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got to thinking that, with the new 6th ed rule changes, this might actually be a decent army. heres what im thinking army list wise, but this is also sort of a tatics debate, since im not too sure if its viable or not:

- grab as many tac squads as possible. 5-6 at least. free missile, cheap plasma or melta (probally an even split between the 6 squads) no upgrades on the srg. load into drop pod.
- take a bare bones captain. give him maybe a combi bolter, or a storm bolter.
- some sterngaurds loaded up with combi weapons. (attach the captain to one) - take a pod.
- fill out the rest with dreads. plasma cannons, and whatever work nice, and pod those in as well. if points left over as many storm talons as you can fit to fill an AA role
- termies also optional, but fit em up with ranged weapons and chain fists.

the tatic is to simply drop down leading with whatever suits you, right on top of the other guy. initial strike should be pretty awsome, as you can just place the pod on top of a target unit, and end up bang on or pretty close to intended target. then disembark 6" for even more acurate deployment. - this gets followed up with a crazy crud ton of rapid fire bolters and plasma, with pretty much 60+ boots on the ground... and a few dreads it should be pretty hard to shift those off, and the amount of close range fire should deal with almost anything.

thoughts?

This is going to help you to fight a lot of opponents, so long as you remember that you are not going to be able to charge the turn you arrive. You will be taking charges, however, in many cases against dedicated cc specialists who are going to have an advantage over a tactical squad with +1 attack and potentially things like HoW and Smash.

The new rules around grenades make Dreadnoughts a perilous choice in this edition. You may be better off switching them to TH/SS Terminators. Check that, you would definitely be better off switching them.

I run a shooty Chaos army, and a strategy like this would only phase me a little bit. The fact of the matter is, I could shoot up about half of your troops the round you arrive, then get into assaults where I am going to hit first in most cases. The advantage you get by shooting first, at close quarters, is only going to take you so far, and the assault bonuses are going to account for a lot of that.

So you might want to think about fewer special weapons and more dedicated cc units.

perhaps... but unloading close to 60+ bolters at close range,... plus another bunch of plasma, and or melta... should make for a bad day. then theres the overwatch right? i would be interested in trying out anyway... theroy hammer always intrigues me. - i also like breaking away from the norm and "netlist accepted" style once and a while.

You are spending 1200+ points on troops, and they're not even the best troops in the game...

 DarthSpader wrote:
i also like breaking away from the norm and "netlist accepted" style once and a while.

Presumptuous much...?

Nothing new about drop pod assault friend. Yes, its very effective in 6th. Particularly with SW.

i think gunline will serve you better, i have been playing gunline marines (2 tac squads, a scout squad) with an element of bikes to capture objectives (my captain is on a bike) and out of 10 games, i have lost none and tied one, to a guy who hadnt lost or even tied a game in almost a year (he runs termie spam black templar) all of these games were below 1250 pts however, in the mission "the Relic" bikes are undoubtedly the best troop choice to use, turn 1: grab relic and turbo boost 6" back, then continue to shield the bikes with other troops. and i can do that because a turbo boost move is not labelled as a run. with that strategy i have yet to lose a game.

with your pod strategy you will have to have impeccable target priority and impeccable rolling, not to mention being mentally ok with losing half of your army turn 1/2 and fighting a lopsided fight for the rest of the game. i generally prefer using lists that rely less on how your dice roll and how good i can maneuver my army. to each his own though.

hmm.

well i dont mean to be presumptious. most people who play marines here do the gunline, and castle in a corner, or play a list with scouts, bikes, dreads, preds and rhinos etc. generally a mobile army of some kind. pods are a rare sight here.

i suppose i could end up loosing a portion of the army first turn... but:

- with 9 pods (4 tac, 3 dev 2 SG) , 5 come in first turn. of those 5, i can vary it up depending on what the other guy does, and i could "isolate" a portion of his deployed forces. if i go 2 tacs 2 SG and a dev unit. i could in theroy have 32 bolter shots, 4 plasma shots across the tacs, another 10-20 combi shots or AP 3 vengance rounds. focusing fire should let me drop 2-3 units, or even a vehicle or 2. return fire has to target 5 seperate units.. with or without cover ... might work out?

again this is just theory hammer.... having not played much in the marine list, im just throwing around ideas.

Got it.

Just not sure about dev squads in pods... Maybe Dreads in pods instead? Pods bring the pain. I call them Doom or Death Blossoms. They induce unhappy face syndrome.

