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I played my first game against a drop pod assault army two days ago. It was a slaughter. I was playing Grey Knights/Smurfs, my opponent was running with space wolves. His list was focused around one simple idea; Nothing but wolfguard with combi-meltas or plasmas (and a few named heroes).

So I was forced to go first, which as far as I understand, means that I have to sit with my thumb up my ass with nothing to shoot at, wasting my first turn. Needless to say, When 40 wolf guard, double tapping combi-plasmas hit the table, I lost more than half my army to the volley of AP2 shooting, even with cover saves. He killed 10 GK termies, Coteaz (for FB and slay the warlord), a land raider, 10 man GK strike squad, and a dreadnought.

Aside from throwing my dice across the table, is there any tactic other than turtling behind ADL and crossing your fingers?

Also,
He had a single scout squad that was using outflank. In a drop pod list, do all of his squads have to be in pods, or was it ok for him to hold that squad in reserve as well.

Yes, you can castle up in a corner. If he has not blast weapons or even template weapons to speak of, reducing your foot print will cause him to run out of places to drop effectively faster. Also note that he only gets to unload on you with 5/9 or 6/11 of his units on the drop turn.

I'm pretty certain that the scout squad would have had to be deployed as it is not immune to the deployment rules as the drop troops are.

This is a good example of why terminators are bad, even GK ones. If he had been forced to target regular marines, he would have been killing 14 pt guys, not 40 or whatever. Bring more bullet catchers and use the bullet catchers to keep the pods away from stuff you care about: bubble wrapping.

Was everything else in a pod?

If so that wolf scout squad HAD to start on the table due to reserves rules.

As a Grey Knight army you have two of the most powerful options for dealing with pods:

Warp quake and coteaz. Warp quake punishes him if he drops right next to you, and I do believe coteaz has a nifty rule you may have missed out on....

I didn't miss out on the coteaz rule, sadly, my interception shots did little more than take out 2-3 marines due to some pretty good saves.


I did not think of warp quake though. That will work nicely the next time I run into this list. thanks!

Martel732 wrote:
I'm pretty certain that the scout squad would have had to be deployed as it is not immune to the deployment rules as the drop troops are.

nobody wrote:
Was everything else in a pod?

If so that wolf scout squad HAD to start on the table due to reserves rules.

These are both wrong. Assuming everything else in Pods, you are left with one unit. 1 divided by 2 rounded up gives you 1 unit you can reserve.

All the important rules for Reserves you need to know:The short of it is that all his units in Drop Pods (including Independent Characters) get ignored for the purposes of counting how many units you are allowed to put in Reserve. If he built his list the way I'm assuming, that left just a single Wolf Scout unit. Half of one, rounding up is one: so he is allowed to put one unit in Reserve and only his Wolf Scouts count so he gets to put them in Reserve and deploy nothing.

Drop Pods allow you to do a null-deployment. There are other ways to achieve it (Cron-Air) but you'll auto-lose the game. Drop Pod Assault is the rule that makes it all possible, by guaranteeing that you get half your Drop Pods in the first turn. Otherwise with no units on the table at the start of the Game Turn (as opposed to his Player Turn)...


As for what you could have done: Hold some of your GK in reserve or roll better. What was your army list? How many units capable of Deep Strike did you have? Could you have potentially Outflanked anything or have any units in Transports so they can move quickly onto the board? How did Coteaz fair give I've Been Expecting You should have triggered for multiple Wolf Guard units that came in (if you positioned your units right).

More details on your list and the lay of the land would help to figure out what happened. Honestly, it sounds like there was a combination of good rolling on his part and play mistakes on yours due to being unfamiliar with how to handle a massive Drop Pod Assault. I'll be honest, its one of the reasons I play Drop Pods: very few people know how to handle that much pressure being shoved down their throat on Turn 1. So I hope you don't take that as an insult.

I don't know how to deal with drop pods, but I just wanted to point out if your opponent only has one unit on the board and the rest in drop pods, and you kill that one unit, according to raw you've tabled him and you win automatically.

