Drop Pod Gravistators

[Caldria]

Hey there brothers.

I had 2 games this weekend, both at 1500 pts (my first 2 with the new codex actually) one was a death/raven against IG.
The second was a Battle Company against a Khorne Daemonkin list with a ton of bikes and hounds (pretty much only bikes and hounds besides the mandatory cultists/bloodletters/possessed)

I swear I didn't know I was facing an entirely assaulty army when I decided to go with the Battle Company xD (needless to say, the full ballistic skill overwatch came in handy here, although because it was only a 1500 pt game, 5 man tactical squads dont pack that much of a punch against 6man bikers and 10+ hounds - even with the extra turn of overwatch shooting)

I was a little limited with the transports I had (only 5 rhinos/razors and 1 drop pod) So in this game I decided to do something I've never done before.

I stuck 7 or 8 devastators with 3 grav cannons (had to cut one out for points) in the pod with my company master - who had the shroud of heroes, arti armour and mace of redemption.

And I'm gonna just say - I instantly fell in love with this unit. Now, granted they were only wounding on 6+ the whole game due to facing daemons. The grav amps did help a ton though (but i rolled enough to see what this unit COULD do against any other army - and I did also entirely wipe out the mandatory medium sized possessed unit in overwatch alone)

The unit was eventually charged by 7 hounds (having killed about 5 in the preceding turns of shooting and overwatch) and a beefed up khorne lord on juggernaut. And to my surprise - the unit didn't get entirely wiped off of the board, the company master actually tanked well for the unit and could hurt a fair amount (He was AP1 in the challenge with the lord though, so I dont expect that any other time but I still love the MoR)

so with that small dose of playtime with that unit, it got me thinking of how to "really" run them.

Now there's the common Azrael + veterans or command squad in pod. But what If we stuck Azzy with gravistators? Now, generally the veterans are a great choice due to them coming down and unloading their combis then them being tanky with some storm shields and being a fairly decent assault unit after that.

But with the devastators essentially getting a free turn of shooting to things charging them - it almost out does their need to be good in assault not so? And Azrael is still in there to actually be an ...ok, killy character (could even make the dev sergeant a vet and give him a power weapon if desired, though with the grav cannons and azrael already in there - this is getting quite expensive)

The devastators also benefit more from Azzy's helmet than the vets do (as you would usually have a couple vets with storm shields anyway)
This unit also prefers the "Hold At All Costs" warlord trait more than the vets, as they want to sit still on that objective and pump out 15-20 grav shots at 24" while the vets kinda wanna move at some point. Also, after the drop, the vets are shooting a couple bolter shots and 1-2 plasma - hardly as scary as the grav shots.

Now to maybe cut down on the tax we could try this with a regular demi company and have BS3 overwatch which is a little worse. Could also stick the mandatory chaplain with this unit to make them just a little better in the first turn of combat too. The only thing I'm trying to work around is this unit getting tarpitted by guardsmen/cultists blobs etc. 

There's no way to give them hit and run that I can see - besides allying in a white scars librarian conclave.

Anyway, that's my wall of text done - Let me know what you guys think, is this any good? is it old news? too expensive? demi company or battle company? Azrael or Int Chaplain or Company master? etc :D

Thanks in advance.

[Solrac]

Grav-cannon's on Tac squads are amazing and having 4 of them in a Dev squad would be utterly deadly. Azrael would make them more survivable and you would have to take a full size squad so your Grav-cannons don't die straight away. That being said it is a VERY costly unit. Regardless of their Grav-cannons their effectiveness would heavily depend on what you have to reinforce them.

 

In a double Demi company to keep things cheap I think I would do 2x 5 man Dev squads with 2 Grav-cannon's each both squads in Rhino's. Move to the middle of the board turn 1 and try not to move from then on.

[IndigoJack]

If you're into grav devs and you're taking a lion's blade, this is how I run mine 4x grav devs, sgt, armorium cherub, company master with auspex (and maybe shroud if I have points) all in a pod. Since the devs have to be 12" away to fire from the pod anyways, the auspex allows you to reduce cover on your opponent, making the grav cannons even deadlier. This is a good spot remover unit that's great at removing all kinds of annoying dug in units like wyverns, venom/malanthropes, spyders from canoptek harvest, etc. It is expensive, the dev unit alone is 250 pts, and the chapter master is 95-105, but it does it's job well. It works even better if you have multiple pods, so you can decide to bring them in on a turn other than 1, in case your opponent null deploys.