A positive look at the Nephilim

[elphilo]

I played with one last night, but instead of Lascannon I used the Avenger Mega Bolter. And man, even though that is supposed to be our dog fighter, it sure did tear up some ground units. But then my opponents Vendetta and Valkyrie showed up and I was at a loss of what to do against it. Since I could only glance them to death while they were doing penetrating hits. Though it was fun to yell "EVASIVE MANEUVERS!" :D

[Polythemus]

While i understand that the op of the thread is the nephilim its important to consider its cousin for purposes of comparison in the FA role.

 

Here is my analysis of the dark talon.

Cons:

I have only tried proxying the darktalon, its got potential for sure but its most useful weapon is only 18" that means if you want to keep your flyer you only get one shot with it on a given unit. Thats a pretty tough sell. It seems that you really need to control your reserve rolls to get it on the turn your deep strikers/ most dangerous units arrive. This means for max benefit you must include points cost for azreal or comm relay.

Pros:

That way as long as you hit with blind and get a good init roll your termies will survive that withering amount of fire theyll be taking from blobs. Azreal or a comm relay are essential for this strat. Assuming you get the chance given favorable enemy movement, the sequence should be: (0) arrival, black knight stasisgrenade x, blind x, deep stike enter (+1) blind y, stasisbomb x, assault x with deep striker, (+2) hover mode, blind y/z, assault y/z. If it all arrives together your opponent will be crying. A very interesting consideration is that i believe blind will effect units in their dedicated transports.

[shabbadoo]

The Nephilim will hose down ground forces. The Unrelenting Hunter ability is really only useful to stop close combat Dreadnoughts before they get into close combat and kill Skimmers moving Flat Out; especially on the rear armor of either of those.

[Polythemus]

I have recently been reconsidering the nephilim jetfighter. Now while i will concede that a storm eagle fully loaded is a better flyer its also more expensive both points wise and $ wise. It is clear from the design of the nephilim that GW doesnt want DA players owning the skies and destroying other peoples models first turn, if they did we'd have more powerful missles on board. I do think they may consider FAQing the blackswords to have the ordinance rule and keep them as is strength wise but that isnt the point of this post.

 

When considering the nephilim the main problems that arise are how to take maximum advantage of its abilities and what will it need to be supported by? We need to consider the tactics of flyers and what is needed to for different opponents.

 

If you like forgeworld there is one answer. If you dont it gets more complicated.

 

Non-FW: the best rule of the nephy is its ability to convert wep destroy to immobilised. Now in order to maximize this we want to keep the low ap value of the las cannon giving us the chance of an immobilized on a 3+. Lets review what happens to immobile flyers.

 

According to recent faq an immbile flyer moves 36", and if it (or any vehicle) gets immobilzed a second time it loses two hull points. That means that any flyer out there except the forgeworld variety will be killed with two immobilizes since all of them have three hull points.

 

Now if you have immobilized your opponent then you can assume one of two things, he will either try to stay on the board to get things at the back of your deployment zone Or he will fly off cause he has no other options. This is where tactics come in. If he stays you must stay, especially if you have no other dedicated AA. So go for some side glances vs your opponents armor/devs. When he flies off, do the same he will come back on. Now once your opponent comes back on he is more limited in what he can shoot at. He must move 36" so that means if your ground forces are in the middle of his deployment zone his hull mounted wapons cant hit you because the max angle flyers shoot down is 45 degrees. But he also knows youll be coming on so he wont want to present any vulnerable rear armor to you. If he does he should be dead, if not its likely that you can still pen him for a second immobilize. Meaning in a dog fight you will win one v. one, especially if you can control your reserves (azreal anyone?). Of course if you also have a dev squad you will be able to take additional hull points. Make sure you try to get any hits from other skyfire units first, to maximize your ability to get that first immobilize, then clean up with the nephys auto immobilize rule.

