Dreadclaw

What are peoples thoughts of the Dreadclaw as printed in Aeronautica.

Its 85 points. av 12/12/12 - can carry 10 dudes or a dreadnaught. Assault, flyer, hover, frag assault launchers. its a flyer that arrives via deepstrike, and then can move normally once it arrives.

For the cost of a land raider, one can field 3 of these.

Normally i just scoff and moan that its just crap compared to a drop pod. (and it is crap compared to a drop-pod) But! when looking at options to deliver the killy for CSM, it starts to look not so bad. its an av 12 flyer /w 3 HP. which as the vendetta/valk will attest, is a fairly hard thing to take down. your not going to get an assault off until turn 3. but you ARE going to be able to assault out of it, and if your sneaky, you can offer your terminators/spawn/Dreadnaught the bonus of having assault grenades.

i'm starting to warm up to the idea of them. they dont suffer the downfall most deep-strikers do in that the models inside dont have to suffer getting shot up for a turn before they explode on someone... AND they can be hovered 12+ 2 inches and positioned correctly for a charge.

Ive been thinking about them more and more.. Thats for sure. ..

Ive also been thinking about the storm eagle to though.. But truthfullynthough the eaiders have been servng me well. That being said.. Id gladly exchange for some dreadclaws.

It's not as good as a Night Scythe, but it's close.

No gun, higher armour, no living metal, assault vehicle... fairly solid.

Wasnt it made so it arrives in turn 1 like drop pods, forced exit, but as of turn 2 it can take off and operate as a normal flyer?

it doesnt have normal droppod safe scatter rule (just option to reroll on the mishap table) but ya its not looking bad. any idea if it can hold termies/mutilators? would be a great workaround for em...

Roland wrote:Wasnt it made so it arrives in turn 1 like drop pods, forced exit, but as of turn 2 it can take off and operate as a normal flyer?

nothing to say it arrives turn one in the aronautica entry. It just says that it begins the game in reserve and enters play via the deep strike rules, and then operates as a flyer after.

actually. the exact wording is

"The Dreadclaw and its cargo always being the game in reserve and enter play using the deep strike rules, after it has arrived, the dreadclaw may move normally"

now... an unscrupulous person might interpret this as saying that the dreadclaw deep strikes... and then may move in that movement phase normally...

Iether way, Judchic is correct in that it doesn't have safe scatter rules....

however! it is a flyer... so when it deep strikes.. it deep strikes into the air above any dangerous terrain etc... no? so the only thing you have to worry about is having enough space for the base (IE not over top of any models)


Re Terminators/mutlilators. they just count as bulky, so it could hold 5.

coming back to this a few months later..

Is there anything preventing a deep striking flyer from entering the game in Hover mode?

GW removed deep strike from most of the flyers in the game, for unknown reasons, other than the idea that supersonic flyers with no hover mode would immediatly crash to the ground because they hadn't moved at least 18 inches during the movement phase.

Anything in the rules stopping a model with the flyer special rule and the deep strike special rule from deep striking in hover?

Storm raven has to enter play from reserves in fly mode only. Because I xport dudes in it all the time I looked to see if I could come in hovering so I could assault better out of it but found the answer to be no. I don't know where Ifound tthat rules but I bet it would be the same thing as the dread. So it would ds in and be placed in flight mode but the ds counts as its movement so couldn't go anywhere that turn apart from where it may deviate but then the turn after it can go into hovermode.

What you think. I'mppretty sure it explains the whole coming in fromreserves thing in the flyer rules somewhere or else in the reserves rule...

The dreadclaws in a funny spot right now. They are building a new model for it and currently still unavailable from fw (i think) so i dont know if theyve updated the rules or not for it yet.

I like the idea of dreadclaws.. although i think id prefer something more similar to regular drop pod. Being to still fly ariund afterwards seems really bizarre for.some reason.

the reason i ask about hover mode, is because of what happened to my storm eagle at the tournament. If your non-Nightscythe zooming flyer gets blown out of the air, it crashes with all its occupants and they all take a str 10 ap1 hit...
At least if it DS's in hover mode, the dudes can hide inside for a turn and if thier ride gets blow up, they just take the str 4 ap- hit and then carry on with the carnage. kinda like an expensive deepstriking assault rhino..

Interesting to see what rules the Charibdis Claw has for rules.

Rhaevyn wrote:the reason i ask about hover mode, is because of what happened to my storm eagle at the tournament.  If your non-Nightscythe  zooming flyer gets blown out of the air, it crashes with all its occupants and they all take a str 10 ap1 hit...  
At least if it DS's in hover mode, the dudes can hide inside for a turn and if thier ride gets blow up, they just take the str 4 ap- hit and then carry on with the carnage. kinda like an expensive  deepstriking assault rhino..

Interesting to see what rules the Charibdis Claw has for rules.

That's a price to pay for sure. Been lucky that my squads haven't had that joy before, though I did lose a 10man assault squad when I tried to deploy using the "Skies of Blood" rule, they scattered on top of enemies and were wiped out... sigh. No rolling for mishaps, just death... Seems GW likes the "all or nothing" mentality