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The Space Marines and SOBs make extensive use of Rhinos and their chassis for their transports, tanks, and fire support vehicles.

The Arbites also use them for rapid deployment during riot situations. But how common are these vehicles? What advantages would it bring to have a Rhino over the much more common Chimera Chassis?

Seems to come up a bit. Neither are better than the other as they have completely different uses. The Chimera is like a mobile base for the guardsmen while the Rhino is more for getting them in fast and maybe back out. The Chimera boasts more armour, weaponry, and transport capacity. The Rhino has four engines which provide it with superior torque as well as allowing it to climb tougher terrain. Both go about the same speed if I remember right.

Then the hatches come into it. The Rhino can basically be entered and left from every side except the front and bottom. The Chimera however has just the back hatch, but its something you want to stay in more anyway.

One important advantage of the Rhino would probably also its rugged nature - it is much less prone to break down and easier to maintain, represented on the tabletop by allowing to roll for an instant field repair when immobilised.

Here is an excerpt from White Dwarf issue #269 I already quoted in another recent thread on Rhinos:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/465358.page?userfilterid=45703

They are relativly rare. Only people of some importance will have access to Rhinos.

Rarer then any standard Guard vehicle imo.

Rhino chassis also make good basic looted tanks for Orks

That's kind of sad. How many looted tanks do we see, and how many of them are on Chimera bodies? Not a whole lot. The Space Marines need to stop losing so many of them.

The Rhino has been around since Mankind first began colonising the Galaxy almost 30,000 years ago. It is an STC and as such was easily mass produced.

It could operate in basically any and every environment and as such they began to be used not just for colinisation but applied in military uses.

Unfortunately the STC was lost during the Age of Strife over 18,000 years ago, only 3,000 odd years before the Great Crusade. So all the remaining Rhinos were the 'last of their kind' and one by one were lost. Not only that, many were lost or stolen during the Horus Heresy only 10,000 years ago. Those that survive to the present are closely guarded and reveered relics, most in the possession of the Astartes.

When the STC was again discovered only 4,000 years ago, only the Adeptus Mechanicus could now produce them which is why the new ones are limited to only being used by the Astartes, Arbites, Inquisition and Sisters of Battle.

So in answer to your original question they were once the most common transport in the Galaxy but now their numbers are limited which is why the Guard, out numbering the Astartes by millions, use the Chimera instead. Its not a matter of which would make the better transport.