Q: "Marshal Laeroth, I have read the reasoning on your site regarding the competitiveness of defensive pod lists, and unless I'm missing something key, I don't see it. This list seems strong against death-star heavy lists, but weak against almost everything else. Would you be willing to explain how this list works against say, anything with bubblewrap capability."
A: I'm happy to oblige. I'm assuming that you've read both: BT 101: Building Another Competitive 5th Edition List and the Drop Pod Templars -- The 'How To' pages. So I'll go slightly more into it. This is why I believe the BT Drop Pod lists are superior to other SM DP lists, and better than most other BT lists.
1) As you mentioned, they do extremely well against "Death Star" opponents. While you might know why, others may not, so might as well be through. Because you are not guaranteed to come out until at the earliest, 2nd turn, this drastically shortens the amount of time that your opponent has to kill MEQ infantry. Yeah, they are only 5-man strong, but even a 5-man unit can stall out an enemy for a turn or two. While they are occupied with a tiny ass squad on one side of the board, you have units that can come down on the opposite side of the board to claim objectives/quarters or even eliminate strung out enemy units.
2) Against MSU armies, you have a little more of a problem as they likely have as many units as you do. However, you have the advantage in that you can go wherever on the board you want when you drop in. Castle up on one or two objectives to claim them, then drop the rest of your stuff on theirs. This will force them to either eliminate your forces on their objectives, which keeps them from taking yours. They can send everything at your objectives, hoping to kill you before the game ends. Or they can contest your forces as well. But at that point, your opponent is playing for the draw and they will have to either face a fortified army behind Drop Pods (which block movement/provide cover), or they will face a huge thorn in their side because you can be everywhere all at once.
3) You unfortunately seem to be misunderstanding the way the army is used. It is defensive. Not offensive. This list cares very little for opponent's bubble wrap. You deploy to contest and stall out your opponent. Dropping units into their face is a diversionary tactic used to distract them from coming to your objectives. At worst, your opponent uses a turn or two firing at those units to take them out preventing them being used on your objective forces. At best, those diversion forces kill lots of stuff and stall your opponent's advance. Remember, if you deploy properly, your opponent will be forced to move AROUND your forces, taking up even more time. Think of it like bubble wrap of our own that doesn't actually suck, except they HAVE to deal with it or they will regret it. ;)
4) There are NINE drop pods in the list. Then you have three more Land Speeder squadrons. Tell me you cannot be everywhere on the board if you need to? This list is MSU to the extreme, which even another MSU list will find extremely difficult to counter when you have the placement decisions.
5) Some people will say: "Well, not everything will come out and it'll then be piecemeal." To that, I say...I'm counting on it. This is actually one of the strengths of the list. If an area of the battle starts to go ill, I will likely have another few units that I can bring onto other parts of the board where the battle is not so fierce, likely claiming/contesting an objective, forcing your opponent to split off another set of forces to deal with the problem, possibly enough to turn the tide for you with your main forces.
These are only some of the reasons why they are good. Its not a blow them off the board list. It isn't even intended to kill huge numbers of your enemy. Will it lose in a pure KP mission? Maybe, chances are good. Even still, the list gives you more than enough weaponry to deal with either highly mechanized opponents, hybrid lists, or even horde-infantry lists. Duality. But anything objective based? You've got a huge advantage over almost every army. The lone exception that I can think of is A) Loganwing and B ) Any mechanized Dark Eldar list, as they have both the firepower and speed to get anywhere on the board at a moment's notice. But the list takes practice to learn, as it doesn't play like a normal BT list does. Patience, strategy, proper deployment, and cunning are needed. Finesse at its best. :)
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