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Hi all, just wondering what everyone thought was the best codex for doing a vehicle-less marine army. That is to say drop pods, infantry, and walkers only.

The thoughts that came to mind were drop pods/pedro kantor, or drop pods/logan+long fangs

Vinilla - ironhands or raven guard - MOTF + dreadpods

The only ones who can really spam 2+/3++ are Vanilla and Dark Angels. IMO drop pod armies don't have the durability...I've never had problems playing against Drop Wolves, DOA BA, or Pod Sternguard. The easiest counter is just to simply reserve everything the first turn, then come on wherever you like.


Dark Angels are probably the most competitive for a footslogging list, though I would like to do a Raven Guard vanilla army.

Give the whole army Fleet via Shrike. 30 Fleeting TH/SS Terminators + Shrike is just about 1400 pts. Sprinkle some H2H scouts in there to your desired points level. Sometimes you'll reserve them and sometimes you'll outflank them.

Templars. Better Drop Pod rules than anyone else, tank hunter assault cannon terminators, tank hunter ven. Dread, tank hunter assault cannon terminator command squads, drop pods for terminators, special and heavy weapons in 5-man squads.

There's heaps of options actually, depends on what you what to run. Despite having no vehicles these list will all play differently, all of these are competitive builds.

Loganwing works with or without pods, Blood Angels DoA is infantry only as are most Deathwing lists and some Grey Knight lists can work without vehicles (Interceptor, Paladins and Terminator heavy lists). If you add pods into the mix then nilla Marines have a decent couple of builds (Vulkan or Sternguard based builds) as do Space Wolves (generally you want Logan but Grey Hunters are decent out of a Pod as well). Dreads can be the core of list by themselves, Nilla Marines, Blood Angels and Grey Knights can all run Dread (or Dreadknight) heavy lists and Deathwing can use them for support. Nilla and Blood Angels tend to use Pods for their Dreads, but you don't have to use them, 6 Dreads running at you popping smoke is a nightmare to deal with anyway and you can run shooting heavy builds as well.

I'm thinking Wolves. Since they get Uber-grit, Counter Assault, and pack a lot of firepower. All that in a scoring unit!

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Templars. Better Drop Pod rules than anyone else, tank hunter assault cannon terminators, tank hunter ven. Dread, tank hunter assault cannon terminator command squads, drop pods for terminators, special and heavy weapons in 5-man squads.

I agree with this. There simply isn't a better Drop Podding army than the Black Templars right now.

BA can Pod a crap load of Dreads. With probably the best CC Dreads in the game.
Libby Dreads can also give other dreads cover!
But yea, Templars are ahead of everyone due to not having the stupid Drop Pod Assault rule.

Ah, what exactly is the advantage of BT drop pods? They don't get half of them in on turn 1?

ph34r wrote:Ah, what exactly is the advantage of BT drop pods? They don't get half of them in on turn 1?

Yes.

Jackster wrote:

ph34r wrote:Ah, what exactly is the advantage of BT drop pods? They don't get half of them in on turn 1?

Yes.

So the idea is that you have nothing on the board turn 1, then half of your stuff comes in turn 2?

Pretty much. Drop Pod Assault (which all other Marine lists have) means you automatically get half on turn one, but against a decent opponent this is far too easy to counter particularly with Dawn of War. If they have mobility they can just reserve, negate your alpha strike and pick off isolated units which are now relatively slow without the Pod. If they have numbers (like Guard) then they can castle up, negate your alpha strike and crush you with some of your army off the board.

Templar Pods on the other hand will start arriving turn 2, which is much harder to avoid. Its hard to reserve against it (you have to be going second to arrive after them, and then its down to dice who arrives in bulk first) and if you bring some fire support you can start breaking castled armies before your Pods arrive. On average you should get the same percentage of your army arriving, except you could get almost everything (or basically nothing, in which case you hide). Any competitive Drop Pod list for other Marine armies either have to just accept they might have to Drop onto an empty field, or take enough empty Pods (take them on units which have no use for them, like Devastators) so they can Drop an empty wave turn one if the situation isn't right for the heavy hitters to arrive.

GK Draigowing backed up by psyffledreads.

Black templar drop pods are also cheaper. Be a real man and take the templars.

Bike armies? Blood angel DoA or blood rodeo armies? Ravenwing?
Deathwing and dread armies have been mentioned.