CSM Helldrake's

I've been facing those since they came out. In my GK's, have to take a storm raven just to really deal with them and now only take termies and pallies just to be able to kinda ignore them. I have 2 Hunters both with Exarch and night vision just to deal with them and it works great. Only ran my DE once against CSM's and ended up with nothing left on the table at the end of turn 3 ,BBQ anyone? You want fries with that? How about some ketchup too? I have two friends that both play CSM's and they always bring 1-2 of them, if I know they are coming, I know I have to put something in to deal with Hell Drakes and that in its self sucks.

Black Death wrote:

I've been facing those since they came out. In my GK's, have to take a storm raven just to really deal with them and now only take termies and pallies just to be able to kinda ignore them. I have 2 Hunters both with Exarch and night vision just to deal with them and it works great. Only ran my DE once against CSM's and ended up with nothing left on the table at the end of turn 3 ,BBQ anyone? You want fries with that? How about some ketchup too? I have two friends that both play CSM's and they always bring 1-2 of them, if I know they are coming, I know I have to put something in to deal with Hell Drakes and that in its self sucks.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me. What's more annoying is the fact that the guy who fields the Helldrake used to play Tyranids but refused to play them against Grey Knights because he felt there wasn't any point turning up against an army that pretty much destroys his 'Nids automatically. I feel much the same way about the Helldrake. I either have to devote a significant portion of my army to AA or accept that I will lose 2 units each and every turn against a single enemy unit.

I don't know about you guys but my Crimson Hunter Exarch did a beautiful job of hunting down and blowing a Heldrake out of the sky. Vector Dancer means it doesn't get to Vector Strike you and tear you out of the sky. You definitely need to focus your fire on enemy Quad-Guns on turn one though, otherwise they'll probably Interceptor kill it. Well worth dedicating the firepower to it though. Just be savvy on what to keep in reserves to save from the Heldrake, then bring in the Hunter to deal with it.

Good thing that we are probably best equipped to deal with quad guns, it takes about 2 venoms to kill it.

Because we can somehow poison metal guns.

Does anyone know the probability of a single volley from an Exarch Crimson Hunter downing a Helldrake? Or at least incapacitating it?

Anggul wrote:

I don't know about you guys but my Crimson Hunter Exarch did a beautiful job of hunting down and blowing a Heldrake out of the sky.

I had some appalling dice rolls in my last game but even with average dice rolls it will take 2 turns for a CH Exarch to take down a Helldrake unless you manage to get lucky on a penetrating damage result. 2 Turns seems to be 1 turn longer than most Crimson Hunters will be in the air for with AV10 and no practical defences!

mug7703 wrote:

Does anyone know the probability of a single volley from an Exarch Crimson Hunter downing a Helldrake? Or at least incapacitating it?

Assuming best case scenario of getting behind the Helldrake to take advantage of AV10 you have 4 shots at BS5 or 3.33 hits. You need a 2 to glance and can reroll anything that doesn't glance or pen (so rolls of 1 in this case) meaning you, on average, cause 3.24 damaging hits which the Helldrake's 5++ save reduces to 2.16. So, as I said above, you need to get lucky with a penetrating hit to take it down in 1 turn with a flyer that is more expensive and far more fragile than the Helldrake! Granted the Helldrake itself has a hard time taking you out but it doesn't really need to when almost anything else in the CSM army is capable of doing so (due to AV10).

Count Adhemar wrote:

So, as I said above, you need to get lucky with a penetrating hit to take it down in 1 turn with a flyer that is more expensive and far more fragile than the Helldrake!

On the bright side weapon destroyed is crippling results for a helldrake, so 50% of the time you are good.

I've had some success against them although, that success was due to a skyfire nexus objective which I parked two ravagers next to.

Considering the AP2 on the guns, two penetrating hits means a pretty decent chance of blowing the thing up, if not taking out the flamer.

ravenheart wrote:

I've had some success against them although, that success was due to a skyfire nexus objective which I parked two ravagers next to.

I actually didn't realize this til recently, but a unit can only take advantage of the mysterious objective if it is holding it - ie must be a scoring unit.  So only if the mission was Big Guns never Tire could your ravagers use Skyfire and even then, only one of the two could use it.

Oops looks like we got that rule wrong. Now I know for next time.

My meta is both chaos and flyer heavy and , not to sound bitter, but I think helldrakes are some serious bs. A recent game of mine saw me utterly trouncing a friend for the first 3 turns, but I called it at the end of his 4th turn when his 2 drakes came in and killed a raider, ravager, venom, my warlord and his entire unit and a full allied squad of Eldar. It was purge the alien so I couldn't even try for objectives. Just sad that the CSM codex is so unbalanced. They have to take one unit if they want to be able to compete at all. My friends hates it so much he is selling his army.

Never played triple Drakes but several times againts Double dragon lists. Everytime the game goes like this.
T1-T2 I kill most of his stuff in board. T2-T3 Drakes come in and the game changes the other way around and I got killed instead.

But!

What DE excels in is having a lot of units. so losing a few doesn't take my list from the fight. And it is most certain that those turkies show so we need to be prepared for it. 36" from opponent board edge means no Vector Strike. Spread out formation lessen the effects fo flamer. Units out side of their transports to avoid explosions.

And on your turn you should have left quite the amount of lances and Blasters to kill the birds. And As mentioned Eldar Allies help a lot.

You must have some seriously good luck with lances then! Even with rerolls from an allied psyker a Ravager is likely to inflict any form of damage on a Helldrake once every 3+ turns!

Not one Ravager but several different source of lance fire. Maneuberability and area denial is a key to it also.

Vasara wrote:

Not one Ravager but several different source of lance fire. Maneuberability and area denial is a key to it also.

I used the Ravager as an example as it's our most efficient darklight platform. What I'm basically saying is that even if you somehow end up with rerolls to hit on all of them, statistically you still need ten (10!) darklight weapons to take a single Hull Point off a Helldrake. Without the rerolls it's 20!

The Red King wrote:

My meta is both chaos and flyer heavy and , not to sound bitter, but I think helldrakes are some serious bs. A recent game of mine saw me utterly trouncing a friend for the first 3 turns,  but I called it at the end of his 4th turn when his 2 drakes came in and killed a raider, ravager, venom,  my warlord and his entire  unit and a full allied squad of Eldar. It was purge the alien so I couldn't even try for objectives. Just sad that the CSM codex is so unbalanced. They have to take one unit if they want to be able to compete at all.  My friends hates it so much he is selling his army.

Out of curiosity, how did two Heldrakes take out five targets? Did an explosion kill the Warlord and his entire squad?

Void ravens with a void lance. It has been a great addition for taking out heldrakes s9 lances are so much nicer.

I know, it's just a shame there's still no official model for the VR bomber. My friend has a nicely converted one with a venom used on the front to make it dual cockpit.

Thar is verycool I need to convert one

In response to Anggul (on a phone so can't quote) vector strike from both and then their two flame templates clipped the back of my venom in the process of shooting at another squad thus wrecking it as a bonus to wiping the squads.