At the end of the game turn no?

But yeah warp quake, bubblewrap the LR also you can reserve your self if you are confident that the things on the table wont die till T2

Huh, it had always been explained to me that the requirement was that if you had one unit that did not have to start in reserves it had to start on the board...good to know

 Desubot wrote:
At the end of the game turn no?

But yeah warp quake, bubblewrap the LR also you can reserve your self if you are confident that the things on the table wont die till T2

That's a good question. I'll stars a thread in the rules section so this one doesn't go off topic too much.

[quote=cowmonaut 559679 6184808 c7e12ca7b6fafb108b703e06bfed000b.png

As for what you could have done: Hold some of your GK in reserve or roll better. What was your army list? How many units capable of Deep Strike did you have? Could you have potentially Outflanked anything or have any units in Transports so they can move quickly onto the board? How did Coteaz fair give I've Been Expecting You should have triggered for multiple Wolf Guard units that came in (if you positioned your units right).

More details on your list and the lay of the land would help to figure out what happened. Honestly, it sounds like there was a combination of good rolling on his part and play mistakes on yours due to being unfamiliar with how to handle a massive Drop Pod Assault. I'll be honest, its one of the reasons I play Drop Pods: very few people know how to handle that much pressure being shoved down their throat on Turn 1. So I hope you don't take that as an insult.

On the subject of land raiders (and vehicles in general), smoke is your friend. Don't forget that 5+ cover save!

 Happyjew wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'm pretty certain that the scout squad would have had to be deployed as it is not immune to the deployment rules as the drop troops are.

nobody wrote:
Was everything else in a pod?

If so that wolf scout squad HAD to start on the table due to reserves rules.

These are both wrong. Assuming everything else in Pods, you are left with one unit. 1 divided by 2 rounded up gives you 1 unit you can reserve.

Right. I use regular reserves so infrequently that I forgot that it rounds to 1.


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triant308 wrote:
[quote=cowmonaut 559679 6184808 c7e12ca7b6fafb108b703e06bfed000b.png

As for what you could have done: Hold some of your GK in reserve or roll better. What was your army list? How many units capable of Deep Strike did you have? Could you have potentially Outflanked anything or have any units in Transports so they can move quickly onto the board? How did Coteaz fair give I've Been Expecting You should have triggered for multiple Wolf Guard units that came in (if you positioned your units right).

More details on your list and the lay of the land would help to figure out what happened. Honestly, it sounds like there was a combination of good rolling on his part and play mistakes on yours due to being unfamiliar with how to handle a massive Drop Pod Assault. I'll be honest, its one of the reasons I play Drop Pods: very few people know how to handle that much pressure being shoved down their throat on Turn 1. So I hope you don't take that as an insult.

Not insulted at all. i most certainly misplayed my hand due to my lack of familiarity. For example I moved my land raider flat out to try and get it across the table to unload the termies inside and claim an objective. needless to say, it and everyone inside died horribly.

Drop pods, do however, piecemeal your list. The OP needs to take advantage of this while minimizing turn 1 damage. If drop pod lists don't do huge damage turn 1, they are at a disadvantage for the rest of the game against a list that didn't reserve. I'm not sure I'd recommend reserves as the counter to drop pod assault, because then you are evening the odds back up

The best thing you can do, in my experience, when dealing with these lists is to place all of your armor in a rear corner. Then layer your infantry around them until there is no possible way for him to get within melta range. Once that is done, it is a matter of waiting for him to hit the board and get his licks in.

If you were going to play again, I would run coteaz with 3 MM servitors attached as a minimum. Then add in a couple of those joakaero monkeys as well. Finish it off with 3 warrior acolytes with plasma so you have more than enough AP 2 shooting at every unit arriving via drop pod. Then, to add insult to injury, have coteaz manning the Icarus for one last interceptor shot.

