Double Dragon

I'm becoming concerned with fighting Helldrakes. Haven't faced a double (or triple) Helldrake list yet but I'm preparing myself for the experience.

What are something list building ideas and onfield tactics we should all be mindful of? The way I see it, these things pretty much ignore cover (Vector Strikes, Baleflamers, etc). Does this see the return of the Flickerfield or perhaps an increase to our Khymera head count?

I've played against one of those bloody things a few times now, both with DE and BA and I can assure you that they were disgustingly powerful before the recent FAQ and even more so now. They are right up there with Screamers and Flamers as the most ridiculously overpowered/undercosted units in the entire game.

Firstly they can hit pretty much any unit on the table when they come in from reserve. 36" move and 360 degree fire arc ensures that there is nowhere to hide. S6 and AP3 means that no armour in our codex can help, cover saves do not apply and FNP doesn't work for most of our models. Basically, if you don't have an invulnerable save, you are dead. The only thing I've found that is any help against them is a Skyshield Landing Pad. The 4++ for models on a shielded pad is the best protection we can get.

Of course that still leaves the problem of killing the damn things...

Yeah I was concidering it. But Khymera have the same 4++ and can move.

How are wounds allocated if he flames you, but extends the template into say your second line of troops. Wounds would still be allocated on the closest model to the Helldrake first, or from where the template was positioned?

You still allocate to the closest model to the Helldrake rather than the template. Only thing I'm not 100% sure on is what happens when multiple units suffer hits. Do they each have their own Wound Pool?

I'm not sure you can target multiple units in 6th edition with the flamer templates saying place the template to cover as many models as possible in the target unit and count up the models hit then roll to wound and "Use normal wound allocation" for the wound pool. In the shooting section, it states that you have to target 1 unit and they don't have the the exception blast templates have that specifically allow them to hit more than 1 unit.

I realise that it's a problem if positioning the template to hit as many models in the target unit as possible forces you to touch another unit (which shouldn't happen very often) but either they just wouldn't be counted (since you can't target 2 units) or they would just up the total number of hits to be thrown into the wound pool to be allocated against the target unit, since it specifically says to use normal wound allocation.

Or am I missing something?

Got a game against Triple dragon tomorrow, not looking forward to it:

HQ
Hurion Black Heart - 160

TROOPS
19 Chaos marines, 2 plasma guns, gift of mutation, power sword - 312
10 Cultists, flamer - 55
10 Cultists, flamer - 55
10 Cultists, flamer - 55

FAST ATTACK
Helldrake - 170
Helldrake - 170
Helldrake - 170

HEAVY
7 Havocs, 4 autocannons - 141
7 Havocs, 4 autocannons - 141
Oblierator - 70

Total: 1499

Will post a report.

I suspect (hope) it will get to the stage where if someone turns up with 3 Helldrakes their opponent just shakes their hand before the game starts and says "Congratulations on the win"... and then leaves.

On a more serious note, against that list I wouldn't worry about the cultists. Bladevanes or splinter fire will quickly take care of them, especially as they are not Fearless as far as I can see. You need to take out the Havoks before the Drakes turn up to stand a chance, as your vehicles might then be intact to help against the cheesedrakes.

each has their own wound pool Adhemar, like before.

You want to beat helldrakes? There are two ways. A: use something with skyfire and interceptor to stop them before they hit the board. or B: out flyer them.

What I mean by outflyer them is you either you run more flyers then them, or you outmanuver them. Its tough to be sure, but its very possible. stay out of their front arc so you cant be vector striked, and they have a problem taking out planes.

Shadows Revenge wrote:

each has their own wound pool Adhemar, like before.

You want to beat helldrakes? There are two ways. A: use something with skyfire and interceptor to stop them before they hit the board. or B: out flyer them.

What I mean by outflyer them is you either you run more flyers then them, or you outmanuver them. Its tough to be sure, but its very possible. stay out of their front arc so you cant be vector striked, and they have a problem taking out planes.

With 3 drakes I guess at least one of them will have the Hades Autocannon, which can easily blow our planes out of the sky.

The new FAQ essentially gives them a 360° firing arc. They can fly over you and still shoot you. It's not funny. Helldrakes are nasty, and in the new FAQ makes it fraking difficult to 'outmaneuver' them since they can be looking one direction and shoot behind them.

Q: How do I determine the Arc of Sight for a Heldrake’s ranged
weapon? (p52)
A: Treat the Heldrake’s ranged weapon as a Turret Mounted
Weapon, measuring all ranges from the edge of the Heldrake’s
base nearest to the target unit.

