Avenger

[Jomgor]

I was wondering what your opinions on the Avenger Strike Fighter were. It may not be a SoB model anymore but I still own one and was thinking of filling out an airwing detachment. Like 2 Vultures with gatlings or some other powerful anti horde. mop up stragglers and armor with the Avenger and bunches of meltaguns. Either that or a guard CP battery. Both obviously dependent on the Avenger even being worth it, or at least a break even model.

[Atrus]

Ive found the Avenger to be veey underwhelming this edition. It lost its Deepstrike ability and lost its strafing run ability meaning that all of its heavy weapons are hitting on 4+ against ground targets and 5+ against other flyers.

Its really expensive for what it does which for me has been nothing more than a bullet magnet.

That said, i only recently discovered the hellstrike missiles which are no longer 1 shot and roll 2d6 for damage and take the highest (basically a melta missile) which pleases me; yet to try it with that loadout, so that may change my opinion of it.

 

Tl;dr: "meh" unit you take for love

[Tirak]

I run Guard flyers pretty heavily and have made extensive use of them even at tournaments, and unfortunately I have to recommend you steer clear of the Avenger. The simple fact of the matter is that it is largely underwhelming for the cost in points you're looking at. With the increase in price of Hellstrike Missiles in Chapter Approved, you've basically priced yourself out of any real competitive play. At 194 points for the stock variant, you just don't bring a lot of firepower, as the primary focus of the aircraft at that point is the gun, and sadly the Avenger Bolt Cannon is pretty poor in this edition. 8 shots at S6 means you're burning through chaff great, but overpaying on the gun against elites like Space Marines and Terminators. Sure you get a bit of extra utility against Death Guard, but that's too much of a Niche, and S6 sadly is mediocre. The AP is great at -2 but the low damage, again means that it's just not really worth much, and so the focus of the aircraft is kinda lost.

 

It doesn't shoot enough to hurt chaff in a meaningful way, and it doesn't hit hard enough to really run vehicles out of town. Tossing in a pair of Hellstrikes dramatically increases the cost to 254, but at that point you've got 4 anti tank shots, only hitting two of those. It's not great quite frankly and if you add up all the numbers and throw them at a standard Tank target of T7/3+, you're looking at doing 4.99 damage per turn at an efficiency of 50.94 points per damage. Not great. The Lightning Strike Fighter barely is usable in a flyer anti tank role, coming in at 305 points per model, though it packs 4 Hellstrikes and an Autocannon in addition to the Twin Lascannon. That puts it up at 6.42 damage per turn and 47.52 points per damage, almost on par with an unmodified Leman Russ.

 

Right now the only flyer worth anything out of the Aeronautica Imperialis group is the Vulture with Punnisher Cannons. No other flyer really operates on that level of efficiency against its chosen target, and until base prices go back to pre Chapter Approved levels and the Hellstrike nerf is undone, death from above isn't really a great option at this point.

 

As a side note, depending on how your club/tournament interprets how Deepstriking interacts with minimum movement, an easy way to give all your flyers Deepstrike is to place them in an Elysian Detachment. While part of an Elysian detachment, their Aeronautica Imperialis keyword gets swapped for Elysian Drop Troops, which gives them all the ability to deepstrike. At my club and at Adepticon, they ruled that deepstriking units are considered to have moved their maximum move increment, so as to be consistent with the rules on the Tallarn Ambush ability which was errata'd explicitly to state that. Though if your club or the tourney you're going to play at interprets it as they have not moved at all and are thus destroyed, then that obviously doesn't work.

[Mekhitar]

I also find myself with an ASF, a remnant of last edition.  Before the changes to our ability to soup, I used to include it with a Sisters brigade fairly regularly; since, I have added it in as an Aux, and in one case, taken it with a pair of Valks.

 

It really isn't worth its points - I run it with the add-on autocannons, not because they are worth it but because I have them from last edition as well - but since mine is already tricked out in the colors of my Order, I play it because it isn't completely terrible.  And it serves as an excellent distraction for enemy anti-tank in more casual games.  I really wouldn't expect it to do terribly much, and worse, it's actually rather hard to keep on the table, because it cannot go into over mode.

 

(I did really get a blast with the Valks, though.  Completely empty, and with as many heavy bolters as I could put on.  My favorite part is charging them into enemy shooting units.)