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Finally getting around to the HQ section of my Drop pod list for my Night Lords. I have the rest of the list at least built, most troops painted. Now I am trying to figure out the better option to use for Sevatar in his Kharybdis drop pod. Options:
5 Contekar+ Tartaros Librarian and Tartaros Herald Warlord with Jedhik Clan Lord WLT
5 Tartaros Command Squad + same two characters as above
9 Man command squad in power armor with 4 or 5 with board shields and power fists, the rest with twin lightning claws, librarian, and chaplain warlord

Rest of the list in a nut shell since I have never posted it on this site
deredeo
leviathan melta lance and claw
Contempter melta and claw
3 dreadnought drop pods
2 tac squads
tac support squad 10 meltas
Terror Squad 4 rotor cannons
possibly tac squad with 5 flamers- depends on the command squad.
all in drop pods
My group plays with a restriction on shooting reactions, no more than one shooting reaction per unit per turn so getting shot off the board on landing isnt likely since aupexes are not commonly put on every squad.

So...

With the restriction your group plays with, and the lack of auspex, how do you see this going for your opponent? You are, after all, dropping three dreadnoughts straight into his face, as well as a big kill-bus elite squad that can assault t1.

I can see this being a very un-fun experience for those involved.

That said, I would frankly go with a big blob of standard terminators. They're lower WS than the command squad, but the volume makes them a better choice into a kharybdis. Can also sub in a chaplain for the libby / herald to make them land as many / more hits than a command squad (% wise) with twice as many attacks, making them much more murdery and also tougher due to having more wounds.

To echo Morgan’s observation? I don’t think you’ll gonna win many friends with this, as the list takes advantage on house rule restrictions.

Is it something I’d take on once or twice to sharpen my skills and push myself? Sure. Maybe even a few times a year because variety is good.

Is it something I’d like to face week in, week out? Absolutely not. Especially when the things built into the rules to bring risk to such a list have been artificially removed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though, if this is a deliberate Dirty Protest against such arbitrary tinkering? Go for it!

Without that restriction drop pod assault is completely useless as the opponent gets three different shooting phases on my turn and the army just has to stand there and take it and then take a whole other shooting phase and assault phase the next turn.

I guess the commonly looked down upon etiquette units are in effect as well would annoy you? Many groups use the one shooting reaction thing, I know SN was considering play testing it for their system. But also they look down upon things like multiple scorpius and large and multiple lascannon HSS squads. We actually think the one shooting reaction per unit per turn thing will be incorporated in the next edition since the current version is so oppressive and allows units to shoot more in your turn than they can in theirs.

It’s just that this list feels engineered to take advantage of your group’s house rule. And so I think will cause bad will toward you.

Note I’m not accusing you of that like. I’m sure we’ve all come up with lists we like the feel of only to find they’re devastating in play. But here? I’m getting echoes of the worst bits of 3rd Ed, where turbo nutter assault armies could cross the board turn one or two, and then merrily hope from combat to combat the rest of the game, slaughtering my army whilst I could be little beyond try to move units out of consolidation and overrun range. And that’s just not fun to me.

But then…I’m not your gaming group. I don’t know your gaming group. They might love the extra challenge

I played drop pod assault in 1st also. Its my preferred style of playing space marines. It got trounced until that rule came into being. I actually havent even gotten a chance to play it since. Drop Pods are kind of meh in 40k since they are ridiculously overpriced and arent dedicated transports. Been trying to make them work there since 10th came out and have pretty much given up on the idea.

I figure most people would be glad to see a Night Lord player not playing Terror Assault. My group is fairly chill. We have a single Fists player but he plays the crusader RoW and not the stone Guantlet. Our SoH guy has enough to play whatever he wants included the dreaded dreadnought list but he only puts the worst loadouts on the drednoughts to keep people from auto-not playing him.

I guess all you can do is Go For It, and then take any reaction on board going forward

Col. Dash wrote:
Without that restriction drop pod assault is completely useless as the opponent gets three different shooting phases on my turn and the army just has to stand there and take it and then take a whole other shooting phase and assault phase the next turn.

That is not how drop pod assault (orbital assault) works.

For starters, you say that your opponent's don't take auspex. By dint of that ALONE your opponent will be making 1, MAYBE 2 interceptor reactions to your drop pods landing.

They'll also make 1-2 reactions to you shooting them.

And again, 1-2 reactions to you charging.

