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1. Drop Pods in the new codex will still have 10 man capacity. The pictures which recently leaked show that the new plastic model is actually designed with 10 physical spots for the marines to be strapped in.

2. Centurian's advice was predicated on the ideas that a) you are using an army that does not have any particularly valuable/critical components and b) you are playing a mission in which castling in a corner will significantly hurt your ability to win the game due to objective points. He further explained in his second post that he did mean for you to still keep your units sufficiently close together to focus your counter attack on Deep Striking units as they arrive.

Stelek wrote:
My version of spreading out takes away landing zones.

Cent's version gives them up, allowing a drop pod army to target your units as it sees fit and therefore isn't a tactic, it's just playing into the other armies strength.

Which is the whole point of this defense, preventing that strength.

My advice, good. Cents advice, bad.

Capiche?

The thing is, with the exception of all-infiltrating guard or kroot, I've never seen an army able to completely deny DS armies a way in. So what you do instead is bring them in where you want them to. Your advice doesn't really deny drop zones either - it just denies drop zones in a very small section of the board. Which is fine, if the only mission objective is annihilation, but if there are any kind of objectives whatsoever (or even just table quarters) you've essentially just conceded the game.

Your advice is good, in a very narrow circumstance with a specific army build. My advice is intended to be more general, and focuses on overall strategy and meant to be adapted to the particular circumstance of a player's army and an opponent's DS force.

Without detailed information about both sides, and the mission being played, its impossible to come up with a "1-size fits all" tactical solution to the problem of defending against DS troops. You end up being the Germans defending against the 82nd and 101st at Normandy, in having a seemingly solid defensive setup that ultimately loses.

Mannahnin wrote:
2. Centurian's advice was predicated on the ideas that a) you are using an army that does not have any particularly valuable/critical components and b) you are playing a mission in which castling in a corner will significantly hurt your ability to win the game due to objective points. He further explained in his second post that he did mean for you to still keep your units sufficiently close together to focus your counter attack on Deep Striking units as they arrive.

Thanks, Ragnar. My point entirely.

Units can lend support to any other friendly unit within their threat radius. Its a mental obstruction to think that having units support each other means that you have to have those units standing next to each other, and doing so willingly concedes unnecessary advantages to your opponent. With screening being almost completely useless (even in 40K 5 with the cover save), there's simply very little advantage to having units grouped up (unless you're playing Guard).

In fact, very few DS players will willingly DS drop pods or other DS troops where they can scatter off the board. That means that you essentially have a 7-10" theoretical safe zone around the board edges that provides some additional restrictions on where units can DS.

To look at it in terms of the most common DS armies, you've got three armies to consider:
1) SM Drop Storm
2) Lysanderbomb (You could also classify Deathwing in here)
3) Daemonic Assault

The other deep strike armies (IG Drop Troops and DE Screaming Raiders) are rare enough (and to be quite honest, different enough) that they require significantly different tactics.

The SM Drop Storm has the advantage of the drop pod rules, which allow them to safely DS closer to your forces. In return, they generally have poor range, slow movement after landing, and random arrival. Unless you face PapaNurgle-level luck and face the entire force on turn 2, they're usually only going to have 50% of their army coming in. That's 50% of their shooting, and most importantly, the ability to only engage 3-6 targets (at the usual tournament level of 1500-1750).

So in other words, a Drop Storm wants you to castle. It makes it easier to use drop pods as a LOS-blocking screen, makes it easier to get into assault, and makes it easier to consolidate from unit to unit. As I'm rarely a fan of doing what my opponent wants me to do, I'd rather find another option. Scattering (but keeping units within the threat radius of friendly units) means that you'll probably lose a few units to the initial drop...but by concentrating the efforts of your remaining units, you can cripple or kill the initial dropping units, and effectively leave them out of the battle.

Against a Lysanderbomb, you'll generally have numbers on your side, but the arrival of massed terminators and their assault cannons can easily cripple portions of your army without too much effort. With a 30" threat radius (6" move + 24" range on the assault cannons and stormbolters) they've got greater range than most dropping units, and unless you're spamming lascannons and plasma, that many 2+ saves can be a bitch to deal with.

