Anti Air Units?

[treadiculous]

I'm wondering what 'Nid units are good for taking down aircraft in 6th?

[Jabberwocky]

Dakkaflyrant is good.

Dakkatyrant and fex are reasonable.

Harpy and Hiveguard are reasonable, depending on AV/other upgrades. Mycetic spore with TL-DS is reasonable. Shooty warriors (particularly on a skyfire nexus) are reasonable except against AV12. Trygon would be reasonable but you are then not able to assault something useful.

Skyfire objectives will help most depending on scoring/mission and even massed S4 (gants) will work on AV10.

[fragile]

We have few options for actually taking them down. It is often best to ignore them and plan around them than trying to counter them.

[glassiya]

There is Objuration Mechanicum from Telekinesis. Although not guaranteed to roll, we have enough psykers to beat the gods of dice. Even Broodlords can cast this spell. It destroys Flyers in squadrons pretty fast.

[infornography]

The only thing we have that fires at ballistic skill against flyers is a dakka flyrant. And the harpy with it's weakest weapon. We have a few options to try to take it down at BS1, but they are not at all reliable. We can also hope to get one of the two decent powers in an overall pretty (please do not swear) set to take down flyers but if you don't roll that one power you are stuck with sub par powers.

So Dakka flyrant it is.

[l0rdf1end]

I would put our options in this order:

Flyrant with two sets of Twin linked devourer. In swooping mode they can choose to skyfire. Plus they have manouverability to get to sides or rear.

Hive guard. They need to be spammed, the flyer gets no Jink.

Objuration Mechanicum, again you have to spam to secure chances of getting the power.

Flyrant easily wins for AA, ground Brainleech devourers are limited by range and movement.

[mash]

other than Dakkaflrant i don't think anything else is worth trying. It stinks but we really don't have anything, you've just got to ignore them. I've heard a rumor that the Pyrovore is being FAQ'd into a anti air unit (might give us a reason to take it).

[coredump]

Both Hive Guard and Devilfex/tyrant are okay at AA, at least for AV10/11. Not great, but a threat.

[infornography]

More of a waste than a threat really.
Devilfex
12 shots twin linked at BS1
for the sake of easy math I will say that twin linked doubles the chance to hit, even though it is not quite that good.
out of 12 shots 4 hit.
Against AV 10 glance on 4. Assuming they get no save and didn't evade, that is 2 glances/pens. So against AV 10 it isn't bad, but keep in mind, most of the real airborne threats are AV 11 all around AV 12 on front and sides, or AV 12 all around.
AV 11 glance on 5. That is 1.33 glance/pens Not very likely to make a significant impact
AV 12 glance on 6. That is .66 glance/pens. You have almost even odds at doing nothing at all

Hive Guard
2 shots at BS1. .33 hits. That is a 2/3s chance of not even hitting
AV 10 glance on 2 .28 glance/pens
AV 11 glance on 3 .22 glance/pens
AV 12 glance on 4 .17 glance/pens

A basic devilfex costs 190 points
A Hive guard costs 50
4 Hive guard still only get .68 glance/pens against AV12 and do worse than the devil fex point for point against AV 11 and 10

Now keep in mind that the guns you are working with are ranged 18 inches and 24 inches. That is not much battlefield coverage and neither of those units is particularly quick on it's feet. They would both be better served by gunning down ground targets than chasing airplanes. You are basically wasting the ranged potential of some very powerful and expensive units on something that really, when you get right down to it, they are no good at shooting down.

Now if they have no ground targets in range and they can shoot at a flyer without deviating from an effective battlefield position during movement then by all means, take the shot. I wouldn't hold my breath but you might get lucky, but I just don't see it being worth wasting their potential against other targets for the vanishingly small chance they will scratch a flyer.

[Jabberwocky]

Devilfex does have the advantage of being scoring in big guns, for potential skyfire objectives as well as with a scoring warlord Prime. Not likely, but worth utilizing if the opportunity arises.

[l0rdf1end]

If you are running into Flyers (which you should be) The only way you can be assured to do its some damage is running Double Flyrant with double Brainleech Devs.

Even then you need to roll 6's to glance the average 12 AV. On top of that they can still jink.

The only thing that's giving me decent odds for flyer control at the moment is running 2 flyrants and spamming Broodlords.

For competative play, it might be wise to wait for the Harrier (I so hope this flyer can start on the board).

[coredump]

Inforno: Two issues I have.

You are conflating proper target priority with effectiveness. Just because there may be a better target for a devilfex, does not change how effective it can be. There may be a better target for a flyrant too....


Your definition of threat seems a bit harsh.
Assuming the 4 hits that you mention, that is a 31% chance of getting 3 HPs off of AV10,
Beyond that, you have more than an 80% chance of getting *at least* one Pen; which has a very good chance of dealing some harsh results.


Against AV11, the chance of getting 3 HP drops down to about 11% (I am pretty sure) About the same as 3 HG shooting at a Predator tank.
But you still have over a 50% chance of *at least* 1 Pen, which adds about another 10% chance of destroying that flyer.

To me, a 20+% chance of downing a flyer qualifies as 'a threat'.

Even better, it tends to qualify as a threat to the flyer owner, just rolling those 'hits' is often enough to get the flyer to Jink; thus reducing its effectiveness next turn

[gloomfang]

I have to agree with Coredump on definitions. We need to define what we are talking about.

There are 3 class of flyers: Light (AV10), Medium(AV11) and heavy (AV12).

I am going to assume that you mean heavy flyers as we can kill light flyers fairly reliably with volume of fire from fleshborers and devourers.

Medium flyers you need S5 to damage. That limits what can even shoot at them. The only real weapons for that are deathspitters, BL dev and Implalers. While there are not a lot of units that can use those weapons, they can reliably glance and they can be taken in decent numbers. Valks and Vends fall into this when you can get the rear shots. Flyrants are your best bet as the S6 and rerolls should let you take down one a turn.

The issue is how to deal with the AV12. This is the real issue when Nids talk about flyers. Impalers are the only shooting weapon we have that can pen. At best you can just try to glance one to death with TL Dev on a Flyrant. your only choices are to try for OM on all your psykers or get PE on your Hiveguard and hope they stay in range. AV12 flyers will generally not Jink unless they are low on HP Against Implalers it does not good and against flyrants they need a 6 to even glance.

[coredump]

Don't make a mistake... even our best AA (FLyrant) is only 'okay', especially against AV12. There really are no 'hard counters' against flyers at this point.