Keep in mind that, with how reaction allotments work, they'll be making 1-2 reactions in one phase and then (except in very special circumstances) 1 reaction in the other phases. This means that at ABSOLUTE most you're taking fire from 4 units / fewer units up to 4 times. And biggest part is that, outside of interceptor, you control what gets to return fire / overwatch. If you're afraid of that HSS lascannon squad blowing your dread away on return fire... Just don't shoot it? I play WE and my shooting phase consists of only vehicles shooting, because it's not worth giving my opponent the opportunity to shoot back into my other units just because they wanted to give a peppering via pistol / whatever. Again, this is different if your opponent runs a mountain of auspex, but you say that they run few to none.

Secondly.

Smart play with orbital assault really counteracts its counters.

Your drop pods force pinning tests on every unit within 6 inches of a landing zone. This means that it's trivially easy to force pinning tests on your opponent's entire army. Furthermore the Kharybdis is a pinning monstrosity, being able to select four(!) different units in its shooting phase and, unless they're terminators, reliably force a pinning test. Then you have rotor cannons. So you can force every unit in your enemy's army to take pinning, which will statistically remove about 25-30% of their army from participating in reactions & the next turn, then you can whack another four units with the kharybdis and (statistically) force another 25% of what it targets, and then follow up with the rotor cannons if you have something REALLY scary that hasn't been pinned yet. If you bring a herald you can also effect units with Fear, making your pinning tests significantly more effective and probably locking down 50% of your opponent's non-terminator infantry upon your arrival.

Again, this isn't going to pin a terminator squad with a chaplain or anything. But that's a massive chunk of your foe's army effectively removed. Depending on your deredeo loadout you can even have more pinning than this. Also-also you're taking a librarian, so you could easily bring a telepathy librarian to both pin something on your turn, remove reactions from a critical unit, and then also pin whatever shoots & charges the unit he's in.


So again, are you sure you want to play this? I have a drop pod assault list and I stopped playing it, because it's incredibly brutal. I found it trivially easy to lock down huge portions of my opponent's army, charge my elite kill-bus in the kharbydis into what I wanted, and then section everything off with screens and threat-overload such that my opponent getting their actual turn before the rest of my army charged didn't matter; they're either shooting threats they can't assault, or shooting screens they then HAVE to assault. Then I table everything turn 2 and bust out an actual list.

Thats impressive your list worked so well. In the early days of the edition everyone brought auspexes simply because we played the previous edition and had lots of deepstriking units to deal with. I myself played back then again Night lord drop pods and an Iron Warriors Pride army with terminators DSing all over since either Golg or Perty gave it to terminators at the time(I forget who, its been awhile.) Then after awhile of this edition we kind of noticed that not many people were taking deep striking units in enough numbers to justify spending 100+ points per game on auspexes. I didnt have my NL list active yet and was still running IW as I had sold my NLs. Another player did play a drop pod list(maybe dark angels, it was grey and mostly unpainted) and I watched a Sons of Horus player annihilate him on landing just from reactions and saw a Blood Angels Dawn of Whatever ROW list(the one where you pick a point and turn and everything comes in there) and saw a similar result. Thats when we saw other groups start to home rule reactions to the "One shooting reaction per unit per turn," so that these RoWs become somewhat viable. After all a MOS can still ruin their day on a not so hard dice roll. Plus a unit has to stop and reload sometime. They can still do other reactions, they just cant shoot multiple times per turn. They can all fire interceptor if they are able if they want even. Just means they cant also shoot back or fire overwatch later.

The Librarian is there specifically to allow his one unit to charge a pinned unit. It never even crossed my mind to let him use his power vs something else. There are a lot of terminators in my area unfortunately. A LOT. Like a butt load the more I even think about it. To the point the more I think about it, the more having a large squad of tartaros terminators is sounding better and better with half lightning claws and half hammers along with the Chaplain.

If I use 10 generic terminators, typically I use tartaros to allow chasing down and moving into other units, I drop the libby and replace him with a Herald to make everyone Line. This load out is 3 twin lightning claws, 2 chainfist/reapers(although I might sub in heavy flamers since in theory they will be in close range), and 5 thunder hammers with a grenade harness on the sgt. Plus Sevvie, a chappie with warmonger so everyone is hitting loyalists at least on a 4+ rerollable, and a herald with a thunder hammer and a unit size of 25 for outnumbering. I did have to drop a tac support squad with flamers to get these extra terminators leaving me with only 8 drops.

Col. Dash wrote:
Thats impressive your list worked so well.

