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When is DS worth it? I feel as though it is extremely unreliable due to scatter. I also see it as a points sink due to the proclivity of the DSing unit to be chewed up by the next opponent turn.

So in what circumstance and with what kinds of units would Dakka suggest to DS?

Fought against Necrons last Friday, had perhaps the most entertaining Deep Strike moment of my career. My opponent gets in his reserves to deep strike his two monoliths, but he is forced to roll on the mishaps chart for both of them. One smashed into a nearby cliff, the other I got to place myself. I promptly put it at the back of his lines and turned it backwards.

If the dice gods smile upon you, Deep Strike is great, if not... see above.

From my own experience, the only time DS is worth it is when:
*If the unit is small enough to fit in most spaces without landing in DT (or worse, mishap)
*The unit has enough firepower to wipe at least one unit of the face of the map once it lands
*It can also weather a hail of shots so it can survive until it reaches assault (or can assault right away).

Sadly, a very small amount of troops can actually pull this off (Terminators, Obliterators, or BA assault marine) when other units with the Deep Strike rule often get ignored.

There are several circumstances in which I would deepstrike units. Deathwing Assault is a great rule to take advantage of as a starting point.

3 Drop pods in a Salamanders army loaded out in various ways are great Mech killers. For example 1 pod full of Combimelta totting Sternguard or a Melta/flamer totting Command squad make great anti-horde and anti-mech drop units. Then 2 pods with regular MM/HF dreads. The units in pods are relatively safe from mishap.

For SW Drop Pod WGT or WG with lots of combi-meltas/plasmas/flamers can ruin peoples days.

BA are built to Deep Strike. The DoA special rules and Dante letting a squad not deviate is great. The all DoA list is an extremely powerful build, so check that out, there are plenty of posts here on Dakka about the DoA BA list.

With CSMs having a few 10 man squads of lesser daemons to drop in off of icons and then charge (yep CSM lesser daemons can assault the turn they deepstrike) is a useful tool.

Deep striking in general can be a great way of implementing a "pin" maneuver which is usually a very good strategy, particularly in Capture and Control missions. I wrote a short article about this subject you can read it here.

I play with a DoA list and place second (3-0) in a recent , tournament this past weekend. Its a great army, because you only scatter 1D6. Dante and the Sangunior is the best two punch combo. Plus the Vanguard unit is worth taking. Need any help please ask.

Deep strike is well worth it for Blood Angels Descent of Angels armies since they have specialized rules that were specifically designed for this style of play. If Daemons only scattered 1d6" they would be hands down the best army. The potential to scatter 9-12" in a completely random direction can hurt any army besides drop pods that is built around deep strking... Thats just the way it is.

I can appreciate the viability of DS in armies designed to do it like BA. However elsewhere, I have little faith in it being anything other than a suicide squad - a relatively expensive one if it is to be effective (i.e. actually kill the target) and reliable (i.e. land on target, on time).

For these reasons, I would especially view DS as a poor option for expensive units such as terminators, which aren't the best specialist shooty units around. I have to ask why DSing termies would be suggested (as per Luke and Overwatch above).

Thanks for all the responses!

The only times I suggest DSing termies is with Deathwing or Wolfguard Terminators heres why:

1. Deathwing has been designed to do it and if you have 20 TH/SS models with CML falling in groups of 5 turn 1 it will create saturation and target priority issues for your opponent and make it hard for them to outrun 4 squads of 5 spread across the board dumping 8 missiles into them turn 1 and being charged turn 2.

2. With Wolfguard in TDA you can take 5 of them kitted out two ways. Either with Combi-meltas to annihilate a tank (or two if it's a squadron) then soak up fire from your opponents army while the remainder of your force moves in for the kill. OR. Take 5 Wolfguard in TDA all of them with SS and various weapons so you can have a super resilient squad that has Wound Allocation abuse all through out that your opponent has to deal with and more than likely won't kill.

This is what my WGT units look like.
5 WGT and Drop Pod
1 Combi-melta SS
1 Combi-melta PW
1 Combi-melta WC
1 Combi-melta Chain Fist
1 Combi-melta PW MB
OR
5 WGT and Drop Pod
1 SS/PW
1 SS/WC
1 SS/PF
1 SS/CF
1 SS/PW CML

Mordoskul wrote:Fought against Necrons last Friday, had perhaps the most entertaining Deep Strike moment of my career. My opponent gets in his reserves to deep strike his two monoliths, but he is forced to roll on the mishaps chart for both of them. One smashed into a nearby cliff, the other I got to place myself. I promptly put it at the back of his lines and turned it backwards.

If the dice gods smile upon you, Deep Strike is great, if not... see above.

I'm curious as to how he got such a difficult-to-mishap unit to mishap? Did he just put it on top of you and not scatter? Lots of impassable terrain around?

puma713 wrote:

Mordoskul wrote:Fought against Necrons last Friday, had perhaps the most entertaining Deep Strike moment of my career. My opponent gets in his reserves to deep strike his two monoliths, but he is forced to roll on the mishaps chart for both of them. One smashed into a nearby cliff, the other I got to place myself. I promptly put it at the back of his lines and turned it backwards.

If the dice gods smile upon you, Deep Strike is great, if not... see above.

I'm curious as to how he got such a difficult-to-mishap unit to mishap? Did he just put it on top of you and not scatter? Lots of impassable terrain around?

Off the board, twice.

Mordoskul wrote:

puma713 wrote:

Mordoskul wrote:Fought against Necrons last Friday, had perhaps the most entertaining Deep Strike moment of my career. My opponent gets in his reserves to deep strike his two monoliths, but he is forced to roll on the mishaps chart for both of them. One smashed into a nearby cliff, the other I got to place myself. I promptly put it at the back of his lines and turned it backwards.

If the dice gods smile upon you, Deep Strike is great, if not... see above.

I'm curious as to how he got such a difficult-to-mishap unit to mishap? Did he just put it on top of you and not scatter? Lots of impassable terrain around?

Off the board, twice.

That's an expensive (and lynchpin) unit to be putting 12" too close to the board edge.

i like deepstrike. but, my two main armies use them differently.

salamander space marines: in my 2500 pts list, i have seven drop pods (no tanks). drop pods are nice with thier rules.

IG: i have two squads of stormtroopers. the ability to re roll the scatter is nice, and, i realy only use them to clear off other troops in an objective game, other than that, they scout or infultrate.

I'll occasionally deep strike with my warp spiders if there is a back field unit that I can easily assasianate, and avoiding retribution with my warp jump is available.

Thunder Fire Cannons come to mind .

But as has been noted, its pretty easy to scatter into oblivion, and its always a bit of a gamble when DS ing. Risk Return ratio is present as always. If the return isn't high, its not worth it to take the high risk.

That said, certain units almost need to Deep Strike- like Zoanthropes, Chaos Termicide, Multi Melta (Ironclad) Dreads. These DS almost whenever they are played, and they do it well.

Also chaos demons could put up some very competitive lists (we'll see what happens to them after GKs are out though ) and they all have to deep strike.

Overall, I'd say DS is more risky than simple reserves, but when the reward for doing so is high enough, and it outweighs the risk in doing so (I swear one of these days my opponents will stop DSing large termie squads against my Eldar only to have them melted by my Fire Prisms s9 ap2 blasts )

So look at your opponents army list, what are his defenses aganist DS, what are his abilities to kill you once you DO deep strike, how much damage do you expect to cause from a DS alpha strike, how much risk of mishap will there be if you go for it?

All of these factors should play into your head when making that call, and depending on how they weigh out should determine whether or not to go for it.