Goatboy’s Monday 40K Musing – Fixing Flyers
Goatboy is here again chatting about 40k. Today I want to go into some ideas on how we could “fix” flyers.
There has been a kind of rage in the competitive scene with flyers causing some problems for armies and some unfun games. So with that in mind I thought – what could be done to fix this? Is this something we need to even fix? Do we go for something crazy or just something within the rules base?
So with that in mind lets start with an idea that isn’t too insane. So we all know the pain of flyers starts with hitting them on 6’s. This starts with punishing your opponent and in a way punishing yourself by forcing you to have “good” rolls damage the flyer. Here are some ideas that could fix this.
Simple Fix 1
You no longer hit Flyers as a Snapfire shot. Instead the flyer now always has a 5+ Jink save and if they decided to dive they receive shrouding from being so fast. This should generate a 3+ cover save which is still good but not insane like the 6+ that is normally needed to hit now. You still only Snapfire if you decide to dodge and you have to decide when they hit you, If your model has Skyfire they remove the shrouding rule from a dodging flyer.
This removes the need to have amazing hit rolls to actually hit the fly and moves the “good roll/bad roll” to the actual flyer player instead of his opponent. It all comes down to making things easier to complete instead of just making it hard at the initial first step.
There was also talk to limit the distance needed to affect the flyer as well – ie your weapon’s range is – 6 inches. I am not sure if this would make the Flyers even better but it will at least let you feel like you can do something instead of just wishing for 6’s.
MC flyers would no longer get knocked down as well to help mitigate the bolter and die issues that would be caused by this. Or you could just leave their rules alone and make them really scary options for opponents to face.
This fix is the easiest to implement as it still uses the same rules we have now and just tweaks some options to make things feel fair.
Not So Simple Fix 2
Make all flyers armor 10 and 2 HP. This way you can always do something with the standard weapon strength of 4 and your army feels like it can always do something. This is a huge fix that I don’t think is viable but it is another thought brought about through local discussions. You would keep all the Snapfire restrictions and make true anti air options deadly to those flyers. I would probably still add in the Jink save and shrouding option but this is something else that could alleviate some of the headaches in 6th edition.
Could you imagine if your bolters could knock down those flying croissants? The points costs would most likely drop a bit and you would see more of them used as an Alpha Strike option. I know the Dakkajets are not setting the world on fire and neither is flying MC’s as they can still be affected by normal firepower of your opponents army. Is this the Key in making things fair across the board?
Do we need to fix things?
Right now I think the biggest groan with flyers is the fact it is an Alpha strike style unit. It comes in, does a lot of damage and due to its nature of needing “good” rolls to hurt it means that it will get to Alpha strike again and again. We all know that having all your toys get blown up and you feel like you can do nothing in return is not exciting.
So do you think these things need to be fixed? Will the quick filling in of Army Books going to answer some of the older mean books? Is team “Roll more 6’s” the best? Are there other ideas that are not too crazy? Is the key to any of this is not feeling like your army and choices are useless?
So, do you think flyers need a revamp, and how would you do it?