 

FW method- Now if youve got the contemptor mortis with kheres or the mortis varieties of rifleman or dual lascan. You should be able to enforce where your oppoent goes and what he does much better since you have more interceptor capability. These units will also be able to help in anti tank/infantry capacity which serves to diversify ability to nullify threats. This will be especially true if you can come on after your opponent which is what is needed to win these dogfights.

 

Hopefully i have presented a compelling arguement for using the nephillim and its ability to take down enemy fliers fairly effectively.

 

For those who are wiser than me can you shoot rear armor if even the slightest portion is presented to you, or is there some standard which decides when you get side and when you get rear?

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

you shoot at the side which presents most of itself to you, usually side as its the biggest. The AMB is ok, the only disadvantage to a Nephilim is, in fact, the points cost, otherwise it is worth it.

[Polythemus]

But given that the hell drake is only ten points less and is not as likely to destroy you it seems that the nephy is actually well priced. It will be equally interesting to see if the upcoming compendium gives unit price changes, because if codex marines and templars get the stormraven it is likely the points will go up, or at least youll need to pay more for all the same options.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

Helldrakes are a pain to fight. If the AMB was at least rending, then it would at least be worth the points imo. Sure, I can see a lot of great uses for the Neph, but against SR and Helldrakes...it is not effective, even with a Lascannon, and those are the closest in price to it.

 

Also, remember vector strike, with its new updated FAQ the Helldrake gets D3, or maybe just 3, S7 hits for flying over you. I think it is best to run with an Aegis Defence Line with a CM in AA and quad gun against the Heldrake, he won't be torched and can bring it down. Or just use DW against Chaos ;)

 

As you point out, it does have a good use, and with the changes to FAQ makes its ability against AV11 and down much more reliable and effective.

[Izzuan]

Last tuesday I had my first game with the new codex, and I brought my converted nepilim (Storm Tweety > Nephilim actually isnt that bad...) with the Las Cannons. I had first turn, and my flyer came out before my bro's hell drake, so didnt get a chance to test against other flyers. I did however unload on his Defiler...penned with the las cannon, glanced with one of missiles. Say what you want, but the only thing that saved him was that demonic ward save (his walkers ALLWAYS make the save against me). In his turn he managed to his with a snapshot from the defiler's TL LC, and I failed the jink and was ker'sploded. Didnt even manage to crash onto anything.  

 

But thats the way the dice roll right? :)

[IndigoJack]

But given that the hell drake is only ten points less and is not as likely to destroy you it seems that the nephy is actually well priced. It will be equally interesting to see if the upcoming compendium gives unit price changes, because if codex marines and templars get the stormraven it is likely the points will go up, or at least youll need to pay more for all the same options.

 

The heldrake is also AV12 front and side, which is huge. AV12 really doesn't care about S7, so a quadgun isn't really going to stop it from torching a unit when it arrives. Lots of S7 can really hurt AV11 though and a quadgun is likely to put at least one pen on a nephilim. Any roll on the damage chart is going to hurt the nephilim in some way. This means a quadgun is likely to prevent the nephilim from doing anything the turn it arrives (either by penetrating or forcing it to evade). Now your opponent has had a chance to get into the nephilim's blind spot. IMO, the only way for the nephilim to be useful, is to take more than one. 360 pts for reliable anti-flyer is just too much. I understand that many people think other flyers are underpriced, but making DA flyers more expensive to balance flyers out isn't going to fix the issue, it's just going to give DA a crappy flyer and force us to take allies for better AA if we want to play competitive.

 

I really don't think the new compendium is going to adjust any prices. I think it's just going put all the FAQ erratas and 6th ed updated rules in one place. If there was going to be a rule change, I'd imagine they'd do a WD insert much like they did for daemons. Additionally, mail order only, so that will limit its distribution. If it was a significant rule change, such as changing point values, I'd imagine they'd want a wider dissemination. This is just my opinion based on what we know so far though, and I could certainly be wrong. 

[Onisuzume]

Helldrakes are a pain to fight. If the AMB was at least rending, then it would at least be worth the points imo. Sure, I can see a lot of great uses for the Neph, but against SR and Helldrakes...it is not effective, even with a Lascannon, and those are the closest in price to it.