3 of them could just about hit anything on the board, any given turn, no cover. Invuln. save or shoot the bastards down is about the only option.

On a positive note, if any army can truly outmaneuver the drakes, a mobile DE army can. It may force us to give up some shooting to move fast enough to out-range some of the weapons, but vehicles would still be able to fire if they can avoid having to move flat-out.

I've tried running the quad gun against them and it didn't do nearly enough, which isn't suprising since it's str 7 against armor 12 and they have a saving throw.

Seshiru wrote:

I've tried running the quad gun against them and it didn't do nearly enough, which isn't suprising since it's str 7 against armor 12 and they have a saving throw.

The Icarus is probably better, especially if you grab some Eldar allies to man it. I've used a Dark Reaper Exarch with Fast Shot before. 2 AP2 shots, hitting on 2+, penetrating on 4+ is not too bad. You rarely get to fire it more than once though before the enemy takes it out. And if they have 3 flyers then they will probably make any gun emplacement a priority on turn one.

I think I've brought this up before but I think that an allied Broadside Unit might be the way to go (3 of course with target lock etc.)

Why?

1. Heldrakes won't kill them easily.

2. Once you get past their invulnerable save, the Broadside has the best shot at killing Heldrakes.

3. A unit of Broadsides is not that expensive per se and has a relatively small footprint to minimize interaction with the main DE army.

Now before I start hearing HQ/Troop tax this or that. I'm just trying to address the 3 Heldrake problem. Especially with target lock, the Broadsides, in this instance looks like a winner.

Mushkilla wrote:

Got a game against Triple dragon tomorrow, not looking forward to it:

Don't envy you this one. The havocs will probably end up as infiltrators, so watch out for that. Don't forget that the Heldrakes can hover if needed. I guess you'll try and ignore the flyers and concentrate on driving off the infantry, which is really our only realistic response to flyers like these. Then sit on objectives and spread out the troops to the maximum you can (a template can only score about 3-4 hits on unit spread out to 2" between models).

And on a general point, wracks still get FNP vs the baleflamer, so would be a reasonable troop choice vs the dragon.

Allies may also help. Farseers can provide guide/prescience to twin-link heavy weapons & improve chances vs flyers. Ork Lootas are not a bad choice. Or how about your own Heldrake with hades autocannons? That would be hilarious vs a double dragon list with only baleflamers! Or imperial guard vendettas (3 in one slot). I think the space marine flyer comes with a multimelta. Tau broadsides are also reasonable with the re-roll (and 2+ armour save).

We pretty much just have to accept that we can do nothing on our own vs multiple flyers and that they can just do as they please. Unless you want to gamble on taking voidravens and hope you get the 'alpha strike' (by deepstriking perhaps). Even a poor player can make life very difficult for us.

Anyway, good luck Mushkilla!

huymix wrote:

I'm just trying to address the 3 Heldrake problem.

The thing I have noticed with three helldrake lists is they don't tend to have any other armoured targets. They tend to favour havocs and oblitorators over the vehicle heavy support choices, dreadnoughts are not that popular, leaving rhinos at most. So the 10 dark lances in my list don't have anything else to shoot at other than the helldrakes, and I have 11 blasters on top of that in a pinch. The helldrakes also take up a third of his army.

@Squierboy: Thanks! I definitely see him infiltrating the havocs, just so he can go first, see my deployment and then set them up for maximum damage.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Shadows Revenge wrote:

each has their own wound pool Adhemar, like before.

You want to beat helldrakes? There are two ways. A: use something with skyfire and interceptor to stop them before they hit the board. or B: out flyer them.

What I mean by outflyer them is you either you run more flyers then them, or you outmanuver them. Its tough to be sure, but its very possible. stay out of their front arc so you cant be vector striked, and they have a problem taking out planes.

With 3 drakes I guess at least one of them will have the Hades Autocannon, which can easily blow our planes out of the sky.

Why would they have an hades autocannon??? its only BS3 and a waste of 4 shots. If you are taking a Helldrake, your taking it for the baleflamer... You can get hades autocannons on a better platform for cheaper (forgefiend)

ThePhish wrote:

The new FAQ essentially gives them a 360° firing arc. They can fly over you and still shoot you. It's not funny. Helldrakes are nasty, and in the new FAQ makes it fraking difficult to 'outmaneuver' them since they can be looking one direction and shoot behind them.

You can still outmaneuver them, its just really difficult now than just saying "get behind them". The 90 degree turn + torrent + template length shortens the area in which you can hide behind one. Luckily there is still a blind spot due to it having to constantly move. The problem becomes when you have multiple Helldrakes, as ideally you want atleast one always covering each of the other's blind spots

Turn 1, kill the havocs.

