Drop Pods in Maelstorm

7th made Drop Pod armies far batter at taking objectives. 10+ Objective Secured troops with first turn deep strike right into objectives make problem for many armies. What would be better option in maelstorm mission, going first to get as many objectives as possible or second to prevent alpha strike on our army?

Personally I'd go second. Let him claim the objectives and spread his army out then redeploy with our very fast units and take out his troops one unit at a time.

I second that. We don't take and hold, we just take.

I'd think we want first, on some of the game types at least. Being able to claim a turn's worth of uncontested Objective VPs from strategic cards is worth it, not to mention being scattered across an entire table instead of just our DZ forces tough decisions for a drop-pod list.

Or maybe not. Maybe this thinking is why I keep losing to my buddy's Imperial Fists.

I would decide based upon what cards I got first. You have killing units, and even that Recon card may determine me to go second heh.

Dethdispenser wrote:

I would decide based upon what cards I got first. You have killing units, and even that Recon card may determine me to go second heh.

You don't get any cards until the start of your turn so that's not going to work.

In Maelstrom there is no real point in going second as objectives are generated at the start and scored at the end of your turn... going first even allows you to move onto further objectives and try to deny your opponent them. The only conceivable advantage to going second is if you're behind on turn 5+ and you know exactly how many points you need to win, and can take risks accordingly.

But...by going second you can castle to prepare for coming melta spam. By flatouting into objectives you give your enemy opportunity to drop, shoot your vehicle and claim that objective. Our option are already limited vs drop pods because of our paper armour, jink is nice but wont always work and we can have problem destroying drop pods with its 12 AV.

It depends really. Castling is the accepted method of defeating DP alpha strikes after which we own the mobility game and probably the shooting phase too. However if the army is just tacs in pods then taking first causes him some major problems. Forget castling and boost onto every objective that could be a viable LZ so his pods arent scoring anything. Sounds weird but look at it like killing each pod you've prevented from landing within 3".

Basically army composition on each side (in his case is it more killy or just survivable tac spam), Objective placement (in your case almost always place them far apart, or even in ruins where pods cant be placed) Then which mission set-> which mission. All are factors to consider but you can control/effect most of these.

Forget about the pods and look at how he deploys.

If there are some tasty targets (like a land raider full of bad asses) and you think you can pull off an effective alpha strike then take first turn. If he has next to nothing on the table and/or nothing valuable that you can get LOS on, go second... simple.