Also, remember vector strike, with its new updated FAQ the Helldrake gets D3, or maybe just 3, S7 hits for flying over you. I think it is best to run with an Aegis Defence Line with a CM in AA and quad gun against the Heldrake, he won't be torched and can bring it down. Or just use DW against Chaos

As you point out, it does have a good use, and with the changes to FAQ makes its ability against AV11 and down much more reliable and effective.

Eh, but as mentioned; TLLC-Nephilim, just have a dog fight with him and use our racial ability to force a second destruction phase (iirc, don't have the book on me atm, it was the Toughness test one, at least), plenty of chances to force immobilised results on it to bring it down, possibly in just a single turn.

[Anabis_Xero]

dose anyone have the crusade of fire dogfight rules? Those are from what i understand are going to be in the new flyer book comming out so i was curious dose the neph do better in anti-air using the dogfight mechanics?

[Polythemus]

The nephilim can do well if you are gonna use dogfighting rules but you are limited in that you cant always use them. The dogfighting rules are basically a rock paper scissors situation with each player having three phases to choose 1 of 3 distinct options, none is mutually exclusive. There is almost always an advantage in being the attacker, with a few exceptions, and there is a good opportunity to get more than one chance to fire at the opposition, which means that the nephillim can easily wreck anything. so you need the rules, and the willingness of the opponent at the start of the game.

[Syphid]

With the dogfight and pilot rules from Burning Skies you can definitely increase the usefulness of the Nephilim.

 

Though it is still based on dice rolls, rock-paper-scissors, and requires adding 50 points to al already expensive model,  being able to fire the Avenger multiple times, increase your BS to 5, reroll 1s, come in from any table edge, precision deep strike terminators pretty much anywhere on the board, and other neat tricks I think are worth it.

 

Other armies will be able to do these things to, but when you're dealing with a Vendetta you don't really have anything to lose.  The first hit kill probability definitely favours 3 Str 9 Twin Linked shots vs AV 11 over 5 Str 6 shots vs AV 12.  If you're in a dog fight with a Vendetta, if your armor is reduced by 1 then you're not losing that much survivability vs Str 9...  but reducing AV 12 to AV 11 is huge!  Especially when you can force another round of the Destroy phase.

 

And a Baleflamer Heldrake is a sitting duck in a Dogfight as template weapons automatically miss flyers.

 

And if worse comes to worse, you can always turn your Nephilim into a S8 Ap 2 bomb and hopefully win a Victory Point :p

[march10k]

What do you think of the comparison of either flier in this kit to a pair of typhoons in terms of ground attack? Four missiles plus a pair of either MM or HB is a pretty decent alternative in my mind...if you're stacking debuffs onto an enemy unit in preparation for a melee assault, maybe the talon comes out ahead...maybe. But, really, I don't see why I would take this hideously expensive flier (I have one in the mail!) instead of the brace of skimmers...

[Tiger9gamer]

With the dogfight and pilot rules from Burning Skies you can definitely increase the usefulness of the Nephilim.

Though it is still based on dice rolls, rock-paper-scissors, and requires adding 50 points to al already expensive model, being able to fire the Avenger multiple times, increase your BS to 5, reroll 1s, come in from any table edge, precision deep strike terminators pretty much anywhere on the board, and other neat tricks I think are worth it.

Other armies will be able to do these things to, but when you're dealing with a Vendetta you don't really have anything to lose. The first hit kill probability definitely favours 3 Str 9 Twin Linked shots vs AV 11 over 5 Str 6 shots vs AV 12. If you're in a dog fight with a Vendetta, if your armor is reduced by 1 then you're not losing that much survivability vs Str 9... but reducing AV 12 to AV 11 is huge! Especially when you can force another round of the Destroy phase.

And a Baleflamer Heldrake is a sitting duck in a Dogfight as template weapons automatically miss flyers.

And if worse comes to worse, you can always turn your Nephilim into a S8 Ap 2 bomb and hopefully win a Victory Point

Dog fight? I am intrigued byt this. Is it from crusade of fire? and can you guide me/ explain how it works for the nephilm more?

