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One of the prime ways to beat a DP army is to keep your army in reserve and then wait for the pods to show up, then rush out and kill them.

Another is to castle up.


Whats the best way for a DP army to counter these tactics? Deploy them near your table edge and wait for the enemy to show up, and then bring down the other pods?

Daemonhunter Inq with a couple of Mystics in a DH, SOB, IG, or SM force. Got to watch a battle last week where a demolisher got two free shots on some drop poding dreads, BOOM!

yeah forgot about them...best thing to do is DS far away from the Inq....

Since you're setting up first (and might be able to resonably guess that you opponent intends to remain off table) you could deploy several of your units traditonally and drop only there empty pods the first turn (better in say annihilation then objective missions, since in those going ahead and claiming the objectives is normally worth while to some degree).

You lose the shock and awe factor that make the pods so appealing of course, but you can easily force the enmy into slogging all the way towards your intial setup form their table edge then.

I need to re-read the rules for "drop pod assault" as they interact with the setup rules...would you be required to disclose during setup which pods are coming in first turn?

Jack

asugradinwa wrote:Daemonhunter Inq with a couple of Mystics in a DH, SOB, IG, or SM force. Got to watch a battle last week where a demolisher got two free shots on some drop poding dreads, BOOM!

He isn't asking about how to defeat drop pods, he is asking how to counter armies that bring anti-drop pod stuff.

If your enemy holds everything in reserve, then you have some choices.

1 - drop back and just let his army come on piece-meal, you still have the other half of your pods for striking them.

2 - Drop onto all the objectives and force him to remove you. You allready are dictating some of his actions, use your remaining pods to reinforce those positions when they come on.

3 - Be gutsy as hell and clog his deployment edge. If you can force his whole army to only be forced to come on only a small portion of his board edge, that could give you a huge advantage. Of course thats being gutsy, and it requires a lot of pods, but maybe your more lucky than I am.

Scissors beat paper? I mean you are taking an all drop podding force to force this rock-paper-scissors mechanic. If you are paper and fight scissors you are starting an extremely uphill battle. The most common sense application in this situation would be not to fight...that is play to the scenario win and if that is not viable, play to the draw.

if he's castled or all in reserve nail the objectives and get yourself in a solid position for when he finally starts to arrive.

Check Stelek's blog: http://yesthetruthhurts.blogspot.com/

He has a drop podding Dreadnaught army. If you deploy nothing in response, he infiltrates 56 scouts along your table edge. Game Over.

What, so basically if you co-operate and hand him the game he wins? Even for Stelek that's depending too much on your opponent's willingness to throw the game.

Nurglitch, not playing the game does hurt your understanding of it. I don't mean that as a personal attack, it's just pretty obvious whenever we start talking tactics.

Unless you brought a Daemonhunters Inquisitor Lord with mystics, the only two defenses versus a Drop Pod Assault army are 1. Castling up and 2. Leaving absolutely everything in reserve.

Castling is a dubious defense, because with Sternguard and Dreadnoughts being pod-able there is a strong likelihood of significant assets being blown sky high first turn. Tau especially hate this.

Now, coming in off of reserves, while it does have definite disadvantages, lets you turn the table: now the pods are down and the dudes are standing around going "WTF????" and you get to shoot them on the turn you come in. It's a very good defensive stratagem and one that drop podders like myself hate. All we can do is castle up as well as we can and hope that we can deal with our opponent's army piecemeal.

What Stelek does is to take the best of both worlds. He throws 3 Dreadnoughts down on first turn and burns any exposed troops into ash and then walks a gak load of guys onto the board turn 2. It doesn't matter what his opponent does because he will have a bad day trying to deal with AV12 walkers along with 50 guys with 2+ or 3+ cover saves. Are there lists that will beat this one? Yes, heavy mech has a good shot at it. Is this a tough list to beat? Against ranged combat specialists like IG or Tau this is absolute murder.

