With the introduction of true flyers to 6th Edition, with things like sqauded Valks/vens, Razorwings, Stormravens and all the others I can't remember. Does anyone think of how the Tau might compete, we have the Barracuda but I am not sure if we can use it.
Since marker lights don't increase the chances to hit (as I understand the rules) since only snap shots can be taken, how might the Tau counter Flyer heavy armies and how does anyone think it will change the game.

Personally I liked the addition of flyers but think currently it may be slightly unbalanced as so many armies lack flyers of there own, and no one has dedicated AA weapons for the moment (At least Seekers still fire at BS5 per ML...right?), I have always been a jet-fighter fanatic to the idea of real fighters is like a dream but not sure where this will take the game as whole, it seems as though GW has wanted to make flyers a big part of the game (which isn't a bad thing, air-power plays a major role in all warfare today) but I think they have wanted to make it such a part that they may have left it unbalanced, at least for now while there are so many lagging army books.

Unfortunately our book not being able to compete with newer books is not new. In my view, not giving the Sky Ray the Skyfire special rule is basically an insult, but there you have it; hopefully GW will fix it in the next version of the FAQ, but their FAQ writers seem to have taken a dislike to Tau so who knows.

Speaking of FAQs - Forge World's is due today. No idea how extensive it will be yet, but it may yet make the Barracuda legal in non-Apocalypse 40K... and Remoras (which you've overlooked) are already legal in 40K, and seem certain to be officially made Flyers. I've never really rated Remoras before but Stealth Fields are now rather awesome - they still won't be able to dish out much damage I suspect, but they will be very resilient! It's not yet clear just how complete the Forge World FAQs will be (if they release full stats for everything, nobody has a reason to buy their books any more; if they don't, using their models will be a PITA having to cross-combine stats from at least two different places) but I have high hopes...?

[edit] Oh - and the next FW book is Aeronautica, ie. flyers for 40K, so I guess the Barracuda, Remora etc will be covered in that?

If we're talking strict codex play, then I feel our best bet for fighting fliers hands down is three units of broadsides configured thusly:

Shas'ui team leader with SMS, Drone Controller, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter
Shas'ui with SMS, Drone Controller
4 Shield Drones

And then you pray.

On top of that probably at least one or two units of XV-8s with TL'd missile pods.

This way you have lots of chances to roll 6's. With a Missile Pod you have a small chance to glance if they don't evade. A significant chance to glance with Rails. On top of that, even if you don't down it on a pen with Rails at least there's a chance to strip off an extra hull point.

Twin-Linked Railguns and Twin-Linked Missile Pods are going to be the name of the game for dealing with flyers. Fortunately, these also happen to deal nicely with non-flyer vehicles so we aren't panicking if we show up and they're a 100% ground army.

When Twin-Linked, the shots are only marginally worse than BS2 shooting (We're almost as good as Orks!) and there aren't exactly a lot of heavy fliers around. Now, if they release a land raider with wings, then we may have some issues to deal with. But until they do that, the math doesn't look too bad:

A single Railgun shot hits 30.5% of the time, and that translates to:

.254 glances or better against AV12
.305 glances or better against AV11/AV10

A single Missile Pod shot (Twin-Linked) hits with the same frequency, and translates to:

.101 glances or better against AV12
.152 glances or better against AV11
.203 glances or better against AV10

You can (roughly) double the numbers for the missile pod since it fires twice per weapon. This means a unit of Deathrains plus a unit of Broadsides can be relied upon to remove a little under 2 hull points (from AV12 fliers) per turn, with a reasonable expectation for a penetrating hit for additional damage. Broadside penetrating hits also have a 50% chance of exploding the aircraft, and sending fiery debris into the lines of your opponent (or your own lines, depending on the location of the fliers).

This is by no means great, but it is also not horrible (especially when compared to other codices).

what about the forge world hammer head turrets? specifically the plasma and long barrelled burst cannons. Both are twin linked giving a little extra nudge towards hitting the darn things. The plasma cannon puts out 4 twinlinked shots per turn at str 7 while the burst cannons put out a whopping 6 twinlinked shots per turn at str 6.

These are by no means dedicated anti air units but they (theoretically) sound as good to me as anything else we have to bring them down.

And there's one possibility more, and I think less pricey: Aegis Defence Line in Fortifications section. For 100 pts total you gain cover for some infantry (or tanks for the bagining of the game) and Quad-gun which is something like TL Heavy 4 Missile Pods with skyfire and possibility to shot at enemy turn to appearing reserves (so less suprises with outflanking vendettas) or for 15 pts less with H1 Lascannon also with skyfire... And the have ranges covering almost everything. With possibility of meeting a flyer on the other side of the table I think it's better than 2 AA XV8, even if we consider it's lack of mobility.

I have considered this a lot... but I have a problem with it. Tau can't hold objectives for their lives, what will make this gun any different? Where the ADL falls flat is the idea of spending 100 points only to have it snatched early on, and then play with a 200 point handicap for the rest of the game. And with that in mind, I think I'd rather just spend those 100 points to have something I know will stay mine until it is killed.

