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It's unfortunate that a cool option in the SM codex is now being abused to the point of being broken to make a viable army list. Players should learn to play their army before they try this spamming/cheesy tactic.
FYI: The Soul Drinkers do not have any sort of Elite choices available to them after they split with the Imperium. They had a small number (perhaps 5 or less) suits of Terminator armor and they certainly had NO dreadnoughts/ironclads or skimmers. They specialized in shock assault and boarding actions. Where the hell did they get a Land Raider?!? lol
Don't use the Codex: Space Marines for God sakes. To keep the flavor, at least use the Black Templars (a brother successor chapter) codex!
For what it is worth, I could see the Soul Drinkers getting their hands on skimmers easily even if it isn't fluffy.
You could portray it as a force of Soul Drinkers right after the break with the Imperium when the chapter was fighting amongst itself. That would be a time period where I could see a dreadnought.
Land Raider. Stolen from the Inquisition :-D. I HaZ LandRaiderZZ?!
To many people do the post war and just assume that is how everything is supposed to be.
Though this is supposed to be a more competitive army then a fluff army, When we do the hobby post coming up it will have a fluff list attached to it for people to look over.
Anything before the split is psuedo boring - seriously, you might as well take Black Templars without the Emp. Champion because that's the closest you'll get to bridge the gap between novel to table.
I'd lose the Termies and the LRC and take more troops... Even a normal 6 man squad in a Razorback is good. the sixman for holding an objective and the razorback as mobile firepower.
Based on the goals and the content of the article i think it was great! This would have proved useful a few months ago!
Nice article, I've had good results using drop pods before, though I've never tried to do them en masse.
1. Drop Pod assault forces me to bring in half my pods. If I'm playing against a force that can be effective in an "all reserves" game such as Mech Eldar, Deamons, Dark Eldar, or another drop podding force I've got the potential to get smoked. First turn I drop my pods only to have Melta or a seer council come and say hi after they come in from reserves.
2. Drop pods are AV 12 open toped transports that are immobilized. All that is needed is 2 weapons destroyed or better shots on the damage table and you give up a kill point. If I get a pen with an AP1 weapon the drop pod is toast on anything but a 1 or 2. I have won kill points games by only focusing fire on drop pods.
3. Once you've played against a deamonhunter inquisitor with mystics sitting next to something with a demolisher cannon or 3 heavy bolters you'll know what I feel. Effectivily doubling a player's shooting phase is not fun.
Overall I think that rhinos are a much better buy then drop pods. That being said, Logan with some multi melta equiped Long fangs drop podding in for turn 1 carnage is not something I want to be matched up against.
Seeing as I play IG, I'll focus primarily on them for the time being. The introduction of both the Astropath and Officer of the Fleet truly throw a kink in the Pod/DS/Reserve (here on out abbreviated as PDR) game plan. I run both in my 2k Aircav list for solely this reason. If I know I'm facing a PDR force, I'll just sit in reserve, let you go first for 2 turns an come in piecemeal (or not at all cuz of the Astro) and then basically bring the majority of my army on in one turn for a serious case of the Alpha Strike (god how I hate that term). Not only can I nullify you're arrival, but I enhance my own.
Such an IG army (it can be mech as well, principle is the same), has complete freedom of maneuver. Regardless of whether I go first or 2nd, I have primacy of maneuver, especially if some aspect of the enemy is PDR.
Good general intro tactica, but some drawbacks would have been nice. It would have rounded out the Pros/Cons of such builds nicely, especially seeing the rise in IG players nowadays.
As for my SW's, they go with Rhinos now. Pods have become too high risk, low reward for me.
~ Roland Durendal
The chapter had one suit of terminator armour, which belongs to their master of recruits.
Thay have no vehicles, seeing as they specialise in boarding actions. There's certainly no mention of Dreadnoughts or Land Speeders in the books, especially not a Land Raider Crusader.
I'm not knocking your list in itself, but If you're going to make a force as distinctive and fluffy as the Soul Drinkers at least keep to the fluff and choose fluffy units instead of having a standard SM list painted in their colours.
