Heldrake Tacita

[Denzark]

Tacita: Heldrake

Introduction

Right, here it is. I see a lot of stuff commented on about the Chaos Space Marine Codex, about how it is not as good as we hoped for, etc – and to an extent, I agree. I was hoping for a return to CSM 3.5 days; on consideration I would rather have played the last codex and had Heldrakes as a White Dwarf inclusion, nonetheless I have to consider what we actually got was balance. But for me, beyond blob cultists – useful with a fearless IC, the unit with the most Charlie Sheen-esque, tiger’s blood for win, is the Heldrake. Having seen Mercer’s recent post, rating Heldrakes as the 10th best chaos unit, I thought I would write a small tacita about the true worth of these birds.

Research

I recently went to a GW Throne of Skulls tournament. Having been quite badly handled with 6th ed C:CSM at previous events, not winning more than 2 from 5, I thought I would join the massed ranks of 4 (Necron) fliers and took a 3 ‘Drake list. Results: 4 from 5, including 3 tablings: of IG/BA, 'Nid horde, and DE. Only loss was against a 3 flier White Scars list. So this is some thoughts about how to get the most from your Heldrakes.

List Selection

Understand, this is about zooming around, burning stuff up and winning. Not fluff, not necessarily balanced, but getting damage done to the enemy. Now I play tested a Nurgle biker lord and attached Nurgle bikers. They came in at 280-ish points, were seen as a priority target, and were just shot down by torrent fire. Repeatedly. Maybe I was playing them wrong – but I asked myself the question can they do as much damage, for what I pay for them, as I could with a 170 point Heldrake? Answer, no. So you must ask yourself the question about any given unit(s) in your army – for every 170 points that you don’t think can do the sheer damage a Heldrake can do, substitute one. Unless you specifically need something a Heldrake ain’t got, such as scoring, AP2, whatever – if it is just a space filler you are considering, ask that question.

The other part of list selection, is making sure they get on. No point in having up to 510 points mooching around in reserve. To maximise the chances of them getting on, Aegis line with Comms relay must be taken. Unless you have some cunning re-roll for reserves, this is a must to capitalise on flying goodness.

Capabilities

So, having become ‘that guy’ with 2-3 Heldrakes, you need to understand their capabilities. There is nothing else I can think of which can do RELIABLE damage to MEQ in both the movement phase and the shooting phase. Maybe some Ork roller tricks but then they don’t get the Bale flamer. That said, you must ensure you position your birds to hit something in both phases. I.e. roll across a unit for the vector strike, and then have your turret nasty ready to burn. Think of the ‘beaten zone’ of the Heldrake – you can place the template 360 degrees, up to 12” away. The template is what, about 8” long? So after moving, you need to be within 20” of a priority target.



Target Priority – Anti Air, then troops

In this model, your Heldrakes are your anti air capability. Don’t worry about 1-trick pony quad guns, or expensive flakk havocs. You need to be vector striking to do this. Explanation: The Hades autocannon is not all that. You will not make points back with it. The daemon-possessed ‘Drake is BS3 – so half your autocannon shots will miss. Even against AV12 I think you are better with D3+1 S7 vector strike auto-hits, than you are with going guns. So prioritise enemy fliers, and again, concentrate effort against them – don’t split your Heldrakes up unless you really need them in 2 different places. Mine cruise around like Von Richthofen and a wingman in tight formation. After fliers, I prioritise enemy troops. Why? Because they score, winning 5 of six missions. Very rare are troops who have 2+, so the Bale flamer, ignoring cover, is awesome. Again, concentrate fire, against one unit at a time. Each time you leave a smoking ruin instead of a scoring unit, the opponent sees one less objective he can claim. It keeps them under pressure and psychologically this is a good thing. Don’t be afraid to one-two the enemy, i.e. vector strike, and then burn the same unit. Also, S7 AP3 can be good against multi-wound, high toughness opponents. The last Bloodthirster I killed, was not drowned in Plasma, but autogun fire from 30 cultists, followed by 3 vector strikes.

