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I have started playing a drop pod army recently and I am having trouble with horde armies.  I have played orcs and nids so far and both times was fighting for a tie.  Any tactics or recomendations on how to fight horde type armies with pods?

right now my list is: termie librarian command squad 2 heavy flamers, 5 man termie squad 2 assault cannons, 5 pods with tactical squads and twin specials, dread in a pod.  @1850

as is the list has 3 heavy flamers and 2 flamers and a lot of bolt shots.  fear of the dark dosen't do much  against either orcs or nids.  the horde player has 1 or 2 turns to move around and fill up a lot of the table and limit my deployment.  I haven't been able to successfully wall off parts of their armies because its a big mass of models.

my other army is eldar and when I play these types of opponents I just deploy farther back and shoot at them as much as I can before they get in combat. 

any advice would be appreciated.  my difficulty may also be related to my unfamiliarity facing these armies, not sure exactly.

the nid list was 2 tyrants, 2 fex, a bunch of gaunts (hormagaunts and shooty gaunts), 2-3 zoanthropes and a lictor.
the orc list had 6 zap guns, a bunch of grots, 3 killa cans, a bunch of dudes in mega armor, and like 100 boys or so.

One idea vs Nids is to take lots of plasma on your tac squads, and drop them all next to Synapse creatures. Plasma all those Zoeys and hopefully the Tyrants into slag, and the gaunts all become pretty useless.

If he's got one Synapse creature way off to one flank, then drop your tac squads to eliminate the *other* Synapse - and watch all the gaunts run far away from you, towards the distant Synapse creature. Then you can pick off the fexes while the gaunts are away, and you'll have a few turns to shoot them as they come back.

Assault cannons work pretty well on MCs with the rending.

Always wall off half your opponents army with a line of pods, of course.

Vs Orks I have no idea - but without fleet, it should be pretty easy to isolate half the army with a pod wall for two turns.

My drop pod list has smoked every tyranid player or ork player I have run into.

Here's how:

Powerfists and flamers with bp/ccw.

At 1850, I run--
libby termie squad with assault cannons, 2 x heavy flamer/ass cannon dreads, 3 x 8 man 2 flamer powerfist squads, 2 x 8 man 2 melta powerfist squads, 1 x 5 man 2 melta squad

The trick is not allowing your units to take on horde units on their own. Twin flamers are great and all but a single squad won't always wipe out a large unit of guants or boyz and tacticals aren't that great against gribbles, even with a powerfist.

The nice thing about facing horde armies is that they will have to spread out, allowing you to focus your initial attack on a flank. Use that to your advantage. I'd add that having termies with Assualt cannons are nigh mandatory, as they allow you to to layer your attacks much more easily (ie it can be hard to get a 2:1 advantage on an enemy unit when all your units are effective at 8"-12").

Every time you take a Terminator with a heavy flamer, Chuck Norris kills a kitten.

I think my loss to the nids had a lot to do with my unfamiliarity with them since their new codex came out.  I didn't realize they don't have hive nodes anymore, so targeting synapse is a huge deal now.

I am not interested in giving my drop pods bp/ccw, maybe 1 but i perfer the holy bolter.  also its already modeled.

with the orcs targeting and whiping out one flank is the way to go I think, thank you for the advice.  I wasn't able to wall him off because there was no room between his squads to do so.

any other advice would be appreciated.

One thing I'll do against nids often is start with all my non-podding terminators on the board, since I know I come out way ahead in the gunfight.

Then as my pods come in, they deal with whatever is about to make it to those terminators.

Are bp/ccw pod squads really viable? Isn't the rapid fire going to do more damage? Or are the hordes usually going to make it your marines before they get more than a turn of gunfire off?

Bp/ccw pods are the only way to fly if you're not running termies (and even if you are if you ask me).

You trade one extra bolter shot once, for multiple attacks in CC and an extra pistol shot each and every time you charge.

If you drop pod, you will be charged by an enemy the turn you land if you want to shoot anything, unless you have lots of 24" shooting (terminators/dreads). You have a 12" range, and assaulty armies are usually fast in some way (orks charge out of vehicles, nids fleet or leap, et cetera).

Against a horde, you will always want the extra bp/ccw attacks because you trade a few bolter shots for extra bp/ccw attacks for the rest of the game. Against a shootie opponent, you want to win decisively in combat, and bp/ccw lets you do that.

Your options for shootie drop pods that can take bolters, really oughta be 6 man squads with 2 specials, backing up terminators and dreads.

Or alternatively you can use full squads with apothecaries and play VP denial shootout.

Otherwise, buy a few boxes of bloodclaws and rock on.