Im considering a wholly/partially planetfall deployed marine/chaos marine army, and given my lack of experiance with spacecraft in general and specifically armies based around their use, I thought I might try to gather some input from the hivemind.

Basicly im wondering (in no particular order):

What kind of core strategy is generally utilised by drop podding armies in terms of successfully competing for objectives/goals, eg drop early (t1?) and try to hold on? Drop late (t3?) and blitz the enemy off the objectives? A mixture? Either, depending on style?

Im not 100% set on all the army dropping, Im open to: a few formations dropping, some air assault, some deployed. Thoughts on what type of formations to deploy? armour? garrisons? tough hard to shift stuff?

Slow and Steady spaceships: is t3 too late? failed activation = lose?

General makeup of armies you have used and their playstyle/strategy?:
100% drop?
~50% drop, 50% deploy?
mixed drop/airassault/teleport?
something else?
Strengths and weaknesses of the above army concepts.


Thanks for any input

Hey there,

I have played games with an all air-drop space marine army. It is really fun to play, but kind of tough to win with.

I think you should drop on turn 1. First off, at the start of the game you have to tell your opponent on what turn your drop is coming in on and the longer you wait, the more time he has to set up a response. Second, since you have to preplot your spacecraft bombardment and you dont want it going to waste, you probably want to drop it in the enemy deployment zone sometime during turn 1 for the best chance of it being effective. Third, waiting until turn 3 to do your drop would make for a really boring turn 1 and 2.

The biggest problem with drop armies, I think, is the general lack of mobility. You should seriously consider putting a unit of bikes into a drop pod so you have some ability to maneuver. (EDIT: signal's comment below reminded me you can't put bikes in a space marine drop pod. Deploy them via Thunderhawk to get mobility you need) In the last game I played against Orcs I broke a lot of the enemy forces with the initial bombardment and assaults, but he broke his forces TOWARD the objectives so when they recovered I was unable to catch up and engage again, so he took a lot of objectives.
If you don't take bikes, then maybe take a Thunderhawk or two to pick up the units that come in from pods, so they can be redeployed.

Take terminators, and don't bring them in until turn 2. It will keep your opponent guessing as to your plans, and it will give him something to worry about so he won't be too aggressive against you during turn 1 (probably).

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

Sadly only Tactical, Devastator, and Dreadnoughts can be transported via drop pod. Bikes are restricted into dropping inside a Thunderhawk or Landing Craft.

Ah, geez, that's right!

I was thinking of putting the bikes in a Thunderhawk! Dammit!

So yeah, lack of mobility is a problem and you want to hit really hard, wherever you hit.

Also, keep your drop pod deployments close together so your units can support each other. Drop pod deployment is the ideal time to add dreadnaughts to your units, so use 'em if you got 'em!

Don't forget about air support. Since you want to hit hard with what you've got, a few units of thunderbolts will allow you to prep the enemy for an assault and help stack the odds in your favor for combat resolution.

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

How about adding a Landing Craft? Then you can drop two formation of tacticals and include their rhinos.

I like the concept too; My list is limited by the absence of Drops Pods or Battle barges, but the following seems like a nice way of getting a full battle company (plus support) on the ground:

Tacticals, Rhinos, SC [375]
Tacticals, Rhinos [275]
Assault, Chaplain [225]
Devastators, Librarian [300]
Terminators, Chaplain [400]
Strike Cruiser [200]
Landing Craft [350]
Thunderhawk [200]
Thunderbolts [175]
Thunderbolts [175]

The entire army can planetfall (or teleport) on T1

That leaves 325 points; You could take an extra tactical+character in pods for that (the list is short on "boots on the ground").

You can leave the Cruiser home and just air assault instead, then you have 525 spare points to play with.

Depending on the other force. In my experience the above is via le in about 50% or less of cases. Do the math before deciding on any planetfall or teleport.

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Turn 1 is most common for the reasons outlined.

Turn 3 can work, but it compresses the time frame in a big way. It turns it into an all-or-nothing kind of game. The major disadvantage is that it gives the enemy all of Turn 1 to maneuver (using March moves) and then all of Turn 2 to go on Overwatch. Even if you have some token ground forces to harass the enemy you can end up in a blender.

