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A lot of space marine armies I have played against competitiivley almost never field bikes (besides ravenwing and scars). Yes they are expensive as you need a lot for hit power but think about the diverse role they have in vanilla marine armies. There have been several games where more firepower and numbers were needed instead of heavier armor against my chaos 8 obliterator dual lash, and my DOA pure wing.

The Rules

Scouts- They get a free move or can outflank, both great for your army. Shooty heavy army has you down? Outflank a squad of scouts with a power fist. They have krak grenades too and are most likely going to damage that vehicle with the biggest threat before anyone can stop them.

Infiltrate- they are guranteed a charge as long as they have an open target if set up properly and receiving first turn

So the biggest question: How do you best use/abuse their abilities?

Scout bikes get expensive- FAST. You need to figure out how many points and what their role in your army is. Best used as a intervention unit, they are 100% more accurate than a squad of deep striking hitmen with the role they fulfill. Now, the question is how to field them?

1. Infiltrate A fully decked out squad with a locator beacon is great for survivability for a deep strike heavy army, with NO power fist. They die fast so dont waste the points on a fist, get the upgrades for the units coming in. 3-5 is all you need if properly hidden, but remember its an easy KP when not fielded right.

2. Outflanking- if you do this it is most likely to counter an assaulting type army and you need to hit them HARD. Field 5-10 with 3 grenade launchers or/and a powerfist will also help against mech, but remember the grenades need 4+ to hit so those 10-30 points might be better for an extra man or wargear item in another squad.

3. Maximum attack- Max out and take the works besides a locator beacon and meltabomb sarge unless you have the points left over. Have them outflank so you are in reserve and can contest/ eat your opponents objective/ s. They cannot hold an objective but 10 men at T5 wont budge against most squads holding their targeted objective. This squad would be a whopping 265 points though, so if you dont set them up for a proper attack, it could mean the loss of your game. ALSO THIS ALLOWS THEM TO COMBAT SQUAD

And this is the most important thing about scouts: they got hurt with the new codex lowering ws and bs. ALWAYS KEEP THIS IN MIND. If you think you would be better suited with something else in your marine army you most of the time are.

Defeatmyarmy wrote:A lot of space marine armies I have played against competitiivley almost never field bikes...

If you think you would be better suited with something else in your marine army you most of the time are.

I think you found your own answer.

Scout bikes pretty much suck. Their only utility is in synergizing with Deep Strikers. The problem with this is...

In order to utilize the locator beacon, they must have begun their turn ON the table. So you can't outflank then deepstrike onto the beacon in the same turn. Furthermore, deep striking happens before you move them, so it's not as if you can turbo boost up next to something then call in a deep strike on the beacon.

If you take them in an unobtrusive squad size, they won't last longer than the first turn.

You don't get deep strikers on the first turn.


If you want locator beacons, use drop pods. They're more resilient (mostly because people can't be bothered to shoot at them) and with Drop Pod Assault, you get them first turn, and you don't have to drive them to where they're going.

If you want bikes, use a Marine Captain on a bike to make them Troops.


Just my opinion: Leave the BS3 stuff to Guard. When they were T3 S3, BS4 WS4, they made more sense.

I think they work fine, 100 pts for 3 bikes with 3 rapid fire grenade launchers is better than you would think. With scout and infiltrate, they can be pretty close to where they will do max damage, either using their S6 on side armor or on transports with Av 10-11, or using their frag on bunched up xenos squads (and horde lists usually are bunched up at least a little bit due to deployment issues). 6 small blasts, even at S3 will do some serious damage the enemy. This of course assumes going first. Going second you obviously turbo boost during scout phase. T5 and a 3+ cover save is VERY durable, and many people won't bother shooting at a nuisance unit that has that kind of save. Then there is the benefit that just taking infiltrators/scouts have on your opponents infiltrators/scouts. They can force your enemy from taking choice terrain pieces for infiltration, and can block enemy scout moves too.

If you want to field to get your DS units on the field, I would suggest ravenwing. The army is built for that.

Im implementing scout bikes into my DOA list to fill in 2000 points. Its 5 scouts- 1 G.L 1 power fist. The idea is to get them in around the same turn as vanguard for extra furious charge hits. Extra assault marines are starting to seem kinda bland as I already am fielding 40 and I wanted some variety, as these guys can also hit when coming in from reserves

Im implementing scout bikes into my DOA list to fill in 2000 points. Its 5 scouts- 1 G.L 1 power fist. The idea is to get them in around the same turn as vanguard for extra furious charge hits. Extra assault marines are starting to seem kinda bland as I already am fielding 40 and I wanted some variety, as these guys can also hit when coming in from reserves

What? how do you run out of jump pack choices in the Blood Angels codex? there are more than just assault marines.

NuggzTheNinja wrote:Scout bikes pretty much suck. Their only utility is in synergizing with Deep Strikers. The problem with this is...

