Preferred Enemy: Riptide Battlesuit

[Squirrelloid]

 

If you go with a drop pod army, can't you hedge it in with drop pods so it can't intercept anything else, and really break up its line of sight so there's a lot of blind spots that you can hide forces in?

 

It is widely agreed that drop pods are considered to have their doors open, so you can't block LoS :/

 

Doors are open, but you still need true line of sight.  The doors being open doesn't mean you can pretend it isn't there.  There's a lot of gribbly bits in there that can help hide units, not to mention the supports between the doors, and it has to check from the model's eyeball level.  I haven't actually placed a drop pod next to a Riptide, so I'm not totally sure how all that interacts with the drop pod model, but i'm guessing you'll generate some blindspots and at the very least some nice cover saves.  (4+ for vehicles, right?)

 

Beyond that, if you have enough drop pods that you can deploy them in depth, you can probably totally block sight with just two of them.

 

(Also, I would have thought drop pods land and scatter with teh doors closed, then pop the doors.  So if you scatter next to an enemy model, the doors on that side cannot open or it would place you closer than 1" of an enemy (actually on top of xP).  "Once the drop pod has landed, the hatches are blown...")

[Calnus]

Its been ruled before that even if you can't physically drop the hatches, they're considered open when it lands.  Not a big deal, like you mentioned there are lots of bits in there, but it will only get you a 5+ save from intervening models anyway.

 

Besides, if it can't draw line of sight to you directly through a pod, I'm sure it can still draw a bead on something else on the table, and your podded units wouldn't be able to shoot it either.  And the gun can still target a very visible pod and scatter or catch the edge of nearby models with blast.

 

No, I wouldn't reccoment blocking in a Riptide with pods.  If nothing else, it will just use it jetpack to move over them next turn.

 

I'm liking the Predator Annihilator, triple lascannons are useful.  But there is definitely an oppurtunity cost and straight up point cost with them that I don't like...Unfortunately, I've been racking my brain for months looking for a cheaper, better lascannon platform, and I'm not coming up with much of anything.

 

If the next army book lets me put a TL lascannon where the Typhoon launchers are on a land speeder, I would be very happy.