Frankie and Reece bust out Death from the Skies in this Space Marines on Dark Eldar video bat rep! Check the Tactics Corner for more great bat reps.
Frankie and Reece bust out Death from the Skies in this Space Marines on Dark Eldar video bat rep! Check the Tactics Corner for more great bat reps.
When you post video batreps, would you mind also posting the lists? I find knowing what is in each army makes the game much easier to follow.
Thanks!
They show the list at the beginning of the video. Gotta watch the video before commenting man.
I watched it, and you’re missing what I’m asking for. They briefly go over whats in it verbaly. They never show an actual list (details are important in this game) the way 1+ armor video batreps do. It’s just a suggestion, but it’s one I know lots of ppl would appreciate.
The lists are shown starting 1:52.
It was nice to see a demo of how DftS actually changes game play. I have to say, the only thing I really hate is having skyfire stripped away – not only does it make no sense fluff wise, it takes away the only reason I had purchased my fliers in the first place.
I would be like if GW suddenly said Thunderwolf Cavalry’s aren’t allowed to hit in close combat. So much rage. Like being tricked into buying useless models.
It’s especially bitter for Space Wolf players since we waited for a very long time to get a flier and the Stormfang was specifically described as being the final word in air superiority. Now suddenly I’m back to not having any decent anti-air. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just buy a Xyphon from Forge World and have that as top cover for my assault fliers but no we’ll probably have to wait a year for new rules.
Rant over, always love watching you guys play and was great to see the murder of Razorwings back in action.
You know that the Stormfang actually is a Fighter, right? If you bother to kit it will “good” weapons (Lascannon + Multimeltas) it is pretty guaranteed to shoot down most flyers in a single pass, presuming it doesn’t get Shaken/Stunned. Even in a ground-attack role it fares better than most Fighters, since its main gun is a blast and it has lots of twin-linked.
It’s expensive as hell, but it at least does what it says on the label.
Happy to eat my words! I’m not sure how I missed that to be honest, except I’ve always preferred the Stormwolf (with Multi-Meltas and Lascannons) because of the Assault transport capacity.
Not to be nitpicky, but I play space wolves, the stormwolf is my favorite and all I have ever fielded up to this new expansion all its guns are high strength, low AP, and twinlinked. But the stormwolf is now an attack flier – which makes it useless against other fliers and FMC.
The stormfang is inferior. It’s main gun is not twin-linked, and it’s transport capacity is too small.
But now I *have* to add some stormfangs if I want air defense. And since attack fliers are good against ground and useless against air while fighters are good against air and not that bad against ground I’ll probably play stormfangs exclusively even though they are the inferior craft. That’s what upsets me – my best flier is now inferior and the inferior flier is now required.
If they had just made attack fliers -1BS towards air targets I would have still been upset but I wouldn’t be *this* upset as I could keep playing with the *rather expensive* models I bought and assembled.
Sigh. And even the formation benefits are useless against half the ground targets since jetbikes and skimmers are considered “air targets” and everything else on the ground are “ground targets”, so when I think about it, GW made it so I actually have to have both to get the full benefit of the formations.
I don’t know… I feel like this could have been really good, but some business executive probably had some control over design and came up with the “genius” idea to make attack craft only good against half the targets and fighters only good against the other half so that people would have to buy both to truly benefit from the new rules – probably pitched it as an “added value product” or some other dirty business expression for extorting the customer. It’s like buying a really delicious looking piece of pie and finding a pubic hair in it.
Yeah, the Stormwolf definitely comes out of things a lot worse than the Stormfang does- and as the favored of the two vehicles, that doesn’t do great things for SW as a faction. However, his post was specifically about the Stormfang not being able to do its job, which isn’t the case; whatever else you might say about it, it’s certainly one of the stronger Fighters out there in a straight duel.
I have a question for you fellas on the Renegade Open mission scoring: in looking at their primer packet, they say to choose your maelstrom at the END of your player turn, then score at the BEGINNING of your next player turn. I noticed you guys were choosing at the beginning of each turn and scoring at the beginning of each turn. Was this a typo in the Renegade Open packet, or did you guys just change how it was played?