What you want to do depends largely on your army, but what you essentially want to do is find ways to concentrate on isolated portions of the Lysanderbomb. Castling pretty much encourages your oppoonent to consolidate their forces as they drop. This leaves you with the necessity of engaging all the terminators at once, which is usually not what you want to do. Scattering not only encourages your opponent to spread out, it also essentially greatly reduces the safe deep strike areas. Since the terminators don't benefit from the drop pod rules in a lysanderbomb, they have to worry about bad scatter rolls. Off the table, onto your troops, or onto their own troops will all easily cost them a 250-300 point unit, which they know they can ill afford. So essentially, your units have (against a reasonably intelligent player) a 7-9" "safe zone" around the board edges and surrounding your own units. (Unless of course, there are teleport homers in play, which is why those things are a priority target in turn 1.)

The final army, a Chaos Demons army, is probably one of the trickiest to counter, because it offers some things that very few other armies offer...namely the boatload of special rules to keep track of. In general, though, I'm theorizing (since I've yet to play against a Chaos Demons army), that countering it will be very similar to countering a Lysanderbomb. They're not going to have nearly as much shooting (unless its a strongly tzeentch themed force) but they'll generally make up for it with some very fast moving, hard hitting assault units.

In general, I dislike castling up because it essentially turns the game into an all or nothing gamble. Either your castle holds, and you wipe out the enemy, or your castle gets breached, which will usually be followed up shortly by the utter destruction of your army. I'm withholding judgement on V5 counters until I've read through the 40K 5 rulebook, but even with the rumored change in consolidation rules, I don't see the Castle becoming that much stronger, especially since it will effectively reduce the efficacy of heavy weapons in the center/rear of the castle formation by providing the targets with 4+ cover saves.

Stelek you didnt answer my question i was just wondering how many GT's have you won cause

you said cents hasnt won any and you have or something....I was jw....

And Centurian99
Is'nt attacking you he's just puting his IDEAS out on a FORUM ....just saying

Centurian99
has good comments about the Marine DS army.

Cent, I gotta say my experience both using and against pods leads me to exactly the opposite conclusion regarding fighting pods.

The big weakness of a pod army is that only half of it is on the table to start. If you concentrate your forces you basically get the benefits of an old-school Refused Flank, and can overwhelm the units which come in as they arrive, focusing 100% of your army (less whatever they kill on the drop) against 50% of theirs.

Whereas if you spread out, the fact that the pods can safely drop right next to you allows them to safely wedge into gaps between your units. If you spread out they are frequently able to divide your force using the pods and focus fire on your stranded units while using terrain and the pods themselves to shield you from counter fire. Thus reversing the concentration of force advantage. They are also able to get their short ranged guns (heavy flamers, paired plasma guns, paired meltaguns) in range of the best possible targets, unless they happen to scatter badly. But given the pod special rules (their ability to safely drop 1” away without risk of death), the chance of a scatter bad enough to take them out of range is substantially reduced.

The advantages of the castle are a) built-in concentration of force and b) protection of your more vulnerable/expensive/critical elements at the back of the castle, out of range of the podding units’ short-ranged guns. Your strategy still allows you to concentrate force, but as you describe it you still give the podders the opportunity to match their guns against the best possible targets.

A Lysanderwing is much trickier, and this is why Mauleed switched over to a terminator-heavy version when he was still playing pods. Assault Cannons, as you’ve noted, give the podders much longer strike range in addition to superior mobility and threat radii as compared to podding tac marines. This I have less experience against, though obviously its longer range makes the depth defense less effective. Still, the castle (especially the expanding castle Stelek described) does limit their targets a bit, and allow you to set up LOS blockages to hopefully keep some stuff protected.

Daemons, OTOH, seem to me the more likely candidate for the counter-tactic you’ve described. They don’t have much shooting, but they DO have a lot of assault power. Against them you’re probably better off to spread out in mutually supporting positions which can concentrate fire on units dropping near any one of them, while cofferdamming the damage sustained when the daemons assault any one portion of your force.

