The Land Raider dropship is not a real thing. I should get that out of the way first, because it keeps coming up. There was a Reddit thread on r/Warhammer40k this week with hundreds of upvotes, asking if a Land Raider dropship variant was ever a real GW product, and the answer is no, not in any old White Dwarf, not in a Forge World pre-order, not in any Black Library novel I have read. People see fan-made 3D prints with rocket pods welded to the underside, or that one Inquisitor 28-style conversion someone did with the Caestus Assault Ram doors, and assume canon caught up to fan-art. So far it hasn’t, and the Reddit thread closed without anyone producing a citation.
The reason the question keeps coming back is the variant family. The Land Raider has more patterns than most newer hobbyists realise, and once you have built one it stops feeling implausible that there might be a flying one or an artillery one or a turret-on-top one, because two-thirds of those already exist on the shelf in some form. So while we are here, the actual list, with the lore.
The Phobos Pattern and the STC That Started It
The standard pattern is the Land Raider Phobos. Twin-linked lascannons in the side sponsons, hull-mounted heavy bolter, ten Marines or five Terminators inside, hermetically sealed so it can drive across the seabed if the mission calls for it. The first plastic Land Raider hit shelves in 1988 as part of the Rogue Trader era, and the modern MkIII chassis arrived in White Dwarf 245 in May 2000. That is the same plastic kit on the table in 2026, twenty-six years on, with sponson swaps and door upgrades layered over the top. By Citadel standards, the Land Raider has been around longer than my marriage by a factor of about three.
The lore origin is Arkhan Land, a techno-archaeologist working for the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade, who unearthed the STC fragment in a Martian archive. The Forge World of Anvilus 9 was eventually dedicated to nothing but Land Raider production, churning out thousands for the Legions before the Heresy carved that supply line in half. Post-Heresy, the Emperor reserved Land Raiders exclusively for the Adeptus Astartes, which is why no Astra Militarum tank crew has ever driven one. Codex Astartes guidance further reserves the kit for a Chapter’s 1st Company, the same unit that fields the Terminators that the Phobos can ferry inside its troop bay.
I converted my own Phobos in 2014, magnetising the sponsons so I could swap between lascannons and Crusader-pattern hurricane bolters without committing. The magnets were too small. The first time I bag-bumped the carry case getting out of the car at my FLGS, both sponsons fell off and one rolled under the table where Pete found it forty minutes into our game. I eventually superglued everything in Crusader configuration in 2018 and have not looked back. Magnetisation is a trap if you do not also commit to upsizing your magnets, and I never do, because I am cheap.
The Crusader and the Redeemer, or What Happens When a Chapter Gets Its Hands on It
The Land Raider Crusader is the Black Templars’ fault. During the Jerulas Crusade in 645.M39, the Templars decided the standard pattern’s anti-tank loadout was less useful than something that would shovel infantry into close combat, so they ripped out the lascannon systems and replaced them with hurricane bolters. The freed-up internal space lets the Crusader haul sixteen Marines or eight Terminators, more than any other Land Raider variant in the codex. Pete plays Black Templars on the side of his main Salamanders army and uses Crusader-pattern Land Raiders in both, which is allowed because nothing in the codex says you cannot.
The Redeemer came out of the Salamanders, naturally, because of course it did. The Salamanders looked at the Crusader and decided what it was missing was flamethrowers, so they bolted on flamestorm cannons big enough to clear a hive entrance in one pass. Pete has owned a Salamanders Redeemer since 9th edition and uses it as his “I am tired of subtle” answer to every list-building problem. He has beaten me with it precisely once across about a decade of garage 40K, which I suspect was more about the dice than the Redeemer, though I have not raised this with him.
The Forge World Relics, Including the One That Looks Like a Mistake
Helios. Achilles. Ares. Prometheus. Terminus Ultra. These are the Forge World patterns, mostly older Imperial Fists or Iron Hands relics that survived because some forge world hadn’t lost the schematic when 30K became 40K. The Helios is a normal Land Raider with a Whirlwind missile launcher bolted to the roof, which sounds ridiculous and absolutely is. Imperial Fists chapters use it as a mobile fire base, dating back to the Siege of Helios where the original was field-converted under fire.
