Dedicated Transports

[Azalus]

I recently aquired a sw battleforce, and used it in a friendly 1000pt match against csm, and was mostly using it to test various unit strengths and weaknesses. I had 3 grey hunter packs, one in a rhino, one in a razorback, and one in a drop pod, (I was borrowing the tanks from a friend). Being a Tyranid player hurts my knowledge of all the intricacies of vehicles, so I was curious, my razorback was popped second turn by Ahriman, my rhino third turn by the same, without ever getting the grey hunters in range of doing anything useful, those two squads never saw assault.

 

The third pack in the drop pod, 5 ghs accompanied by a wgbl and wg in power armor, landed in the middle of the fray with no scatter, shot up the thousands suns and then took out a 5m tda squad over a counter-attacked assault.

 

Is there a reason for the overwhelming success of my drop pod over my tanks other than my inexperience at using the vehicles effectively? The drop pods just seem infinitely more useful, with the downside of potential scatter.

[Karack Blackstone]

Dedicated Transports:

 

- Take up a FOC slot in Dawn of War campaigns just to point it out, I learned that one the hard way

- Can be difficult to learn: however, with EA (a choice) there's always a chance to get vehicles into the fray at the right time

- Always remember, that if the vehicle is a wreck and not surrounded by enemy models, you MUST get out. If you can't then it's a lost unit.

- In the case of a vehicle destroyed by an explosion, the vehicle is removed, the unit inside takes a toughness test (opponent rolls) against strength 4 for being inside. Any wounds made must be saved and assigned as normal.

 

Hopefully you weren't being cheated, but without more information it's hard to tell.

 

Rhinos and Razorbacks are basically better for me, but for you, maybe Drop Pods are the way to go? You also didn't scatter which can drastically change things if you miss, and drift off the board, for one.

Just to ask, what happened to the units you had in the Rhino and Razorback?

[clanfield]

personly i like rhinos i do use drop pods mixed in when i like but mostly rhinos you need 3 or more i find to zoom up field some times iv had upwards of 7-8 at one time i find enermys shoot other stuffs like redemers :P

[MalachiOfRuss]

Did you activate the Smoke Launchers on the Rhino or Razorback? They will give the vehicle a 4+ cover save for 1 turn. Moving 12" each turn, that 1 turn of cover is usually all that you need to get your troops somewhere useful. Also pay attention to where you place those transports when they move. Watch the fire lanes and angles of anything that could really hurt them and try to put the transport in a position where the worst of the enemy shooting can't even see it, or at least you get a cover save. This is where the amount of terrain on the board really comes into play. Remember that the rulebook says that 25% of the board should be terrain, and there should be some Line of Sight blocking pieces there.

 

The other thing with vehicles, especially transports, is that you can't leave them "hung out to dry." The army needs to provide some other threats to put your opponent in a "no win" situation as far as what to shoot at. Organize your army to present difficult decisions in target priority for your opponent. You want to present situations where your opponent thinks, "I could shoot those troop transports, but then X will just come and destroy me. I could shoot X, but then his troops will just advance on me..."

 

Make no mistake: drop pods can be an important part of a marine army, especially against a high-range shooty army like Tau or IG. However, they are unpredictable and those units that pod in are often left with no support, and probably facing a whole lot of enemy guns.

 

EDIT: Rereading I see that your transports actually survived 2 or 3 turns. That's actually pretty average. If you were moving the maximum 12" a turn then you got 24-36" of movement from them for your troops. Was that not enough to get them near the enemy?

[dswanick]

First question for the ex-xenos player (:P), did you use your smoke?

 

My general strategy for vehicles is:

turn 1 - 12" move towards my objective, hug cover or pop smoke.

turn 2 - 12" move onto my objective at which point the transports are now bunkers, pop smoke if not already done.

Generally, I never care if my transports get taken out turn 2 or after because they should already have served their purpose of delivering a Troops unit onto an objective. (Don't tell the Iron Priest of my calous disregard for the Honored Brother Transports ;))

[Wulfebane]

At 1000pts, I would like to know more about your force. You say you only had 3 Grey Hunter packs, each in it's own transport? If that is ALL you had, then it's a matter of prioritizing targets.

 

As a tyranid player, you likely weren't as concerned about casualty attrition due to charging the gunline, relying on the sheer mass of units that will survive the hail of bullets and make it into melee. If all you had were 3 packs and 3 transports apiece, you left your opponent with only 3 targets to debate about, one of which will definitely not be seen until Turn 2 at the earliest.

 

With only 3 choices to target, your opponent took out the one that was most troublesome first, that being the Razorback (with long range potential), and the Rhino second, depending on when your drop pod landed.

 

My advice would be to give your opponent more targets to choose from in order to distract him and keep his focus less concentrated on a single target.

[Azalus]

As I was using almost completely what I could build from a battle force (mind you my little group doesn't compete, so we don't use wysiwyg) I had a wolf guard battle leader, 4 wolf guard split between my other 4 pack, 3 packs of 5 grey hunters, a pack of 5 wolf scouts that used obel to get behind them, the drop pod had the wgbl, the grey hunters, and the wg pack leader, the rhino and razorback had the 5m grey hunters +wg each (I'm sure you wanted to know the wargear options too, but it seems I left my army list over there)

 

I see that I made a rookie mistake though, as I didn't even think about my smoke the entire time, which could have bought me what I needed while Ahriman was using bolt of change to pop me, and also used Ahriman to template my scouts down.

