Fighting Company Devjon: Versus Cynicism Part 3: Adapting to Sixth with Defensive Drop Pods

With the new edition and the new FAQ there are a few changes that we need to deal with when building or adjusting Drop Pod lists into the new edition. Yes, the changes do upset what we normally look at when designing Defensive Drop Pod lists. Yes, we do have to deal with some problems. No, it is not difficult.

Probably the most distinct change that we face has been the new Drop Pod Assault rules. No longer can we deny kill points to our opponent for several turns; now we have boots on the ground at the beginning of turn one. However, this is overall a positive change as there are general advantages to lists taking one or more Drop Pods as supplemental units (no fear of waiting until turn five for one), and it is not the most harm the DDP lists will suffer from the changes, not even close.

That honor goes to the BRB and the general reserve changes. Not counting units that have to go in reserve, we can only reserve half of our units. With required HQ choices, that provides a particular problem, as the Emperor’s Champion is one and the Warlord is two, we will have to deploy one of them as normal at least. Having to leave a scant few units on the field to get immediately killed by our opponent?

yay…

But there is one final major change to the Reserve rules that should be mentioned. The obvious 3+ reserve rolls on turns 2 and 3, automatic turn 4. This is basically the same as the new Drop Pod Assault rules in that we get our pods down sooner, so we have to come to grips with the fact that we need to be more killy and less denial, and that means almost a total refocus in our design philosophy from last edition.

But never fear for not all of these changes are for the worse. Some of them will actually benefit us while others will simply need to be adapted to (in a new edition? *gasp*) and I am sure that the DDP list will stay a strong list when we get through this time of change.

First off, the new Drop Pod Assault Rules are an awesome change. Not in every way, but in one particular way: you choose which half comes down on turn 1. With our new focus on a killing list instead of a denial list, this is absolutely superb. Can you imagine how much more control you now have? With a Drop Pod list at that! Before, controlling the battlefield was one of the greatest strengths of the list archetype, and now we are so much better at it. That single change may alone counteract the downsides of coming onto the field sooner, vehicles exploding more easily, and being forced to have units on the field at first.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Take Marshal Learoth’s DDP list from 5^th edition. One Crusader Squad and all of his distraction units can come down. Or, if he wants to keep some distraction units for later need, he can keep any or all of them back and just drop down more Crusader Squads. Hell, he could change things up each time and customize which units come down depending on what he’s facing and how they are deployed.

An assault-based army? Crusader Squads scattered around in the back and maybe a Command Squad or two to snipe the more dangerous vehicles; when his opponent has spread out some to deal with where everything is, drop the Dreadnoughts to kill things piece-meal.

A parking lot? Dreadnoughts and Command Squads right next to them to start the destruction, leaving most of the Scoring units safely in reserve until the most threatening guns are dealt with.

A Mobile Mechanized army? Dreadnoughts and Command Squads to kill the lead vehicles and hem them in with vehicle hulls, killing much of their effectiveness before your Scoring units arrive.

Infantry Horde? Make sure that you get your Dreadnoughts in first to funnel them and then bring in your Command Squads later to target those funnel points.

Deep Striking Land Raiders? Keep the Command Squads in reserve to answer the threat.

And let’s be clear: you could never do this on purpose before! Sure, you would likely get a mostly even split, but you were forced to use what you got; now you can customize. To further emphasize this (because it needs it), you can’t even do this with normal lists. Yes, now Drop Pod lists are better able to respond to whatever enemy you face than any other list. (Take that, supposed codex creep!)

But those are only examples from Marshal Learoth’s DDP list, which needed to focus on having lots of similar units to ensure that you would get what you needed. Since we know that we will get what we need anyway, a number of options open up to us.

Crusader Squads don’t have to be all equipped the same anymore. You could give some anti-vehicle weapons and some anti-infantry weapons. You could decide that you generally want two of them to land in the back and grab objectives; give them Lascannons or Missile Launchers. You may decide that you want to have only one Command Squad with Meltaguns and one with Plasma Guns because you only expect to need to immediately deal with a single heavy vehicle at a time. You may even have a mix of Assault Cannons and Multi-Meltas on your Dreadnoughts for the same reason. Or you may decide to take Terminators instead of Dreadnoughts and just put Teleport Homers on your

Castellans (so you won’t scatter because Terminators can no longer take Drop Pods).

And we still function much like a Kill-Point denial list. The tactics don’t fundamentally change, as you still need distraction units and they still function the same. These are still Defensive Drop Pod lists, and they still function in much the same way as long as you adapt them to be now better.