A few points about Drop Pod Marines:

1. Pedro Kantor is your friend. Sternguard are arguably the best unit that you can pod, so if you can take Kantor to pod them AND make them scoring, you'll be at a big advantage. They might not last that long, but if you take enough of them, you might be able to get around that.
2. Masters of the Forge are worth taking if you like Dreads in pods. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that it allows you to take 3 Sternguard squads and still be able to drop Dreads in using HS choices.
3. If you dropping dreads in, you should probably be dropping Ironclads. The Meltagun is a good last ditch attempt to kill a vehicle, and heavy flamers are good for Anti-Infantry. They also benefit from a front armour of 13, meaning that Krak grenades do much less damage to them. That's not to say other dreads aren't good in the list, but if you need a dread IN a pod, an Ironclad is the way to go.
4. Null Pods. Remember that just because you have a transport does not mean you have to deploy in it. There are reasons for taking a drop pod as a transport yet still deploying on the table.
5. Always take an even number of pods. It gives you the most control over what you bring in and what you leave behind. This also ties into the idea of null pods, where you can have half of your army deploy ontable, and then drop the other half on T1 with a gradual rain of empty pods pouring onto the battlefield to block LOS and movement.

Definitely 3 dreads will out perform 3 devs in pods, I've run pod lists in the past, and if you take a motf instead of a base captains you can take 6 dreads, if you brought in a tac squad, a sg squad and 3 dreads with assaults cannons you will do something, they won't break 3 dreads in 1 turn, then later you bring in the rest, it could work, but there are certainly armies that will just eat your army and ask for more, and your tactic will only work until your opponents learn to counter it by spreading out I would even suggest jump pack vanguard doing heroic intervention, while a hell of a pointsink, they can easily come in on a pods locator beacon turn 2, and will almost always eat a unit just with their HoW and massed power weapons.

hmm. i like the idea of a MOTF in the list. in any case a dirt cheap "token" HQ is all i really want. basically a guy to fill the mandatory slot, and thats it. keep him as cheap as possible. if a master of the forge unlocks more dreads, that could be a useful thing. i think the general idea though is to get as many boots on the ground, with as much dakka as possible all at once, and in the other guys face.

obviously such aggressive tatics will be either a solid win or a total arse whooping.. but either way it should be fun. ill work on a list and adjust my starting list i have here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/490228.page

any advise on the exsting list in that thread is also welcome. thanks.

in regards to that list you posted, you would be better off to use one 10 man SG squad, evenly divide combi meltas and plasmas, and when they arrive combat squad them and use the meltas to blow up tanks and plasmas to kill whatever lay inside said tanks. instead of having 2 squads that may or may not kill just the tanks and then have nothing else to shoot at because they already shot the tank, which may or may not be dead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
and usually its not worth it to put full meltas or plasmas in the squad as if the models survive a round of shooting, the special issue ammo may be a better option than a single anti tank shot or 2 kill or die trying shots. plus if you pay the premium for plasma and they proceed to die in one round of shooting you just wasted 5 points.

 DarthSpader wrote:
- grab as many tac squads as possible. 5-6 at least. free missile, cheap plasma or melta (probally an even split between the 6 squads) no upgrades on the srg. load into drop pod.

This is the problem with your plan. You're taking more tactical squads than necessary for objective claiming purposes, and that's just a bad idea. They're worse than the alternative units at everything besides scoring objectives, so an army built around them is going to be much weaker than one that takes the require objective holders and then spends the rest of the points on more sternguard/terminators/etc.

 jordanis wrote:
and usually its not worth it to put full meltas or plasmas in the squad as if the models survive a round of shooting, the special issue ammo may be a better option than a single anti tank shot or 2 kill or die trying shots. plus if you pay the premium for plasma and they proceed to die in one round of shooting you just wasted 5 points.

Except 5 points is dirt cheap for something that powerful, even if you don't get maximum use out of it every game, and when you do get to use them you tend to wipe entire units off the table. Sternguard should always have the maximum number of combi-weapons.

There is some excellent advice in this thread! Good stuff.

updated my list with some of the advise here, and posted a few new builds.

question: with HP and all the auto glance type weapons out there, are dreads that good? are they worth it? is the ironclad worth it? a melta gun will still probally flutz it up pretty good, and a lazcannon should also see no diffierence. (nor will lances, haywire, etc)

what about hq? master of the forge unlocks dreads in the hev slot, but libbys are psykers, (wich are great and my local group LOVEs psykers) or a captain/chaplain for combat?