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It seems to me that deep striking assault units aren't even worth taking. Wouldn't any opponent just shoot them to bits on their next turn, especially if they posed a real threat? How can this handicap be overcome?

I'm mainly thinking marine units here - assault marines and terminators.

Thanks!

It's called a storm shield. 2+ armour saves and 3+ invulnerable generally ensure a couple survive.

Vanguard partly cover this aspect since, with JPs and no IC with them, they can land and if in 6" of a unit, charge it. DOesn't help they're not very good in CC (defeating their purpose to a large extent) and cost loads.

As a Daemon player I would frankly love a 2+ 3++

The handicap is huge, so what you do is intense saturation of targets relatively quickly, thats why the Daemon army demands you split your army in half, if they ALL deployed using reserve rules then the army is just unplayable, and deep striking into the battle field is already so damn unreliable in the first place.

Although seeing a squad of 21 Bloodletters backed up by a BT and 6 Juggernaughts w/ Skulltaker appear in turn 1 behind a marine gunline is just so satisfying....

Ketara wrote:It's called a storm shield. 2+ armour saves and 3+ invulnerable generally ensure a couple survive.

It is also called safe distance, cover, target saturation, preventive volley...
You know, you deepstrike when you know you really get some profit from it. If not, it is not worth the chance, OFC.

Always remember that you don't NEED to deep strike. This is especially important for Assault Marines and other stuff with extra mobility. You will often want to start them on the board and move them up behind cover instead of deep striking.

By the way, if you play Vanilla Marines, seriously consider not using Assault Marines.

snake wrote:It seems to me that deep striking assault units aren't even worth taking. Wouldn't any opponent just shoot them to bits on their next turn, especially if they posed a real threat? How can this handicap be overcome?

Yes, but it is far superior that they wipe out your unit AFTER you have chosen your target and get a turn to shoot at it than to have said unit start on the board and get shot up or blocked off on its way to its target.

Deep striking allows you to attack hidden units, wherever they are on the board, and to strike wherever your opponent is weak without mercy, and, more importantly, with giving your opponent little, if any say in the matter.

That it's easy to kill these units once they make their splash is not an undue price to pay for this advantage.

Ailaros wrote:

snake wrote:It seems to me that deep striking assault units aren't even worth taking. Wouldn't any opponent just shoot them to bits on their next turn, especially if they posed a real threat? How can this handicap be overcome?

Yes, but it is far superior that they wipe out your unit AFTER you have chosen your target and get a turn to shoot at it than to have said unit start on the board and get shot up or blocked off on its way to its target.

Deep striking allows you to attack hidden units, wherever they are on the board, and to strike wherever your opponent is weak without mercy, and, more importantly, with giving your opponent little, if any say in the matter.

That it's easy to kill these units once they make their splash is not an undue price to pay for this advantage.

It just seems like planning to throw points away, which is especially unattractive if you're taking something expensive like sternguard in a drop pod or termies. Given this line of thought, marine assaulty DS units seem almost worthless since they won't be killing much via shooting before they get shot up themselves.

Deep strike is only useful if you break it - either by reducing your chance to fail, your likelihood of failure, increasing your odds to come in when you want, or DSing 20 units onto the board to spread the risk around (and even then you pretty much have to have melta/plasma or something equally potent at short-range to even make it worthwhile) - and this all comes with the caveat that things still have to go your way to not just lose, and it's really easy to break even or worse.

Completely unassisted DS is really bad.

snake wrote:It just seems like planning to throw points away, which is especially unattractive if you're taking something expensive like sternguard in a drop pod or termies. Given this line of thought, marine assaulty DS units seem almost worthless since they won't be killing much via shooting before they get shot up themselves.

Sure, they very well could only be around for a turn, but the amount of damage they do in said turn is what makes them worth it. I mean, if a 105 melta stormie squad drops in and takes down a land raider, what more does it NEED to do to be worth its points?

Really, you're only taking them for the damage that they do, rather than their staying power, for example. Of course, with almost ALL support units, what you're caring about is the damage, so what does it matter how long the unit stays on the board if it can get its job done?

And yeah, deepstriking CC units is just foolish, unless you have heroic intervention (or can use the assault ramp to assault out of a deepstriking land raider...)