I've heard in many threads that eldar are the most versatil army and that they have a weapon or unit to cope with any enemy. What is their weapon or unit of choice against nob bikers.

My guess is S6 spam but I play nids and I know first hand how ineffective those are.

2x BIKE Seer Councils, Farseers with Mind War, and lots of Fire Dragons.

All they'll need is a little bit of energon, and a whole lotta luck.

Best bets are still always based around winning an assault. Eldar can accomplish this with the right setup.

Fortuned warlocks to tie up models and absorb wounds plus something hard hitting (like harlies, karandaras, wraithlord) to come in basing only one model. That should be enough to swing the wound count in your favor and break them.

Some people suggest mindwar against an LD7 painboy, which really relies on a contentious rules debate so I wouldn't count on that every game. But if you win that 4+, it's a good way to get rid of the FNP.

Lastly you can take a huge about of STR8 firepower with large firedragon squads. Sure you'll lose against anything else, but you'd have a chance of winning vs the bikenobs in shooting.

STR6 shooting is not the answer, if only because most of the STR6 platforms are much more vulnerable to the nobs than the nobs are to the Str6 shooting.

Transports are a very strong option though, and will help your late game tank shock gambits if you manage to knock some nobs out.

A big seer council might be able to tarpit the Nobs, but I'm not sure they would eventually survive. Wraithlords with swords might be able to make the Nobs ineffectual before the Wraithlords drop from combat as long as the Wraithlords get the charge into HtH.

Any shooting will have to wait until the Nobz have not turbo-boosted, maybe the turn after they consolidate out of a combat.

Any of these ways are not a sure thing and not as effective as what Marines or some other armies can bring to the table.

Moz has got it right. Eldar should concentrate on winning a round of HtH and chasing down the bikes rather that outright killing them in shooting or assault.

Thats a good idea Moz but, what do you think of 2 jetseer councils since the army is a highly mobile force wraithlords wont fit in and, harlies got nerfed hard in 5th.

Tank shocking is probably the best option for Eldar if you're running at least a couple of Wave Serpents and don't have a Seer Council. Just move flat-out 24" over the unit and pray they fail a Ld9 check (Ld7 without a Warboss). Once they do, move something within 6" and keep them there until the unit runs off the table.

Danny Internets wrote:Tank shocking is probably the best option for Eldar if you're running at least a couple of Wave Serpents and don't have a Seer Council. Just move flat-out 24" over the unit and pray they fail a Ld9 check (Ld7 without a Warboss). Once they do, move something within 6" and keep them there until the unit runs off the table.

the leadership depends on the boyz around them, 4 boyz=ld4 just shoot the crap at them until they need to take a test and hope they go running. this requires luck though...

yermom wrote:Thats a good idea Moz but, what do you think of 2 jetseer councils since the army is a highly mobile force wraithlords wont fit in and, harlies got nerfed hard in 5th.

With 2 max sized jetseer squads, you should try for 3x Fire Prisms or 3x Snakes on a Plane for your heavies. The rest of your list will then be guardian jetbikes or DA inna serpent.

Basically you're going to try to shoot down the bikers a bit with the Prisms or Snakes, then mindwar the painboy, then charge in and pray.

EDIT:

Wraithlord will get murdered by Nob Powerklaws.

Harlies have what it takes to put wounds on the unit. That's all you need when fortuned warlocks are holding down the majority of the swings. They didn't honestly get nerfed that hard, and the combat isn't that difficult to setup either.

Applying pressure with the shooting tactics whitedragon suggests will be good for forcing them to act, but just don't count on winning a game by shooting them off the table. Most of what can hurt them with shooting (save the prisms) is also extremely vulnerable to their counterattack. Making a favorable trade there is very difficult to pull off.

Moz,

You only gotta drop a few before you can Mind War them, I'm not implying trying to wipe them out from shooting. Your goal is to drop the Painboyz LD to 7 (depending on which way you debate the rules) so that he is easy prey for Mind War. The harlies are going to be difficult to hide from the Nobs dakkaguns and get a good charge, and if you have only 1 seer council (because you need points for harlies) then you could very easily be overwhelmed by two huge bike nob units.

It shouldn't be that difficult to keep falcons and Prisms flying around shooting at nobs until the seer council charges in. Hell you could even circle the council around the tanks to avoid them getting charged too.

Also remember that for the harlies to get alot of wounds, you need DOOM. Otherwise they will be wiped out.

Eldar 4ed codex

...add the leadership of thier respective models.

This means it uses the models base stat. Which is 7. Which is awesome.


Um, fireprisms? str9 ap2. Cover save, woo. Most things get 4+ anyways. Vaps & no armour or FNP save.

Now add in your farseer bike concils & troops (hey hey snipers!) which makes a fairly comprehensive list which will be fairly good against this one trick pony.

The issue with Min Warring an Ork is that they all have a 'Mob Rule' special rule, which may or may not increase the leadership of each Ork to the number of Orks in the mob. If you are able to reduce the Nobs to below 7, then it becomes a moot point. If you do not, it may lead to a dice off or hard feelings either way. If you're planning on trying it, you should probably let your opponent know so that you can have the argument before it becomes a game winning dice toss.

Aside from the specific wording, the powers ability to specifically pick one model out of a squad and its 'flavour' id say that it just uses its LD value listed under the models entry.

But yeah there is that arguement which isnt a given (I think its pretty clear but..) so thanks for the heads up.

I don't want this to become a rules dispute thread if you guys want to have a 20 page discussion about the LD of a warboss and his unit do it in YMDC not here. I don't mean to be mean but, I want to know about eldar killing nob bikers NOT nob bikers LD rules, hence the name "How do eldar cope with nob bikers"

Wouldn't a standard mech list kill the nob bikers list pretty handily? You can just scoot around 24" taking shots with pulsars and bright lances, killing a few each turn. Or just run them over with skimmers repeatedly. Theres not a lot they can do to a FA12 tank with big shootas and they should never be able to catch/damage one of the falcons in combat.

Nob bikers own Eldar. IF the eldar are moving fast enough to get away, they're not shooting. If they're shooting, they're probably going up against a 3+ cover save from turbo-boosting. And once the nobs charge, the sheer number of S9/10 attacks means that a handful will hit, even if they need 6 to hit. Striking against rear armor means dead skimmers.

Best bet Eldar have is two-fold. One, fire dragons are about the only unit with enough S8 shots to make a dent. The key is waiting until you don't have to get past the 3+ inv.

Hand to Hand, the key is winning and then breaking them with combat res. That pretty much means a fortuned unit of warlocks to soak attacks, in combination with another unit that inflicts S8 power weapon attacks to do the actual damage.

There's a reason why I'm shifting my Altansar army to include a warlock council and Wraithlords...

Infiltrating snipers, horde o storm guardains to speed bump... le ork nobz can either miss these guys are turbo boost round to try and get at the prisms - which by the way, will eat nobz. 3 of em, even with that 3+, thats two many vaping hits on the squad. And as soon as that squads down to enough models to be hit by a single blast (4 models?) two prims can link up to vap the warboss (which, i assume is T5?).

