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So I've been playing pods (and have yet to come close to losing a game) and I'm wondering what are some of the tricks people have seen or used to deal with podders.

Two tricks we've figured out so far are:

Get a big unit, like conscripts, and make a buffer zone around your castle. Then you can't be "feared".

If you're worried about fear, put some vehicles of your own behind you, so you have to fall back sideways to get around them. Keeps you around longer.

Any other tricks?

I think deamon chaos can do it. Fearless units so FOTD is pretty useless, deamons that come in after the drop podders have landed so that they can get the charge. This would work especially well if all of the icons are mounted in rhinos. This way there is no chance of deamons coming out until the drop podder has popped a few rhinos. Who cares if the unit inside it is entangled, when you still can summon deamons off of the icon and they are free to go about their merry way.

I know my EC Chaos list has had great sucess against Lysander wings and other DS style armies for this very reason. Its not even all that deamon heavy.

Deamon hunters seem like they could be pretty effective against podders. Fearless, mobile, good in assualt, and don't they have somebody in their retinue that allows them free shots at deep strikers?

I'd think rhinos would be tough to use against podders. If you sit in the rhino, two pods is all it takes to block all the doors, and then it's likely one dead rhino and cargo.

If you huddle them in the corner so the pods can't get at them, then the podders simply drop far enough away to make you have to move into their assault cannon range.

Posted By methoderik on 03/07/2006 9:46 AM
Deamon hunters seem like they could be pretty effective against podders. Fearless, and don't they have somebody in their retinue that allows them free shots at deep strikers?

Pods don't deepstrike.

I'd think rhinos would be tough to use against podders. If you sit in the rhino, two pods is all it takes to block all the doors, and then it's likely one dead rhino and cargo.

Thats assuming no scatter on two pods (or lucky scatter that took you into the rhino. Got lucky did you. Thats also a minimum of 180 points to surround a unit worth a minimum of 133 points, and depending on where the rhino was, you could find yourself with two somewhat isolated units after the smoke clears.

Personally I don't think the odds are that good that you will be able to block all the exits.

As for assault cannons, yeah they hurt, but run a surviving rhino up as an LOS blocker and they won't have too much to shoot at for a turn. That might just be all the time you need.

But you can place your Rhinos (and maybe one or two squads) next to each other in such a way as to block the pods landing where they would block your doors. You can still leave a couple of inches for your guys to disembark while not leaving enough space for a pod.

This should be part of YMDC, but it has some relavence here as well:  Pods are immobile.  Do they count as immobile or "moving" for the purposes of grenade/HTH attacks the turn they drop in, since IIRC, vehicles arriving from reserves count as moving at least 6"???

If they count as always "immobile", then one might be able to assault the pod to remove LOS, then consolidate into HTH to deny their next shooting phase.

Doesn't matter. Even if your trukk zoomed 24" last turn and somehow gets immobilized in the shooting phase, durring the assault phase its an immobile target and as such is auto hit. Same with pods. Doesn't matter how far it moved last turn (from orbit?), during your assault phase it is immobile and auto hit.

Of course this has two things going against you. First, you have to kill AV12 in assault. Hope you do well with your powerfists or get lucky rending.

However the biggest flaw to your plan is that IIRC you do not get a consolidation move after destroying a vehicle in HTH. You pretty much just hang out where you were.

You autohit pods in hth. But you don't consolidate after fighting them, as they are vehicles with no WS.

Anyway, I'm still not sold on daemons delivered via rhinos being very effective against podders. If you aren't a good spot for him to seal the doors (and I think this is going to happen quite often if you want it to) you simply drop in and shoot the rhinos. They're not likely to live through the fire, and then the daemons are coming in definitely out of assault range (unless you've got mounted daemonettes, and then the other guy is sure to drop into cover and dare you to charge him).

I just think one or two squads in a rhino is going to be very easy to deal with.

But I am interested in it enough to want to try to play against it.

You can't Consolidate after assaulting a vehicle which doesn't fight back. Only when fighting something that has a WS stat and is capable of swinging back at you.

Woo... Jinx you owe me a Coke... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Dark Angels would be pretty good against droppers. I mean, even if you do not take stubborn, they are completely intractable and therefore do not give ground, meaning FOD doesn't do jack to them.

In addition, if they properly castled, you would be forced to use 50% of your army against 100% of theirs. The librarians would be useless. In addition, if they purchased the correct banner they could get a free shooting phase on you in your assault phase. They then could move forward, double tap and/or assault you.

I don't think leaving units in rhino's are that good idea. If the droppers come down and blow it up, your entangled anyway.

