If you just bought multiple flyers and have a list all planned out around them, you aren’t going to be happy with GW’s latest FAQ.
Flyer Spam has been killed by Games Workshop and the salt flows from players who cashed in their savings to invest in flyers. Should we care about that salt? We shouldn’t as an abusive strategy has been addressed but what will happen now?
The King is dead, long live the King.
JStove here with breaking news – Actually it’s not breaking, I read the news as soon as anyone else that watches the 40k universe. The point is, when this kind of thing happens you have to start hammering it from every direction so the entire community sees it. That’s what spam posting and clickbait is for, fam.
GW HAS CLIPPED FLYER SPAM.
In the latest FAQ, GW has added a Sudden Death rule. If at the end of any turn you have no models on the table, or “boots on the ground” as we’re calling it, you automatically lose. Here’s the sweet spot though- FLYERS AND UNOCCUPIED FORTIFICATIONS DO NOT COUNT. (They don’t wear boots.)
That means that if your army is six Stormravens and one Librarian, if your opponent just flies a Demon Prince into the Librarian and squishes him, the game is over.
‘If at the end of any turn after the first battle round, one player has no models on the battlefield, the game ends immediately and their opponent automatically wins a crushing victory. When determining if a player has any units on the battlefield, do not include any units with the Flyer Battlefield Role – these units cannot operate within a combat airspace indefinitely and they cannot hold territory without ground support. Furthermore, do not include any units with the Fortification Battlefield Role unless they have a unit embarked inside – even the most formidable bastion requires a garrison if it is to pose a threat.’
This is overwhelmingly positive news. Not just because the raven spam was completely abusive but because it illustrated a scenario where GW responded to a major issue in the game, owned it, and resolved it. This kind of display of leadership is unprecedented in the history of GW, as any long running veteran of the competitive scene knows that the company has a wobbly track record for community support. Good to see them stepping up, nothing but praise for them on this one.
The bad news is that I had a big article on how to fix flyer spam in the pipes and now it’s totally irrelevant and will never see the light of day. Sometimes that happens around here. Oh well, I’ll take that loss for the team.
The new big question is what kind of boots are we gonna see now that flyers have been clipped? Raven spam has been killed overnight, which is great. However, the pendulum has swung very far indeed. It’s not just that using an all flyer list is an auto-lose condition now but relying heavily on them has become incredibly risky. It unbalances the list and lowers the volume of points worth of models your opponent must actually kill to win. Lean too hard on flyers and your foe will ignore them to chop your knees out from under you. The Stormraven is still one of the princes of the Space Marine roster but how often will we see it now that it has to share the pie with the rest of the marines?
