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The opponent I fight most uses a battle company in drop pods. I was just wandering what some generally good ways to defend against them are. The armies I use most are Blood Angels and Death Korps of Krieg

Mech angels hardish counter drop pods. They drop in and kill your valuable Rhinos. If they are using grav, they literally can't explode them, so you can hide behind the wreckage. You can hide your jump pack retaliation force behind the Rhinos as well. I've actually tabled a skyhammer list before.

Thanks for the quick reply Martel and that sounds good. My recent list uses Rhinos so I should be able to pull that off

Really one of the only methods I've seen is either castle in a corner with lots of terrain, forcing him to either scatter or deepstrike where you want him to, or if he has specific stuff (suicide meltas, grav guys) feed him stuff he can't hurt (conscript blobs into his meltas or grav guns).

 jreilly89 wrote:
Really one of the only methods I've seen is either castle in a corner with lots of terrain, forcing him to either scatter or deepstrike where you want him to, or if he has specific stuff (suicide meltas, grav guys) feed him stuff he can't hurt (conscript blobs into his meltas or grav guns).

He uses a lot of grav so my death Korps will probably have an easier job defending against him.With the DKoK, I was considering bubble wrapping my artillery pieces with my infantry and placing my cavalry in places where they can charge after he deploys his pods. I also have small squads of storm troopers with plasma guns in centaurs which would be great against him, but they could also work as great distractions to get him in places for my artillery to bombard him

Nothing say 'FU podded Marines' like the remaining half of a BA squad charging them with a Power Sword.

Not the most effective, sure, but you typically enjoy your revenge.

My simple strategy is to keep my whole army close together (bunkered I guess) expendables out. That way when he drops, it is half his army vs all of mine. Yes I suffer casualties, but generally my next turn smokes whatever he put down. I must admit, two of our six players love the drop pod army, and its not because of effectiveness. They just don't want to be bothered with the tactics of placement and movement. They want to buy a unit and put it on the table exactly where it will do the most good, then roll dice. I find it a cop out to some extent, but hey all tactics are viable and that's just my opinion. In two dozen games I've never seen a drop pod army get more than one movement from their pods...(snore).

Go ahead and throw coteaz in a 50 man blob with plasma guns and las cannons and bubble wrap your whole army with it setting up in a corner. pretty good chance you will get to shoot everything in that 50 man at multiple drop pod units. In fact - it's such a strong counter he will be forced to forgo alpha strike all together. It's reasons like these that I actually consdier AM a viable army.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Go ahead and throw coteaz in a 50 man blob with plasma guns and las cannons and bubble wrap your whole army with it setting up in a corner. pretty good chance you will get to shoot everything in that 50 man at multiple drop pod units. In fact - it's such a strong counter he will be forced to forgo alpha strike all together. It's reasons like these that I actually consdier AM a viable army.

He's technically a LoW, but Azreal is really fun for this. He gives the unit he joins 4++, FNP within 3" of an objective, and Stubborn. It's 200 points plus a CAD or Allied Detachment, but damn is it funny

Krieg can't have blobs, but your squads can't run from shooting casualties. This goes for heavy wpn too, so he'll have wipe squads to get behind whatever they are bubble wrapping or to get rid of a well hidden special weapon. Another cheap nasty suprise you can have are engineers with demo charges

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Go ahead and throw coteaz in a 50 man blob with plasma guns and las cannons and bubble wrap your whole army with it setting up in a corner. pretty good chance you will get to shoot everything in that 50 man at multiple drop pod units. In fact - it's such a strong counter he will be forced to forgo alpha strike all together. It's reasons like these that I actually consdier AM a viable army.

He's technically a LoW, but Azreal is really fun for this. He gives the unit he joins 4++, FNP within 3" of an objective, and Stubborn. It's 200 points plus a CAD or Allied Detachment, but damn is it funny

Trust me if I had the time to build 200 infantry I would be running some IG shenanigans.

Interceptor on my broadsides and riptides with the drone net.

Positioning during deployment. Recall the following:

Drop pods, with doors closed, are roughly 4 inches in width with its doors closed A drop pod is longer with doors open, and the doors count as part of the hull. A drop pod, including its doors, has to stay at least 1 inch away from your stuff, as do the disembarking units.

Let your opponent go first and deploy accordingly. Remember that unit coherency is 2 inches from model to model. Exploit that.

Recall also that drop pods move the minimum distance to avoid mishaps if they land on things like terrain or enemy units, but not if they scatter off the table. If they scatter off of the table, they mishap. Again, deploy in a way to exploit these facts.

Deploy so that he drops where you want him to and so that the alpha strike is mitigated to acceptable levels, and you are in a good position to counterstrike on your own turn.

Bharring wrote:
Nothing say 'FU podded Marines' like the remaining half of a BA squad charging them with a Power Sword.

Not the most effective, sure, but you typically enjoy your revenge.

Why half?

 Traditio wrote:
Positioning during deployment. Recall the following:

Drop pods, with doors closed, are roughly 4 inches in width with its doors closed A drop pod is longer with doors open, and the doors count as part of the hull. A drop pod, including its doors, has to stay at least 1 inch away from your stuff, as do the disembarking units.

Odds are his opponent will ergo deploy them with pods closed. Lost storm bolter shots ain't worrying him

Half because a podded Tac squad kitted to kill Tacs might kill the other half before it gets charged.

I'm cowering behind a rhino hull. They ain't shooting anything. Basically I'm exploiting melta's utter failure in 7th and the awesomeness of grav spamming. It's even awesomer when I've got grav bikers hiding out as well.

I just fill the board with cheap troops. Maxed out grot mobs are good for area denial.
I'd just set a picket with the DKoK troops and have a mobile counter assault ready.

Krieg guardsmen are more expensive than normal guardsmen, cheap troops is not that much of an option.

Put the expensive stuff he wants to alpha strike in reserve, and use them to murder him in turn 2+?

Deny them a landing area for the pods with units. And actually having stuff there that likes them to be in their face.