I can't find anything in the main rulebook, or the spacemarine book to say that thunderhawk gunships can start off table like they can in 2nd ed/titan legions. Does this mean that as well as a 50pt hike they have to start the game on the table? Not waiting in reserve for just the right moment?

Yes, they start on the table like any other flyer. But you do not have to make them land at first turn, you can keep them flying at high altitude over your deployment zone (unless your opponent have some Line of sight AA units), they're surely in a safe zone and in a later turn give them a FF order to make them land.

50 points SMV2/TL thunderhawk was just an abused unit (cheap & quite unstoppable) not comparison possible with the drop pods. Why using drop pods when you can play some way cheaper units with a better impact on the battle field.

They werent an abused unit in Space Marine.... first, anyone on first fire could shoot at them. Second, they only moved 60cm. Third, you killed it and you killed everyone it was carrying. (No bail out rule in SM) Forth, you had to land to disembark. (No jump troops disembarking in midair like net epic). Fifth, you were limited to a maximum 3 (as there were limits in SM as oppossed to most of Netepic). We had people playing Blood Angels, dark Angels and Space Wolves...all of used Thunderhawks to some degeree and usually the damn things were all dead by turn 2.

Having said that.... since we don't use the optional flyer rule, the thundehawk is harder to kill in netepic plus jump troops can get out without it landing and troops get a bail out roll even if you kill it (off course if its in the air at the time, only jump troops could survive) so it should be worth more than 50 in netepic.

And not that it matters for an official answer.... because there is no rule that allows you to keep it offboard... in my group noone would protest if you wanted to keep it offboard and bring it on in a subsequent turn. I can think of a few people I have played with that would say no, but there is a reason why I dont play with them on a regular basis anymore

Cheers for the answers guys.

It's funny, I've had them used on me plenty of times, and I never felt that they were an abusive unit. I just used to bear them in mind when making my plan, and hope my magna cannons were feeling accurate that day.

In Space marines...not only could you not buy unlimited Thunderhawks...the drop pods were free.....the reason you dont see drop pods in netepic (unless the guy just feels like it) is that there are no limits in netepic and while the thunderhawks went up by 50 points, the drop pods went up by 300, they can be destroyed to break the company (in SM they didnt effect break) and use up a special slot to boot.

For the Same three hundred points you can take the Space Marine Landing Craft (called the Dropship in the Gold Adeptus Astares) and you can bring along 6 of your vehicles.

And of Course you could aways teleport one detatchment.

And I wonder when the Thunderhawk Transporter is going to make an appearance?

The SM2 version of the T-Hawk was Uber broken. Cheap and almost impossible to kill. Late game objective snatcher, or combined with the even more abusive drop pods, part of the "I'm not placing any units on the table...you set up" army.

[quote]fifth, you were limited to a maximum 3 (as there were limits in SM as oppossed to most of Netepic).[\quote]

As far as I can tell there were no limits on thunderhawks in SM2/TL re-reading the rules for them they were taken a support cards so potentially you could have 5 per company.

IIRC correctly wasn't it only units on FF within 25cm of their landing zone? And I can attest to them being heavily abused....why was it just about every tournament army which could use SM allies took a company of Scouts with 3 T-Hawks as support cards. Ah, happy days

I agree totally here
Flyers were and still are very fragile
especially light armoured transporters like the T-hawk