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the_scotsman wrote:
Salamanders doesn't do much of anything for the Skyhammer. Sure you can put a couple flamer pods down but twin linked flamers rarely do that much more.

Honestly I just think you're gimping yourself power wise with a pod list. You're going to run up against a lot of lists you just can't touch.

Care to explain why a Drop Pod list would not go well with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force with 2x Devestator Squads Dropping in, along with 2x Assault Squads? Seems to me a Drop Pod list makes the most sense in that regard.

Foot-Slogging wouldn't work with this, basically leaving me with a Mechanized Assault list to go with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force. Unless you can suggest something else.

 Ironwolf45 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Salamanders doesn't do much of anything for the Skyhammer. Sure you can put a couple flamer pods down but twin linked flamers rarely do that much more.

Honestly I just think you're gimping yourself power wise with a pod list. You're going to run up against a lot of lists you just can't touch.

Care to explain why a Drop Pod list would not go well with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force with 2x Devestator Squads Dropping in, along with 2x Assault Squads? Seems to me a Drop Pod list makes the most sense in that regard.

Foot-Slogging wouldn't work with this, basically leaving me with a Mechanized Assault list to go with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force. Unless you can suggest something else.

Simple: Try finding an opponent willing to face off against it.

This formation would pair up nicely with my Inq/SOB conclaves in land raiders. Those units just need something to tie down a unit or two that are threats to the Land Raiders for one turn, then the conclaves are in you lines and gg.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Ironwolf45 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Salamanders doesn't do much of anything for the Skyhammer. Sure you can put a couple flamer pods down but twin linked flamers rarely do that much more.

Honestly I just think you're gimping yourself power wise with a pod list. You're going to run up against a lot of lists you just can't touch.

Care to explain why a Drop Pod list would not go well with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force with 2x Devestator Squads Dropping in, along with 2x Assault Squads? Seems to me a Drop Pod list makes the most sense in that regard.

Foot-Slogging wouldn't work with this, basically leaving me with a Mechanized Assault list to go with the Skyhammer Annihilation Force. Unless you can suggest something else.

Simple: Try finding an opponent willing to face off against it.

If that's seriously the only reason you are saying they are not good together then you clearly don't get a lot of games lol. I am doing a Drop Pod list because I have always been a fan of the fluff for one and also I have always been tempted to try out the Salamanders as well. And it's the only formation where Assault Marines are actually worth taking in the regular SM Codex. As it stands I have lists made to run this formation with other aspects for a drop on army with the Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, and the Salamanders chapter tactics. will post them here as soon as I can.

No, because paired with a drop list all you have is an alpha strike.

First, whatever pods you hold over to turn two, you might as well not have at all. The Skyhammer is around 700 points properly equipped. You'll probably have/shoot for 5 more pods. That's at least a 300 point tax you'll be paying in units that won't get to do anything, because every game will be won or lost turn 1.

Next, extra pods do little to alleviate the troubles that the Skyhammer has. Normal pod drops are gonna be either drop-grav, drop-melta, drop-dread (less melta, more melee threat), or drop-flamer (your best option.)

Drop flamer helps you kill hordes, but killing them isn't your concern. If a guard blob prevents your melta from being in range of anything useful and your assault marines from assaulting anything valuable it doesn't matter if your drop flamers waste that 120 points of conscripts-the game is over and you lost.

Drop melta is just more of what you have with Skyhammer. Good at killing expensive vehicles, inefficient at killing cheap transports or MSU, particularly Jinking transports.

A mechanized list that can apply strong ranged pressure turn 1, on the other hand, lets you make up for some of the weaknesses of Skyhammer. Since Skyhammer can come in turn 2, you can use say a predator, land raider Lascannons and some whirlwinds to strip bubble wrap, pop transports and soften up a list that would turn aside your turn 1 Skyhammer so you can bring it in turn two and it'll actually be effective. MSU will still suck to deal with but you at least have ranged tanks capable of sweeping small units and tank shocking them away from objectives.

I have considered a mechanized approach, however not sure what would be the best way to go if I did that if I'm completely honest. When it comes to SM, I have always viewed them as a fast, hard hitting army, while armies like my Militarum Tempestus are a mechanized force. Not saying they can't, but since I'm seriously considering the Salamanders Chapter Tactics for my list, that is why I was leaning towards a Drop Pod list to utilize there rules as much as possible, but I am always up to look into and trying new things.