Other considerations

There are a lot of special rules and therefore a lot to forget, with Heldrakes. It will not die – at the end of a friendly turn on a 5+ you regain a hull point. Also this is if the model is not removed as a casualty or been destroyed – so I reckon if you have flown into reserves you can still roll. The Bale flamer has Soul Blaze, so on the off-chance something survives, the unit may be on fire, and you roll for this every turn – the book says unless specified, a turn is a player turn, so the opposition may burn in both yours and theirs. The Scouring – fast attack, including the Heldrakes, becomes scoring. But don’t forget they are not Denial units – you cannot speed in for a last turn contest of an objective, you can only hold an uncontested objective. Lengthways deployments – harder for Heldrake. Remember you can go flat out though – up to 24” – so your maximum movement in a turn is 60”. I think the last thing to consider is against other fliers, try and go second – so you can smash them before they get a chance to shoot you.

Summary

The Heldrake is sometimes described as broken. Normally by GK players whose expensive power-armoured heroes are in a slowly cooling pile of blackened goo ha-ha. But point for point it is the most effective unit in the Fast Attack slot, and possibly the codex – in terms of destroying the enemy. Just remember though, if your opponent hasn’t gone heavy on anti air, you may be seal-clubbing and this will not be fun for either of you. So I would say leave 3 Heldrakes for cut-throat, tournament play, or if you want to punish a friend for spamming 18 necroissants, or 2 Storm ravens or some such. Lastly, if Tzeentch is being tricksy and your Heldrakes haven’t arrived or have been blasted from the skies by a gazillion Vendettas, just remember, Chain Axes to the fore, and Blood for the Blood God!

[dalek123]

Hi
Just curious about your thoughts on daemon allies changing anything, we now have access to cheap divination, hence rerolls and possibly a 4+ inv save, also Heldrake is a Daemon and presumably is affected by the grimoire of true names. If it fails you still have a 5+ jink
I am wondering if a hades autocannon with prescience and daemonforge is a better antiflyer option in my flyer heavy area.
Thanks.

[Denzark]

Dalek

All depends on the definition of Daemon, and does the rules in Codex Daemons affect everything with the Daemon USR. In which case, what you say may be the case - a rerolling to hit with Hades would take it to 75% not half, hits, and the Daemonforge should let you spank what you hit quite well. The principle of concentration of fire until the enemy flier is dead, still stands - you don't want several damaged but still fighting fliers knocking around.

[Chumbalaya]

Do you really need a tactica for using Heldrakes?

1) Put Heldrake on board
2) Kill everything
3) Win

[Denzark]

Chumby

my sarcasm detector is on the blink. Not sure if this is a serious question. Suffice to say, a 170pt unit is a huge chunk of points - you could find yourself playing an exceptionally talented or lucky player, or come up against opposing massed fliers. Therefore it merits collecting your thoughts and using them properly - I haven't always and squandering a resource on the battlefield is pointless. I don't think Heldrakes are autowin, I think they are a large part of what keeps CSM competitive in 6th ed.

[Caitsidhe]

I played a game this weekend (me pure CSM) and my opponent CSM/Daemons. He had two Helldrakes, while I had the more polite and civilized one Helldrake. If I were to go by conventional Net-Wisdom I should have lost given how uberpowerful the Helldrake is billed. The reverse happened. I won with little to no issue.

The Helldrake is an extremely good flyer which bypasses cover wounds on a 2+ against most things it is designed to kill and ignores all but Terminator armor. A Quad Gun will not, on average take one out of the sky on arrival. They can come fast, vector strike, and then let their torrent go.

There are some things to remember. That Soulfire thing isn't really helpful. You don't need it to kill so all it really does is give units you nail a chance to gain FNP. In general, don't breath fire on Terminators. You are unlikely to do much (if any damage) and the chances are you will help them more tha hurt them. Helldrakes drop like flies to Vendettas and and most Lascannon armed planes that come in after them. What can you do?

Does it sound like Games Workshop is saying buy flyers for your army or else? It should. That is exaclty what they are doing. The AA provided so far isn't that good. Even the new Tau aren't going to spell instant death to the average flying circus. Only Imperial Guard with their vaunted (and oddly underused) Sabre Defense easily deals with flyers. They are 40K ok but aside from myself, I just don't run into people using them.