The speed bumping guardains can also speed bump the nobz to allow the (atleast) one unit of cc goodness to catch up and join in, last atleast a turn or two, while the rest of my army annhilates your scoring potential. Yes those orks are scary and tough. If I tried to ram at 24'' with my undamaged prisms and be silly then it would be a walkover. No-one (sh) would

Im the unorthodox eldar player, and i have to say a full battery of Vibro cannons, as 1. you can hide behind impassable terrain and stuff that block LOS and you can still hit the and stuff behind them 2. pinning, i dont think people would do this but i guess i would give it a try.

Wraithguard if you can afford them.

If you could cause them to take dangerous terrian tests (which would be awesome, hence thunderfire cannons), would be nice. Vibro cannons, d6 str 4-6 hits. Not enough firepower. A prism will outrange & outmanouver that static artillery battery. Plus itll do alot more damage. Pinning is a def but w/ the warboss the ld is annoyingly high neways.

Pinning on ld 9 isnt a bad idea though.

Wraithguard are not aviable answer, their main advantages of their high T and powerful guns are both nergated. Orks will assault before the wraithguard shoot and big choppas will make short work of T6.

D-Cannon for the instant kill, nob bikers have a large footprint a D-Cannon battery should thin out the orks nicely.

Scattter laser War Walkers should do enough damage per points that the 4+ and FNP will not be able to keep up, especially if guided or doomed.

hutchy_99 wrote:
the leadership depends on the boyz around them, 4 boyz=ld4 just shoot the crap at them until they need to take a test and hope they go running. this requires luck though...

That's not how Mob Rule works. They are Ld7 base, and most biker units don't exceed 7 or 8 models because it becomes retardedly overkill at that point.

The problem with designing an eldar list to be nob bikers is will not be a balanced list.

G

Danny Internets wrote:

hutchy_99 wrote:
the leadership depends on the boyz around them, 4 boyz=ld4 just shoot the crap at them until they need to take a test and hope they go running. this requires luck though...

That's not how Mob Rule works. They are Ld7 base, and most biker units don't exceed 7 or 8 models because it becomes retardedly overkill at that point.

Actually the typical list features two squads of ten.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:The problem with designing an eldar list to be nob bikers is will not be a balanced list.

G

A 2x Jetseer council flanked by 3 prisms, fire dragons, and 2 units of DA's in a wave serpent are pretty hardy against everything.

Assuming the jetseer councils are maxed out that list is probably over the ard boyz points limit and only has 2 troop choices...

I think a full unit of Dark Reapers would be able to take them down to a manageable size. Doom the Nobs, Guide the Dark Reapers. The exarch can ignore their cover save with crack shot. They will get a 5 plus invulnerable and a 4 plus feel no pain. I know it sucks but you can start taking them out from afar to the point where a Wraithlord might be able to finish them off when they hit your lines. Eldar are all about synergy. If it takes the combined efforts of every unit in your army to take them out for 2 turns then your doing alright. I've played against a Nob biker horde. No matter how quickly you kill them they are going to take some of your guys with them. A squad of 6 nob bikers with all the gear/painboy comes to around 400 points. Thats quite an investment. Unless they happen to pass their rerollable leadership you are going to have to work for the kill.

Dark Reapers are not the way to go for that 200+ point unit you did 1-2 wounds and they're static so will be charged next turn.

Eldar Support Weapons look like they could be fun.

Static anything will be charged and killed on turn 2.

Jetseers with Fire Dragon/Prism support or even Wraith Lords geared for cc.

Falcon spam with Fire Dragon/Prism support

A lack of close combat S8+ makes this kind of a tough deal for the Eldar.

I don't see how any static unit will be charged and killed by turn 2, since units can be screened from assaults, and there may be more static units than Nob Bike units to make assaults.

The more I look at this, the more it seems that the best way to deal with this unit is to pin it down, which an Eldar army shouldn't have difficulty doing with their access to pinning weapons.

Actually D Cannons sound like a good idea. They ignore cover if you fire indirect, they sit at the back of your army. He won't be able to charge them and they will likely be out of LOS. Once again doom and guide. They can instant kill and always wound on 2's. I think the answer isn't killing these guys with shooting. The answer is whittling them down until a unit like scorpions or banshees can finish them off or at least tie them up for one combat and then finish them off the second combat. A fortuned squad of dire avengers with diresword and shimmershield with defend severely neuter a squad of Nob Bikers.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
That's not how Mob Rule works. They are Ld7 base, and most biker units don't exceed 7 or 8 models because it becomes retardedly overkill at that point.

Actually the typical list features two squads of ten.

G

The Eldar are a sneaky race and creating an aluring target for the nob bikers may not be a bad idea. Static shooty units like Reapers can do alot of damage, remember theres still the rest of the ork army to kill. Others have said that they will be a target and will be destroyed in turn 2, good let them come. Wraithguard was also mentioned as a bad idea. What if they provided a screen for the Reapers and tied up the nob bikers in cc. Ok that seems unlikely that they will just cruise in with Wraithguard near by, right? Well, keep the Wraithguard next to a transport for quick, well timed support. Then fly in Jetseer & co. and finish them. Even if you don't like this approch I think using a tempting target that the Orks know they'll have to deal with later , if they don't sweep them with their bikers, will give you a controled enviornment to kill them without losing important squads. Pinning, also gives you more options for timely reaction.

Danny Internets wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:

Actually the typical list features two squads of ten.

G

Most of the lists I've seen floating around the internet seem to have 2 squads of 7 (8 with the Warboss) at 1750, but perhaps it's different in the major tournament scene. Ork players are few and far between here so I don't have much to go on other than what I've been reading.

If you see them in squad sizes of less than 10, then they aren't fearless, and you can tank shock them repeatedly until they break.

The striking scorpion phoenix lord would be a good choice since he has a lot attacks, a high WS and a S8 power fist. Of course he is going to die most likely in the first round of a close combat. I think a couple of wraithlords would be useful as well since they can insta-kill the warbosses. If you could use wraithguard so that they can shoot the nobs that would also help. One farseer with doom and guide on a jetbike as well along with a spirit seer. The fire dragons as mentioned would also be useful too. I would probably field guardians mounted on jetbikes as a troop choice so they can play keep away from the nobs.

G

G

Karandas and large squads of scorps are probably the best assault option. Throw in a Avatar for fearlessness extra CC ability.

By running away
example
= Eldar Person
= Ork Nob Biker


->
"oh "
->

So, how about Shining Spears?

A full unit would get 4 S6 AP4 shots and a S8 AP4 shot in the shooting phase, 8 S6 Power Weapon attacks and 3 S8 Power Weapon attacks on the charge, then disengage using Hit and Run into dangerous terrain using Skilled Rider if the Nobz don't break.

Throw them into combat with Nob Bikers accompanied by a Wraithlord, and maybe through a Doom in there as well and I think there might be something.

If the Nobz do break, they'll get rolled up by the Shining Spears' high Initiative. If they don't, then the Wraithlord can hold them there for another pass by the Shinging Spears.

DonkeyCannon wrote:Actually D Cannons sound like a good idea. They ignore cover if you fire indirect, they sit at the back of your army. He won't be able to charge them and they will likely be out of LOS. Once again doom and guide. They can instant kill and always wound on 2's. I think the answer isn't killing these guys with shooting. The answer is whittling them down until a unit like scorpions or banshees can finish them off or at least tie them up for one combat and then finish them off the second combat. A fortuned squad of dire avengers with diresword and shimmershield with defend severely neuter a squad of Nob Bikers.

