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Hello, I just wanted to share a tactic that I tried and found working. Probably nothing new or original but still. I play Salamanders so my lists are melta/flamer heavy and really short on range.

Last game I played was a 1250pts vs Eldar or Aeldari. I have 5 drop pods with 1 Ironclad with double heavy flamers, 3 centurion devastators with hurricane bolters and grav-cannons , 1 command squad with 5 melta-guns with Vulkan He'stan and the other two with 10 assault marines and 10 tactical.

So what I did was I deployed my Scout bikes with locator beacon through infiltrate, I managed to hide them about 13 inch from his wraith lord, wraith knight and tanks. with the locator beacon my 3 first drop pods arrived next to each other, placing my units about 4 inches from his main army. Killed his Wraith lord/knight (the big one) with my sergeant only, 5 shots, all hits (invoked devastator doctrine), all woundings with the re-rolls from grav-amp, and with a little luck he missed 5 feel no pains 5+, the remaining of my troops flew up a tank with the meltas and He'stan + the dread put their 3 heavy flamers with +1 str and wound re-rolls on the remaining units inside. After that most of the game was spent hunting his remaining forces down.

GG much fun

Thought on improvements? Can this work in 1850pts or 2000pts too?

Since the WK has 6 wounds, I'm interested to know how you killed it with a 5 shot grav cannon. I also have no idea why you'd shoot the sarge and only the sarge at a WK? What was the other extremely pressing target more dangerous than a WK that desperately needed 10 grav cannon shots more than a WK did?

As to improvements, well, you can take a Skyhammer with it and get relentless grav cannons coming out of pods but also get your ASM down where you need them so you can flame and charge. Coteaz allows a re-roll on sieze or siezeing on a 5+ so your scouts don't get obliterated if your enemy goes first.

Definately not something to rely on with larger point games since the likelihood of getting your scouts removed is much higher and an insquisitor with servo skulls does a very similar job for 34 points, but you can always do worse than a 10th co task force of scout bikers.

Since the range on the grav cannons are 24", you could probably also drop them much further back so that when you don't kill your target or you're swamped by chaff that you don't feel quite so silly.

As to improvements for larger games, since you're running Sallies, you're going to have to roll for Perfect timing instead of just buying it for 20 points like the other 20 million "innovative" white scars players who just jam a Hunters Eye Libby in the pod with the Cents.

He said it had 5 wounds and I didnt check, perhaps he got i wrong.

The reason why i only shot the serge first is because he and he alone has split-fire, I shoot at 5 wraith guard with D weapons with the rest.

Salamanders don't get to pick Skyhammer formation in the Flamebringer detachment.

Thanks for the other advice, I will look into these!

One trick if you switch to a formation based list is the 10th co. TF doing what you did with the bikes. You get stealth if you infiltrate, which stacks with the bike’s jink save. So if they want to get rid of that beacon, they need to pout a huge amount of firepower into them.

 Nevelon wrote:
One trick if you switch to a formation based list is the 10th co. TF doing what you did with the bikes. You get stealth if you infiltrate, which stacks with the bike’s jink save. So if they want to get rid of that beacon, they need to pout a huge amount of firepower into them.

Yeah that is what I did as I'm running the Salamanders Battle-forged Flameblade formation/detachment, else I don't get the +1 to my flamers. I had the bikes deployed against a ruin so I got the 3+ save. I cant get more than that though because Scout bikes can't take camo-cloaks.
Thanks for the advice though!

Droppod don't need support from locator beacon Scout bikes. They are not likely to mishap unless you put them extreme close to board edge. And you disembark 6 inches, which also mitigate scattering away, i.e. put the pods 6 inch away from enemy tank, your Marines are highly not likely to be out of melta range. For Droppod Grav Centurions, their 24 inch firing range is much less risky to be scattered out of range.

The Scout Bike locator beacon is better combined with
1, Skyhammer Annilation formation Assault Marines, they need precisely dropped close to enemy to get that assault out of DS.
2, Draigo-Tiggy-Grav Centurion Star. They cannot risk mishap because that will usually be around half of your army