Hey McBeath,

As I've seen it played you are entirely correct in your interpretation of firing empty drop pods down onto the field. So your tactic with the Thunderfire Cannon would work.

Which of your remaining 6 would you want down first turn? Do you save the Sternguard for upfront or later?

Have you thought about putting a locator beacon onto one of the drop pods you have coming in first turn? This would allow you to make sure all the second turn on stuff gets to come in nice and close. I just see this list as needing to create a tight formation of drop pods and a little fire base in order to be able to deliver the knock out punch to one section of your opponents army.
Anything that can minimize the randomness of the already trickling reserves comes in handy.

With just the Thunder Fire Cannon on the table deployed...what if you end up going second? Do you deep strike that in?

One other suggestion is to try and put in thunderhammer's rather than the power fists for your seargents. This helps further captialize on Vulcan's Chapter Tactics.

All round good list though!

Later,
Greg

I understand what you are saying about determining First and Second wave based on opponent.
However, I disagree that this should be done on the fly at the beginning of a game.
You should already have 2-3 patterns of deployment pre-determined and then categorize which pattern would be used against which opponent styles.

This gives you solid tracks of plan, that vary slightly from game to game. If you are trying to go through all the pro/con of order early, it leaves you open to more unkowns. While they may not be mistakes, the more unkowns you develop into your battle plan from the get go, means the more you have to be able to think on the fly as the action really starts to happen. And once in the thick...then the unkowns could compound to create mistakes because you aren't able to take all the extra variables into consideration.

It can be a good trade off to go with what is familiar and to your tendency, rather than optimal efficiency early on, in order to improve your decision making capability later in the game. The faster your brain has to make decisions the more it will fall back into routine, rather than analyzing the current situation. If you have a familiar layout, it allows you to focus on a few variables so nothing critical gets glossed over in a rush.

Having said all that...have you thought of how you would deploy based on several of the major armies? If so, what are your thoughts?

Like you said, it all looks good on paper. The next step is to ensure the list meets your intended design specifications (ie it does what you wanted it to do). The best way to do that prior to building...is to check some of the tactics you were hoping to use.

You mentioned the naked tac squads coming down on objectives. Personally, I don't believe against other solid competitive lists that even 30 Marines + 10 Sternguard can afford to get spread out. Other than the Ironclads you don't have a lot to cleave you out of a combat save numbers. I've always held firm belief that you need a decent counter assault unit in any army that revolves around short range fire fights, which the Ironclads can help with...but not if they are the first wave assaulters (due to opening up exposure to the counter assault early).

I mention all this cause I'm working on a Raven Guard styled Drop Pod/Assault Marine list that would function similarly to yours...just with more assault punch and less sternguard/melta punch.
So my brain has been going through all these tactical challenges lately.

I'll post the list here and on my blog later this week.

Later,
Greg

Ridvan from our group played a very scary Black Templar all drop pod list (all but one squad of teleporting terminators) it was very effective The last singles tournament at Spellbinder in Woodstock it was a 1700 point list and he took best overall with it just beating out my Eldar that got best General.

I hated fighting this list the all drop pod list lets you control the battlefield so well. You pick the fights, you pick when and how they happen.

I guess my view of Drop Pod armies is very skewed because I'm primarily an Eldar player. One that favours a ton of speed and short term fire power.

I've always had little trouble deploying in such away that Drop Pod squads get to shoot at what I want, and then I move to get rid of the things I need too.

Mostly this involved a denied flank deployment with not quite enough space to put a drop pod down in between layered units, with the hard wraithlords and falcons going on the outside.

And with the trickle effect of an entire dropping army...if you can withstand that first punch...my speed allows me to run down everything else.

But I can see where a slower or softer army would have issues.

What kind of tactics do you use when its Drop Pods on Drop Pods or on Daemons?

Later,
Greg