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3 squads of termies (including HQ) + 1 8 man squad with 2 plasma guns dropping out of the sky + 3 Tornados & a 6 man las/plas.

Best way to beat it?

With which army ?

Kick your opponent in the fork. While he is on the ground, deploy his drop pods into a corner away from your forces, hoping they scatter off of the board. Once he stands back up say "I have you in a perfect tactical position"

Seriously though what army are you playing? Makes a big difference.

marines

Drive to GW HQ, and beat the ass of the person responsible for making it possible to have 10+ Assault Cannons drop podded into a game

don't play him.

So you are saying that it is a completely unbeatable army?

Using my AL, I find that fast attack units are more useful than usual. Also larger squads and lots of plasma, seems to wrok for me when I face similar armies.

Ignore them. This army is beatable. My pod list has the most trouble with Mech Tau and Mech Eldar. Set up and mobility are the keys. If you can manage to keep from having your army split up by a wall of pods you have a chance. When you set your army up, place the units in such a way to give your opponent no good choices to drop into. Or set a trap. Give him something so juicy to hit he can't resist it. Either way if you give no thought to set up you will lose.

 

Here's a couple strategies I would use.

First, you'll have a couple turns of movement before they show up. Seize the center of the board and try and spread out, so that the pods can't dvide up your army, and he has to drop them on the edges of the board. Good chance they might scatter off. This works if you have a horde army and can cover alot of space in the center.

Divide your army into 2 castles. If he lands and puts all his marines on one side of the pods, and tries to shoot you, then you can shoot/assault him. Try and kill the drop pods as well...on a pen 6 it explodes and goes bye bye.

Have lethal killer assault units that will be able to wipe out what he drops in. Or landspeeder tornadoes....they can move around andget LOS onto his blocked units.

Don't fear the assault cannons....I had 6 in my Wolf GUard army and in a 3 game tournament got like 4 rending the whole day.

Be mobile...when he drop pods in, move away from the units and make him footslog around.

Drop pod armies excel in dividing up your force so you only have half an army to fight his whole force, and in shock firepower when they land. With proper deployment on your part, and mobile units, you can negate those advantages.

Another good tactic is to hedgehog into a corner. He won't be able to divide you and will eventually have to move to attack you, opening his units up for return fire/assault.

Not simple,
I am an Eldar player, never really delved into the marines that much, but what I would try is keeping some hard hitting assault squads in cover with jumppacks, next to some big Dakka squads. If you pair up, assualt to dakka, then to get to you with his 'shorter' range assault cannon he will need to get close enough so that you can charge him with your assault squads.
Well, not quite. an assault marine has an effective range of 18", so he does have the 18" - 24" range that he can take advantage of, but to do that he will either end up deploying pretty close to his own 'standard' deployment zone, or backing himself up on a different unit.


When he lands, he will dakka with his termies, but the cover should help with that. Then he either charges you, and you get the first hit (in cover!), or on your turn, you dakka the hell out of him, and then charge him right back.

If I am not mistaken a squad of 10 assault marines should be able to score enough hits on a termie squad to get it to fail at least 3 saves... (hopefully?)

Hidden powerfists in squads would do this very well. Powerfist = Dead Termie.


For my eldar I would use stupid fast squads like bikes and warp-spiders so that I could tie up his termies a soon as they landed, thus preventing them from shooting my nimble banshee, who then charge into HTH and finish off the squad. (30 power attacks will do that...).




For the final word, just consider matching his army 'exactly' (or close to it). That'd be hilarious, everyone deepstrikes, guy who gets the fist turn has a problem.

Nah, the list is beatable 1/2 out of 10 times due to dice/luck/terrain.

Point of Clarification. Is he using a Drop Pod Army or a Lysanderwing. Lysander wings pose a unique problem all of their own. That and stuffing 10+ AssCan in an army screams I dont know how to think tactically.

Depends on the size of his pods bases. Are they 3' 6' or 12'. Leave it to GW to have rules for a model thay don't even produce. I have even seen the high tech dixie cup drop pods. Best way to beat most pod armies is just to castle and space your models out enough to deny any gaps to pod into and to cut down on your own models that are in rapid fire range. If you use the 2' spacing effectively they often can only shoot at 4 with rapid fire.

Yeah, castle in a corner with the cheapest troops in the outer rings. Position the expensive vehicles, speeders or assault troops at the back of the castle such that they are more than 12" away from the outside edge of your castle (making it impossible for them to take plasma/melta shots on the turn the pods arrive--assault cannons there's not much you can do about). Use a 3-las predator (if it doesn't have a better target) or 3-missle dev squad to try to blow up pods with a penetrating 6, exposing whatever disembarked from the pod to the fire from your whole army.  Think about investing in a big assault squad with characters that might be capable of taking down all or most of a terminator command squad with a single charge--a chaplain for the rerolls to hit, a librarian for the boostable initiative and force weapon.

Your advantage is that you get to deploy your whole army and will be fighting, on average, half of his army in turn 2-3. If your army is numerous enough or tough enough or well-deployed enough to shrug off his first turn of shooting and still have some kind of counterpunch ready, you can take him out piecemeal.

The 'ultimate' weapon.

Inquisitor, 2 mystics, and a Baneblade, (or a Demolisher).  See how many you kill a they drop in.

That depends on the ruling for Drop Pods. Adepticon (I believe) considers it Deep Striking, so it's fair game w/ the Mystics. I've seen other rulilngs where Drop Pods are not Deep Strike, thus the Mystic rule gets real hazy and unclear.

Personally, I'd allow the shots as Drop Pod armies are cropping up everywhere and with such a varying style of Drop Pod (especially in size).

So, do mystics give you shots at the pods, the squads, or both?

Depends on which unofficial FAQ you go by...

Mystics only get 14" average precog range. If I was podding in and I ended up too close to an Inquisitor, I'd just disembark out of LOS to avoid the shots. If I landed in the 18"-24" sweet spot, I'd take my chances vs the mystics.

You'd want your retinue to include 2 vet guardsmen with plasmaguns, and a Plascannon gun servitor if you do this. That should get you 4 dead termies or marines if they land too close and make the mistake of disembarking in LOS of your Inq squad.

I prefer 2 mystics + a demolisher within 12"