However, not all is well the new edition. As I have said before, anti-infantry firepower will be more prevalent due to the nerf to vehicles. I still believe that this is 100% true based on my few 6th edition games and the same reasoning I had before, and we will need to take steps to deal with it, namely having more bodies. I’m not a huge fan of max-bodies, but frankly 5-man Crusader Squads just aren’t what they used to be (lol) and Drop Pods don’t protect as well as they used to. So I think that it will be necessary to have at least close to a full accompaniment of Neophytes, bringing up the cost of each Crusader Squad by 50 points (40 for the one with the Emperor’s Champion in it) and 64 for the Command Squads.

Unfortunately, that means that we would need to drop two-to-three Crusader Squads from typical DDP lists, and that just isn’t a very good idea (and does not conform to my 4+ Crusader Squads requirement for the next few list articles that I have). So let’s compromise what we need with what we can have to keep us at the correct number of points.

Converting my own Drop Pod list shouldn’t be too difficult, that would be my tournament goal list which will be updated once this article is posted, so here is the original for reference:

Emperor’s Champion: Vow (Abhor the Witch…), -110

Marshal: Bolter, Krak Grenades; Command Squad (5): Bolters, 2 Meltaguns, Apothecary; Drop Pod; -228

Castellan: Bolter, Meltabombs; Command Squad (5): Bolters, 2 Meltaguns, Apothecary; Drop Pod; -216

Dreadnought: Multi-Melta, DCCW, Heavy Flamer, Extra Armor; Drop Pod; -160

Crusader Squad (5): Bolters, Multi-Melta, Plasma Gun; Drop Pod; -126

Land Speeder: Typhoon Missile Launcher, Heavy Bolter, -70

Total:-2,000

So what are we going to do? Why, we’re going to make the Dreadnoughts dedicated to anti-infantry and anti-light mech while we trim down the Marshal and Castellan to have no equipment to save points. Then we will see how large the Squads are if we drop one Crusader Squad and if we drop two.

Changing the Dreadnoughts to have Assault Cannons instead of Multi-Meltas gives us 30 points, and we get 24 points shaved off of the Commanders. Dropping one Crusader Squad gives us 180 points to spend on extra bodies. (I like the Multi-Melta/Plasma Gun combination for the Crusader Squads, so we’re keeping that for now.) One extra body for every remaining squad would be two Initiates and five Neophytes, which would cost 82 points. We can do that twice for 164 points and get another Initiate somewhere.

That’s pretty good, but what if we dropped another Crusader Squad? That would instead give us 306 points to spend on extra bodies and +1 for every remaining squad would only cost 72 points. Do that four times and we have 18 points left (Initiate and Krak Grenades on a Castellan). That would put us at nearly full in every squad.

But a question arises. A good rule of thumb is to spend about 40% of your points on Troops, as in the past that has seemed to give us enough without having spent too much on the less deadly units in most circumstances. Granted, that was last edition, but as far as I can tell, 40% will still be a good amount for Troops; so let’s consider that.

With the original list, 38% of the points were spent on Troops. Dropping one Crusader Squad puts it at 37%, and dropping two puts it at only 34%. Obviously, this could be amended by dropping a few of the Initiates out of the Command Squads in favor of putting them in the Crusader Squads and I might be inclined to do that, except that only dropping one Crusader Squad will leave me with 7 man squads which should be sufficient and less vulnerable to AP 4 and Blasts/Templates.

By dropping only one Crusader Squad I also end up with a loose sixteen points which I could use for either an Initiate but I think instead I will give my Warlord a Storm Shield and a Bolter to make him more durable. But there is another change we can make. Switch two of the Crusader Squads to have Missile Launchers instead of Multi-Meltas and we can put them in the back to guard objectives and provide some fire-support (again, either on turn one or sometime later, depending on what I need). It’s tempting to exchange those Missile Launchers and Plasma Guns for Lascannons, but I think we have enough low-AP fire at closer ranges already, so I’ll keep those Frag Missiles available.

And here is what the final list looks like:

Emperor’s Champion: Vow (Abhor the Witch…), -110

Castellan (Warlord): Bolter, Storm Shield; Command Squad (7): Bolters, 2 Meltaguns, Apothecary; Drop Pod; -258

Castellan; Command Squad (7): Bolters, 2 Meltaguns, Apothecary; Drop Pod; -242

Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, DCCW, Heavy Flamer, Extra Armor; Drop Pod; -150

Crusader Squad (5/2): Bolters, Shotguns, Multi-Melta, Plasma Gun; Drop Pod; -146

Crusader Squad (5/2): Bolters, Shotguns, Missile Launcher, Plasma Gun; Drop Pod; -146

Land Speeder: Typhoon Missile Launcher, Heavy Bolter, -70

Total:-2,000

The Typhoons will start on the board so that I can have my Emperor’s Champion in a Crusader Squad. I think that the Castellans count as having a Drop Pod (because they are leading their Command Squads), so that will let me reserve one of the Typhoons if there aren’t enough places to hide them on the board.

