Are flyers that good?

I am looking at the flyer rules. I am not convinced they're the cat's pajamas, as what seems to be the consensus. A single flashlight shot an bring down a 260 pt Hive Tyrant and do 1 out of his skimpy 4 wounds.

Has anyone here has great success or been the victim of flyers, to the point that it swung (or broke) the game? I am interested to hear about people's experiences.

Fliers are far more amazing than Flying Monstrous Creatures, though the later is still rather impressive. In my experience, it is not that uncommon for my Scythes to go an entire game unscathed, though their damage output is still subject to the whole dice rolling aspect of the game.

Flying monsterous creatures will either be amazing or meh depending on who you go up against. if you fight against someone without the torrent of fire to put heavy weapons on them they remain mostly unscathed. and being grounded isnt horrible if you suffer one wound to avoid more. then again if you are playing someone who can put enough shots to down your FMC and then blow him away it might seem kinda pointless. although they do move much faster so it might let you position significantly better for that 2nd turn charge and avoid being focus fired.

Zooming fliers arent going to shoot every single turn...they are either going to face the wrong way or have to go off the board and come on again.

Also anyone can take an icarius lascannon or quad gun for cheap with a fortification at BS whatever you can take in your army essentially. Being a guard player my quad gun may be manned by an eversor assassin while he waits for my opponent to come feel the pain lol

FMC get skyfire and vector strikes vs other flyers. so its flying defense.

your generic close combat FMC isnt going to see much use for Swooping except as a fist turn 24inch delivery vehicle. Generally i find that its worth the risk to swoop as making your enemy need 6's to hit you is going to reduce your wound count beyond the 1 you might to take from impact with the ground. remember that you roll once for each unit that hits you. not for every hit you take.

FMC with shooting attacks can be fairly devastating. a Daemon prince with wind of chaos is pretty much guaranteed to get a good line of fire for his template. getting side armor shots on tanks, or units that try to hide their special weapons at the back.

MC's in general took a bit of a hit with 6th i find. but they were fairly nuts before. so meh.

Mechanized Flyers are really good at killing stuff and sticking around for long periods of time. After 6-7 games against them, i generally just ignore their existence. You cannot stop them from doing what they are going to do in any tactical manner, and firing non-skyfire weapons at them is just wasting that fire. (6's to hit, only to be sucked up by jink saves). The best advice i have is that any points sunk into mech flyers is not sunk into scoring units. So concentrate on the mission and don't get distracted by the big flashy new stuff. (even if it is a ridiculous amount of dakka you have no way of dealing with)

I'm hearing 2 schools of thought on flyers:

1) Take something that's dedicated to killing them (A flyer of your own, Comtemptor or DA mortis dreads, Aegis w/ a Quad gun manned by Telion, etc.)

2) Friend Request? Ignore.

That's basically it. Either you've got the perfect tool for the job, or everything you throw at it is wildly ineffective. When I've taken out flyers, it's been that they went to hover, or I totally lucked out on rolling. If I had to pick one it'd be either a flyer or something like a Mortis that can handle them, but doesn't handicap itself in doing so. (If Dark Angels get Mortis Dread w/ Skyfire and Interceptor AND LS Tempest which are basically Stormtalons, they are going to rock.)

Thats the saddest thing Beau. flyers rock right now. and in a year, when every codex that comes out has dedicated anti-aircraft guns, everyone will be whining that they spent $80 on XYZ flyer and they get shot down before they ever do anything useful.

Not this guy. As long as my only (non-IA) flyer option is a Storm Pigeon, I can't bring myself to do it. (Don't like the model, and I lke some conversions I've seen, but I don't want to put that kinda effort into it.)

The Tempest looks great even if its a downgrade from a StormTalon.

I think armies will have more OPTIONS to deal with flyers, but they are always going to have a catch. (Mortis dreads have to remain stationary, Flakk missiles are a upgrade and preclude taking Frag/Krak, etc.)

Im just excited to have an Eldar flyer....probably one with vector dancer and a holofield save of somekind.... or atleast has options to give it that

Also i think a zooming Stormraven is the biggest pain to deal with, however it being 200+ points that unless you play it smartly you wont get all your rounds of shooting out of it you can so just ignore it till it dumps troops, or just ignore it period.