[Syphid]

With the dogfight and pilot rules from Burning Skies you can definitely increase the usefulness of the Nephilim.

Though it is still based on dice rolls, rock-paper-scissors, and requires adding 50 points to al already expensive model, being able to fire the Avenger multiple times, increase your BS to 5, reroll 1s, come in from any table edge, precision deep strike terminators pretty much anywhere on the board, and other neat tricks I think are worth it.

Other armies will be able to do these things to, but when you're dealing with a Vendetta you don't really have anything to lose. The first hit kill probability definitely favours 3 Str 9 Twin Linked shots vs AV 11 over 5 Str 6 shots vs AV 12. If you're in a dog fight with a Vendetta, if your armor is reduced by 1 then you're not losing that much survivability vs Str 9... but reducing AV 12 to AV 11 is huge! Especially when you can force another round of the Destroy phase.

And a Baleflamer Heldrake is a sitting duck in a Dogfight as template weapons automatically miss flyers.

And if worse comes to worse, you can always turn your Nephilim into a S8 Ap 2 bomb and hopefully win a Victory Point

Dog fight? I am intrigued byt this. Is it from crusade of fire? and can you guide me/ explain how it works for the nephilm more?

It's from Crusade of Fire, and will also be in the upcoming Death from the Skies supplement.

There are three things that shake up the flyer game: Ace Pilots, Maneuvers, and Dogfighting.

You can upgrade any of your Flyers to an Ace Pilot for an additional points cost. It works like Warlord traits: you get to roll on a table with three possible results, with each Army having its own table. For Dark Angels your Ace Pilot abilities are Re-Roll 1's to hit (great for the Avenger), enter from any table edge when arriving from reserves (Hello rear armor!) or give your flyer a teleport homer with extended range (basically allows you to deep strike anywhere without scatter because of flyer movement)

Each Army also has two special maneuvers. For DA you have a suicide attack that destroys the flyer (not an ideal use of your expensive flyer, but denies your opponent a VP while potentially scoring you one), and a maneuver that forces another dogfight sub phase (which could be awesome)

Dogfights are initiated when you move close to another flyer and win a contested roll. It's a rock paper scissors game with three turns. There are a bunch of different results depending on the outcome, ranging from the fight ending early to you getting to shoot all your weapons or increasing your BS for the duration of the fight. Or nothing could happen at all.

Normally the high AP weapons you find on Valkyries, Stormravens, Stormtalons, and Heldrakes combined with predominantly AV 12 give them a big advantage over the Nephilim. Statistically speaking, a Valkyrie's 3 twin linked Lascannons (or Stormraven's LC's and MM or Missiles) are going to take out AV 11 before an Avenger gun is going to glance it to death. If your opponent gets the first round of shooting off on you you're pretty much dead anyways, regardless of whether you dogfight or not.

BUT! If you get the drop on an enemy flyer, you could dogfight it which gives you three sub rounds of combat, with the possibility of a fourth because of the Dark Angels special maneuver. Depending on how the Rock Paper Scissors game plays out, you have the ability to shoot the Avenger on every Sub Phase, or do awesome things like increase your BS to 5 (which is money if you have the re-roll 1's Ace Pilot trait) get an extra movement, prevent the enemy flyer from shooting or dogfighting in the next turn, decrease the enemy flyer's AV by 1 on each side, and some other stuff.

It gives you way more options for the Nephilim other than take a chance with a single TL Lascannon Shot or pray for 6's with the Avenger, and in the worst case scenario with these rules, an enemy Valkyrie or Storm Raven or Heldrake dogfights you and you die... Which would probably happen if you were just using normal shooting rules anyways because the Nephilim is only AV 11. I don't think the Dark Talon would fare very well because its weapons are Blast... Put if you're dogfighting a Dakka Jet over top of the Standard of Devastation it could maybe be ok?

[pueriexdeus]

So your say

With the dogfight and pilot rules from Burning Skies you can definitely increase the usefulness of the Nephilim.

