Steel Rain

Steel Rain is a defensive tactic employed by Space Marines.

Because a Space Marine Chapter often sends only a fraction of its forces to any given conflict, it is difficult for them to defend a position; if they attempt to cover the entire perimeter, they will be spread too thin to hold off a massed assault, so the only way to strengthen their defense at key points is to leave large sectors undefended.

The Codex Astartes contains a solution to this catch-22: keep the majority of the force's Marines in orbit and deploy automated beacons around the perimeter. The beacon detects enemies passing through and can call down multiple, simultaneous, and devastating defensive Deep Strikes on its position to deal with the enemy force, no matter where on the perimeter they attempt to break through. This way, the Marines need not waste time and effort on territory which does not come under attack, while not leaving any openings to the enemy.

We only hear about it in Dawn of War: Soulstorm as Captain Indrick Boreale describes it to the Blood Ravens under his command. The funny part is, that if it's in the Codex Astartes, they should all know about it already.

The real reason it's never used is because Space Marine chapters rarely set up a base, as they normally show up, hit the biggest targets and leave; and when they do, they're working with the local PDF/Imperial Guard, thus do not need Marines to defend the area.

The hilarious part is the fact that Tau describe this Space Marine tactic as unorganised waste of men that cost Boreale victory.

In theory, this is an acceptable tactic for dealing with limited numbers of reserve forces (though the fact that Boreale had HALF THE FUCKING CHAPTER THERE--thus rendering this tactic pointless--really should be brought up again) when being used against a single strong thrust by an enemy, especially one who has similar forces to yours. On the flip side, it has its pitfalls. The biggest one is that this plan fails to adequately defend against opponents who outnumber you enough to hammer you from all directions, are capable of outmaneuvering you, or feint properly. Properly used in symmetric warfare (Say, against Chaos Marines) this has the potential to utterly destroy the majority of an enemy's forces in one strike. It's less than useful in asymmetric warfare (such as fighting the Guard) where they simply won't care about your many marines in one localized area.

UPDATE:

As of the release of Dawn of War 3, the Steel Rain maneuver makes a comeback.

Although it isn't mentioned outright in the storyline or from a character in particular, it can be heard by random chance whenever a player calls in Deathstorm Drop Pods. The Deathstorm Drop Pod is created in the orbital strike slots only, it serves as a defensive weapon to work as area denial and is sent in to any location on the map where the player has visibility. When dropped, one of the lines said consists of: "INITIATING STEEL RAIN PROTOCOL". Either making the maneuver canon, or a nice nod to Soulstorm.

See Also

• Drop Pods, the vehicles frequently used in Steel Rain (one might say that they are the Steel Raindrops).
• Steel Rehn, a parody song written to the tune of Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain" song, but with lyrics sung by Captain Boreale.
• Katyusha, a legendary WW2 artillery piece.
• Hwacha, the original steel rain.