Homeskillet, that was a typo. It should read “Choose your Malestrom at the beginning of your turn, and score at the beginning of your NEXT turn.”
Thanks for bringing that to our attention!
~ Puck
Just looked at the battle report and I have a question for Reece:
If you knew your opponent was bringing flyers on the table, what was your anti air strategy?
You got lucky with the sky fire from the mysterious objective but in reality I think your army had no real way to deal with flyers.
Death from the skies modifies the way we play the game and what we bring on the table. Lists will need to be adapted.
Except if you don’t plan on bringing flyers yourself, it doesn’t change a whole lot. Some flyers are now fighters and can no longer shoot ground targets. The rest really didn’t get any better with this book. You would have to take 3 or 4 flyers (eating up a huge chunk of your army in normal 1500-1850pt games) and have them come in a specific formation to actually be any better. And, if you’re Tyranids or Daemons, this book actually made it even easier to spam FMCs since a majority of flyers lost their ability to shoot them down.
The standard strategy of “ignore most flyers and hope they’re too expensive for what they do” is still a viable one.
Can no longer shoot ground targets at full BS*
“The standard strategy of “ignore most flyers and hope they’re too expensive for what they do” is still a viable one.”
I am not sure this is still a valid strategy… This applies to how armies and battles USED to be fought before Death from the skies changes. (And to some extent, the upcoming FAQs)
If Reece had not gotten Skyfire by luck, Frankies 4 flyers would of dominated the battlefield… (with -1 to BS but still )
Reece had flyers but used them in the old style (as if they still had skyfire)
We must adapt and change the way we are thinking. Its not easy I know and we humans hate change and hate the way it affects us.
You will need to spend SOME points in AA now and make tough decisions on what to cut.
I have started to update my lists with this in mind, ignoring flyers wont cut it anymore
Why do we have to change our thinking?
Flyers weren’t seen in the meta before because they weren’t worth their points. Hence few armies took them and few armies planned against them.
Now, with DftS they are either the exact same as before or get -1BS if they’re a fighter unless your opponent decides to take 4 of them which would be around 1/3 of their army, or more, depending on the type of flyer. Why would I have to change my thinking for something that was bad to begin with and hardly got better?
You say Frankie’s flyers would have “dominated the battlefield” but would they really? They’re actually WORSE than they were before if they’re -1BS and basically all they get is the ability to try to pull off a formation and the extra pivot (if the roll works out). If they weren’t “dominating” before, why would they now?
What I am saying is if Reece’s list would of incorporated a stormhawk interceptor or two, his experience would of been drastically different. (Forget the word dominating)
1. He would of wanted to play in the dogfight phase instead of dreading it (interceptors are more durable than Frankie’s flyers and they are very shooty)
2. He would have skyfire to take on air threats
3. 2/3 of his weapons are twin-linked, the effect of the -1 to BS would of been reduced
I would be curious to see a rematch with Frankie’s exact same list and Reece adding some interceptors.
All I am saying is when things come up and changes the meta, let’s stop trying to go against it by thinking we don’t need to change how we play the game.
I don’t think it will change things that much, though, honestly. The Interceptor would have helped a bit, but how often do you find yourself facing 4 flyers? Not often. That Stormhawk is not bad at all, but I am not going to include it just in case I face a flyer heavy army, I’d rather take more effective ground units.
My honest assessment is that DftS will make flyers less relevant to the game, not more. I think we will see them less often but when we do, it will be a flyer heavy army. In the past you’d take a single flyer to handle multiple roles, like I would take a single Stormwolf to handle AA, give some mobility and anti-tank. Now it can’t fill the AA role, their is no reason for me to take it, it is too expensive for what it gives me. I think a lot of people will make the same choice, thus less flyers in the meta.
