Mandragol-air

[Fulgrim]

Overall, WYSIWYG isn't that much of a problem, i plan on magnetizing as much as possible, and if unable, the bomb loadout won't be an issue.

 

The question is more about... assuming i wanna play a 300 point game, will i need more than 6 thunderhawks? more than 2 marauders of a given kind? more than 6fighta-bomerz?

[Firedrake Cordova]

The question is more about... assuming i wanna play a 300 point game, will i need more than 6 thunderhawks? more than 2 marauders of a given kind? more than 6fighta-bomerz?

I very much doubt it. :)

[Mandragola]

"Need" is a tricky one to define. Thunderbolts are the best Imperial dogfighters so if you're playing a pure dogfight at 300 points, you would want a lot of them.

 

However, that's unlikely to be what you'll be doing. The good thing about AI in my opinion is having all the scenarios. Things like ground attack missions, troop deployments and so on. Thunderbolts can't do any of that, or at least not as efficiently as other units. It looks to me like marauder bombers and valkyries are the best options for achieving those tasks, with thunderbolts keeping the enemy planes off them.

 

For myself, I've got two marauder bombers and two destroyers. I'm considering two more bombers.

[Mandragola]

Played an actual game of AI tonight for the first time. Might be the first time my first game of something involved two fully painted armies - lockdown is odd.

 

We had 98 points each. I had a Fury, two normal thunderbolts and a destroyer. My opponent had 3 dakkajets and 2 fighta bommerz, each with extra shooters and a pair of rockets.

 

My first actual move involved me diving a thunderbolt, exceeding maximum speed and taking a point of damage. I'd started out at altitude 5 so the orks couldn't easily get me, but I had to move 6 to get into medium range, while diving down to the ork's altitude of 4. Not an awesome start.

 

 

I was pretty happy with how the first engagement looked. I got three of my planes to medium range and opened fire. Unfortunately the result was only two points of damage, on two different dakka jets.

 

 

Both sides proceeded to miss a lot and fail to roll to damage a lot more, but slowly my guys pulled ahead. The marauder tanked a range 1 attack from a fighta bomma, though it took damage, and a couple of holes appeared in thunderbolts too. But I downed a fighta bomma and a dakkajet, giving me the advantage in activations, and caused a point or two of damage to other planes.

 

Then suddenly I had a turn where everything clicked. A thunderbolt killed the second fighta bomma from full health with a tailing shot. At the end 3 of my 4 planes were damaged, but 5/5 ork planes were downed. A glorious victory for the Imperial Navy!

 

 

I was quite impressed by the marauder destroyer. I hadn't realised it could fire its turret forwards. That means it's actually very nasty at both close and medium ranges, unlike the thunderbolts. It's also tanky as hell, obviously. I was moving it quite late on so I could always point it at something too... though that didn't always mean I caused any damage.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Mandragola

[Fajita Fan]

That looks cool, like Xwing with hexes.  Could you ever see using two Marauders?  I'm really thinking of lootin' one for my Orks to have a bomma if I need one. 

[Mandragola]

I could see using two marauder destroyers, yes. It's a very solid plane with good firepower.

 

I found that the game doesn't really reward speed or manoeuvrability all that much. The destroyer could often move last, and that generally meant it could fire at something. It even tailed a dakkajet once.

 

That said, Orks would obviously loot them, so go ahead if you want.

[Mandragola]

I had a fun time today sticking little planes together. I've built four more valkyries, one as a 6-las vendetta and three as valkyries with lascannon and missile pod. I've now got three with each load-out so I will be painting them as separate wings. They'll get a colour scheme to match my destroyers.

 

 

I had a quick look at how I could field them. At 100 I can just run 3 vendettas and 2 valkyries, for 99 points. At 150 I can take 2 vendettas, 3 valkyries and 2 marauder bombers... or maybe sub in a thunderbolt for one of the destroyers. 

 

So far I haven't bought any arvus lighters or vultures and I've no plans to get avengers. I might get some of the FW planes in future but I don't feel like I need them. Vultures could be fun, whether or not they're actually any good.

 

I also got a couple of AX 1-0s for my Tau. I've given one of them each kind of drone and the main guns will be magnetised. I think I prefer the plasma option over railguns but there isn't a lot in it.

 

[MithrilForge]

Awesome! , your Force looks great on the tabletop 

those Valks… 

Look forward to seeing paint on those bad boys 

 

cheers, Mithril

[Mandragola]

Did a bit of painting. I have seen a lot of silver lightnings and I've always felt like having a go at NMM, so here's the result.