The Achilles drops the lascannons for a thunderfire-style quad launcher and twin-linked multi-meltas, and is genuinely the toughest Land Raider in the lore, originally designed for siege work by the Imperial Fists. Six transport capacity instead of ten, but it shrugs off plasma the way Marines shrug off small-arms. The Ares is the one I never quite understood. It has a demolisher cannon as the main armament, plus rotary heavy bolters in the sponsons, so it is a Land Raider that wants to be a Vindicator that wants to be a Predator, and the lore explanation is that the Imperial Fists built it during a long siege somewhere and never explained why they bothered. Great in 30K. In 40K it is mostly seen on apocalypse tables and battle company display photos.
The Prometheus is the command and control variant: extra vox arrays, auspex spires, a pintle-mounted command station. Used by Chapter Master detachments and the Inquisition. The Terminus Ultra is the multi-lascannon mutant, with two extra lascannons grafted to the hull and a power that lets it overcharge them at the cost of taking damage every shot. The first time I read about the Terminus Ultra it was in a Forge World PDF that I am pretty sure no longer exists on their site. Most of the rules for these things are quietly orphaned in 10th edition, sitting in the Legends document next to the Excelsior.
The Spartan, Which Is Technically Not a Land Raider But Looks Like One
The Spartan Assault Tank is a longer, heavier, twin-lascannon-mounted siege transport that emerged from a 1989 White Dwarf 119 kitbash. The original article showed someone scratching together a “Mark II” Land Raider out of bits, and Forge World eventually turned it into a real product line, then GW released it in plastic for the modern Heresy game. Its sister vehicles, the Typhon Heavy Siege Tank and the Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyer, share the chassis. So whether the Spartan counts as a Land Raider depends on who you ask. Officially it is Legiones Astartes, classified as a separate vehicle line. Functionally it is the Land Raider with a stretched troop bay, carrying twenty-five Astartes or two full Terminator squads plus a character.
So that is the patterns I can name without consulting Lexicanum. Phobos, Crusader, Redeemer, Helios, Achilles, Ares, Prometheus, Terminus Ultra, Proteus from the Horus Heresy era, Anvilus from the older Forge World days, Excelsior the rare command tank that is only sold at a handful of Warhammer stores, and Repulsor if you count the Primaris hover-replacement that filled the gap when GW stopped designing things for non-Primaris armies. Twelve patterns. There is also a Hellfire variant in older codex entries that I keep forgetting exists.
The Dropship Question, Answered Properly
The Imperium clearly does drop Land Raiders from orbit. The Thunderhawk Transporter, the logistics variant of the standard Thunderhawk gunship, has an underslung clamp rated for one Land Raider or two Rhinos. So Land Raiders absolutely arrive on planets via dropship. They just do not become the dropship themselves, the way the Caestus Assault Ram or the Stormraven do.
The Caestus Assault Ram, an actual Heresy-era atmospheric assault craft that does insertions through hull breaches, shares enough silhouette with a heavily-armoured boxy thing that people reasonably confuse the two. The Caestus carries Marines only, in a hold designed for boarding actions. It shares pages with Land Raider entries in Imperial Armour books, and the silhouettes blur together when you flip past them quickly.
A lot of fan-made 3D prints exist with the keywords “Land Raider dropship” on Etsy and various STL marketplaces. Some of them are genuinely impressive. I bookmarked one a couple of years ago with retro-thrusters and dorsal vents that I would absolutely paint up if I owned a resin printer. None of them are GW product. They are convincing enough that someone who saw one at a tournament might, two months later, ask Reddit and get half a dozen contradictory answers.
Walking that back, briefly. There was a vague concept-art piece from the 6th edition era that someone on the Bolter & Chainsword forum claimed showed a Land Raider with thruster ports, and I cannot find it now. Possible GW has flirted with the idea internally and never shipped anything. Possible the artist was just sketching a Spartan from an unusual angle, or working on the unrelated Storm Eagle. The thread itself is archived and the image link is dead.
There is no Land Raider dropship in production rules. The closest the Imperium offers is a Thunderhawk Transporter delivering one to the surface. If you want a flying transport, you want the Imperial Fists Thunderhawk fleet, or the Repulsor’s hover capability for Primaris lists. The Land Raider itself stays on the ground, which is where Chapters have used it for ten thousand years of recorded siege warfare.
The Land Raider has lived through more editions than most marriages survive, which is part of why I am still defending mine on the table after fifteen years of trying to get it killed. Sponsons glued, magnets long abandoned, paint chipped on the front-left track guard from one specific game in 2019 against Pete’s Salamanders that I do not want to talk about. It has earned the right to one persistent rumour about a flying version, even if no kit exists.
){kind=link}