Thoughts on Anti-Air

So a little background. At my local game club, my Dark Eldar army was doing absolutely great, so I decided to attend Throne Of Skulls. This went a lot better than expected, as I had only played 8 games of 40k prior to attending. It was a 1 day event, so out of the 3 games I played, I won 2.

My loss came to (would you believe it) Tyranids! I didn't get first turn and he had 3 flying monstrous creatures. They immediately went into flying mode, and for the rest of the game they shot me up with twin-linked devourers, and I just couldn't hit him back on 6s. He later went on to top score at the tournament, so he was a good player, but I just couldn't deal with his air units.

Since then, I have played about 25 games with Dark Eldar, lost 2, against Necron flyer spam and Chaos Heldrake spam. Recurring theme? Enemy flyers!

Next year I want to attend some 2 day Throne of Skulls events and would love to win something, so my first step is how to deal with enemy flyers.

I've taken a razorwing or a voidraven so far, and to be honest, I'm not impressed. Sure, they are good flyers, but they cannot rule the skies against other flyers that are really strong at the minute.

Then there's the fortifications options. I thought about them for all of 10 seconds. WAY too static. Quad-guns and a defense line etc aren't going to work when my entire army is built for speed and dictating where the fighting takes place.

So I'm thinking of going for option 3. Taking no anti-air whatsoever. Bringing in another Ravager, which makes an army total of 15 dark light weapons and hoping I can roll 6s. With the amount of poison weaponry on the table as well, I'm thinking I can wipe out ground forces and hope to avoid playing someone with 539 Nightscythes in their list! Sure I'm going to lose some units to firepower from the air, but hopefully I'll have enough left to ignore a few losses. I know I can also manouevre about to mitigate damage as enemy flyers struggle to manouevre themselves...

What do you guys think of this plan?
What reliable methods of anti-air have you used for competitive play?

P.s. Ally with Eldar isn't an option!

Delvian wrote:

P.s. Ally with Eldar isn't an option!

Here's your problem. Dark Eldar do not have competitive air or anti-air units. Period. That basically leaves you option 3.

As a sidenote: Venoms (or in general, splinter cannons) rule against flying monstrous creatures. You should be able to get a FMC crashing down reliably with three or four Venoms, after which you can shoot it normally with lances or other poisony goodness.

Ignore is the best plan. Allthough Bastion grants your vehicles 3+ cover.

Area denial works well too. Spread your beasts to very large area to deny your opponents room to manuever his flyers.

Mandor wrote:

As a sidenote: Venoms (or in general, splinter cannons) rule against flying monstrous creatures. You should be able to get a FMC crashing down reliably with three or four Venoms, after which you can shoot it normally with lances or other poisony goodness.

Yep I've added Splinter Cannon Trueborn with Venoms for some turn 1 splinter fire from the backfield. Turn 1 against the tyranids saw hardly any splinter fire because I had to spend the first turn moving up to get the rifles in range. Next thing, both my gunboats were destroyed.

Delvian wrote:

Mandor wrote:

As a sidenote: Venoms (or in general, splinter cannons) rule against flying monstrous creatures. You should be able to get a FMC crashing down reliably with three or four Venoms, after which you can shoot it normally with lances or other poisony goodness.

Yep I've added Splinter Cannon Trueborn with Venoms for some turn 1 splinter fire from the backfield. Turn 1 against the tyranids saw hardly any splinter fire because I had to spend the first turn moving up to get the rifles in range. Next thing, both my gunboats were destroyed.

Gun boats are bad. Too easy to destroy them. And since they can pump out a lot of dakka they are on top of the enemy target priority.

Disagree Vasara. Gunboats with Splinter Racks have consistently been my star unit. Nearly 40 games, all games bar 3 have been massively down to the gunboats. All for 170 points.

I normally throw up some raiders with Wyches and/or Incubi turn 1, into cover if possible, which suddenly turn into enemy target number 1 considering next turn would be a bloodbath in assault. That means the gunboats can get into position with limited enemy return fire. Obviously against flyers this doesn't work, as they can't be assaulted, hence this topic. But it works great against ground units.

Mandor wrote:

Delvian wrote:

P.s. Ally with Eldar isn't an option!

Here's your problem. Dark Eldar do not have competitive air or anti-air units. Period.

I agree. The Voidraven is probably our best bet but it's too fragile and, barring a lucky penetrating hit, is unlikely to take out an enemy flyer before being taken down itself. The problem, as with a lot of our units, is that we've retained the glass part of the glass cannon but lost most of the cannon itself. We're simply too fragile and need to have superior firepower to compensate for this, which is sadly lacking in our own flyers.