Though it is still based on dice rolls, rock-paper-scissors, and requires adding 50 points to al already expensive model, being able to fire the Avenger multiple times, increase your BS to 5, reroll 1s, come in from any table edge, precision deep strike terminators pretty much anywhere on the board, and other neat tricks I think are worth it.

Other armies will be able to do these things to, but when you're dealing with a Vendetta you don't really have anything to lose. The first hit kill probability definitely favours 3 Str 9 Twin Linked shots vs AV 11 over 5 Str 6 shots vs AV 12. If you're in a dog fight with a Vendetta, if your armor is reduced by 1 then you're not losing that much survivability vs Str 9... but reducing AV 12 to AV 11 is huge! Especially when you can force another round of the Destroy phase.

And a Baleflamer Heldrake is a sitting duck in a Dogfight as template weapons automatically miss flyers.

And if worse comes to worse, you can always turn your Nephilim into a S8 Ap 2 bomb and hopefully win a Victory Point

Dog fight? I am intrigued byt this. Is it from crusade of fire? and can you guide me/ explain how it works for the nephilm more?

It's from Crusade of Fire, and will also be in the upcoming Death from the Skies supplement.

There are three things that shake up the flyer game: Ace Pilots, Maneuvers, and Dogfighting.

You can upgrade any of your Flyers to an Ace Pilot for an additional points cost. It works like Warlord traits: you get to roll on a table with three possible results, with each Army having its own table. For Dark Angels your Ace Pilot abilities are Re-Roll 1's to hit (great for the Avenger), enter from any table edge when arriving from reserves (Hello rear armor!) or give your flyer a teleport homer with extended range (basically allows you to deep strike anywhere without scatter because of flyer movement)

Each Army also has two special maneuvers. For DA you have a suicide attack that destroys the flyer (not an ideal use of your expensive flyer, but denies your opponent a VP while potentially scoring you one), and a maneuver that forces another dogfight sub phase (which could be awesome)

Dogfights are initiated when you move close to another flyer and win a contested roll. It's a rock paper scissors game with three turns. There are a bunch of different results depending on the outcome, ranging from the fight ending early to you getting to shoot all your weapons or increasing your BS for the duration of the fight. Or nothing could happen at all.

Normally the high AP weapons you find on Valkyries, Stormravens, Stormtalons, and Heldrakes combined with predominantly AV 12 give them a big advantage over the Nephilim. Statistically speaking, a Valkyrie's 3 twin linked Lascannons (or Stormraven's LC's and MM or Missiles) are going to take out AV 11 before an Avenger gun is going to glance it to death. If your opponent gets the first round of shooting off on you you're pretty much dead anyways, regardless of whether you dogfight or not.

BUT! If you get the drop on an enemy flyer, you could dogfight it which gives you three sub rounds of combat, with the possibility of a fourth because of the Dark Angels special maneuver. Depending on how the Rock Paper Scissors game plays out, you have the ability to shoot the Avenger on every Sub Phase, or do awesome things like increase your BS to 5 (which is money if you have the re-roll 1's Ace Pilot trait) get an extra movement, prevent the enemy flyer from shooting or dogfighting in the next turn, decrease the enemy flyer's AV by 1 on each side, and some other stuff.

It gives you way more options for the Nephilim other than take a chance with a single TL Lascannon Shot or pray for 6's with the Avenger, and in the worst case scenario with these rules, an enemy Valkyrie or Storm Raven or Heldrake dogfights you and you die... Which would probably happen if you were just using normal shooting rules anyways because the Nephilim is only AV 11. I don't think the Dark Talon would fare very well because its weapons are Blast... Put if you're dogfighting a Dakka Jet over top of the Standard of Devastation it could maybe be ok?

So your saying that with the best rules available, DA Fliers on their own against other fliers, still will suck???

[Syphid]

So your say

 

So your saying that with the best rules available, DA Fliers on their own against other fliers, still will suck???

 

They'll suck less?

