40K Deep Thought: Flyers Are Past Their Prime
Flyers were controversial when they were added to game. How the mighty have fallen.
I remember when flyers were first added to the game. It’s not a couple of editions back like most people think, but WAY back in the early childhood of Forge World.
The Early Days
The first set of flyer rules came in: Imperial Armour from 2000. There were several versions of Forge World rules that varied from flyers zooming across the table doing strafing and bombing runs, to things that are more similar to what we have now. Back in the early days you can see the designers trying to make flyers seem somewhat realistic with their interactions to ground combatants due their incredible speed differentials.
Everyone Get Flyers
Flyers were incorporated into the core 40K rulebook in 2012’s 6th Edition, and we were off to the races! Once they were nailed onto the core rules the conveyer belt started up and everyone got them. We got everything from fighters to bombers, to flying breadboxes like the Arvus Lighter, to the massive Manta. At some point GW decided to drop all pretense of realistic motion, and all flyers moved to their current system of doing insane corkscrews around the table, trying to get in some shots before blacking out from the G-forces and flying off the table.
There was a time that flyers were greatly feared, and yes you would see fringe armies like the Valkyrie-Vulture and Necron Doomscythe Flying Circuses come and go in the meta.
Once they dotted the skies in flocks.
Even as late as 8th, we saw Storm Raven Flying Circues in the very early days (Pepperidge Farms remembers!). Heck flyers were so much of a thing that for a brief window of time, multiple armies got dedicated anti-aircraft vehicles to deal with them.
Alas…
But all things end with the broom… Nowadays we see flyers in a really odd spot. You do still see lists out there, but the once mighty flyers of yesterday have been reduced to “trickshot” armies. These are loophole lists that win not by superior strategy, or synergy, but by flying circles around holes in the rules.
Its deadliest weapon… perhaps the flying stand.
When a list relies mainly on movement blocking and other tricks to win – it’s a sad state of affairs for the flyers. No more artfully circling around and strafing targets, now it’s more of “you cant hit me due to rule X”, or you can’t charge or shoot the rest of my army due to rules Y and Z”.
Flyers Need an Overhaul
A lot of the flyers predicament is a side effect of both players inability to say no to spam, and the inherent issues with 8th. When flyers were abusable – they were abused, so GW stepped in and made them non-scoring while the rule of 3 dealt with spam. 8th’s increased mobility across the board made their speed less valuable and transports across the board are out of fashion these days. With the flyers themselves in retreat, there is no need for any of the dedicated anti-flyer platforms. I can’t remember the last time I saw one fielded at all.
Name this tank – you have 5 seconds!
So GW is in a pickle. In the two editions after they were introduced, everyone ran out and got some flyers. Now they mostly live on dusty hangars across the world – with some Eldar exceptions. It’s hard to know how they can be brought into use again, as their biggest issues are baked into 8th’s core rules. Who knows, maybe when 9th comes back, GW might come full circle and completely re-engineer how they interact with the game. Those Forge World rules from back in 2000 may be useful to look at after all…
~How would you rework flyers to make more of an impact to the game?
