Ha, you're right!
Odd that a self contained space craft can't self-planetfall (although it does still have Planetfall which if fair enough).

Still, the rule is simple enough and valid for certain siuations in the game.

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I feel it is fairly simple and works for certain types of units; if I had my druthers though, I'd write it so that the unit using it had to use an action that included a "move".

Mmm, the idea of falling out of the sky and immediately sustaining fire seems a little odd.

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That's actually a pretty cool idea.

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chroma: you'd be taking a pretty big risk attempting an action that doesnt involve a move, chances are you'll scatter one of the units out of formation and be unable to sustain at all if you try. same as with regular planetfall (except worse, since with regular planetfall you can drop, and then decide if its safe to sustain or not)

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Interesting that these views are on respect of the person doing the action, rather than from the perspective of the opponent.

With respect to replacing teleport, while that sounds really plausible, it is also a significant boost; no BMs for arriving, and virtually no opportunity for the opponent to counter or even prepare. OW is the only potential defence, and even that fails against sustaining.

As to the point regarding scattering out of position to sustain from, it is significantly more likely that you can put the planetfallers into a good position despite scattering; there is something less than a 25% chance of finding yourself out of position through scattering, though local situations are likely to affect that.

I think drop roks in the gargant bigmob list work, but they are basically forced to use the Double action if they want to enter play reliably, as sustaining drops their I initiative to 3+ and risks skipping a turn.

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The ability to appear and immediatly act seems pretty powerful. All other deployment methods have weaknesses - teleporters gain BMs and don't know if they act first or not when they arrive, transport aircraft needs to face flak and interceptors (very likely placing a BM). Is 2d6cm scatter really a disadvantage comparable to this?

I'm assuming the pre-plotted arrival time/location is still required. If so, that seems like a reasonable disadvantage.

If not, then yeah, it's a bit over the top.

Morgan Vening

yes, the disadvantages of regular planetfall still apply (preplotted location and time. and scatter)
unlike marine drop pods, regular planetfall makes it very likely that a formation will have atleast one of its units scatter in the wrong direction, and be out of coherency of the others, making sustaining a very risky proposition.
i dont think i've ever planetfell with a formation of more than 1 and not had to move back into coherency

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Have you found it to feel unfair in play, Ginger?

I can't recall anyone making that comment after using it. It was usually a normal case of testing for point tweaks rather than it being unfair or gamey.

Neal, yes and no
I have played against Tau and the single Manta arriving is just about Ok; there is not a lot that you can do to it through OW etc, so the difference between the two mechanisms is negligible from a game balance perspective. However, I suggest that the other extreme of having an entire army able to do this would be OTT (not to mention rather lengthy) though I have not played under these circumstances.

Unlike the original Planetfall, Self-planetfall is not limited to a single activation within the game and it is this aspect that is probably the most contentious.

• Formations remain off-table until they activate, so cannot be countered by evasive manoeuvers or shooting (except OW).
• With multiple drops, the player can choose the most advantageous to play which is also a big boost as it reduces some of the timing problems associated with planetfall.
• Plotting and Scattering is not a major disadvantage; indeed with multiple drops and formations it can be turned into an advantage through having individual drop points ~15cm apart. The initial 15cm player's placement of the drop zone usually compensates for the ~7cm scatter, especially where the drop zone has to be moved to avoid enemy ZOC. This actually allows significant flexibility in where the formations / army ends up.
• Arriving in multiple activations can also reduce the 'overcrowding' issues usually associated with planetfall as formations need not necessarily be placed so carefully relative to terrain.

Jaggedtoothgrin, your comments on coherency made me re-read the rules, and you are correct that each unit in the formation would be scattered individually. This paragraph in the rules is actually a hang-over from earlier versions of the SM Drop Pod rules that simulated where each drop pod actually landed. These were superceded by the Drop Pod to speed up the game (because of the time needed to place each unit in each formation), but not actually removed from the book.

Guys, is this how others play self-planetfall?

Ginger: I don't disagree with your assessment, but so far testing as found all of that to be relatively easy to balance with point costs rather than something that feels inherently unfair.

As to scattering, it is all done by individual unit. Testing with lots of planetfall formations in the Raven Guard SM list found that even multiple formations of Speeders (rolling to scatter 5x per formation) was really not all that slow to resolve the scatter. That would be the same with self-planetfall.

The Dark Eldar only has one unit that self-planetfalls (The Executor) and I've only ever played with one of them. So it scattered... All one unit.

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