Warhammer 40k Flyers look like one of the easiest unit types left for GW to cut, and the Space Marine codex just gave us a pretty good look at how that could happen.
So no, GW hasn’t said it’s killing Flyers off entirely, but at this point it really doesn’t have to, does it? Look at what they’ve been doing to 40k ranges for the past two years, and aircraft fit the pattern almost too well.
Space Marines just lost the Stormhawk Interceptor, Stormtalon Gunship, and Stormraven Gunship in one codex, with all three heading to Legends. GW also said this is how removed units will be handled going forward, so every codex on the 11th Edition release schedule gives us another chance to see whether somebody else’s plane gets the same treatment. It gets Legends support in the app, and that’s basically the send-off.
There’s another way GW can handle aircraft it doesn’t want to outright retire, and the latest dataslate already showed it off with the Heldrake. Sadly, depending on why you bought the model in the first place, that version of an update might actually be worse.
- What could be happening: Flyers are one of the easiest categories in 40k for GW to retire, and Space Marines losing all three aircraft shows what that process could look like.
- What we’ve seen so far: three Marine planes went to Legends at once, most armies are down to a single Flyer kit, and two editions of restrictions have done little to bring aircraft back.
- What it could mean going forward: aircraft keep slipping out of competitive play codex by codex until 40k barely has an air force left.
Space Marines Losing All Three Aircraft is the “Tell”
Let’s be real, GW didn’t pick off one weird kit nobody was buying. They cut every plane Marines had left in one shot: the Stormhawk, Stormtalon, and Stormraven.
We’ve watched similar cleanouts hit the Space Wolves and the Blood Angels, but those looked like chapter-specific housekeeping. This one feels different because all three cuts are for every chapter. GW can point to the age of the kits, sure, but that still leaves Space Marines, the range they support harder than anything else in 40k, without a single aircraft
Well, besides the Thunderhawk Gunship, which is a different class of miniature altogether, and not really hitting the tournament tables at all.
Either way, if the Space Marines don’t need a plane anymore, you have to start wondering what’s supposed to save the one(s) sitting in somebody else’s range.
The Heldrake Already Showed GW’s Other Option
Chaos players already got a look at the less final version of this. In the recent dataslate, GW removed the Aircraft keyword from the Heldrake, set its OC to 0, and gave it a normal 12″ move.
So yeah, the model is probably staying around because it just isn’t really an “aircraft” anymore.
Honestly, that’s probably the easier way GW can change anything they still want to sell or support. The unit remains legal, keeps a non-Legends points cost, and loses the rules that made it behave like a Flyer in the first place.
So if you bought the Heldrake because you like the model and its guns, that’s probably fine. But on the other hand, if you bought it because you wanted a daemon dragon tearing around the board like an actual aircraft, you’ve lost quite a bit more than a keyword already…
Then There Are The Orks…
For now, the Orks kept most of their aircraft that are plastic kits, while the Forge World ones were Legends’d to point over to them.
So, was this a two-step process GW is implementing to get rid of them? Well, only time will tell if they made the initial 11th Edition cuts so the resin models still had somewhere in the plastic range to go, rules-wise. Or we’ll find out in later updates if GW wants the plastic Ork flyers (which are only a few years younger than the Space Marine ones) to stay in the game at all…
Custodes Flyers Go Digital
Curiously GW put out the Custodes flyers (the Ares and the the Orion) as Digital Only rules in the app, and left them out of the codex book alltogther, which is great. The problem there may be that it makes is easy to move them to Legends later on sadly. Only time will tell what happens with them now.
Most Factions Only Have One Flyer Left to Lose
A wider aircraft cleanup wouldn’t take much work at this point, to be honest. Hardly anybody fields an air wing anymore, with Drukhari or Imperial Guard probably seeing the most aircraft play. Most factions are sitting on one kit, maybe with another datasheet built from the same sprues, and that’s about it, sadly.
For plenty of armies, you’re basically talking about only one SKU. So if that kit stops being worth manufacturing, stocking, balancing, and carrying rules for, GW can remove the whole aircraft category from the faction without blowing a hole in the codex. Lose a core infantry unit, vehicle, or character, and people notice immediately.
