At my venue Sunday, we played using the new rulings (really the only one that mattered to what we were doing was stacking arty) in a 2000-point battle. Yes, I'm talking 3 650+ point armies vs a dropship. With arty-stacking nixed, the dropship was an absolute BEAST, and only took damage due to a single critical miss. Last time we did a dropship battle, arty just pummelled it into submission due to the fact that the stacking was able to get through its armor from 36 inches away. This time around, we weren't able to get CLOSE without being blown away. The dropship was BY FAR the biggest winner with the new rules going into effect.

yaytothe unplayable (as in tournyrules)

i think the HL really got a big boost out of these rules, now we have the support we need for our fatties

With the Arrow IV coming out, the dropship might be vunerable again to an artillery unit that does 3 damage

Yes, but that's just one piece, and the ship's still only taking 1 click/shot until its hardenned armor is gone. Not nearly as bad as the SS AAA or SH DI-towed. BTW, this was a venue-supported event, so it's not like I got nothing for causing the dropship to fumble at me. :P

havenmyst- Eh? I supose your in the same boat as me then, not enough AP artilery. Beliveve me without out it your kinda screwed in the game.

No, I have AP arty, but dropships are unaffected by AP.

Against the drop ship, use Sadia Wolf against the front 14" turrets. When that player has the lead in damage, have him put units with long dials within range of the dropship guns, and all the other players move into range as well. The dropship must fire on the player with the lead, giving 1 turn for everyone to move into position freely, and open up en masse against it the next turn.

Really need team cooperation to take down the drop ship.

A friend and I blew a dropship to scrap using ZERO artillery pieces. Arty against the dropship is just cheesy. We each brought 2 lances of Mechs to the field and just overwhelmed the targetting capabilities of the turrets. They can only shoot at so many targets each turn and they must sit every third turn if you push them otherwise every second turn.

My SH Atlas and Merc Jupiter both smacked the dropship hard, as did the SH Thunderbolt and Merc Cygnus.

And then after the dropship was slagged (10 bullet holes, of which I got 6 and he got 4), he turned on me and we went blasting each other to scrap. By the end of the game, he had two Mechs still functional and one salvaged, while I lost only one Mech and had one in Salvage.

It was a good day for the killboards. :)

Chris

I had never played against a dropship myself before, so I just threw some stuff together- pieces that I was wanting to try out that I had never played before & such- The dropship player brought his SS lance with a Ryuken 2 & Lego. I was the only player that was able to make a dent in the support (taking out a sniper, & 3 infantry while one other player took out a tank & the other player- the one with the most powerful mechs- was pinned down by the Ryuken 2 the whole fight. My strategy was to try to capture one of his mechs & try to go at the dropship using his own piece, but I wasn't able to draw out his mechs far enough.