Why or Why Not: Space Marine Drop Pods

Let us start with this, I have never used a drop pod with my Dark Angels, I have never seen anyone ever use a drop pod, and I have never read a battle report where a drop pod was used. So i have absolutely no experience what so ever in the way of the drop pod, yet Games Workshop has drop pods and has put them in Battle Group boxes. So what is a drop pod? Well it appears to be a 35 point vehicle that allows infantry and/or dreadnaughts to deep strike. It has the same armor as the front end of a rhino on all sides and a storm bolter, also just like a rhino. So for the same point value as a rhino you get an immovable rhino with AR 12 on all sides that can deep strike but not Tank Shock.

Let us look at the drop pods delivery system, Deep Strike. In turn two the drop pod can be brought in from reserves via deep strike and follows all the rules for deep strike with one exception, the Inertial Guidance System. This system allows the pod to reduce it scatter if it may happen to land on an object that it wouldn't normally be allowed to land on. This greatly reduces that chance of a mishap and while i have never had a mishap when arriving from Deep Strike I have seen it in the past and it can be very bad for an army that is expecting its troops.

The delivery system of the drop pod has another advantage over normal deep strike troop, the drop pod assault. This lets up to half of your drop pods to deep strike in turn 1. So if you only have one drop pod you automatically get it on turn 1.

What else does the drop pod give us? Not much more over the normal rhino other than the fact that it can transport a dreadnaught. This may be a very good way to deliver close combat dreads to the front lines were it could devastate the enemy but it also probably won’t last very long. It could be dropped in a way to block LOS ,force an enemy unit to destroy it, or go around in order to get to an objective making it a glorified piece of impassable terrain. Well at least it is impassable terrain with a storm bolter. Your opponent will be forced to deal with it and with the moderately good armor it may distract them for a couple of turns.

So would I try using a drop pod in the future? Well before I sat down and started writing this up I would have said no, I like my Assault Squad drops behind enemy lines but seeing that they have been less than stellar in the last game I used them I am hesitant to use them again anytime soon. Now that I have actually stopped and thought about some very annoying things to do to my opponent using a drop pod I probably will take one in a game or two just to see how it plays out.