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I went out and built 10 new drop pods for this list, at the fantastic cost of 7 dollars each from Lowes. Hooray. I'll post some pics when I get a chance to finish them off. Anywho, here is ze list.

Cleanse & Purify, Take the Fight To'em
Eye to Eye (fixed this, got them mixed up), Have Pride in Your Colors

Epistolary, fear + fury, terminator armor
Command squad with chain fist, 2 assault cannons, combi-plasma on the sarge (had 10pts to kill)
-drop pod

Venerable dreadnought with heavy flamer, assault cannon, extra armor in a drop pod
Dreadnought with heavy flamer, assault cannon, extra armor in a drop pod
Dreadnought with heavy flamer, assault cannon, extra armor in a drop pod


8 marines, 2 meltaguns, vet with pfist, drop pod
8 marines, 2 meltaguns, vet with pfist, drop pod
8 marines, 2 flamers, vet with pfist, drop pod
8 marines, 2 flamers, vet with pfist, drop pod
8 marines, 2 flamers, vet with pfist, drop pod
5 marines, 2 meltaguns, drop pod


I could potentially swap the troop loadout to something like:
10 marines, 2 melta, vet with pfist, drop pod
10 marines, 2 melta, vet with pfist, drop pod
10 marines, 2 melta, vet with pfist, drop pod
5-6 marines, 2 plasmaguns, drop pod
5-6 marines, 2 plasmaguns, drop pod
5-6 marines, 2 plasmaguns, drop pod

Thoughts? The flamers seem to do well for me, in general, but having some extra anti-armor might be spiffeh. But losing powerfists really irks me.

Minor update;

So I took this to a tournament - 24 man RTT. I came in 3rd overall with 7/10 and 7/10 in appearance and theme, despite my barely 3 colors on drop pods, and 17 18 17 18 wins. I had tremendous difficulties getting all of the bonus battle points, because someone always had a way to deny me a couple (mobile hqs, lots of mobile chars, et cetera).

If there was one thing I found to be very difficult, it was protecting terminators. My horde of marines did great.

the army itself looks like it would work well, these sorts of armies seem to become more of a commonplace. You seem to have pretty much every angle covered however consider yourself lucky that your army doesn't arrive 1-2 units at a time because it can be devestating.

There's a battle report up on the board for this.

So far, I think the Dreads are starting to be fantastic now that I'm getting better at using them. The heavy flamer+assault cannon+extra armor combo is so affordable and they're simply excellent at horde control, killing squads without a powerfist (which are shockingly common) and so on. Fearless dudes get seriously whittled down due to the dread outnumber wounds. Venerable is fan-frigging-tastic if you only let people shoot at him. Very well worth it for me.

The flamer squads, I think I would like fewer of. I would have in almost every game been happier to have plasmaguns (every single army I see seems to have lots of vehicles, which is really bizarro to me. But hey). I think I may consider making one or two of my flamer squads for bolter+plasma squads (but leaving the vets just in case). I'd need to nip and tuck some points somewhere for that, maybe drop a guy or something.

I'd love to add some more dreads, but doubt if it's worth giving up the comp friendliness of my list. Would have to drop the bp/ccw trait for it, and think I'd not bother with troop squads without a trait to support them (apothecaries, bp/ccw, or similar).

I've never had fewer than 4 pods come in, but if I did I'd hide in a corner and force someone to come to me, then use the separation in his forces caused by having to chase me to make him pay. I've done that when only 4 pods come in and it works pretty well to combat the 'slow-pod' syndrome.

I sincerely hope the come out with an expansion of some kind allowing us to put improved comms SOMEWHERE in the drop pod list, as I think it'd make it remain a competitive army after everyone learns how to play it.

