For a long while I've been playing ground based Space Marine armies, occasionally with one Thunderhawk. For a change I'm thinking of going the opposite direction and trying and all planetfall / drop pod list with nothing on at the start.

I'm thinking of planetfalling a formation of 2 or 3 Thunderhawk Transporters.

I'd expected the rules to involve scattering once for the lot, and placing the others within coherency, but reading the actual Planetfall rules it appears each planetfalling unit is scattered separately. It states that if a formation ends up out of formation due to the scattering it must move back into formation when it activates. As landed aircraft the Thunderhawk Transporter formation must take an action that turn and cannot move and there is a fair chance that one or two of them will end up out of formation and auto-die.

Is this how people are playing it with your Thunderhawk Transporters? It seems excessively harsh and somewhat ridiculous for them to auto-die like this!

yes

though, what list are you using where there are multiple thunderhawk transporters in a single formation?

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It's not each unit that scatters, but each drop pod/T'hawk/LC in the drop that scatters. So if you were drop podding 2 dev's and 1 tac then you would make 3 scatter roles. So a 2 T'hawk transport formation would be a single deviation. 2 planet falling war engines wasn't a possibility when the rules were written though.

So plot, move each pod marker up to 15cm, scatter, place one unit within 5cm of that, rest of units in formation in coherency and 15cm of final drop point... that's from memory.

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no, thats only how the space marine special rule drop pods work

thunderhawks, etc, planetfall regularly, and thus, scatter individually
i remember this rather ruined the harakoni warhawk drop i made

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As mephiston says, multi war-engine formations planetfalling didn't exist when the rule was written, so it's hard to be definitive

personally I would have zero problem with a player treating them as a single unit and scattering accordingly, rather that than take huge risks with them scattering out of coherency and auto-dying

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Thunderhawk Transporters aren't anything special, all Space Marine chapters use them regularly. They weren't around when the codex astartes list was written, but they should really be standard in all SM lists. I was looking at using the Black Templars list at the moment, which has them, but they'll also be in my Minotaurs army list when I get round to revising and using it. Scions of Iron has multiple in a formation too, it's needed to transport most formations.

Thanks Meph, but you're misremembering, that's how drop pods work but Thunderhawk Transporters planetfall.


I hope most people wouldn't but RAW the planetfall rules specify planetfalling each unit with planetfall separately and they'd die when they activate if they land further than 6m from each other. It's not ideal to ask my opponents if they mind me breaking a game rule at the start of every game.

I agree that the rules were written without considering planetfalling units of aircraft which would be immobile and unable to move back into coherency, but the rules as written are a problem. Given that the rules are fixed and not going to changed I think we should address the problem at the Thunderhawk Transporter end. I think they could do with one or other of the following added to their notes:

“When planetfalling scatter one Thunderhawk Transporter. Then place other Thunderhawk Transporters within coherency of this unit.”

OR

“Thunderhawk Transporters are not destroyed if they are out of coherency with their formation on the turn they planetfall. If they are out of coherency they must fly off in the end phase however.”

Thunderhawk Transporters also break the War Engine transport rules which specify another formation can be transported “as long as the entire formation can fit inside the war engine”. The Epic UK Thunderhawk Transporter has the following in it's notes “The entire Thunderhawk Transporter formation is counted as one War Engine for both the War Engine transport rule (e.g. one transported formation can be split between multiple aircraft within one Thunderhawk Transporter formation) ”. Strictly the Net-EA ones should have this in their notes to allow them to transport too, so the unit text could do with being edited for this reason as well.

ahem, 10cm (DC x 5cm for war engines in a unit)



perhaps just append 'and for the purposes of planetfall' to the end of

"The entire Thunderhawk Transporter formation is counted as one War Engine for both the War Engine transport rule (e.g. one transported formation can be split between multiple aircraft within one Thunderhawk Transporter formation) and for the allocation of hits..."

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or perhaps, if you take a formation that requires this bizarre war engine hodgepodge of multiple thunderhawk transporters, you accept the trade off of no longer being able to safely planetfall. If you want to have a large planetfalling contingent, landing craft are better suited to that role anyway.

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very true, I can't see why you'd ever use thawk transporters over a landing craft myself, apart from losing the entire formation to a lucky crit rather than just half if you fly on rather than planetfall, you get much better firepower and the all-important fearless bolted on for not many points more, plus it can carry 4 land raiders rather than 2, *and* 12 stands of infantry to boot....

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The Templars list has them 2 for 250 or 3 for 350 (200 and 300 in the Compendium but I think that's an error), 6DC of 4+ Reinforced has it's advantages over 4DC. As does 6 x AP5+/AA5+ shots over a much wider area.

It's not one or the other, I'm planning on using both the TH Transporters and a truescale (around 50% larger) Landing Craft in my army.

I was looking at the EUK list where you can only have 1 or 2 transporters, which costs 300 pts, perhaps they need a price reduction as the extra 50 points for a LC buys you quite a lot, 2x decent AT shots, fearless, improved CC and FF values and a bigger transport capacity, all for the downside of the lot being shot out of the sky on a single critical....

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I misremebered it as x3, this helps some, as does the size of the models. The best idea would be to target all 3 at the same spot, possibly with area terrain they can't land in to one side pushing the landing spot back if they scatter there. I still maintain the auto-death should be fixed in the notes though.

I agree that the Epic-UK ones looks to be overpriced and a poor choice, looking at the lists people take on the Epic-UK site it's telling that out of 10 Black Templars lists used at tournaments no-one has taken any. Perhaps bring up dropping the points in the next rules review or however it works?


That would actually be best option, placing all 3 and scattering them all the same direction and amount works better than the two ideas I had above (scattering one then placing the other two would be too good).

Although I disagree with the bit that says they count as one WE for the allocation of hits, rather than following the normal rules for formations of WE. Why is this included with the Epic-UK version? This suggests if there are multiple THTs 10cm apart they can all be killed by one Deathstrike hit, contrary to the way this normally works with a unit of WEs.

Its been a while since I looked at the list but they're not in the same formation. Actually now that I think of it that's actually how to fix planetfall without a rules change. Make the THawk transporter a formation of 1, 2, or 3 and then RAW would scatter together.

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Sorry Jimmy but you're wrong on both counts.

The existing THTs are in formation of 2-3 in the Black Templars list and even 2-4 in the Scions of Iron list. The old links for the lists are dead but they're both in the Compendium. In my opinion 4 is a bit excessive, so I'll test 2-3 in the Minotaurs list.

The rules weren't written to account for formations of aircraft, but the planetfall rule as written specifies scattering each unit - not formation - with planetfall separately.

Huh isn't that a thing.
Always played it wrong then . Yeah that's dumb; I like my inadvertent house rule better.


Yeah we need to fix that. RAW vs RAI would make you feel that's worthy of errata debate. [shrugs] That moves the THawk Trasporter from plain over-costed to pure worthless. EUK tourny stats seem to back that up.

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