Turn 2+, stay inside your raiders, then the drakes will need 5's to pen you and meanwhile your inf is relatively safe (only explodes on a 5+).

If, okay when, you're shot out spread out 2" between every inf model - and position them in a wave pattern. A circle will also do the trick.

Then the drakes can only hit a maximum of 3 models per flamer template.

Shadows Revenge wrote:

Why would they have an hades autocannon??? its only BS3 and a waste of 4 shots. If you are taking a Helldrake, your taking it for the baleflamer... You can get hades autocannons on a better platform for cheaper (forgefiend)

You would take them because the baleflamer does jack against vehicles and people still take vehicles. And if you're taking 3 Helldrakes that's a decent chunk of points so you may well be light on AT elsewhere in the list.

@Septimus - don't forget they can still vector strike D3 str 7 hits (that now always hits side armor and ignores jink) which will rip our vehicles apart and then they can burn the passengers with the bale flamer probably hitting all of them since they have to be placed in the wreckage.

One Void Raven would do alot against them, but sadly hurts you against normal flyer spam

I think flicker fields would be a must against drakes. Night shields seem kinda pointless 6" plus template is still going to reach the whole board after a 36" move.

Night shields actually say they have no effect on template weapons which the bale flamer is so it would still be 12"

Quote :

@Septimus - don't forget they can still vector strike D3 str 7 hits (that now always hits side armor and ignores jink) which will rip our vehicles apart and then they can burn the passengers with the bale flamer probably hitting all of them since they have to be placed in the wreckage.

It's D3+1 hits, so about 2 hits on average, meaning 1 pen which has to roll a 5+ to explode a Raider. 33% is not too bad odds vs. autohits. If you have a FF (good idea even though you can jink, you won't get a jink save if going second, or being seized, for instance) the odds are even better.

If a Raider has a FF then you only have a 21% chance of getting an explosion result.

Doesn't seem so much worse than all the other long range fire you can get for the points cost of 3 helldrakes, even though they hit automatically.

If it does happen, tough luck I guess. I'm just saying it's not as bad as some people make it.

Helldrakes are definitely good but they are at their best flaming inf, and particularly marine inf. So deny them inf targets for as long as possible.

10 lances if on foot infantry may very well be much lower after 1 turn of baleflamers from multiple helldrakes.

But for the sake of argument, lets say you do have all lances and blasters attacking heldrakes.

Bear with me here on the mathhammer and the fact my math is not great:

21 shots = 21/6 hits = 3.5 hits.

Lets say its front or side: penetrating hits 3.5/3 = 1.167 penetrating hits, glancing hits 3.5/6 = 0.583
Of those, the invulnerable save should mean,

1.167/2 = 0.58333 penetrating hits that are unsaved. I believe you would need a 5+ to really kill it.
0.58333/2 = 0.292 glancing hits that are unsaved. Hull points can be regenerated.

Couple of things to keep in mind, this is of course all in theory. But this is assuming all lance and blaster shots get to fire.

Fact is, 18" moving with a 360 baleflamer means anything can be burned to death in the DE army. There is no running.

For your units, honestly, I would keep them in venoms. This is probably their best protection you can get.

Aliies are the default answer in 6th! Probably. Offensively, at least, the options open up once you add psychic powers. I would vote Forewarning as the best way to pass out Invulnerable saves to non-vehicles, with Eldrad having the best odds for getting it and the best way to use it, twice! After that, you want solid anti-air in pretty much any army, not just to fight Heldrakes. The Exarch+Gun combos are my recommendation, either Fire Dragon+Quad Gun or Dark Reaper+Icarus Lascannon- their squads should receive one of the 4++ saves. Prescience on a Ravager is not very likely to work, but it's an easy thing you can do with any Farseer.

As for defensive tactics, most of the typical anti-flier tactics went out of the window once it got a turret. You cannot get behind a solid wall, it will fly over, see you, then flame behind it. I'm not sure if two solid walls helps or not: Vector Strike shouldn't get around the restriction that you can't aloocate a wound to what you can't see, so if you somehow set up a position where you force the dragon to fly all of the way past you over a wall you can avoid that. But then that unit is doing nothing to help you kill the enemy's ground forces and score his objectives.

So I recommend offense, and call in a favor with a local Craftworld.

Here's the report against that triple Helldrake list:

BR19: The Black Buzzards VS CSM Triple Helldrake - 1500pts

Hope it's useful.