Though with the books it never went into detail of what they truly had everywhere but they were a heavy drop pod army with lots of psykers. To try and fit it to the current aspect of the codex would be very hard. When you see the pictures of the army it is before the first Chapter war so way before they loose a lot of their wargear and equipment.
In a way, it's a shame becasue i don't get to see your idea of Spider-Sarpedon to compare to mine, but on the other hand, i get to see a different take on the Soul Drinkers
I'm honestly not sure what they had before the chapter war, but the impression is that as boarding specialists, they never bothered with vehicles other than drop pods.
btw, they aren't psyker-heavy - only one Librarian (Sarpedon) is assigned to the most important mission in the chapters history (retrieving the Soul Spear), which is acually not a lot considering 3 companies were sent. Librarians became central to the chapter post-chapter war.
If i am playing Wolf or Goatboy the gloves come off and we go all out at it.
Much hilarity ensues.
Yet there is something which does not sit right me when going half hearted in terms of drop pods. It doesn't make much sense to have half your force still on the ship while the other half is already on the planet in transports blowing up baddies. I mean once you get off your drop pod and the battle is won, what happens next? Do you sit around waiting for the next bus back home while your buddies zoom off to the next battle field?
Anyways although going half and half does create an effective list for the above reasons it just has never sat right me going half half.
Also the Drop Pod model is awesome that in itself is a reason to play a Drop Pod army!
Drop pod = pounce.
or
Tactical retreat, reposition, vox, counterattack.
Drop pod = Counter attack.
Basically I use them to either stop mobility as you said or destroy big blast weapons or otherwise nasty vehicles that can do lots of damage from far away
Few changes though
The Soul Drinkers were VERY assault heavy, I would ditch the DP dreads for Assault Squads and as an upgrade I would through Locator Beacons on the all DP's to make your movements even more accurate
Sarp/Tigerius 230
Iktinos/Cassius (Vanguard Escort) 125
Vanguard x8 230
Dpod + Locator Beacon
Assault Squad x10 200
PWeap
Melta Bombs
Tact X 10 225
Meltagun
Dpod + Locator Beacon
Tact X 10 225
Meltagun
Dpod + Locator Beacon
Scout x 5 100
Camo-Cloaks
Missile Launcher
Sniper Rifles
Scout x 5 100
Camo-Cloaks
Missile Launcher
Sniper Rifles
Scout Biker x 4 155
Astartes Grenades
Cluster Mines
Locator Beacon
Assault Termy x5 200
3 TH/SS
2 Lightning Claw
Legion of the Damned x5 205
Meltagun
Multi-Melta
Total = 2000
The Legion would tag along with Sarp when they come in, So between Gate and Slow & Purposeful its pretty nasty.
IDK hows it look to everyone.
Orks can also do many of these things, especially force a drop pod list to not be able to drop where it wants.
I'm building a board for next year which will be quite dense in terrain and I want to see how the deep striking/drop podding armies do on it. The goal is recreate a classic WWI or even as late as Vietnam trench battle. 40K offers a lot of ways around ground pounding, but if you make it a troops only count for scoring that eliminates some of the use of the dreadnought and other elite drop poding options.
I've done this twice- its been 50/50 on the success.... but even my opponent would tell you his win came from my horrible dice as almost all my placement was dead on. Average dice makes it a bad day at the office for IG, as long as the marine coming in via Drop Pod is confident in his placement and tactics.
Also, the weakness of the IG infantry is one of its strenghts. If you waste your drop podding unit on shooting infantry, be my guest. The big guns will ensure you don't make the same mistake twice after using your 200pt Marine squad to kill off a 65pt infantry squad or 50pt platoon command. I had a marine player last week make that exact mistake. Comes down with two units of melta sternguard and an Ironclad, combat squads them both, kills 3 chimeras and some infantry, but the chimeras had blocked LoS to the LRBT's and the Vendettas were reserved. The next turn, after killing about 200pts worth of IG infantry and transports, he lost the Ironclad, Vulkan, a Master of the Forge, and over 600pts worth of Sternguard Vets to LRBT battlecannon and plasma cannon fire and Vendetta lascannon fire and the various guns of the other infantry units and Chimeras. There wasn't much left to do other than mop up after that.