[Learn2Eel]

I played a game this weekend (me pure CSM) and my opponent CSM/Daemons. He had two Helldrakes, while I had the more polite and civilized one Helldrake. If I were to go by conventional Net-Wisdom I should have lost given how uberpowerful the Helldrake is billed. The reverse happened. I won with little to no issue.

The Helldrake is an extremely good flyer which bypasses cover wounds on a 2+ against most things it is designed to kill and ignores all but Terminator armor. A Quad Gun will not, on average take one out of the sky on arrival. They can come fast, vector strike, and then let their torrent go.

There are some things to remember. That Soulfire thing isn't really helpful. You don't need it to kill so all it really does is give units you nail a chance to gain FNP. In general, don't breath fire on Terminators. You are unlikely to do much (if any damage) and the chances are you will help them more tha hurt them. Helldrakes drop like flies to Vendettas and and most Lascannon armed planes that come in after them. What can you do?

Does it sound like Games Workshop is saying buy flyers for your army or else? It should. That is exaclty what they are doing. The AA provided so far isn't that good. Even the new Tau aren't going to spell instant death to the average flying circus. Only Imperial Guard with their vaunted (and oddly underused) Sabre Defense easily deals with flyers. They are 40K ok but aside from myself, I just don't run into people using them.

I'm curious, are you referring to the Soul Blaze special rule that the Heldrake's Baleflamer has? That doesn't have a chance of providing Feel No Pain - only the attacks (specifically ranged, unless they have a certain melee weapon) of Tzeentch Daemons do.

I guess most don't realize just how effective Sabre Defence Platforms are when they can take Vendettas; I do find it odd how a lot of players will go for the weapon with the higher Strength and fewer shots even if it is statistically worse in terms of destroying or at least severely crippling fliers reliably. I had a look at them myself and was amazed at how cheap they were, whether with autocannons or otherwise. It might also be an issue that they don't have the rules or don't want the models, I guess.

By the way, to the OP, I want some Tacitos A good read!

[Denzark]

@Caitsidhe I agree with what you say re: GW wanting us to buy flyers. Posibly more noticeable than other types of stuff, if it one aspect of 6th where they can hit hard (some) but are hard to hit in return.

@L2E agree with the soulblaze comment. Maybe Cait was referring to some codex Daemon type rule?. Thank you for you comment, i am a fan of your tacitas and I suppose in some ways they influenced me. With regard to Sabres, still places won't let you bring a FW to the party unless by prior arrangement. The last person I agreed to let bring FW, brought the over sized Storm Raven (bigger FW thing forget the name). I downed it in a one-er with a lucky pen from a vector striking Heldrake, smashing a load of TH/SS terminators and Vulkan H on the inside...

[Learn2Eel]

Thank you I love reading up on everyone's articles, I think the more that is written about the hobby, the more people will get into it and have fun.
I agree with the sentiment regarding Forge World stuff, particularly when one sees the rules for the new Necron Dark Shroud Bomber - it is hard for tournament organisers to keep up with standard codices and trying to rules-lawyer that stuff, but the Forge World books can add a whole new layer of complexity to such situations. I personally don't mind Forge World stuff myself, but I can understand why many tend to avoid it; luckily, I think most LGS owners allow its use provided the owner has the rules.
Ah, you must be referencing the Storm Eagle. Yeah, downing that with one Vector Strike is very lucky indeed!

[Tynskel]

Chumby

my sarcasm detector is on the blink. Not sure if this is a serious question. Suffice to say, a 170pt unit is a huge chunk of points - you could find yourself playing an exceptionally talented or lucky player, or come up against opposing massed fliers. Therefore it merits collecting your thoughts and using them properly - I haven't always and squandering a resource on the battlefield is pointless. I don't think Heldrakes are autowin, I think they are a large part of what keeps CSM competitive in 6th ed.

You lost me at '170 point is a huge chunk of points'.
Maybe if you were playing Platoon Guard...