Are flyers that good?

one of the comments below the video had the ultimate counter.

just field a fortress of redemption and hide all your crap in it and behind it for the entire game. Stupid army vs stupid army ftw.

this does not help solve my problem lol, i might as well go sim city and field a bunch of bastions/aegis defence lines...

Deadlytoaster wrote: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.)

i agree it seems crazy something like that can shoot in a 360 degree arc, but if that's how it's modeled on the plane, then that's how we'd have to accept it playing. might be worth emailing GW and see if they state this is the case or not.

Rifleman dred's a good answer to av 10 and av 11 flyers.

Two auto cannons generally good. If you can force a flyer to evade, it can only snapfire. Also, as a guy that typically has 1 or 2 flyers on the board, they have a couple of challenges relating to charting a flight plan. You want to be able to maximize firepower before flying off the board. You also want to try to fly off the board on turn 4 as well.

I dunno, they aren't that nuts. The dakkajet's a bit OP... But other than that, flyers are reasonably balanced.

Your the math guy mark.

My not so great math gives a rifleman dread a 5.8% chance to remove a hull point from an AV 11 flyer (glance or pen..) and without evade (with evade it drops down to 3.9%)

the odds jump to a whopping 7.8% against AV 10. Granted half of those will be pens with 17% chance to explode the beast.

how exactly does that = "a good counter"?

You hit it on the head MikeB.

Everything is all or nothing. Your chances of hitting are miniscule. BUT if you get a hit, 1/2 the time its REALLY bad. If you do get a second hit against it, it's likely toast. (either due to HP or taking a second pen).

They seem playable at 1-2. More than that starts getting rediculous.

Unless you are Crons. Because those are transports that don't auto lose their cargo when they do get blown up.

Folks, ally with DA if you can. All your Scoring terminators and Skyfire/Interceptor Mortis Dreads belong to us. And we have punch and pie.

There's really no counter to them currently. I think it's going to be a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" sort of situation. As for the death ray, it's a little unclear as to how its targetting works. RAW it looks like it has a 360 degree fire arc. I'm not sure if that is the intent though, considering the caveat about the tesla destructor having to target something hit by the death ray. Unfortunately it wasn't addressed in the FAQ. The Frontline Games guys use the 360 arc (as evidenced in the video) which I think is reasonable. I find it's usually best to play RAW until told differently.

I'm going by pics in WD, but it looks like its on a turret of sorts. Tom/Mark, can either of you give us a clear shot of the mount?

if it glues in place and doesn't attach in such a way that lets it spin, like the storm talon's assault cannons do, it may be that it only has a front arc of fire. usually their targeting rules and the way they model the vehicle's guns coincide, so that might decide which way it plays.

GW zoom in pic of the death ray:

from how it glues in with that square nub, i'm assuming that means its not meant to rotate and therefore be fuselage-mounted

The square nub.... that's attached to a ball which would give 180 degree movement... just sayin.

That rear section. Above the glowy green tennis ball o doom. Does that interlock, or is it clear. Thats key.

This is just the model. The rules say "Anywhere within the weapons range." RAW, that's anywhere within 12" of the sucker.

The gun is modeled such that it will always face dead ahead. Note on the frame the two indents on either side of the cross-hole, just to the right. Those are where the "power feed lines" go from the ship to the gun.

That being said, the gun fires in a non-traditional method, being an area attack with no scatter, only amounts of area hit. RAW lets you drop it anywhere, and with the new FAQ you can drop it on top of yourself and not shoot yourself down, as the Death Ray gets called out specifically as not being able to hit fliers (core FAQ). While no longer being able to laser beam down other fliers makes me sad, I do enjoy not having to worry about clipping myself any more.

Aervyper wrote: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.

I do not see the FAQ you mention. All I see is that if you ever have nothing on the table you lose...basically if you have your whole army in reserve you lose.

Well with the 360 degree arc of fire two were a little ridiculous in my game. He was able to keep them on the board the whole game and they could always hit something because of the silly 360 arc as well as being able to place it 12" away then you can change the direction of the shot again... it strikes me as a real lame way of doing it, also apparently for determining cover its from the angle of the gun not the shot, so you could actually get it so it hits more guys by going through cover but then they dont get cover save because the actual angle of the flier wouldnt give them cover.... And you would think fliers wouldnt have that big a impact, but in this game it was rather devastating

Fliers do not count as being 'on' the table or so I am lead to understand. So if your entire army is a flier or in a flier at the end of the turn you lose.

Rifleman vs Flyers [Number of Results]~[Percentage Chance] I rounded a bunch along the way.
AV10: 0~42% 1~42% 2~11% 3~3% 4~1%
AV11: 0~51% 1~39% 2~8% 3~1% 4~1%

Edit: Number of Results represents glancing or penetrating hits. AV10 flyers, only a 42% chance of nothing happening.

I cant understand your jibba jibba.. My stats classes were almost a decade ago

the first number is the number of glances? the second number is the chance that it happens.

Aegwymourn wrote:the first number is the number of glances? the second number is the chance that it happens.

glances or pens, yes.

Aha! I see it now..

I can't wait for Tau to get their AA fortification. Intercepting Railguns! *Pew Pew*

A unit of 3 broadsides basically has a 50% chance to destroy a flyer. (Unless dude makes his evade save, even then, he's snap-firing next turn)

I agree. The only downside is if there is something else that needs to go down that turn as well it can be a tough call to make. Not to mention you are basically trusting your dice to behave, which is like pissing into the wind sometimes. I have a newer 1500 point list I'm getting together with the FW order. Haven't had any time to get more games in though. Its driving me crazy, lol. Although I did start stripping my older models for re-priming/painting.

Really for Tau AA I would love to try some Remora Stealth Fighters. I think it'd be really interesting if they could earn their points in a game. Especially if you take two squadrons of two, although that's 440 points.

I'm not sure if anyone else has playtested the Lord of Change, but I think that he is actly a very good FMC. Mellee FMC only get to do the long jump T1, or maybe later on to chase something down, but otherwise it doesn't come up too often, and the crashing part hurts.

But the Lord has 3+ invul, and 3 shooting attacks, and 360 arc of targeting. Although he will be around 300 points, I found he amde it back every game, even when he only came in alst few turns.

And as for AA, I think flyers will still be good, you gets lotsa dakka per point with Orks, so even if my enemy had AA guns I'd still run them

canadin wrote:And as for AA, I think flyers will still be good, you gets lotsa dakka per point with Orks, so even if my enemy had AA guns I'd still run them

Your opponent can only have one quad-gun, so try and kill it first turn.