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The Orbital Assault, how to make it work


Exark

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So, given the relative lack of community tactica threads on this Rite on the various forums (or so I've seen), I thought it prudent to create one. So guys, how do we make this work generically, both against our brother legions and 40k armies.

 

So an initial contribution: Deathstorms, yea or nay. I tried one yesterday against my friend's admech (40k) and it made its points (145 with krak launchers and DPA rule) back within its first shooting phase. I think they're a solid choice to bring DPA personally and a decent disruption unit given how their indiscriminate fire works. Combo that with a dreadnought talon and (maybe) a leviathan turn one and it provides some nice threat saturation

You can go two ways with the Orbital Assault : either threat saturation and attrition, either pinpoint insertion of efficient counters and playing on the DPA rule to delay the deployment until it's needed.

 

One of the big challenges of this Rite is that you have to rely on mobile Marine mounted weapons or Dreadnoughts for most of the efficient fire support (support squads, seekers, combinators, etc) because units with access to Deep Strike are quite rare.

 

There will still be some form of attrition once you've breached the DZ, so good staying power is always needed.

Reserves manipulation is a major factor to consider, though it is limited in Orbital Assault:

- Sons of Horus get to re-roll 1's.

- Fulgrim gives his army re-rolls, as does Remus Ventanus. :)

- Perturabo can start rolling from Turn 1.

- Alvarex Maun can re-roll for Drop Pods and Flyers if he is Warlord.

 

The only other ways to boost the roll are via the following:

- a Librarian with Scrier's Gaze from Divination. He'd need to drop in 1st turn and get the blessing off though.

- an Allied Detachment that includes a Land Raider Proteus with an Explorator Augury Array.

 

Remus Ventanus is a winner. He can be your Compulsory HQ so Guilliman is still available to be used for his awesome buffs (instead of running Primarch's Chosen). Then you can confidently take Flyers knowing they (and your remaining Pods) will arrive on Turn 2 five out of six times. Drop Pods also enable Interlocking Tactics for your LA(U) units. :)

To add to that list of reserve manipulators, Skorr can take the strategic trait to give you reroll to reserves, so he's also solid. Unfortunately though that still leaves most units without a good method of reserve manipulation in an orbital assault list, so you have to find a way around that. I think the best way to plan an orbital assault list to not be very reliant on reserves is to make sure to have some drop pod units that are not high priority to arrive on the board in turn one or two. Tacticals would be an example, a unit of ten in a pod is certainly in no rush to get on the board and fairly cheap. That lets your priority units drop in turn one and not have to worry about failed reserve rolls. 

 

The other big hurtle with orbital assault is anti tank units, since most of the big guns in the heavy support slot are not allowed in the rite. The best way around this is dreadnoughts in drop pods. The leviathan in particular can be a solid anti tank unit with 3 melta shots when it drops in. Any contemptor variant with dual graviton guns also works well. There's also javelins, the lightning and any unit that can take melta bombs will do. 

Yeah, good point about 2nd wave units. Tacticals are usually going to make up those choices, but If you need a cheap DPA unit to get an odd number of pods, a single Rapier is a good shout. Give it a laser destroyer array and it can even Snap Fire on the turn it arrives (or make it a Quad Launcher with shatter shells). Deathstorms are more expensive and have a tendency to suck.

I typically play my NL with this rite. Especially now that we have reduced costs on assault squads. I start with two large 15-20 man assault squads, a raptor squad and the commander with a jump pack on the board. First turn I have several drop pods come in. Tactical support squads are the bread and butter of this list. Vet squads are also highly important as all four of my remaining troop squads are taken up by support squads. What comes in first turn depends on what the opponent has. If he is vehicle heavy, I field my two melta squads and a contemptor. If he is troop heavy I will field my plasma and flamer squads. Never ever discount a flamer tac support squad. Versus elder I have scored first blood and kill the warlord with this squad wiping out a jetbike farseer and his scat bike squad entourage in the first shots of the game. 5 man deathwing termie squads have been incinerated as well in a single volley(admittingly, that many armor saves of one was luck along with the burninator warlord trait I rolled).

