First of all, sorry if these questions have been asked before, but I can't seem to find the answers here or in the rulebook.

1) Flying units joining combat: can these units come from an area with an activation marker on it, i.e. can Thunderhawks leapfrog from one combat to another?

2) Flying Transport: I'm a bit confused as to the effect of the transport move on the transported units. Suppose I start with two Chaos Marines and a Thunderhawk in the same area. Both Marines embark, are transported three areas and disembark. The Thunderhawk continues its move for another two areas.

- can the Chaos Marines still move, and if they do, how many movement points? All 3?
- which areas get an activation marker (making abstraction of strategic effects)? Only the area the Thunderhawk ends up in, or the area the Chaos Marines end their move in as well?

3) Transporting Heroes: I've seen quite a bit of discussion on this topic, but what is the conclusion? Do Heroes take up a transport space or not?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Whiskeyjack said:

#1: Nothing bottomline official, but no seems to be the consensus.

#2:

CSMs have 3 movement.

It all depends on the order you used and which area(s) you designated as target. Suppose you want to move from Damocles Spaceport (south-east) to Lions Gate Spaceport (north-east). You play Assemble and nominate Lions Gate as destination area. You have 1x Thunderhawk and 2x CSM at Damocles. You can pick up and transport and the CSM along the way (into a legal area), but since the only destination is Lions Gate, CSMs can only move there, so why not take them the distance with the Thunderhawk? Bottom line is that if you have 1 destination area, that is the only area you can move to. If you can't reach it with a unit, then that unit can't be moved with that order (barring TH transport).

It gets a bit trickier with Redeploy order, which allows multiple destination areas. Suppose you have 1x TH and 2x CSM at Damocles Spaceport. You play Redeploy in the Imperial Plateau region, nominating the Eternity Wall Spaceport as one destination. That area is 5 moves away from Damocles, so TH can reach it. But with Redeploy, you can have multiple areas, so you could also make any other area in the IP region as destination. Thus, the Thunderhawk could drop the CSMs just south of the Eternity Wall Spaceport and you could then move them to whatever destination area in the IP region you chose (maybe move them adjacent to the Lions Gate Spaceport on the north side of the Imperial Palace) when executing your Redeploy order.

There is nothing in the rules on whether transported units can move, but I see not reason why you couldn't do the Redeploy combo I wrote down. As long as you don't move (or pick up) units from areas that have an activation marker (I think there are some orders that allow you to move units even from those areas), seems fair game.

#3: Nothing official on this either.

Many thanks for your extensive and enlightening answer!

Any timing yet on the 'official' FAQ?

Actually, on the 2 nd part of your question, yes, you can drop the Chaos marines off anywhere along the thunderhawks travel route to the Lions Gate Spaceport ( as long as it is a legal dropoff area). The only area in this case that will get the activation marker is the space port. The Chaos Marines can then be given orders later. Pg. 23 of the rulebook shows a very good example of Thunderhawk transport ability. There is even an illustration shown as well.

We have been playing that since heroes do not count as units except only when given move orders they will have to count as one of the transport units but this is still a big question mark of course.