Battle Report 81- Death in the Skies: Massive Flyer Battle

This week's battle report features a whole host of fabulous flyers! With my recent move down to Newcastle, I was saddened to leave the great guys and girls at Dundee Wargames Club. As a sort of leaving-do/game, I decided to host a massive 40k flyer battle based on the scenario in Death from the Skies.

I had done the same game a few weeks earlier with two of the players from the club to test the rules. It was an absolute blast and we decided to add some additional special rules as the game went on to make it even more fun.

The rules for the scenario followed the Fighter Sweep air war rules, with the following changes:

• Flyers are not allowed to leave the board. There can be nowhere to hide in this game and I wanted a ton of flyers on the board at once.
• At the end of their move, flyers are allowed to make an additional 90 degrees turn. If they choose to do so, roll a D6. On a 1-2, the G forces rip the aircraft apart and it is destroyed. Flyers with Vector Dancer can turn without penalty as normal.
• Flyers that Jink suffer -1BS the following turn for each enemy flyer they jinked for. E.g. if you are fired upon by two enemy flyers and jinked twice, you suffer -2BS the next turn. This was to stop one side from being too powerful and forcing multiple flyers to jink and snap fire next turn while doing little damage.
• Any time a flyer is destroyed, it careens out of control. Roll 2D6 and a scatter dice, the aircraft moves in this direction, stopping if it hits another flyer. If it collides with another flyer(s), both players roll a D6. If the player with the destroyed aircraft beats the roll of the player with the flyer it hit, both flyers are now destroyed!
• "Janked" is the official past tense of "jink" for this game, i.e. "I'm at -1BS as I janked last turn".
• When a flyer is destroyed, it get to come back on in the players next turn. 

This time round, I managed to get a whole host of players to sign up for the game. I split us into 4 teams based on the number and type of flyers that were available. These were:

Players would score 1 point for each destroyed enemy flyer (2 points for the massive Tigershark). If a destroyed flyer crashed into any other and destroyed them, the points would go to the player who shot down the original plane.

We decided that the four teams would roll off for priority each turn, the highest roll going first, the second highest going second, etc. This would create even more chaos as players could potentially get two turns in a row.

The game was fought on a 8x6 feet board. Based on the additional special rules in effect, I expected lots of carnage on all sides!

Hobby Sunday 17/07/16- White Scars Stormraven

This week's Hobby Sunday highlights my White Scars Stormraven flyer. This model has been sitting undercoated in a box for over a year now, so I finally decided to dust it off and get it finished in my recent run of White Scars painting.

 

The Stormraven was painted in my standard White Scars scheme.

Wash with Agrax Earthshade.

Hobby (not really) Sunday! 29/06/16- White Scars Stormhawk Interceptor

This hobby Sunday comes to you on a Wednesday this week (madness, I know!). The reason for this is that I have actually been making a lot of painting progress over the past few weeks and getting several units completed in a single week. Rather than spread out the hobby Sunday posts of do them all in one big dump, I thought I'd add a couple of additional ones.

 

The list submission deadline for Caledonian Revolution was Sunday night just gone by. I had finished painting my proposed army for it, but in a moment of madness, decided to swap out my Stormtalon for the new Stormhawk flyer to give me some added anti-air firepower. The tournament will not be using the Dogfight phase, but will be using the other rules from Death from the Skies (at least I think. The FAQ was not too clear and they didn't reply to my question on facebook). Given this, the Stormhawk would be my only source of skyfire, as the Stormtalon would now lose it.

 

So this meant I needed to get the Stormhawk painted. Fortunately, the weather was nice at the weekend (allowing me to undercoat it) and there were three games of football on Sunday that I could watch while painting. As a result, I managed to get the Stormhawk completed over the weekend. I had previously magnetised the weapons to allow me to use all the options.