The Eldar codex attempted to accomplish this with the Crimson Hunter Exarch, who does have superb firepower, but again the fragility of the model is too much of a weakness. It's essentially a 170 point one-shot weapon! This is further complicated by the flyer rules meaning that, as you start in reserve, if you go first you may not even have a target for your one shot wonder before an enemy flyer destroys you when it comes on in its turn. Interceptor fire on a fragile model is also an issue, especially with the sort of firepower that Tau can bring.

I'm not sure what sort of remedy there is in our own codex. FMCs are not so much of an issue due to splinter weapons having a great rate of fire and this should enable you to bring a FMC down fairly easily. As splinter weapons have no effect on vehicles and our own flyers are rubbish that does cause a huge problem. Personally I tend to take Eldar allies (Dark Reapers in a Bastion with a Quadgun) but you've ruled that out.

Count Adhemar, great points. I can't see why we don't have the greatest flyers in the galaxy?! Considering DE is known for lightning strikes, with precision & brutality, awesome fighter type flyer rules for the Razorwing seems a no brainer to me, a la Crimson Hunter. But as you've mentioned, even that gets brought down with Interceptor.

I know that Eldar allies is a good move, even with Prescience buffing snap shots, but for many reasons I don't want to go down the Eldar route. The background I've written, the popularity of Eldar, and also wanting to win something with a pure list without Allies. At ToS, the top DE player had Chaos Daemons Allies! A few people were wincing at that!

I also appreciate that for being ultra competitive, fluff etc has to go out the window, but I'm trying to give it a shot by being competitive and thematic.

I think that anti-air is the only thing that our codex is really lacking. If the opponent is spamming fliers I don't think there is really an option other than using mobility to try and avoid them.

As a side note I always find it interesting that our flyers are considered so fragile when they are on par with most other flyer's AV. There a few flyers that are tougher like the hell drake, but those are the exception not the rule. Every flier that has come out since that one has been comparable to ours.

I don't think that our fliers can really be used to counter flier spam, but they do ok one on one. Most of the time it really boils down to which flier comes in last.

Trystis wrote:

As a side note I always find it interesting that our flyers are considered so fragile when they are on par with most other flyer's AV. There a few flyers that are tougher like the hell drake, but those are the exception not the rule. Every flier that has come out since that one has been comparable to ours.

The common flyers that are seen in games are:

Stormraven (AV12 all round)
Stormtalon (AV11 all round (2HP))
Helldrake (AV12 (10 rear))
Night Scythe (AV11 all round)
Doom Scythe (AV11 all round)
Vendetta (AV12 (10 rear)

So, with the possible exception of the Storm Talon, not only are these all tougher than our flyers, in terms of AA firepower they are all equal to or greater than our own, given that our missiles can't even be used against other flyers as they are all blasts.

A few simple fixes would help. Firstly, switch the armament on the Voidraven and Razorwing around. The bomber should not have better guns than the fighter! Secondly, both should have Vector Dancer. Thirdly, the Razorwing should have AA missiles as an option. Fourthly, twin-link the guns on both. Lastly, give them both Flickerfields as standard.

Apparently Dark Eldar are too arrogant to twin-link any of their guns. Either that or ammunition is just really expensive. Maybe Commoragh Darklight Inc has a monopoly? But yes, totally agree with you Count Adhemar. I'd love to see the option for AA missiles.

But back on topic, I tend to favour option 3. I've even started taking my Razorwing with dissies for a one turn big hit on an infantry target, and totally given up on intercepting with it. If the opponent would rather commit his flyer to taking out mine than harassing my ground troops, good luck to him.

Remember that guys moving 12" in their transports are snap firing anyway, so are at no disadvantage when also shooting at flyers, same with guys who have gone to ground. So if some flying monstrous creature needs a bit of dakka to encourage its face to meet intimately with the ground, I wouldn't hesitate to move the warrior gunboat 12" to optimal range. Similarly, if a group of dark lance Trueborn have drawn anti-air duty for a game, by all means keep them gone to ground in area terrain or behind an aegis for a sweet cover save. (Except wave serpents and Tau can really ruin our day... Nothing new there!)

The Raven has a TL Dark Lance. yeah, one shot TL would be so great.. No we do not need TL on the flyers and the heavyer weapon is supposed to be on the heavyer flyer, which the voidraven bomber is.

