Dropping In
I got an email the other day from a Warpstorm reader that had originally contacted me when he was getting started, looking for advice on what direction to take and which units to use and how to equip and use them. At the time (December 2009 through March 2010,) I put together a few articles, hoping that the advice that helped him would also help others. (If you are interested in checking out those articles, you can look at Getting Started with Space Marines, Getting Started: Equipping your troops and choosing new units, Big Guns: Conversions, utility and Devastator theory, and Expanding your force with Elites.) Since then he's gotten a lot more experience in and has really developed a feel for what he wants his army to be like. This is the email I got the other day...

Hello Mr. Cowan, this is H.B. Do you still remember me? I asked you some questions when I was starting 40k a while ago (about a year or two) and you helped me out a great deal with my Space Marine army by making some articles in Warpstorm. I'd like to thank you for all the tips and ideas that you gave me. You were really a big help back then when I didn't know much and didn't have many people to depend on.

Even though I know better about the game now, if you are fine with it I'd like to obtain a bit more of your advice. I still play Space Marines (I haven't really moved on to another one) and fluff is a big part of my army. I created my own chapter called the Reapers and made my own paint scheme. Their fighting style is quite unique. Unlike many other chapters, Reapers prefer to fight in cities and other confined areas. They are experts at close-range shooting and close combat. Therefore, they don't often use traditional marine tanks such as Predators or Landraiders. For firepower, Reapers rely on their Devastators, Thunderfire cannons and Dreadnoughts. Sternguard Veterans and Scouts with snipers are some of the core units in my army. Lately I've been thinking; if the Reapers didn't appear on the battlefield on transports, how would they make their appearace? I answered myself: drop pods. I want to make an all out drop pod army. No Rhinos, no Landraiders. I'm planning on starting on the table with only my Scouts and perhaps my Devastators. Using drop pod assault, I'll crash down half of my army infront of the enemy on the first turn then slowly bring rest of them out as my reserve rolls are made. How should I tackle this? I mean, the models are not the problem, do you have any advice on how to play this kind of army? What are the strengths and weaknesses with this kind of army? I've never seen anyone do this so I have no idea if it will work or not. Personally, I'm not much of a competitive player so I don't mind loosing games for the sake of fluff. Besides, it will give my opponant something different to play against (I've seen enough Hammernator armies out there). Also who knows? It might be a very good army once I get the hang of it.

Again, thank you very much.
H.B

P.S: Like before, if you'd like to make a page in Warpstorm so everyone could benefit from it, it would be awesome. For that, I've attached some photos of the Reapers in case you'd like to post them there. I got the idea from Novamarines. There is a Dreanought, Tac squad with Rhino, and Honor Guards.

First off, I do remember you, H.B. and I'm glad you've been enjoying your army! You don't have to move on to another army. While that is what many people do, you can often find a lot of depth and interest and variety in a single army, and sticking with one army will definitely give you more experience with it, which will pay off in the long run. Okay, now let's take a look at some of your questions.

Drop Pod Armies
Drop Pod Armies offer you an initially huge amount of mobility in terms of being able to appear nearly anywhere on the board. On the other hand, once in place, you have very little mobility, since you are stuck to infantry movement. In terms of strengths, Drop Pod armies offer that initial high mobility, being essentially a chance to take your deployment phase later in the game, presumably after the enemy army has already set up or even started moving. They also let you get most of your army up close to the enemy with no chance of being shot ahead of time. This means you can land and start shooting without having taken casualties. With more assault-oriented units, it means they only have to endure a single turn's fire before getting to grips with the enemy. This can be enough of a bonus that I'll add it to the list another time: by dropping in, you are effectively getting "first turn" regardless of who won the roll, since your army isn't on the board to get shot at. It's not all roses, however, there are some potentially serious downsides to a Drop Pod army...

Once you've dropped in, you don't move any faster than any infantry unit. If the enemy can still move quickly, they could simply disengage and go somewhere else, out of your reach. In addition, you are dividing your force for the enemy. If your whole force is in drop pods, you will have half of your army on your first turn, while the enemy presumably has his whole army. 1000pts versus 2000pts is really rough on the smaller army. Having some units start on the board can mitigate that, but it leaves them vulnerable to being shot and limits the impact of your drop deployment. (I'm not saying don't do it, just recognize what it does for you and what it takes away.) The final weakness of a drop pod army is that it doesn't have many vehicles, and vehicles are particularly effective in 5th edition, lending their armor, mobility and firepower to the squads inside.

Those are both pretty respectable lists. In creating an effective drop pod army, you'll want to do what you can to emphasize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses, either through unit choices, equipment or tactics, or some mix of the three.

You ask, "Will it work?" The short answer is yes. In fact, drop pod armies were pretty powerful for a while at the end of 4th edition. Even if no one in your area plays one, they used to be fairly common. They function best by isolating and ganging up on one portion of the enemy army. They can also use some semi-suicidal units to nuke dangerous enemy units or strand them away from the action.

You say you aren't a very competitive gamer and you don't mind losing games for the sake of "fluff." I can respect that. I believe that a drop pod army isn't really in the top tier of competitive armies these days. On the other talon, I believe that with some good unit and equipment choices and good tactics, you can still get quite far with it. Let's see what we can do on each of these fronts.

First, I'd like to make a comment about Duality. This is the idea that each unit should be able to do more than one thing. It may not be very good at the second thing, but it should be able to contribute if it's primary mission isn't possible. An example might be a Tactical squad with a flamer and the sergeant has a combi-melta and meltabombs. With 9 rapid-fired bolters and a flamer, it's got pretty effective anti-infantry firepower at close range. It also has a one-shot meltagun and the meltabombs for doing some vehicle damage in a pinch. Maybe you really need that tank dead, but you have nothing else in range. Maybe you need to get the enemy squad out of its vehicle so that your other squads can shoot it. Perhaps you simply have all of your good antitank on the other side of the board. Not only is it worthwhile to have a backup plan, it complicates enemy targeting. If you have 2 really good antitank units and 2 really good anti-infantry units, which ones will a tank-heavy list shoot at first? On the other hand, if all 4 units have antitank capability, they won't be safe until all of your units are dead. It's a lot harder to kill off 4 units than 2.

