Regarding the THawk spam list, this has always been a possibility ever since the core list was created, and there have been a few semi ‘apocraphal’ attempts at creating similar spammed air lists, most of which were quickly forgotten since few people actually had 12+ T-bricks (as they were then) with one Landing craft as the BTS, or some variation on a theme. Competitions were more gentlemanly etc and only the core lists and Swordwind existed. Ahh, fond memories . . .
Back to reality
The current THawk spam list is both valid and evidently very broken :- the player uses the long range firepower of the 6x-7x THawks to suppress any ground AA, then flies on with 5x TBolts to shoot up key formations. Rinse and repeat for two turns, and then claim objectives on the third turn.
Placing the THawks in the space 1/3 is a non-starter since it invalidates many lists that combine these with Titan etc. But I believe the simple solution is to impose a straight limit to the number of aircraft available to the marine player (this can be varied by list for additional colour):
Quote:
Note, as well as complying with the usual 1/3 space, air, Titan restrictions, Space Marines may only use 1x aircraft (Landing Craft, Thunder Hawk, Marauder or Thunder Bolt) per 600 points.
That gives the standard 3k list 5x aircraft, the 4K Britcon list 6x aircraft, which from memory covers the vast majority of past lists without resorting to other tricky rules.
If people want to relax this in the future, you can drop to 1x a/c per 500 points etc though I would not recommend going much below that point for obvious reasons.
What do you think guys?