Old School here with a post from the road. Tonight I want to talk about drop pods and the quantity folks take them in. I am a big fan of single pods in armies, dropping disruption, distraction or destruction, such as the Logan bomb, sternguard, ect. Cvinton, on the other extreme likes to mount his whole army in pods.
While he doesn't have to cross the board in rhinos, surely to be left walking at some point, he also ends up without the protection provided by the famous space Marine rhino. I think this just represents two styles of play and to different themes players will use when fielding their army. it really got me thinking and since I am on the road, I wanted to keep this post short and give you readers the chance to discuss the topic. How many drop pods is ideal? How many do you run and what goes in them? Are you doing the enemy's job of de meching you or are you delivering swift power armored death? Let's hear your thoughts ... oh and Cvinton, feel free to snowmobiled your ideas in there!
I'm a fan of the three pod list. I'll bring two MM/HF dreadnoughts in on turn one and reserve a tactical squad and Vulcan to generally arrive on turn four. It allows me to open up a LR, hopefully, and preserve a scoring unit.
ReplyDeleteI own three droppods, to keep my options open. as heretic, two dreads and an infantry squad work well. Normally I run a 1 pod list, but if I can work in an empty pod somewhere I like to. That allows me to not have to drop my squad in first turn. Say they are sternguard, great at infantry, and can even be given melta to deal with tanks. but against a reserves list, they may not have a target when they come in. second pod allows you to delay them.
ReplyDeleteI have three pods - for sternguard libby, tac squad captain, and tac squad reserved.
ReplyDeleteNo pods in my Imperial Fists are that very soon now is ready for battle. So I want my next army after that be very different. Not the steady hard IFs but aggressive in your face mayhem. Space wolves.
ReplyDeleteMy plan is to go all pods for the grey hunters and wolf guard and keep my long fangs on foot. No armor. It will force me to go for the kill and learn not to waste drop points.
I run 5. 2 of which have beacons. 1 with a command squad (2melta's kossaro khan), 2 with tac's , 2 with dreads ( reg a . cannon and hvy flamer and iron clad). Backed up by termie libby, termie assault squad , out flanking razor back tac squad and a small unit of scouts. it really does well. I enjoy not deploying and reacting to my oppenent after years of rhino rush.
ReplyDeleteI'm painting up a skyhammer, but I used to run an all pod list pre-plastic model back when the rules for drop pod assault didn't require a model. It was a good list, did well, especially if there was significant amounts of terrain on the board.
ReplyDeleteAll-pod armies are, unfortunately, very weak to the enemy simply reserving everything and taking them apart as they show up, since drop pods are almost always have units with short-range guns in them, whereas your opponent is likely more prepared to deal with an engagement from further out.
ReplyDeleteHaving a small detachment to arrive and cause havoc can be effective, but it's important to be careful _what_ you send- Sternguard will do some damage, but they will almost certainly be wiped out in return by the full weight of the enemy's firepower, which functions less as a "distraction" and more as "hey I want to trade my 285pt unit for one of yours."
I see what you mean AP, five man squads are a worthy sacrifice for the odd rock unit land raider and if there isn't anything to drop in on, they can at least be dropped back to set overwatch fire on an objective.
ReplyDeleteAs for dreads in pods, they were always less survivable to me than marines in pods, usually dying to melta or assault the next turn.
When I ran space marines I ran zero pods. I was having to much fun with rhino spam. Nothing beats 40+ black template rolling up the table backed by a nasty command squad.
ReplyDeleteI run too many pods. I just reworked my list to have 5. The problem I'm finding is that as a not all pod army I'm not giving a enough saturation to the opponent and they're just saying I guess I shoot my whole army at your one target; the land raider. Its a tough target but its not when you bring 1850 points to bear.
ReplyDeleteI am though, a huge fan of late game tac squad arrivals. With 5 pods I do get the meat of my army on the board. 1 landraider with vulkan and 5 termines, an ironclad, 10 stern guard and a tac squad. Left in reserve is all of 400ish points of tac marines to come in for late game grabs.
The advantage I find versus rhinos is that it gets my marines where I want them...and it gets ALL of them there. Putting 30 space marine moon boots on the ground in one spot really makes an amazing defense, especially if they're 30 space marine wolf fur covered moon boots. Unless you have some movement advantage you're more than likely going to eat 60ish bolter shots.
The rhinos certainly give you the advantage to redeploy but in my opinion if you need to get back in your rhino, you did something wrong in the first place.
Tell me honestly, what percentage of marines after disembarking have gotten back in their rhino? I bet unless it was to do a drive by on some firewarriors its pretty slim. Now, tell me what percentage of rhino's have been blown up before they got to where they needed to be?