Dcannons only instakill on 6's right? Then they're useless. They don't ignore cover, because nob bikers self-generate their cover saves, either through turbo-boosting for a 3+ or their own, natural, permanent 4+. They also only have a 24" range.

Squad of scorpions, full strength on the charge: 36 attacks, 18 hits, 6 wounds, 3 saves, 1.5 feel no pain. No models removed. Orks strike back with at least 16 power fist attacks. Hit with 2/3, wound with 5/6, for approximately 10 kills. Scorpions gone. Doom helps, but not enough.

Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

Nurglitch wrote:So, how about Shining Spears?

A full unit would get 4 S6 AP4 shots and a S8 AP4 shot in the shooting phase, 8 S6 Power Weapon attacks and 3 S8 Power Weapon attacks on the charge, then disengage using Hit and Run into dangerous terrain using Skilled Rider if the Nobz don't break.

Throw them into combat with Nob Bikers accompanied by a Wraithlord, and maybe through a Doom in there as well and I think there might be something.

If the Nobz do break, they'll get rolled up by the Shining Spears' high Initiative. If they don't, then the Wraithlord can hold them there for another pass by the Shinging Spears.

Shooting likely does nothing, but we'll be generous and give them one model. S6 power weapons likely do nothing of value, because you're not instakilling. OF the 3 S8 power weapon attacks, once to hit, to wound, and invulnerable saves are figured in, you've killed probably one model.

Nobs strike back with powerfists and wipe squad.

Green Blow Fly wrote:The striking scorpion phoenix lord would be a good choice since he has a lot attacks, a high WS and a S8 power fist. Of course he is going to die most likely in the first round of a close combat. I think a couple of wraithlords would be useful as well since they can insta-kill the warbosses. If you could use wraithguard so that they can shoot the nobs that would also help. One farseer with doom and guide on a jetbike as well along with a spirit seer. The fire dragons as mentioned would also be useful too. I would probably field guardians mounted on jetbikes as a troop choice so they can play keep away from the nobs.

Actually, I think his best bet is to partner up with some fortuned warlocks. Warlocks base as many models as possible, in particular the powerfists, while Karandas bases a regular nob. He does the damage, the warlocks try not to die, and Eldar win on combat res. The big challenge is getting them into position to charge.

Trying to whittle them down with regular shooting is something of a waste of time. Assuming a 10-man nob biker squad, you need a way to reliably cause 44 wounds on T5 before a single model is removed as a casualty. If for some reason you can ignore the FNP, you need a way to cause 22 wounds on T5.

If you're going to shoot at the bikers, about the only way to do anything besides watching the ork player abuse the wound allocation rules is to use S8 shooting. Lots of s8 shooting, because you've got to get past the 4+ or 3+ cover save.

Similar problem in assault: you've got to do S8 power weapon/fist attacks, or you're doing nothing to remove models, and will probably be wiped by the sheer number of power klaw attacks coming back at you.

Some of you probably don't believe me, and are going to continue to argue that weight of numbers will be able to work. But I'm telling you that the only reliable way to deal with nob bikers is through massed S8 attacks. For Eldar, this means fire dragons. Nothing else puts out the volume of fire needed. Assuming they're not guided, a you need 4 BS3 Bright Lances to kill a single nob biker.

In assault, the options really boil down to two things: Wraithlords and Karandas. Both need another unit to charge with them, so that they can soak up powerfist wounds.

Otherwise, unless you're tossing your ENTIRE army against the bikers, you're probably going to die.

Put it this way: 3 full bladestorming squads of dire avengers/w defend shooting at a doomed 10-man biker squad.

90 shots. 60 hits. 5/9 will wound, so approximately 33 wounds. 16 saves, 8 feel no pain...9 wounds total. No models have been removed. Ork warbikes multicharge all three units.

Dire Avengers Strike first: 33 attacks, 17 hits, 3 wounds. 1 armor save, 1 feel no paint, 1 wound inflicted. Still haven't killed a model. Orks strike back. 16 attacks at I4, 11 hits, 7 wounds, 3 failed saves. Power Klaws strike at I1, with 16 attacks, 11 hits, 9 wounds, 6 failed saves.

All dire avenger squads either take 9 more saves (if there's an avatar nearby), or they test LD at -9

But hey...Eldar are nowhere near as screwed as Necrons are. So rejoice!

D-canons are useless.
Shining Spears are expensive and suffer from TLOS.
Harlequins will need something to soak wounds (or failing that, Fortune) and Doom upon Noobz.
Dragons. 4 Draons kill 1 Noob per shoot. If this is enough or not - decided it yourself.
WL can do some good but are vulnerable themselves, are relatively expensive and eat out HS slots.

Centurian99 wrote:
Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

By the way, this is the exact same scenario facing the Harlies. The only thing the harlies have going for them is higher WS still needing 4's against Waaagh Banner Nobs though, and 5+ Invulnerable saves.

A decent way of getting around the 3+ cover saves is to sacrifice a unit in front of them, like a squad of rangers or some guardians. They charge in, wipe/break the squad, then sit around. They still get their self-generated 4+ save, but at least it's better than 3+. You did lose a squad, but hopefully you've lured them into a poor position.

whitedragon wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

By the way, this is the exact same scenario facing the Harlies. The only thing the harlies have going for them is higher WS still needing 4's against Waaagh Banner Nobs though, and 5+ Invulnerable saves.

Actually this is why you take Banshees backed by Yriel and a Farseer throwing Doom on a unit. This will kill enough bikers to give you the assualt resolution you are looking for. The banshee squad should have the counter assualt ability also.

A farseer with Doom IMO is almost a standard issue to help out with all the 5th edition mixes of armies.

sabote wrote:

whitedragon wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

By the way, this is the exact same scenario facing the Harlies. The only thing the harlies have going for them is higher WS still needing 4's against Waaagh Banner Nobs though, and 5+ Invulnerable saves.

Actually this is why you take Banshees backed by Yriel and a Farseer throwing Doom on a unit. This will kill enough bikers to give you the assualt resolution you are looking for. The banshee squad should have the counter assualt ability also.

A farseer with Doom IMO is almost a standard issue to help out with all the 5th edition mixes of armies.

Why waste the banshees? Banshees will do nothing against the bikers, even if they're doomed.

Assuming countercharge. 30 attacks, 15 hit, 3 wound (generous), RR, 2 more wound. Five wounds! Impressive...whoops, nevermind, orks get a 5+ invuln....make that 3 wounds.

All banshees die.

Wow, good idea.

Deadshane1 wrote:

sabote wrote:

whitedragon wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

By the way, this is the exact same scenario facing the Harlies. The only thing the harlies have going for them is higher WS still needing 4's against Waaagh Banner Nobs though, and 5+ Invulnerable saves.

Actually this is why you take Banshees backed by Yriel and a Farseer throwing Doom on a unit. This will kill enough bikers to give you the assualt resolution you are looking for. The banshee squad should have the counter assualt ability also.

A farseer with Doom IMO is almost a standard issue to help out with all the 5th edition mixes of armies.

Why waste the banshees? Banshees will do nothing against the bikers, even if they're doomed.

Assuming countercharge. 30 attacks, 15 hit, 3 wound (generous), RR, 2 more wound. Five wounds! Impressive...whoops, nevermind, orks get a 5+ invuln....make that 3 wounds.

