Whats the Anti-Air?

The options I've been toying with are:

Wave Serpents - For roughly 600 points I can bring 2 Serpents, 5 Avengers, 5 Fire Dragons and an Autarch to manipulate reserves and lead my Reavers.
Tau Firebase Support Cadre - Riptide and 2 squads of Broadsides all with Skyfire and Tank Hunter. Sprinkle in some drones for markerlight support and that should deal with pretty much anything in the air. Downside being the cost. Even barebones just with Skyfire and no Drones it clocks in at 700+ points.
Firestorm Redoubt - 2 twin-linked quad icarus lascannons, magos machine spirit (BS3), void shield and comms relay comes in at ~275 points and provides pretty good, if automated, AA fire and reserve manipulation plus a safe (AV14) place to hide a decent size unit until later in the game. Downside is that it's static and potentially can be one-shotted, with disastrous consequences for both my AA capability and any unit inside or on top of it.
Astartes Stormwing - One Raven and 2 Talons should be enough to dominate the skies against most threats and at ~450 points it's not too expensive.

The Tau are probably the best AA but they are expensive. The Eldar fit nicely into the rest of my army but do make me feel a little dirty. The Astartes and the Redoubt both feel wrong in a DE army.

I'm stuck!

After my little whinge about serpents, I went and read the entry for the crimson hunter. Sky hunter is a good rule, something we could use on our fliers. Just like vector dancer.
I can see the superiority of the craftworld for AA. I'm now a convert.

Yeah the crimson hunter is much better. I genuinely believe that our aircraft aren't intended for anti-air duties, from rules right the way through to model design (the wings are far too big for it to be an agile maneouvrable aircraft, but perfect for something ridiculously fast - just check out pics of the SR-71). The only thing that confuses the issue is that the razorwing is called a jet fighter.

That being said though, they are the only in-codex options that can perform AA role.

I can tell you from using the Firebase Support Cadre that skyfire isn't even really needed. Just giving them early warning override is usually enough to negate flyers. That will save you 90 points and give you protection against drop pods other deep strike shennanigans.

I've been trying to figure out a good fortification to use for a quad gun and comms relay too, but I was leaning more towards a bunker to keep the cost lower. I really wish the void shield generator could take a comms.

Not related to strategy, but I do find it funny how the fluff for reavers, hellions, and scourges basically state they spend the majority of their time flitting about the air near the top of massive spires.

But apparently, they don't have skyfire.

And if you argue it's not because they're high, it's because they go too fast, then our skimmers and reavers should only be hit on a BS1 if they flatout or turboboost.

Razorwing with 2x Lances is 140 points. The 10 points buys you both Lances.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

DestroyApathy wrote:

p.s. The plus 1 cover save is super fantastic, especially if one is discovered on the way up the board, and you can use it as a route to get your Raiders up. Especially with the new Night Shields, a 2+ jink within that 6" diameter (more if you consider you only need a bit of the Raider within 3") is a big helping hand.

I love this - never saw it as much use until now! Looking forward to annoying people with that one, I can just imagine the conversation now.

"Right, time to shoot that raider off the objective."
"Good luck, I have a 2+ jink save."
" "

ok, won't work against some things, but it'll be fun seeing their faces the first time!

That's exactly how I won a game against Necrons a few weeks ago. All I had left was a one hull point venom, Jinking, during night-fight, on a scatterfield.

On topic, Razorwings are usually ok for anti-air with the lances, in my previous experience. Alternatively, just ignore the fliers if you can and focus on everything else...some fliers aren't that nasty in the grand scheme of things.

Quote :

p.s. The plus 1 cover save is super fantastic, especially if one is discovered on the way up the board, and you can use it as a route to get your Raiders up. Especially with the new Night Shields, a 2+ jink within that 6" diameter (more if you consider you only need a bit of the Raider within 3") is a big helping hand.

NS gives you a 3+ Jink and not a bit more, unless you pull off angling your craft in a specific way.

Just buy Razorwings for AA, they're slightly cheaper and they have all the missiles needed to fight all targets.  While Void Lances are better, they also cost more for smaller gain. The Crimson Hunter is decent buy, because while it dominates air targets like you wouldn't believe, it's also quite overpriced. The fact that this air superiority fighter doesn't come with Holo-fields also makes my design senses haywire.

It still hasn't made sense to me why we don't have Vector Dancer when the Hemlock does, since that is a ground-support plane as well.  To make matters worse, we don't have Strafing Run either, further depleting our ground-role.

Rage.. building.. must.. stop.. talking.