AoS Melee attacks against flyers

[Canas]

How are you supposed to measure melee attacks against flyers? Especially with the larger models. I got a couple of terradon riders, but since the poles you put them up differ heavily in height, from barely being 2" to about 4". The shortest would be about man-sized. Which would mean that if you measure model to model the fancy flying terradon's would for some inexplicable reason Always be only flying at about the height of the heads of their opponents. For example a saurus warrior with a spear would be (barely) able to touch the one on the 4" pole, and the once on the 2" would basicly be in range for anything apart from maybe goblins or skinks or something. Which seems bit stupid. Similarly bigger units like a carnosaur literally won't even care if their opponent flies they'l be able to reach them anyway.

What adds to my confusion is the swooping dive rule. This feels like it's intended to put you in melee range, allowing you to attack more in exchange for sacrificing the safety of flying out of reach. If you measure model to model, especially the ones on the 2" will basicly Always be in range anyway, so why would you ever not dive if you're in range for being hit by puny footsoldiers anyway.

Are there any rules specifying melee around flying? Or is flying essentially just a fancy way of saying "you can ignore terrain"?

 

[Bowser]

How are you supposed to measure melee attacks against flyers? Especially with the larger models. I got a couple of terradon riders, but since the poles you put them up differ heavily in height, from barely being 2" to about 4". The shortest would be about man-sized. Which would mean that if you measure model to model the fancy flying terradon's would for some inexplicable reason Always be only flying at about the height of the heads of their opponents. For example a saurus warrior with a spear would be (barely) able to touch the one on the 4" pole, and the once on the 2" would basicly be in range for anything apart from maybe goblins or skinks or something. Which seems bit stupid. Similarly bigger units like a carnosaur literally won't even care if their opponent flies they'l be able to reach them anyway.

What adds to my confusion is the swooping dive rule. This feels like it's intended to put you in melee range, allowing you to attack more in exchange for sacrificing the safety of flying out of reach. If you measure model to model, especially the ones on the 2" will basicly Always be in range anyway, so why would you ever not dive if you're in range for being hit by puny footsoldiers anyway.

Are there any rules specifying melee around flying? Or is flying essentially just a fancy way of saying "you can ignore terrain"?

Swooping dive also gives you rerolls, because your bird will be more viscious up close. Flying is just a fancy way of saying ignores terrain and other models for movement purposes.

 

[Canas]

Meh, that is slightly dissapointing. Especially for units like the terradons who are clealy flying high and have a specific diving ability. At least for units like prosecutors they look like they'd mix fighting on the ground and in the air so it makes some sense.

 

[Aginor]

Yeah, it makes sense for some units, like Stormcast who I imagine just fly a few hundred meters in real life and then land and fight on. But Terradons, with ranged weapons? Why should they fly that low?

...but then I understand that they probably would be too strong otherwise.

 

[Canas]

meh, for the terradon specificly I'd expect them to be more or less balanced even if they can hover above the enemy and pelt them with javalins till they're all dead... they simply aren't that powerfull if all they have is their javalins or bolas. What would be much more problematic balancing wise would probably be the various aelven wizards mounted on dragons, or that hawk that carries a bolt thrower around, those would probably be stupidly devestating if they could just fly above the enemy.

Still, in general I'd have expected differently, seems like a missed oppertunity.

 

[Aginor]

Agree.
When I talked about it with my Orruk-playing friend he was very relieved though, since he doesn't have a single unit that could attack them yet. So imagine a full airforce of, like, 15 Terradons against Ironjawz. That basically means that as soon as the wizard and the Warboss on Maw-Krusha are dead there is nothing that keeps the Seraphon from winning.
So while I would love to have flying units that only can be hit by ranged weapons with 4-5" or more it would be really bad for armies which just don't have such units.

On the other side: I think I read somewhere that in former editions (never played those) htere were more pages of rules only for covering flying units than we have total rule pages now. That says something about complexity of flying.

Also compare to real life: Air superiority is EXTREMELY important in modern warfare, exactly because of that. Tabletop games don't want that, they want balance between stuff that would not be balanced in real life.

