Stormbirds And Thunderhawks

[Snejk]

Is there any reasonable explanation to why the Chaos Legions and renegades don't use Stormravens and Thunderhawks?

 

I'm currently reading Galaxy in flames and get the impression that at least the Stormravens are in good use by the legions while the Thunderhawks seem to be a pretty new addition to the arsenal. And in Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver Talos and his ill equiped gang seem to have at least one Thunderhawk.

 

The only thing i can imagine is that what ever Stormravens and Thunderhawks the Traitor Legions had have been either destroyed or become useless due to lack of spare parts and maintenance. But surely the Dark Mechanicum could conjure up some sort of aerial transports for the Traitors? I mean they managed to build Harbringers, Hell Blades and Hell Talons...

 

Maybe they lost their aerial capability with all the spiky bits added? :D

 

Any suggestions?

[Hellios]

Stormbirds... not Stormraven :D I think is what you mean... Not the small brand new craft just being rolled out in 40k but the bigger than the Thunderhawk landing craft used in the Great Crusades. I would say Chaos do use them... It just isn't mentioned as much! Also I would say that certain legions and warbands wouldn't use them in the same way as modern space marines just because they have their own way of operating.

 

Iron Warriors for an example are more than capable of acting as a rapid strike force using Thunderhawks to deploy... However Iron Warriors also like to grind the enemy down from a distance and have the numbers and equipment to do that while some chapters of space marines will not.

[Snejk]

Of course i ment stormbirds. Where did i get Stormravens from..? So silly.

And yes all Legions world not use them of course, but more assault oriented forces probably would. And they would be a good way for Havocs to quickly redeploy.

I just think it's sad they are rarely mentioned.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

I think the lack of mention for the Stormbirds is due to the fact that they are designed to move full Heresy-era companies of Marines; their transport capacity is likely to be in the hundreds, compared to a T-hawk, which is only thirty. Most Heresy-era Chaos warbands that have appeared in recent BL fiction don't have enough Marines to really make deploying such a large vessel worthwhile. The one example of a Traitor T-hawk I can recall -- the ones from ADB's Night Lords book -- is used to move all of one squad of Marines on a regular basis. Now, if we ever see, say, a novel about the start of the 13th Black Crusade that shows the Black Legion's massed landings on Cadia, I would expect to see some Stormbirds in there.

[Kristoff]

They can barely fit a Thunderhawk on the table, and you want something bigger?

 

Also, I believe that most Legions were in the middle of phasing them out when Horus was named Warmaster, with only the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus sticking with them. Add 10,000 years into the mix, and they probably lost enough to not make them at Forgeworld, yet.

[Iron Lord]

At one point in (I think a Heresy short story from one of the two compilations) a "dropfalcon" is mentioned.

 

In the Battlefleet Armada rules for Battlefleet Gothic, a Chaos fleet can upgrade to have Marines and Terminators- but it can also upgrade to replace normal launch capacity for a carrier, with half that, but equipped with Thunderhawks instead.

 

So a Devastation class cruiser could replace 2 squadron bays that can launch Dreadclaws, Swiftdeath fighters and Doomfire bombers, with 1 squadron bays that launch Thunderhawks.

[Lord_Caerolion]

The Soul Hunter series has the Night Lords equipped with numerous Thunderhawks, as well as the Transporter variant. After all, the Traitor Legions can't rely purely on drop-pods and Dreadclaws, as their tanks have to get down from orbit somehow. Really, the only reason is "they don't have a place in the standard list, and Forge World hasn't done a model for them yet". After all, the Imperial Guard list doesn't feature any orbit-capable craft (well, other than the Arvus), yet their squads and vehicles get deployed somehow.

 

In other words, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. In fact, we've got two books so far that mention the Night Lords still maintaining Thunderhawks, and I believe the first novel, Soul Hunter, also mentioned the Black Legion as still having operating Thunderhawks.

[AekoldHelbrass]

"Rules of Engagement" by Graham McNeill is the most interesting piece of fluff on the matter. It says that Thunderhawk is a cheap transporter that is easy to manufacture and maintain, but it's so badly built that none of Mechanicus put his name to pattern. Plus it was planned as intermediate transporter, while Mechanicus were working on proper replacement for Stormbird. It never happened because of HH. From other BL novels we can see that Stormbird is able to transport full company of 100 marines and is reliable. But may be the model will be too large for standard battlefield?...

[Iron Lord]

If the Manta wasn't too big for 40K scale- would the Stormbird be?

 

The Epic Armageddon marine dropship seems like the nearest equivalent to the Stormbird- did Epic Armageddon come out before the first in the Visions series?

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

Once sorcerers learned to travel using worm-holes and dark technology, why would their warband need to spend money on transports?

 

Of course, there's a few warbands who need "basic" airborne technology (W.E.'s) because of their hatred of sorcery, but who's to say they don't enact rituals to open warp gates for travel? No spell casting there.

 

If you're a fujitive coward and you've survived for 10,000 years by teleporting/running away when you're about to lose a battle, how could you maintain equipment during planet drop combat if it's bigger than a tank?

 

<3

[Rain]

Yeah, the traitor legions have thunderhawks. And Stormbirds. And fellblades. And drop pods. Even though none of these have official rules for Chaos version as far as I know. Oh and Hellios, the Iron Warriors don't just grind their opponents down via attrition, and even when they do, the initial landings involve both drop bods and gunships to clear the way for bulk freighters that carry titans/superheavies.

 

The reason the rules don't exist is that GW is sloppy. Same reason there is a traitor warband in the current codex described as making excessive use of drop pods even though the codex does not include drop pods or dreadclaws. That said, since apoc is anything goes anyway you can take a T-hawk if you want for your Chaos army, nothing's stopping you, including the fluff.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Once sorcerers learned to travel using worm-holes and dark technology, why would their warband need to spend money on transports?

 

Of course, there's a few warbands who need "basic" airborne technology (W.E.'s) because of their hatred of sorcery, but who's to say they don't enact rituals to open warp gates for travel? No spell casting there.

 

If you're a fujitive coward and you've survived for 10,000 years by teleporting/running away when you're about to lose a battle, how could you maintain equipment during planet drop combat if it's bigger than a tank?

 

<3

 

So, the Legions utterly depend on their Sorcerors for pretty much all travel entirely? That's a hell of a lot of power to put in the hands of an incredibly small part of your warband. As for the maintenance, they've managed to maintain entire fleets worth of capital-classification ships, and they have the support of the Dark Mechanicus. Something as comparitively small as a mere Thunderhawk should be no problem whatsoever.

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

Just sayin! Until I get standard codex rules for drop pods/hawks/stormravens, my Chaos army just 'teleports' around. :\

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

But considering the psyker rates, and the number of psykers who become marines, it wouldn't make sense logistically for each individual warband to have enough psykers, and powerful enough psykers, to teleport armies around in large chunks. And even for the Black Legion, they have so many marines that they probably wouldn't be able to get enough to get the job done even though they're the largest group under Abaddon. Also, a wide variety of books, especially A D-B's Night Lords, as well as the Dark Apostle series, reference warbands having Thunderhawks and Drop Pods.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Just sayin! Until I get standard codex rules for drop pods/hawks/stormravens, my Chaos army just 'teleports' around. :\

 

And at which point, if their warband gets hit with a single lucky sniper shot, completely strands the entire warband...

 

Background exists outside the codices. We have outright statements of the Legions having Thunderhawks operational today. We have outright statements, and rules to match, of the Legions having drop-pods (well, Dreadclaws) operational today. We have Chaos fleets with ships capable of launching orbital assaults from launch bays.

 

 

Can you have your own warband just do that? Yeah, of course. However, you simply cannot state that the Legions don't have any operational orbit-to-ground capable craft. It's contradicted by numerous sources, including several novels, Forge World rules, and the BFG Chaos fleet, to name a few. The Chaos codex itself has a Chaos warband noted for its use of drop-pods.

[Rain]

Yeah the thing we actually don't have reference to is sorcs teleporting armies around. Sorcs guide the ships yes, but they are still using ships. The closest corralate to what Ah-a is suggesting in fluff is some marines jumping bodily into warp rifts and showing up wherever, but this is a last resort, they only did it on vraks because their ships were destroyed/out of position. For the most part just jumping into the warp is not a good idea. It's like hitchiking in the middle of a highway in dark clothing with all of the drivers being Ted Bundy and all the cars Christine.

[Snejk]

How big is a Stormbird? I was under the impression that it was just slightly larger than a Thunderhawk, and I'm currently reading Flight of the Eisenstein where on pg. 92-93 Garro and Mortarian are crammed into a Stormbird's "Spartan crew compartment" on their way to the Vengeful Spirit. And once they reach the Vengeful Spirit several other Stormbirds, belonging the the Emperors Children and the World Eaters are docked to the ship and being refuelled.

 

So my impression is that the Stormbird is slightly larger than a Thunderhawk, but not very much bigger. And then I also wonder why Garro and Mortarion are using the crew compartment when they are in transport and not the cargo hold where there should be enough seats for them not having to be crammed up with the flight crew. Or am I missing something? I understand that a Primarch may want to ride in style when visiting one and other, but using a company sized transport ship just to fly from one ship to another seems like a wee bit overkill.

 

Personaly I think the Traitor legions and renegades use what ever transports they can get their hands on. If they have ways of flying a Marauder bomber and use it as a transports i doubt they would not use it. I think I remember reading that one the main characters in Dark Apostle used a Marauder bomber as his personal transport. I wonder where he was crammed in. In a bomb bay perhaps?

[NemFX]

A stormbird could transport a MINIMUM of around 100 marines. Usually they were depicted offloading about a half dozen transports, and then a cloud of assault marines from a different hatch. I'd say a stormbird is around 3 times bigger than a thunderhawk, which is described as 'agile' by comparison.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Primarch...a wee bit overkill

 

Think about what you just said...

 

The Imperium doesn't do anything unless it's overkill, for there is no amount of dead that its enemies can be that is dead enough. They brought in the AdMech and leveled an entire continent flat on Ullanor just so they could march around on it in front of the Emperor. They fly around in humongous space ships that have giant statues of eagles on top of them for no real reason other than because they can, and they shoot torpedoes out of these ships that are the more enormous than many of their escort class ships. They commit galactic level genocide by reason of "it's our job", and have burned down whole planets and civilizations with the thinnest provocations, or without any, or maybe even just to prove a point. There is no such thing as "overkill" in the Imperial mind, only the paranoid shame that maybe they didn't kill something as dead as they could have.

[Kol Saresk]

Well all of this is true, but in quite a few of the HH books, it mentions how all of the Traitor Legions prior to Isvaan are getting armor and tech upgrades which would suggest that they probably had more T-Hawks than the Loyalists did with the exception of those near Terra and Mars while the rest were just phasing them out. And since few of the Traitor Legions move in warbands of large enough numbers to need Stormbirds, it is probably why we don't hear about them. The Black Legion, Word Bearers Hosts and entire Iron Warriors Grand Companies are probably the only groups that would even think about needing them. And there is the fact that they move around mostly in strike cruiser-sized ships so if they get caught in some sort of void war where they might need fighters, T-Hawks would be deploy able at faster rates than a massive Stormbird, even if the Stormbird can carry more ammo.

[Slayer le Boucher]

No T-Hawks for Chaos Legions?, please...

 

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/8239/img1390wdx.th.jpg

 

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8466/img1396z.th.jpg

[Warsmith Aznable]

No T-Hawks for Chaos Legions?, please...

 

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/8239/img1390wdx.th.jpg

 

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8466/img1396z.th.jpg

 

Dude, that thing is wild...

[Snejk]

Primarch...a wee bit overkill

 

Think about what you just said...

 

The Imperium doesn't do anything unless it's overkill, for there is no amount of dead that its enemies can be that is dead enough. They brought in the AdMech and leveled an entire continent flat on Ullanor just so they could march around on it in front of the Emperor. They fly around in humongous space ships that have giant statues of eagles on top of them for no real reason other than because they can, and they shoot torpedoes out of these ships that are the more enormous than many of their escort class ships. They commit galactic level genocide by reason of "it's our job", and have burned down whole planets and civilizations with the thinnest provocations, or without any, or maybe even just to prove a point. There is no such thing as "overkill" in the Imperial mind, only the paranoid shame that maybe they didn't kill something as dead as they could have.

 

 

Yes, the imperium of man are quite exessive when it comes to destroying their enemies, real or imagined, but still I don't really see the point of using a Stormbird to transport a handfull of dignitaries. And in Flight of the Eisenstein they cram in several Stormbirds into the hangars of the Eisenstein. And it's my impression that a frigate is first and foremost a big gunboat (several kilometers long of course), rather than a carrier of sorts. But maybe i jsut shouldn't overthink things and just accept that the stormbird is huge and that the primarchs ride in style.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Yes, the imperium of man are quite exessive when it comes to destroying their enemies, real or imagined, but still I don't really see the point of using a Stormbird to transport a handfull of dignitaries. And in Flight of the Eisenstein they cram in several Stormbirds into the hangars of the Eisenstein. And it's my impression that a frigate is first and foremost a big gunboat (several kilometers long of course), rather than a carrier of sorts. But maybe i jsut shouldn't overthink things and just accept that the stormbird is huge and that the primarchs ride in style.

 

No, Imperial ships are just big. Most frigates are over a kilometre and a half long, with a Dauntless-class light cruiser coming in at 4.5 kilometres long. Sure, they're not carriers, but they can fit a hell of a lot of ships in them.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Something else to remember is that warship classifications are a statement of role, not just size. In modern military parlance, a frigate is an escort for larger battle-line craft, designed to keep smaller combatants and fightercraft off of the ships of the line. So the Eisenstein probably went light on heavy anti-ship weapons light lances and instead had some extra defensive turrets, a decent broadside of regular guns, and some torpedoes tubes. Plus, it will have had a hangar bay appropriately sized to carry multiple small craft of its own to provide close protection against enemy fighters -- namely, T-hawks and Stormbirds.