All banshees die.

Wow, good idea.

Usually ends up with 2 wounds from the exarch
5 from the banshees
4 from yriel
2 save and 9 die

Has not failed me yet. So yeah impressive. Is there more too it like setting up the unit for a charge and wearing it down a bit. Yeah but thats the essential part.

sabote wrote:

Deadshane1 wrote:

sabote wrote:

whitedragon wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
Banshees are similar. A bit more wounds through ignoring feel no pain, but still nowhere near enough the number of wounds needed to kill models.

By the way, this is the exact same scenario facing the Harlies. The only thing the harlies have going for them is higher WS still needing 4's against Waaagh Banner Nobs though, and 5+ Invulnerable saves.

Actually this is why you take Banshees backed by Yriel and a Farseer throwing Doom on a unit. This will kill enough bikers to give you the assualt resolution you are looking for. The banshee squad should have the counter assualt ability also.

A farseer with Doom IMO is almost a standard issue to help out with all the 5th edition mixes of armies.

Why waste the banshees? Banshees will do nothing against the bikers, even if they're doomed.

Assuming countercharge. 30 attacks, 15 hit, 3 wound (generous), RR, 2 more wound. Five wounds! Impressive...whoops, nevermind, orks get a 5+ invuln....make that 3 wounds.

All banshees die.

Wow, good idea.

Has not failed me yet. So yeah impressive.

You're beating the odds then....BY A LOT. You're arguing against numbers here. Those are the flat out averages of a result against Nob Bikers. Banshees are NOT a reliable way to handle them. The only thing that they could do in the fight you illustrated above is possibly help keep the Special characters alive.

I.E. - I'll beleive it when I see it, but I dont think I will.

Besides the fact you're dedicating both of your HQ's to kill a single unit of Nob Bikers...on the off chance they actually survive, there are still another whole unit for them to deal with. Nob Biker armies typically have two full units and two warbosses.

Banshees are not a viable attack against Nob Biker armies...despite what your "results" say.

sabote wrote:

Usually ends up with 2 wounds from the exarch
5 from the banshees
4 from yriel
2 save and 9 die

Has not failed me yet. So yeah impressive. Is there more too it like setting up the unit for a charge and wearing it down a bit. Yeah but thats the essential part.

9 wounds? Thats NONE dead. (and a more realistic average of saved wounds would be 4 out of 11, not 2)

Each nob has two wounds with a different weapon layout for optimum wound dispersal.

Your data is in error.

Deadshane1 wrote:

sabote wrote:

Usually ends up with 2 wounds from the exarch
5 from the banshees
4 from yriel
2 save and 9 die

Has not failed me yet. So yeah impressive. Is there more too it like setting up the unit for a charge and wearing it down a bit. Yeah but thats the essential part.

9 wounds? Thats NONE dead.

Each nob has two wounds with a different weapon layout.

Your data is in error.

No kidding really..... I am glad we have you around to set things straight....... who would have guessed 9 wounds from a power weapon that a ork did not save from kept it around.... than who would have guessed that they did not have to pull whole models off?.... add to the combat resolution at the end......

but hey thanks for the information

Eldar really do not have any good units to take out Nob Bikers.

Fire Dragons are a poor choice since they shoot once, and kill a few, then what? They die. They will not break with a boss pole (I have never seen an ork unit break yet).

I played against a couple of small squads of Nob Bikers at the Baltimore GT and I had 3 Exorcists with a lot of stenght 8 AP1 weapons and I could not bring them down.

What you also need to do is factor in that they will have lootaz that will be shooting up any true threats to the Nob Bikers as well.

You need combat rez, and something that can take a lot of power klaw attacks. I would think the best way to do it would be to hit the bikers with doom, and a full squad of fortuned Harlequins, and even then you have to get lucky.

sabote wrote:
but hey thanks for the information

No problem, thats why I'm here, to help out!

Just to finish up, since we're talking also about combat res....

say 5 ork powerfists since you didnt kill anyone (including the warboss) Thats 16 or 17 powerfist attacks hitting your banshees on 3's assuming you charged. I'm thinking you probably dont want your characters with 4+ invulns facing off against that many powerfists if you want to keep them around, so....


I think thats enough to handle any sort of combat res that we're wondering about, especially after the basic attacks that also hit you on 3's and wound on 3's.

Your bashee gambit is no good here, move along.

Blackmoor wrote:Eldar really do not have any good units to take out Nob Bikers.

Fire Dragons are a poor choice since they shoot once, and kill a few, then what? They die. They will not break with a boss pole (I have never seen an ork unit break yet).

I played against a couple of small squads of Nob Bikers at the Baltimore GT and I had 3 Exorcists with a lot of stenght 8 AP1 weapons and I could not bring them down.

What you also need to do is factor in that they will have lootaz that will be shooting up any true threats to the Nob Bikers as well.

You need combat rez, and something that can take a lot of power klaw attacks. I would think the best way to do it would be to hit the bikers with doom, and a full squad of fortuned Harlequins, and even then you have to get lucky.

Yeah thats pretty much it you have to get lucky

And like Green Blow Fly said. If you set up an Eldar list to beat Nob bikers which will depend on luck and skill. You dont have a list that is very balanced and will suffer against many other armies.

Deadshane1 wrote:

sabote wrote:
but hey thanks for the information

No problem, thats why I'm here, to help out!

Just to finish up, since we're talking also about combat res....

say 5 ork powerfists since you didnt kill anyone (including the warboss) Thats 16 or 17 powerfist attacks hitting your banshees on 3's assuming you charged. I'm thinking you probably dont want your characters with 4+ invulns facing off against that many powerfists if you want to keep them around, so....


I think thats enough to handle any sort of combat res that we're wondering about, especially after the basic attacks that also hit you on 3's and wound on 3's.

Your bashee gambit is no good here, move along.

If it had not worked for me in multiple games against them I would possibly agree. However it has worked. So it will stay. But again thanks for the insight.

Again... no ones mentioned fireprism (take two, be happy) or pathfinders.

A farseer (yes specifically designed against bikers) with mindwar (and doom) with some banshees can easily pick off the painboy -the models LD is 7. Its his mind (but reguardless, a stright 8-9ld vs ld 10 rolloff isnt that bad). Either way, that lil unit picks off nobz or charges into his other units of they boost away, while keeping it doomed. If they get charged the banshees are 100% effective. They will die even more but 10banshees will die anyway, point is they will cause the same amount of wounds on charge or counercharge.

I run a farseer with harlies so its nearly the same (more expensive but I6 so they still go first albeit with less attacks than a charge) - point being you can happily build a balanced army.

Pathfinders. Pinning, can quite happily cause ap1-2 wounds. Ive been dealing with 4+ cover saves since the start of 5ed.

A wraithlord. With wraithsword. How many will he insta kill? (I assume the nobz are I4 on charge?) Hes worth 110pts with a shruicannon which is just a nice lil weapon, if he kills two then thats his points there and done. Power claws wound on 3's against T8 or is it 2's? Yes he will probably die but he will be dangerous.


Prisms.. str 9 ap 2. Thats gotta kill atleast one on a sucessful hit (i.e doesnt scatter lots badly) - thats near enough a prisms cost (Now i also assume these nobs are worth 80pts/model?). When it gets down to a few boss and nobz that will fit under one blast plate then you link ur two prisms and vap the boss too! Or just have ur wraithlord direct his CC attacks against the IC warboos and Easily deal ur points in damage - could get lucky with that invunerable though...