Nice good post make's sense

Hmmm. Why are we talking about lysanderbomb? I'm certain I didn't mention it. Oh right, the inexperienced has mentioned another red herring once again.

Sigh.

Lysander wing is a Legion of the Damned style army, deemed too powerful and is in the process of being removed from the game. So I don't see much point in discussing it. Can we not? Thanks.

If you really want deathwing in the discussion, it is an assault force. It can't shoot you to pieces like a lysanderwing can. It also does not all arrive all at once and is vulnerable to an anti-deep strike defense (the one I laid out, not yours).

I guess my problem with your 'tactics' cent, is they don't hold up in the real world. Show me an army that can be spread out against a drop army, like a wagon wheel, and bring effective firepower to bear. If my tactical squad is spread out 15" and only 3 guys are in rapid fire range if they move...how is this good? All of your comments and advice is dubious at best. You are running theoryhammer, and you aren't doing a good job of it.

Especially a demon army in theoryhammer. Why you'd spread your army out in such a way they can pavane multiple units into flamer range is beyond my ability to comprehend. You obviously don't have ANY experience playing against a demon army, but giving them multiple targets is stupid. Pavane is short ranged. Dropping is not guaranteed, so they aren't going to be in range of much of anything...and who cares if they move you D6" the turn they drop? If you are spread out in a 'spokes of the wheel' formation you are encouraging demons to put big old templates onto multiple units. That's the only kind of shooting they have, and that you can stop with my deep strike defense.

Please for the love of all that's holy, stop posting endless pages of nonsense. I know you can't help yourself, but your lack of actual game experience is showing.

Mannahin has a better grasp, as in here:

"Daemons, OTOH, seem to me the more likely candidate for the counter-tactic you’ve described. They don’t have much shooting, but they DO have a lot of assault power. Against them you’re probably better off to spread out in mutually supporting positions which can concentrate fire on units dropping near any one of them, while cofferdamming the damage sustained when the daemons assault any one portion of your force."

Sadly, this theory does not work.

Demons can drop behind terrain away from one flank with fast movers.

They then drop in front of another flank with everything else, someplace your other flank cannot shoot them well.

Now you're dead. The fast movers get into your other flank, and the slow movers are on top of your flank. Since you've spread out, you cannot concentrate rapid fire into the demons that are vulnerable to it--and you cannot stop them from assaulting you.

Game is over at that point.

If you concentrate everything into one corner, you can bring every shot possible to bear on the demons. It's a necessity. You need to be able to immediately dump everything your army has into the demons that have dropped, and reduce them sufficiently so they are no longer threats to you--and keep yourself intact as you do so. That's the whole way you kill demons with a foot army. Mechanized armies just win against demons, so I don't see much point in discussing them. You don't need fancy tactics to crush a demon army if you kill their 4-8 fast moving guys and shoot the rest to pieces. Oops sorry did I give away a secret? My bad.

By the way, Cent--you did have one semi-decent point. About objectives. Sort of.

The new 40k missions have two sets of objectives: One mission with 2, so your comment is invalid as you can secure yours easily. The other mission has multiple loot counters, so it requires you to move your guys...not. Only if there are 5 counters do you need to move. Guess what happens if there are 5 counters? You can sit on 2 of them. That leaves 3 more, and if a demon army wants to park 3 troops choices on 3 loot counters--by all means, laugh at your opponent, beat his army, and shoot him off just 1 objective. Then it's a "draw", and it goes to VP's. If he has 2 troops left, odds are you'll be highly favored to win off of VP's--because demons are a coin flip army, and either win big or lose big.

Just out of curiosity Stelek. why should anyone listen to your advice regarding 40K, this deepstrike topic in particular? We all know what Centurian99's credentials are. We also know that PapaNurgle won the Adepticon Gladiator 2 years ago with a drop pod army, so why should we listen to you, as opposed to players who have far greater experience than you?

