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Since this list has become quite popular out of nowhere, particularly on the top tables at Baltimore this year, it's a fair bet that nob bikers are going to be part of the meta-game for at least the immediate future.
The list tends to build itself once you set out to build a strong ork bike force. You immediately pick up that nobs are vastly more resilient than any other bike units, and with the ork mob rules you really benefit from taking as many as you can in a unit. With 2 wounds each, feel no pain, and 5th edition wound allocation shenanigans - the unit builds itself. When I saw other bike nob army players at the GT this year, the only question i had to ask was "How many klaws did you take per unit?" the rest is a given.

So, a common bike nob army list would have:
2 warbosses on bike, klaw, squig
2 x 10 nob bikes, painboy, WS5, bosspole, klaws and just enough wargear to make each model unique (though all combi-rokkits + ammo runt is a pretty wicked opening volley).
A gretchin/ork mob or two for scoring troops that can stay behind while the bikes venture forth.
This brings you to about 1500. At which point I personally settled on snikrot + kommandos since the natural defense against the bikes is to form a castle on the back edge. Snikrot serves as a good disruption tool against that.

The real strength of this army is that there isn't anything else like it in the game. They are fast, unbelievably resilient against shooting attacks under Str8, and they put out a decent amount of firepower at 18". Plus they are nobs led by a warboss, so getting assaulted is going to be ugly!

Basics:
Allocate all str8 and higher firepower first. If you score some minor wounds with small arms fire and then fire/swing the instant death attacks the canny ork player will allocate these wounds to the already wounded biker. Yes it's legal, don't hate the player - hate the game - and then fire your shots in the correct order next time.

Do not get discouraged when the first volleys are out, nobs are wounded, but none died. The wound allocation rules will have wounds going all over the unit before the first one drops, but once they start dropping the squad will deteriorate rapidly. Keep at it and don't give up.

So what do they fear?
#1 is that they cannot ever afford to lose an assault, so if you've got a way to get the drop on them, or bait them into a counter-chargeable position, then make whatever sacrifice is necessary. Remember that each nob-bike unit is ~750 points, so if you have to throw 300 points of models out there just as bait, don't feel bad about it! There aren't many units in the game that will survive a protracted combat with the bikes, so count on a one turn shock attack where you win combat by 3-6 wounds and run them off the board.
1a Setting up a favorable charge:
The two keys here are how many wounds can you put out, and how many wounds will you take back in doing so. Tilt the scale in your favor and make them run! Do bring in heavy hitters that can dish out Str8+ attacks to cause instant death wounds, but don't also bring a tarpit unit in with that heavy hitter unit. The nobs will clean out the tarpit to stay ahead on the wound count.
Good: 2 carnifexes
Bad: 2 carnifexes and 20 spinegaunts
Good: Ghazkrull alone with 2+ invulnerable for a turn
Bad: Ghazkrull + 19 boyz

1b Hooks and bait
Use the things they can hurt to draw them out, then use the things they cannot hurt easily to win the combats.
For instance: Draw them out with assault marines, beat them down with dreads.
Hooks:
Dreads
Terminators (esp. Thunderhammer + Stormshield yikes!)
Defilers
Oblits
Wraithlords
Soulgrinders
Bloodthirster
Either c'tan
Implant attack Tyrants
CC Fexes

Bait:
Everything else

#2 Leadership
Sure they are fearless at 11 when the boss is joined. But kill one model and they are now Ld10, 2 models and they're stuck at Ld9. If the boss leaves the unit they can go as low as 7! Pin checks, tank shocks, any break tests are your friend! Know the difference between leadership and morale checks. Bosspole only works on morale.
Tank shock them at Ld10, who cares? You only need to get lucky once against these guys.

#3 Terrain
All difficult terrain becomes dangerous to bikes. Put your vulnerabilities in some terrain and make them pay the wounds to come in there. Armor and feel no pain won't save them, and the wounds are done by model (not by unit) so they lose control over which models get pulled. Lashing bikes into terrain is awesome (test to go in, and a test to come out).

