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I'm a relatively new player and struggling to figure out how to defend against my friend's drop pod assaults. He comes in turn 1 and blasts my face off. I play a mix of Dark Eldar and Eldar, so if he drops in flamers, my Kabalites in their Raiders are crispy elven toast turn 1. I don't see any Interceptor in the codex to try to take em out before they can lay down the pain and starting with less on the board seems real risky. So....what do?

Reserve your units

Or make a wall of cheap transports.

More information needed would help:

What missions/setups you using?
What army list?
How many pods arriving T1?
Opponents list (# of pods VS other units)

Also str4 flamers VS AV 10 raiders are 6s to glance. Why are your guys getting toasted?

 Ratius wrote:


Also str4 flamers VS AV 10 raiders are 6s to glance. Why are your guys getting toasted?

Raiders are open-topped.

Ratius Open topped transports each hit from a flamer causes d6 and at ap5 no save.

As to how to survive a pod assault lots of units he cant kill them all or reserve them unfortunatly theres not much else. The only intercepter for de is the quad/icarus and they are only hitting pods & filling on 6's. So not much use.

 Ratius wrote:
More information needed would help:
What missions/setups you using?
What army list?
How many pods arriving T1?
Opponents list (# of pods VS other units)

Really your list is the most important. There may be some durable units in your list that you can deploy, then everything else in reserve. Also clumping up in a corner away from any objectives helps. Field a 20-man Kabalite unit and deploy them at max coherency in a corner of the board, then deploy other units behind them about 3-4 inches back. This will prevent you other units from getting flamed or melta'd.

Now his pods and footslogger Marines are far from objectives and you can pretty much use your speed to redeploy onto the other side of the board

Ratius Open topped transports each hit from a flamer causes d6 and at ap5 no save.

My bad, good catch.

Also clumping up in a corner away from any objectives helps. Field a 20-man Kabalite unit and deploy them at max coherency in a corner of the board, then deploy other units behind them about 3-4 inches back. This will prevent you other units from getting flamed or melta'd.

Now his pods and footslogger Marines are far from objectives and you can pretty much use your speed to redeploy onto the other side of the board

Thats giving up some series board control though and in heavy maelstrom missions likely a bad idea.

OP - we need to see your list first mate.

I would try the Talos formation from the Haemonculos list It has a brutal amount of shooting and can weather his fire. If he deep strikes close enough for flamers then you charge him first turn and crush him after you shoot the piss out of him.

Can you field empty raiders?

Thats giving up some series board control though and in heavy maelstrom missions likely a bad idea.

OP - we need to see your list first mate.

He's playing DEldar/Eldar, mobility shouldn't be too much of an issues one would imagine.

Martel732 wrote:
Can you field empty raiders?

Yeah, just field empty vehicles and reserve the Warriors.

I'm not actually too familiar with Craftworlds, but every vehicle in the DE side of your army can deep strike - take advantage of it! If you're against an alpha strike list or something with enough long-range shooting that you can't safely cross the board, deploy an anchor unit on the board and reserve everything else. We don't really have expendable units like cultists so bubblewrapping isn't the ideal solution.

Do you have a Talos or something similar available? I've seen those used as minimal deployment anchors, though your Craftworld stuff can fill that role too. Alternatively (and even better) consider taking the Scalpel Squadron - that will let you deploy absolutely nothing on the board, same as a drop pod army. If you're against an alpha strike list use then to null deploy, or against a more standard army deploy normally and hope for those D3 first blood points.

You can also "circle the wagons." You place raiders with AV11 facing out in a box/circle. In the middle of this rectangle of AV11, you place your warriors at 2" spacing so that the pods have nowhere to land inside the circle. Therefore, he has to deploy his pods against empty av 11. On your turn 2 (or 1) you load the warriors into the remaining raiders and zoom off leaving him with nothing to shoot at.

You can also spam 5 man venom squads backed up by a beefy haemonculus covens unit. Hell, even a wraith knight. Sure he'll pod in and kill 3 of them, but there are like, 8 more where that came from and he's going to be flat footed the rest of the game since he's moving 6" per turn.