 

Chaos list was

Ahriman

9 Thousand Sons + Sorc

9 Thousand Sons + Sorc

5 TDA CSM

 

He kept Ahriman in a position where I couldn't get to him and he focused the vehicles, the scouts didn't make it out til turn 4 because the dice gods hate me, and I missed the drop pod assault on turn one due to mishap, it got delayed until turn 2. the unit with my hq took out a thousand sons squad and the 5 tda, but was down to the battle leader by that time, all that was left on turn 7 was 4 thousand sons + sorc, and my battle leader, if I could've gotten into assault in turn 6, it probably would've been my match, but my move through cover rolls were abysmal, and then rolled double 1's on my last cover saves.

 

Lessons learned, and it probably would've went different if I had more than a battleforce, I'll keep in mind smoke, and better positioning for my tanks, as well as prioritizing cover, space marines may have better armor than nids, but the attrition game doesn't seem so efficient there :/

[Karack Blackstone]

This may sound a bit rough, but please, bear with me:

 

There's realistically no reason to attrition with any force of Space Marines. Instead of equivalent to Infantry units (IG) we instead get equivalent to Special Forces Teams. Our boys are quite a bit more expensive than horde lists, and have the better armor chance to hopefully stay up longer. I still remember the time I sent a full LRC of WP + BC's into a green tide. That was a lesson learned.

 

Your list sounds rather solid, but money permitting, consider for the future if possible a slight increase in people? As you're not WYSIWYG compliant, can you put down models with the same base sizes and increase your troop count? The major issue with GH's is that they tend to want high body counts when in a Rhino, such that 9+1 (WG) or 10 is a rather old debate (another thread, too).

 

And don't forget, not only do SW vehicles get smoke launchers, we also get search lights for Dawn of War or Night Fighting rules. I personally find EA a great buy if it can be afforded and justified, if need be. I justify it as my units need to always move, move, move; there's no point in just sitting there one turn as a huge target.

[Azalus]

No worries about sounding rough, that just sounded like the voice of experience, and I've been trodding long enough to learn to accept advice, instead of shrugging it off and barreling headlong my own direction. Thanks for the advice, perhaps it will help in the future <_<

[dswanick]

and I missed the drop pod assault on turn one due to mishap, it got delayed until turn 2.

How, exactly, did you manage this?!?

[MalachiOfRuss]

and I missed the drop pod assault on turn one due to mishap, it got delayed until turn 2.

How, exactly, did you manage this?!?

Probably scattered off the table.

[dswanick]

and I missed the drop pod assault on turn one due to mishap, it got delayed until turn 2.

How, exactly, did you manage this?!?

Probably scattered off the table.

Yeah, seeing as that's the only possible way - I meant "How could you do that to yourself?!? :P".

[Azalus]

Mostly it was a matter of risk vs benefit, the position I was after was perfect for that unit, I just didn't expect to scatter 11 inches towards the table edge, lol.

[Karack Blackstone]

That old problem.

 

Hate to say it, but that's one of the reasons I haven't used my one assembled pod, if ever, I think. Drift magnet towards the table edge.

[Grey Mage]

I recently aquired a sw battleforce, and used it in a friendly 1000pt match against csm, and was mostly using it to test various unit strengths and weaknesses. I had 3 grey hunter packs, one in a rhino, one in a razorback, and one in a drop pod, (I was borrowing the tanks from a friend). Being a Tyranid player hurts my knowledge of all the intricacies of vehicles, so I was curious, my razorback was popped second turn by Ahriman, my rhino third turn by the same, without ever getting the grey hunters in range of doing anything useful, those two squads never saw assault.

 

The third pack in the drop pod, 5 ghs accompanied by a wgbl and wg in power armor, landed in the middle of the fray with no scatter, shot up the thousands suns and then took out a 5m tda squad over a counter-attacked assault.

 

Is there a reason for the overwhelming success of my drop pod over my tanks other than my inexperience at using the vehicles effectively? The drop pods just seem infinitely more useful, with the downside of potential scatter.

Drop Pods are amazing- but if you dont think them through it can also be easy to counter them.

 

Rhinos and Razorbacks can also be excellent- did you use smoke launchers? did you try to stay in cover *like a monstrous creature would?* Was it an objective game or just going to smash some skulls?

 

Drop Pods work by denying your enemy the ability to hit first, as such alpha-strike style units that arent debilitated by it are best. IE- Special Weapons are better than combis, because not only can you use them the turn you come in to cripple an enemy unit, but you have that ability again the next turn, and the turn after. Similarly its best to avoid small units if you can, because larger units will be more survivable to the return fire of your targets friends. 10 man GH packs are a good example, Dreads, especially Vendreads, are even better.

 

They also work by being precise- you can get some amazing deepstrikes off with them, even in crowded conditions. In fact, sometimes crowded conditions help you deep strike more accurately- use that inertial guidance system to your best advantage!

 

Often times your Pods will die- and that is A O K! because it means less firepower your troops theyve just delivered are going to be taking. At the same time, as youve just noticed- theyre about as resilient as a rhino in their own way... so its a fair exchange in my book.

 

Mech- the use of Rhinos, primarily- is always going to be the standard unless vehicles get a drastic nerf, but DPs give you away to approach the battle sideways, smile at it, and then hamstring your opponents army. I love my Drop Pods, and I encourage you to try them out more.