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Assuming the enemy is bringing say 4 drop pods, two of which are melta squads and two are flamers/flamer dreadnought. how do you deploy to counter this? vs melta bubble wrap is okay, but if you bubble wrap they'll drop flamers and barbecue all your infantry...

Also if you know you're looking at going up against salamanders with the ability to drop melta, including vulkan for the mastercrafting melta, how does that affect your decisions about bringing in vehicles (mostly heavy support)

I'm playing Imperial fists btw, but advise away for any scenario.

I can only speak from the opposite perspective, meaning I played with Vulkan and 3 squads of LOTD.

What caused me difficulty was the following.

No armor being on the table, only monstrous creatures.

There being models so spread out that I deep striked onto a model and lost a squad.

Armor being spread out across the table so I had to assign one squad per armor.

What made it easy was the following.

Putting your armor where the rear is exposed with position to allow me to drop behind it.

Putting your armor where I can hit 2 armor with one squad, or putting your armor where I can drop all of my meltas in the same place and hit all of them.

If you put models spread out where you think they will deep strike and back your stuff up where they can't get behind it I think that is the best defense. Also, putting your models in a ruin for a cover save or even better in a fortification like the skyshield landing pad or the aegis defense line is better.

I was thinking that backing up all the armor against the board edge would be good, and then using an ADL for both cover and interceptor, while fanning out marines as widely as possible to stop meltas from getting in range and keep flamer casualties to a minimum

Wrap a spread out melta bubble around 3 vindis, when he drops pull the bubble survivors away and unleash hell. Also back up with two combi-plasma sternguard units (or just go vengence rounds) in pods with an extra 2 pods (ded trans for the bubble wrap). If the enemy gets first turn drop your sternis and rapid fire his alpha strike. If the enemy goes second, drop the empty pods so they can't alpha strike your sternies, then drop the sternies later.
OR you could run a whole pod army yourself. Then whoever gets second turn gets the alpha strike, thus is more likely to win. The game is then decided on one die roll. It'll get so boring he will eventually stop playing full pod armies against you :-p.


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Could also do this with 3 podded stern squads and 3 empty pods if you have the points.


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Btw this idea will not work too well if hes taking legion with their 3++.


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Or run all your units in cheap 35pt metal boxes. He will have to dedicate a units shooting to one before he can shoot the occupants. With only half his army coming down first turn it will highly dilute his alpha strike.

I play IG, mech vets, and have played numerous games against drop pod/deep strike blood angels and other marines. What I did.

1. make sure my highest armor value was going to be the only armor they could face. Yes, most of the vehicles were on the back board edge.

2. how you deploy: you can either spread out and make them dedicate one to one or, clump together and only make them have one or two sides to choose from when they drop in. When you clump together, spread out enough so a drop pod can't fit between vehicles or units. You have to decide who will be sacrificed. Sometimes it works out badly, other times well.

I once played against a dark angels player, and I had four chimeras, a squad on ground near an objective. The CCS, along with two manticore missile launchers behind a ADL w/ quad gun in the corner. On the other side, the single Leman Russ exeterminator. Well, he dropped speacial named dude and ten terminators infront of the chimeras and one squad in the open. Squad got eliminated, but, I now had four vets squads (plasma,melta) and four chimeras to tear him appart. After unloading two squads from the chimeras, giving orders, and shooting all the other stuff there, he was down to special guy and one terminator left.

moral, give them a target, but, be able to counter. Deployment will win or loose you the game against drop pod armies.