Can a nob biker squad still score without a warboos (but after being fielded with one?)

Razerous wrote:Again... no ones mentioned fireprism (take two, be happy) or pathfinders.

A farseer (yes specifically designed against bikers) with mindwar (and doom) with some banshees can easily pick off the painboy -the models LD is 7. Its his mind (but reguardless, a stright 8-9ld vs ld 10 rolloff isnt that bad). Either way, that lil unit picks off nobz or charges into his other units of they boost away, while keeping it doomed. If they get charged the banshees are 100% effective. They will die even more but 10banshees will die anyway, point is they will cause the same amount of wounds on charge or counercharge.

I run a farseer with harlies so its nearly the same (more expensive but I6 so they still go first albeit with less attacks than a charge) - point being you can happily build a balanced army.

Pathfinders. Pinning, can quite happily cause ap1-2 wounds. Ive been dealing with 4+ cover saves since the start of 5ed.

A wraithlord. With wraithsword. How many will he insta kill? (I assume the nobz are I4 on charge?) Hes worth 110pts with a shruicannon which is just a nice lil weapon, if he kills two then thats his points there and done. Power claws wound on 3's against T8 or is it 2's? Yes he will probably die but he will be dangerous.


Prisms.. str 9 ap 2. Thats gotta kill atleast one on a sucessful hit (i.e doesnt scatter lots badly) - thats near enough a prisms cost (Now i also assume these nobs are worth 80pts/model?). When it gets down to a few boss and nobz that will fit under one blast plate then you link ur two prisms and vap the boss too! Or just have ur wraithlord direct his CC attacks against the IC warboos and Easily deal ur points in damage - could get lucky with that invunerable though...

Can a nob biker squad still score without a warboos (but after being fielded with one?)

I use 2 prisms and also a bike council

I think that, without going into alot of detail, you'll need a sacrafical unit. Avatar, Wraithlord,Wraithguard,Warlocks on jetbikes, Phoenix Lords,Fire Prisms etc. are all units that can put a dent in the Nob Bikers. Throw the sacafical unit at them to tie them up and then a combo of the above list. In the mean time you can be sneaking around with lesser units, as the attention is on the beefier ones, to takeout those lootas or whatever. The Eldar are still faster and pinning can be key.

Fire prisms may work, but you're still depending on the bikers failing a 4+ cover or even a 3+ turbo-boost cover save. And essentially, you get one or two chances to shoot, because assuming that the nob biker player isn't a moron, he's going to identify whatever small chances you've got of killing his bikers and prioritize accordingly.

Mindwarring the painboy may work...but you'll also essentially throw away your farseer in the next turn. You've made the problem slightly better, because you've removed the FNP save, but you still need to cause 10 wounds on T5 after a 4+ or 3+ cover save before another model is removed as a casualty.

There's only a couple of combos I'd consider to be halfway reliable. One would be a full 10-man warlock squad, preferably mounted on a jetbike, but as long as they can get the charge, it'll work. You end up with a unit that essentially ties up and grinds away at the nob bikers (as long as the warlocks are fortuned, natch). Being able to win largely depends on how many models you can catch under destructor templates. THe warlocks also need to be enhanced.

If you want to decisively win against the nob bikers, you've pretty much got two options: attach Karandas to that warlock unit. Fortuned, the warlocks soak powerklaw attacks, while Karandas strikes with his silly number of S8 powerfist attacks. You should manage to win this one on combat res, after Karandas guts the nob bikerz.

The other option is to set up a 3-wraithlord charge on the nob bikers. 3 wraithlords with wraithswords should be able to do enough damage to the nobz that they'll lose the combat. A sacrificial unit to absorb powerklaw attacks will also help.

What I'm seeing is simply that there are only a specific, limited number of Eldar Builds that have a prayer. Serious competitive lists will have to include at least one of those elements.

With one exception, I think that armies need to plan on dealing with nob bikerz in hand to hand, which creates some specific build requirements. THe exception to that is Tau, and I'm picturing a rediculously specific build that can take on nob bikerz and win.

For every other army, I think the only reliable way to take down nob bikers is in hand to hand.

IG is totally screwed against the nob bikerz. 3 demolishers and 3 hellhounds may, possibly, be able to deal with one squad. Against two, I simply don't see any viable method for guard to deal with them.

Razerous, I mentioned fire prisms on the first page.

Cent, the fire dragons would be shooting immediately before a mind war and jetlock charge, so hopefully most of the ork army will be tied up in CC and the dragons will be able to slip away.

Also, I don't think soaking powerfist attacks is really all that acheivable with large models like wraithlords involved in the combat. Remember a Nob squad will have a crap ton of powerfists, and with pile in and the Wraithlord's huge base, that will be alot of powerfists able to strike.

As with warlocks and karandras, that works out a little better because of karandras' base size. Ideally you'd want to have him charge a model (as Moz suggested) far way from the powerfists, and have the warlocks tie up as many other models as they can to prevent Nob pile in.

whitedragon wrote:Razerous, I mentioned fire prisms on the first page.

My bad

This talk of sacraficial units.. if it kills enough points to make up its cost then it is a 100% effective counter to the nobz. Speed bumping guardians, granted, wont kill thier points worth.

Two teams of council with enhance & possible destructer (w/o bikes) with two farseers with mindwar/doom/forune (well one can just have doom & fortune) - screening or mixed with 3 wraithlords with shruikens and swords. Maybe take out one lord and stick a prism in the centre where it sudnt be able to be charged. Add in some troops -200pts worth (atleast one cheap squad kept in reserves for as long as poss) and youve got a 1500pt list that should be able to beat a 1500pt nob biker list. Maybe.

Personally I dont like making point-dense units as the ork nob bikers just do it better than any other unit (bar, possibly, tyranid warriors).

In my professional opinion I would suggest placing your head between your legs and kissing your ass goodbye.

Eldar already had it bad in 5th, if there are going to be a lot of Nob Biker armies around they will become a army for diehards.

Centurian99 wrote:
IG is totally screwed against the nob bikerz. 3 demolishers and 3 hellhounds may, possibly, be able to deal with one squad. Against two, I simply don't see any viable method for guard to deal with them.

my apologies to the OP for taking the thread off topic for a second....

Actually, non-dropping IG annihilate nob biker armies. You're either facing the 'one big nob biker unit with a regular ork army behind it', or the two big nob biker units and 2 grot units.

3 leman russ pies and 4 lascannon hits per turn on a nob biker unit hurts. And there isn't a unit worth more than 100 points that they can get to on the table. So you have an insane number of turns to lob pie at them as they consolidate.

I have a huge vostroyan army, and I play constantly against my friend who is hot on nob bikers right now. Warboss can only gobble one of those pie wounds per turn, plus he's trying to intercept the lascannons too. It seems like each time we play, his warboss loses two wounds early, and then he has to start allocating battle cannon and lascannon to nobs.

If he's running the one big nob unit. It gets killed or completely ruined by the end of turn 3. Then he has to brave the hellhounds he didn't pop with his small amount of lootas with his remaining small boy units.

