Ravenwing and Flyers, whats the verdict?

[Surrender_Monkey]

As you may know, I am just starting a Ravenwing army and I might be able to get a couple of Dark Talons/Nephilim Jetfighters (still in box) for relatively cheap. One or two of these might be a good way to bring my planned 1500pt list up to 2000.

 

I'm getting back into the game and don't have a lot of experience with flyers, but reading the rules I get the feeling the DA flyers are a little underwhelming. Of the two I think the Nephilim would be more effective in my army (I don't really have any combat troops to exploit the stasis bomb) but even so I think I might be able to accomplish more with some land speeders, since I could get three for nearly the same cost.

 

So anyway thoughts and advice welcome.

[Pyro X]

I like both of the flyers but they arn't great at killing other flyers. They arn't to bad at taking down tanks/troops though. more speeders is always good imo. If you just really want a flyer I'd go with one nephilm (I think its the better of the 2) or ally with space marines and get a stormraven.

[Brother dean]

I've not done bad with the army but I do feel a Nephilim would have served me better than the dark talon I did take...  (Guard arty battery in an Ageis line)  I also have pointed up a speeder squadron and I think the speeders might be a bit better for the points because I havent had the planes come on before the 3rd turn and you can get at least two turns of use out of the speeders.  

 

And dont forget the rule of GW, "If one is good Two do better..."

[Stormtrooper-VII]

The flyers we get are not bad but their rules don't justify their points cost. The Dark Talon is good if you can get some synergy going with other elements of your force, one such example would be getting it within range of the Standard of Devastation thereby making it's bolters a lot more potent but without that synergy it's not very good.The Nephilim on the other hand is not very good at anti-air and is too expensive for what it can do but can put out a decent number of shots with the mega bolter. 

 

Take them for whatever reasons but as Brother Dean pointed out the planes have to come in from reserve and the speeders can be quite useful. 

[Adper]

Flyers are definitely a cool addition to the game.  It really comes down to whether you want a fly because you think they are cool, or because you want it for a specific roll in your army.  I think the problem most people have with our fly isn't the fact that they are "underwhelming" its just that what they bring isn't reflected well in their point cost.  The fact that there are other flyers that cost less and outshine our own doesn't help either.

 

I personally haven't used our flyers yet because I have been playing in an escalation league and we were playing at 1k pts.  I couldn't justify using them because there where other units I could take that would offer more for the point value.  I probably wouldn't take one until we get up to 1,500pts, but now that these new Wall of Martyrs fortifications are out I might have to reconsider.  I don't know the rules or point values on them yet, but I have a feeling they might be a better option over our flyer.

[jeremy1391]

The nephilim is good at taking out flyers, just not drakes, ravens, and vendetta's... However the av 10 and 11 flyers get eaten by nephilim.

[Surrender_Monkey]

Thanks for the replies, but guys have failed to convince me, I'm going to pass on them, when I expand I'm probably going to add some speeders and more bikes (I have a Librarian on bike conversion in mind).

[Master Avoghai]

However they have an advantage on speeders

 

3HP/A11/hit on 6s

 

This make them very resilient to many attacks contrary to speeders which are now the most easy vehicles to shot down... ( high rate of fire weapons + 2 glancing hits = don't even need SoD to kill a speeder with bolters... Hurrah)

 

Personally I include one in my 1750pts army. Ok it's not the most powerful choice of my list (I have a Morris contemptor to compensate :-p ) but it really helps to destroy light transport or troops.

Moreover, the last GW releases tend to show that GW is aware they've gone too far with storm ravens and drakes and they want to tone down the flyers a little bit so...

 

I think there will be more and more room for the DA flyers in the future..

[Pyro X]

another big advantage of our flyers (while they can't really kill the top flyers out atm) is the combos you can use with them. Dark tolan near the banner of devastation gets 2/4 salvo on its hurricane bolters. Another is if you use evade to get a jinx save while you fly it near a dark shroud giving you it a 3+ cover save, granted you could only snap fire next turn but still what other flyer has a chance of getting a 3+ cover?

[Stormtrooper-VII]

A Dark Talon putting out 24 shots would be quite dangerous I think but it doesn't quite solve the problem of the unfortunately high points cost.

[facmanpob]

A Dark Talon putting out 24 shots would be quite dangerous I think but it doesn't quite solve the problem of the unfortunately high points cost.

Consider it this way....a Dark Talon putting out 24 shots due to the SoD is the same cost (ignoring the odd point) as a 6-man bike squad, which also puts out.....wait for it.....24 shots due to the SoD. I don't think the Dark Talon is overcosted, I just think that there are other flyers out there that are undercosted......I'm looking at you Imperial Guard!!

[march10k]

I like the DT better.  The main gun is kinda "meh" unless the enemy has a infravisor (like a character accompanying a devastator squad might), but a pair of hurribolters is nice, even when you don't get dakkapole synergy.  And then there's the stasis bomb.  It's the Void Dragon's gift when it comes to gutting the enemy's deathstar unit.  So far, my best use was on some harlies...they got the pants beat off of them by a tactical squad, lol. 

[cypherthefallenangel]

Verdict.... Guilty of meh.

