Couple posts back I was discussing deployment in 40k. My main point was to know what you are going to do before hand, (minor adjustments are easy), diagram it out, and practice your deployment.
I apparently had left something out. Missions. Learning what to put into those tight board quarters and standard 12" deployements. Here is an example
I played a game, where we were deploying into board quarters. This is was tough for me, becuase there was alot of terrain where I was setting up, and I had to fit in 16 chimera hulls into this space. I purposely armored up on the one side of my quarter with lots of chimeras, and left very little room along my other flank, and only left any real good drop spots pretty close to the board edge. Not to mention it was the only area that wasnt easily protected by my anti deepstriking squad (mystics). What this did, was force him to a hard drop, which my opponent failed and went off the board edge destroying his dreadnaught and drop pod with locater beacons. It was a risk on my part, but I had close to a 50% of him going off the board edge I figured. I had controlled his drop pod assault to where I wanted it to come in. If they had hit, the damage would of been minimal as well, as full veteran squads with plasmas, and meltas in chimeras within striking range.
The rest of the game went poorly for him, as he kept attempting to reach that flank. Two mishaps later, he had lost about 25% of his army becuase of deployment. The rest of his army i had set up to disable quickly, and the game limped on for him to the end of round 4. This is one of those games as well, that he also had siezed the initive on me, or would have been worse for him.
So, prepare your deployments for each deployment mission type. Be prepared, becuase a good set up can quickly turn the game in your favor really fast, often before the first shot is fired.