If he is running the 1500 points of nobs, and 250 points of grots list, I'll kill off one nob unit, and then use the rest of my long range shooty units to scare the grots off table once they come in from reserve. He can do whatever he wants with his lone second nob unit. I'll keep shooting at it and eventually he is going to have to find an objective to sit on with it.


But alas, this thread was about eldar... it has been very useful to me, since i didn't have the answer going into it.

After sifting through all of the ill-conceived ideas that weren't really run through the math-hammer, I would have to say... A warlock unit with fortune and mind-war, joined by karandras, sounds like a solid answer. The warlock unit smothering power klaws for a wraithlord seems a lot tricker, but it works on paper. In a pinch, fortuned harlequins could be a combination smotherer and killer, especially if they were escorting karandras, or a wraithlord.

Since a combo harlequin/wraithlord with a nearby eldrad is the most likely candidate for being fielded, I am going to explore this a little more. Also, karandras is quite an impressive fighting character against other armies as well. So fielding him in an all comers eldar list is a possibility. Especially since I'm starting to feel that eldar need to be using serious CC threats in all of their tourney lists to have the tools to beat the big 5th ed. lists.

btw, if anyone is on the fence about harlequins, get off the fence! They are still top notch assault units, they can beat assault terminators and give demons fits.

Shep wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
IG is totally screwed against the nob bikerz. 3 demolishers and 3 hellhounds may, possibly, be able to deal with one squad. Against two, I simply don't see any viable method for guard to deal with them.

In non-Kill Point missions, Actually, non-dropping IG annihilate nob biker armies. You're either facing the 'one big nob biker unit with a regular ork army behind it', or the two big nob biker units and 2 grot units.

While I hate doing it, modifying your quote was the easiest way to amend your statement. (Of course, it goes almost without saying that IG are hosed in KP missions. But if we KEEP saying it, maybe GW will fix it with the new Codex.)

btw, if anyone is on the fence about harlequins, get off the fence! They are still top notch assault units, they can beat assault terminators and give demons fits.

You think so? My Genestealers have been having a rough time under 5th, as they bounce off units they would have murdered in 4th (e.g., Carnifexes, Obliterators, and the humble Plague Marine); my Daemonettes are sulking the edition away. Harlies are a little more mobile, but seem awfully frail w/their T3 & S3.

Janthkin wrote:

Shep wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
IG is totally screwed against the nob bikerz. 3 demolishers and 3 hellhounds may, possibly, be able to deal with one squad. Against two, I simply don't see any viable method for guard to deal with them.

In non-Kill Point missions, Actually, non-dropping IG annihilate nob biker armies. You're either facing the 'one big nob biker unit with a regular ork army behind it', or the two big nob biker units and 2 grot units.

While I hate doing it, modifying your quote was the easiest way to amend your statement. (Of course, it goes almost without saying that IG are hosed in KP missions. But if we KEEP saying it, maybe GW will fix it with the new Codex.)

btw, if anyone is on the fence about harlequins, get off the fence! They are still top notch assault units, they can beat assault terminators and give demons fits.

You think so? My Genestealers have been having a rough time under 5th, as they bounce off units they would have murdered in 4th (e.g., Carnifexes, Obliterators, and the humble Plague Marine); my Daemonettes are sulking the edition away. Harlies are a little more mobile, but seem awfully frail w/their T3 & S3.

Yeah, spot on for the guard... unplayable until they get a new book as far as annihilation is concerned. They are far far far from being any good. But lots of lascannons and lots of battle cannons, which are pretty underwhelming against other modern lists, happen to matchup well against the atypical nob list. To summarize, I hate my guard codex with a passion, and May seems like eons away.

As far as harlies. They certainly aren't the terror they were in 4th. But I've seen them used to counter assault terminators (you can trade point for point if you can't pop their land raider, if your bright lance opens up the raider, charging harlies scoop termies) and bloodcrushers (fortune/doom/charge scoops bloodcrushers)... the math doesn't like their match against nob bikers, you just need to make sure you've invested more into them than you used to. 6 used to be able to get the job done, now it seems like you need to start with 8, and 10 is better. I don't have any compunctions about cutting kisses off of the unit if I need points.

ooh, forgot to add...

nob bikers are one of the rare units in 40k that can't climb to the second level of a ruins.

rangers on floor 2 of a ruins are almost completely invulnerable to a 2x nob biker, 2x grot army.

If you want to be really tricky, you could put a harlie unit directly under the rangers in the ruins, and they couldn't legally be charged... (nobs would have to get within an inch of the rangers, which they can't get into b2b with)

Not gonna make any friends using the second trick... and not every judge is gonna jive with it either...

Shep, I completely agree with you.

IG suck with kill points (ill beat that horse until nothing is left) but they do have answers for Nob bikers. Even dropping IG can get it done with melta and plasma squads, as long as the army isnt all drop troops, which is what I think you were implying.

As long as you retain units to sacrifice to the nobs to protect your tanks, you will shoot the hell out of the nobs withe weapons that ignore feel no pain.

As for Eldar, Harlies still are brutal and used in conjunction with a tougher unit such as a WL or two, would be a serviceable response. It is a tough go for the pointy ears though.

Shep, really? Aside from using buildings I'm just not seeing it. getting enough wounds past a 3+ cover save could be problematic. You get one turn to shoot, then the ork player multicharges as many units as he can.

Not saying it can't be done...but I'm not seeing it reliably taking them down. One squad...maybe. Two squads?

Centurian99 wrote:Shep, really? Aside from using buildings I'm just not seeing it. getting enough wounds past a 3+ cover save could be problematic. You get one turn to shoot, then the ork player multicharges as many units as he can.

Not saying it can't be done...but I'm not seeing it reliably taking them down. One squad...maybe. Two squads?

I think his point is that the IG player can field 8 scoring units for the cost of 1 Nob biker squad (or 4 mechanized scoring units). Mix in Drop Troops/Light Infantry to keep some of them off the board for a while, and the Nobs just can't do *enough* to a Guard army in a non-KP scenario. If you can kill off 1 squad, great; your drop troops/outflankers/long range fire should scare off the grots, and leave the Orks short on scoring units.

I don't think he's wrong, given the "no KP" caveat: if there are 1400-1600 pts in Nobs on Bikes headed your way, you can cheerfully sacrifice a LOT of Guardsmen, and the Russes/Hellhounds never have to stop shooting. Avoiding too many multicharges will complicate things a bit, but terrain is a helper here - enough Dangerous Terrain tests will continue the job started by your Hellhounds.

The problem is that such a Guard army is looking at 20+ KPs, which is frankly untenable in a tournament situation.

I like the 2nd floor reminder. But always put your objectives as deep into terrain as you can against a biker list. (Also, IIRC, "Dangerous Terrain" calls for tests on a per model basis, so the Ork player has no control over which models take wounds.) And keep those objectives as far apart as practical, to maximize the problem for an army with so little in the way of objective-holding ability.

What about a mech Eldar army with 4-5x lance-armed Serpents, 2x Prisms and 1x Bike Council with Fortune Seer and lance-armed Autarch? I'm thinking that playing keepaway with a single Nob Bikes unit shouldn't be too hard while the Prisms etc. soften them up.

2x Nob Bikes would be more difficult. Perhaps unload the rest of the army on Nob Bikers #1 while the Prisms and Council take on Bikes #2?

