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I am wanting to make a all drop pod army allied with Scions possibly. I am trying to do a quick strike force. I used to Play only drop Guard back in the day i'd like to continue as best I could.

What is the best rules set t use ? Iron hands with unkillable Lord ? Kantor List ?

Do I do 6 tactical squads and 3 stern guard units and then Scions ?
Or just Stern guard units?

Thanks just wondering I have been out of it for a bit.

As for Drop Pod marines, there are a couple chapters that do it better.

Salamanders, with their flamer specialty are a really good choice.

Imperial Fists are really good if you are going to be running that many bolt guns. And if you are going with sternguard bring in Pedro. Pedro has some great rules

If you want to put guard allies in the pods you will need to go with the fast attack slot drop pods from Space Wolves, or Blood Angels. I think BA have the FA pods anyway.

Of the two I would go with Blood Angels. Their tac squads can take heavy flamers and they are better on a charge.

Although, if you drop pod in close to the enemy, there is a good chance you will get charged. so having counter attack (space wolves) will benefit. But counter attack is only on certain units I believe.

So I think pedro and lots of stern guard and Tact squads would be good like 6-9 units ?

Alternative is taking 3 full tac squads, 2 full stern and combat squading.

Pedro doesn't do anything for sternguard anymore. Don't bring him. If you want to use Sternguard the best chapter tactics are the Ultramarines. They are currently the only way to buff Sternguard shooting in the dex without psychic powers. As a matter of fact they have the only psyker that can buff sternguard shooting in the dex anyways. Lol.

Top level competitive pod lists stop and end with Blood Angels, Ultramarines, and Iron Fists.

If you don't care about competitiveness then please, use whatever chapter you want and don't worry about it too much. In the end all marines are the same.

I vote yes on Pedro and tac squads/stern guard.

A good boost to go with drop pod armies is flyers. Stormtalons are cheap and effective models, and pretty good at taking out or threatening other flyers.

And since a reserve heavy army really needs to get a 4 on the strategic traits table, dont make Pedro your warlord. You will lose his static warlord trait (which kind of sucks anyway) but you will be able to roll 2 dice for that precious 4 result. Gives you +1 to seize and reroll for reserves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hyozanman wrote:
Pedro doesn't do anything for sternguard anymore. Don't bring him. If you want to use Sternguard the best chapter tactics are the Ultramarines. They are currently the only way to buff Sternguard shooting in the dex without psychic powers. As a matter of fact they have the only psyker that can buff sternguard shooting in the dex anyways. Lol.

Top level competitive pod lists stop and end with Blood Angels, Ultramarines, and Iron Fists.

If you don't care about competitiveness then please, use whatever chapter you want and don't worry about it too much. In the end all marines are the same.

You know what. you may be right about Pedro, I guess we just play with a house rule that turns those old statements that made a unit scoring and turned them in to ObSec, but RAW that wouldn't play out.
So perhaps Pedro is a no go. A generic Space Marine Chapter master with artificer armor and a(n) storm shield/eternal shield + whatever weapon you want is always a great combo.

Or! Just bring a chaplain with an auspex. 95 points to reduce a cover save by 1. And it unlocks the command squad. A command squad with 4 meltaguns in a drop pod is 175 points.

You can run 15 pods at 1850 with blood angels.

What do you take in a 15 drop pod army for blood angels ?

you can do something similar with Space Wolves

I built a 12 pod 12 psyker list for funsies

15 Drop pod blood angels looks something like:

Flesh Tearers Strike Force:

Sang priest, auspex,
4x Tactical Marines, heavy flamer, drop pod
3x Stren Guard, drop pod
5x Assault squads, 2x Melta, 1x combi melta, drop pod
1x Assault Squad, 2x Melta, drop pod
2x Devs, Drop pod

People underrate Kantor. Yes he is squishy, but he does A LOT to buff those around him. And yes, he does give ObSec to Sternguard, which is very good fun. Imperial Fists/Crimson Fists tactics suit drop pod armies very well, especially one with lots of Sternies and tacs. Seeing as marines miss on a one or a two, the ability to re-roll ones on ALL bolt weapons (but not Spec Ammo) is extremely useful in any circumstance.

For a bit of fun try a all pod + Sternguard list with Kantor: unbound but all units have ObSec, meaning you can laugh all day as your pods appear, clean an objective and leave some tough Sternguard kicking around to hold it. Add a libby or chappy for extra fun, and also a dread or two and a Thunderfire and you have a fluffy yet effective drop list. Flyers ice the cake too auspexes can be pretty nice too sometimes...

The Blood Angels variants are strong as well (that's what I play normally) but have a different style. The OP mentions lots of tacs and Sternguard, and imho Crimson Fists is perfect for this. BA for me is normally about using drop pods in conjunction with assault based units on the ground, especially as their main strength is their charge.