I've also done Turn 2 drops. With a small, fast set of ground forces you can play cat-and-mouse on Turn 1 and try to deflect the enemy to where you want them. It becomes harder to plot LZs to hit the enemy, but with your harassing forces it's not easy for them to move that far out of the deployment area so it's not horrible.

Slow and Steady spacecraft can potentially be a problem if you are playing Chaos. A failed activation pushes you to Turn 4. There's an outside chance a marine army with a spacecraft can bump you as well by choosing Turn 3. Any turn 4 drop is likely a loss.

Because drop armies are always fast-and-furious, you'll be retaining activations a lot. You definitely want a Supreme Commander.

As far as how much of the army to drop, that's going to be a personal choice. The key is to make sure the army is not too divided. That can be done in a number of ways. Air assaults and teleports are the obvious options to link up. Speeders and Scouts with transport are fast formations and can garrison forward in a position to quickly support dropped troops. Something that's just fast with good range, like a Pred formation or Warhound, can move far enough to help out a bit even on the first turn. Straight aircraft support is always going to be useful as well.

Air assaults have the advantage of being more reactive when most of your forces are going to be on the ground with relatively limited mobility first turn. Teleports with a Turn 1 drop might be worth saving until the beginning of Turn 2 so you don't end up with so many formations that you can't activate them before they are shot at.

You should consider your objective placement. If you throw an objective way off to one edge of the board, it becomes hard for the enemy to take while also remaining dense enough to fend off a drop attack. There's a fair chance they will give it up. If they do, you can drop a single formation on that objective and dig in so you have one of the T&H objectives. As an example, 8 CSMs in cover on OW are going to be darn hard to clear from the objective for ~300 points.

Finally, you should think about combinations of attacks in your strategy

If you are bringing in air assaults as support, the enemy will likely be castled up, with all their flak concentrated, so you need to think about how to clear out flak before the aircraft come on board.

Point-blank positions are vulnerable to Sustained Fire so if you are facing a firepower-heavy force like IG you might consider trying to get Scouts to force the enemy to move via Zone of Control.

If your spacecraft has pinpoint attacks, you might want to set up the ability to strip shields from WEs before you activate the spacecraft.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, there is some great information here.

I've been using the following Black Templars army for a while now with pretty good results (+it's pretty fun).

Incompertus, 4000 POINTS
Black Templars (170711)
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SPACESHIP [200]
Strike Cruiser

TERMINATOR [450]
4 Terminator units, Marshall

LAND RAIDER [350]
4 Land Raider Crusader

LANDING CRAFT [350]
1 Landing Craft

PREDATORS [350]
4 x Predator Destructors, 2 x Hunters

LANDING CRAFT [350]
1 Landing Craft

ASSAULT [175]
4 Assault units

ASSAULT [175]
4 Assault units

THUNDERHAWK [200]
1 Thunderhawk gunship

LAND SPEEDER [200]
5 Land Speeder

LAND SPEEDER [200]
5 Land Speeder

DEVASTATOR [250]
4 Devastator Units plus Transport

TACTICAL [350]
6 Tactial units plus Transport, 2 Neophyte

TACTICAL [400]
6 Tactial units plus Transport, Castellan, 2 Neophyte

(The last 3 units drop pod). At 3000pts I don't use the drop pods. What I like about this list is the choice of deployment depending on what enemy you're facing.

Everything bar the Landspeeders can potentially planetfall if enemy AA is heavy, or deploy using the aircraft in the normal way or any combination of the two. I quite often planetfall the Predators to get my AA up the field to provide an umbrella for my other flyers to work within when facing lots of fighters and teleport the terminators to take out any annoyingly placed flak units.

Crucially too, most things are still quite speedy once on the ground and plays the maneuver game quite well.

When using the drop pods at 4000 pts they're often used to overwhelm a flank and spread blast markers (Along with the orbital barrage) and sit on objectives. It's quite difficult to shift an 8 stand marine tactical unit in cover and overwatch. There's also the Captain in there, so that if needs be I can launch a huge combined assault with the retain if there's a worthy target (The enemies BTS for e.g).

It's also worth noting that the tacs and devs can use rhinos to deploy if they choose too, it's just that I rarely use this option. I really like the playstyle and mental imagery of the Space marine orbital, precision, strike.