Lose the one plane barely anybody was bringing anyway, and the next codex still looks mostly the same, to be fair.
Guard players have already watched most of this happen. When Forge World was still propping up the wider Imperial Navy range, Astra Militarum had one of the biggest aircraft selections in 40k. Most of it is gone now, and the Vulture Gunship is already sitting in Legends. So this isn’t some future cleanup GW would have to start from scratch. A few ranges are already well into it, and with the recent Ork Legends rumors floating around too, greenskin pilots probably shouldn’t get too attached to the status quo either…
GW NERFED Flyers Until Nobody Missed Them
Aircraft used to cause real problems, and sometimes they were flat-out oppressive, so GW spent two editions piling restrictions onto them. Between targeting rules, movement limits, deployment changes, Strategic Reserves, and points bumps, every time Flyers caused trouble, another fix got bolted onto the pile.
Somewhere along the way, fixing Flyers stopped looking like the goal. They just became awkward enough that most people quit bothering with them. We were already asking years ago whether anybody liked them, and they never really seemed to have recovered.
That’s where the whole thing starts looking rough for flyers. Players stop bringing aircraft because the rules make them a pain, then usage drops, and that gives GW even less reason to spend time supporting them.
At some point, planned obsolescence starts feeling like a fair description. Nothing happens to the model on your shelf, but every new aircraft rules update pushes it further from the version of 40k GW actually seems interested in maintaining.
The Table Shrank and Aircraft Never Got Rebuilt For It
Then there’s the table itself. The Event Companion gives you tightly measured terrain footprints built around movement, Hidden, and objective play. Infantry, tanks, and Monsters can all work inside that setup.
Now try parking a Stormraven in it.
The old 72″ x 48″ board aircraft were built around is gone, and a 60″ x 44″ table stuffed with ruins isn’t exactly giving anything with wings room to breathe. GW has kept adjusting the game so big ground units can function on dense boards, while Flyers still feel like a leftover subsystem that never got the same treatment.
Actually rebuilding aircraft around modern 40k would take rules work. Putting them into Legends is just a whole lot easier for GW.
Final Thoughts on Warhammer 40k Flyers
If you still have a Flyer in your army, watch the first block of codex releases for 11th edition. GW doesn’t need a giant announcement about the future of aircraft if every book can handle one model at a time, either by moving it to Legends or changing its rules until it works more like another vehicle.
A couple more codex releases should tell us whether Space Marines were just an unusually brutal cleanup or the first obvious sign of something bigger. If another faction loses its only Flyer, and another one after that, it’ll get much harder to write this off as just a “coincidence.”
But either way, the models can always stick around on shelves, in narrative games, and anywhere else people agree to use them in 11th and beyond.
🔗 Related Reads:
- GW Pulls The Plug on More Space Marines, Sends 17 Units To Legends
- New Warhammer 40k Legends in 11th Edition: Rules & Datasheets
- New 40k Codex Release Schedule: 2026 Roadmap for 11th Edition
- Warhammer 40k Balance Dataslate: August 2026 Rules Changes Winners & Losers
- Warhammer 40k Missions: Event Companion New Rules & Update Guide
- Forge World Died Quietly When GW Replaced & Rebranded Their Models
- Are We Hating Flyers Enough in 40k?
Do you think GW is quietly retiring Warhammer 40k Flyers, or is your faction’s aircraft safe when the codex lands?
They should have never been in a standard game of 30mm 40K. If they would put some effort into streamlining and expanding epic scale, it works there.
GW did the exact same thing to Fortifications way back when. They incrementally nerfed them until they were useless and then dumped them entirely. Now there’s only a few token Fortifications that no one bothers using.
We’ve seen the pattern. I’ll bet you anything their plan is to axe the Flyers and then replace them with something new for players to buy in 12th edition. They killed off Skimmers for Flyers in 6th edition. Or maybe they just want to axe the whole Flyer ruleset like they axed Armor to cut down what they view as rules bloat.