#4 Unit selections
See the above list for units that are effective at wrecking them in assault. As for shooting: look to units that can pin, can allocate multiple S8 wounds in a round of shooting, can pick their target model (monolith, telion, vindicare - go for the painboy!), single S10s, or Ap4 + ignore cover (heavy flamers, wind of chaos). Multishot medium strength (5-7) guns are good for getting wounds through attrition in there, but don't count on them winning the game for you. You've got an uphill battle if you aren't bypassing at least one of their defenses (toughness, 4+ cover, feel no pain).

Possibly more coming as I learn more about my own lists weaknesses.

Ablative defense. An army as small as the Nob Bikers cannot afford to lose a single model.

Marines, for example.

Tactical Squad
Tactical Squad
Tactical Squad
Ironclad Dreadnoughtx3

You can line them up your tacticals such that no matter how he arranges his Nobz, he can't get the charge on the 'Clads (and therefore fails, S8 versus AV13 is chock full of suck). You lose a unit of tacticals. He loses a whole unit of bikes to Ironclad counter assault.

You can create some variation of this theme with almost every army. Make the Nobz peel back one layer with every charge and your castle will beat them out through sheer bloody attrition.

The wound allocation rules will have wounds going all over the unit before the first one drops, but once they start dropping the squad will deteriorate rapidly. Keep at it and don't give up.

Clear this one up for me quick... Don't you have to pull full models when possible? Is the trick that wounds are allocated previous to where this kicks in?

Wounds are allocated to each set of models with unique gear. After wounds are allocated, failed saves that cause instant death remove whole models where possible.

So if you had two nobs that were equipped the same, and one was previously wounded - they take a lascannon hit. The unwounded nob would take the unsaved wound and die (whole model).
However, if the two nobs were equipped differently and one was wounded, you may allocated the lascannon to the previously wounded nob.

Grey Knight Terminators would do a number on them, especially with incinerators.

It seems like marines have too many answer for them:

Redeemers
Assault Termies
Dreads
Vindicators

They seem like they would chew through a horde ork army pretty well.

An Ork horde could be supported by some fast models with Skorchas, like Warbuggies and Deff Dreds. A Battlewagon with a Deff Rolla would also be funny.

Huh? The Horde is rarely supported by buggies, battlewagons, and Deff Dreds. They stuck too many points away from all the units that make it a Horde.

Besides, this isn't about the Green Tide, it's about Nob Bikers and countering them.

This is not an anti horde tactica. It's a 22 (threatening) model army that can and will table someone on turn 2 if they aren't being careful.

All terminators are good against them but grey knights are actually pretty low on that chain. The important thing here is dealing Str8 wounds and GK termies just don't do that.

Marines do have a lot of answers though, which is good for them. The trick is getting to use those answers on an opponent who is 4x faster than your models.

I beg to differ, Moz. Marines are one of the most able to do so because of their ability to shoot Orks to death if they're not willing to close into cc with the units that can punch them to death.

A line of Tacticals in front of Dreadnoughts seriously wrecks the Nobz Bikaz' day. Especially if you have 25% terrain coverage; it's almost impossible for them to go anywhere without eating those dangerous terrain tests.

The Bikaz are indeed a scary force, but even generic Marine lists should be able to handle themselves pretty well against them.

Traskel wrote:Grey Knight Terminators would do a number on them, especially with incinerators.

It seems like marines have too many answer for them:

Redeemers
Assault Termies
Dreads
Vindicators

They seem like they would chew through a horde ork army pretty well.

This isnt a horde we're talking about here.

its around 20 or so bikers give/take with warbosses on bikes. The rest of the army is made up of one or two infantry type units.

Grey Knights doing a job on them....not likely.

First off, 2 wound nobs could care less about incinerators, they have FnP and 2 wounds.

The only possible way to GET the charge is out of a LR, so lets assume the bikers do get caught....

Warboss will likely die to the Grand Masters force weapon, the other 4 Terminators have 12 attacks, only 6 will hit, 4 wounds, Bikers have a 5+ invuln thanx to Cybork Armour....3 wounds on nob bikers...not a single dead nob most likely, wounds will spread. FAIL.

Equip your Knights with Thunderhammers instead and you could have a few dead nobs due to instant death but the end result will probably be about the same, Knights cannot handle the punishment.