It’s that easy.

4 comments:

Marshal LaerothNovember 4, 2012 at 4:21 PM
This is a good article, which brought be back to my pride and joy...the DDP. I had been tinkering with updating the list a few months back, but I discarded most of those ideas. However, I did keep the most viable one. That list tried to address some of the issues that 6th Edition brings, including the one I'll mention in a second.

Running pure Black Templars (imo the best DP army out there) prevents you from having legitimate way of dealing with Flyers. As an example: With Grey Knights taking their Stormravens, combined with Warp Quake, will cause extreme issues for us without SOMETHING to deal with it. This is also not taking into account the growing number of flying MC's hitting the meta with CSM/Daemons running rampant. So how does your list address this problem?
DevjonNovember 4, 2012 at 10:15 PM
Honestly, I had not put any thought into dealing with flyers for a few reasons.

The first of which was that I am trying to show that Black Templars are not a lost cause, specifically because of the concerns about us being left to solely an allies role because there are just so many codexes which are better than us (I should make that the issue of the next article). So taking allies (which I am unused to anyway) was out of the question.

The second is because I have not yet had direct experience with flyers. I've only gotten a few games of 6th edition in, and those have been against non-flyer lists. So between that and not reading many articles dealing specifically with flyers they don't often come to my mind. I guess they just aren't common enough yet.

The third is because what I have heard about flyers has varied between they end up being less effective than taking other units and they are stupidly powerful. But I need to explain that:

Things that make flyers super-powerful include the vulnerability of AEGIS Defense lines, the general lack of anti-flyer weaponry in most armies, the special rules that flyers have that makes them so hard to hit, and the impressive firepower they can normally take (the Ork flyer can have something like 32 BS3 S6 shots I think?).

But that said, I have never heard of flyers being a real issue to people. What I heard from NOVA was that the flyer-spam armies didn't do generally well (and again the AEGIS Defense lines didn't work), and other things I've seen is that, while good units, they don't do a whole lot.

So honestly, I'd say keep the Typhoons safe for as long as possible and try to gun down the more dangerous flyers while you endure their less lethal firepower. Yes, that would be my solution.
Marshal LaerothNovember 5, 2012 at 6:07 PM
1) I can understand that point...but even the best codices are using allies to cover weaknesses. Grey Knights might be the only exception to the rule there, as they are one of the few codices that have psykers, anti-flyer defense, and flyers themselves. I don't really buy the take BT as allies, as there isn't much in the codex that screams "take me!" as a secondary army. Can we do pure? Sure, but I think only certain builds can pull it off.

2) I'm surprised. They are widely used around my neck of the knave, and more at Nova. Give it time, you'll start seeing them. Though, I doubt in spam form.

3) It depends on the flyer. Flying MC's are pretty ridiculous against pretty much anything that isn't a Flyer. They hurt, lots. GK Stormraven's are also extremely nasty, especially if they invested in Psy-ammo and Hurricane Bolters. The rest of the flyers are kind of run of the mill, but they allow you to control sections of the board and do things you're not able to normally...which is what makes them good.

However, they aren't so good (except the GK Stormraven/Flying MC'S) that you need to devote large amounts of resources to killing them, as everyone believed. You're right, flyer-spam didn't do well because they didn't have enough room to maneuver. But you should still have someone to deal with them. Honestly? I like the Aegis Defense Lines quite a bit. For 100 points, you get a lot of high quality shots. The Quad Gun is vulnerable to incoming fire, but it always gets a 4+ cover save from the Defense Lines. Its cheap, but you do have to make sure a squad camps it so it's able to fire, so there is a mini-tax on it. And if the gun does die, you still have the functioning Defense Lines. The problem is...in a pure BT Drop Pod list, its hard to fit the Aegis Defense Lines in without sacrificing "punch".
DevjonNovember 6, 2012 at 9:46 AM
I suppose you could take a few Imperial Guard to run the AEGIS Defense line and bring a flyer (which, as I understand, will be more potent against other flyers) and possibly even the HQ figure that helps mess with reserve rolls (Master of the Fleet?). But to do that you would have to drop a fair number of squads from the list, which would make it less of a Drop Pod list and more of a list trying to use Drop Pods as transports.

Honestly, I still don't think that flyers are worth compromising the nature of the list in order to have specialized units to deal with them. If you really want, drop two Crusader Squads and get an AEGIS Defense line with a stationed squad, which would also help with choosing where to deploy the Typhoons.

Fighting Company Devjon

Oct 29, 2012

Versus Cynicism Part 3: Adapting to Sixth with Defensive Drop Pods

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