Flyers
'Flyers' are aircraft and — in the case of Tyranids — giant creatures that act like aircraft. Nimble fighter aircraft, sturdy fighter-bombers, lumbering bombers, cargo transport aircraft — all have their place in support of ground forces in the 41st millennium.
In many ways, Flyer units and detachments are quite different to ground forces, and their rules reflect this.
Flyer data sheets
Flyers have data sheets just like regular units — but with these differences:
-
The Speed value is always
Flyer. Flyer units are so fast that we treat them as though their Speed value is unlimited — you can move them as far as you wish across the play area. -
The Assault value is a split value, such as
2/2. We call this the 'Dogfight value' — although most of the time we refer specifically to only one of its two parts:-
The first number is the Intercept value of the flyer, which represents its overall manoeuvrability.
-
The second number is its Gunnery value, which represents the overall deadliness of the flyer’s air-to-air weaponry, when it can get an enemy flyer in its sights.
-
Deployment of flyers
You don’t deploy flyers along with other units at the start of the battle — place them somewhere outside of the playing area, in the Ready state (see Flyer readiness states). You can imagine that they are in orbit, or stationed at a nearby airbase.
Flyers and assaults
Flyers can never take part in close combats or firefights in any way, and can never become Broken.
[TODO: This sounds absolute, but there is the edge case of landed transport aircraft. Consider new wording — or perhaps a simple footnote to acknowledge this exception would suffice. Although I suppose we might also need to clarify some points of detail about this edge case somewhere in this section.]