Played a couple of games by podding my Dark Angels yesterday. I finally got around to buying a squad of termies so I could try them out. My DA are RT and comp friendly but hard, and I didn't paint up any new minis for the pod variant, so it is far from maximized. I played the pods in a 1500 league last year as well. So far I think my record is something like 12-1 or 12-2 when I pod.
Anyway, the first game was 1750 and the list went like this:
Reclusiarch w/Jump Pack, Stubborn, Termie Honors
5 Termies with 2 ACs, 2 Chain Fists, Stubborn, in a pod
Dreadnought with HF, Extra Armor, in a pod
10 Tac with PF Vet, ML, MG in a pod
10 Tac with Stubborn PF Vet, Las, Flamer, in a pod
10 Tac with PF Vet, Plasmagun, in a pod
9 Tac with Plasmagun, in a pod
8 Assault Marines with PF Vet, 2 Plasma Pistols
Tornado with AC, HB.
I played this against a Speed Freaks army and shot it up. The player is pretty inexperienced with his Orks, so I played perhaps a little more agressively than I should have to make it a little more interesting. My shooting at his HQ's trukk and then at the HQ the following turn was absolute crap, which very nearly made it a game. We played Secure and Control and the mega-armored retinue survived to kill my termies (who had no business being as close as they were, even though it was a dense cityfight table) and one of my tac squads and hold an objective. I killed everything else he had though, and held two objectives myself, which made a nice solid win.
Second game of the day was 1850 against a friend's Biel-tan. I brought the same list, just adding Artificer Armor to the chapain and a second Tornado. He fielded a five-man Farseer retinue on jetbikes, all with witchblades, a squad of Banshees in a Falcon, squads of Scorpions, Fire Dragons, and Wraithguard in Wave Serpents, and a Wraithlord with Starcannon.
This was a much more interesting game, because I don't have a lot of anti-tank shooty in this list, and he was careful to keep the backs of his tanks against impassible terrain (there were several pieces across the board) on turn two, which gave me limited options for shooting them down. Thankfully I only got one tactical squad and one Tornado on turn two, and he broke his plan, disembarking the Wraithguard and Fire Dragons to roast the tac squad, and the Scorpions nearby, ready to give HtH support. This meant that I had much better targets when most of my army came down on turn three. Dreadnought heavy flamer on Fire Dragons = ironic death. Once again my bolters did the business on the drop- one squad even killing two warlocks out of the retinue. Torrent of Fire did for the Wraithguard's warlock too. My opponent played cagy and was still in contention until the last turn or two, just because it was Alpha Recon and he was focusing on my scoring squads. I wound up with two tac squads at 7 and 6 in his zone, and my termies and surviving Tornado just outside it. He had knocked the rest of my units down out of scoring unit status. He had his Falcon just outside my zone- if he hadn't had a brain cramp and forgotten that my Termies still hadn't come down on his turn 5, he would have had the Banshees alive too. As it was they made the mistake of disembarking, and ate hot AC death on my turn 5. He would have had 2 scoring units in my zone if not for that mistake, and it would have been a close win for me as my termies would have stayed in his DZ.
