It would have been nice to use my manticores for once. I guess I have to keep a closer eye on Dave when he retains... so shady  

But regarding tactics, It never occurred to me to put formations like the Russ's on overwatch. When I think Russ, I think maneuver formation, which may or may not be right in facing a drop army. Chalk that up to inexperience, I guess; I've only been playing for about a year and a half.

I didn't garrison the units I could have because I wanted them to screen the important formations in case the latter didn't activate (the 1-in-6 chance seems to pop up 4 out of 6 times for me, at least it seems that way). More of a pessimistic outlook and probably self-limiting in a number of ways, but that's what I was thinking. Plus those assault marines slapped me silly and called me susan last battle, so I was wary of them as well (for good reason, it turns out).

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Fair enough.  Some quick scout-based anti-drop tactics:

It's possible to garrison on any objective in your half.  That includes the Blitz, if you want a formation on your baseline to be on OW.  You can also extend the garrison outside the actual deployment zone to push the scout ZoC forward and they can start on OW.

A large scout formation can blanket a huge area with ZoC.  As long as your scout ZoCs overlap with the formations which deploy normally in the deployment zone the pods have no place to land.  They will be "bounced" away from the bulk of your army, out into the middle of the board.  The scouts will still get hit with deathwinds and such and the dispersed formation can make them vulnerable to assaults, but it can definitely be worth it.  Also, setting up on OW can really hinder an air assault, mitigating that weakness somewhat.

So, you could have setup something like...

Stormtroopers on one of the T&H objectives, on OW.
Sentinels on the blitz, on OW.
Set up the bulk of the army so those Scout formations sort of bracket the army and the ZoCs overlap.

You still have the Roughriders to fill in any gaps or cover a flank if the Stormtroopers and Sentinels can't fully cover.  They can garrison as well if that gives them a better placement.

It's very hard to tell from the pics, but it looks like you could have bounced most of the drop formations out to mid-board or well off to the flanks.

==

On overwatch, you obviously couldn't just completely sit there on OW and let the Whirlwinds and Preds run around, but you could run your arty duel against them and if they stuck their noses out, used the Shadowswords to hit them at long range.  Shadowswords are not the best OW formations.  That probably would have left your large formations with lots of shots - troopers, HQ, Russ - freedom to set up on OW.  Even if you needed one of them to pound on the few units the SMs had on Turn 1, you'd surely be able to keep at least 1-2 of those ready for the drop.

If you managed to suppress or kill the Hunters like that, those TBolts would have been able to pile on.  Sending TBolts against a THawk is not likely to shoot it down.  It will just place BMs.  If you have ground formations on OW they're going to place BMs anyway.  The aircraft can be saved to pick stuff off later.  As it turned out in this game, going after the Thawk was probably a fine idea.  I'm not second-guessing you on that.  I'm just pointing out that they make excellent close support.

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Neal

It's in there.  4.2.5, emphasis added:

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Neal

I've seen that one yes, I was looking in the landing section though as that's what I was doing. I probably would have been better off just taking a pot-shot at the Manticores with the THawk anyway, the Assault Marines would have possibly gotten more than one assault in that way.

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Dave

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Neal,

I posted this observation in the RG thread, but it may not have been seen. This is just a fluff thing, but the only chapter that has drop podding terminators is the Space Wolves. The SWs do not use any teleporting technology (strong distrust), so seeing drop podding RG termies is going against the latest canon.

Yours to do with as you see fit, but as the RG get more exposure, you may hear more about that.

OTW, the list looks very intriguing.

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Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

Thanks for the pointers, Neal. Very useful stuff. The landed t-hawk was definitely my third choice for that ground attack, IIRC, but the other two formations had hunters and those have proven to be the bane of my aircraft in past battles. (most of my t-bolts have ended up being puffs of black smoke and metal confetti before they could do anything). I was a little peeved to find out that the T-hawk is a mobile AA station, even when landed. But the subsequent ground attacks demonstrated your point about the usefulness of t-bolts in ground attack. That lone t-bolt accounted for more kills over the next three turns than I can remember any other pair in the past.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

CaptPiett if you're going to ground attack the T/hawk after it's landed remember that it only has 15cm AA (30cm AA is only for it's fixed forward arc).

If you attack it from behind or from a side arc you could stay out of AA range as the T/bolts have 30cm range AT attacks on the multi laser and rockets.

The T/bolts only need to get within 15cm if you're using the stormbolters (AP and AA).

@dptdexys: hmmm... usually I'm pretty good about that sort of thing, and when Dave and I play we (read he) usually don't let the opponent screw himself over in that way. I'm not sure why my t-bolts got shot at before they did their ground attack if their weapons out-ranged the t-hawk's. Perhaps we thought they had to use their AA values... Maybe Dave can clear that up, b/c I don't remember. (perhaps our gentlemanly ways are at an end and I should be less trusting    Although I really don't think so as the integrity of the playtest is undermined.)

@Neal: Any opinions on the IG list construction? The battle did seem to be touch-and-go there for a little bit, but even as my units were failing their activations, I still felt pretty confident. I've been pretty schizophrenic in my IG list construction lately, so it would be nice to eventually settle on a good one and learn how to use it well... Others' opinions are welcome too, of course.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Capt Piett:  No real comment on the IG.  It seems to me like a decent list, but I can't recall the last time I played using an IG army.  There are a lot of people on here who are far more qualified to provide IG advice.

==

Honda:  I replied.

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Neal

I think the TBolt's movement was limited by the Hunter and the THawks AA. Either that or the Baron just breaked early to let his lackey eat up some shells for him.

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Dave

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