I was going to question whether Yriel might be better than Karandras because Yriel has an invuln (re-rolled with Fortune of course) and the Eye for high first-round wound output. However, I then realized that a single klaw hit will splat Yriel, and the Eye will of course kill at least one Seer and not hit enough (large-base) nobz to matter.

Savnock wrote:What about a mech Eldar army with 4-5x lance-armed Serpents, 2x Prisms and 1x Bike Council with Fortune Seer and lance-armed Autarch? I'm thinking that playing keepaway with a single Nob Bikes unit shouldn't be too hard while the Prisms etc. soften them up.

2x Nob Bikes would be more difficult. Perhaps unload the rest of the army on Nob Bikers #1 while the Prisms and Council take on Bikes #2?

I was going to question whether Yriel might be better than Karandras because Yriel has an invuln (re-rolled with Fortune of course) and the Eye for high first-round wound output. However, I then realized that a single klaw hit will splat Yriel, and the Eye will of course kill at least one Seer and not hit enough (large-base) nobz to matter.

Thats just it IMO. Yeah I like Karandas however over the long haul of a tourney the autarch gives you more options for deployments to face other armies. At least you might be able to join the yriel with the warlock unit and have fortune cast on him.

Just attack them with a smaller squad that can do as much damage as it will take and some big crap to actually kill guys. 8 Harlies and 2 wraithlords should work out fine. The Harlies do around 4-6 wounds, die and then the wraithlords do another 3 wounds which are doubled 'cause of the smush and the eldar should win with the wraithlords taking zero wounds. Doom is a must though.

how about a fortuned Asurman? I would normally never even consider taking him, but in this case, he has a rerollable 4++, eternal warrior and any wound he causes has about a 50% chance of killing the nob outright. He would be more for absorbing wounds than causing damage, but hey, its a thought.

Well, actually, a seer council would do the same thing more effectively when I think about it.

Although, with defend, he also limits the amount of attacks coming in which is a big help.

Shep wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:
IG is totally screwed against the nob bikerz. 3 demolishers and 3 hellhounds may, possibly, be able to deal with one squad. Against two, I simply don't see any viable method for guard to deal with them.

my apologies to the OP for taking the thread off topic for a second....

Actually, non-dropping IG annihilate nob biker armies. You're either facing the 'one big nob biker unit with a regular ork army behind it', or the two big nob biker units and 2 grot units.

3 leman russ pies and 4 lascannon hits per turn on a nob biker unit hurts. And there isn't a unit worth more than 100 points that they can get to on the table. So you have an insane number of turns to lob pie at them as they consolidate.

I have a huge vostroyan army, and I play constantly against my friend who is hot on nob bikers right now. Warboss can only gobble one of those pie wounds per turn, plus he's trying to intercept the lascannons too. It seems like each time we play, his warboss loses two wounds early, and then he has to start allocating battle cannon and lascannon to nobs.

If he's running the one big nob unit. It gets killed or completely ruined by the end of turn 3. Then he has to brave the hellhounds he didn't pop with his small amount of lootas with his remaining small boy units.

If he is running the 1500 points of nobs, and 250 points of grots list, I'll kill off one nob unit, and then use the rest of my long range shooty units to scare the grots off table once they come in from reserve. He can do whatever he wants with his lone second nob unit. I'll keep shooting at it and eventually he is going to have to find an objective to sit on with it.


But alas, this thread was about eldar... it has been very useful to me, since i didn't have the answer going into it.

After sifting through all of the ill-conceived ideas that weren't really run through the math-hammer, I would have to say... A warlock unit with fortune and mind-war, joined by karandras, sounds like a solid answer. The warlock unit smothering power klaws for a wraithlord seems a lot tricker, but it works on paper. In a pinch, fortuned harlequins could be a combination smotherer and killer, especially if they were escorting karandras, or a wraithlord.

Since a combo harlequin/wraithlord with a nearby eldrad is the most likely candidate for being fielded, I am going to explore this a little more. Also, karandras is quite an impressive fighting character against other armies as well. So fielding him in an all comers eldar list is a possibility. Especially since I'm starting to feel that eldar need to be using serious CC threats in all of their tourney lists to have the tools to beat the big 5th ed. lists.

btw, if anyone is on the fence about harlequins, get off the fence! They are still top notch assault units, they can beat assault terminators and give demons fits.

Phe hell hounds are where its at, str 5, ap 4, no cover save. lets fry us some ork bikers.

I've been thinking more about this since I posted.

Since we're really talking about the tourney scene here, we need a solution that will also do well against other tourney builds. An army tuned _just_ to defeat nob bikes may fail against other opponents. We need a solution that is not only adaptable to other fights, but strong there.

My first instinct was to make do with what I usually field. That's not gonna work, it seems: all the BLs and the Prisms won't soften the Bikes up enough if there's two units of the buggers.

Now that I think about it, I think my standard mech build (BL Serpents, 2 Prisms and a bike council) will adapt well to fight bikers if I drop the Prisms in favor of 2 more Serpents packing 6x Dragons with flamer-bearing exarch. This will also be decent anti-armor and hit heavy infantry hard, albeit at much closer range. With a unit of Banshees and a bike Council, the army will basically play like a Swordwind with tons of meltas. Against nob bikerz, playing keepaway while putting out that many heavy shots over 2 rounds should either eliminate one large biker unit or soften two smaller ones to be handleable by the Council and Banshees, even with turbo saves, if I reckon correctly.

The two bikerz scenarios someone else helpfully pointed out earlier are (a) 1-bike-unit plus lotsa other Orks armies and (b) 2-bike-unit and little else armies. I'm actually more worried about the first variety, as Lootas are the bane of my Serpents when I'm unable to concentrate fire and eliminate them right away. That's where I'll really miss those Prisms. Hmm.

So what do y'all think- will that build have a chance against the bikerz tide? Opinions from players of the wheelie death army especially appreciated.

Golga wrote:Phe hell hounds are where its at, str 5, ap 4, no cover save. lets fry us some ork bikers.

The Hell hounds are useless. The orks will still get their 5+ Inv Cybork Body save and then get their 4+ FNP save.

Any body consider a full squad of War Walkers kitted with Miss Launchers? Along with 2 Prisms and Jetseer council, then finish build from there.

Just an idea for a flexible build.





edited for spelling

I run a similar list:

4 serpents with lances
2 prisms
6 dragons w/exarch
20 guardians w/2 scatter lasers
10 DAs exarch with bs/defend and shimmer/PS
Seer Council on bikes
Autarch on bike with fusion and lance and mandiblaster

I'm pretty sure 4 lances will knock out at least one nob. Seer uses doom and fortune, cut loose with 4 destructors 1 fusion gun and 6 tl shuriken cats then charge in with ws 5 and ini 5 from enhance it is very likely that the orcs will get routed. Granted I still have to make it past two saves but the 6 autarch attacks bypass FNP and at WS 7 from enhance he's going to hurt something.

This is taking into account that I've used my Dragons, bladestorming avengers, guardians with lasers and locks, and prisms at other targets. Possibly another bike squad. Granted they wont do nearly as well unless I get off some lucky prism shots.

The problem isnt dealing with the nobz, it's dealing with the nobz + the rest of the army. The other issue is wound allocation abuse.

I have no issues with orc elites with 2 wounds, or 2 saves, or a constant cover, or WS 5, or T5, or STR 8/9/10, or being a scoring unit.

