Yup - on a number of occasions in both 3000 and 4000 points lists.

The benefits tend to be obvious - very strong assaults at specific locations of your choice, limited chance for enemy to prevent them etc. But there are a number of significant disadvantages; smaller formation sizes, no transport (so limited mobility), and as you cannot kill every enemy, those that remain are often ideally placed for counter-attacks. There are some other, more subtle disadvantages as well:- The rules on activations force you to make activations when it may not be advantageous, the rule about consolidation prevents air transports from disengaging if troops consolidate back onto them, and the transports have to stay on the ground throughout the turn as sitting ducks for the enemy to destroy.

My preference was to use Landing Craft as well as Thawks to provide the formations with vehicles, as well as being stronger and 'Fearless' which makes them a lot harder to destroy , but even so, the whole result tends to be very binary - if planned and executed well, with moderate luck it can be devastating destroying large parts of the enemy army and paving the way for a significant victory; but if poorly planned, assaulting the wrong locationi, with moderately poor luck etc the SM forces can be swiftly isolated and destroyed piecemeal paving the way for a significant defeat.

One suggestion - use Marine Bikes instead of one of the Devastator formations. They are cheaper and do not have quite the same punch, but they are mobile and moderately tough, so can then be used to occupy distant objectives that the normal forces cannot reach, and the Assault formation points can be used elsewhere - perhaps to buy a Landing Craft - - -

In the time I've played Epic, I've only had a SM army so thats the only force I really know how to play and know anything about. I don't like the idea of, and don't want to, build an army tailor-made for the specific enemy I am playing. But I DO want to play the best game I can that gives me the best chance for victory, and for that I need to be able to identify my opponent's weakness.

I know that Imperial Guard are weak on close combat, and orcs are weak on firefight, but what are weaknesses of the other Epic armies for me to exploit?

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

Briefly..

Eldar - weaknesses are generally low armour and numbers. Titans easier to break by BMs (less DC). Eldar generally dont like artillery.

Tau - weak in almost all types of engagement, especially CC. Also Tau have no BP weapons, so your formations can bunch up for FF support without fear of the template.

LATD - generally unwieldy formations, LV transports, not a lot of quality shooting. Low strategy and initiatives.

Chaos (BL) - faction rule can be a weakness. Otherwise its more that the list has limitations on how many of certain units can be selected. Possible weakness is less mobile AA.

Nids - no flyers, low amount of good shooting, synapse requirements (kill synapse units to cause further problems).

Necrons - main weakness is reliance on portals (monoliths). No monoliths means stuff can be stuck off board.

AMTL (titan lists in general) - weakness is usually the non-titan formations being weak and then low activation numbers if these can be removed. When out-acticvated the titans struggle to hold/cover ground. Also these lists struggle against heavy TK (rather obviously).

Can someone please help with a question about playing Thunderhawk Gunships:

If a Thunderhawk comes onto the board - say, turn 2, and is unloaded - and I intend to land it near a unit so I can pick that unit up and attack & redeploy with it on a later turn.....one that turn that it comes in, can it do any type of attack with its weapons before it picks up the target unit, or can it only land and then pickup & leave at end of turn?

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

Ok, here we go. You can't drop off and pick up automatically in one turn.

When the T'hawk lands and its cargo disembark they are one formation, so can shoot or engage one enemy formation. If engaging and the cargo uses its consolidation move to re-embark the T'hawk it may not disengage in the end phase.

While on the ground other formations may activate and move onto the t'hawk and it may then leave in the end phase.

But the t-hawk, if empty, can fly on and load up a formation during it's activation, right? Not during the transported formation's activation?

When an empty THawk arrives and lands to pick up troops, it may shoot or assault as well once it has embarked the troops.***

This is correct.

In summary, there are two ways of getting troops into an air transport

1. The WE air transport activates, flies on and lands by the formation, embarking them under rule 4.2.5 (Transporting Ground Units).
2. When the WE air transport is landed (and technically a ground unit) another formation may move to it and embark at the end of its move under rule 3.1.3 (Transport War Engines). This could be
   - at the end of a 'normal' move as part of an activation,
   - after a 'Withdrawal' move when broken,
   - a 'Consolidation' move after an assault (though this will prevent the WE air transport from disengaging in the end phase)

*** Note, if the air transport is performing an assault after it has embarked a formation, the troops on board effectively become part of the Transport's formation, so they add their numbers, inspiring characters and BMs to the assault (but cannot actually fight in the assault as they are now inside the transport).