Is there a reason it has to be all or nothing? Deploy 1 unit (rhino anyone?) and then he can't infiltrate close enough to block your entire deployment area.. If he pods next to the 1 unit then you move your guys on right next to him, not all that complicated

Kirasu:

Not to mention all the troops of your own that you can Deep Strike into the game, thereby bypassing any established cordon your own board edge, and getting the drop on Drop Pod Assault units.

But let's not ruin sourclam's theory-hammer with reality.

Nurglitch wrote:Kirasu:

Not to mention all the troops of your own that you can Deep Strike into the game, thereby bypassing any established cordon your own board edge, and getting the drop on Drop Pod Assault units.

But let's not ruin sourclam's theory-hammer with reality.

Umm...where do I start to reply to this???

To mirror sourclams statements concerning you actually playing the game nurglitch...There is a very basic flaw to your strategy, the phases of the game are: Move, shoot, assault. If your forces are destroyed in the movement phase why does it matter what the other small element of your army can do?

I'll make it more clear: Turn 2 reserves and deepstrikers come in. Approximately half your army is destroyed that needs to come on from an edge.

You either need to suffer the dreadnought DP - sternguard DP barrage or basically auto lose. A great army build strategy.

BeefyG:

Somewhere to start might be with my first post, where I noted that not deploying on the board in the face of Stelek's army was being willing to throw the game.

Kadun linked to any army list Stelek posted on his blog, which isn't exactly a Drop Pod army, although I do like the Dreadnoughts in Drop Pods part. In that list Stelek takes six Scout squads so that if the other player wants to deny the first wave of Dreadnoughts a target that other player throws the game.

Now sourclams thinks that you either have the option of castling up your army in the face of a Drop Pod Assault like Stelek's, or starting in reserve. So it's no small wonder that Stelek has noticed that players like sourclams are a dime a dozen and promptly designed an army that lets players like sourclams hang themselves.

Because if sourclams tries his only other strategy, that of castling up, his 2000pt army is going to get smashed by a horde of Scouts and three Dreadnoughts on the first turn, and mop up with more Dreadnoughts and Landspeeders in the following turns.

But Kirasu, it seems, isn't the sort of scrub that Stelek likes to manhandle in tournaments, like, say, sourclams. He seems to have noticed that by putting a cheap sacrificial unit out there, one can both prevent reserves from being locked out of the game, and get the drop on the first wave of the Drop Pod Assault.

I think that you can do something similar with your own Deep Strike capable troops, especially in combination with that sacrificial unit if that sacrificial unit has something like a teleport homer, homing beacon, or icon. Or it's just the case that your entire army is drop-capable. After all, we all know that a successful list spams its strengths.

If your army isn't drop-capable, you're probably running a horde, like a horde of Orks, or a horde of Plague Marines, and then your anti-drop pod tactics will to basically wait patiently for your enemy to either drop conveniently into your lap, or waste time and points dropping in his own backfield.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Why couldn't you have stated that in the first place though?

"What, so basically if you co-operate and hand him the game he wins? Even for Stelek that's depending too much on your opponent's willingness to throw the game."

There's not much of your last post in that first post so I can understand why sourclams and I misinterpreted you.

You don't understand this game. You really don't. Normally I wouldn't care - at all - except I've begun to see that when New Guy comes to this forum looking for legitimate help, you give them crap advice. Like in the Nidzilla thread when you strongly advocate taking Dreadnoughts versus Monstrous Creatures. Then New Guy runs off, gets his ass handed to him, and quits playing because his army sucks.

Now sourclams thinks that you either have the option of castling up your army in the face of a Drop Pod Assault like Stelek's, or starting in reserve. So it's no small wonder that Stelek has noticed that players like sourclams are a dime a dozen and promptly designed an army that lets players like sourclams hang themselves.

Because those are the options. I like how you talk as if you actually have game experience.

Because if sourclams tries his only other strategy, that of castling up, his 2000pt army is going to get smashed by a horde of Scouts and three Dreadnoughts on the first turn, and mop up with more Dreadnoughts and Landspeeders in the following turns.

See, you're talking like you have game experience again. An MEQ list will be able to castle pretty effectively against Stelek's Dreadscouts because 3+ saves don't die to heavy flamers. It's not all cozy good times, but you should minimize your losses enough to melta down or countercharge the Dreadnoughts with relative ease.

