Email in: BA armor spam, with Pods!

"So thinking off of your BA foot list, I was curious to see what I could do with all my Marines that I have lying around. Fiddled around a bit and came up with this. It has less ranged suppression firepower than the list you designed, but I think it might play interestingly.

BA Librarian, Jump Pack, Lance, Shield
Honor Guard, Jump Packs, 3 with melta/lightning claw, one with powerfist

5 Sternguard, 2 heavy flamer, 3 combi-melta, Drop Pod
5 Sternguard, 2 heavy flamer, 3 combi-melta, Drop Pod
2 Sanguinary Priests, power armor, one with Jump Pack

10 RAS, 2 melta, powerfist
10 RAS, 2 melta, powerfist
10 Tactical Marines, multimelta/flamer, Drop Pod

10 Devastators, 4 ML
10 Devastators, 4 ML

Less long-range firepower, but that's a lot of guys you could potentially have in their face on turn 1/2, and a lot of close-range firepower. Most likely the RAS and honor guard deploy on the board and jump/run the first turn, using cover (including your own pods) as needed. You could also drop the Devs down to 5 guys and up the Sternguard to 8 or so each. The jump-pack priest plus the Honor Guard should be enough FNP, and the priest without a pack is set for rearguard. In a worst-case scenario, you can drop at least one of the pods empty.

The main reason I thought to change to pods was because in the original list, there were 15 devs, 10 sternguard, and 10 tac marines sitting in your deployment zone, with only 1 priest to cover them all. That seems like it would be a very clumped firebase if you wanted everyone to benefit from FNP, not to mention that you may not have that much cover/area. By podding, you reduce the requirement for the priest in the back to be everywhere at once.

Thoughts?
Kris"

I think running Blood/Nipple hammer lists are better than this. You're losing points on what are essentially suicide units in the Sternguard but don't add to the army's combat potential and splits your army neatly. I think if you really want to use Sternguard in pods go with Dante, SG as Troops (4 squads?), 3 Priests (1 on foot), 2x Sternies in Pods, Libby if you can and 3x Dev squads with an extra Pod thrown in to get both Sterns down on T1. This way the SG can start on the table and run at your enemy whilst you get Missile + Sternguard fire on T1.

Quickly tallying points Dante, Libby, 4x SG w/2x pistols, PFist, 3x5 Devs w/4 ML, 2 Priest w/JP, LClaw, Priest, Pod, 2x5 Sterns w/3 combi, 2 HF, 2 pods ...225+125+230*4+130*4+180+50+35+320+70 = 2315; well over so probably not viable at 2000 points. Dropping Dante and replacing the SG as 30 ASM (2x mgun, PFist) is feasible and gives you 125 points to play with (expand Sterns or Devs, add 2nd Libby) but has less combat punch. Really I think this operates much better at 2500 therefore (add in another SG squad and drop a pistol from each SG to total 2495) and you'd be better off with a more standard 'Hammer' style list at 2000 points to ensure your army isn't easily split by your opponent.