Unit Choices
You mention Devastators and Thunderfire cannons. These are excellent long range units that are often hampered by their vulnerability to enemy fire. If you give them decent cover and use drop pods, that should take a lot of the pressure off of them and let them remain effective for longer. You also mention Dreadnoughts. While the most common kind of Dreadnought in most competitive lists these days is a Rifleman (2x TL-Autocannon, fantastic firepower against light-medium vehicles) a more standard mixed Dreadnought (like you have pictured here) is a better choice for a drop pod army. Although it doesn't do an amazing amount of damage, a Dreadnought is very effective against an enemy unit that doesn't have a S6 or better weapon. It can just sit there and munch on them all day and have nothing to worry about. Against enemies that can hit harder, you could have the Dreadnought hang back and shoot to soften the unit up for another unit or two to assault. In addition, it can lend it's attacks to help a squad finish off an enemy unit on the charge. Multimeltas and Assault Cannons are probably the best options here. Sternguard veterans also are highly effective in drop pods, as it lets them get up close where their various weapons are most effective. One common use for them is as the semi-suicidal squad. Give them a couple of meltas and a couple of combi-meltas, then point them at whatever it is you want to go away. If they kill a LandRaider then get squashed, it doesn't matter, because they've kept the Hammernators from going anywhere, meaning they are less effective.

Equipment Choices
While I've covered a lot of equipment choices above, I want to reiterate how useful it is to exercise duality in as many of your units as possible. Always having the right tool for the job is really worth quite a lot. Complicating enemy target priority is also a very good thing. The two exceptions to equipment duality that I can come up with are Sternguard Veterans and Devastators, for very different reasons. Sternguard Veterans come with all sorts of fancy special ammunition for their bolters, which makes them automatically effective against infantry. If you make their main or combi-weapons into antitank weaponry, they'll have duality already. On the other talon, the Devastators work best when they have similar or at least complementary weapons, since their range allows them to impact so much of the board. If you give them two Lascannons and two Heavy Bolters, you'll be paying a lot of points for a unit that wastes half of its shooting almost every turn. If, instead, you give them 4 Missile launchers, you'll have some effectiveness against infantry, but you'll also fare well against vehicles. If you give them 4 Lascannons, they'll be great against vehicles. Given the number of vehicles on the table these days, I'd probably go with either 2 Lascannons and 2 Missile Launchers or 4 Missile Launchers.

Tactics
The general idea of tactics is to gain local superiority so that a large chunk of your army can gang up on a smaller chunk of theirs. Drop pod armies tend to lean even more heavily in this direction, as they are initially outnumbered (before all the reserves have shown up.) There are several ways that they achieve this.

Putting your drop pods primarily on one side of the enemy army is a great way to get started. The more spread out the enemy is, the better, but all but the tightest wedge formation can be exploited this way. Imagine the enemy army being broken up into 4 chunks. There is an inside and an outside chunk on your left, and another inside and ouside chunk on your right. Land most of your drop pods so that they surround the outside chunk on the left, and most of the right side won't be able to reach you right away. Bam! Local superiority. 800pts of your army gangs up on 500pts of his. Definitely one-sided, which means you'll have a good chunk of yours still left to smack down the next part of the enemy army.

Use your drop pods to block traffic. Drop them between the unit that you want to gang up on and a unit nearby that might come to its rescue. Simply by making them take an extra turn to get there, you take a lot of pressure off of your units, giving them time to reduce their immediate targets before others show up.

Earlier, I mentioned semi-suicidal units. These are often used on their own, away from the bulk of your army. Their purpose is to either further cut off reinforcements (or wipe them out, depending on the target) or to remove highly dangerous units from play. Most threats of this nature are vehicles of some sort or are Monstrous Creatures or heavy infantry. Meltas are highly effective weapons against all of these targets. Remember that these units are designed to die, so make sure their target is worth their sacrifice. Don't just shoot into a Tactical squad with them, unless that Tac squad is holding the winning objective.

You mentioned starting some units (such as Devastators, Thunderfire Cannons, Sniper scouts) on the board and dropping the rest of your army. This can be very effective, particularly if you use the concept of isolating by fire. In my comment above about using your drop pods primarily against one chunk of the enemy army, I mentioned imagining the enemy army in 4 chunks. If you drop half your pods next to his right flank outside chunk on turn 1, then use your long range firepower to start decimating the right flank _inside_ chunk right away. By damaging the group next to the one you are attacking, you are limiting their capability to reinforce the outside chunk that your lead elements are currently engaging. If you can damage them sufficiently, they'll arrive in tatters. Instead of reinforcing their flank, they'll simply be feeding themselves to your units in bite-size chunks. Mmm... tasty!

Finally, look for favorable matchups. If you have an enemy unit of close-combat nasties that have a lot of S4 and 5 power weapons with good initiative, send in the Dreadnought to slowly eat away at them with no threat in return. If the enemy unit has heavies with powerfists or Thunderhammers, soften them up with shooting, then send in as many good-initiative power weapons as you can. If it's an enemy firepower unit (like Devastators) charge it with something that will either tie it up for a while or kill it off, but you don't need to be in a rush about it.

Let me know how you do with your army, and I'd be interested in seeing your drop pods, too. Are you going with the standard models, scratch-built ones or another model option?

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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