Against every other flyer i find that warp spiders can be effective in large groups (squads of 10). Their str 6 guns and high volume of fire and mobility (which makes up for their lack of speed) are highly dangerous to Av11/10 fliers. So would 3x 2x scatter lazer warwalkers for that matter (bs el sucko dont matter if you need 6's to hit anyways and might be cheaper than the spiders and have better range). Hmm, but basically i havent played too many people who use their fliers effectively yet (they may be harder to ignore once people start figuring it out though....)

Fliers are incredibly good and like they mentioned in the BoLS article are exponentially better the more you have. 1 is tough to deal with, imagine facing 6 (shudder...). I played Mark today and he had a single flier. He did not roll very well for it (really short ranges on the death rays) so it only killed a Rhino, one tactical marine (in the explosion), 2 scouts, 2 land speeder tornadoes and 2 attack bikes. That's it. If he had 3 of those and a bunch of those other fliers there would not have even been any point playing. A single quad-gun would not have helped me. Hydras would not have helped me, unless I fielded the maximum 9.

I believe that flyers are worth their points if you find away to use them right, I've face several armies so far that have flyers in them and had results across the board and I rarely field a quad gun as my wolves don't like sitting around, it all basically comes down to die rolls.

I find the most annoying thing about mech flyers is you cant anticipate them. you cant do anything about them. you cant defend against them. its like having a super hard to kill Marbo show up wherever they want and f*ck you up.

They move onto the table with incredible range and get to shoot at whatever they want at whatever angle they want without you having a say in the situation at all. It removes a lot of tactical play from a game. (its fairly realistic... but realism never makes for good games)

Tim is also right about the single quad gun. for 100 points, you can only reliably take 1.3 HP off an 11AV flier per turn. I wouldn't recommend purchasing one unless you also wanted the fortification to go with it already. taking an aegis line or a bastion just so you can get the Quad is folly. if you DO want the aegis or bastion though, the gun is cheap basically a 50 point rifleman with skyfire and interceptor.

What feels wrong about countering flyers is its counter intuitive. What's better, a unit of 10 lootas or 2 riflemen? Because BS is taken out of the picture, it's simply whatever can generate the most shots.

Timbo wrote:Fliers are incredibly good and like they mentioned in the BoLS article are exponentially better the more you have. 1 is tough to deal with, imagine facing 6 (shudder...). I played Mark today and he had a single flier. He did not roll very well for it (really short ranges on the death rays) so it only killed a Rhino, one tactical marine (in the explosion), 2 scouts, 2 land speeder tornadoes and 2 attack bikes. That's it. If he had 3 of those and a bunch of those other fliers there would not have even been any point playing. A single quad-gun would not have helped me. Hydras would not have helped me, unless I fielded the maximum 9.

Tim puts it in a good perspective. There is a 3rd unit type now. Before you had to brind a balance of anti infantry and anti tank, now you have to bring anti flyer firepower too.

Rhaevyn wrote:I find the most annoying thing about mech flyers is you cant anticipate them. you cant do anything about them. you cant defend against them. its like having a super hard to kill Marbo show up wherever they want and f*ck you up.

They move onto the table with incredible range and get to shoot at whatever they want at whatever angle they want without you having a say in the situation at all. It removes a lot of tactical play from a game. (its fairly realistic... but realism never makes for good games)

Tim is also right about the single quad gun. for 100 points, you can only reliably take 1.3 HP off an 11AV flier per turn. I wouldn't recommend purchasing one unless you also wanted the fortification to go with it already. taking an aegis line or a bastion just so you can get the Quad is folly. if you DO want the aegis or bastion though, the gun is cheap basically a 50 point rifleman with skyfire and interceptor.

The quad gun strips the first hull point off when it arrives, and probably the rest during your next shooting phase.

I disagree, you don't have to plan for a flyer, besides there is nothing out there that is strictly made for aircraft hunting, its not different then planning to face a biker army or an imperial armored company, most ppl only field 1 maybe 2 flyers which any army can handle given your die rolls are in your favor. This flyer topic is just another topic that won't please everyone, give it sometime another there will be something else to take its place. In my opinion it comes down to- if you know and don't like what your future opponent uses don't play him

I've found flyers very hard to mathhammer like that stash. Between 6's to hit, and the jink save, you need approx 12 shots to achieve a solid hit. If you are using a quad gun, youre glancing on 4's (assuming av 11) so up to 24. It's got 2 hp so 48 shots. I left out tl, but you get the picture. In the games I've had with flyers, it's been very random, some the flyer gets shot out of the sky after a round, others its untouched and seemingly invincible.