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not sure I'd recommend reserves as the counter to drop pod assault, because then you are evening the odds back up

Why not? It was the hard counter to the list in 5th edition. That only changed because the Reserve rules changed.

I think the hard counter is just being able to take the damage then eradicate the drop podders on your subsequent turn. I don't see how trying to play the drop podder's game, only inferior, is any kind of counter.

Back when BA could fight, drop lists never worked against my BA lists.

It's so simple you are overlooking it: Units in Drop Pods need to get in close to the enemy before they get shot at. By close I mean under 12". All the Special Weapons that they can take aren't effective outside of that range. Meltaguns (6") and Flamers (8") need to be under that. Hell, their normal weapon isn't effective outside of that range, what with being Rapid Fire.

So in 5th Edition you put your entire army in Reserve when you faced a Drop Pod list. None of your Vehicles got melted by Melta, none of your hard troops died to volumes of AP 2 or Templates. You start rolling your Reserves on Turn 2, not getting all of your units. But hey! You usually were a Vehicle or in a Vehicle and had weapons that had some range on them. Your opponent likely only has an 18" threat range (6" movement + 12" range) and you are sticking 24" or further away, what with most Vehicle mounted weapons being 36" or 48".

Suddenly you are the one able to shoot the enemy before he has an opportunity to hurt you. Sometimes for multiple turns.

You took away the enemy's entire edge; their strength. That's why its a hard counter. You aren't playing their game, you are denying them the opportunity to play theirs.

If you don't believe me, well that's fine. Can only lead a horse to water and all that. Can't do it all out anymore in any event. The best we can do is to Reserve key units and bubble wrap the rest. By taking Drop Pods the enemy has forced us into a defensive posture and has effectively taken control of the board before the game has begun. You now have to take control back from him. He's dictated the terms of the game, but he relies too much on that initial strike.

Okay. I can see that now. I really, really hated the reserve rules in 5th and so I rarely used them, even with DoA. Of course, I could assault Space Puppies at init 5 then, so I *wanted* them right next to me unable to assault themselves.

I play Drop Pods, and NOTHING is more saddening than seeing an opponent who is savvy enough to Reserve half his army. (Especially the parts that are vulnerable to my initial strike, like non-skimmer vehicles.)

Deploying in area cover can help the half of your army that has to stay on the table, especially if it's AP 2 fire that's worrying you.

Castling works too, especially if you can stack up in such a way that it's hard to bring more than one pod down in a good position.

But honestly, Warp Quake and Coteaz should be enough to handle a Drop Pod list. I'm really, genuinely surprised to see you say you had trouble against it. Before the new Eldar 'dex dropped I even took an Eldar detachment to a tourney just to have some kind of protection against Warp Quake.

In any event, if you have any specific questions about how to adjust your tactics against Drop Pods, I'd be happy to answer them via PM. Hope the answers in this thread help!

Why do you care if they reserve half their army? That let's you take on the other half piecemealed.

I think the reason you'd reserve vs DPA is so that you prevent your most threatening weapons from being destroyed on turn 1, particularly if your turn is second. Yes, your units come in piecemeal thereafter, but is it better to arrive late and have a chance to do something, or arrive on time and be destroyed before you can do anything?

Bubble wrapping is superior, I think, because then the most dangerous weapons can fire on turn 1, or turn 2 without having to roll to arrive.

What is better (bubble wrapping or reserving) should be decided depending on composition of Your army. In last tourney I've reserved everything I could in my army and won the game easily. Regarding GK they have some psychic power to bring reserves more easily so it can also be helpful.

 khorneeq wrote:
What is better (bubble wrapping or reserving) should be decided depending on composition of Your army. In last tourney I've reserved everything I could in my army and won the game easily. Regarding GK they have some psychic power to bring reserves more easily so it can also be helpful.

...and composition of your opponent's army. And there's no reason you can't use both. Staying flexible is one of the keys to competitive victories.

If you bubble wrap and not use reserves, you'll have way more to shoot back at the drop pod army.