40K Deep Thought: Have Flyers Peaked?
Hello everyone your fiendly Blowfly here again !! Bzzzt… I’d like to briefly discuss how I think flyers will play out over the course of sixth edition – I think they have already passed their zenith.
If we look at the championship in Chicago this week BoK has reported there aren’t many Heldrake spam armies. Necrons are still right up at the top. ; )
What is currently the best flyer for the points? To me it’s hands down the Night Scythe… Fairly cheap for the points plus its a transport. The Night Scythe is a real gamer winner since you can dump a scoring unit on an objective late in the game. I can’t really say which is second best – probably most people will say the Heldrake or Vendetta. I really like the Doom Scythe – it’s not as survivable as the Heldrake but the death ray has the potential to wreck deathstars and I respect that a lot plus it’s got the Tesla Destructor which is really good obviously.
I personally like the shift from heavy mechanization to more infantry based armies, in fact it’s one of my favorite things about sixth edition. I think Tau have a lot of really good anti flyer defense and it is a natural deterrent versus skies of death armies. There are lots of people who generally don’t like flyers and its turned them off to 40k. Like I said though I think in that frame of mind it’s only going to get better. If we look at daemons, Dark Angels and Tau you’ll notice none of these armies got over the top broken flyers – that seems to be the new trend and if you think about it Necrons in many ways were one of the first true sixth edition armies so they had a big head start. Each codex has a window of opportunity and sometimes it happens quite late like Tyranids. Maybe several of the fifth edition codices were written more with sixth edition in mind. Only Phil Kelly is left from the past, all the other developers are new guys.
I’m very interested to see the next codex written by Mat Ward. I think it could be very telling for the future of the game. Love or hate armies such as Grey Knights and Necrons they are currently passing the test of time. I’ve seen lots of codices drop off the map when a new edition is released. I hope that there won’t be another over the top broken codex any time soon. That might sound a bit hypocritical since competitively play Necrons-Grey Knights but honest I like the new Chaos and am working on a new army.
Mostly it seems like most of the complaints about sixth edition stem from the lack of things such as spammy units. I’d rather keep learning how to play the game better rather than generating a list of complaints. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out over the next year or two.
So do you think the arrival of Tau Empire heralds the begining of the end of the Reign of flyer dominance – and what is your favorite flyer?
