Lucious Pattern Drop Pods

[PumpkinHead]

I am confused on how the lucious pattern drop pods work. The burning retros rule says that the pod and anything touching it gets shrouded. The Assult vehicle rule is slightly changed and says that the dread gets to assault out of it the turn the dread leaves the pod, but it can't assult on the turn the pod lands. Many questions arise:

 

1) Does the dread stay in the Lucious patten drop pod for a turn and in essence gain 3 ablative hull points?

2) Does the dread have to get out once the pod lands and only get shrouded if touching the pod, and lose the benefit of an assault vehicle?

3) If the dead stays in the pod, and the pod is exploded, which side of the dread does it hit? Do you use the stormraven as guidelines for a dread mounted vehicle?

[WestRider]

1,2) The Dread can stay inside, because the Lucius Pattern Pods don't have the Rule that normal Pods have forcing the passengers to Disembark as soon as it lands. So yeah, it basically gets another 3 ablative HP, with Shrouded. Then next Turn it can get out and Charge, because Assault Vehicle.

 

3) I'd go with Rear Armour, yeah. I should have thought of this earlier, I just sent a question to FW asking which Facing to use when it gets hit by a Template and takes No Escape Wounds, but forgot to ask about Explosions.

[PumpkinHead]

If they can stay inside, does that mean a dread can get back inside later in the game and assault out of it again?

[WestRider]

Yep. You can totally have a Dread (even a different one) hop inside it later for some extra protection. You can shoot out from it, too, because it's Open-Topped, so I can see gradually walking a shooty Dread up to an empty Lucius Pod and bunkering him in there if the circumstances worked out right.

[PumpkinHead]

DANG!!! Totally worth the point increase!  Now to fit it into my dreadnought list...

[WestRider]

Yeah, they're absolutely worth it. Awesome Unit.

[Guest]

I am confused on how the lucious pattern drop pods work. The burning retros rule says that the pod and anything touching it gets shrouded. The Assult vehicle rule is slightly changed and says that the dread gets to assault out of it the turn the dread leaves the pod, but it can't assult on the turn the pod lands. Many questions arise:

 

1) Does the dread stay in the Lucious patten drop pod for a turn and in essence gain 3 ablative hull points?

2) Does the dread have to get out once the pod lands and only get shrouded if touching the pod, and lose the benefit of an assault vehicle?

3) If the dead stays in the pod, and the pod is exploded, which side of the dread does it hit? Do you use the stormraven as guidelines for a dread mounted vehicle?

1) Much better. Remember that the Lucious drop pod get's self-generated cover when it drops. So it's 3 ablative hull points with shrouded.

 

Or you could get out and pop smoke launchers for a 3+ cover save (shrouding + smoke launchers). I don't think you can pop smokes from inside the pod, so depending on how viable you think cover will be...

 

This all used to be covered by their FAQ, but looks like they ditched that in the update. Touching the doors counted as touching the model for shroud, despite the door not counting for anything else...

 

I will note that you should be aware that you can be hit with templates pretty easily while inside the transport (since templates hit open-topped transport embarked units d3 times each). This used to be covered by the FAQ regarding how to resolve which facing was hit, but I don't recall how they resolved it.

 

Not that it matters, but aside from the point increase, and the size increase of the model, the pod also has no weapons or upgrade options.

[PumpkinHead]

I don't know of many egrub (haywire) templates that I have to be worried about. I figure they should be relatively safe. The pod isn't there to do work, the pod is there to deliver and keep safe a dreadnought for one turn until he can get out and punch someone in the face.

[Guest]

I figure they should be relatively safe. The pod isn't there to do work, the pod is there to deliver and keep safe a dreadnought for one turn until he can get out and punch someone in the face.

And they are until that guy shows up with a couple of heavy flamers. Since each heavy flamer does d3 hits to the dreadnought inside the pod, knowing which facing is hit is very important. This has come up in my games. 

[PumpkinHead]

Hence I said relatively safe...