Currently I've yet to see a drop pod SM army do anything other than flounder against a decently deployed (or reserve denial'd) IG army. They just either have no decent place to come in and end up wasting themselves on weeny units, or their trap gets sprung with nothing to ensnare and the IG roll on turn 2 with an Astropath and effectively seize a first turn advantage in terms of shooting.
My marine scouts infiltrate in advance of the main assault, the bulk of my forces follow them in and begin the main action, my reserves come in where they can cause the most damage. Using the empty pods to deny objectives and be a threat with missile launchers helps to force the enemy to either withdraw from the objective or dedicate firepower to destroying it. And yes they are made of paper but that is a unit not engaging my main force. And not all of the pods will be empty, a multimelta dread inside your lines can be very annoying ;)
Thanks for the article.
It also makes me wish i could take more assault weapons, but i'm ok with that... I'm not sure if you covered this but another thing that's great to do if you can spend the points is load up on a bunch of pods with locator beacons and at least half with deathwind ML's and create a wall of pods with large blast templates. Great against hordes, or get the FW Deathstorm pods, but then you may have a problem of your gaming crew not letting you play them bc they only cost 75 points....
Now that being said, More then likely most Tau won't be able to wipe 4 units off the board who are right in front of them. They just don't have the volume of firepower to dish out in one turn to kill 4 units.
12 fire warriors rapid firing is only 12 hits and about 8 wounds Marines save 5 of them. You still have 7-8 marines alive on average. Now lets say you do get enough people to bear and you get two squads or three squads you still have three marines alive from just one unit. Yes, you can use crisis suits to hit the squads but pretty good chance they will have 4+ saves because your firewarriors are in the way and you can't get clear shots.
Now lets add in the fact that you have multiple units that just drop pod down in front of you. The average numbers for that short range and for Tau in most cases hurt them. Tau need at least one or two turns to soften their target before they can wipe them off the board. If you close distance for the next turn assault it doesn't go well for Tau.
My rationale would be that there is an AI-controlled gun on it that makes people think twice before pitching tents and raising flags.
Point taken though. I just think that you should have to have actual troop (vehicle crews count) to contest an objective.
I think you could have had a little better list, but I don't like Drop pod forces. There are decent counter tactics to them.
Castle up in a corner, Inq. Lord anti-DS plasma cannon squad, meching up.
Even playing Sisters (with no anti-Deepstrike), I usually am happy to see Drop pods coming at me. the force comes piecemeal. It makes it easier to focus fire on a couple of your units at a time. I could see perhaps a K'sorro Khan list with a few Multimelta Dreads in pods being decent.
It can be a whole lot of guys coming in fast from the flanks, with some pods dropping in the middle.
with pods, people tend to want to get nearer the edges, to avoid getting shot in the back.
just some ideas.
Also, Tigurius? Cassius? I can see what you want to do with Tigurius, but you only have one extra pod, most likely full of Tacticals that would benefit from his re-roll. So... you just spent 230 points on a dude where you could of spent 130 - 180 for the same thing with 2+ 3++.
Both you're HQs are huge point sinks and while they are cool, you could of bought the vanilla version and saved yourself a good hunk of points. A bit more work and you could get another Crusader w/ multimelta.
The Dreads are cool. If you're going to play pods with lots of Dreads though you might want to consider a MOTF so you can spam Dreadnoughts like crazy. That and Ironclads... it pains me to say it (because I love my Ironclads), but you're spending an extra 30ish points on a dude that is going to die. A regular Dreadnought can do the same job but better. If you pick your drops right a regular Dread will never be out of melta range while it is pretty easy for an Ironclad to fall short of that magical 6"
Looking at the rest of your list here... I hate to be an ass, but it really isn't all that competitive. You have 2 scoring units, four if you combat squad. You are seriously lacking there, especially at 2000 points where the competition is going to have 3+ troops at least.