Ive played a rather similar army in some tourneys. (Space Wolves: 6x 8-10 Marines with 2 Fists and 1 Melta in Pods + HQs and Speeders) Despite my even better CC potential I had severe problems against Blood Angels who were able to outshoot and then charge me. So while I went 20:0 against oldschool shooty Marines several times I went 0:20 against Blood Angels the two times I faced them. (Thouse won both tourneys btw.) What Ive learned from these games is that the damage you do with your shooting when your Pods land, is more crucial than the CC potential of the disembarking troops. Meltaguns are great here to kill Vehicles which seems to have more impact then killing another enemy marine (so I think Plasma is less good). The problem is that experienced players can shield their vehicles with Troops, so that Meltaguns will find it hard to get into range. For this reason I would suggest to use a maximum of 4 units with Meltaguns (8-10 Marines 2 Melta, 1 Fist)

I have allways refrained from using Dreads in this list, because I feared they would be easily killed by enemy anti-tank weapons. Now that I hear how well they seem to work, I will try them out.

Finally I think you should drop the trait that gives your troops CC weapons. Overall the shooting that Bolters provide when you land is more important in my experience. Against non MEq armys your Bolters will win the fight for you (think of CC attacks with initiative 11) and against MEqs the few additional str. 4 attacks in round 2 of the combat wont help much (for that youve got the invaluable Powerfist).

I actually used to play my list with all bolters. However, I've found that 70% or better assault armies are the only things that are very threatening to me (other than 3 Falcon Eldar). So I gear my list to counter that, and losing a few bolter shots has rarely been a problem vs. shootie anything - I just make a lot of vps on the drop, then assault the rest to death.

The main threat I suffer is horde assault armies with 3+ saves. Blood angels, Black templars, space wolves, daemonbombs, etc. Anything that could potentially outfight me is the biggest problem. So I have leaned toward maximizing my CC threat, which also gives me an edge vs. Necrons coincidentally. Even Tyranids can be tough. The tactic I've developed that seems to work well is to try to blast the big threats on the drop - wipe out the template weapons, big assault squads, etc, and make the rest hike to me. Getting a few extra hth attacks and being able to move and shoot and assault gives me a pretty big edge. Sometimes just taking away their antitank is enough, and forcing them to fight HTH with dreadnoughts and hordes of guys.

Another underused but slightly nice benefit is that against the Daemonette bomb, I can drop in cover and then own them even if I don't get to shoot at them (same goes for fleeting genestealers who are ourside of 12" and for some reason don't buy fleshhooks - a nearly universal failure).

I use 3 units with meltas and it seems to work pretty well. However, the 3rd unit of flamers is usually superfluous and I find I'd rather have anything else.

The dreads, now that I am getting better at denying antitank shots to them (and NEVER exposing the rear armor) are doing a lot better. I had a lot of early problems with them.

Thanks for the input! I am definitely considering some other ways of doing things than the bp/ccw troops, but bolters so far have failed in a lot of games and the bp/ccw have kicked butt. Dunno. Definitely think if I cut back down to like 3 squads and a bunch of termies/dreads I might go with bolters instead and use heed the wisdom.

Looks like our experiences are pretty similar. 3 Falcon Eldar is what I was fearing most as well. (Allthough nobody plays it around here.) Ill open another threat for dealing with Falcons in the Tactics Forum later.


And like you say, being assaulted by assault armys can break our lists. From using a maximum of Blood Claws and Powerfists I can tell that improving your close combat abilitys in troops does not solve all problems. Good opponents will have mobile assault elements to charge you and will shoot you before they charge. A marine unit of 10 cant hide behind the Pod properly and comes close to a pointsink against templates (AP3, but even simple Flamers spell doom) and even if the opponent has no Templates himself he can shoot your Pods with heavy weapons and make them explode (open topped is not good for us here^^).

- btw this is another strong incentive to use Dreads. People will hurt you with their anti tank weapons anyways, when they target the Pods, so you dont give them a whole new target with Dreads. -

Besides the template problem, simple focused fire by mobile shooty units like Tornados will whittle one of your units down to a degree, that its close combat potential will become so little, that the opponent can charge you with a specialized unit (Death Company or even furios charge Scouts (!)) safely. Since you come peace meal, the opponent can repeat this process several times, which finally can make you lose.