With that in mind, what are or would be some solid units to field in a mechanized SM force? Might seem like a horribly noob question but I haven't done anything Marine related in a long time so I'm only just starting to catch up.

Fire Raptors! Fire Raptors!

Or stuff like a squad of tri-las predators, a squad of vindicators... everything comes in squadrons now, just pick a rhino variant and buy 3 of them.

Whoops.. I don't know what I'm talking about

A triple squad of WyvernWinds, Land Raider Lascannon Flavor full of flamer packing badasses of some sort, individual Autocannon/Lascannon preds. You want long range enough to provide immediate fire support to the droppers with firepower tooled to popping lighter transports.

Salamanders sky hammer.

2x 10 marines with upgraded sergeant, and 4x multimeltae combat squared. Homing beacon and deathwing launcher on each.

2x 10 man assault squads with the eviscorator and 2x flamers.

Elite space wolf detachment

2x venerable dreads with blizzard shield and axe with smoke launchers and drop pod with deathwing launchers.

1x pod with launcher party ng arjac, 3x as terminators and terminator rune priest done up. Try to get biomancy for endurance and iron arm.

Basically turn 1 the 2x devs land, the assault marines and dreads land with no scatter. The dreads pop smoke, the devs attack anything that can actually hurt the dreads, and assault marines tie up anything that can change the devs.

Turn 2 arjac team lands and really screws with target priority.

Something.

Win.

Homing beacons have to be on the board at start of turn to work.

 Mulletdude wrote:
Whoops.. I don't know what I'm talking about

Welcome to Dakka you'll fit right in!

Ive been playing with pods a lot. Im gonna start going balls out soon. Im gonna start going pod heavy, because my current luke-warm approach has been hit or miss. But I can offer some advice, because it seems thats part of whats being asked.

-Support the pods. Use tfc's or preds to help them out. Deploy those support units so that they'll be in the right position to get a los on the pod force's biggest threats.
-Make a big landing. Bring some full pods. That way they can support each other.
-Choose the right pods to come down first.

I was thinking Dark angels formations with allied skyhammer...

Skyhammer formation with gravs (using whatever vanilla rules, but painted green!!), a large deathwing formation, and possibly a ravenwing formation.

Skyhammer pounds turn 1 while ravenwing moves where you want (ojectives or towards the enemy). Deathwing drops and pounds turn 2 while your opponent is still shaking in fear from the turn 1 beating.

Could be nasty....

Has anyone considered allying Skyhammer to... More Skyhammer?

Personally I'm tempted to pair it off with a Demi-Company, purely because it gives you a Codex Company as it was in Armies of the Imperium (the modern chapter structure for the 'big four' came from the Armies of the Imperium supplement for Epic, but when it finally filtered down to 40k they changed the actual squad ratio in the Battle Companies, and I prefer the symmetry of the original).

 Konrax wrote:

2x 10 marines with upgraded sergeant, and 4x multimeltae combat squared. Homing beacon and deathwing launcher on each.

Basically turn 1 the 2x devs land, the assault marines and dreads land with no scatter.

The model with the beacon must have been on table at the beginning of the turn. It's not there in time if it has just arrived by a drop pod.

I thought this formation would allow me to field BA the way I like them, ie. 3 fragnoughts turn 1 in pods, plus the formation. Put Dante and priest with the assault squads. Think it will be fun.

The addition of a 10th company force of 3 small units of scout bikes with locator beacons who start on the table and infiltrate and then scout move means your beacons start on the table. You can move no closer than 12" from an enemy unit with your scout move IIRC, but the locator beacon combined with at least 8* assault marines on large bases means you now have a virtually assured 1st turn charge.

*1 for the centre, 6 to complete the next ring and then 1 more to start the outer ring as close to the enemy as possible to minimise charge distance. This gives 6" from the beacon and 3.2" worth of bases, meaning if you started 12" away, you must now make a 3" charge on 2 dice, with a re-roll.