The best answer to dropping list seeams to be other dropping lists/bomb lists. However there is always any list that has all infiltration and high numbers could simply set up over the entire board, denying all locations to land. A drop pod list would then just automatically lose.... which would be pretty funny.

I don't know that they automatically lose. If you can't come in, nothing says you're destroyed.

But I can't imagine very many infiltrating armies that can actually cover the entire board. By my calcularions it would take over 350 models to do that.

As for Dark angels castling, I'm not sure I follow. Podders deal with shooty armies by dropping pods between them and the enemies guns. They then shoot up most of what can shoot back, rinse and repeat. Only mobile guns have a chance to deal with them, and they don't often drop in range of bolters (even if they move). (note, this only applies to terminator heavy drop lists).

And the librarian might not be able to fear them, but he can still use his fury. Dark angels have no protection from pinning, correct?

Posted By Jayden63 on 03/07/2006 10:08 AM
However the biggest flaw to your plan is that IIRC you do not get a consolidation move after destroying a vehicle in HTH. You pretty much just hang out where you were.

 

Crapolla.  You are right.  I suppose you would be better off just assaulting the squad. 

And the librarian might not be able to fear them, but he can still use his fury. Dark angels have no protection from pinning, correct?

Well, if they can get a hood in there, you have a chance to negate anything the Librarian can do. But yes, they can still be pinned.

As Artorious hinted at, another marine army that brings its own terminators and librarian probably has a good shot. Then it becomes a race as to who can drop after the other guy and who can actually get their psychic powers off.

Also the strength of a drop pod list really depends on the number of drop pods vs termies. The more termies in there, the more you have to treat it like a Lysander wing than say a space wolf drop pod force.

I've played with pods a bit with my marines for a while and there are a few armies that will give you trouble.

Sisters
Necrons
Non Speed Freak Orks
Godzilla Nids/Nids in general

I'm sure there's more but that's all I can think of at the moment. Though of course I'm playing these games at 1500 points and without terminator/assault cannon heavy lists, so in some cases the above armies won't be an issue if you're dealing with a Terminator heavy drop pod list.

Posted By mauleed on 03/07/2006 10:29 AM

And the librarian might not be able to fear them, but he can still use his fury. Dark angels have no protection from pinning, correct?

Right, thats the difference between Stubborn and Fearless. Stubborn can still be pinned.

Castled nids should be pretty good too, FOD won't do much good and the gaunts can mob the Librarian after he lands so his unit won't be doing much. Shooty TMCs should be able to knock out the cover offered by a drop pod, or at least cover the holes between and the Flying tyrant could leap on whoever drops closest.

 

Drop troops IG should have some improved comms and if the Drop Podders land together IG could either hold off a round for them to spread or make sure they drop together to exploit low numbers if only a few Pods dropped on turn 2.

I only have two tried and true methods to beat Droppods with my Kroot- which aren't fearless and don't have vehicles.

# 1 - Play any mission that isn't standard, works every time.

# 2 - If I get to infiltrate, I have successfully been able to spread my models around the board in such a way that I leave just enough room for the droppods, but not enough room for the models to disembark without being 1" away from mine.  This is extremely difficult to do if they have one unit that isn't in a droppod, and nigh impossible if they have two.

So I'm looking for any other ways to deal with them that doesn't involve me being an ass.

- Oaka

Oaka, I think even without the pods my drop pod army would give your kroot fits. But I have yet to hear of anyone insisting the pods couldn't be used.

Seems to me it would depend on the points values. Is this at 1500 or 2000 or somewhere in between? From what I've seen that makes a big difference in the number of assguns you can fit into a list.

1850 is the tournament standard around here. Pods scale best in 1850-2000 I think. 1500 would hurt them quite a bit.

So the Termies aren't immune to pinning because they're stubborn, but aren't the regular squads intractable, which does make them immune to pinning? I don't have my DA Update on me, so I'm not sure. But that sounds right.

Of course, if it's the Termies you're trying to pin, it doesn't really matter.

EDIT: I'm wrong, they're vulnerable to pinning.  Damn.  Who honestly plays DA besides AK and WhiteDragon anyway?

I've played against a few Drop Pod armies, and have yet to lose. Well constructed ones too (i.e. they listened to me when building their armies).

Caveat #1 - We use the Eye of Terror FAQ that lets mystics allocate shooting to Drop Pods. If you're not using that, then my Guard would probably have been toast). Basically, about a third of the units that come in within 4d6" die or are gutted immediately. For the most part, the rest of my shooting is all move and fire, so its extremely difficult to deploy in such a way that I can't maneuver and bring lots of firepower to bear.