When I reviewed the rules on air transports (always a good thing to do) in section 4.2.5 Transporting Ground Units, under the paragraph titled "Landing", the rules state:

"After embarking or disembarking any units, the aircraft may carry out its ground attack."

So I take this to mean if I brought in an EMPTY Thunderhawk and landed it at the end of turn 2 with 5 cm of a unit I want to embark and pull out, and there is an enemy troop within 15 cm, I could still shoot at that enemy unit with all the 'Hawk's AP weapons.

NOTE I SAID "SHOOT", NOT "ENGAGE".

Then, at the end of the turn the Thunderhawk makes it's disengagement move, and takes off and exits the board with the embarked unit aboard.

Is my interpretation correct?

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

Yes, you are correct with the above.

This week I was able to play a variation of my air-assault SM force against orcs......purely as an experiment because I was pretty sure I'd lose but wanted to see how the game would progress.
I was actually amazingly surprised at how well it went. I used fighters to prep a target before breaking it with termies at start of turn 1, then used more fighters to prep for a Thunderhawk assault with assault & dev SM, called down the bombardment and drop pods at a reasonably good location, and was able to really lay on the pressure at the start of he game.
Of course, I lost momentum because as I broke enemy units my opponent elected to break them TOWARD my part of the board, then they recovered and were able to take blitz and objectives on my half, and I wasn't mobile enough to stop them.....but it sure was a fun way to lose a game!

Thunderhawks:
A "standard" load I always seem to take is one unit of devastators, and one unit of assault troops with chaplain character. Do other SM players (who must have more success with SM than I do) take other combos in their T-hawks? Also, are there any SM players who take more than one T-hawk in a 3000-pt game?

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

Sounds fun I'd like to try that too, one day; It strikes me as an iconic type of engagement for Marines.


I usually take a librarian with the devastators, for that extra MW3+ FF attack (and because I like characters in SM units). Other than that, I've seen T'Hawks loaded with 2x Devs, when the space marine player couldn't rely on getting into CC (against Eldar, for instance, where many of the juicy targets are all-skimmer).

If I go with T'Hawk assaults, then I do actually prefer taking two. If the enemy has a very hard target you'd like to assault, you could then load the devs and the assaults in separate T'Hawks, land the devs and shoot with them, then retain and land-and-engage with the assaults, with support from the devs. That's about as highly concentrated force as the marines can do If there are no particularly hard targets in the enemy force, then I load up with dev+assault in each t'hawk and engage separate targets.

Speaker,

First, if I may just ask a minor question concerning your post:
You say that if the opponent has 'hard' target you use a T-hawk with devs followed by a T-hawk with assaults, and if not you load 1 of each squad in each T-hawk.

Does that mean that you know before the battle starts what your opponent has taken for forces and know what to put in each 'Hawk, or does the decision of what forces go in each Thunderhawk not need to be made until the battle starts?

Beyond that....to take two T-hawks filled with those forces....by my count that is somewhere between 1250-1350 points.....which represents a good percentage of the whole battle force. When you play like that, what other forces are you taking and what are you giving up?

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That's not a moon....it's a space station....

It's strictly theoryhammer! I haven't actually done this, I just mention it as feasible.



The latter. The decision whether to load transported units on aircraft or spacecraft is made during setup of the game, after force selection.



I'd take some terminators as well, and a beefed-up tactical with SC, Dreads and/or Vindicators to garrison my own blitz. And two segments of Thunderbolts, to provide AA, prep for assaults and to harry broken formations.

I don't usually take Warhounds, or basically any kind of ground armour (Land Raiders, Hunters, Predators or Whirlwinds), in this type of list.

You can always elect to leave units behind before you deploy.

This allows Space Marines to decide not to take rhinos to either garrison or arrive by thunderhawk. What you can't do under the rules/netEA lists is elect enter play by drop pods, this must be decided at list build time.

The above isn't true for Epic-UK lists, were they have allowed you to chose to drop pod at deployment time as well.