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I've been playing now for about a year. One game a week, usually. Space Marines and, lately, Necrons. Different army lists each time (mostly), usually with one unit or so that's capable of deep striking.

As yet, in around 30 games in which I've deep struck, I've yet to avoid scattering somewhere.

Each time, my scatter seems to slightly wreck my plans. My guys with 12" range scatter exactly 13" away from all targets. My Drop Pods scatter precisely into assault range of monstrous creatures. I land on difficult terrain? I roll 4 ones with 8 dice. If there's a sigle piece of impassable terrain within 12 inches, I'll scatter onto it. I've never hit the target, and I've never scattered anywhere and thought "hey, that's not too bad." It's ALWAYS been terrible.

Of my 10 or so mishaps, I've only been outright killed once. The other 9, my opponent has placed me in the centre of the killing fields.

Am I doing something wrong? I know dice are dice, and 30 games is hardly infinite monkeys and typewriters, but it's not insignificant.

Does anyone have any tips for good Deep Striking technique, or links to sound advice on the matter? At this rate, I swear I'm not gonna deep strike until 6th hits, when I hope changes to the system will make the pros outweigh the cons.

Cheers!

Well deepstriking when you don't have DoA, a drop pod or something that allows you to not scatter at all is very risky. Its not useless and can reliable take out things when you dont scatter or only scatter a short distance. I ran honour guard w/ 4 meltas and Dante so they came down where I wanted them and i could drop down kill a landdraider or anyother tank of my choosing then I could assault the contents the turn after or move onto another tank.

In ahort no it is not useless. But it requires the right equipment and Deep striking without anything to minimize the risks is dangerous. never deepstrike Monoliths. As a BA I would never deepstrike a landraider as its footprint is huge and a Monoliths is even bigger.

Aren't 2 out of the 6 results on a scatter die a "hit"?

redkeyboard wrote:Well deepstriking when you don't have DoA, a drop pod or something that allows you to not scatter at all is very risky. Its not useless and can reliable take out things when you dont scatter or only scatter a short distance. I ran honour guard w/ 4 meltas and Dante so they came down where I wanted them and i could drop down kill a landdraider or anyother tank of my choosing then I could assault the contents the turn after or move onto another tank.

In ahort no it is not useless. But it requires the right equipment and Deep striking without anything to minimize the risks is dangerous. never deepstrike Monoliths. As a BA I would never deepstrike a landraider as its footprint is huge and a Monoliths is even bigger.

Pretty much nailed it here. And even with DoA BA which I play, it can still be risky, especially if you get bold/stupid place your guys too close to enemies/impassible terrain. Always remember for DoA that you can still scatter 6" and its always better to play it safe than to mishap and lose your entire unit.

Kevlar wrote:Aren't 2 out of the 6 results on a scatter die a "hit"?

Yep. You wouldn't think so with my results though.

Me playing Guard our Stormtroopers don't have that problem as we can Re-roll our scatter Die with the Airborne Assualt Special Rule but in your terms i think your just unlucky i have had my ten man Kaskin squad kill over 1,000 points , The deep struck fired plasma rifles , HSLG 's and threw a vortex Grenade and killed 2 Baneblades and a Reaper titan ( we deep struck inside of the Sheild ) damn lucky yes but it can happen

Unfortunately, my good man, your issue boils down to your dice hate you. I find that being humble and having a contingency plan go hand in hand

So you're really, really unlucky with deepstriking. So don't do it.

Deepstriking basically boils down to icon/homer/drop pod/airborne assault suicide or harassment extravaganza, or it boils down to unguided throwaway suicide units.

The only really obvious exception to this is a drop pod assault, or drop pod-esque things like DoA, wherein you can have your entire army deepstrike. In this case, you've just got to play it a little more consiervative/use pro-DS items more.

Bring locator beacons with say scouts. Infiltrate them up he board to where you want to deep strike.

Deep Striking is not useless but you do have to plan ahead for it. Give someone a Teleport Homer and put them in a Land Raider. Run the LR up to the general area where you want the squad to drop and then on turn 2 if they come in have them land around the Land Raider somewhere. Can also be done in a Rhino but its harder to do with them unless you have multiple Rhinos with one or two acting as a shield so that the Rhino with the Homer/Personal Icon can do what it needs to do.