But Kirasu, it seems, isn't the sort of scrub that Stelek likes to manhandle in tournaments, like, say, sourclams. He seems to have noticed that by putting a cheap sacrificial unit out there, one can both prevent reserves from being locked out of the game, and get the drop on the first wave of the Drop Pod Assault.

This is a decent idea, and somebody else thought of it.

I think that you can do something similar with your own Deep Strike capable troops, especially in combination with that sacrificial unit if that sacrificial unit has something like a teleport homer, homing beacon, or icon. Or it's just the case that your entire army is drop-capable. After all, we all know that a successful list spams its strengths.

And here's where your advice starts sucking again. 1. Your sacrificial unit is dead, because you sacrificed it, remember? 2. Most people don't or are not able to field a pure drop/deepstrike army (unless your codex has a Soulgrinder on the front). In the case of Dpods, there's no need to because of the new Drop Pod Assault rules. 3. Now you're just mis-applying generalities. The strength of a Drop Pod assault list is the ability to insert significant units wherever you want them without exploding from Deepstrike mishap. Not every unit in your list is going to be "significant". N'est pas?

If your army isn't drop-capable, you're probably running a horde, like a horde of Orks, or a horde of Plague Marines, and then your anti-drop pod tactics will to basically wait patiently for your enemy to either drop conveniently into your lap, or waste time and points dropping in his own backfield.

Or Mech Eldar, or Mech Tau, or Raider Rush, or mech IG, line IG, Nidzilla, Suit Tau....... Did you even think before you typed that statement? Plaguemarines are never going to be a Horde, not without sucking incredibly. Drop conveniently into your lap?

"HAY GUYZ, BEZT DEFANSE FRUM DPODS IS 2 LET DPODS FALL ONTO U!!!"

To the OP:

It's very difficult to address your original question without specifics because it'll change depending on matchup and deployment. What exactly are you running into with regularity?

kadun wrote:He has a drop podding Dreadnaught army. If you deploy nothing in response, he infiltrates 56 scouts along your table edge. Game Over.

Um...unless you enter the board with a vehicle, easily Tank Shocking a hole through which to enter. The 'wall of scouts' really doesn't work against any balanced army.

The 'wall of scouts' really doesn't work against any balanced army.

The wall of Scouts is certainly questionable.
Castle up would be my answer for my mech Eldar or mech Chaos army.

BeefyG:

I'm sorry, sometimes I just assume that by reading the thread you guys can put my comments in context and understand them. I thought it was clear enough that my comments were in reply to kadun's.

Democratus wrote:

kadun wrote:He has a drop podding Dreadnaught army. If you deploy nothing in response, he infiltrates 56 scouts along your table edge. Game Over.

Um...unless you enter the board with a vehicle, easily Tank Shocking a hole through which to enter. The 'wall of scouts' really doesn't work against any balanced army.

Sure, on turn 2 you can tank shock with vehicles and leave them on the back edge so the Scouts must move. But if you move past them, the Scouts can stay put. On turn 3, still no footsloggers can come in from reserve because they come in at the start of your movement phase, your tank is still sitting on the gap. So you move your tank on turn 3 and your footsloggers come in on turn 4 at the earliest, assuming Scouts didn't move to close the gap.

Sure there are ways around it, fully mounted army works or tanking shocking but leaving a one inch gap to the board edge will allow a few models in, but it is an option that is available to the DreadScouts and if you're not built to handle it, you will be severely handicapped or just plain destroyed. Against equal opponents a slight advantage can be pushed and widened throughout the game to claim eventual victory.

With anything but a land raider tank shocking a hole open will also leave side armor very vulnerable to all of the missile launchers. It's not an auto-lose but still certainly something to consider.

KeithGatchalian if we're threadjacking your topic feel free to ask something more specific.

kadun wrote:

Democratus wrote:

kadun wrote:He has a drop podding Dreadnaught army. If you deploy nothing in response, he infiltrates 56 scouts along your table edge. Game Over.

