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I've never gone up against one but tomorrow night it's happening. I have no clue what his list is besides its 1500 and drop pods sm. He knows I'm running guard and maybe mystics, but thats it. Should I run mech guard or am I just asking for a whoopin? What should I be expecting?


I'm also going to make a post about the proper way to use mystics. So look out for that if you have .02 cents.





Thanks!

If hes a full drop pod army hold everything in reserve and try to go second. If it's kill points come on to the board as far away from where he landed as you can and blast him away focusing on the drop pods them selves first as they are open topped and fall easily to dedicated anti-tank. If its points just drive past him with your chimeras and go directly to taking points and if he landed directly on a few points just focus fire him off a point or two and contest the rest. The most he can shove in to a drop pod are 10 marines or sternguard + 2 HQs or a walker and both are very manageable with the tools the guard have in their arsenal he can also pod TFC and devestators but dont count on that. If hes full drop pods he wants to come down and cripple you by simply holding back in reserve you can greatly control the flow of battle and put him at a severe disadvantage since he must bring in half his pods on turn one and as soon as they hit the table the units inside have terrible mobility. Also if he upgraded any pods with locator beacons to safely bring in nasty units like terminators, assault squads, more pods ect ect make sure you kill those pods and deny him safe landings and force him to take more risks.

If he went half pods then its even easier. Guard players have alot to deal with units and vehicles at a distance. Try to go first bunch up and use your infantry to put protective buffer zone around your tanks and heavy weapon teams. A guard player can easily cripple the half of his army that will start on the board and deal with the other fourth that will drop down on his turn.

I started playing 40k with an all drop pod army and tried many different lists to make it work and found that it is very hard to pull off and easy to thwart.

Oh and yes run mech guard your mobility and fire power combined is a nightmare to face if your have to pod in half your army on turn one against an empty board and if he lands his pods empty hes at an even bigger disadvantage because hes using foot slogging infantry starting even farther away.

As for the mystics, you don't need them if you use reserve tactics. Guard are a very powerful army and don't need the extra help dealing with deep strikers. When DH get updated you will very likely not be allowed to take allies anymore anyway so you might as well practice going without now so it isn't a shock later.

I pose a different opinion;

Take an Infantry gunline list. Let him Pod all he wants, and shoot the tar out of anything that comes close. If he is playing Pod Marines you will likely see Sterngaurd(or regular Tacs) With Meltas(combi for Stern) and Dreads. If he drops dreads near you Shoot them under the bring it Down order. If he drops the Sterns near you , 1 Unit will take some heavy losses, then you can drop the Sterns with Massed Lasgun Fire.

Play to your Strengths and exploit his weaknesses, roughly every other Pod he has will be coming in Piecemeal. When they Drop in Take out their contents. If they have locator beacons, take out the pod too.

Remember these things:
1) only Half the pods(rounded up) will come in first turn, the rest follow normal reserves.
2) The Pod can only reduce the scatter distance to not fall directly onto your troops, or Impassable terrain. if he tries to land on your troops on purpose he mishaps(unless he scatters off of them)
3)He cannot(under any circumstance, excepting maybe Black Templars) assault the turn he Pods in.
4) Again, unless he is playing Black Templars, the Pod cannot Shoot the turn it drops in.

I was going to run mech but this sounds way more evil. Maybe I'll take a hybrid list of only chimeras + banewolf + vendetta along with a platoon.

I'm used to being whooped by gunlines.

see, I'm attritious with hints of close assault (FA, Elite). and, as such, I usually get chewed through by large guard gunlines.

However, I'm also used to seeing 5 squads full fire power directed at me, and having nothing happen.

very risky army, but gunlines are a stron backline. they take a lot to smash, and with enough troops, they're like a failured troop horde on their own.

Kommissar Kel wrote:
3)He cannot(under any circumstance, excepting maybe Black Templars) assault the turn he Pods in.

Alas, even us templars aren't good enough to assault from pods.

What about vanguard vets tho'? I know not a lot of people run them, but if he dropped vanguard vets against a gunline, woudn't they eat stuff pretty quickly?

So you drop podder folk. what scares you? and what about imperial guard scares you?

tldr wrote:I was going to run mech but this sounds way more evil. Maybe I'll take a hybrid list of only chimeras + banewolf + vendetta along with a platoon.

BAAAAANEWOVLES. They'll devour Drop Pod Marines, especially if you give them Multi-meltas on the hull.

I would go with reserves, then again I play with fast armies, so we'd prob. go into reserves regardless

Like i said when i used to play with my drop pod army going in to reserves didn't just scare me it pretty much caused an auto-loose situation for me against some one with alot of mobility and fire power. The pods have small units of short range units inside them so if is seized ground or capture and control i would land on the points which means the other guy could come on the board out of my range and start picking me apart since im all spread out with no range and i had to hold on for the last 4-6 turns but a mech imperial guard player often would have the mobility and fire power to take points from me so it was very difficult two win and required me to roll above average cover saves to win. In kill points its game over those drop pods give up kill points like crazy being open topped AV12 immobilized vehicles with only st 4 bolters or st 5 templates.

You may lose your first game against drop pods but once you see them in action and how they work and their massive limitations i think you'll have no problem beating pod armies in the future.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Kommissar Kel wrote:
3)He cannot(under any circumstance, excepting maybe Black Templars) assault the turn he Pods in.

Alas, even us templars aren't good enough to assault from pods.

What about vanguard vets tho'? I know not a lot of people run them, but if he dropped vanguard vets against a gunline, woudn't they eat stuff pretty quickly?

That is what I thought; I just wasn't completely sure, so I added the Note and the "maybe" qualifier.

as Far as Vanguards go Heroic intervention only works if they have paid for Jump packs, so they will not be podding. Then as they have paid for Packs the Squad is at minimum 175 points (for 5 +1 Attack assault Marines, and a "free" Power weapon). That squad May wreak Havoc on 1 Unit, but will likely take casualties(sheer volume of attacks on 5 models) and then will have their steam swiftly let out. Also if they manage to not destroy/SA your squad in their turn, this is the only time you should really fear them.

Vanguard isn't something you should really be worried about since I've found that people rarely run them and if they do with drop pods they will likely try to land by a pod with a beacon which means you should just focus fire on any beacons that are close to your army. Other wise he has to land within 6 inches of you to assault which puts him at a massive risk of misshap and they die just as easy as regular troops unless they have storm sheilds and then that unit is eating up so much points the rest of his army is tiny. If hes running vanilla SM hes putting him self at a severe disadvantage running vanguard and doubly so if hes running drop pods on top of that.

Vanguard can be decent with blood angels though.

He brought master of the forge and 4 dreadnoughts. I didn't bring enough melta, but we tied.

In my experiance when it comes to handling pod armies theres two things that helped greatly – orders and transports.

A semigunlyne list can have blobs and chimera/vendetta/valkyre vets to do those things.