Games Workshop just made flyers great again- you have to see the new rules for aircraft in 9th Edition Warhammer 40k now!
Warhammer community along with the GW team talking things over at Warhammer TV’s Twitch stream revealed details on the way about how flyers will interact with the game in 9th Edition. Check out this latest batch of rules…especially if you like your big aircraft models.
Flyers Are Back: New Aircraft rules for 9th Edition 40k
Your Flyers will soon be coming and going as they please – no more bugging out or flying off into the sunset! If it leaves the battlefield, a Flyer can just swoop around to return later in the battle and deliver a murderous strafing run. In the new edition, the danger zone is very much ON the battlefield, right where it belongs!
So here’s the way everything works. If you fly off the board, it goes into Strategic Reserves, later in the game, you can drop your aircraft back down 9″ away anywhere on the board. The only stipulation is that you can’t charge with it later in that turn (but how often do gunships want to charge something, so who cares).
Aircraft Ignore What’s Happening on the Ground
Another key feature of the new rules for Flyers is how they interact with units on the ground. As aircraft are typically soaring overhead and not skimming along the ground, they don’t interfere with them or hinder their movement in any way. After all, a Flyer’s base is only there to help keep it aloft! Here are the highlights of how this works…
Basically, unless you have a flying model, there’s no interaction between units on the ground and aircraft. Models can move over the base, they can sit in the 1″ engagement range (normally melee), etc. The only time that you wouldn’t ignore some of these rules is if you have something like a Hive Tyrant or Smash Captain heroically intervening.
GW Hands Out a New Keyword To These Units
You might have noticed that “Aircraft” is a brand new keyword being talked about. In the back of the rulebook, there’s a page dedicated to showing which flying units have the Aircraft keyword so there’s no confusion. However, we did notice something…
What about Tyranids?
Tyranids are a faction of all bio-engineered horrors but they still have units that use flight stands just like an aircraft would. While it makes sense that the Harpy isn’t technically an aircraft, it still shares the same effect/footprint in-game currently. Could it be that niche units like the Harpy won’t be able to leave the board and come back on? Will they still be chargeable despite having a flight stand? It’ll be interesting if GW has another ruleset put aside for niche units like this.
Overall, it looks like aircraft are finally behaving the way the should have always behaved. The ability to leave the board and come back 9″ away later in the game seems quite powerful and those Dark Eldar multi-flyer players are probably licking their lips right now. The trade-off for that extreme mobility, of course, is that they have almost no board presence compared to boots on the ground.
What do you think the meta will look like with this buff to flyers? Will we be seeing almost every list run a flyer the way we saw almost every Space Marine list take a Thunderfire Cannon once upon a time?
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About the Author: Wesley Floyd
Wesley Floyd
Job Title: Staff Writer
Joined: 2018
Socials: @RealmbrushPainting
About Wesley Floyd: Wes has been in the Warhammer hobby since 2015 and joined the Spikey Bits writing team in 2018. He is known for his satirist takes on trending topics and imaginative yet amazingly affordable hobby solutions to painting Warhammer miniatures.
Imperial fanboy, tabletop fanatic, and the self-proclaimed King of Sprues. He knows for a fact that Mephiston red is the best-tasting paint and is the commission painting equivalent of a Wendy’s 4 for $4. If you like what he writes and want to contact him or have your tabletop minatures painted (to a mostly okayish standard), message him on Instagram.
