Saythings wrote:
The advice above is solid. One thing I disagree with in the above 2 posts are the Heavy Support slots. As a Salamanders player that runs 5 drop pods every list (at 1850+), I run 2-3 stalkers.

The reason I run Stalkers with my Salamanders is Drop Pod (and everything inside) don't shoot or do very well against flyers, especially Heldrakes. A CSM player with a single Heldrake will cause you to lose the game in any competitive area.

Even someone running Vendettas/Nightscythes will ruin your day. Not for the same reason as the Heldrakes, but the fact that you can't hurt his flying transports. Since you can't stop them, he can out maneuver you. You drop in Turn1 or Turn2, where his troops don't have to come out of the transports til Turn4 or Turn5 so he has complete control of the board and since you lack AA, you essentially lose before the game begins.

You can choose to ignore flyers like I see more Salamanders players do, but I think it isn't the best idea. I currently have 8 drop pods built so I could run all Drop Pods at 2k, but I honestly don't see that being as strong as it used to be in 5th edition or even early 6th. The meta has changed too much to just drop your entire army and hope you do enough damamge in one turn. There needs to be more strategy involved. 3 Stalkers are almost as cheap as a single Tactical Squad (plus Pod) at 225 pts. They can hit Flyers (Heldrakes, Vendettas, Ravens) and Skimmers, (which seems to be getting more popular with E/DE). Even FMCs stand no chance when they can all split fire at BS2 and force 6 grounding checks. It's frightening how effective they can be. Worse case scenario, you shoot 12 (BS1) TL S7 shots at a ground unit. Throughout a game, you can easily kill 225 points with just "crappy" snapfires. Not only that, but with Heavy Guns Never Tire, you have mobile scoring units in your backfield.