I started by undercoating the flyer in white (after remembering to cover my magnets in bluetack) and gave it a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

Assembling and Magnetising the Stormhawk Interceptor

I recently purchased a new Stormhawk Interceptor after picking up the Death from the Skies expansion. I really liked the look of the new model and the rules were also rather great. I decided that I would magnetise the kit to get all the available options on the flyer.

 

One of the reasons for this is that it is actually quite difficult to choose between the Las-talon and Icarus Stormcannon. The Las-talon is a short ranged, two shot lascannon that is great for taking on vehicles or monstrous creatures. The Icarus Stormcannon on the other hand has Interceptor and Skyfire, great for possibly taking out enemy flyers before they have a chance to fire on the board and gets some big bonuses during the Dogfight phase.

 

After looking at the kit and checking out a few online guides, it was actually surprisingly easy to magnetise the kit.

 

I started by assembling the kit as detailed in the instructions. When it came to the tail section, I copied the Stormhawk conversion by Siph_Horridus over at the WeeMen blog. He had taken the top tailfin and moved it to the bottom after trimming the bottom fin. This gives the Stormhawk a much more streamlined look compared to assembling it in the regular fashion. I really liked this and it suited its role as a supersonic fighter jet.

 

I began by assembling the main hull. The bottom tail of the rear of the hull was removed.

The rear tail fin has been removed.

Death From The Skies Supplement Review- Part 4: Air War Missions

This final part of my review of the new Death From the Skies supplement takes a look at the new Air War missions. Six new scenarios are presented for getting the most out of games using a lot of flyers. Some of the missions seem like a lot of fun and I hope to try some of them in the future.

 

Some of the missions presented require the use of several flyers, so might be best suited for larger games with multiple players per side in order to fulfil the requirements. There are a couple of changes to regular missions that also take effect. One is that flyers are able to start the mission on the battlefield (unless the scenario states they must begin in reserve). This means you will be able to use your flyers from the very start without having to hope that they turn up early. Another change is that the game no longer ends if one side has no models on the board and only units in reserve. This is a sensible change for games likely to feature a large number of flyers in reserve and additional units in reserve and makes null deployment an even more valid tactic in this game.

 

Fighter Sweep

This mission does not use points values and simply takes place between two opposing armies of flyers. This represents a massive air battle, so you will not need any terrain, but will likely need a very large gaming space to properly play this mission.

 

The winner of the scenario is the player/team with the most victory points; 2 VP for each destroyed Fighter, 1 VP for each destroyed Attack Flyer or Bomber.

 

This mission uses an endless reserves type rule, where each flyer that is destroyed is returned to play in the following player turn. There are also additional rules to benefit flyers that arrive from reserve, giving them an increase in their move (to allow them to get into the action) and Preferred Enemy.

 

I really like this mission, it provides a very different way to play 40k and provide a more unusual game. I plan on running this mission at the club in a couple of weeks and hope to get a large number of players and flyers on the board.

 

I may make a few changes to the mission though. I would remove the Dogfight phase as the board represents this. With so many players and flyers, having a Dogfight phase would become too complex I think. I also may remove the no skyfire rule for the other flyers. It will be very hard for non-fighter flyers to damage other flyers if they can only snap fire. I may compensate for this by giving Flyers a ballistic skill bonus or improved jink. I'd be interested to hear what readers would think of these changes and whether they will unbalance the game.

 

With the large board, large number of flyers and endless reserves, I am hoping this will be a fun and bloody game of 40k.

Death From the Skies Supplement Review- Part 3: New Flyers and Formations

The third part of my review will look at the rules for the new flyers and their formations that have been introduced in Death from the Skies.

 

New Flyers

Stormhawk Interceptors

Space Marine armies have a new flyer of the Fighter type to take on their foes. The flyer is based on the Stormtalon chassis and I really like the look of the new model (I may even consider picking one up in time).

