Space Marines, 1750 Point. Drop Dreadnoughts!

[SotonShades]

Hey Guys,

A few months ago I posted a Dreadnought/Drop Pod list from the vanilla marine codex, with a few ideas of how to increase it. After a fair few play test games, here is the list I've come up with. Let me know what you think. Full list to follow;


HQ

Master of the Forge; 120 Points

Artificer Armour
Servo-harness
Frag and Krak Grenades
Storm Bolter
Power Axe


Troops

Tactical Squad; 205 Points

Space Marine Sergeant, Bolt Pistol and CCW
7 Space Marines, Boltguns
Space Marine, Flamer
Space Marine, Missile Launcher
Rhino


Tactical Squad; 220 Points

Space Marine Sergeant, Bolt Pistol and Boltgun
7 Space Marines, Boltguns
Space Marine, Plasma Gun
Space Marine, Plasma Cannon
Rhino


Tactical Squad; 90 Points

Space Marine Sergeant, Bolt Pistol and CCW
4 Space Marines, Boltguns


Elites

Chaplain Dreadnought; 195 points

Flamestorm Cannon
DCCW with in-built Storm Bolter


Venerable Dreadnought; 205 points

Twin-linked Lascannon
DCCW with in-built Heavy Flamer


Venerable Dreadnought; 210 Points

Assault Cannon
DCCW with in-built Storm Bolter
Drop Pod with Storm Bolter


Fast Attack


Lucius Pattern Drop Pod; 65 points

Heavy Support

Venerable Dreadnought; 210 points

Multimelta
DCCW with in-built Heavy Flamer
Drop Pod with Storm Bolter



Dreadnought; 105 points

Multimelta
DCCW with in-built Storm Bolter


Dreadnought; 125 points

2 Twin-linked Autocannon




As I said last time, The tournament is 1750 points, FW units allowed, just nothing with structure points or the gargantuan creature unit type. My tactics are roughly the same as before;
Use the Lucius Pod to drop in either the Chaplain Dreadnought (most likely) or the second multimelta dred, along side the venerable melta dred or the ven assault cannon dred, depending on who the opponant is. Do the best to take out a key unit or two, or at least tanlge them up for a few turns. Rest of the army takes up shooting positions (using the Master of the Forge's Bolstered Ruin ability where possible), using combat squads I can have 3 units ready to run out to objectives, with two holding my home ones if I need that many.
Dreds without pods can advance with the Master of the Forge (to help out with any immobilisations or weapon destroyeds) to take on any advancing enemies/clear objectives for me. Remaining Dread in a drop pod can act as my mobile reserve.

Main weakness; massive lack of speed. With the exception of the rhinos, I've got nothing moving faster than infantry. That said I will still be in my opponants deployment zone on turn 1.
Adcantages; Lots of AV12 Walkers that can get in combat pretty quickly.

So, Solid list, solid tactics? Anyone got any tips or sneaky tactics?

[SotonShades]

I suppose it's only fair to tell you all how this list faired in the tournament?

Not well, in short.

First couple of games really did come down to luck! Lucius Drop Pod comes down, Chaplain Dreadnought walks out, shoots a squad of grey knights and reduces them to a single man and then... falls short with his difficult terrain roll by an inch. When he was only 3" away :confused: Needless to say he got immobilised in my opponant's first turn, and had little to do for the rest of the game. Kinda set the tone for the tournament really. Not once did I hit with a small blast template. In fact, not once did I scatter less than 7" with a blast template. Glad I dropped the conversion beamer!

My army had a habbit of turning up entirely before any of my opponants' reserves. Great when they had something on the board for me to shoot. Not so great when all their stuff turned up on turn three, giving my their assault phase and two turns to try to win the game in!

I may sound like I'm whining a little. Nah, not my style. I had an awesome weekend and met some great players. Venerable dreadnoughts did what they are known for; not dying until they absolutely had to. Well done to the tactical squads for doing what it says in their name; being tactical, holding objectives and generally making kills at a steady rate. Except in the Annhilation missions. They did squat there, but it was fun. Master of the Forge managed to succesfully make every repair roll asked for, bringing one of the Venerable Dreds back from immobilised with no weapons to full working order in three turns (thanks the the dred's refusal to accept any more damage :p).

As I've said, I had a bit of poor luck with this list, but it still seems pretty solid. When I won, I won big. When I lost, it was close; usually with me certainly winning either the turn before the last, or would have had we had another turn, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Hope someone else can get this list to work and show what it can really do. Other than make people decide they've lost before the game begins lol.

Shades

[Tynskel]

Venerable dreads are pretty expensive. I would have replaced two of them with Ironclads, then used the extra points to get some land speeders.

[SotonShades]

True, but i can't give up the satisfaction of watching your opponants face drop when you make them reroll on the damage chart for the 15th time that turn for the same dreadnought, and having only stunned it. Also, I never seemed to get on with Land Speeders. Dunno why, but I could never make much use of them... I do agree that they would make up for the apparent lack of speed in this army however. Only 1 out of 5 games where that was an issue though, and that ended on turn 5, so could have swung the other way just as easilly.

Given that the plasma cannon killed a grand total of 1 helion out of 6 games, I'm tempted to say it was a bit of a waste of 5 points. Dropping that and the Mortis pattern dread (who didn't make his points back in any game, though did have some fun scaring infantry units) would allow me to buy two more Lucius pods, bringing 5 dreadnoughts in... give the normal drop pods to the Lascannon VenDred and probably the Assault Cannon Dred should allow me to pop transports and tie up a good number of transports and their (hopefully) meltagun armed units straight away, ith the option to leave the lascannon on the table to give me at least some ranged ability from turn one.