Are We Hating Flyers Enough in 40k?

By Jack Stover | May 25th, 2018 | Categories: Editorials, jstove, Warhammer 40k

Jstove here with a simple question- “Are we hating flyers enough?” I don’t see a lot of them on the 40k tables and I think I know why.

I don’t mean actual airplanes, because here’s the trick- I don’t really see people use that many aircraft that aren’t Space Marine aircraft. Space Marine airplanes are all T7, hard to hit, and covered in guns, so that makes sense because they’re just bigger, faster, harder to kill tanks. Pretty obvious.

What I’m thinking about today is everything that flies that isn’t an airplane, which is actually a pretty long list.

Let’s go over our potential targets, some of which are the biggest jerks in the game.

Big Daddy Flyrant (all 7 of them, now all 3 of them.)
Winged Demon Princes (Which you can still have as many as you want thanks to them all technically being different dudes in different books)
The other 2 flying big bugs and all varieties of Spore Mines
Tau riptides, Ghostkeels, Crisis, Stealth, Drones, Tanks… Pretty much anything that isn’t a fire warrior or a broadside.
All skimmers
All jump infantry
fancy Jetbikes
Pretty much everything in Dark Eldar.
Bloat drones
Nurgle Flies and Tzeentch Screamers/Discs

What’s on this list? A lot of things that fly, but more importantly, a lot of things that fly but aren’t hard to hit.

Only the actual jet aircraft (or jet engines duct taped to cement bricks if you’re into Space Marine aviation) are hard to hit. Everyone else is just a fancy boi with a lot of movement and can fall back and do whatever whenever they want.

Have Space Marine flyers poisoned us with anti-aircraft bias?

Here’s the problem with most weapons that target flyers- They don’t knock down space marine aircraft because space marine aircraft is tough. And because space marine aircraft is tough, we all want the gold standard to be Space Marine aircraft. You look at an anti-aircraft weapon and see that it probably doesn’t blow the wings off a Stormraven on a good hit, and you pass it over.

But it will kill everything that actually has feet.

Even though a lot of anti-aircraft weaponry doesn’t have great odds against all the various flavors of Space Marine flying brick, that doesn’t mean the guns are bad. In most cases, these guys are total hosers against models that have middle-of-the-road armor.

Basically, if your feet touch the ground at the end of the movement phase and you aren’t rocking a 2+, a few failed saves can really turn into a massive problem.

Most weapons in the game that are anti-aircraft are S6 or S7, which is just enough strength to pull 4s on Marine aircraft, which is of course, not that hot. They also have no AP or baby status AP, -1. Again, not that hot. A 4+ to wound a Stormraven, followed by a -1 save? That’s a 4+ save. That means you have to hit a 4 up, and he has to hit a 3 or lower. In math hammer, that’s about a 25% chance of any shot doing business. Like I said, against a Space Marine brick, that’s not easy money. You might as well just take your hard to hit roll and bet it on a Lascannon.

But S7 and -1AP isn’t bad at all against anything that actually has feet and isn’t rocking a 2+. It’s just enough penetration to make a model with a 3+ worry about his health insurance, and it’s enough to punch out anyone with a 4+ armor save or worse.

But Multiple damage is where it gets spicy. Some of these guns really punch if they connect. Now imagine you’re getting +1 to hit against models that FLY, and you’re knocking down that power armor to a 4+, and you can see that those Hive Tyrants and Deamon Princes are going to think twice about landing anywhere within line of sight.

Which brings us to our next point- Getting a hit bonus is great for models that aren’t hard to hit. To be fair, a lot of guns are just objectively better than your typical anti-aircraft gun, because they’re just stronger. But what you’re losing in hitting power you’re gaining in dice assurance, the practical guarantee that you can’t miss.

Now you could say, “That’s great. I can get 3s and 2s to hit on models where I might normally need 4s and 3s, but only on those models, or I could just gamble on the worse roll with a bigger gun and still do work if my dice are hot.”

