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I know I’ve been out of gaming for a long time. The only 40k I do anymore is on say “snow days” or rainy days my son who’s now 10 will ask to play the soldier game. So we dust off my 40k stuff & play a game. We use 3rd edition cause I think it’s simpler & quicker than the 2 later versions I have. But the other day when we had a game he asked why don’t we have airplanes? I remembered the later rules on flyers that came out but that was when I was getting out of the hobby & don’t have a copy. I was hoping with all these experienced & seasoned players out there someone could come up with something I could experiment with? I’m not worried about specific stats for a particular aircraft. I just want ideas on the whole turn sequence: move, shoot, & being shot at. Thanks in advance

So you just want a quick and dirty way to splash flyers into 3rd edition games?

Well, the defining features of flyers in 8th edition are:

* You have a minimum distance that you MUST move. Failure to move at least that far results in instant death.

* You move forward in a straight line and can only rotate 90 degrees once before moving.

* Attacks against most flyers take a -1 to hit penalty.

* Flyers cannot assault (not an issue for 3rd edition) and can only be charged by models with the Fly keyword. So basically, they can only be charged by land speeders and assault marines with jump packs; not by tactical marines and rhinos.

* Flyers cannot claim objectives.

* Some flyers can enter hover mode which basically means they ignore all the above rules until they declare they're no longer in hover mode.

*Flyers that are forced to move off of the table by their minimum movement are destroyed.

So you could basically just choose the most appropriate unit in your army to have the above rules slapped on it. If you're playing marines, maybe your land speeders get to pretend to be flyers. Hive tyrants with wings are NOT flyers in 8th, but maybe they could be in your games. You get the idea.

Wyldhunt, thank You very much! That helps A LOT! Most likely my son will be just making stuff out of LEGO!

 shrew wrote:
Wyldhunt, thank You very much! That helps A LOT! Most likely my son will be just making stuff out of LEGO!

If he's playing space marines, that's perfect! Their flyers look like they were made out of bricks anyway.

Happy gaming.

There have been Flyers at least as far back as 3e, and there have been three major incarnations of the rules (pre-6e Apocalypse/FW rules, 6e-7e rules, 8e rules). A comparison:

Movement: Pivot-move rules as mentioned by Wyldhunt. The major difference between 8e and earlier editions is that flyers used to be able to fly off the table into Ongoing Reserves (as per normal Reserves but they automatically arrive the turn after they leave); you may find it more cinematic if your flyers are swooping in and swooping out instead of flying in a square around the middle of the table.

A sidenote on Reserves: Flyers pre-8e were forced to begin the game in Reserves and get rolled for like everything else.

Attacking: The -1 to hit is 8e rules; in earlier editions you only hit flyers on 6s unless you had a weapon with the AA rule and couldn't hit them at all with blast/template weapons. I think part of the reason they changed over to -1 to hit was because it was hard to balance anti-aircraft weapons given that they were invaluable if your opponent had flyers and sort of pointless otherwise; you might use either, but keep in mind that when you only hit flyers on 6s they had much weaker armour (AV 10-11 on most, 12 was for heavily-armoured ground-attack craft) whereas with the -1 to hit 8e flyers can be as tough as ground targets (a Stormraven is T8/14W/3+, a Predator is T7/11W/3+).

Melee: In 8e you can't charge Flyers unless you could also Fly, in 7e and before you couldn't charge Flyers at all for any reason whatsoever.

Hover mode: If you're using 3e rules you'll want to know that a Flyer that chooses to hover effectively changes its type to Fast Skimmer for the turn.






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Addendum: If you want a guideline on what flyer stats looked like in 3e Imperial Armour (2000)/Imperial Armour 2 (2001), Imperial Armour Update (2002), and Imperial Armour Volume 1 (2003) should have all the FW planes from back then, they'll be hard to find but there may be pdfs floating around the Internet.

You could also treat them as skimmers. Oh, right, *fast* skimmers . In that case, just give them appropriate stats (look to other skimmers like Wave Serpents and Falcons for “tough” skimmers, and Dark Eldar skimmers for lighter planes.

Thanks guys. It looks like I’ll have a lot more to keep my son (Jake) occupied on “snow” days coming up this winter

 shrew wrote:
I know I’ve been out of gaming for a long time. The only 40k I do anymore is on say “snow days” or rainy days my son who’s now 10 will ask to play the soldier game. So we dust off my 40k stuff & play a game. We use 3rd edition cause I think it’s simpler & quicker than the 2 later versions I have. But the other day when we had a game he asked why don’t we have airplanes? I remembered the later rules on flyers that came out but that was when I was getting out of the hobby & don’t have a copy. I was hoping with all these experienced & seasoned players out there someone could come up with something I could experiment with? I’m not worried about specific stats for a particular aircraft. I just want ideas on the whole turn sequence: move, shoot, & being shot at. Thanks in advance

I'd just try to find a copy of the old paperback Imperial Armour (the first one, before Volume 1 even), which had rules for flyers and super heavies. These rules were printed in the old WD with the Vehicle Design Rules too, I think it was #252 or 251.
I actually think those old flyer rules were cooler than the current ones. Maybe a bit more complex, but certainly with a lot more flavor.

In short:
They always start in reserve, so they can arrive from turn 2 and onwards, starting on a 4+ like other reserves.
When they arrive, place them on whichever table edge you want, facing the direction they're heading.
But here's the kicker - you can't move it until the opposing player's turn. First he makes his movement phase, then you move your flyer. Then he makes his shooting phase, and you fire whichever weapons the flyer has.
You have to move it in a straight line, and can only turn 45 degrees once. After you've fired, the flyer continues and flies off the table edge - it will return next turn on a 2+.
Flyers can only be hit on 6's, and can not be targeted by ordnance or guess range weapons. Add 12" to the range (so obviously no flamers either). Weapons with the AA special rule, like the Hydra, will hit using their regular BS.
Use the normal vehicle damage charts. Immobilized counts as destroyed. Most flyers only have AV10.

That's off the top of my head, but in broad strokes it should more or less cover the 3rd ed flyer rules.

The Valkyrie also had an entire page of special rules for stuff like hovering and rapelling.