Skyfire?

Did 6E make the right decision in making Skyfire as rare as it is?  Skyfire allows you to fire at Flyers with full Ballistic Skill, but you are crappy at firing at anything else.  Very very few things can do this.

Well I have played a few games against flyers and here's what I observe:  the dismounting rules make it so that ultimately, those flyers are going to give you a chance to pop them when they enter hover mode and 6's DO happen.  So all is not lost when fighting flyers.  In addition, certain rules like the Tau Skyray are actually better than Skyfire becasue the Seeker Missiles fire at BS 5 but have the virtue of being able to fire at ground targets just fine.

I personally think that they made the right decision not to flood every army with Skyfire.  From a narrative standpoint, Flyers are way up there and flying at improbable speeds compared to other things on the board.  They're probably not within the easy range nor aiming capabilities of many weapons and so it "makes sense" narratively.

Flyers are not cheap as a rule, and their movement rules leave their back ends exposed a bit.  Dar Eldar Flyers dont get above AV 11 and AV 12 for other flyers.  The consequences when you get blown from the sky in one is pretty dire also if you're transporting people!

I do think that as new codex's come out, you will see more Skyfire weapons.  But allowing the scenario to "play out" a little in tournaments and such and seeing how big an impact they will or won't be will help the developers decide how much MORE frequent they want Skyfire to be and flyers for that matter.

I personally anticipate that flyers might proliferate AS the answer to other flyers and the idea of Dog fights is pretty appealing.  the rules sort of encourage dog fights and thats a cool idea to me.  Lets face it, every army, even today, has an airforce.  I can just imagine (think Avatar) what a Tyranid flyer would look like, but it'll probably be awesome.  The theme music to Top Gun playing while you play with your toys is fun.

I'm more of a narrative leaning guy so for me, I think they hit a home run on the Flyer/Skyfire rules with one little exception:  German 88's are plenty effective (Read:  absolutely devastating)  against ground targets so why do Skyfire weapons fire SO poorly against ground targets 40K years later? BS 1 seemed a bit low for Skyfire weapons.  Markerlights don't impact the BS because the BS is a "set value" of 1 (see page 2 of the Main Rulebook).  I suppose to keep it consistent they made it BS 1, but I sort of question the internal logic on that. 

despite that break in internal logic I am pretty excited to see more of these fun dogfights.  the new Space Marine flyer, as ugly as it is, can now go skyhunting and have a real role to play, dropping from the clouds behind Flyers and blowing them away.