Um...unless you enter the board with a vehicle, easily Tank Shocking a hole through which to enter. The 'wall of scouts' really doesn't work against any balanced army.

Sure, on turn 2 you can tank shock with vehicles and leave them on the back edge so the Scouts must move. But if you move past them, the Scouts can stay put. On turn 3, still no footsloggers can come in from reserve because they come in at the start of your movement phase, your tank is still sitting on the gap. So you move your tank on turn 3 and your footsloggers come in on turn 4 at the earliest, assuming Scouts didn't move to close the gap.

Naturally you don’t want to Tank Shock completely past the Scouts, thus leaving them in place. But if you insert a Tank (even a Rhino) into the middle of one of the Scout squads (leaving the back edge of the tank about an inch to an inch and a half away from the board edge), said Scout squad will be forced to move out of the way. They have to regain coherency in their own movement phase, and will be forced to do it in front of or on one side of the tank. So the perfect line/wall of Scouts is broken. Other scout squads can move to try and close the gap, but then they're not maintaining their positions in the 60" long Thin Scout Line.

As for a sacrificial unit, if you deploy a Rhino on the table and leave everything else in Reserve, the Rhino forces the Scouts to deploy too far back to block the edge. Yes, your Rhino will probably die. This is a perfectly reasonable investment to foil your opponent’s army’s strategy.

Not every army has the same tools (though quite a lot of them do have Rhinos), but Drop Pods have been out there for almost four years now, and a competitive army should have stuff built into it to use either or both of these tactics.

Mannahnin wrote:

Naturally you don’t want to Tank Shock completely past the Scouts, thus leaving them in place.

Except you have to move you full speed to tank shock

Actually, no, a vehicle doesn't have to move at full speed to Tank Shock.

What is so scary about three drop pod Dreads backed by Scouts. A competent player wouldn't hold his entire army in reserve because of three Dreads. Remember, a good castle defense doesn't necessarily mean all units are packed tightly together. Please drop your Dreads early-game in front of any of my armies. Your 450-500 points of Dreads against my entire army. They will do a little damage and be slag the next turn and then what? Oh yeah, then come the equally scary Scouts.

Please drop your Dreads early-game in front of any of my armies. Your 450-500 points of Dreads against my entire army. They will do a little damage and be slag the next turn

Yeah, three Dreads against a whole army. Today, killing a Dread is not as easy as it was in the 4th edition unless you have melta weapons.
I already made some 'bad' experiences, the Dreads lived too long for my liking.

Killing any vehicle isn't as easy in 5th without melta weapons. This is why my GT build for this year doesn’t have missile launchers any more, and has eight times as many melta weapons.

scotts:

I believe Stelek's army consists of 6 Dreadnoughts, 56 Scouts, a Master of the Forge, and three Land Speeders.

Six drop pod Dreads, 56 Scouts, etc. Wouldn't that would make it roughly a 2,000 to 2,250 game. Makes more sense though. Three pods arrive on turn 1. I still find it to be a concept with far more holes than strengths.
I also disagree with a previous poster. Up close and personal, in the shooting phase, Dreads are still ridiculously easy to neuter. Meltas or not (and most folks have some sort of Melta type stuff) three Dreads can not stand down an entire, reasonably balanced army at short range. If the pods drop aggressively all three Dreads are disabled or destroyed that turn. Dreads have to be 50% or more covered to get a 4+ cover save. Look through the new drop pod model with the hatches blown. Among other issues it's pretty easy to line up a 'no cover' shot on a Dread.
Now if the Dread(s) could assault the turn they drop....

I have to agree with scotts. The army just screams "Gimmick" I mean really 56 scouts? what are we playing on a table full of forests. Either the scouts will have to setup out in the open or all over the board which sorta defeats the purpose of supporting the drop pods.

Usually a power gamer will spam the best units of a codex but dreads, speeders and scouts?

This has started a bunch of talk about being able to block out reserves when the simple answer is simply don't go in reserve. Just setup your entire army. If 3 dreads could take out 2000pts in 1 turn then everyone would be using them.