And yes, for larger games (2k), a pair of fairly tricked out skyhammer forces would be pretty hilarious, though you might want 2 waves to avoid crowding. Sample list;

Skyhammer #1
230 - 10x ASM, 2x Evicerators, 2x Flamers, Jump packs
230 - 10x ASM, 2x Evicerators, 2x Flamers, Jump packs
325 - 10x Devs, 4x Grav, Pod, Beacon
225 - 10x Devs, 4x Melta, Pod, Beacon

Skyhammer #2
230 - 10x ASM, 2x Evicerators, 2x Flamers, Jump packs
230 - 10x ASM, 2x Evicerators, 2x Flamers, Jump packs
315 - 10x Devs, 4x Grav, Pod
215 - 10x Devs, 4x Melta, Pod

2000

Feel free to shuffle the grav or melta into the first wave with the locator beacons. Still have the option to bring everything down on turn #1 if you want, but the addition of the beacons means your ASM won't scatter if they end up in ongoing reserve from a mishap, so they're not exactly wasted points, and the option to give a no scatter drop to a skyhammer coming in turn 2 is still a powerful tactical choice.

 Drasius wrote:
The addition of a 10th company force of 3 small units of scout bikes with locator beacons who start on the table and infiltrate and then scout move means your beacons start on the table. You can move no closer than 12" from an enemy unit with your scout move IIRC, but the locator beacon combined with at least 8* assault marines on large bases means you now have a virtually assured 1st turn charge.

Just hope you don't go second or get seized on.

 pretre wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
The addition of a 10th company force of 3 small units of scout bikes with locator beacons who start on the table and infiltrate and then scout move means your beacons start on the table. You can move no closer than 12" from an enemy unit with your scout move IIRC, but the locator beacon combined with at least 8* assault marines on large bases means you now have a virtually assured 1st turn charge.

Just hope you don't go second or get seized on.

Getting seized is always a risk but it's not the end of the world as I have a lot of flexibility with this list. That being said, I currently have 3x different lists, each with a different Chapter Tactic To Test out, however does everyone believe that I have to go 10x man with the Devestator Squads or would squads of 5x to 7x guys be alright?

And on a side note a friend brought up to me, what do you guys think of the Skyhammer combined with the Flesh Tearers Formation?

I think 10 Devs is the way to go. Splitting to two units of fire is just too good. The assaults can be 5 though.

Also, which FT formation? The 6 FT one?

Flesh Tearers Formation, where they have 6x FA Slots. Would allow me to field a fluffy Assault Marine Army if I wanted to other then fielding the Raven Guard special character from FW. Either that or maybe combine them with the Deathwing but that would be hard to do as Terminators are expensive.

 Ironwolf45 wrote:
Flesh Tearers Formation, where they have 6x FA Slots. Would allow me to field a fluffy Assault Marine Army if I wanted to other then fielding the Raven Guard special character from FW. Either that or maybe combine them with the Deathwing but that would be hard to do as Terminators are expensive.

I spent hours today building mock lists using the skyhammer, and have come to the conclusion that for a pure drop pod list, nothing really beats just going dual skyhammer if it's allowed. The Flesh Tearers Strike Force, the Battle Company free drop pods, none of it stacks up to what you get out of the skyhammer, and because of that, it doesn't really support the skyhammer very well. You'd think it would, or that you could make a really shooty alpha strike list using the free drop pods from the battle company or something, but it's ultimately too expensive. You'd have other options if you were playing games over 3k points. But in the normal tournament points levels (1850-2000), it's just not efficient. That said, if dual skyhammer is allowed where you play, you could field this list at 1850:

2x 10 Assault Marines: 2 Eviscerators, 2 Flamers in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
2x 10 Assault Marines: Eviscerator & Flamer in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
10 Devastators: 3 Grav Cannons + Grav Amp, 1 Multi-Melta in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
3x 10 Devastators: 4 Multi-Meltas in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)

That gives you 8 pods that arrive on the first turn, 40 assault marines that can charge in turn 1(8 squads), and 40 Devastators that basically destroy face and pin everything turn 1(Also 8 Squads). Since they're 2 seperate formations, I would likely choose imperial fists for the formation with 2 multi-melta dev squads, and against heavy mech, I'd combat squad them into 5 man units that each had 2 multi-meltas, since they'd have tank hunter. Most likely go Ultra Marines with the formation that has the Grav guns.