 

 

 

And I've made a small start on my six valkyries. These actually turn out to have a lot of surface area, so they take a bit longer to paint than I was expecting. Lots more to do!

 

[duz_]

That Lightening looks great nice work!

[Fajita Fan]

I like that camo scheme and you’re much braver than me - I could never attempt NMM!

[MithrilForge]

@ Mandragola - that NMM is looking good, it's so hard to do right and it looks like you've given it a decent go   , happy to see you have started on the Valks...

and I second the statement of "nice camo scheme"

 

Cheers, Mithril

[Mandragola]

Thanks. The Camo scheme on these is pretty straightforward. Camo green and dark angels green, that I'll eventually drybrush. I find that the contrast paint does quite a nice job of picking out panel lines, though you often need a second coat to get a good finish. It's a pretty fast way to paint models, though these valks are a bit more complicated than the fighters I've done so far. It's also nice that the paint dries very thin, so you don't lose any detail.

[Mandragola]

Played my second game last night. We ended up going for 200 points on the troop landing mission from the Rynn book, with me as the attacker.

 

I had 3 valkyries with lascannon and missile pods, 3 vendettas with 6 lascannons, 2 marauder destroyers and Dagor Jarni with two sets of skystrikes. My opponent had 50 points of ork ground defences (a full set) and a bunch of dakkajets and fighta bommers (I think 5 and 3).

 

Here's a shot as my planes start to move off after deployment.

 

 

I started out with most of my planes at altitude 1 and speed 4, intending to take out the ground defences and then drop off their troops as soon as possible. I had Jarni at altitude 3 to provide top cover. My opponent sent all his orks forward to try and overfly me, mainly at altitude 4. He had a couple come in at height 3 though, and that meant I was able to have a vendetta pop up and zap one, while Jarni took out another. The marauders each killed a ground defence. I took a bit of damage here and there, including a long range pot shot from a big AA gun that did 2 damage to Jarni.

 

A pretty good opening turn turned into an extremely good second turn. Basically my opponent intended his dakkajets to drop in behind my valks and shoot them up. But he didn't go far enough back and I had more planes, so I could wait till he'd moved before activating my valks, and getting out of trouble. I used the Swoop manoeuvre a lot with valks so I could slide out of fire arcs while still making progress towards the objectives. Meanwhile Jarni, the vendetta and one of the destroyers kept shooting up ork planes.

 

We called it at this point. My opponent was down to 4 planes and all of mine were still airborne. I had some decent luck and I'd predicted my opponent's plan well enough to counter it.

 

 

In all honesty this wasn't the best gaming experience I've had. The orks were actually massively penalised for taking ground defences. It meant they had fewer activations from the start and that problem only got worse. The actual defences were pretty nasty but the planes had an awful time.

 

I think this game needs an initiative system like x-wing. The alternating activation system is simple but it leads to silly stuff, like bombers out-dogfighting fast jets simply because they activate later. Agility counts for very little if the other guy gets to move after you.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I think this game needs an initiative system like x-wing. The alternating activation system is simple but it leads to silly stuff, like bombers out-dogfighting fast jets simply because they activate later.

I suppose the obvious first-attempt fix is that you can only move a fighter if all bombers have been moved, and you can only move scouts if all fighters have been moved (if you have none of a type left, your opponent has to finish moving theirs before you continue)..?

Edited September 8, 2020 by Firedrake Cordova

[Mandragola]

That's an option. Alternating activations creates two key problems: it's too big an advantage to have more planes, and you can activate planes in any order, which reduces the importance of agility.

 

Right now a tough, shooty plane like a vendetta costs less than a fast, lightly armed, flimsy plane like a lightning. If the two were to fight, the vendettas would get the last activation and be able to outmanoeuvre the lightnings. And if a lightning should die on the first pass, the vendettas have an even larger advantage.

 

I think these problems weren't so obvious when we just had thunderbolts dogfighting fighta bommers and dakkajets. Their agility is comparable so it's not too silly if one beats the other in one game and loses in another. But for vendettas to outmanoeuvre barracudas is really not cool.

 

I've given this a bit of thought. My proposal is to essentially use x-wing's system of having the worst planes activate first, and the best ones last, so that proper fighters should get the drop on heavy stuff. The problem is that obviously the planes don't have an initiative stat, so we need to come up with one. My idea is to add together some of the existing numbers on a plane's card to figure out its flight capability. I think that the maximum speed, top manoeuvre, throttle and handling are all relevant. So something like a marauder destroyer or a grot bommer with rubbish handling would activate very early, then you'd get things like valkyries, fighta bommers, thunderbolts, dakkajets, and finally the top end fighters like barracudas and lightnings.

