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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?

Don't use Drop Pods.

Alternatively, dummy up, add extra empty pods and use them as distractions, leave some rocket pods for your enemy to deal with while your real ones come in on target as the game progresses.

It also really depends on what is popping out of your pods. If your opponent really has limited anti-armor then it might not be considered a loss to suicide something like an ironclad in and MM the target down....even if the ironclad dies it probably has saved your backfield. Considering you could drop 3 of these you could have a pretty nasty first strike.

Consider also against a reserving opponent or castle to drop empty pods for the sole purpose of hindering his moment and distracting. Then walk your own units on from reserve/bring in the other pods once his stuff is on the board.

There aren't any super great tactics to counter anti-pod tactics, but there are some good guidelines.

When you don't have any targets, make sure you don't just drop pods all over the place. Drop them close together. Its easy to take out a couple units when coming in from reserves, its hard to take out 5. If you have 5 units close together then your opponent is likely to enter from reserves far away from them. Your remaining pods can then cage in his reserves while your first drop runs to engage.

Another option is to have some empty pods in your first drop, and drop them in a manner that forces your opponent to enter his board edge in a more restricted way (block off part of his edge with pods).

Miraclefish wrote:Don't use Drop Pods.

My thought exactly, or you could use a few of these. Watch the enemy swarm around the first pods and get blown apart.

Imo if you want to do fully competitive Drop Pod list you need a) enough pods so that if you want you can drop nothing but empty pods turn 1 and b) decent fire support which starts on the board. Fortunately these two things tend to support each other anyway, you take stuff like Devastators or Riflemen Dreads with Pods which they have no need to use (apart from maybe DoW going first I guess). If you are forced into dropping things into prepared defences or an empty table you have immediately lost the initiative, which is the whole point of the pods. Doing this means that if you get an opportunity you have your entire army arrive turn 1 (stuff you deploy + all the Pods with units in them) and hit hard for an alpha strike. Otherwise you use your deployed fire support to start opening up transports and removing bubble wrap and drop a bunch of Pods in their face to box them in, then have your army arrive from turn 2 onward to hit them hard.

have a few units deploy as normal and give them empty pods.


these can allow you to keep some of your stuff back in the case of a reservist.



these Dummy Pods can have Locator beacons so your other pods come down on target when they do show up.



another tactic is to Circle the Wagons.

drop your pods in and form a defensive position with the pods as cover. your opponent will find shooting you difficult.

it works really well in Objective games as you can seize the objective and your opponent will have a tough time dislodging you from your position.