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Hi to all space marine players, is a drop pod with a tactical squad in worth having? Or should I invest in scouts or devestator squads? What are your experiences with drop pods and tactical squads since chapter approved? Thanks.

Full disclosure: I’ve not fielded mine since the new codex dropped.

They have a niche back; the first turn drop. The question is what it’s worth the points to drop? Most competitive people will tell you “nothing”. You are better off just investing in big guns and power units. What chapter you play can have a big impace of this . Some chapters (Salamanders) benefit from dispersed heavy weapons. Others (UM, IH) can fire heavies on the drop more effectively. With the right successor CTs you can drop into flamer range.

Things that might do better in a pod:
Dev squads with grav cannons
Company vets w/plasma
Sternguard

Putting a tac squad in a pod is not the best use of points, but it’s not useless. It gives you a blob of ObSec wounds you can slap down most anywhere on the table. The tac squad is an iconic part of the army, and the drop pod obital strike is an important part of how they do battle. When putting together themed lists, it’s a way to get troops for a battalion without bending your restrictions too much. Your army on the table might be a fast moving strike force, but once battle is met, reinforcements slam down from orbit.

And there are tricks you can pull with pods. They are still a chunk of wounds that need to be killed. If they are closer to your foe then your characters, your HQs can’t be shot. You can do LoS/board control things with them; they are large objects taking up space.

I would not recommend them to a new player (unless they really loved that part of the lore). If you don’t have any scouts or Devs, get them first. Scouts are low cost troops that have nice deployment rules and can grab objectives and screen your forces. Devs let you bring some heavy firepower, and a number of options for other squads (take spare tac bodies and build ALL the guns). Plus pods are a nightmare to assemble and paint.

Play a few games. Think about if a pod fits your style. It might. I enjoy mine and take them out from time to time. But I generally play more casual lists. Marines are a toolbox army. We’ve got a unit that does just about everything, with a lot of overlap. Figuring out what fits your style is important. There are more viable marine lists then there are players (until you start getting to the top-table competitive level, where you need to squeeze every drop of efficiency out of your list). Find what works for you and makes for a fun game with your opponent.

As Nevelon says, you have to use the right units in them AND use the Pods themselves to pull sneaky tricks, like keeping Characters protected or even creating a screen against melee units.

I think they are worth it, but most agree they need a points drop. 50ppm total seems about right to me.

I am actually excited about using the to "drop in" my DW Watch Master and a unit of Intercessors with some Hellblasters and an Inceptor.
And yes, I know Primaris cannot be "in" the Pod, but the Watch Master can and he can have the Beacon Angelis to teleport those Primaris in front of him. So you deploy the Intercessor unit out of LoS, drop in the Pod with WM and use the Beacon.
It's a good way to get the WM midfield to better support other units moving forward (like a few other Fortis units Advancing with Aggressors) and brings the RF weapons into ideal range on Turn 1.

This, of course, is only 1 Pod and by no means meta breaking, but it will be fun and could be a surprise for a few opponents.

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Cheers lads that's some great advice and tips! yeah I'm definitely still figuring out what type of play style I want and what works for me, they seem like a fun and cool thing to use and even tho like you say maybe not competitive I'd imagine you could definitely cause some problems.
Also do you think terminators are worth adding to your list or costly?

samrobo1234 wrote:
Cheers lads that's some great advice and tips! yeah I'm definitely still figuring out what type of play style I want and what works for me, they seem like a fun and cool thing to use and even tho like you say maybe not competitive I'd imagine you could definitely cause some problems.
Also do you think terminators are worth adding to your list or costly?

As always, they pay a premium to be OK at a lot of things in a game that rewards specialization. Do they want to shoot? Be in CC? Is it worth paying for the 2+ save when so many things ignore it? Or the extra wound when there are 2D+ weapons out there?

All that said, they are probably in the best place they have been since 2nd edition. Caveat to that statement: they sucked HARD in some of the intervening years, so better then they have been is not necessarily “good”

But now that we have all the official warnings out of the way in case some mathhammer min/max person comes in to tell you how bad they are...

I love the old guys. Sure, you pay a lot to be kinda mediocre at a lot of things. Or, more politely, “Tactically Flexible” Stormbolters actually put out some Dakka, they get a respectable number of swings with their fists due to the new codex.

The assault variants, and different flavors also have some nice points. I would not go all-in and spam them. But sticking a squad in your list isn’t going to cripple you. Especially on a friendly table at the local game store, where unit selection is also weighted buy the rule of cool and how well someone painted something, rather than point efficiency.

