How many flyers are to cheesy?

[Generalissimo_Fred]

You sit down to play a game of 40k and your opponent starts to unpack multiple large flying stands. How many is to much? How many before you feel you're not playing 40k but reliving the Blitz.

I don't want to hear about how you can beat flyers. I don't want to hear about how you flood the board with models and flyers can't touch you. The truelly strong flyer lists have a dedicated ground presence or at least the means to acheive one in short order. How many flyers are to much for the standard list to handle before it becomes a game of you hiding and going to ground each turn to wait for the game to end?

On the flip side for those of you who don't like flyers, it is not ok for an opponent to forgo any vehicles and focus on taking as many toughness models as possible? In other words is a flyer heavy list just as cheesy as a 240 man Guard blob list? They both maximize a wing of 40k model type to the exclusion of others. I'm just curious.

[swampthing]

In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, "a little fermented curd will do the trick," so, I curtailed my Walpoling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
Monty python
my phylosophy on this age old question is as follows:
Cheese is in the eye of the beholder. We, as players , do not write the rules. Our job is to use the rules to our advantage. If the player interprates that to mean having a lopsided army with heavy emphasis on one type of unit, then thats his/ her perogative (pardon my bobbie brown). Most experienced players will tell you that a balance army in the longrun will give you the best win/loss ratio and that lopsided armies are the crutch of beginners. I dont begrudge players that run cheesy armies, for the reason that 40k Karma is a bitch.

having said that, tha first to bring up Fremunda cheese in this conversation is getting a virtual slap.

[seahawk]

Nothing is cheesy unless a complete ass is using it.

That being said, I feel that up to 2 major flyers is alright for a balanced army, or you could have probably 3 minor flyers and still be good. An air force would be 3+ major flyers or 4+ minor flyers.

Major = Storm Pigeon, Doomscythe, Vendetta, Heldrake, Razorwing/Void Raven
Minor = Storm Chickadee, Valkyrie, Orks, Hell Blade, Nightscythe

And let's not even get started with the Caestus or Storm Eagle!

[Redbeard]

This is a large part of why I'm finding 6th ed to be mostly unenjoyable.

Flyers have had rules for a long time. FW rules, but not so horribly different than the 6th ed rules. For the most part, they weren't allowed in games, even games that allowed FW. Because they're not fun.

I remember playing against a flyer list with my daemons at the gladiator tournament a few years ago. Like Fred said, I huddled my guys at the center of the board, rolled saves as well as I could and hoped to outlast them. Neither I nor my opponent had any fun. We were among the first finished and it was just blah.

Now they're a core part of 6th ed. Yay! And, I disagree that they're the same as flooding the field with other types of units because even if you're outmanned by 240 guardsmen, you can reasonably expect to kill them. The existence of flyers has rendered the dedicated assault army obsolete. You're either playing flyers, an army designed to beat (withstand?) flyers, or an army that can whup anti-flyer armies (isn't that what the screamer/flamer daemon army does?). Not bad if you believe in R-P-S tournament theory, but I don't believe that's suitable for tabletop wargames.

It's okay for M:tG to have a R-P-S metagame, because an individual game takes five minutes, and then you can sideboard, and even if you get your worst matchup, you get eight games and a loss doesn't knock you out.

But when each round is 2 hours and one loss means you're essentially done, R-P-S meta isn't good for tournaments. That's too long to sit as a target in a shooting gallery and lose a tournament due to your draw.

Oddly, the solution that I've found is to play more fun games and less competitive games. Simply discussing with your opponent what you'll be playing means that you're unlikely to end up with a one-sided matchup and might actually enjoy the couple hours of gaming. Of course, that doesn't work in tournaments, but I'm not sure 6e does either.

[Lord Krungharr]

I think we will see less Warhound Titans at the Gladiator for the too many Flyers reason. The Vulcan Megabolter is okay, but 2 just sucks. Of course the rules for that tourney aren't even posted yet, so maybe they'll limit the number of Flyers? Not likely....

[RAMSEY]

In a tournament setting bring as many as you want. Tournaments are suppose to be a challenge.

Playing for fun I would never use anything on the field that my opponents couldn't take down. Although playing for fun for some people(not me) means that you crush your opponent and leave them quivering in a corner.

[Norbu the Destroyer]

I am a little biased as I own 3 Night Scythe models, but I think anything over 3 flyers is a little "cheesy". I think for pick up games, if I play anyone who takes anything more than 2 I give them a hard time.

I dont think there is anything wrong with taking lots of fliers, it just doesnt make for a fun game if your opponent doesnt have an answer. Although to be fair, that can happen with any game of 40k if its a bad match up. I used to watch my deamon armies dissolve to Dark Eldar in 5th edition.

I believe that winning with lots of fliers at a tourney goes over as well as winning with guard in early 5th, or GK at the laster stages of 5th. Everyone kind of goes..."nice job winning that tournament with the easiest army to play." Take that how you will.

Now all that being said, I played agauinst two lists that I would consider "airforce" lists at Nova, both by really good players, and they were two of my favorite games for the weekend. Both lists had 6 or more fliers at 2000 points. Now I had 3 scythes of my own, and 2 Ann. barges for some anti aircraft fire, and the games were both really intense. There was a sky battle and a land battle happening at the same time. Players were constantly going between killing things that cant hurt your fliers, but score, or trying to damage other fliers, but letting the ground units survive. Had a blast both games, and both were really tight.

I like the dimension of fliers to the game, but I can see taking lots of them putting you in a category with 5th ed. grey knight players, playing an "easy button" army.

[blk Ice]

Don't worry, The big G will come out with a nice new shiny AAgun to shoot those little bugger down, Only $75.

[Lord Krungharr]

Yeah, those new DA Dark Talons? with the Blacksword missiles, that looks like a super duper anti-air weapon, of course it's a flyer itself. With that one, I wonder if the missiles with have Skyfire as a special rule for them, meaning they could only target flyers, FMCs, and Skimmers? Probably not, but that would make for more balanced lists if they had to choose between anti-air and anti-ground flyers.

I tried out 5 Flying MCs in my Daemons list this past Satyrday, that was brutal to the ground based IG army I played, we called it in Turn 2. I hadn't planned on playing that guy, thought I was going up vs a Nids list w 2 Flying Hive Tyrants, but it was gratifying to see my big winged Daemons aren't worthless after all this time on the shelf.