[Interrogator Stobz]

Take 15 Landspeeders instead, when fliers turn up blast away. Not overly helpful I know but we are used to a bit of a hamstringing ;)

 

s

[march10k]

Take 15 Landspeeders instead, when fliers turn up blast away. Not overly helpful I know but we are used to a bit of a hamstringing ;)

s

Meh...five is plenty! A full squadron of tornadoes should do the trick, lol! (Okay, hitting on 6s, it's only a 3 hits, and you need another 6 out of those three to auto pen AV 12)

[Anabis_Xero]

I gotta say I played my first game with the Neph today, it was a small game only 750pts and it was mainly to start seeing how flyers work on the table. (my playgroup is smallish and no one there has any experence with flyers yet) I was playing an ork player who knew i was gona bring the neph so he brought something like 12 of the dudes with orky missles and a battlewagon with missles all over the thing.  The Neph came on and lined up for rear shots on the battlewagon and I have to say if you use the Neph for what its designed for (ground combat not anti air) this thing is nasty. Between all the weapons I managed 7 glances easily wrecking the battlewagon.  My next turn i flew off the table, I couldent get any more worthwhile shots, when it came back on the tabe I took aim at the unit of rocket boys (dont remember the actual unit name) and killed about 7 of the orks.  I mean whail it might not be a heldrake this thing is stull brutal to ground targets and light > meadium armor even alot of the heavier tanks assuming you can position for side or rear armor and it isnt a landraider.  Even aginst infantry this thing is brutal, granted the orks didnt get and kind of armor saves but i feel even aginst MEQ's being able to force that many saves on a unit is going to lay down some hurt.  All in all the Neph has its roll to play and it dose it well, just dont rely on it for your anti-air.  That said im looking forward to these dogfight rules just to add more versitility to the model.

[march10k]

Anabis,

 

Have you considered that the dark talon might have done just as well, or better? Or the pair of typhoons that I mentioned, for that matter?

[ValourousHeart]

The 2 typhoons would not have faired better.

 

First off the are skimmers not flyers so you hit on BS as opposed to on 6+.

 

Second the 18-36 movement and ability to leave the board is additional protection that the speeders do not have.

 

Third is the difference between av10 and av11

 

The benefits the 2 typhoons have is the ability to be 2 units (but that cost you in other ways), they can start on the board (but could be killed before you get a turn), and higher strength weapons.

[Anabis_Xero]

Anabis,

 

Have you considered that the dark talon might have done just as well, or better? Or the pair of typhoons that I mentioned, for that matter?

well the dark talon is a completly different unit that isnt even comprable, as for the speeders im not sure to be honest. Im not a high level player or tactican by any means but my gut says the neph will serve better than the 2 speeders.  The speeders are only AV 10 with 2 hullpoints so there really venerable to just about everything in the game where as the flyer has all the inherent survivability of being a flyer (aka snap shots against it and being able to move off the table).  Another thing to note is that even though the missles on the tyhpoons are S8 theres four shots hitting 3's and unless your opponend positions, or your really close your mainly going to get front armor or side shots where as the neph can come in and unload a ton of S6 and S5 shots into idealy rear armor that are hitting on 2's with some of the shots being twin linked.  Also the Neph being able to upgrade weapon destroyed to imobilized is nice, granted you wont always use it but if you need to lock a flyers velocity or playing against skimmers your really going to enjoy having this ability over the speeders.

 

one last thing to note (pure speculation i have no flyer v flyer experence), even though the neph might not be the greatest anti air flyer (but honestly we cant all have vendettas) it still is a flyer (skyfire) that can pump out alot of shots so glanceing AV12 is a real posibility and AV11 flyers shouldent really be a problem.

[Upstartes]

What about 2 Nephilims? Together, they are 60-ish points more than a Storm Eagle equipped to handle fyers, and also not much more expensive than a 4xML dev squad with flakk and an aegis line with quad gun. Fills up 2 FA slots, but that wouldn't be so bad in a list with Sammael or Azrael, or in a DW-heavy force.

 

Of course, that's like $150 of jetfighters...