Stealth Team, bonded with a lead carrying HWDC and a Marker Drone or two with a Shas'el (TL-BC, Flamer, HWMT, HWBSF, 74 pts) to operate the gun. 2+ cover for the entire unit, the potential for ML guidance in addition to BS4 on the Quad-gun and hurricane of misery for anyone who wants to try and dislodge the unit with an assault. If things do go bad, scuttle the Quad-gun and vanish into the night, leaving your enemy in control of a little patch of cover that doesn't really do them a lot of good in the first place.

So... my club has a very competitive metagame... and going into GW today I saw 3 necron armies with 6 flyers at 1500 points... Obviously I need some solutions, so I've started looking pretty hard.

Now I know we're looking for solutions mostly within our codex, but I for one plan to be bringing some Eldar allies and I hope that this piece of gear might be a diamond in the rough.

The vibrocannon. For those of you who don't know them... It's an artillery support weapon found in the Eldar heavy support section. It costs a little less than a deathrain and can take up to 3 in a squad. They've got some cool mechanics for how they hit and deal damage (both to troops and vehicles). For my army, I was looking at 2 things. First and foremost, any hit to a vehicle automatically glances it. Under the new edition... that's not a bad power. But so what, we have railguns which autoglance almost any flyer they hit too... but the hitting is the key point and that brings me to the second benefit. For the vibro cannon, you roll to hit for all the guns before you nominate a target, and if any hit, then you draw a line from the weapon team and everything under it counts as being automatically hit. This means you're rolling to hit on an unmodified BS against flyers!

So a 2 vibrocannon team will cost you 100 points. It will (on average) hit 75% of the time with the opportunity to hit more than one vehicle a turn, and thus cause .75 glances a turn on a flyer regardless of its AV. Suck it railguns ?

Until said Flyer turns right around and strafes your Vibrocannon Team . Unfortunately I think we're stuck until GW comes out with the White Dwarf issue that has our Flyer in it.

Something to consider for knocking fliers out of the sky, a deep striking 8 man gun drone squad.

Unfortunately you'll only get 1 shot from that squad reliably and it would only have a marginal chance of damaging a flyer . Building on that though, massed Fire Warriors rapid firing might work on Av10-11 Flyers..

Hahaha. Sorry, this made me chuckle. IIRC the Vibrocannon works by making the ground vibrate, which is how it's able to hit every unit along a line. The idea of using that against Flyers amused me.

That's a fluff consideration, obviously, not rules, so in a competitive environment it may not be an issue for you.

Taking an Aegis Defense Line with a quad gun (100 points total) or a Bastion with the quad gun (only 25 points more) is also a reasonable solution. It's cheap, doesn't interfere with any FoC choices, and both options offer excellent protection to a unit, or even multiple units.

An Aegis Defense Line, for example, can provide 4+ cover to three full strength broadside squads that are spread out in different locations on the battlefield, and provide a fourth mini-bunker with the quad gun in another location to be manned by a different squad. Really not a bad deal for the points.

I thought the fluff describes it more as a sonic blast (ala vibrating particals), which doesn't have to be along the ground, I'm pretty sure it's not an earthquake cannon. For my army I'd probably design it as a railgun emplacement rather than an actual vibrocannon.

A thought occurs to me. Perhaps we could use Drone sentries as a makeshift air-defence unit? A sensor tower network could yield twin-linked markerlights, which may allow for a higher chance of a seeker missile launch, and allow a unit per shooting phase to re-roll any misses towards a unit, while Drone sentry turrets all have twin-linked weapons. Both units are also troops choices, so do not prevent more crisis suits, railgun units or markerlights.

Spam Markerlights and Seekers (bring a Sky Ray), or just shower them with Railguns. With 9 TL shots per turn, something will hit, and the toughest flyer we've seen so far is AV12. Pen on a 3+, Kill on a 4+. Statistically we land, what, about 3 hits per turn? That's not significantly worse than our odds of killing a Leman Russ with the same guns.

Also, speaking of Markerlights: The gun emplacement rules say all other special rules of the gun and the model firing it apply. For us, that includes markerlights. Put a BS4 model on the Quad-gun, and paint the flyer with an ML and you have, in effect, a pair of TL Autocannons hitting on a 2+. Even against AV 12, there's a good chance you'll bring the target down.

This will probably turn out to be the most effective anti-Flyer firepower we have, for no reason other than quantity. There is only a single flyer in the game our pulse rifles cannot hurt (unfortunately, it's the most popular flyer, as well...), and now that they can move and fire at their full range, putting a large volume of shots on the target is easier than ever. Of course, it'll be down to glancing it to death, and sadly most flyers have three hull points. Still, it's better than nothing!

Ah, OK, I was going from memory and must have misremembered. Apologies. (I was still amused).



I'm not so sure about the turrets, but I have certainly been taking Sensor Towers since the update. A TL ML and a PosR and reroll Deep Strike scatter in LOS and make a nearby unit twin-linked is nothing to sniff at, even if it is only on an AV10 immobile vehicle - no-one ever thinks to shoot at it!

Of course, making the unit effectively twin-linked doesn't help with, say, Broadsides... but it certainly helps Hammerheads, or Hazard suits (ouch!), or most Crisis suits (not that I use them), or of course Fire Warriors... 24 twin-linked Pulse Rifle shots at 15" will give even a Flyer cause for concern (as long as it's AV10 or AV11 of course).

Could you maybe drop a sensor tower next to say.... the Icarus Lascannon on a bastion and twin link it?