Editing Heldrake (section)

===More Than The Sum Of Its Parts===
A flier is one thing. A loadout that can hurt almost any unit type is manageable. After all, we keep things in reserve all the time, and aren't Torrent weapons supposed to flush you out with near-impunity? But the Helchicken was like a guidebook on how to design something with no real weaknesses.

As a flier the Heldrake could hide in reserve at the start of the game, completely off the board, then get a free Vector Strike ''before'' Interceptor weapons could fire at it. Unless you hid everything against your table edge, it was ''guaranteed'' to hurt something. In the high likelihood that it was still alive after Interceptor (which not all armies had to begin with) it could then put a Baleflamer template pretty much anywhere, including on the former passengers of whatever vehicle it just Vector Struck to death. With a 36 inch move and a further 12 inch Torrent in a turret there was basically nowhere on the board that was safe from a Heldrake once it rolled to come in.

Basically, the Heldrake was the ultimate exercise in "anti-zoning", and was so amazing at it that in completely ignored one of the 40K meta's more fundamental tactics: screening. Everything else in the 40K series could be [[Fish of Fury|blocked off]], could be [[tarpit]]ted, could be bogged down or hidden from, or at least be given a token level of resistance to annoy the controlling player. But the Heldrake? It just shouted "Fuck you I'm a dragon!" and flew right over everything right on top of whatever you wanted to kill. It could hurt anything, nothing could hide from it, and very little could hope to fight back in any meaningful way. It had the hat trick, the golden trifecta of an overpowered unit. Hell, it even negated its own intended weaknesses; as a Daemon vehicle it was ''supposed'' to suffer from BS3, but neither Vector Strike nor Torrent gave a shit.

Lastly, just to leave a bad taste in the mouths of cheap entitled [[neckbeard]]s, the Heldrake was a brand new vehicle. You can bet your sweet ass Heldrake kits were expensive. Naturally, you have everyone losing to these things accusing GeeDubs of making their traditional overpowered army of the month's scheme. And when it was discovered that 6th Ed. Chaos Space Marines weren't exactly a god-tier codex ''without'' the Heldrake (sweet euphemism, it went from, depending on which Chaos God you swore allegiance to, unspectacular (Nurgle) to absolutely terrible (Khorne) if the player didn't fork out money for at least one Drake), you had the CSM players (rightfully) joining in too.