Deep Striking can be very useful when you consider your opponent has to prepare for a force that could come down anywhere on the table

Play daemons. It will teach you either a) how to deepstrike or b) how to hurl hundreds of dollars of plastic, lead and FINEcast at a brick wall

Evading the swear filter is a violation of Dakka rules.-Mannahnin

Jihallah wrote:Play daemons. It will teach you either a) how to deepstrike or b) how to hurl hundreds of dollars of plastic, lead and FINEcast at a brick wall

QFT

Since the whole army HAS to deep strike, you generally learn how to do it over time. And you can take invuln saves on dangerous terrain( which is where you will be aiming for like 99.99999999999999999999999992% of the time, since a 5+ on a 15+ point model(or a 4+ on a 17+ point model if tzeentch) sucks.)

Deep striking can be a full on theme to an army or a tactic employed by just a couple units. They are great for keeping your opponent guessing where they are going to come in and what are they going after. You may cause your opponent to make decisions that he would not normally make or play more conservatively than normal. In the very least you should think of them as a wildcard that you can use to take out enemy armor or threaten that nasty enemy unit.

Plan to have them assist some part of your force that is moving into position for mutual support. Also sometimes you need to drive a Rhino up to give yourself cover to block LOS on your unit that just deepstruck down.

Really its all about trial and error and being sneaky with a deepstriking unit that has ability to do something useful.

I like to deep strike: Land speeders, Jump troops, Kaskrin. Terminators.

~Lion~

Use teleport homers, locator beacons and such. Don't always deep strike, it depends on your enemy and the terrain.

I base me CSM lists on foot troops and obliterators for the most part, and since my CSM icons are the same as homing beacons, my oblits don't scatter.

Build your list with that in mind, scout bikers can help as can scouts with teleport homers, drop pods with locator beacons and such.

Drop pods and locator beacons thats all I can say

Deep Striking is an incredibly useful mechanic. You just have to calculate in your army planning whether deep striking will actually help IF you scatter. If your list RELIES on a dead accurate deep strike, it's not a good idea to do it at all. If your plan and list are built to deep strike for position and future round action like mine usually are, then you will love it.

That's really the best anyone can tell you on this because deep striking only makes sense when you can AFFORD to be off target.

My Stingwings can afford to be off target or even land in terrain because they re-roll terrain testsd. They have the Pathfinder Devilfish's to guide them in and they are usually there for position and objective stealing, or else assassinating a fringe unit (which they need not do the round they come in).

In my FootDar list its a bit more important that the Warpo Spiders land on target but my list is sort of built to ensure that if they miss, I can defend them with Scorpions, so I dont worry about the misses as much, or really at all.

So The list and the strategy really determines whether you can support it or not. The mechanic itself really can't be put on trial.

Denying a flank or castling in a corner is an excellent way to deepstrike. The enemy units on the denied flank will often present side armor or OOC (Out of cover, I'm coining that damnit) to a deepstriking unit in the right spots and the denied flank will have less models thus leading to an easier deepstrike. Denying a flank and then deepstriking works if you use either a) mobile shooty units to ping up the enemy as they try to reach the actual battle, and possibly divert attention/bullets from the core of your force or b) a hard elite unit like terminators to stall the denied flank. Divide and conquer- whilst the denied flank is dealing with the terminators, you deal with the flank you deployed on.

The problem with deepstrike that I see is people want to use this mechanic to get their forces as close as possible to assault or rapid fire or use melta weapons on vehicles. For me, the best deepstriker, in terms of usefulness and reliablity, has been 10 GH w/ 2 plasmaguns, or 9 GH w/ plasmagun and Runepriest. They drop down on midfield objectives, block movement with their pod and threaten MEQs. The priest can be given things like Murderous hurricane, for difficult/dangerous terrain shenanigans, JotWW since he's closer to the enemy than the RP with the longfangs, LL for more S7 shots from the squad, Stormcaller to mess with other deepstrikers, skimmers and jetbikes (that might be Tempests wrath I'm thinking of, but you know the one I'm talking about ). This squad sits in cover and puts out decent fire, and can punch back when assaulted. It forces my opponent to react to it, instead of my rhinos/razorbacks. And those twin plasmaguns have reaped a surprisingly hefty toll for just 2 plasmaguns. The squads success is due to its podding into the midfield, instead of in the opponents grill on turn 1 and be isolated from the rest of the army. You can deepstrike ANYWHERE on the board, not just up with the opponent!

