option purely out of tradition given all the air superiority fighters and more agile drop ships which have been released since the original AI. And that's before even considering Chapter specific aircraft for Space Wolves, Dark Angels, and Deathwatch...

This could even be where they first introduce a model for the Primaris marines' Overlord Dropship though that might overlap too much with the Thunderhawk for both to be in wave 1.

Why would how they approach Space Marines be a problem? They have the same sort of stuff as other factions - There's the Thunderhawk, Stormhawk Interceptor, Stormraven Gunship and Stormtalon gunship. Also the stormeagle/Fire Raptor.

Thunderhawk is big enough at this scale it'll mess with the hex won't it? You're not going to be able to occupy the spaces in front or behind (maybe the next ones over!) if it's the size of warlord titan lying down.

Would have guessed Stormhawks and Stormravens really, but honestly also Chaos vs Eldar first.

Dream AI2 would have been to keep the same scale as the old ones and spin out into the other factions earlier though. Necrons, Dark Eldar and Tyranids etc. Maybe a Heldrake as well.

 Tastyfish wrote:
Thunderhawk is big enough at this scale it'll mess with the hex won't it.

The Manta will be even worse with 2" hexes.

 Breotan wrote:

 Tastyfish wrote:
Thunderhawk is big enough at this scale it'll mess with the hex won't it.

The Manta will be even worse with 2" hexes.

Honestly with a model like the manta i'd hope they'd give it a different stand, maybe slightly taller so the other ships aren't scraping against it when in nearby hexes.

Lightning is 19 points for lascannon version and 23 points for the multi laser....... yeah stick to the Thunderbolt.

Meanwhile Valkyrie as a 16pts transport have very good additional weapon (2-6-2 (3 ammo) missile pod, or 0-4-2 Lascannon)

Looks like the Aeronautica Imperialis Rules Update and FAQ was updated today.

Aaaand Thunderbolt still better than multilaser lightning. The original game made lightning dirtcheap, and it come with more and better guns than the new one.

Chopstick wrote:
Aaaand Thunderbolt still better than multilaser lightning. The original game made lightning dirtcheap, and it come with more and better guns than the new one.

They were definitely too timid with the points increase. Perhaps if they had limited ammo or were a bit less maneuverable (ie 1-5 instead of 1-6) then that could be a way to balance things out besides just raising points.

And still no Rocket Booster for Thunderbolt.

Meanwhile Vulture, Barracuda and Tiger Shark got it because Rule Writer fail to do his homework.

I'm geniunely surprised they bothered with an FAQ at all considering this is GW's absolute least-effort product line.