Random Unit Breakdowns #1

The Drop Pod- One of the best transports money can buy

     For today, I'm going to do a breakdown of a random unit from a codex. I hope to make this a series. As long as I don't run out of codices, I'm fine. There's an advantage to having played almost every army there is, though some might call me a bandwagoneer. You know, I think I might get a bit off topic, but here goes.


  
     I feel that the spite associated with the people called things like "Codex of the Month Club" or "Jumping on the Bandwagon" is incorrect. I make it a point to collect around 750 to 1000 points when a new army comes out and see what I can do with it. I do this to familiarize with each codex, both to make sure I can counter it better, and to give my opponent a better game by not having him(her) look up rules or tell me what their units do. Considering the second point, I'd say that the "bandwagoneers" actually add to the general 40k game. Therefore, show them a little respect and try not to spit on them. Tell me your thoughts on this, I'd like to know.

     Now, back to what I was originally doing. Today's unit is:
The Codex: Space Marines Drop Pod- p. 69 in C:SM
This is the pod that gets a transport capacity of twelve, so it has a pretty big advantage over the other, more recent, Space Marine codices. We have to have some advantage over the newer, more powerful codices.

I'll start with pros and cons:
Pros

• Can carry a full squad plus attached character
• You can combat squad upon arrival. That means that whether you feel you need multiple small units or one large unit, you can decide based on the tactical situation when you get there, not what you predict it to be at the beginning.
• The Inertial Guidance System means that you have very little risk in deep striking. You can also use this to minimize scattering off the board. If you select the target point as a couple inches away from a piece of area terrain next to the edge of the board, you first have to miss and scatter the wrong direction, then, even if you do miss, you will probably scatter on to the area terrain and end up at the happy side of the terrain piece. This can also be used to deep strike assault units behind cover during the critical first turn when they can't assault anything. This makes the problems people often have with deep striking go away.
• Because it has AV 12 all round, it is quite durable, and can survive to do some damage and bring in other deep striking units with a locator beacon. 
• The aforementioned locator beacon automatically comes in on turn one, so you don't have to worry about your assault, vanguard, or terminator squads, or land speeders for that matter, coming in before it. This can be used to get large numbers of tank hunting units in behind the rear armor of the ever-present mech units.

Cons

• It's immobilized, so it's hit automatically in close combat, can't really move behind cover, and automatically gives your opponent half victory points should you play in a using those rules.
• It's an easy kill point for your opponent, though this can be neutralized if you have other scary units distracting the enemy.
• It only has a storm bolter, unless you take a deathwind missile launcher, in which case you are a good bit more powerful, but has to get opponents within twelve inches of it in order to actually use it. I don't think it's worth it for the points.
• It's open-topped, so it's even easier to kill.

There you go then. CMID out.