[duz_]

Good feedback for the FW team, I don't know if they have a dedicated faq email otherwise there's always 40KFAQ@gwplc.com

[General Zodd]

I think this could make a great addition to the rules, not only to stop Marauder Bombers out-dogfighting Barracudas, but also because it somewhat mitigates the snowball effect of being the first person to lose a plane. Getting the first kill should put you in a good position, but it’s easy to have that advantage really increase exponentially when you already outnumber your opponent.

 

The only word of caution I would have is that the initiative system in X-Wing can periodically lead to a meta that ends up heavily balanced into either loads of cheap stuff, or a small number of nothing but the highest initiative ships. X-Wing has other stuff to balance that, but Aeronautica might end up being everyone taking the highest initiative ship they can if it’s likely to beat others’ initiative, or just giving up on that and maxing out on Destroyers and Eavy Bommers where positioning matters slightly less. To mitigate this I don’t think any system you introduced should be too granular. Perhaps just Bomber<Fighter<Scout with maybe a light and heavy fighter distinction in there (Lightning’s and Dakkajets vs Thunderbolts and Fighta Bommers), and maybe a transport category for Valkyries? Having a mathematical model that makes sure each release goes into the right category makes sense but might not survive contact with the next release.

 

Also it’s not mentioned, but I assume is implicit, that this would only affect activations in the movement phase, not at other times?

[Fajita Fan]

I loved X-wing’s alternating turns but I had always wished it used hexes.

[Beaky Brigade]

It's nice to see your aircraft taking to the skies!

 

In terms of alleviating the 'shooting gallery' style game, you could try getting a bigger mat, or at least playing smaller points until you can.

 

I think the standard 3X3 is too small for a 200pt game honestly. I only played up to 130pt at the WHW Event I believe and the stock tables felt too crowded.
 

I tried AI on my opponents custom printed mat which was almost 40k sized and it felt like a different game with more space to 'breathe' without the aircraft bunched up. Orks need to stay on their toes to close the distance but their speed shows more as well.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Beaky Brigade

[Mandragola]

It's nice to see your aircraft taking to the skies!

 

In terms of alleviating the 'shooting gallery' style game, you could try getting a bigger mat, or at least playing smaller points until you can.

 

I think the standard 3X3 is too small for a 200pt game honestly. I only played up to 130pt at the WHW Event I believe and the stock tables felt too crowded.

 

I tried AI on my opponents custom printed mat which was almost 40k sized and it felt like a different game with more space to 'breathe' without the aircraft bunched up. Orks need to stay on their toes to close the distance but their speed shows more as well.

I agree that it might have been better with a bigger mat, but to be honest that really wasn't the issue. Regardless of the size of the mat, the person with more planes wins by activating last and lining up vendettas and marauder destroyers against 2-hull fighters. 

 

It's actually even worse for defenders because they've spent points on ground defences, which don't activate in the movement phase. So taking AA guns is effectively a handicap to dogfighting, for no good reason at all. My opponent would have had more activations than me if he'd bought 3 dakkajets instead of the 6 ground defences.

[duz_]

Yes seems like ground defences should be a separate phase to avoid this issue?

[Firedrake Cordova]

It's actually even worse for defenders because they've spent points on ground defences, which don't activate in the movement phase. So taking AA guns is effectively a handicap to dogfighting, for no good reason at all.

I suppose allowing ground defences to activate (not fire) in the movement phase, effectively allowing the player a "pass", would go some way to alleviating that?

[Mandragola]

Good feedback for the FW team, I don't know if they have a dedicated faq email otherwise there's always 40KFAQ@gwplc.com

I looked on FW's site and it's AeronauticaImperialis@gwplc.com. Maybe I'll write this up and send it to them.

 

 

It's actually even worse for defenders because they've spent points on ground defences, which don't activate in the movement phase. So taking AA guns is effectively a handicap to dogfighting, for no good reason at all.

I suppose allowing ground defences to activate (not fire) in the movement phase, effectively allowing the player a "pass", would go some way to alleviating that?

 

I think that would just reverse the problem instead of fixing it. The defender would have several more activations and wouldn't have to move anything until most of the attacking force had moved.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I think that would just reverse the problem instead of fixing it. The defender would have several more activations and wouldn't have to move anything until most of the attacking force had moved.

Of course, because ground defences are cheaper than planes, thus you can have more of them :blush: