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Was just curious, as Space Marines have teleportation, drop pods, and Thunderhawks to travel between orbit and planets, but there's not much about how the Guard does it.

The Arvus lighter and the Aquila shuttle are incredibly small for moving larger groups of men (the dimensionsn on the Arvus don't make a great deal of sense when compared to say, the Thunderbolt), and the Vendetta/Valkyrie/Sky Talon are atmospheric only. The Marauder is large enough, and capable of atmospheric and space flight, but there isn't a transport variation. There are some references on Lexicanum for Devourer Dropships/Cetaceous carriers, but they're pretty dated references and particularly specialized vessels. I vaguely remember that regiments are sometimes carried on Imperial Navy fighting vessels; I'm clueless as to how they actually get on and off these ships (not to mention their equipment).

Can anyone shed any light on this? Or failing that, is there anything I could read up on this?

They have their own shuttles, and Guardsmen can go in about anything. I don't remember how many times in the Ciaphas Cain series, they had to deploy using cargo shuttles.If on an actual Imperial Navy vessel, the Navy will provide the shuttles & transport to and from the ship.

Some troop carriers can land on planets, while other times Guardsmen land in enormous dropships that hold dozens of squads and armor at once.

They have gigantic lander ships for moving large formations. You can see the artwork for one of them on the box for the plastic Cadian Command Squad.

Thanks, I was just confused when things are described as "workhouse" vehicles when it logistically doesn't make a great deal of sense for them to be.

in Ghostmaker, the short story focusing on Caffran had large dropships built to come in fast and low on targets. They were like supersized Valkyries that were capable of flight in vacuum.

There is one less common method mentioned in the Planetstrike book: troop ships that project some sort of field of extremely low gravity, or something on those lines, between themselves and the surface, the idea being that the troops can just step into it and float down to the planet (when it doesn't fail and fling them to their doom).

 Fezman wrote:
There is one less common method mentioned in the Planetstrike book: troop ships that project some sort of field of extremely low gravity, or something on those lines, between themselves and the surface, the idea being that the troops can just step into it and float down to the planet (when it doesn't fail and fling them to their doom).

Gravchutes as well, which are just glorified parachutes.

But yes, the Imperium has large landing vehicles, drop ships, and shuttles. Fifteen hours had a company sized, multilevel landing ship.

If you look in the imperial guard codex, there is actually a picture of a giant carrier in the background. I also believe in the 4th edition codex, the picture featuring the cadians battling the chaos traitors, theres a picture of one in the background as well.

Yeah, guard lack mid-sized drop ships. We encountered this problem in Rogue Trader. you either go full dropship or small troop carriers. Nothing that can transport singular vehicles to the planet surface. We salvaged a trio of Gryphons from a planet but lacked any way to retrieve them, despite having access to planets to purchase smaller ships from. Dropships were too hard to get.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Devourer_Dropship#.UQbkob9JNq8

Varrick wrote:They have their own shuttles [...]

Imperial Guard units having their own aircraft permanently assigned is a very uncommon oddity, actually - the Storm Trooper regiment being one of the few exceptions to this rule, although there are some more. It reads as if there is some sort of change in thinking going on, with various experimental "combined formations" being in existence. It sounds a bit strange that this occurs after about 10.000 years of keeping the dropships organisationally apart from the infantry, although I suppose one could explain it with such doctrines never being incorporated into the Tactica Imperialis and thus dying out again and again each time their proponent falls in battle, retires or is otherwise disgraced, and the hardliners reaffirming the status quo.

Just adding this since the division between Guard and Navy is one of the fundamental themes in the Imperial military machinery.

Hospy wrote:[...] and the Vendetta/Valkyrie/Sky Talon are atmospheric only

Valkyries are capable of insertion from low orbit, at least in the studio material.

Some GW fluff on Valkyries and their use as drop ships for the Guard: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m530559a_LA_Valkyrie.pdf

They just step out of the ships onto the piles of dead guardsmen already there

On the cover of the current codex it appears that the IG have sallied forth from large a dropship that appear capable of holding a few thousand troops at least.