actually, because of the way the aircraft rules work with BTS (a destroyed aircraft can be a BTS, as can a landed one, but one that has disengaged cannot, so it falls to the next most expensive until one is one or the other) it's been a serious bugbear for me since i first started the game, and i am hoping that whomever the new marine AC turns out to be, will fix it so that marines need to take their thunderhawks from the warengine area like the rest of us (this would also help stop the "marine armies are all 3 thunderhawks and two warhounds" problem) certainly i will be making that case to them.
the best option is: Bike Squad + Commander (250) Thunderhawk (200) x9 Thunderbolts (150) x6
place your two objectives as close together (and as close to his) as possible, to make it easier to contest more than one, or as far apart and back as possible to make him massively split up his forces to defend them. Bikers sit in one of the thunderhawks, and Stands Down for the first two turns, drops in somewhere safe at the bottom ofn turn3 to prevent a BTS loss, (bikes because they can flee faster than most things can chase them if need be. you could drop the 9th thunderhawk for a second bikeBTS, incase you want to swoop in and collect one of them from a dangerous location on turn4). another few thunderhawks land in positions to contest (but not claim) objectives enough to prevent the enemy from winning. turn 4, the surviving thunderhawks disengage, and a fresh batch drops into position. the game then goes into countback. they'll have probably killed 600-800 points of your aircraft, but with careful strafing, you'll have easily killed twice that. thus, you win the game.
boring, stupid, and can be counterable (via particularly tau and eldar armies with sufficiently massive AA to outlast your strafing runs) but definitely not something that should be allowed within the rules. the problem being that unlike ork fighterbomber armies (which have been illegalled) you arent losing the ability to defend objectives, because transport aircraft can land. so all you're doing, is denying your opponent the ability to shoot with most of his army.
hence stupid bogus and hateful
(also, i do own all those models...)
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