Its overpriced mediocrity. It doesn't do anything very well. For 180pts it should. Its weapons are bad. A twin linked heavy bolter good for only infantry. Lame and you cant upgrade it to something better, lamer. Crapsword missiles, 6x S6 AP4 @36” just bad at everything. Their to weak for any reliability against armor and fliers. The crappy AP 4 is nearly worthless against TEQ and MEQ. So you can nuke 2 orks a turn. Woopy doda. Super lame! the mega bolter has the same problems as the missiles, crappy S6 AP4. No twinlinked,no rending so already worse than the tlac that the SR & ST can have. If they made it AP3(bolter S4Ap5, h-bolter S5Ap4,m-bolter S6Ap3) with 6 shots , like it should have been it would have been ok. But no. OR a tllc, which is good but 1 lascannon is not reliable and if your shooting at stuff that lascannons are good for then more often than not the other guns are wasted.

Our fliers suffer from poor design ill thought out game purpose. I mean a helldrake is very good at messing up light armor and infantry. It fixes itself(IWND),5++, av12, demonforge,and vector strike all better for 10pts less but totally worth its points.

The dark talon is far to situational. It has NO anti-flyer/tank capabilities, no upgradeablity, 1 bomb(the only good weapon) and you have to gear you army and strategies tward its one shot wonder usage.

The bottom line is other units in our dex have better purpose and are cheaper.

[elphilo]

A twin linked heavy bolter good for only infantry. Lame and you cant upgrade it to something better, lamer.

This. I can forgive the single Lascannon, I can forgive the worse than Flakk Missile Black Sword Missiles. But the fact it is a Heavy Bolter instead of an Assault Cannon like everything else new that comes out is just a slap in the face. I had high hopes for our Anti Flyer Flyer, now my hopes are for the next edition to make it better. Such a cool model with terrible rules

[Pyro X]

with its movement it can still get behind tanks to that nice
10 AV. and even with bolter fire it can still glance them to death. it’s not
amazing like a storm raven but it gets the job done. If you don't want to field
them than you can always ally up some ultra-marines or grey knights and get something
else. They aren’t meant to be the biggest OMG flyer like helldrake, they are
meant to be force multiers.

 

[facmanpob]

Don't forget, the drake wasn't auto-include until they FAQ'd the baleflamer

[Master Avoghai]

A twin linked heavy bolter good for only infantry. Lame and you cant upgrade it to something better, lamer.

This. I can forgive the single Lascannon, I can forgive the worse than Flakk Missile Black Sword Missiles. But the fact it is a Heavy Bolter instead of an Assault Cannon like everything else new that comes out is just a slap in the face. I had high hopes for our Anti Flyer Flyer, now my hopes are for the next edition to make it better. Such a cool model with terrible rules

And actually I'm still wondering why they didn't give the HB to the DT...

But like I've said before, compare with tau bomber or the eldar hemlock... Don't seem to be REALLY that bad..

[elphilo]

A twin linked heavy bolter good for only infantry. Lame and you cant upgrade it to something better, lamer.

This. I can forgive the single Lascannon, I can forgive the worse than Flakk Missile Black Sword Missiles. But the fact it is a Heavy Bolter instead of an Assault Cannon like everything else new that comes out is just a slap in the face. I had high hopes for our Anti Flyer Flyer, now my hopes are for the next edition to make it better. Such a cool model with terrible rules

And actually I'm still wondering why they didn't give the HB to the DT...

But like I've said before, compare with tau bomber or the eldar hemlock... Don't seem to be REALLY that bad..

You're right. Comparatively all the 6th edition flyers (excluding the helldrake, but as facmanpob says the helldrake wasn't auto include until the turret FAQ) are high in price. But an assault cannon instead of a heavy bolter wouldn't of made it overpowered comparatively to 6th edition flyers. Take the Crimson Hunter for example, its 20 points less than the Jetfighter and both have similar roles in their respective army, flyer hunter. The Jetfighter gets 1 S9 AP2 twinlinked attack, 3 S5 AP4 twinlinked attacks and 6 S6 AP4 one use only missiles. The Crimson Hunter gets 2 S8 AP2 Lance attacks and 2 S8 AP2 attacks. The special rules they both get are on par with each other so no real need to compare that. Normally I'd pick quantity over quality, but all the S8 shots blow quantity out of the water.

Honestly I wouldn't care this much if that heavy bolter was an assault cannon

[Polythemus]

Im gonna chime in here. At this point weve got a workable codex. Does it have tons of weird powerful special rules? No, but it is wokable. I think we have to work a little harder tactically than say necrons or tau or maybe chaos but we do have the means to survive the current environment of 6th ed.

However, i also think that for me personally my biggest complaint is anti air. Everytime i come back to this site there is a part of me that hopes to see an announcement at the top of the page saying "Dangels aircraft faq'd! See in side for details!" to either drop the points, or increase the strength of the missles. Maybe we need to write a letter everyday, but it might be useless. That is the biggest letdown for me and makes me wish we had acess to the storm talon, since its basically better.

Elphilo and i came up with the idea to use two nephillims and see if that worked. He assured me it didnt, so the only other thing to try with the current nephillim is to see if using the fighter ace upgrade it could work. Outflanking a lascanon might be whats needed to bring down the enemy. Thats alot of points to spend on a flyer though, perhaps against necrons your dead but against the rest it might be workable.
But really for it to be viable you need one of those basic changes to occur. Barring that just say you'll be using the death from the skies supplement and dogfight those SOB's every. single. turn.