Our take on Pods seems to be as follows:
We take pods to gain the initiative and get CLOSE.
-> Denied Flank and Hidden Powerfists beat static shooty armys.
-> Multiple Meltas at close range beat Vehicles.
-> Dreads with Flamers and Assault Cannons can deal with hordes (template,multiple shots, immune to most small arms), their assault cannons can take down mobile weak shooty units (like Tornados), and they can often block the way towards your troop units (Scouts with furios charge or Genestealers that want to assault our troops)

Mauleeds philosophy with pods seems to be:
Use Pods to get close with Dreads and Fear (edit), and use terminators to back that up with even more shootiness in the form of Assault Cannons mounted on Termis and Tornados (so the army is pretty immune to everything without AP2 or high strength). In Mauleeds list the Termis therefore dont deepstrike/drop pod to get close. They just want to come from reserves to deny targets until the rest of the army arrives. Mauleeds army solves the close combat problem in many ways:
1. Close Combat power: Everything has inbuild Powerfists (Termis, Dreads) and is highly durable versus normal attacks (AP2, AV12, Skimmer).
2. Beyond that, the army provides an insane ammount of shootyness, that allows its player to kill the biggest opposing close combat threads before they can charge.
3. The army can operate at almost full effect at 24" (minus fury and the Flamers), should it face a pure assault army.

Now after writing all this, a combination of Dreads in Pods, backed up by deepstriken/podding Terminators seems to have few weaknesses, for it solves the problem of "getting close and being charged" so well. Being highly specialized it faces its own problems though, which propably can be counterballanced by a synthesis with your (Longshots) army.

- Eldar: 3 Falcons with Starcannons. Starcannons beat Terminators and Tornados. Assault Cannons dont cut it against Falcons.

Against Falcons normal Marines with 2 Meltas do ok. (more ablative wounds against Starcannons and a chance of 20% to to kill or stun the thing on the drop), so maybe at least the 2 Troop choices should be equipped like you suggest. Against most other Armys the Meltas should be good too. For example against armys with a lot of Vehicles and 2+ saves ^^.

I think you mean "fear".

And I rarely even bother with fear. I have to base my tactics around using it, and I don't often need to. It's just a nice anti-Tau tool.

But your summary is pretty dead on. Whereas power armor heavy podders must get close, terminator heavy have the option to stay away. I think it means I can deal with a wider range of opponents (3 falcons haven't been a problem in the past for exampe).

But this type of list certainly looks appealing and fun. I bet it does much better against nids than my list.

It's pretty fun to play but you're right, I get outranged a lot which is one of my few big problems (that and mobile assault armies).The dreads and one termie squad helps out a lot with that, but against long range skimmers I can have issues that an army with the ability to long range engage more targets might not. My one Ace vs. skimmers is that I have more pods and therefore can threaten rear armor and blocked exit hatches a little more, forcing people to deploy their cargo or lose it and to be very careful with their back armor.

I wind up using Fury a lot more than fear, because I don't want things to run away from me if I can't be sure I will keep them running. I've actually considered trying out Vortex to see if I can snipe characters with it, but it's awfully pricy.

So far Nids and Bugs have been amongst my easiest victories. I hear a lot of crap talked about the Godzilla list but almost everyone runs 3+ carnis and some zoeys and a tyrant here, so I don't see how adding some more assault cannon targets is going to change my game much. IG is either too static or not mobile enough and tends to catch fire. I did however once table a Tau guy in two drops due to him castling everything in a corner but he was an utter nooblar.

I have two dilemmas regarding the list I'd love some help with-
1) At least one flamer squad seems superfluous. What would one swap out a 196 pt unit for?
2) The Terminators/Libby just die. A lot. People refuse to shoot my dreads, and always make their leadership to shoot the termies (though I do need to get tougher about forcing them to 'ld or shoot my pod')

You play your termies at the edge of their engagement range usually, right Mauleed? and that seems to work OK?

I try to keep my whole army at the edge of it's engagement range, if I feel that I'm threatened in hth.

If I'm worried about shooting, then it's better to be conservative and make sure people don't have LOS to you, and hit them harder next turn (which is easy with my longer range).