The new space marine terminators with t-hammers and a 3++ save? Probably a bit better, especially with lysander leading the charge to instant death the warboss (toughness 5 base remember, str 10 needed to smash him with a single hit). Lysander is prolly pretty much the bane of these bikers, with 4 wounds, EW, 3++, he's a good foil.

Another good unit to charge into them with after baiting them would be an evicerator'ed out celestian squad including cannoness/and preist. 10 str 8 (after faith) evicerator attacks with RR's to hit with some of which hitting on 3+ despite the Nobs WS. Kicking faith once again gives you invulnerable saves for some surviveability. (Imagifier and Litanies is key here) The problem here, is that the unit is fairly expensive. I've destroyed a biker unit with this before, but it left me with 2 sisters down, and standing out in the open ready for the OTHER unit to charge in and finish me off....this time with added attacks from a charge on their side with no rr's for myself.

The problem with countering Nob bikers, is that you might be able to come up with something thats going to clobber the unit no problem, however, unless you have two units that can do so, you shoot your wad and still are left with another 10 hard pipe hitters to somehow deal with....they just killed your trump card after they get left standing out in the open.

People dont generally bring two hefty close combat units that can deal with a biker nob army. If you do...thats your army, just like the Nob bikers themselves. Its not usually a good idea with other codexes though, anything you can bring will likely not be as versitile as the Nobs are.

Deadshane1 wrote:This isnt a horde we're talking about here.

I meant the bikes list would chew up a horde list.

sourclams wrote:I beg to differ, Moz. Marines are one of the most able to do so because of their ability to shoot Orks to death if they're not willing to close into cc with the units that can punch them to death.

A line of Tacticals in front of Dreadnoughts seriously wrecks the Nobz Bikaz' day. Especially if you have 25% terrain coverage; it's almost impossible for them to go anywhere without eating those dangerous terrain tests.

The Bikaz are indeed a scary force, but even generic Marine lists should be able to handle themselves pretty well against them.

Marines just standing there dont have a snowballs chance. Regardless of how you 'bait' the bikers. Any Nob Biker will tell you....

10 marines guarding a dread...no problem, bikers scoot around the side and charge the whole schebang...wiping them all out.

20/30/40+ marines guarding however many dreads, again, no problem. Bikers do a combined charge on ALL marines standing out in the open making for a hopeless combat that the marines cannot hope to do anything but run from. dreads may charge the bikes, then the OTHER biker unit comes in to save them.

5 power Klaws on Nobs is becoming industry standard. Thats 10 str 8 standing there after YOU charge THEM, 15 at 9 if they charge you. Nob Biker armies arent afraid of Dreads...not space marine ones. Lots of Kans? Scarier for them. Marines? Please.

What do you think about Bike Councils and Super Councils ('Locks, Yriel, Eldrad) against Nobs on Wheels? I knwo you said not to bring the tarpit unit, but I'm thinking this is one tarpit that might actually do well against the Nobs. I'm guessing the Bike Council will lose to attrition if they are not supported by Shining Spears, but the Super Council on foot seems like they have a good shot (Yriel and Eldrad's strong powerweapons plus all those witchblades). Do you think that's accurate?

Hmm- that's a fight I'd really like to test soon.

One thing that will work wonders and should emege as a popular build(im abit surprised it hasnt shown yet) should be the marines with landraiders and assult terminators with SS-TH.

I've found also that the bikes can really outshoot the marines as well if it's just tacticals guarding dreads.

One note for your deadshane, the nobs are base 3 attacks. 5 klaws is 15 (15!!) klaw attacks. Too many in my book, I feel that 2 in the squad + the warboss is adequate for most purposes. 3-5 might improve your odds against certain lists but will be overkill best spent elsewhere against most.

I also say that nob bikes are afraid of dreads on a countercharge, especially ironclads or venerables who are unlikely to die in return. Again it's not about wiping the bikes out to the last Nob, it's about winning a combat by 3 or more wounds and chasing them down. Dreads have a good wound dealt to wound received ratio.

If you play Daemons you have a good shot. Drop khornate units or Soul Grinders all around them. They can assault something, take a few wounds and kill it. You counter charge and wipe them out. To avoid this they have to start multi-charging, but that gets dicy real fast.

I've also seen Kairos take an 8 man Nob Biker squad w/1 warboss leading's charge and hold it, but that was probaby just good luck.