Spoiler:

In the early days of the edition everyone brought auspexes simply because we played the previous edition and had lots of deepstriking units to deal with. I myself played back then again Night lord drop pods and an Iron Warriors Pride army with terminators DSing all over since either Golg or Perty gave it to terminators at the time(I forget who, its been awhile.) Then after awhile of this edition we kind of noticed that not many people were taking deep striking units in enough numbers to justify spending 100+ points per game on auspexes. I didnt have my NL list active yet and was still running IW as I had sold my NLs. Another player did play a drop pod list(maybe dark angels, it was grey and mostly unpainted) and I watched a Sons of Horus player annihilate him on landing just from reactions and saw a Blood Angels Dawn of Whatever ROW list(the one where you pick a point and turn and everything comes in there) and saw a similar result. Thats when we saw other groups start to home rule reactions to the "One shooting reaction per unit per turn," so that these RoWs become somewhat viable. After all a MOS can still ruin their day on a not so hard dice roll. Plus a unit has to stop and reload sometime. They can still do other reactions, they just cant shoot multiple times per turn. They can all fire interceptor if they are able if they want even. Just means they cant also shoot back or fire overwatch later.

The Librarian is there specifically to allow his one unit to charge a pinned unit. It never even crossed my mind to let him use his power vs something else. There are a lot of terminators in my area unfortunately. A LOT. Like a butt load the more I even think about it. To the point the more I think about it, the more having a large squad of tartaros terminators is sounding better and better with half lightning claws and half hammers along with the Chaplain.

If I use 10 generic terminators, typically I use tartaros to allow chasing down and moving into other units, I drop the libby and replace him with a Herald to make everyone Line. This load out is 3 twin lightning claws, 2 chainfist/reapers(although I might sub in heavy flamers since in theory they will be in close range), and 5 thunder hammers with a grenade harness on the sgt. Plus Sevvie, a chappie with warmonger so everyone is hitting loyalists at least on a 4+ rerollable, and a herald with a thunder hammer and a unit size of 25 for outnumbering. I did have to drop a tac support squad with flamers to get these extra terminators leaving me with only 8 drops.

Snip

It is worth noting that I feel a lot of mass DS / drop pod lists are frankly just not well put together.

Mine ran with 60 despoilers, a HSS multi melta squad, 1-2 dreads, a cataphractii command squad, and 1-2 units of rampagers (with one unit in a kharybdis with a chaplain). While only one squad charged on impact, the result I found was that I had enough bodies to clog up desired movement and enough priority targets to still have numerous high-level threats in excellent shape after reactions + a full turn of being pounded.

It worked particularly well for WE because our unique reaction means that people have to be VERY careful how they shoot those dangerous threats that are directly in their face, or else you'll just get an extra charge off in their turn. The HSS multi-melta squad was also a sleeper MVP. Cheaper than all the other 'big' threats because it comes down in a normal pod, but that kind of unit HAS to be dealt with potentially even above your melee threats. Which means it's usually getting the opportunity to react several times in your turn with return fire & overwatch, allowing you to kind of turn the tables on your opponent. Or else just absolutely melt their key units with a multi-melta firing base setup directly in their lines.

Now again, I don't know your meta; you might be fine. But experience and looking at that list tells me it's liable to not make many friends.

Mass airborne/ drop lists have always been my thing when they are allowed. Drop pods for marines, Elysians/drop troop doctrine for guard back when those lists/doctrines were legal back in the golden age of the guard. In 5th I had a full drop pod Night Lord terminator army using Space wolf Rules, such a fun list. They have always been either win big or lose big armies with very little middle ground.

For ease of just getting them done for now, I might just go back to my original 5 Contekar terminator retinue since I already have them built and toss in a pod with 7 dudes with flamers on the chance I run into militia.

Im trying to get a Swift Blade RoW list to look somewhat functional but thats a rough one.

Current list:
Sevatar
Herald in Tartaros with T-hammer
Librarian in Tartaros armor with telepathy
Contekar x5

Terror Squad x5 4x Rotor Cannons- drop pod
Contemptor Multi-melta/claw built in melta
-Dreadnought drop pod

Assault Squad x10 sgt-fist+art armor, +power axe
Assault Squad x10 sgt-fist+art armor, +power axe
Tac squad x10 sgt w grenade combi-drop pod
Tac squad x10 sgt w grenade combi- drop pod
Tac support x10 melta -drop pod
Tac support x5- flamers

Kharybdis- command rides here
Leviathan meltalance, claw- dreadnought drop pod

Gives me 8 pods dropping turn 1. Turn 2 on I have two speedy line units maybe coming on the board who can see off light units that maybe have got into my rear lines.