Then you brought Scout bikers... yeah... Outside of the locator beacon what were you hoping to get out of these guys? Its a crappy unit man, another Tac squad in a rhino would help a lot more than these guys helping your pods. Really, pods don't need much help. They'll scatter... what? Seven inches on average? You're still in multimelta range at that point. Even if you do scatter the full 12" if you picked the right spot you'll still be in melta range. No real need to spend the points on bikes.
Yeah... kind of failed on the not sounding like an ass there, but this list and tactica are kind of crappy. It's not very competitive and it doesn't even mention what an opponent can do to totally gimp your list. I play Drop Pod marines on a fairly regular basis and feel like this is just isn't helping newbies at all.
Sorry, mate.
He mentions what can happen if you hold your entire army in reserve. He only has two units in drop pods. He can just bring them in, and since it is only a small part of his army, it isn't a big deal.
As for the Astropath, well, that's what Tigirius is for. Statistically, a rerollable 5+ is the same as a 4+, and a rerollable 4+ is better than a 3+. And considering there will only be two units in reserve, it doesn't exactly "gimp" his army.
That's the whole point of the "hybrid" drop pod list thing. He describes things that a list with only a few drop pods can do.
Cassius is 130pts, and significantly better than a vanilla Chaplain (T6, remember). Not exactly a huge point sink, compared to some that I've seen. And only 2 scoring units isn't a big deal, at least not when you can combat squad. Remember, it doesn't matter how many troops you start with, only how many you end with.
Most of your criticisms aren't really founded. It sounds like you didn't fully read the article, because he adresses many of the issues you brings up. And he never really said his list would be super-competitive. It was just an example list, as the article was just about incorperating 2-3 drop pods into a normal list, not about a full drop pod army as you seem to think.
That guy is just not worth his points. Librarians are squishy. Squishier than just about any other SM HQ and Tigurious is no exception. He has no invul save, unless you use Force Dome and even then it's only a 5+. If you used a regular one you'd save 90 points. 40 if you took an Epostolary.
As for lack of troops, what army doesn't build itself to anti-mech? Most players I know, or read about, build their armies to kill marines. Which makes sense, we have some the best troops in the game. If you only have 20 tacticals you are going to have a hard time doing anything other than contesting objectives. And while I know usually that's all you need to do to win, two to four small groups just doesn't cut it. Especially when an army like Tau or IG can gun them down in a turn of shooting.
I just feel like this could of been better written and presented, that's all. This article comes across as intended for newer players, and being from BOLS, a website that is very highly regarded, newbies are going to read it and consider the word of God. Ok... that might be a little much the creative metaphor department but you get my point, yes?
"Some of you asked for a typical space marine list so here you go (this list is for my new Soul Drinkers army which will be coming to you in a hobby article soon)"
That's my point, a ok article but more in depth analysis of the draw backs would have been nice. That and possibly showing more than just one example of a hybrid list, b/c typical hybrids I've seen (least in my area) usually run 3 minimum pods.
And since you brought up the list, the army list won't exactly prove effective at any of his tactics he mentioned. They can contest objectives no problem (Aerial irritants), but it fails pretty much everywhere else. 1 pod dropping in to "bait" me (Decoy From the Skies) will only make me laugh and either ignore it and go around it or shoot it with one, maybe 2, units and kill it. As for (Neuter Enemy Mobility) and (Define the Battlefield on YOUR own Terms), sorry but 1 pod coming in on turn 1 does neither of those. Heck 2 pods by turn 2 isn't scary either. So what if I start in reserve, the worst I have to deal with is what? 2 tac squads? 2 dreadnoughts? 2 Sternguard squads? It will definitely adjust how I play for that initial turn, but it's nothing that can't be easily overcome.
But those comments are directed at that specific list. Which is why I think another list or two would be helpful. The tactica has some ok advice, but really only for armies that have a good amount of pods (3+), if not comprised entirely of podding forces.
~ Roland
Blood claws don't get the second special weapon util they have a 15 man unit, but seeing as how regular space Marines can't take more then a 10 man squad I think they put the 10 man limit to stop large units of blood claws comming down.
I can't see droppod vs Footsloogging BCP of 15-16. you have use LRC. I think it was stoopid the way DropPods work for SW. That's me =P