Last time I spoke to you about Sky Drops and how it works, now its time to talk about how to use them, and how to deal with them.
More after the hop.
Using Sky Drop Markers.
So how you use the Sky Drop Marker largely depends on what your game plan is. Since you can score a large number of Tactical Value (TV) points from Objectives or Enemy units, figuring out how to use your models to the best of your advantage without throwing away points for your enemy is an important consideration.
In the case of the Aquans who have turrets and force multipliers in the Crystal nodes, you need to place your Sky Drops so that the enemy is going to be worrying about them on the way in. Once you can start getting your turrets behind them with 6 AD each and able to link fire, squadrons are going to begin dropping pretty quickly.
If you are playing where you have the ability to drop in some troops then its time to look at Objectives.
Since only a limited number of units can capture objectives in the game, and at the moment they are all of the Light category (So Infantry & Recon tanks) they are all very effective at killing each other, specfic MAR's might make a different in this, but in the main dropping in a scoring unit will allow you to either threaten or take an objective of theirs, or to outright kill a Scoring unit before it has managed to do anything.
Since the Objectives score points at the end of each game turn its important to look at what you can threaten and when.
While the enemy Objective is one of your tertiary objectives, and only scoring you a low number of point each turn, taking it off your opponent denies them a significant number.
So even if you can't take the objective off them and hold it, its worth considering destroying their back field take and hold units to deny them those points, and to force them to send things back to deal with you.
Defending against Sky Drop Markers
So how do you defend against them? Well it isnt as hard as you might think. By crowding the space around the marker if the Sky Dropping unit is going to land on you instead of landing there, or being destroyed it continues in the same distance until it is able to deploy.
When it lands it will do so within 4" of one of your models, which allows you to call a CQB action against it.
Every model that it scatters over gets to add its CQB value to your CQB attack dice pool. This can push you up to significantly bigger Attack dice pools and mean that it may land and live, but it might not be doing much else after it does.
The other way to defend against this is to block line of sight to the Sky Drop markers while the Micro dice are still high, preventing the enemies Nexus designator from Zeroing them in.
Finally you can aim to destroy the enemy Nexus designator, and in the process remove the safety of those Zero'd in sites.
Not easy things to do perhaps, but definitely something to consider.
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