The biggest thing you need to get this Rite to work is to have a discussion with your opponent regarding victory conditions. Do you play by the 7th edition core or the ones in book V, where you wait until the end of a game turn to determine if someone is not on the board, or do you play by the rules in every FW publication before and after book V, where if at any point you have nothing on the table, you lose, so Orbital Assault automatically loses all of its games if you deploy nothing on the table.

  • 1 month later...

My guess would be yes they need to have deep strike, because the RoW rules state that every unit in the army must be capable of deep striking, not just units in the primary detachment. That's just my opinion though, I've never heard of some ruling on the matter from FW

I thik that I read somewhere, not sure where or about what, that if you take talon of 3 drednoughts, each takes pod, and they all count as 1 for Droop pod assault. Does this exist anywhere?

That's part of the Orbital Assault RoW iirc, check its page.

http://i64.tinypic.com/fvd83n.png

I don't understand completely, which part says that they all come at once, but, you can do what you said -> If you have 5 drop pods 3 of them arrive because of drop pod assault(1 dredo and 2 other units?, and then you say, okay, those 2 other dreadnoughts from talon also arrive, since they do?

Yeah all I see is that they have to land within coherency, nothing makes a talon all arrive at once. Unless my English is failing me.

 

Edit: OH. Is it because the dread talon rules state that they all deploy at once? I'm just guessing though so ignore me if you want. :p

Wouldn't you select the entire Talon, which would count as one unit for the purposes of the 50/50 split? My reasoning is that it does seem to specify "Drop Pod units" multiple times in the entry for DPA. Because they arrive from Reserves on one roll and deploy as one if they're walking, right? The whole thing leaves me confused whenever I look at it too hard.

 

Anyway, has anyone ever tried using Rapiers in Orbital Assault? Podded Las Destroyers or Grav Cannons seem like a neat trick at first glance. Hopefully I'm not missing something, but it looks like you can pod 3 las destroyers down for ~270 points? I feel like I'm forgetting some sort of limitation somewhere that only lets you take one pod and rapier per elites entry, or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Well, the DP rules state only one Rapier + crew per pod at max. But can you take 3 Rapiers in 3 pods as one elites slot under OA? OA just says each Rapier can take a pod, but with none of the specific deployment rules like the Talon.

Also just realized they can't fire the turn they drop... D'oh

 

edit: and then I started thinking about unit coherency issues and got dizzy. I think it's probably intended to function as just one Rapier in one pod per Elites slot, which isn't so hot

Wouldn't you select the entire Talon, which would count as one unit for the purposes of the 50/50 split? My reasoning is that it does seem to specify "Drop Pod units" multiple times in the entry for DPA. Because they arrive from Reserves on one roll and deploy as one if they're walking, right? The whole thing leaves me confused whenever I look at it too hard.

 

You're onto something there, but it depends if by Drop Pod units it means Drop Pods or units transported in Drop Pods. It's easy to infer the latter since it mentions units having to deploy in pods that take them as dedicated options, but it's not explicit.

 

I guess you would then drop the talon of three (one unit), another pod (second unit), and the 5th pod would go into reserves as a third unit.

 

Wouldn't you select the entire Talon, which would count as one unit for the purposes of the 50/50 split? My reasoning is that it does seem to specify "Drop Pod units" multiple times in the entry for DPA. Because they arrive from Reserves on one roll and deploy as one if they're walking, right? The whole thing leaves me confused whenever I look at it too hard.

 

You're onto something there, but it depends if by Drop Pod units it means Drop Pods or units transported in Drop Pods. It's easy to infer the latter since it mentions units having to deploy in pods that take them as dedicated options, but it's not explicit.

 

I guess you would then drop the talon of three (one unit), another pod (second unit), and the 5th pod would go into reserves as a third unit.

 

It's just a classic case of FW not writing rules interactions very well, but this would be my view. To make taking Talons "worth it" and the army scale well in higher points.

 

Or else you're limited to 4 Elite Dreads and 3 HS ones.

So, i'll just drop this here.

Speaking with a friend of mine we had the idea of 10 marksmen vets on drop pod (or anvillus) all, or almost all, armed with combi-grenade launcher, for an hard hitting unit shooting 20 small blasts with Sniper in short range.

What do you think?

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