If your local meta doesn't allow duplicate formations, then I would drop the idea of a pure drop pod list, and use the skyhammer to make another list better. Because of how good the skyhammer formation is, it will pretty much make any list you add it to better.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

 Ironwolf45 wrote:
Flesh Tearers Formation, where they have 6x FA Slots. Would allow me to field a fluffy Assault Marine Army if I wanted to other then fielding the Raven Guard special character from FW. Either that or maybe combine them with the Deathwing but that would be hard to do as Terminators are expensive.

I spent hours today building mock lists using the skyhammer, and have come to the conclusion that for a pure drop pod list, nothing really beats just going dual skyhammer if it's allowed. The Flesh Tearers Strike Force, the Battle Company free drop pods, none of it stacks up to what you get out of the skyhammer, and because of that, it doesn't really support the skyhammer very well. You'd think it would, or that you could make a really shooty alpha strike list using the free drop pods from the battle company or something, but it's ultimately too expensive. You'd have other options if you were playing games over 3k points. But in the normal tournament points levels (1850-2000), it's just not efficient. That said, if dual skyhammer is allowed where you play, you could field this list at 1850:

2x 10 Assault Marines: 2 Eviscerators, 2 Flamers in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
2x 10 Assault Marines: Eviscerator & Flamer in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
10 Devastators: 3 Grav Cannons + Grav Amp, 1 Multi-Melta in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)
3x 10 Devastators: 4 Multi-Meltas in a drop pod (Combat Squaded)

That gives you 8 pods that arrive on the first turn, 40 assault marines that can charge in turn 1(8 squads), and 40 Devastators that basically destroy face and pin everything turn 1(Also 8 Squads). Since they're 2 seperate formations, I would likely choose imperial fists for the formation with 2 multi-melta dev squads, and against heavy mech, I'd combat squad them into 5 man units that each had 2 multi-meltas, since they'd have tank hunter. Most likely go Ultra Marines with the formation that has the Grav guns.

If your local meta doesn't allow duplicate formations, then I would drop the idea of a pure drop pod list, and use the skyhammer to make another list better. Because of how good the skyhammer formation is, it will pretty much make any list you add it to better.

The multi-meltas aren't going to do enough damage to anything other than a wall AV11 vehicles to be worth the points. You can get more DS'ing melta, and cheaper to boot, elsewhere.

ASM are ASM...I wouldn't spend points there under any circumstances.

You get four pods.

The ass marines get jump packs.

the_scotsman wrote:
You get four pods.

The ass marines get jump packs.

No, you can give them pods instead of jump packs.

I'm not sure familiar with how the chapter tactics work with all these different detachments and whatnot. Can you give the Skyhammer the ultramarine's one for ability to use the devastator doctrine and the main CAD White Scars for bike bonuses?

What about something like;

Skyhammer Annihilation Force; Ultramarines?

2 x 5 ASM, jump pack, melta-bombs x 1 = 180
2x 10 Devastators, 4 Grav cannons, drop-pod = 630

CAD. White Scars?

245 Chapter master Facesmasher, powerfist, shield eternal, artificier armor, bike.
412 4 x 3 bikes, 2 grav-guns, sergeant with combi-grav
300 3 Thunderfires
230 2 Storm Talons, skyhammer missiles
-----------
1997

Solid anti-air with the talons. Passable anti-infantry with T-fires, talons, 12 bikes, 20 devastators and the ASM. Anti-armor isn't bad with all the Grav weapons and backup from the talons. Face smasher can stand his gorund against pretty much anything in melee.

The Turn 1 or T2 alpha strike with upwards of 72 grav shots should hopefully cripple all your opponent's scary stuff, leaving you with a decently mobile force to cleanup the rest.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
You get four pods.

The ass marines get jump packs.

No, you can give them pods instead of jump packs.

It says in the formation that they must have jump packs.

This is what I have on my Salamanders right now:

Skyhammer: 10 ASM, with two flamers and one Eviscerator each. PS on the sergeants. Dev squads are 10 man as well, loaded with MMs and a combi-melta on the sergeants.

CAD: Vulkan He'Stan, who rides with HG with PS and a CB in a drop pod. Second elite is full strength Sterngaurd with combi-meltas, also in a pod. Two troops selections are tac squads in drop pods, with MG and MM. Totals up to 2000 points.

Evisceratprs are wasted points, Imo, on 1 attack models. If they were 15 points, maybe, but 25? You'd be better off buying more grav cannons, since they will ruin the vast majority of models in the game.