As the, self-styled expert than you claim to be, what are your credentials and accomplishments?

Why should we listen to you?

Darrian

Dude Stelek i am also tried of you thinking your the gak for wining Warhammer 40k . and you complain about no one to play with cause your so good. Surpised any one plays with you if you Stomp them so much

Dude its a game i dont even now why i care about 40K

Its to have fun with not to be serious.

Dude chill and same for others it's 40k ......jc

as for your credentials and accomplishments i know your pretty good i havent seen you play but i've seen them.

But if your so good Play a Grey knight Deep strike Army and win a GT ....

Darrian, argument by authority is less interesting than actually reading the tactics described in some detail.

C99 has both the credentials and the chops. I've been surprised so far by the missing details in his posts in this thread and by the unneccessary shots at Stelek. While Bill doesn't owe anyone any cool tactical analyses or detailed descriptions of deployment formations and maneuvers, they'd sure be nice to read and do a better job showing us how much he knows.

I post what I know.

I didn't realize I needed street creds to post what I know.

At least I post what I know.

I'm not someone that needs to hide my list, my knowledge, or the benefit of my experience because I'm afraid someone will gun for me and beat me.

I know alot of guys that are like that. They're here, right now.

You one of them?

K well thats fine I've been playing for years I can ask a bunch of the Gamers at my store for advice.

I just think he shouldnt act like he's better then everyone for winning for "10" years at 40K

I've read the Tatics meant to say there ok if you look at my post.

But some one shouldnt shoot others down when they actually give good advice for all yall,.

Stelek wrote:Hmmm. Why are we talking about lysanderbomb? I'm certain I didn't mention it. Oh right, the inexperienced has mentioned another red herring once again.

Sigh.

Lysander wing is a Legion of the Damned style army, deemed too powerful and is in the process of being removed from the game. So I don't see much point in discussing it. Can we not? Thanks.

If you really want deathwing in the discussion, it is an assault force. It can't shoot you to pieces like a lysanderwing can. It also does not all arrive all at once and is vulnerable to an anti-deep strike defense (the one I laid out, not yours).

Um…the topic of your post is “Deep Strike Defense”.

So that would mean we are talking about defending against:
Demon Armies
Lysander Wing/Deathwing
Drop IG
Drop Pod Marines

So to bring up Lysander style drop armies would seem reasonable. We still have at least 6 months of them even if the new SM codex changes things, so they are still a valid topic.


As far as what I do is that I turtle up in a corner. As Cent99 says, I have “points of failure” in my army, so I normally have to hide them in the rear with the gear. Since the effective range of a melta gun is 12” I know that if I put my tanks in the back corner, I can put enough meat shields in the way to push the deep-stikers back beyond 12”.

Stelek wrote:
I'm not someone that needs to hide my list, my knowledge, or the benefit of my experience because I'm afraid someone will gun for me and beat me.

So what army are you bringing to the LVGT?

Stelek wrote:Hmmm. Why are we talking about lysanderbomb? I'm certain I didn't mention it.

Can you give me a shout if/when you mention Trollbloods? I'm planning on making a P&M post at the weekend, featuring Trollbloods.

O yea but like on your blog why dont you do Grey Knights for the GT to show all the Smarts you now. About warhamms 40k ? ?

If i sounded rude i'm sorry but your being rude to others for no reason (its 40k ) it's not like your actually fighting for the Lives of others

And i dont need you creds to see that your good.

But some one who wins for 10years and

if you keep winning then play a harder army

could answer me how many GTs you've won like you said earlier and i asked earlier? ?

What ever i was just wondering why your bashing someone who has experince that is good and why can't you respect him.

Mannahnin wrote:<snip>lots of good points</snip>

That is a potential outcome. That's why the dispersal itself is important. On reflection this may have something to do with my propensity for mobile firepower. The drop pod wall becomes much less effective when the majority of ones heavy weapons can move and fire, even if that movement is limited to 6"/turn.