DE aren't great against pods, but generally castling up helps. If you have Warp Spiders and decent LoS blockers then you can no-deploy everything else. Also consider taking a fortification, Bunker+Comms would work well if reserving stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ether wrote:
You can also "circle the wagons." You place raiders with AV11 facing out in a box/circle. In the middle of this rectangle of AV11, you place your warriors at 2" spacing so that the pods have nowhere to land inside the circle. Therefore, he has to deploy his pods against empty av 11. On your turn 2 (or 1) you load the warriors into the remaining raiders and zoom off leaving him with nothing to shoot at.

Raiders are armour 10. The only armour 11 DE have is Ravagers whch are a bit expensive to use in that fashion.

So my two mates are looking at drop pod list/allies, one is a flesh tearers allied drop pod formation and the other is a dedicated space wolf drop pod list. They both seem to be under the impression you can assault from deepstrike the turn you arrive. I know some marine formations have it as a special rule but do these two have it?

Nowhere near my rule books or codex for another few days and it's gonna be doing my head in until I find out

Klowny wrote:
So my two mates are looking at drop pod list/allies, one is a flesh tearers allied drop pod formation and the other is a dedicated space wolf drop pod list. They both seem to be under the impression you can assault from deepstrike the turn you arrive. I know some marine formations have it as a special rule but do these two have it?

Nowhere near my rule books or codex for another few days and it's gonna be doing my head in until I find out

No those detachments don't let you assault from a drop pod

Legend, thanks mate!

 CrownAxe wrote:

Klowny wrote:
So my two mates are looking at drop pod list/allies, one is a flesh tearers allied drop pod formation and the other is a dedicated space wolf drop pod list. They both seem to be under the impression you can assault from deepstrike the turn you arrive. I know some marine formations have it as a special rule but do these two have it?

Nowhere near my rule books or codex for another few days and it's gonna be doing my head in until I find out

No those detachments don't let you assault from a drop pod

I think there is only one formation that will let you assault from DROP PODS, and it's owned by Blood Angels (Angel's Fury I think, the formation with three Stormravens). There are formations that let Assault and Vanguard Marines assault from reserve, however, but these units are not in drop pods.

A detachment will have to be specific about assaulting from reserves to assault from a drop pod

Reserving units is not only a great counter for Drop Pod assaults, as you can can simply come on from your back board edge and blast your opponent's in-the-open Marines with Shruiken/Splinter fire, but it's also a great idea for Dark Eldar in general as you can keep them safe out of harm's way until they get some decent bonuses from Power from Pain. Allying in an Autarch is also a great tactic as it helps you bring on units you really need in, and keep away units you don't want in until they've got another bonus from PfP.

Nope. Models can't ordinarily assault the turn they arrive from reserves. Drop pods often cause confusion because they are Open Topped, which would ordinarily allow that if they hadn't come on from reserve.

Or grey knights with their termies and paladins with HQ deep striking. Another bane for eldar because our toughness 6 and 8 don't last against thunder hammers and lightning claws. So even a wraithknight can not anchor. The lack of invuln saves really hurt these mobile armies. My best advice will be to find something that you can threaten with a pawn so they have to make a choice,, save the unit being threatened or strike your open units. I found placing 10 ranger at my opponents board edge done this great against 3 imperial knights.

WK can anchor against GK fine. What are you talking about?

if your an imperial one solution could be the new firespear strikeforce, huddle around them for protection, take the blow of his pods and then smash them apart, but in general the idea is to make the army take up as little space as possible, drop pod armies sacrifice their ability to hand out damage to lots of targets at once in a small area to tackle foes all over the place. by packing in you negate his firepower, then it is he who much pick and choose what to kill and should he fail you have the advantage.

huddle around things with good shooting and interceptor to keep them alive the longest he has to work through the rest of your army to get tot ehm and this lets you project his pods into the interceptor shots.

from here you push out, should he decide to go for objectives instead of killing you push out and motion to counter or table once his initial wave is spent, his second wave will be mostly full of chaffe and bad follow ons so you can probably wether the storm of turn 2 deepstrikes or more drop pods.