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Just wondering if anyone can provide some useful insight into coping with drop pods when playing with Eldar.

The last couple of games my regular opponent has brought "Twilight" BA & SW, he has two long fang units and a BA dev squad, so has 12 missile and 2 lascannon shots, then the rest of his army are tac squads in drop pods.

He has three of them with two flamers and the other two with two melta. The flamers decimate my troops choices and meltas knack my war walkers. (helped with all the heavy weapon squads)

I'm not having much luck as he just doesn't scatter that far and gets to choose which units to wipe out at the start of his first turn. (This has been my rangers and guardians and ward spiders the last couple of games.

I can't afford to be 3 squads down at the start of each battle :S

I've used wave serpents to good effect, one of them took the full force of all the heavy weapons and only suffered one glance, but don't want to end up having to take everything in a serpent just for it to survive

What is your list? Reserving the really fragile stuff helps of course.

The ancient castle and bubblewrap set-up.

First of all, how many points is this? If he is running 5 10-man Troop units as well as 5 Heavys, it eats up a lot of points.

The best way to deal with Drop Pods remains bubble-wrap however. If you string out a ring of cheap troops to provide a line of impassable terrain, you can then bury your valuable units within. Essentially making a fortress where the outer walls are Guardians.
He cannot land within the walls because you should be able to prevent any 'safe' landing spots. He is then forced to land outside the walls and can only effectively engage your Guardian screen. Sure he will probably destroy it, but then he is on the field and his alpha punch has been absorbed by your cheap infantry. Your turn 2, simply go to town. He has dropped 50 marines on your doorstep with no support and relatively little gain. You're almost certainly in assault range, but a healthy dose of shuriken can also help.

Wraithlords and WraithKnight will help. The Wraithlords are now characters in this edition and can challenge the powerfist right out of the fight.

This was only a test list, I normally take Vypers instead of the Hawks but was just trying something out (it went badly).

HQ, Farseer, Baharroth

Troops: 11 x Guardians with SL, 5 x Rangers
Elites: 5x Wraithguard with D-scythes in wave serpent, 6 x Scorpions inc Ex with Claw in wave serpent
Fast attack; 7 x spiders, 7 x hawks inc Ex with Sunrifle
Heavy Support: 3 x Walkers with SL and BL, 5 x Reapers, Ex with krak missile (forgot eldar name) and fast shot, Wraithlord with twin BL and flamers

Not the best Eldar list in the world, but I was experimenting with the new rules

Scorpions are still rubbish in assault even with 5 S8 AP2 hits they got beat in assault by a dev squad :( (poor rolling didn't help their cause)

When his drop pods landed he flamed my warp spiders, so only one left, flamed the rangers and wiped them out, then blew up a walker with a melta loaded drop pod, dev squad finished off other two

I guess deep striking the spiders will help them out a bit, but due to the movement I didn't deem that necessary.

Eldar deal with Pods the same way anybody deals with them, most of which has been mentioned above. Another thing to do is deploy to maximize the chances of mishap if he wants to be bold with his drops. Wave Serpents are particularly susceptable to Melta thanks to Serpent Shields, so use them to shield your other guys, as he can't charge on the turn he drops. Then shoot the crap out of him with everything you've got. I'm of the opinion that this is one of those situations where having a Seer Council really helps, especially if you manage to roll Fortune and/or Protect, as you can get into combat and hold it in place to allow your other units to shoot at his guys piecemeal.

Well, the described list can be quite nasty with 12 missile launchers in the HS section and some drop podded Marine squads.
A Serpent spam list should be able to handle it especially if you get first turn so that the Serpents can move and thus can benefit from the holofields.

Thanks for all the advice, I know I screwed up with my deployment by leaving too much space in my deployment area, which allowed him to pick and choose his units to attack. I might have to invest in another guardian squad, although if I deployed the serpents properly they'd have taken up a lot of the free space.

I forgot to mention he also had two landspeeders with typhoon missile launchers and heavy bolters.

He had all the firepower as he knew I was going to try my wraithknight out the previous match.

The point limit was 2000 I can certainly save money by exchanging baharroth for an autrach or other cheaper HQ choice. I got screwed over as he rolled for -1 on my reserve rolls, so the hawks and baharoth ended up coming in late and on seperate turns

Unless your opponent actually pays for blast weapons, there is no reason not to stack up your army very close. The smaller the foot print you have, the less effective drop pods are. I beat non-SW drop lists all the time this way.

Martel732 wrote:
Unless your opponent actually pays for blast weapons, there is no reason not to stack up your army very close. The smaller the foot print you have, the less effective drop pods are. I beat non-SW drop lists all the time this way.

Just be careful about those 4 flamers though. I would have to agree with holding the fragile units in reserve.

Gapow wrote:
Thanks for all the advice, I know I screwed up with my deployment by leaving too much space in my deployment area, which allowed him to pick and choose his units to attack. I might have to invest in another guardian squad, although if I deployed the serpents properly they'd have taken up a lot of the free space.

I forgot to mention he also had two landspeeders with typhoon missile launchers and heavy bolters.

He had all the firepower as he knew I was going to try my wraithknight out the previous match.

The point limit was 2000 I can certainly save money by exchanging baharroth for an autrach or other cheaper HQ choice. I got screwed over as he rolled for -1 on my reserve rolls, so the hawks and baharoth ended up coming in late and on seperate turns

if using hawks and your opponent roles -1 to your reserves then start with them on the board and skyleap off turn one, this places them in ongoing reserves which means they come back turn 2 and you can drop your blast large or small when you come in with your hawks.

Just some food for thought.