Eldar Flyers Appear Unstoppable!

A few days ago, when I mentioned to a friend I was considering adding some Corsair Flyers to my Eldar army, he suggested I wait until Forge World released their FAQ/Errata for 6th Edition to see what they could do. Well, the documents were released on the 6th, July, and a quick read shows Eldar flyers are a must have!

Lets start with the Nightwing fighter. As well as being Supersonic (duh!) and being able to Deep Strike, this thing has the Vector Dance special rule. This means you will never have to finish your movement and not be lined up to shoot at something. This is, I believe, a major drawback to the Marine and other races' flyers, particularly on small boards.

Got my gems done today too :)

 On top of that though, you get the Shrouded special rule. Granted, it does depend on your interpretation of the Jink rule (and that really does need to be FAQ'd) but it appears that if you choose to Evade shots you get a 2+ cover save!

Then we have the Phoenix bomber. This has all the above plus Strafing Run - you hit targets on the ground with an extra +1 to your BS! This thing's bombs are going to obliterate nearly every infantry unit in the game :)

Given the power and potential of these two flyers then, it seems likely they will attract a certain amount of enemy fire early in the game. It is possible, even though most players will need 6's to hit, you will spend a lot of time evading. That said, many players struggle with target prioritisation and I can see a lot of players still choosing to spend their bullets on the infantry targets that are threatening objectives.

The smart move though would seem to be to target enemy fliers early in the shooting phase with some high strength (at least 7) weapons to force the controlling player to Evade. Then forget about them if you really do need to take out ground based targets.

The removal of the 12" penalty to range when shooting at fliers will help with this.

Sun Blitz motif. Yeah, I know it looks like a flower.

Fighters and bombers could be one of the most exciting aspects of New 40k though. Its seat of the pants stuff - flying at high speed, out of the reach of most weapons, hard to hit by all others. You can do a lot of damage - if luck is on your side. Or - stray las-cannon slams into your ship, a plasma blast glances you, and its all over. Dominating your enemy from the air sounds like a gamble, sounds risky. But pull it off and you'll be slapping the X-marks all over your fliers and coming up with Ace pilot names before you know it.

I'm looking forward to seeing which way the dice fall for me :)