...still I want them to be better, or cheaper. To me it seems Terradons are pretty weak, which is a pity because I love their style.

 

[Bracnos]

At my local store they came up with this rule, to add a Z plane just use dice to indicate how high up a model is making that move be part of the movement. I can be devastating if you have to player 2 has no flyers or ranged shooters but It has made the games I watch more entertaining to say the least.

Two thunder tusk are guarding a objective and player one sets her ranged flyers "12 inches" in the air and shoots away for as long as the model lives.

 

[Aginor]

It forces the enemy to play more balanced. I like that. An Ironjawz player would have to make a decision: Give up Ironjawz allegiance and get some Bonesplitterz archers, or take the risk, ignore the flyers, and try to crush the rest of the enemy with pure Ironjawz melee power.

 

[Canas]

Meh, with two rules it should work relativly well with flying in general

1) Don't allow ranged troops to have devastating ranged capabilities (e.g. a a flying wizard might be a bit much...)
2) You can't contest objectives while flying, you need to land

Even if you have ranged superiority in this case versus an army that has no way of dealing with it you still shouldn't be able to win by default since you can't claim objectives with them. Plus, an army that has absolutly no real way of dealing with them is probably not that good an army to begin with.

The most major issue is what do you do with the flyers that are too powerfull like the flying wizards... it'd be incnsistent to not give them the advantage, but a wizard on a dragon might be a bit hard to kill this way..

 

[Aginor]

Yeah that's really a problem. The powerful melee guys that fly (like the Maw-Krusha) are not the problem, but the wizards and artillery-like ones are indeed.
Perhaps add a rule that you can't cast while flying because of... dunno, make something up. In Dungeons&Dragons a wizard gets a penalty on his casting while riding a horse because it is bad for his concentration. It could be done with a -4 on the casting roll or so. So if you want to cast without penalty: put the mount on the ground for that round (hey that even rhymes! )
Same with flying artillery. Just give them -1 or -2 on the hit for heavy weapons.

 

[Canas]

Even then there's probably going to be some annoying ones. there's bound to be some insane aelf that decided he should shoot with a magical bow while riding a dragon and because its magical and stuff it hits as hard as a cannon and since its an aelf he of course has perfect aim...

Or just the straightforward issue of a dragon breathing fire. There's no real fluff explenation to force them to land to do their ranged attack in that case...

 

[Canas]

In fairness though, ranged is stupidly powerfull in AoS anyway given that you can shoot while in melee and without any penalties for moving. So at least that'd be consistent......

 

[Aginor]

Yeah. So that pretty much means: Archers and other counter-air units would belong into every army.
...but then it really boils down to: Can you stop enemy air: You win. If you can't, you lose.

hmmm... really tough.

EDIT: Oh yeah forgot about that. Yeah, I'd change that too, although I love shooting armies.

 

[Canas]

The only possible solution I could think of would be introducing ammo... this would even work for flying magic users or a dragon spewing fire. At a certain point they run out of ammo/magic/just get tired. But that would introduce its own host of problems... seems like flying is just rather a problematic mechanic.

Meh, shooting armies would be fine if they did comperativly little damage or had some other significant downside compared to melee troops. If you take judicators compared to liberators the judicators are equal or potentially even more powerfull depending on how effective their special weapons end up being even while in melee since they can just keep on shooting. The only real noticable disadvantage would be the lack of shields...O and they're more expensive. Overal shooting is just a bit weird and powerfull in AoS

To be honest I'd love to try and take an army of judicators and see how effective that would be, cuz it sound like they should be flat out better for the most part..

 

[Bowser]

At my local store they came up with this rule, to add a Z plane just use dice to indicate how high up a model is making that move be part of the movement. I can be devastating if you have to player 2 has no flyers or ranged shooters but It has made the games I watch more entertaining to say the least.

Two thunder tusk are guarding a objective and player one sets her ranged flyers "12 inches" in the air and shoots away for as long as the model lives.

This is quite brilliant. I think I will implement this. Makes that 80 point gyro copter worth while.