The Stormhawk has a higher front armour of 12 compared to the Stormtalon, but the rest of the stats remain the same. This gives the Stormhawk a bit more durability compared to the Stormtalon. It is also a fighter, giving it some great bonuses in the Dogfight phase (it even gets a bonus to its Pursuit and Agility values in the Dogfight phase).

 

The flyer comes armed with a twin-linked assault cannon, Las-talon and twin-linked heavy bolter, so has a decent amount of firepower. The Las-talon is a shorter ranged Lascannon with an extra shot, so pretty good for taking on other flyers or ground tanks (albeit hitting on 4's thanks to being a Fighter). The Las-talon can be upgraded to an Icarus Stormcannon, which has the Interceptor and Skyfire, making it very useful in the Dogfight phase. The heavy bolters can be upgraded to either a Skyhammer missile launcher or Typhoon missile launcher. The options for the Stormhawk's weapons allow you to either target armour or infantry as you choose. The only downside is that the Stormhawk suffers a -1 BS penalty to shooting a ground targets, so may diminish its firepower slightly.

 

The Stormhawk also comes armed with an Infernum Halo-Launcher, giving it re-rollable Jink saves to get in on some of that sweet Ravenwing action.

 

I like the Stormhawk Interceptor. It is a great looking model and comes with a lot of firepower for such a cheap flyer. It does suffer a bit against ground targets, but should perform very well in any dogfights.

Death From The Skies Supplement Review- Part 2: The Dogfight Phase

Welcome to the second part of my review of the new Death from the Skies supplement review, looking on the new Dogfight phase for flyers. The first part of the review looked at some of the additional rules for flyers and the new rules for the Flyer Wings in 40k.

The Dogfight phase occurs at the start of a player turn before reserve rolls if each player has one or more flyers in reserves. This is not compulsory though and if one player wants a Dogfight and the other does not, they can roll off to decide if it occurs.

If the Dogfight phase does occur, there are 4 different phases that occur.

1. Interception Phase
This phase basically decides who is the Attacker and who is the Defender. This is a simple roll off, with bonuses for having more Fighters in reserve and penalties for having more Bombers in reserve.

The Attacker gets to pick one of his flyers and one of his opponent's flyers to take part in the Dogfight, meaning the Attacker can single out an enemy craft rather than having to go up against the Defender's choice.

Death From the Skies Supplement Review- Part 1: Flyer Rules and Flyer Wings

Welcome to the first part of my review on the new Death from the Skies supplement. This new supplement greatly expands the rules for flyers in 40k, providing new special rules for using these unique vehicles and introducing some interesting new scenarios for players to use. I wasn't initially intending to purchase this supplement, but I saw a copy going for cheap-ish on ebay and decided to buy it. I have a few tournaments coming up and thought I would pick up the rules just in case they were in effect at the tournaments and I wanted to know what they were all about.

 

This first part will look at some of the new rules introduced for flyers and the new flyer formations that have been introduced, known as Flyer Wings.

 

Flyer Rules

The new rules for Flyers build upon the rules already presented in the 7th edition rulebook.

 

Flyer Characteristics

The first new rules add additional characteristics for flyers in the game. These are Combat Role, Pursuit and Agility.

 

Combat Role splits flyers up into three distinct battlefield roles; Attack Flyers, Bombers and Fighters. Attack Flyers are for going after ground targets (how I would generally field flyers in a battle), Bombers are for dropping bombs (ironic, isn't it?) and Fighters are supposed to target enemy flyers.

 

The Pursuit value represents the speed of the flyer and is important for determining the attacker and defender in the dogfight phase (a new phase of the game that I will cover in the next review). Pursuit values range from 1 (for the cumbersome Astra Militarum Valkyrie) to 5 (for the sleek flyers of the Eldar and Dark Eldar).

 

The Agility value represents the manoeuvrability of the flyer and is important in the dogfight phase for forcing your opponent to turn (making it more difficult for them to fire) or allowing a flyer to jink. These values range from 1-5.