You’d be right, but consider this- Do you think you’re going to see the end of jetpack Tau units, Daemon Princes, or Flyrants in your lifetime? Even with the rule of 3, that’s still a lot of high-value targets that you would love to get +1 to hit on. Here’s something else that’s pretty hot, speaking specifically to Tau, the +1 bonus cancels out the stealth modifier on sneaky Tau because sneaky Ttau units have fly.

Juicy flyer haters

Stormwoodchipper Interceptor

The Stormhawk Interceptor is typical of Space Marine flyers- it’s tough, it’s covered in guns, and it has a stupid looking brick for a cockpit. Worst of all, it’s a vanilla Space Marine unit, so it’s easy to ignore because trying to fill space Marine battalions without buying scout squads is pure punishment. But the Stormhawk is a flying woodchipper. Belisarius Cawl woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and he said to himself, “You know what? Screw Flyrants and screw the Tau.” And the Stormwoodchipper was born.

First of all, it’s practically impervious to harm. It’s a T7 HARD TO HIT flyer with power armor that for some dumb reason gets to re-roll armor saves of 1. But more importantly, he’s got 6 dice of S7 AP-1 hatred that HIT ON A 2 versus anything with the FLY keyword, and all 6 of those shots do multiple damage. This cannibal airplane will easily mulch a Flyrant or a DP in one turn on that alone, and if he leaves the thing with 1 or 2 wounds standing, he can clean up with 12 shots from his Assault Cannons.

In other news, pretty much everything you want to kill in the Tau army has a fly keyword, so you can just use his super speedy movement to drop him right in front of a Ghostkeel and still hit it on 3’s.

It’s almost worth playing Space Marines for.

Hellforged Deredo Don’t Need Line of Sight

When you look at Forgeworld Dreadnoughts, and especially Forgeworld Chaos Dreadnoughts, it’s easy to get lost. The Leviathan is a big fat murder beast, the decimator craps mortal wounds, and the Hellforged Contemptor with Soulburners in the fists is basically just a baby Decimator that you buy once you hit your rule of 3 Decimator spam limit.

But hiding inside this pack of mortal wound spam murder robots is the Hellforged Deredo, a secret toolbox. Like all big bad robots from the Heresy, he starts with a 2+ BS at full wounds, which is already great. Like all big bad traitor robots from the heresy, he gets access to sweet Dark Mechanicum guns, like Butcher Cannons and ectoplasm, which are great.

With his Helical Targeting Array, he gets +1 to hit flyers, which means that he actually still hits flyers and stealth suits on 2s and Ghostkeels on 3s, which is pretty nutty.

But the nuttiest thing of all is the big daddy Havoc Launcher. It’s 3d3 shots, S6, -1AP, and only 1 measly damage. But, it doesn’t require line of sight. This is an absolute game changer for chaos, because for most of the game we only had indirect fire from an Iron Warrior’s stolen Basilisk, and then only from Plagueburst Mortars in Death Guard. The Hellforged Deredo not only hits on 2s all day against everything if it stands still, but it can hit it without even looking at it.

Old Faithful Hydra

The Hydra flak tank doesn’t have a sweet set of guns with a cherry on top that ignores LOS like the Chaos Deredo, and it doesn’t have the easy money 2’s and survivability of the Stormhawk, but what it lacks in fanciness it makes up for in cost. For just a hundred points and the cost of a Heavy Bolter, the Hydra brings 8 dice of S7 AP-1 D2 murder that will hit anything with the fly keyword on a 3. It’s just another gun bolted onto a Chimera chassis so it’s not tough, but at barely over 3 digits in points, it doesn’t have to be.

Currently, the hydra’s biggest problem is not that he’s bad, it’s that he’s competing for points against similarly priced artillery tanks like the Wyvern, Manticore, and Basilisk. It’s hard to ignore the seductive call of the Manticore’s S10 storm eagle rocket. However, the hydra does shine when he’s used to do his job, which is to be the cheapest flyswatter in the game. 8 dice of S7 D2 going off on 3s is a big deal against a Flyrant or a Daemon Prince, and despite the rule of 3, I doubt you’ll be seeing less of those guys.