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Okay, I am fairly new to Warhammer and my friend just discovered something.

On the first turn, he drop pods a dreadnought that multi-meltas one of my vehicles to death.

What can I do to counter this?

I've heard about anti drop pod tactics such as clumping your units together, but I don't know really exactly what to do

Any help would be appreciated

You could add an Inquisitor to your list which is accompanied by mystics. Thus he'd scatter away and you were even allowed to shoot at it before it can act. Works only for Imperial armies though (IG, SM, WH, DH)
I think other armies don't offer anything to prevent drop pods from coming in...

you could just hold your entire army in reserve, and when he drops in, line a melta shot up on it

What army do you play (it would have been smart and helpfull to include that fact in the first place)?

Steelmage99 wrote:What army do you play (it would have been smart and helpfull to include that fact in the first place)?

Surely there are some tactics that all armies can utilize? (it would have been smart and helpful to include those tactics in the post)

One of the reasons I don't use pure drop pod oriented armies anymore is because of dawn of war.

Because the toss to see who goes first can basically alter the entire game for you, in a bad way.
If the drop podding player loses the toss, the enemy gives the first round to him, and keeps his entire army in reserves.

This means that on turn 1, 50% (rounding up) of the drop pods come down, without any clue where the opponent is going to come out of the reserves.
Which means he have to either:
- Drop close together in the middle of your deployment zone, and pop smoke with the models that can, and then pray that he survives one turn of fire. When the player arrives from the reserves he can keep the distance by coming in from reserves far away from the opponent, and then try and kill his units.
- Drop all over the enemies zone, and in that way make sure he's close to something that comes in. This way his forces are scattered and hopefully you kill the stuff which are close to your incoming units.
- Drop in a safe distance from your side. This means that his guys are footslogging from then on.

Sure theres a lot of other stuff to do as well. But basically your in a win-win-win-win situation. Sure, he might keep the better units still in reserve if he got enough undeployed drop pods, but most of his stuff is already down on the field.

This works best on Dawn of War as your entire army may enter on turn 1. However by keeping your units in reserve you can easily just come with ~50% of your units in on turn 2 and then he has already deployed most of his drop pods. This might blow back in your face though, as you practically might have all of his army versus 50% of your. But by playing it tactically right you should be able to avoid most of the enemies until the rest of your army arrives.


These are some of the ways people counter pure drop podding armies.

However keeping your entire army in reserves for just one drop pod might be overkill. If thats the case i'd deploy some of my units in front of my tanks so they get an obscured cover save. You should also try to put the interesting targets close to the table edge, as the drop pod still mishaps if it moves of the table, which makes him think twice about closing it that close to the edge, and if he places it further off, he might scatter outside 2d6 melta range or outside the weapon range.

Some things to think about

spread your troops out so there is less choice for him to decide where drop pod it in on the battlefield.

taylorton147 wrote:
spread your troops out so there is less choice for him to decide where drop pod it in on the battlefield.

Good advice. If it is just a single drop pod coming in then screen the juicier targets with some infantry to force him out of half range with the multimelta. This can be a double edged knife though as he might have something on the dread for anti infantry as well (such as a havy flamer.)

Area denial is a pain for drop pods as it works to limit their effectiveness. If you limit his targets then you can try to force your opponent to take risks or make mistakes.

Cheers
~Volkan

If it's just one Dread with a MM, simply put a lot of infantry around your tanks to keep him out of 12" double dice range.

Sorry I didn't include what army i'm playing as, it slipped my mind
I'm playing as CSM, I'm liking the spreading out infantry tactic so far
I think if I just spread my force out enough that there was room between my infantry and tanks, but no enough for a drop pod, that it would be difficult to get a dreadnought in range for melta

Using an infantry picket to support your vehicles is one idea, but that also leaves you open to having that infantry picket fragged by Space Marine forces starting on the board.

Sounds backwards but put your tank in the open. A drop pod reduces its scatter distance so that it doesn't go off the table, land on an enemy model, or land on impassible terrain. Putting troops around your vehicles would help the drop pod if it scatters into them because it would reduce the scatter distance.

Put your vehicle in the open with a heavy weapon team i.e. havocs within los so they can pop anything that gets to close without having to risk turning your vehicle to give the dread the front armor.

Also if you can, put your vehicle at the far corner of the board away from an objective. As long as the vehicles weapons have a very long range, there will always be something to kill and if the dreadnought deep strikes near it then after it kills your vehicle it will be two or three turns before the dreadnought gets close enough to the action to do any good.

Hope this helps.

B.D.

Above poster: Drop pods don't reduce scatter for off the table.

OP: I'd recommend preparing for it by deploying something close enough and ready to take out the dread the turn after it drops in. Then take the first turn if you can, and pop smoke on your vulnerable tanks. If you want to shoot with most of your tanks, I'd say leave one juicy target off to the side and pop smoke with it. Make it so he really thinks he can take that out and stay safe, hope you roll the save, and then spring the trap. Also, pray to the dice gods. Just remember that he's taking a risk in dropping a dread that close to you in the early turns without support. Take it out right after he drops and he's down a decent chunk of points early.
Last bit of advice: make no one vehicle the focal point of your army. The more targets he has, the harder its going to be to choose, and the less its going to mean if he takes one out, when you have another for him to worry about.