Council could probably do it if they get to countercharge in. Problem in a protracted engagement for the council is that both units are equally resilient, but the lynchpin of the council (Eldraad) is easier to pick out with a single klaw wound than the painboy is for the nobs. With eldraad gone it goes downhill in a hurry.

I think the best way to deal with the Ork biker mob is a unit of 10 terminators with storm sheilds and hammers. this will win every time and is good vs pretty much any army.

You may see me including this (although it would be GKTs... not as good) in the future for my sisters list.

ALSO, the best way to get wounds in would be Ordanance such as the orbital strike from pedro or any marine chapter master.

A single greater daemon of tzeentch or Slaanesh would give a mob a bit of trouble as would blood crushers

i think if I were to face this again I would try my best to double assault with 2 cannonness at the same time and pray I don't fail saves :p

Moz wrote:

One note for your deadshane, the nobs are base 3 attacks. 5 klaws is 15 (15!!) klaw attacks. Too many in my book, I feel that 2 in the squad + the warboss is adequate for most purposes. 3-5 might improve your odds against certain lists but will be overkill best spent elsewhere against most.

yup, my bad.

5 seems to be the winning number, since when biker nob goes up against biker nob (these armies actually hit each other this past weekend) he who has more Klaws wins. 5 is overkill, but not so much overkill that its costing you too much elsewhere. (the winning list had 5 Klaws per unit not including the Warboss' Klaw I do beleive.

Moz wrote:Council could probably do it if they get to countercharge in. Problem in a protracted engagement for the council is that both units are equally resilient, but the lynchpin of the council (Eldraad) is easier to pick out with a single klaw wound than the painboy is for the nobs. With eldraad gone it goes downhill in a hurry.

theblklotus and I talked about this the other day, and the key for the bikelocks is that the Farseer or Eldrad does not have to actually be attached to the unit. The farseer himself doesn't really help all that much in assault more than the regular 'locks anyway. As long as 10 fortuned bikelocks charge in, and the farseer is within 6" to cast doom and fortune, it should be a good shutdown.

The real problem comes from the eldar giving up more KP's then the ork army. To make the rest of the army moderately effective, the eldar army will likely be a few KP's more than the ork army, especially if we're talking about your army Moz.

Also, if you load the seers up with mindwar, (which why wouldn't you) you could easily pick off the painboyz since mindwar lets you select a model. That plus the painboyz abysmally low LD would spell almost certain doom for him. (But I don't have my books with me so I'm not sure if the painboy would get LD10 against the mindwar attack.)

Another problem that you touched on Moz but needs to be highlighted again, is that if there is a squishy squad in combat with the nobz, they nobz will wipe them out. With the new combat resolution rules, that means that all of those wounds will go towards the hole combat. Units that are Fearless of ATSKNF will suffer badly. That's why you need one RESILIENT unit to take the charge, and hopefully another unit that will finish the nobz off for good. (This is true of any CC unit that can deal alot of wounds in 5th, like a large squad of khorne berzerkers.)

For example, Nob bikers charge Ghaz + 30 boyz. The bikerz can basically throw all their attacks against the regular boyz, and then Ghazzie and the Boyz lose combat, so then have to take a pile of extra wounds for No Retreat. However, if Ghazzie is all by himself, he can Waagh, he will most likely take alot fewer wounds and less wounds (if any) from No Retreat. Hell with his S10 powerklaw, he may even win the combat. That is what Moz is saying.

yes, it did have 5 klaws in the mob when the boss is included.

In Nob on Nob action you need to manuever to double assault and kill that way, not go one on one.

frgsinwntr wrote:A single greater daemon of tzeentch or Slaanesh would give a mob a bit of trouble as would blood crushers

A big unit of Crushers does not do enough S8 wounds to really break the back of the nobz. Two units of 8 crushers would crush the nobz, but one unit would barely batter than I'm thinking. The same problem is true of the KoS and LoC. The Bloodthirster on the other hand, would be a bear, but a unit of nobz with 5 klaws would most likely take him out as well.

Deadshane1 wrote:
5 power Klaws on Nobs is becoming industry standard. Thats 10 str 8 standing there after YOU charge THEM, 15 at 9 if they charge you. Nob Biker armies arent afraid of Dreads...not space marine ones. Lots of Kans? Scarier for them. Marines? Please.

