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Hello Dakka, I've decided to take my first steps into a Space Marine Army finally and have decided to go with Black Templars. Now, I know per the F.A.Q Black Templars now get the Drop Pod Assault. My question is, how viable is such a tactic with close combat oriented crusader squads? I planned on dropping them with the Emperors Champion in one squad, my Marshal in the other. Now since my rulebook is at home, I'm running off of memory here but I'm sure that the transport limit for the Drop Pod is only 10, which is why I was going to just take nine initiates per each Drop Pod that has an IC with it.

So is this an alright tactic? Or am I going to get cut to pieces and should stick with MSU and one counter charge Crusader squad?

I haven't had much luck with Drop Pods, to be honest. The transport capacity is 10, so you'll need 9 Crusaders + the IC. Whatever unit comes in generally gets shot to pieces before it can assault the following turn. A dreadnought is more fun to drop than a crusader squad, I've found.

I've had more success using the drop pods mid field and rushing my rhinos forward to support them, attempting to cut the table in half and create a fire zone. Black Templars can shoot very well with 5-man terminators squads sporting 2xCyclone missile Launchers or Assault Cannons with Tank Hunters.

It's the Righteous Zeal that's the problem, now. Being force to move the full 6" toward the nearest unit will pull you out from behind cover and into precarious positions.

Ah, yes that makes sense that Righteous Zeal would be the issue. Thank you for the reply as I myself was rather skeptical that it was a viable tactic.

Drop Pods are mostly good for suicide special weapon units and if you need to get anyone to the other side of the field really fast (or for scenario rules, I suppose), I don't personally use them (I have a Dark Angels army and a partially-built Blood Ravens army using the vanilla Codex) but they have a place.

I doubt that place is with CC-oriented Crusader squads, though; the great strength of the Crusader squad is the numbers and cheap extra Neophytes to catch bullets you can bring, limiting them to a squad that would fit in a Drop Pod seems counter-indicated.

Just a quick OT, how does the BT codex fair in 6th ed ?

Techmarines let you add some serious punch to Drop Pod squads, and if you've got the entire enemy army shooting you after you drop you're doing something wrong.

For a very short while we could drop-pod terminators on turn 1. 2 termie command squads with assault cannons or CMLs dropping accurately on turn 1 was just pure awesomeness! With the latest update we can't do that anymore so as mentioned above the drop-pod assault isn't very useful for BTs.

To answer mayfist's question, I've done relatively well with a Terminator-heavy (2 tank-hunting terminator squads and 1 assault terminator squad) list and MSU of initiates; no vehicles whatsoever (until I get a Mortis Contemptor), and 2 ADLs with quad-guns (via dual FOC).