My plan if I do take flyers is 2+, or none at all.

An aside: does anyone have. Ls tempest?,how does it compare size wise to a storm talon? Looks like they are slightly longer than std ls and wings are bigger.

Lord_Commander_Stash wrote:

The quad gun strips the first hull point off when it arrives, and probably the rest during your next shooting phase.

not true. you can't fire the gun the following turn if you intercept during the other players movement phase.

da bear wrote:I disagree, you don't have to plan for a flyer, besides there is nothing out there that is strictly made for aircraft hunting, its not different then planning to face a biker army or an imperial armored company, most ppl only field 1 maybe 2 flyers which any army can handle given your die rolls are in your favor. This flyer topic is just another topic that won't please everyone, give it sometime another there will be something else to take its place. In my opinion it comes down to- if you know and don't like what your future opponent uses don't play him

I try to plan for everything. not before a game.. but during deployment and movement phases. against an armored company i can plan to rush him, against bikers, i can plan to hold back and gunline him down. or refuse flank, or a hundred other Tactical decisions. like say if Draigo hits the table... I can maneuver around him, or plan to shoot him. against a flyer there is NOT ONE THING, that i can do about it. nothing. Which takes the tactics out of the wargame.

I generally play all comers lists, i don't *sideboard* or change my army based on who I'm going to play, i generally bring what i would bring to a tourney during league or fun games. winning or losing generally lies in how you use the units you have to counter the units they have. Unfortunately, flyers get to alpha strike anything they want, every game, without fail. and there is no counter to it. To put it in perspective every Mech flyer = Lucious pattern Drop-pod multiplied by as many flyers as you can afford to buy.

I'm not going to not play against flyers or people that field them. its part of the game. but, I am saying that their implementation is another step in GW's march towards non-competitive non-tactical play.

Well, get used to them. As the BoLS article said they are destructive and take little skill to use. Most armies have no answers for them other than the insufficient quad-gun. So one can shoot them and hope to get lucky, or ignore them and hope your opponent's fliers' shooting is unlucky. I agree with Mike, it takes tactics out of the game and replaces it with more luck for now. That may change in the future as countermeasures become available. Thankfully locally I don't think we'll have to worry about people really abusing fliers. If one was playing on the tournament circuit right now I'd imagine people would be buying fliers by the caselot or staying home altogether.

I think that fliers are that good. Heck the new FAQ addressed the flying circus. If you have only fliers on the table at the end of your turn you lose. I just hope that they release a FAQ for all codecs when the chaos book comes out. If We all have to wait for our codex to come out for flack missiles we are going to cry.

Probably the biggest weakness right now for fliers is the single 90 degree turn. If you cannot place your flier base on empty terrain, one inch or more from enemy models it iis removed from the table. I have seen everything from a how to move fliers, to a 3x tervigon list to spawn termagants to deny landing space.

Video evidence how evil this can be, enjoy. Flying circus

Also the 45 degree cone for los. You can counter by moving toward them sometimes

I'd encourage people to watch that video. It shows exactly how balanced flying units are. That Space Wolf army is one of the shootiest ones out there. You can't really bunch up your deployment to get the fliers to overshoot you either or the doomscythes will eat you alive. Nova Open should be a blast!

favorite line from that video was near the end regarding the milk challenge when franky's over the can and says "ohhhh, kino, we could die..."

most flyers, and i say this taking mine in pairs only, aren't that bad to face against. but 10 flyers and 3? 4? of them being death ray doom scythes...ugh.

this is the first time i've ever said this about any 40k unit ever made, ever; Death Ray Doom Scythes are sickeningly O.P. even faced one on saturday, and even after mark clarified how they target and drastically changed the results in one shooting phase because of it, those things are disgusting to face off against if you didnt plan for the small chance of flyers appearing.

Yeah i played vs those same flyers, granted i had some atrocious rolls and he had a few really good ones. The fact it can shoot the doom ray whatever direction it likes is retarded. (does the gun itself actually turn 360? because i couldnt find it anywhere in the faqs about what its arc of fire is and the book is so ambiguous that it has Matt Ward written all over it). Needless to say the game didnt go well in my favor. Im just not sure how to deal with flyers with Eldar, i just mostly ignore them but if hes got 2 or more doom scythes i dont know how you can afford to (and no an aegis defence line does not fit an Eldar theme at all.)