I'm going to have to politely disagree with you, as well. Ironclads (perhaps I should have been more specific) versus Power Klaws, even on the charge, wreck Nobz' day. I've done it, do it, will do it again. Honestly, it's kind of easy. Screening them with 10 tactical marines is also easy, doubly so with 20, and 30 just makes it stupid easy.

Well, my EC army could take on Nobz Bikers rather easily: DPs lash them to bunch them up and then Obliterators shoot them with plasma cannons.

I look forward to a nob bikes vs. daemons game someday, but I anticipate that the shooting of the bikes will be the key to neutralizing what they can't handle before the charges start.

I'll agree that more klaws is better, but unless it's bike nobs vs bike nobs it's rarely an issue. 10 bike nobs without any weapon upgrades will win combat vs. just about anything that isn't all swinging at Str8 or Armor 11+.

I think that the real key to the mirror match would be what else is in the list that causes one bike unit to have to yield the charge to the other. 2 x 2 squads of bikes can zoom around the board all day without ever needing to engage one another.

20 tac marines with an ironclad support? no way in hell does the ironclad "wreck the nobs day." they have what 3-4 attacks base? Nobs are gonna get off the charge...they dont vs the ironclad frankly the person playing the nob list is dumb then. So nobs charge the 20 marines and the ironclad. Nobs destroy them. Sure ironclad with 4 attacks (since i cant remember playing it safe) gets 2 hits and then MAYBE kills 2 since nobs still get 5+ invuln. In return 5 claws with a warboss with a claw can pretty much wipe out the units on their own. For example direct the warbosses 6 claw attacks (you took an attack squig right?=)) against the ironclad...OHHHH 6 attacks hitting on 3s penning on anything but a 2-3 on 2d6...yeah ironclad destroys bikers...... then the 5 claw bikers tear the spacemarine squads a new one...and this is even discounting the attacks from the remaining non claw bikers. 5 claw bikers then get 20 attacks on the charge. even half hitting, and being generous and saying only 7-8 wound that is still almost a whole tac squad gone. In the meantime your two squads of marines are doing dink with their normal attacks since 4+/4+ is hard to get through. the 4 powerfist attacks from the sergeants? 2 hits and again MAYBE 2 dead orks max. So at the end of the day the biker squad has now destroyed your ironclad and pretty much killed off one squad out of the 2 present. Marines rule!!!

Yeah except that's really not how it works. Try it. Like, in a game. Also, take your ritalin. It helps your typing skills.

It's also not at all a given that the Nobz are guaranteed to get the charge versus the Ironclads. Screening tacticals, for example.

Please don't just speculate wildly, it doesn't help anyone. Far too much "It's easy just X" on dakka.

If you base the S10 warboss klaw to the ironclad, congrats on just losing your warboss at initiative 4 to the S10 ironclad.

If the nob biker throws away a 750pt squad to kill 2 tac units and an ironclad, he's lost anyways.

The concept here is that the marines surround the clads so the clads can't be charged anyways (hence the screen). The problem in my assessment of this situation is that X points of marines is less survivable than X points of Bike nobs in a shooting exchange. Unless there is a real shooting threat to the nobs that they can't handle with their own shooting (demolisher, dev squads behind a wall of marines + dreads) then the bikes will just sit at 18" and remove tac units until the marine player doesn't have a screen anymore.

Which is a very realistic assessment of the tactical situation, Moz. In fact, in that scenario I would indeed be far more worried about Nob shooting than Nob assaulting for the reason that you stated.

The issue then is usually that the Marines are almost guaranteed to have *something* capable of insta deathing the Nobz through shooting, whether it's multi meltas, missiles, or las.

The marine player will need to outshoot the Bikers and that is were the 120pt 3 attack bike unit comes into play. The AB's can dance around the Iron Clads and fire 3 heavy bolters at the Bikers. Sure the damage will be slow, but it should beat the return fire of the Orks. Now the bikes have to engage the marines to avoid the AB's and the Iron Clads can clean up. The AB's are not static and can chase the Bikers around the board. They can also avoid any Snikrot units.

Abbaddon would be awesome against this unit however as was said above, once he is out the other Biker unit will have the table to themselves.