Caveat #2 - My night lords are ridiculously mobile. Especially with the 2+ save Chosen bikers. The stuff that isn't mobile gets bonuses to cover saves. And I've got demons...furies, to be exact. So I do a mini-castle with the Raptors inside, with the Chosen bikers running around generating a 2+ save, and providing demon summoning points. MoCU helps negate Fear of the Dark. I've always managed to preserve enough alive that I can usually wipe out units as they come in.

Well what do you want to go on as far as a list basis then.  Do you want the marine hoard that uses big Tac squads in pods w/ Plas/Melta or dual Plas and some dual meltas.  Or should we go off the UM list you posted that's more termy heavy and along the lines of "Fear of the Assault Cannons" via Pods.

Against the list you posted up the easiest counter list is your standard 1850 Necron force.  Your rending assault cannon shots are reduced in effectiveness by about half, and assuming they're smart and use a Lord w/ a Res Orb and a Lith or two, you're in deep trouble.

An 1850 Ork list would also be pretty scary against pods, perhaps a KOS list at 1850 as well since you wouldn't be able to shoot enough transports on drop to keep from being charged.

Also perhaps a DE WWP army in raiders.  It'd be like facing an IW army, you'd be rolling to see who got the reserves rolls when they needed em.  It'd also be depenant on who won the turn to go first.

Any army that wins by presenting a mobile "target overload" approach, like a Raider DE or KOS list would do well, especially if they can hide some of their transports near the edges of the board that make it hard for you to safely drop nearby.

Still the worst thing for you would be Necrons, Monoliths would really put the hurt on the stock marines, and the rapid fire death from the teleporting Warriors would hurt the termies.  You'd need some real luck to take down the Monoliths with the pods when you drop leaving you very vulnerable to a large warrior squad teleporting in and rapid firing you to death.

Killin' pods is easy. Walking khorne berserkers. Lots and lots of them. With 6 attack powerfist champions. In woods.

Oh, and assaulty night lords are one of the toughest armies my pods have fought yet (tied one, lost one) - he's running 4 marine squads, 20 furies, 2 squads of raptors, some terminators and a daemon prince. Pretty much the moment I drop something it gets swarmed.

Any straight up move-and-shoot assault army that outnumbers you will give you a tough game. 30 assault trooper blood angels will give you fits.

necrons arent too bad as you can just phase them out, and the monolith just makes this easier

Well, just for discussion, let's say you fought against an all infiltrator list that set up all over the entire board. On turn 2 you roll for deepstrikers(or podders, whatever). You have to deploy them that turn, you can't wait for later on, per the Reserves rule. I would think you would immediately try to deploy them, nominate a place on the board, then roll for scatter. They would have no place to deploy, and therefore land on enemy models and/or impassible terrain and are destroyed. I guess the opponent could also just leave enough areas so that the pods had to enough room to deploy in, but not enough to disembark troops out of. If they did this you would definitely have to deploy, but the rules state that you must immediately disembark, exists all blocked means everyone in all the drop pods would die.

Your right, Dark Angels aren't completely immune the the psykers, but any dark angel that takes a commander, kicks his guys up to LD 10 is going to sort of laugh at anyone that is going to rely on failed pinning tests (unless they are Tau). I realize that the drop pods will be able to land, create blocked areas of terrain, that sort of thing, and that is their strength. But assuming the mission is "Kill um all" type of situation, the dark angel can castle up with his stuff in a 18x18 block. I play a drop army, or a deepstrike army, and here is how I think of it, from the dropping perspective.

If my opponent sets up along a long flank, or spreads out, I've won. It's just that simple. I can then choose my field of battle, deploy and using terrain/pods to block LOS. My opponent must then attempt to redeploy as I crush a weak flank and turn my attention to him. My real concern is when he does something like this:

He has 3 Vindicators and 4 squads in rhinos. He castles in an 18x18 sized area. He uses his infantry on the outside, and the rhino's to block LOS to the vindicators, which create an area I can't drop into. I drop close buy, shoot at him, do some damage with 50% of my army. He then moves the rhino's and blast's me with 3 vindicator rounds and also moves up and double taps with marines.

Facng that, I would have the alternative to drop farther away, but full droppers tend to take 2x special weapons, and once dropped have little mobility. I would think an army with mobile firepower would run you down at that point.

The reason I was sudgesting dark angels is that they would be immune to any Boo tricks, and they are, like all marines, hard as nails, and thus they can effectively castle as close together as they want, and still laugh off FoTD (they invented it after all). Plenty of armies are incapable of properly castling against podders, Tau come to mind immediately for instance.