Usually 12 activations, but you're down to 11 or 10 by the time you load up 1-2 THawks, less if you took Terminators or a SC. Against an opponent with 12 activations you're not going to out activate them even when you're going second. A late turn 1 assault is the only way 2DC AC seem to get off the table alive around here, but that means you're hoping you have the activations to do it.

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250 could well be too much, I just don't think fearless creep is the way to go.

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see this here is worst-case scenario stuff in my experience, speaking from the PoV of someone who has almost exclusively played air-heavy codex marines for the last 3 years, if your opponent still has activation parity at the end of turn 1, you're doing quite badly, between the spaceship + deathwind + contents you should easily account for 2 formations (unless you get it badly wrong and miss) which should as a priority be soft AA targets (falcons, hydras, skyrays, EUK fire prisms etc) then your warhounds can probably nobble a small formation each

at this point as long as you're not flying onto the opponent's baseline, through their survivng flak, and instead picking a suitably isolated target, you should have little trouble pulling off an air-assault then recycling the termies before your opponent has time to react, and if it means your first thawk gets destroyed, then you've still got a potentially game-winning air assault lined up for turn 2 if you pick the termies up successfully

Of course the opponent can flak your thawk on its approach move, then move and plink it to break it, and get within 15cm to destroy it, but that assumes you've left them with that option

I'm willing to try dropping the thawks to 200 for testing, have at it, and really don't pull any punches when it comes to how you go in, make sure you stack the deck as much as possible and put the nastiest formations you can into the flyer

I'll ask my resident chaos and marine experts to do the same and we can compare notes in a few months

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That the thunderhawk with fearless was axed without testing is pretty disappointing in my opinion. There are some compelling arguments against adding fearless that brings some questions to my mind, but the fact remains that in actual testing they have failed to prove OP in the Emperor's Children list. I've taken lists with 3 of them, and I find that at more than 2 (given the structure of that list's core/support/WE/allies FM options) you have to make choices about whether you want to sacrifice air cover, titan/knight support, etc. Also, you start to limit on-board FM, making the ground force quite vulnerable in turn 1 due to on-board activation disparities. In sum, the combination is quite powerful, but fearless isn't game-breaking when other factors are taken into account. The major advantage I see compared to good guy marines is that the loads can be more efficient (e.g. 8 bikes vice 5, 8 raptors vs. 4 assault/4devs, etc.) but once landed the CSM FMs are easier to break and cannot summon until after their assault. Some important advantages of CSM, like the aforementioned summoning, but also the ability to take more than 4 termies, are sacrificed by putting those FM in the t-hawk. I'd rather upgrade the termies and get them where they need to be for free via teleport, than waste 200 points on a FM that's quite easy to break just via BMs.

"fearless creep" is definitely a concern about which I'm quite sensitive, but over in the EC list I think I've overall rolled back the number of those units, moving noise marines from core to upgrades and elites, for example. It's relevant here because adding fearless to the t-hawk is actually a reasonable way to increase it's durability during/after an assault (to my mind it should be tougher than an orca, which isn't even meant to be in an assault if you follow the tau list logic) //when balanced out in other ways//.

In a perfect world, the RC and EC, once approved, should have harmonized stats for similar units like "chaos thunderhawk". Looking down the road, it would be unfortunate if the EC one, despite testing to the contrary, loses fearless because the RC one never had it because of some theorizing about it being overpowered, however logical that theorizing may be. There was a lot of shouting about the t-hawk when I rolled it out, but not that much testing outside of our group. In the scheme of things, why are 3-4 test games to actually demonstrate its OP-ness so onerous?

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If you cost the EC thunderhawk for fearless, and call it an 'Emperor's Children Thunderhawk' then all is good

I'm not trying to sneak changes into any other lists here....

The issue as I see it, is of differing metagames, I seem to recall Dave or Ruth saying that in your group, you don't usually thunderhawk terminators in? and in general from your batreps, it doesn't seem that you play a heavy air-assault sort of game, a cursory glace at some recent batreps shows a single thawk in most lists, normally with tacticals inside

in our group, we typically play an air-heavy game, most of my successful marine lists have a pair of thawks, usually loaded with at least one terminator formation between them, sometimes one each, dptdexys, miket and steve54, all tournament winners and much better players than me are in the same boat, having fearless on the thawks jumped out at all of us as a very potent addition to an already potent unit

as air assault can be so devastating, there have to be some concessions and increased risks, the aircraft having the lethal critical effect for example so you do occasionally lose the thing with all hands before it gets to its target, and another risk factor is that if the assault doesn't go your way, you typically lose the thunderhawk, as you probably should, fearless removes this risk entirely, if the thing is loaded with noise marines or whatever, you can chuck it in at any target, safe that even if you lose the assault, your thunderhawk will be flying off unscathed, and the formation inside will need to be killed rather than hacked down

the other factor which I did flag up in a batrep is a broken fearless Thunderhawk can only ever pick up a maximum of 4 BMs rather than 6 for a regular marine one, and in practice is more likely to end up with 2-3, which means not only is it not at risk of death by proximity, it is FAR more likely to come back on next turn

I've already suggested they be tested at 200 points, the same as the non-fearless, non-ATSKNF DC2 vampire

I'm putting some lists together, and after I finish my share of the IF testing I'll run a few EC and RC batreps using thunderhawks and compare them

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Isn't that exactly what you did with the slaaneshi knights? The only difference being that their stats were already set in an Approved list rather than an in development one

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Slaaneshi knights were in an approved list? Not sure what you're talking about there.
oh, LaTD. Never mind.

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Latd I believe

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I get your frustration and I can see your logic in terms of the testing. My feeling is that sometimes a change can be unsuitable regardless of how many battle reports you do. Let's not kid ourselves, playing a game with a single unit is not going to tell us a whole lot in empirical terms, we like to kid ourselves that it can but you'd need half a billion battle reports to judge whether a single unit is too good - not half a dozen. Nobody is saying it's an auto-win, just that they don't think it is a justifiable stat for the unit and is a buff to a unit that does not need it. It is hard enough to counter thunderhawks as it is, I think it'd be wise not to risk making it unfair for the opponent. That said, perhaps it would be good to have a batrep to point to that demonstrates the effect we're concerned about.

BTW a thawk is already "tougher than an orca" - in fact it is twice as tough, having 4+ reinforced armour. So no worries in that regard. If the thawk has fearless then I want it on the vampire too. I can think of no reason why one would be fearless and the other not, and I have yet to see a justification other than "to stop it being broken by BMs" (isn't that a universal desire of players?). Aside from the fact I disagree with that goal (i.e. I think any aircraft on the ground should be vulnerable to BMs and think the marine ones are too good in that regard) I just don't think it is a part of the list that needs any buffs at all. Everything needs weaknesses, and losing your units is the balancing risk for an air assault. If you go in hot, stick it at the front, take damage and there are still active formations nearby, damn right you should expect to lose it.

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On this subject, this list faces similar problems with daemons to other undivided chaos legions either not having any at all or the ability to summon lots of points just to get the cult daemons and as an undivided legion that absorb any marines through desertion or recruitment the idea that they band together into distinct groups within one force seems a bit silly to me. Chaos is after all divergent and the different cults hate each other, only giving some tolerance usually not, perhaps using the old hated faction rule might balance things.
For an undivided formation to summon the same amount of cult lesser daemons as a cult formation they would normally need a chaos champion and for 75 points in total I feel that becomes expensive anyhow, but this however does mean they now have access to a greater daemons of any cult, which is normally why people take chaos champions. So yes IMO their would need some fiddling there.

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