I agree with Reece. If anything, DftS would make me want to take less flyers. My baleflamer drakes would be just as good as they were before since they just drop templates, but the hades drake is pure garbage now. And it was hard to imagine it being more garbage than when they nerfed the fire from 360 to 45. Now, not only does it still have its crappy firing radius – it can’t even shoot at other flyers other than to snap shot. So it’s just a really crappy anti-ground unit.
Threllen, you play CSM as well?
I am testing a 3-4 HellBlade combo with DftS. It’s cheap and a ton of fun.
Seems like that would be hard to test, given you don’t know whether it’s a Fighter or Attack Flyer (which will make a critical difference), whether it will be available in a Flyer Wing (though one assumes it would, Forge World often gets crazy ideas), or even what its Pursuit/Agility values are.
I do play Chaos (would guess around 8-10k of points along with another 6k+ of Daemons), but I don’t have any forgeworld. Nor would I want to try to tackle the mess which is trying to DtfS-ify Forgeworld flyers.
Yeah, that is going to be really weird to handle.
Not that complex actually.
1. Hellblade is definitely a Fighter (Its fluffly purpose is to hunt other flyers)
2. Its still a regular flyer so I can have multiple models to create a flyer wing composed of 3-4 models. (No special formation needed)
3. Since I have 3-4 models on the table, i can apply attack patterns.
4. I am using “Generic” stats for Fighters for now : P4 – A4
The only thing I am missing are the Wing Leader Bonus but I dont care about that part first.
Like I said, I am just testing the concept while we wait for the real Forgeworld rules. It never hurts to practice, ill simply adjust afterwards
I don’t think it does, actually. Frankie’s fighters would have been worse than they were before, and they weren’t dominating before. I don’t think you need to change your strategy at all, really. Flyers all got worse apart from the air wings, which stop working as soon as you take some casualties.
How well does this “Flying Death Star” play, and would you consider it “competitively viable” in a tournament setting?
The look of fielding that many is beautiful, and it seems at least a little fun to play.
Eh, if flyers were working for you before, they will work for you now and better when you have all of them, worse when you take a casualty and lose the air wing bonuses.
Attack and Bomber flyers are straight up just worse due to losing Skyfire.
A buddy and I tried out the DftS rules this past weekend. Here’s the lists we ran, and some thoughts afterwards:
Me:
Eldar Cad:
Farseer, Jetbike, spirit stones
3 x 5 Windriders with scatter lasers
1 x 4 windriders with scatter lasers
Corpsethief Claw
5 Talos
Black Heart Talon:
2 Razorwings with dark lances
2 Voidravens
I’d say it’s a standard kickass Eldar alliance list, subbing out a wraithknight and some warp spiders for the fliers, plus a Corpsethief Claw. You can’t go wrong with a Corpsetheif Claw… I also realize that this is very close to Frankie’s list! Great mind’s think alike…
He ran:
Daemonic Incursion Detachment
Lord: Fateweaver
Warpflame Host:
Herald of Tzeentch with Disc and grimoire
1 x 20 pink horrors
5 exalted flamers
3 x 3 flamers
Forge Host:
3 Soul Grinders of Tzeentch
Attack Wing:
2 Heldrakes
I’d say his list was a bit experimental for him – it was his first time trying out the Daemonic Incursion, and we agreed afterwards that the exalted flamers were a bit of wasted potential. They deployed all together with the horrors as a kind of invincible grimoired/cursed earth warpflame blob near the centre of the board and just sat there, flaming things and daring my corpsetheif to charge them.
The Game:
Unfortunately for him, my opponent made a mistake upon deployment, exposing Fateweaver to my jetbikes and underestimating their first turn reach. I had first turn, he failed to seize, and poor Fatey got vaped back into the warp in a hail of scatter lasers before he could do anything. My opponent debated whether to put him in reserve, but felt the potential of my flier wing to gain the upper hand and impose a harsh penalty on his reserves outweighed the risk of deploying him. Had he survived, the ensuing battle would have been much different…
The corspetheif claw spent most of the battle slogging it out with the soul grinders, eventually smashing them down while suffering a few casualties.