Yeah that makes sense man, basically I'm building a 1750 point army pretty much from scratch with the tactical marines being my first buy about a year ago (that's why I'm trying to fit them in somewhere) so I bought a drop pod to not make them go to waist, so far my army is-

Ultramarine army list


HQ                                                     points

Warlord
Marneus calgar                                 200

HQ

Primaris librarian.                               90
Power sword.                                       4
Bolt pistol
Frag & Krak grenades

ELITES

Vectrix honour guard X2                    60
Storm shields X2                                  4
Power swords X2                                 8

Redemptor dreadnought.                  105
Heavy onslaught Gatling canon        30
Icarus rocket pod.                                 6
Storm bolter X2.                                    4

HEAVY SUPPORT

Centurion devestator squad X3.      120
Heavy bolter X6.                                   60
Hurricane bolter x3.                             30


TROOPS

Intercessor squad x10                        190
Sgt
Power fist.                                                9
Bolt rifle

Squad
Bolt rifle x9

Tactical squad x10.                             120
Sgt
Power fist.                                               9
Melita bombs.                                        5
Bolt gun

Squad
Missile launcher.                                  20
Flamer.                                                    6
X7 boltguns

DEDICATED TRANSPORT

Drop pod X1.                                         63
Storm bolter.                                          2



                                                                1145


Any tips or nice units to add to reach that 1750 mark would be helpful, thanks.

Only two units will do anything out of a Drop Pod, and that's either Sternguard or Devastators.

One point on lists: Just unit totals for points, not individual points. Helps keep GW’s lawyers away.

If you are going with Ultras, it might be worth going with Tigirius, rather then a regular librarian. You get a lot for the extra points.

Lt.s are good for the wound re-rolls if you are looking to add another HQ.

You want a 3rd troop. There are pros and cons to all the options. But get one for the command points you get for unlocking a battalion.

Multiple small units are generally better. Large units make better use of buffs and stratagems. So it’s not 100%. Just most of the time. You could field the intercessors a 2x5 man squads to fill slots without having to pick up another unit.

You are light on AV firepower. Generally that means adding more lascannons, but there are other options, depending on what you like. Massed mid strength firepower gets a lot of jobs done, especially with re-rolls. But for hard targets it hard to beat S9 multi damage weapons.

I would say one metagame gimmick would be the tremendous footprint that a drop pod has with the doors down.

I don’t have the measurement handy, but if we estimate a 10” circle, and enemy models can’t get within 1” without assaulting, then 6x 65 pts = 390 points to put a 6’ wall across the board.

A single pod would deny deep striking within a 28” diameter circle. 6 of them *might* be able to prevent deep strike, at all, certainly combined with scout squads they could probably deny any deep strike location on the board.

Maintain for three turns? Maybe not... but you could potentially auto-Destroy units held in reserve.

Lulz, and if someone castles in a corner, you slam the pods down doubled up so they can’t leave their initial deployment some.

Haha yeah no problems, I'll reorganization the points in that case.

Ah okay so tigerus would be a better choice for the extra points? I'll look into getting him.

I have looked at Lt.s that might be a good shout. With calgar rerolling hits and Lt. With wounds!

And I was thinking maybe another 10 intercessors and a dev sqd with 4 las cannons and a Sgt or a few predators or something?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yeah that's a really good way of looking at and using drop pods! To be honest I never thought about not allowing your opponent to deep strike but if it was going to be done then drop pods would be ideal. Thanks mate that's some good information!

I have been using drop pods all of 8th edition. I love me, did when they were t2, now they are just amazing. I normally run 3, 2 for protecting devistators if I don't go first and 1 for a frontline harrassment unit filled with sternguard for targets of opportunity/ chaff clearing shenanigans.

Depending on your opponent it can really make or break a game. My normal guard opponent hates them, he simply has no way of protecting his russ tank commanders and pask from the Las cannon team or the grav cannon team normally. If you face genestealer cults you can really mess them up with drop denial since you come in before they do and can simply "position" your army t1 so whatever is coming in is coming in where you want them to.

Nice thanks for the advice! What do you equipt your stern guard with? And how big of a squad do you put in it?

I run my sternguard with their default special bolsters. Your paying more per guy for them, why mess with it? And they are pretty effective with a full squad of 10 and their special strat.

Okay cool I think that will be my next buy then, cheers