Stelek wrote:<snip>lots of ranting and creation of straw man arguments</snip>

Remember, we've come up with three basic methods of defending against Deep Striking armies here. The one you advocated (onion castle), and two that I advocate (spoke castle & pseudo-dispersed) deployment.

Onion deployment gives you layers of defensive depth, and allows for maximum protection of vulnerable units, but gives you very little room or ability to respond to enemy arrival, and makes for a deployment that folds ridiculously quickly if its breached.

Spoke deployment allows for the protection of a smaller number of vulnerable units at the cost of putting more units at risk, but allows for a much more effective and immediate counterstrike. It suffers from many of the same flaws as the onion castle, in that if breached it tends to collapse rapidly, and gives up effective control of massive portions of the table to your opponent.

Pseudo-dispersed deployment appears far more vulnerable and weak than the castles, and to be honest, is on initial contact. But if you disperse carefully, keeping units within the threat radius of other friendly units, what you create is a situation where your opponent seems to have lots of good places to drop, but most of which are really traps. This only works if you've got an army without point failure sources, or whose point failure sources are well protected. Pseudo-dispersed deployment also gives you the maximum ability to contest and seize objectives in the midgame and endgame.

After weighing in on both sides I'll have to say:

First one to post theirs as an article wins?

I keed!

(Or do I?)

If only yours were worthwhile against the armies you listed.

Take pictures and show me how it works.

From your descriptions, I laugh at your two.

They both lead to defeat in detail.

Stop spamming the same stuff and give us credible examples WITH DETAIL that explain how opening up your army to attack gives an advantage versus armies that need an open defense to have any chance to succeed.

Put up already.

it seems to me that this has gotten unnecessarily complicated. Unless I'm missing something, the way to beat deepstrikers is to engage elements of his force with all or most of yours. This is usually pretty easy since all buy Lysanderwing arrive peicemeal. It appears that the question is: do you castle up and hunker down, or scatter to the five winds and make him chase you down?

The answer, to me, is: depends. If you have a high model count with fragile yet powerful units, scattering them will simply lead to your punchers getting shot. If you have a low model count army, then castling will cripple your abiliyt to seize objectives or even respond to the enemy.

In some armies, more expensive and/or more powerful units are more durable (Mech Eldar, chaos, necrons, tyranids) while other armies are more or less the same durablity regardless of power or cost (IG, Orks, DE, Tau). Castling to protect more durable units is counterproductive, but sending expensive yet fragile units abroad will lead to a short lifespan.

Castling or scattering are two methods of the same tactic: creating a fully supporting network that can respond to the enemy. Which one to choose has more to do with what army you play then any tactically correct choice. As a general rule: any unit that can be reliably destroyed by a one or two units of shooting in a turn should be hidden or castled. Units that can shrug off all but an amzing turn of shooting from one or two units can scatter out.

after 3 pages of this i'm still not sure precisely what centurion means by wagon wheels and dispersed.

particularly wagon wheels. it kinda sounds like conga lines radiating out from a hub. that would just be...bad. or is it a central hub of units surrounded by a ring of small groups? that would make more sense, but i don't exactly see a significant difference from the expanding castle described in the OP.

a dispersed deployment i understand can't really be defined since it's going to depend entirely on terrain. the concept makes sense in general i suppose. you spread out as much as your threat range allows, giving your opponent better target selection in exchange for better board position. i'd just add the note that killing everything in sight is always as good as any mission objective.

maybe i'm having a hard time visualizing this stuff because i play necrons and thus have completely different deep strike defense options available.

Stelek wrote:Stop spamming the same stuff and give us credible examples WITH DETAIL that explain /snip

Put up already.

ghostmaker wrote:could answer me how many GTs you've won like you said earlier and i asked earlier? ?

I think it is time I chime in.
I am the person who PMed Stelek for some advice on anti-deep strike. The sole reason why Stelek is the one I PMed, is that is saw him mention deep strike defense in another thread.
Had Stelek PMed me back I would have been perfectly happy.

Now I am even happier since this turned into a thread that interest me.

But, please don't turn this into a pissing contest.

