Yep, its starting to happen here, too. People are starting to go crazy with pods. I've seen threads discussing how to deal with them with various armies, but I've yet to see anything involving webway portals.
My DE WWP army is fairly typical -- a haemy and a sybarite each with wwp, assault squads (wyches in raiders, warp beasts, killy dracon on bike or foot, maybe a reaver squad) in the portals, a couple of warrior squads for ablative wounds until a portal opens, ravagers either in the portal or out depending on the situation. Sometimes I go heavier on the sniper squads, sometimes more assaulty. My list varies, but its generally your fairly typical wwp list.
I don't want to tool my army specifically for pods at the expense of other armies, so suppose you show up with an army along these lines and get matched up against pods. What plans do you make? Put more or less in the portal? Try to go first or second? Drop the portal quickly, or try to hold it closed? What are the best and worst case scenarios?
Here are my thoughts on the subject: The ability to bring out your troops after his is key, but it all hinges on keeping the portal carriers alive long enough. Suppose you go first. In this case, I'd wait to drop the portals until turn two. That way, half his troops will show up on turn two after your portals open, and your portal carriers get wasted. On turn three, your troops pour out and start their attack. Assuming that the enemy was close enough to kill your portal carriers, you shouldn't have a problem getting into combat. Just make sure that you don't completely waste the enemy in one turn, and the pods that drop on turn three won't be able to do anything to you. After the initial carnage, any fast and still-scoring units go for objectives.
If you go second, drop your portal on turn one. It should have a similar effect to going first, but you won't have quite as much come out of the portal at once when the action starts.
A problem -- when the pod troops kill off your portal carriers, they can surround the portals. Squads in raiders or reavers are fine, but this makes the warp beasts a less than ideal choice. Maybe I should dump those from the list and go with all units in the portal being skimmer-based.
So, it looks like going first may actually be as good as or better than going second when dealing with pods? Not bad, considering that most pod players are going to be trying for second turn anyways.
So, what am I overlooking? Is my strategy bad, or is it my typically less-than-ideal playing?