Jihallah wrote:Play daemons. It will teach you either a) how to deepstrike or b) how to hurl hundreds of dollars of plastic, lead and FINEcast at a brick wall

Evading the swear filter is a violation of Dakka rules.-Mannahnin

I thought I was putting a cheeky accent onnit, guv'nor!

<3 Mannahnin

Far from useless, but needs to be done with a plan in mind and that you may lose the unit.

...No?

Deep Striking is a somewhat risky tactic that requires care and timing to pull off effectively, but if you've got access to Teleport Homers and effective units you should have little to no trouble if the Reserves dice are with you. Deathwing Terminators Deep Striking in support of an early Ravenwing attack is one of my favorite and most successful tactics, as a matter of fact, mostly because it weakens and disorients the enemy while distracting his attention from the Devastators and Tactical Marines about to blow him apart.

I give my sniper scouts TP homers so they get set up near enemy and then call in LotD, Terminators, and other shenanagians.

I keep a simple rule in mind when I deep Strike - Average scatter is 7 inches.

I give myself as close to a 7 inch cushion as possible. If the dice kick me into a mishap, it's bad luck. If I didn't give myself the cushion and I mishap, I gambled and lost.

I never scatter, when I played Oldcrons I always VoD around the table instead of moving, I can count the times I scattered terribly on 1 hand. My monolith always showed up where it needed to too. I guess it's just a luck thing.

There are 2 people who use deepstrike heavy armies at my FLGS. a Blood Angles army and a Demon army. the BA player gets dead on results so much he takes VERY risky moves with his units. the demon player scatters so much that he puts his stuff where he does not want it to land so that it will scatter into a decent location. compensate for what seems to happen to you most by playing to it.

I would never deep-strike without something that reduced the chance of scattering/miss-hap. I will happily deepstrike stormtroopers or drop pods, say. But I can't imagine drop-podding anything else.

Deep Striking isn't useless, it's just a gamble sometimes unless you have said war gear items mentioned above

of all the op's deepstrikes he has only lost 1 unit? did i read that right? because dude, if thats your deepstrike...i want in.

in 1 single turn i lost 2 units to deepstrike, completelly dead.next turn, dangerous terrain failed and ... you guessed it, dead.

an alternate game, 1 hit and 2 scatter within range. then i pavane units into place and bam, 3 squads of my opponent wiped out.

its' a gamble and it's risky, but it can be an amazing play even more so if you have a teleport or a icon to guide you (tho this has never been the case for me)

i like it it's fun it's random and keeps me on my toes.

Also, it does kind of depend on what you're deepstriking. If you're deepstriking meltaguns against things that rather have to be in melta range (as in AV12+), then yeah, they're called suicide squads for more than one reason. If you're deepstriking tactical terminators, however, you only need to land within 24" of your target, which means you don't have to cut things NEARLY so close, and the risk of deepstriking drops quite a bit.

Personally, I'm even more or less fine with plasma guns, actually. They can attack from 12" away, so it's not like you need to land right on top of them to shoot. If you place the initial attempt 7" away, there is a tremendous amount of leeway between a hit on a scatter die, and scattering in almost any direction up to the average of 7". Plus, there are usually a few directions you can scatter where you can scatter all the way up to 12" and still be within 12" of the target (if the scatter direction is diagonally pointing towards the target for example). Even without a reroll, you're still looking at getting in range vaguely roughly 3/4 of the time, with pretty low chances of scattering directly on the target and having them get blown up on the mishap.

Really, the suicidally close deepstriking is for things with meltaguns or that want to get into close range combat. For those things, yeah, you're really going to want them to have some help from a drop pod or an icon or something. For everything else, though, you don't need to be very risky for deepstriking to do its job.

Deep striking also sucks because you have to be in base to base formation, then you get blasted.

I think people are deep striking something too valueable. Deep strike multiple smaller units and it won't be so bad if you lose one.

It's not really that bad if you lose everything. It's about taking the epic chance and getting stuck in deep. Sometimes it will pay off and it will make all the others worth it.

Getting used to it with daemons sounds like it works, but that's not very realistic. Playing planetstrike should do the same thing, and you can play it with what you already own.

Some here are villifying it as a practice. I think you can't quantify in any MEANINGFUL way the risk/reward in a vacuum.

Saying Deep striking ITSELF is bad makes no sense. The build and WAY more importantly, the STRATEGY is what defines it's correctitude as a tool to be used or not.