In order to utilize the locator beacon, they must have begun their turn ON the table. So you can't outflank then deepstrike onto the beacon in the same turn. Furthermore, deep striking happens before you move them, so it's not as if you can turbo boost up next to something then call in a deep strike on the beacon.

If you take them in an unobtrusive squad size, they won't last longer than the first turn.

You don't get deep strikers on the first turn.


If you want locator beacons, use drop pods. They're more resilient (mostly because people can't be bothered to shoot at them) and with Drop Pod Assault, you get them first turn, and you don't have to drive them to where they're going.

If you want bikes, use a Marine Captain on a bike to make them Troops.


Just my opinion: Leave the BS3 stuff to Guard. When they were T3 S3, BS4 WS4, they made more sense.

That's good advice for a codex marine list, but not for a DOA list. DOA is a completely different play style where scout bikes are golden.

Unlike codex marines DOA has no issues with troops because DOA assault marines>Tac squads. We're loaded with troops, so that's a non issue.

Scout bikes are not expensive. 10 scout bikes cost 5 points more than a codex chapter buying 10 tac marines and a rhino. They are very cheap for what they do.

What do they do? They are a punching bag. When they turbo boost they are T5, 3++ cover, and 4+ FNP, and they cost 3 points less per model than a T5, 4++ cover, 4+ FNP plague marine.

DOA absolutely needs the ability to start on the table without deep striking regardless if the DOA player goes first or second. Against some armies deep striking is very ill advised. That means the DOA army has to take 1 or 2 shooting phases on the chin before the assaults start. What DOA gains from the scout bike screen is a wall of 3++ cover that gives the rest of the army a 4++ cover. Everything is T4/T5 with a cover save, and nothing has an armor value. The best target an ap3 weapon like krak can find is 4++ cover assault marines, and the best target ap4 weapons like rifleman dreads can find is 3++ cover 4+FNP scout bikes so there are no good targets for heavy weapons, and small arms fire is largely ineffective against T5 3++ cover 4+ FNP.

BS 3 is also a non issue when talking about TL relentless bolters that can move 12". They still hit 75% of the time which is better than the 66% of the time that BS4 non TL hits. At 80% of the cost of a regular SM bike they actually out gun regular SM bikes. 5 scout bikes=4 SM bikes in cost. Math hammer shows 5 scout bikes will average 7.5 hits per turn compared to 7.1 hits per turn from 4 SM bikes.

schadenfreude wrote:



DOA absolutely needs the ability to start on the table without deep striking regardless if the DOA player goes first or second. Against some armies deep striking is very ill advised. That means the DOA army has to take 1 or 2 shooting phases on the chin before the assaults start. What DOA gains from the scout bike screen is a wall of 3++ cover that gives the rest of the army a 4++ cover. Everything is T4/T5 with a cover save, and nothing has an armor value. The best target an ap3 weapon like krak can find is 4++ cover assault marines, and the best target ap4 weapons like rifleman dreads can find is 3++ cover 4+FNP scout bikes so there are no good targets for heavy weapons, and small arms fire is largely ineffective against T5 3++ cover 4+ FNP.

BS 3 is also a non issue when talking about TL relentless bolters that can move 12". They still hit 75% of the time which is better than the 66% of the time that BS4 non TL hits. At 80% of the cost of a regular SM bike they actually out gun regular SM bikes. 5 scout bikes=4 SM bikes in cost. Math hammer shows 5 scout bikes will average 7.5 hits per turn compared to 7.1 hits per turn from 4 SM bikes.

+1 Scout bikers are awesome for what they do. Think of it this way: all marines have anti mech spam. For 265 points you have a full squad without a beacon. 3 squads outflanking like this in 1850= pwnage.

The reason I do not add any more assault marines is because I have enough to wreck vehicles but only 1 unit that can assault the turn it becomes available. DOA struggle and adding this one unit I feel can be a last turn game changer.

Also, basic vanilla marines can do this:

1850

Libby
5 razorbacks- las plas
razorback hb
3X 10 scouts bikers- 3 gl 1 pf

Heavier armor bikes will give you some problems, but most people are mech, horde, or elitest armies nowadays.

Well Nilla marines usually need more tac marines, are usually mechanized thus there is no non mech target saturation, and can't give their scout bikers FNP. The only Nilla lists I can see making good use of scout bikers would be a bike list where regular bikes are troops possibly combined with TH/SS terminators that are dependent on locator beacons.

DOA is a very different army than Nilla marines.

I'm surprised the OP didn't include this little gem:
3 Scout Bikes w/ a combi-melta and melta bombs. IIRC that is 85pts.

Its pretty simple. Start out on the board, scout as far as you can, then zoom up behind a vehicle, shoot the melta and if that fails, melta bombs and krak grenades.

Granted it'll probably only work on someonce once, seeing as how they'll deploy to avoid that. But you still gain an advantage, you are exerting influence over your opponent. On another note: armies are so mech heavy that their only option is probably to start further back. They give up their mobility (for a turn or two) in order to protect themselves from a 85pt unit. Duh, winning!