The Problem is, that our flyers came out too soon. Next update will see an updat that will bring them on par with the eldar flyers. Anti air missile and vector dance would be sufficient and maybe an upgrade to an elite flyer.

On Topic. As previously sad, Anti air is scarcely found in the DE codex. Your best choice against FMC are mass splintershots. Venoms with double SC + 3Trueborn with double SC are very good unit, wait 'till you down a FMC and then jump on it, get up & repeat.

Against flyers in general, try to ignor them and play the mission. Kill the rest of the army, and try to place your units in ways, which force him off the board.

I get your point off not using allies, my army is also not that much liked by their cousins, so i found myself a nice fluffy way to play my allied farseer: rouge psyker plaything of my heamonculi ;-)

(And nice to find some others that favour the good old/new gunboat, still, some venoms can't hurt)

slaínte

Crazy_Irish wrote:

The Raven has a TL Dark Lance. yeah, one shot TL would be so great.. No we do not need TL on the flyers

Why not? Look at all the other flyers. They other have a high rate of fire or are twin-linked (or both). It makes them more reliable and therefore more useful.

Quote :

and the heavyer weapon is supposed to be on the heavyer flyer, which the voidraven bomber is.

Why?

Quote :

The Problem is, that our flyers came out too soon. Next update will see an updat that will bring them on par with the eldar flyers.

I can't wait. Bringing us on par with subpar flyers. Woohoo!

Count Adhemar wrote:

Crazy_Irish wrote:

The Raven has a TL Dark Lance. yeah, one shot TL would be so great.. No we do not need TL on the flyers

Why not? Look at all the other flyers. They other have a high rate of fire or are twin-linked (or both). It makes them more reliable and therefore more useful.

Well first of all i look at the model. TL would mean one shot. if it would come from an ace pilot upgrade, it could be done, but i would more like a +1 on the table.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Quote :

and the heavyer weapon is supposed to be on the heavyer flyer, which the voidraven bomber is.

Why?

Because a heavy flyer can take a heavyer load and the bigger guns usually a heavyer. But i agree the fighter should be better at fighting other flyers. I would like to see a pulse version of the DL. S7 AP2 2 Shots would be nice, but that would be a nicer version of the dissis XD
But anti air missiles would make it a good bit better against other flyers.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Quote :

The Problem is, that our flyers came out too soon. Next update will see an updat that will bring them on par with the eldar flyers.

I can't wait. Bringing us on par with subpar flyers. Woohoo!

I would not want an abomination like the hell turkey! we are a glass canon, we just need a bit more punch for our flyers.

One of the problems with our flyers is that the fighter is a better bomber than the bomber and the bomber is a better fighter than the fighter. They need to become more specialised and be better at what they are intended to do. The bomber needs to have, well...bombs! The fighter needs to be able to fight other aircraft.

Count Adhemar wrote:

One of the problems with our flyers is that the fighter is a better bomber than the bomber and the bomber is a better fighter than the fighter. They need to become more specialised and be better at what they are intended to do. The bomber needs to have, well...bombs! The fighter needs to be able to fight other aircraft.

I'm with you there, the only reason the fighter is better at "bombing" is because he gets his first missiles for free. Would he be able to get AA Missiles the world would be a better place. and the fighter could shine as a fighter. It's not because of the heavy DL, it's just because of the free rockets.

An Crimson Hunter or a Void Raven is our only AA choice, other than that ignore and get behind them, make them fly off the board to be effective, and your get more turns without their shooting on the field.

Adhemar is right, the fighter needs AA missiles, and the bomber needs different bombs to hit different targets. But we will have to wait and see when the new book hits. GW is never known for balance anyway...

Skipping on anti-air seems to be the popular option then. Thanks everyone.

On the topic of flyers, we've got a long wait for an update. Realistically they aren't going to update the Dark Eldar codex for a good while I think. I can't see them keeping up the rate of Codex releases we've seen this year. Codex supplements are more likely the route forward for a while.

With that in mind, if Forgeworld weren't so busy with the Horus Heresy, a Dark Eldar flyer would be fantastically received. Similar to how they did the Necron night shroud, I.e heavily influenced by the Night Scythe. They could use the Razorwing as a base, sculpt on a few more details, job done. But then DE don't get a lot of love from FW...

I wouldn't bee so sure. What codices are there left, that do not have a 6th Edition update?

-Tyranid (next)
-Imperial (supposedly start of 2014)
-Orks
-Blood Angels
-Grey Knights
-Necrons
-Space Wolves
And us. Well ok, it's still some list, but should we be last on that list?

