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I got to wondering the other day, as I was working on fluff for my Space Marines army in the planning stages, it's obvious how marines in drop pods make planetfall, as well as teleporting terminators and jump packed marines (though I couldn't say definitively what they make their jumps from -- thunderhawks?) ... but what about mechanized Rhino forces, or tanks, or bikes? Landspeeders don't seem like they're equipped for re-entry, etc...

Is this all handled by thunderhawks? If so, what kind of capacity do thunderhawks have? It doesn't seem to be really discussed in the current marines codex, and I don't have any older ones...

Basically, I'm wondering how many thunderhawks would support a typical playably-sized detachment of marines for various army types.

A transport Thunderhawk can carry two Rhinos or a Land Raider underneath if you look on Forge World. I have no idea about Land Speeders though...

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/acatalog/SPACE_MARINE_AIRCRAFT.html

The OC-D

Space marines have:

-Thunderhawk ( apoc )
-transporter variant of thunderhawk ( fw rules )
-landing craft ( epic )
-stormbird ( HH-books )

Usually deepstrike either per teleport (termies), droppod (Command, tacs, devs, dreads) or thunderhawk (jumppackers, landspeeders).

The old pre heresy Stormbird had a greater capacity as the thunderhawk.
Thunderhawk is axctually a super heavy transport ( so apoc chart aplies for choice of passengers ) with a capacity of 30.
transport t-hawk, as OCD said.
Landing craft is part of epic ( armageddon ). May carry: 4x LR sized or 6x rhino based vehicles. Plus 12x units of infantry and termies and dreads still need twice the space of standard models.

In a pre heresy or HH game, stormbirds could be used. Otherwise the thunderhawk in 40k.

OCD is correct, Transport thunderhawks are the primary method of getting material and warmachines between Ship and Ground. In addition to Rhinos and Land Raiders, the Thunderhawk transport can pick up used drop pods, or carry large supply containers with ammo, fuel, food etc. Troops and Dreadnaughts are primaraly transported by Normal Thunderhawk.

I am not aware of any situation where we've seen a Landspeeder carried, but it would not be unreasonable for them to be transportable by Transport Thunderhawk and dropped off at high altitude.

You can count up your own army to see how many thunderhawks it would reqire. (30 infantry to a normal thunderhawk, 1 LR or 2 Rhinos to a transporter). That would assume the entire group was dropped at once, which they often arnt.

IIRC, the strike cruiser which perfromed the first strike on Taros (which was done with a battle company) had 3 thunderhawks and 5 TH Transporters stocked on the ship.

1hadhq wrote:In a pre heresy or HH game, stormbirds could be used. Otherwise the thunderhawk in 40k.

Even though I've never seen them in the 40k Fluff, just HH, I would bet that there are still some Stormbirds in service with the original and second founding chapters. Particularly for Salamanders, Iron Hands, or Iron Warriors since they tend to be more tech-related.

Mars.Techpriest wrote:
I am not aware of any situation where we've seen a Landspeeder carried, but it would not be unreasonable for them to be transportable by Transport Thunderhawk and dropped off at high altitude.

i may be really wrong but i seem to remember that in an interview with john blanche on the old epic box cover that there are land speeders dropping from high altitude thunderhawks. if not ive read it some where im sure.
if anyone has WD 208 to hand they can read the interview.

A reference for "air-dropped" jumppackers and speeders is codex space marines, unit description.