As stated above the warpflame blob took up space in the center of the board and didn’t do much. The MSU flamer squads hopped around, corrupting objectives and flaming jetbikes, which was fun for them, but then I charged the flamers with my jetbikes in order to avoid getting burned by helldrakes, and that put a stop to their philandering around as the units got locked in a slap fest for a few turns, and bad rolls on Daemonic instability got them sent back to the warp after my Farseer joined the fray.
Predictably the Eldar eked out a win at the end, grabbing the most crusade objectives with what jetbikes survived the heldrake bbq’s. Eldar win 10-9. However if the game ended on 5 instead of 6, he would have won through objectives 10-9.
The fliers:
We had two dogfight phases – none of which actually did anything! I won attacker first, matching one of my razorwings with his lead heldrake. I won the engagement, but he won maneuvers. My guns were out of arc, and his were out of range, so we just flew off.
The second opportunity for a dogfight: he won the roll off and sensibly chose not to engage.
On the board: the fliers were more effective. His heldrakes came on first (I failed my reserve roll), and killed lots of jetbikes. Nothing has really changed about heldrakes, except that he was able to fit them into his list without any Chaos Space Marine (ie cultist) tax. I think that’s great.
My Black Heart Talon formation largely chose the Indomitable attack pattern for tank hunter and ignores cover. Hot dang that made them good! The razorwings were able to much more efficiently deal with the helldrakes, shooting one down the turn they came on, and reducing the other on other turns to 1 HP. The voidravens were able to blast some HP off the soul grinders and kill a bunch of flamers/horrors with their ignores cover bombs, and later dark scythes. I didn’t get a chance to use their other special rules, such as interceptor, but I could imagine it coming in handy had the reserves order been different (he came on first because I failed my roll, whereas if I came on first, I would have intercepted the hell out of his drakes or deep striking daemons). The attack wing formation bonus was actually very easy to achieve, especially with my army. The jetbikes are very mobile and have a small footprint, so it was easy to make space on the board for my flyers to come on in formation, and in terms of terrain there is always the ‘wobbly model syndrome.’ I appreciate the attack wing formation rules because they actually reward you for being tactical and smart in the way you position your models. Though there are a few formations that depend on model placement, most formations give you bonuses purely based on the models you buy – whereas these flier ones incentivize you to really move wisely on the tabletop. Why don’t all formations have these kind of rules?
All in all, our verdict and judgement is that the DftS is a benign rule set, and a welcome addition to the game. On the whole, some things got better, other things got worse, but it sincerely adds more depth and FUN to the experience. The dogfights were cute and quick, and the fact that we had more points invested on models that weren’t always on the board actually made our game go faster. I appreciate that this is anecdotal evidence, a drop of water in an ocean of various experiences, so to speak, and we weren’t playing in a tournament setting – though both of us are top dogs in our meta over here in NYC – but having tried it, I would definitely do it again, and I encourage others to do so. For better or for worse, this is 40k now anyways, and in my opinion and experience, this does nothing to imbalance the game, while providing a much needed shake-up to the meta and a more in depth immersion for those that choose to ENGAGE.
Fire Arcs don’t actually matter in Dogfights, as such. The facings just determine whether you fire at full BS or as Snap Shots, but you still get to fire all Weapons that are in Range.
Oh really? I would love to see some supporting documentation for that, as unfortunately I can’t find any…
It’s never explicitly stated, but the Attack Sub-phase Rules make no sense for 75% of the available Flyers if Weapon Arcs matter, because only a handful have anything that can fire anywhere except a Head-on Pass.
I have gone back and forth on things- on the one hand, it explicitly states that you resolve the Dogfight shooting like a normal shooting phase (and vehicles have limited fire arcs in the shooting phase.) On the other hand, the Angle of Attack rules do seem a bit weird in that context.
Yet another unanswered question, I suppose.
Ah, interesting. Though the wording isn’t quite there, the dogfight phase is abstract enough that your interpretation makes sense – it would certainly make it more influential and entertaining! Throw that bone to the GW FAQ team and let them chomp on it.