And regarding FW, shouldn't the next IA be about DE? Also we have got some more treatment from BL. Dark Eldar have played a role in 2 Horus Heresy storys, eldar only once, afaik. Also Path of the renegade and Incubbus. We have come out of the shadows, but i agree, more FW treatment would be nice. An nice AA unit would be nixe.

The next IA is Crons, FW confirmed that. We are going to be in IA 14 (again, confirmed).

The problem comes that the Heresy has been doing so well, FW has shifted all its efforts into more Heresy stuff, so they have pushed backed IA 13 (was suppose to come out this year, and now its scheduled for Q2 of next year) and that subsequentially pushes our IA back... So yeah, we got awhile before we get some FW love

Even though there aren't many more to update, I really think they will slow it down. 6th edition needs to last, so updating everyone within 2 years would leave years after with no updates...
And Surely they wouldn't be doing 2 army updates for 6th...

Supplements to fill the gaps, with a lot of emphasis on fantasy (considering their new edition is due out next year for the fantasy anniversary). Just my opinion anyway, with a close eye kept on Naftka's opinion!

Let's be careful what we wish for. The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the next 'codex' for us was a digital only supplement, with a lame warlord table, and a couple of slightly reworded rules.

Then nothing til 8th ed.

Way i see it, if you face enemy Flyers there are 2 types of armies

1) Armies that have some Flyer support
2) Armies that have hell uva lot of Flyers. And i mean here Necrons, IG, CSM.

With first - if you take Single Razorwing - you can either threaten their Flyer or damage it, either way considering Flyers not coming till turn 2, you will save yourself another turn or 2, which does help your ground forces.

With second - you just need alpha strike powerfull enought to shocking destroy all ground forces turn 1. And thats probably means goodbye Raider Wyches and Raider Incubi. Single Razorwing wouldnt hurt here too.

Anyway - Bastion with Quad-Gun, Reapers is probably ok advice, but taking that is kinda admitting for low tier games. Cause with those many point therem you will dearly be sorry when you need raw killing power instead of this. Tau dont have Flyers.

Azdrubael wrote:

Anyway - Bastion with Quad-Gun, Reapers is probably ok advice, but taking that is kinda admitting for low tier games. Cause with those many point therem you will dearly be sorry when you need raw killing power instead of this. Tau dont have Flyers.

I think you'd be surprised at the sheer firepower of that unit, particularly as I usually take them with a Farseer for support. Roll Perfect Timing and Prescience/Guide and you will, quite simply, delete any unit that doesn't have a 2+ save. Even those will be taking enough saves to inflict some casualties. If you're lucky enough to roll Doom as well...

Delvian wrote:

Even though there aren't many more to update, I really think they will slow it down. 6th edition needs to last, so updating everyone within 2 years would leave years after with no updates...
And Surely they wouldn't be doing 2 army updates for 6th...

Supplements to fill the gaps, with a lot of emphasis on fantasy (considering their new edition is due out next year for the fantasy anniversary). Just my opinion anyway, with a close eye kept on Naftka's opinion!

6th Edition is a shooting fest, with only very specific armies being capable of doing any viable assault at all. For armies that don't have high numbers or high resilience assault units, assault is generally useless. And with the complete stop on first turn assaults, assaulting from reserves and in a minor way Overwatch, even armies that do have numbers or resilience struggle. Look at the top tier armies at the moment. Almost all rely on shooting with hardly any assault.

Cover saves are out of control due to fortifications, shrouded and stealth. The result of this is that newly released codices need to have some form of ignore cover weaponry. And this increase in ignore cover weapons invalidates armies that actually rely on these cover saves. Look at the top tier armies at the moment. Almost all have a large variety on cover ignoring weapons.

With flyers and flat out for every vehicle in the game, almost every army now has become incredibly fast, capable of reaching any part of the board from any other part of the board in a single game turn. Armies that rely on speed and maneuvering suffer because they lost some of their prime benefits. Look at the top armies at the moment. Almost all either have flyers, fast skimmers or bikes.

Flyers themselves are hit or miss, depending on your codex. Either your army has godlike flyers (Necrons, CSM, IG) or they blatantly suck (Eldar, DE, Tau, DA). This causes anti-air to be either generally useless versus the first or totally overpowered versus the last.

So, why does 6th edition need to last exactly? Is it the best edition so far? Sure. Is there much to improve upon? Definitely. As long as a potential 7th edition revises 6th edition, instead of invalidating half the codices like 6th itself did from 5th, I think a new edition can't come fast enough.