@Stelek

While I appreciate your willingness to help me out, you chose to make it a public discussion yourself. Opposing oppinions WILL occur. Please take this in stride and let's keep this thread informative and dynamic. This goes for you too, Cent.

corinth wrote:after 3 pages of this i'm still not sure precisely what centurion means by wagon wheels and dispersed.

particularly wagon wheels. it kinda sounds like conga lines radiating out from a hub. that would just be...bad. or is it a central hub of units surrounded by a ring of small groups? that would make more sense, but i don't exactly see a significant difference from the expanding castle described in the OP.

a dispersed deployment i understand can't really be defined since it's going to depend entirely on terrain. the concept makes sense in general i suppose. you spread out as much as your threat range allows, giving your opponent better target selection in exchange for better board position. i'd just add the note that killing everything in sight is always as good as any mission objective.

maybe i'm having a hard time visualizing this stuff because i play necrons and thus have completely different deep strike defense options available.

Necrons definitely have different deep strike options available, and different considerations (namely res orb coverage and veil for counter-deep striking)

But by a spoke castle, I'm talking about putting any vulnerable/critical units at the hub, and radiating the majority of your other units outwards in a conga line.

Dispersed wouldn't work as well for Necrons because of the need to maintain res orb coverage, unless you're running a flying circus, in which case it works just fine. Of course, flying circus is one of the stronger builds out there.

Jazz is for Losers wrote:

Stelek wrote:Hmmm. Why are we talking about lysanderbomb? I'm certain I didn't mention it.

Can you give me a shout if/when you mention Trollbloods? I'm planning on making a P&M post at the weekend, featuring Trollbloods.

Well, Kaya's Spirit Door is pretty similar to deep strike, but if you Wagon Wheel with Reach, you should be able to pop her or her Warpwolf when they come a knockin'.

Stelek wrote:
They both lead to defeat in detail.

By the way, have you ever heard of infestation tactics?

I'm not sure how those tactics apply to 40k unless you are playing cityfight.

Enlighten me.

Infestation tactics doesn't have anything to do with cityfight. If you don't know what infestation tactics are, it'll take way long to explain.

They don't work for every army, but they do work if your army is constructed around them. You need to have a force that has a relatively consistent threat radius for its units, and you have to avoid having any easily destroyed lynchpin units.

In essence, you're offering your opponent what looks like a defeat in detail...but what you're really doing is denying your opponent any obvious schwerpunkts that they can focus on.

To bring it back to the defense against a deep strike army...you're going to lose units. But you present your opponent with what is essentially a no-win situation. They can either disperse to deal with your disperal, which because most deep strike armies have extremely short threat radii, allows you to outmaneuver them, or they concentrate their forces...which makes it even easier to outmaneuver them. Either way, you're playing to the real weakness of the deep strike army - its lack of maneuverability once it hits the ground.

Deep strike armies are vulnerable to immediate counterattack, because of their general low numbers/unit count compared to the force that starts on the table, but good players have developed tactics and army builds to compensate for this.

Matching strength to strength has never seemed to be a good tactic to me.

Sorry, you're full of beans.

Infestation tactics have EVERYTHING to do with fighting in a city.

This might be a tactic you made up, but that isn't what infestation tactics are.

Maybe you should look it up. It's cutting edge military theory, so it's not like it's on a wiki for you to read up on.

Your theory is also chock full of nuts.

It isn't better than a deep strike defense in the slightest, it's far worse and it still gives a deep strike player a field day.

Sigh. It's pointless discussing this with you. Either you really don't grasp tactics at all, or you're just doing your best to flamebait and be obstinate in hopes I'll blow up.
Just keep flying your trolling under the radar. I'm sure everyone else in the krew is highly amused by this whole thread.

Stelek wrote:Sorry, you're full of beans.

Your theory is also chock full of nuts.

Why? Seriously, I want to know.

It isn't better than a deep strike defense in the slightest, it's far worse and it still gives a deep strike player a field day.

Again why? I don't understand.

Thanks.

Ozymandias, King of Kings