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Heres a concept I havent seen done yet, allthough it might be highly competitive.

Basicly you play a Marine army with a good amount of heavy weapon troops. Lets say something like this:


2x 5 Marines LasPlas 100 pts

3x 6 Marines (elite per trait) 3 Missile Launcher, tank hunters (deploy after enemy tanks) 168 pts


Then for Countercharge you take a more in your face aproach with drop pods, following the logic, that against assault armys your pods will arrive in time to intercept the enemy, while against shooty forces you get real close unmolested.

Librarian, FoD, 4 Termis, 2 ACs, Tank Hunters -360 pts

This is 1064 points so far and one propably should add a few more Pods.

10 Marines icl. Seargent, Powerfist, 2 Flamers (per trait), Pod 226 pts

And maybe a bigger unit on the ground to recive charges:

10 Marines incl. Seargent, Powerfist, Lasplas 205 pts

So we come to 1495 pts.



The list is just there to give you something to start from. Lets dicuss the concept of Pods+Gunline.

The 50/50 Drop Pod army never works.

If you start the game with only a few units on the table, and they will end up getting shot and killed by an entire army before your Pods even come in. You either need to have everything on the table, or everything come on in drop pods, so you will both get killed piecemeal.

I think you`re wrong. It might partly be the 50/50 thing. At the moment i favour something like 600 in 1500 points. Heres some reasoning:

- Early game a "normal" gunline army does not benefit from its countercharge units. It even has to hide them, if they are rather expensive. Pods make "hiding" your countercharge indipendent of terrain and force your opponent to guess where and what exactly will come.

- Early game Marines in cover protected by range are decent vs. enemy assault units and tanks. Against another pure gunline they might be slightly outnumbered depending on the opponents ammount of countercharge, but tough enough to hold their own for 2-3 turns. Once
the Pods come in the odds should improve, for Pods tend to be the natural counter to enemy gunlines.

- Overall gunlines are a proven and successfull, yet a little boring concept that tends to struggle at taking objectives and reliably beating other gunlines (gunline vs gunline should be 50/50). Im basicly promoting a healty dose of Pods instead of things like bikes or jumppacks for countercharge, which makes the army less predictable and propably better at getting objectives and beating other gunlines.

Finally in my experience firing lanes are limited most of the time, so theres only so much static Marines you can benefit from. Investing excess resources into Pods might improve overall pointefficiency.

I'm a little leery of the term "gunline". In 4th edition with appropriate terrain, very static shooty forces don't tend to be very successful. Shooty forces which also incorporate mobility (speeders, termies, preds, etc) do better, and can be quite effective.

You need to be careful not to sink too many points into the pods, and to make sure that any units which are podding are ones which will contribute effectively on the turn they drop.

As Blackmoor said, a 50/50 shooty/pods split is just asking to die. But one or two units coming down in pods may work along with the rest of a shooty army. A classic choice is a venerable dread with AC & heavy flamer. The Termie squad with 2 ACs (optionally a command squad with Fear Libby) is also a nice selection, but you're better off going without the pod for that unit because against some opponents you're really going to want the option to start them on the table. I've seen (and run) a couple of decent armies which put 1-2 tac squads in pods instead. They don't usually go dual flamer because usually their rapidfiring bolters are enough to maul light targets. Two meltas or two plasmas are better, as they allow the unit to put the hurting on heavy armored stuff as well

with a few recent losses with a nearly identical army i can attest to the fact that hybrid gunline & drop pods suck....
and now will stick to purely drop pods or an all on the board tactic

im working on a somewhat hybrid army @ the moment and will post it shortly

I suppose it really depends on what you end up fighting. If you go up against a pod army, you are likely to just lose since you will have targets for the incoming pods to concentrate on and destroy before your pods have anything to do. If you go up against nid zilla, I think you have a decent chance. Your long range shooting should do a number of the big beasties while your pods should arrive in plenty of time to deal with the little bugs (you’ll probably want to put power fists into them if they don’t have them already so you can threaten the big bugs too). You should also be fairly successful at dealing with mech lists too. You got plenty of long range fire power to focus on transports and if some do get to/near your lines, you can drop pods down to take out whatever disembarked from them. If your pods show up before the transports get to your lines, you can always drop them down and shoot at rear armor. Heck, with a little luck on the scatter rolls, you may even be able to block the transport exit(s). If you go up against a gun line army, you have a reasonable amount of return fire to put out at them and when your pods show up, you should be able to do a number on their most deadly units.

All in all, I think that if you play it properly and you manage to get some decent reserve rolls, that this idea could work out. As far as the point split goes, I would shoot for weighting your army a little more towards the shooty side of things (say 60/40 or so) so that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket that relies on reserve rolls. I would also error on the side of smaller, cheaper pod units rather than larger more expensive ones. 6 man tac squads with flamers and/or plasma are probably the best way to go. Melta guns should probably be left at home since you already have plenty of long range anti tank power.

Lots of good advice. Indeed pure Pods seem to be the hardest matchup for this list. So it might be quite a good metagame choice, given the rarity of pure Pod armys.

The podding troops should be good at close combat, which seems to promote larger squads with a hidden fist.