Editing Heldrake (section)

== 19 Months of Cheese ==
For all of 6th Edition, H-Drakes were considered mainstays in everyone's top five [[cheese|cheesiest]] units. And looking at it in the context of the times, it's not hard to see why. Its cheese was famous, almost memetic, like how [[Pyrovore]]s are terrible. It all stems from three major factors:

===Durability===
First and foremost, it's a flier, so your options for hitting it are already limited. More to the point, it was the first flier of the edition to be designed AS a flier (as opposed to Stormravens, which were designed as skimmers). The early meta had no idea how to deal with fliers, so anyone playing against a Heldrake wasn't prepared for it. Nobody had Skyfire weapons except Guard players with Hydras, and Hydras were falling out of favor since they couldn't hit ground targets very well anymore.

But just hitting the flier was the first step. You also had to get past front and side Armor Value 12. Keep in mind this was before 6th Ed. Tau, so almost everything that had Skyfire was S7. It's also a Daemon Possessed vehicle, so it had 5+ invuln. And unlike other fliers, it got this for ''free'', whereas other fliers could only Jink if they were willing to snap-shot the following turn. To ice the cake, they gave it It Will Not Die, so your hard-earned efforts of finally hurting the thing could be all for naught.

===Damage Output===
[[File:Tumblr nnrqjzAyKm1si96eio3 400.jpg|thumb|350px|left|It's terrifying on the ground, too.]]
By default, it has a [[Hades Autocannon]], but nobody took it because it could also get a cheap yet amazing weapon called The [[Baleflamer]]. Good lord, just the Baleflamer! S6 AP3 Torrent, a weapon designed specifically for killing MEQs that coincidentally doesn't care about the bird's lackluster ballistics skill. Did we mention the [[Baleflamer]] was considered turret-mounted? Yes, it didn't matter where you actually positioned this thing, it could fire in any direction, letting the Heldrake deliver miss-free, cover-ignoring, multi-model devastation without even paying attention to where it's going.

It could also Vector Strike D3+1 times at S7 AP3 Ignores Cover, just by moving over you, so MEQs (remember, Vector Strike became AP2 in 7th ed, which also reduced the number of hits to one against ground targets) and vehicles aren't safe either. And as a flier it can Vector Strike pretty far in a single turn, picking and choosing whatever it wanted, and always hit side armor on S7, so any attempt at [[Fish of Fury|clever positioning]] was basically wasted.

Long story short, you have a weapons platform that can threaten almost everything your opponent could throw at you (and completely ignore [[Land Raider|the few]] [[Monolith|exceptions]]), but was especially geared towards destroying MEQs en masse.

===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.