.....but put it all together and multiply it by 10 and then its a little much. But that's semantics, i'll still always rumble a good orc player bike nobz or not.

LucasLAD wrote:
I'm pretty sure 4 lances will knock out at least one nob. Seer uses doom and fortune, cut loose with 4 destructors 1 fusion gun and 6 tl shuriken cats then charge in with ws 5 and ini 5 from enhance it is very likely that the orcs will get routed. Granted I still have to make it past two saves but the 6 autarch attacks bypass FNP and at WS 7 from enhance he's going to hurt something.

Some buddies and me ran the numbers of that situation, and although we didn't include the jet-tarch, I don't think he changes the numbers significantly, In essence, the magic number of models hit by the destructor was 7 or 8, I believe. If the destructors could average 7-8 hits, then enough wounds would get through the 5++ and 4+FNP saves to allow the charging jet council to do enough damage in HTH that the orks lost the combat. If only 4 models were hit on average, the jetseer council got owned.

If the jetbike council got charged, they got owned.

Additionally...we ran the numbers with 8 warlocks+farseer. No sure what your jetbike council is comprised of, but 8 warlocks + farseer is almost 600 points right there...

You're right on the lances thing, though. 4 bright lances from wave serpents equals 3 hits, 2.5 wounds, and either 1.25 saves or ~1.66 saves. So one wound is right. Kinda unimpressive, eh?

Well, that one wound has to go on the Warboss, or they lose a guy (since it's S8). Do it enough times, they start losing the ability for the warboss to soak those wounds. Note that also applies to EML as well, so if you're not tooling for LR spam you can save some points here and there.

Savnock wrote:I've been thinking more about this since I posted.

Since we're really talking about the tourney scene here, we need a solution that will also do well against other tourney builds. An army tuned _just_ to defeat nob bikes may fail against other opponents. We need a solution that is not only adaptable to other fights, but strong there.

My first instinct was to make do with what I usually field. That's not gonna work, it seems: all the BLs and the Prisms won't soften the Bikes up enough if there's two units of the buggers.

Now that I think about it, I think my standard mech build (BL Serpents, 2 Prisms and a bike council) will adapt well to fight bikers if I drop the Prisms in favor of 2 more Serpents packing 6x Dragons with flamer-bearing exarch. This will also be decent anti-armor and hit heavy infantry hard, albeit at much closer range. With a unit of Banshees and a bike Council, the army will basically play like a Swordwind with tons of meltas. Against nob bikerz, playing keepaway while putting out that many heavy shots over 2 rounds should either eliminate one large biker unit or soften two smaller ones to be handleable by the Council and Banshees, even with turbo saves, if I reckon correctly.

The two bikerz scenarios someone else helpfully pointed out earlier are (a) 1-bike-unit plus lotsa other Orks armies and (b) 2-bike-unit and little else armies. I'm actually more worried about the first variety, as Lootas are the bane of my Serpents when I'm unable to concentrate fire and eliminate them right away. That's where I'll really miss those Prisms. Hmm.

So what do y'all think- will that build have a chance against the bikerz tide? Opinions from players of the wheelie death army especially appreciated.

Sav- that was the conclusion I reached a while back and dropped the Fire Prisms. I have run a similar build to what you mentioned using Yriel as my Autarch and it has worked out well against my opponents. I have pretty much played all armies with this build except the DA witch army and faired well. At the end of the day you still need luck to roll your way and contrary to some of the nay sayers (though I can understand their reasoning) the banshees with council and autarch have worked well agianst the bikes (Doom and fortune from farseer) But you need some events to go your way. End of the day it also very much depends on your opponents. A vetern Ork player will challenge you to get the right situations set up. So maybe you might have to settle for a draw. I worked this army out on numerous nurgle armies and than worked my way up to orks. Currently I am trying to figure out how to include a walker unit with scatter/starcannons.

Shep wrote:

Yeah, spot on for the guard... unplayable until they get a new book as far as annihilation is concerned. They are far far far from being any good. But lots of lascannons and lots of battle cannons, which are pretty underwhelming against other modern lists, happen to matchup well against the atypical nob list. To summarize, I hate my guard codex with a passion, and May seems like eons away.

I honestly don't think enough people give Guard credit; even other Guard players. Admittedly they are *hard* to wield in lower than 1500 point missions, but at 2,000 I think Guard are really quite good. Although the KP issue hoses Guard hard, it's not impossible to table your opponent. Especially if you're playing against Marines, and especially if those marines are addicted to ultra expensive HQs and Terminators. If the new codex brings the Leman Russ Exterminator back, I think Guard will go from somewhere in the middle (that's right, the middle) to up near or on the top.

They were talking about the nobs on the Tau sniper drone thread. After thinking about it I came up with a tactic that I now want to playtest.

Please bear with me here. This comes from a Tau point of view and because we have no true snipers.

Nob bikers are sort of like facing the 'Crons Deciever in that they're both tremendous bullet soaks. Because they are big and bad with the nobs being fast also, we think that we have to direct all of our heavy firepower at them. A couple of years back I asked a friend how he dealt with the C'tan, his very enlightening reply was "why fight a god if you don't have to?........(Translate) Why give your opponent what he expects? He' begging you to ingnore the other part of the army and waste your limited fire power on the nobs.

This is how I see these Biker nob lists. They are like slight of hand. Here, look at the big interesting thing as I try to slip this little thing past you. Question. How long before bikers get to you if your highly mobile? 2 Turns? The weakness with this build is that they can't fill the board, thus leaving manuevering room.

Now, What happens if you use those first 2 rounds to kill transports and the rest of the army? How many squads does he have left? How many squads can the bikers kill in 3 to 4 turns? Remember in two-thirds of the missions they have to objective sit so it's more like 2 turns. If they do charge you, just lead them away from the objective.
Then if you focus all the big fire power and tough units on one squad for those 2 turns. Chances are he has only one unit left. You have enough left to control one of the objectives and still challenge the other or others.


What would you take as an all round balanced army that has the speed and fire power(Blast temps?) to attempt this strategy?........Let me know what you think

Tzeentchling brings up a good point. (Instant death), is something that the Eldar are very good at with range. Mindwar the painboy and shoot away. TL bL on a serpent or two could help out alot to compliment your heavy support options. Nob bikers are a neat squad and demand anyones attention, however, I think they're more new than scary. EML can be instant death or pinning, which pinning from an EML or not is essential.

focusedfire wrote:
Nob bikers are sort of like facing the 'Crons Deciever in that they're both tremendous bullet soaks. Because they are big and bad with the nobs being fast also, we think that we have to direct all of our heavy firepower at them. A couple of years back I asked a friend how he dealt with the C'tan, his very enlightening reply was "why fight a god if you don't have to?........(Translate) Why give your opponent what he expects? He' begging you to ingnore the other part of the army and waste your limited fire power on the nobs.

That's a poor analogy. First, because with two units of those nob bikerz that count as troops (because you've got two warbosses), you simply CAN'T ignore the bikers. Second, you can't delay, because those bikers are guaranteed to be on top of you on turn 2. 24" turbo-boost on turn 1 (giving them a 3+ cover save), followed by a 12" move and 6" assault. To not get charged on turn 2, you have to deploy 36" away from them...which is tough (but not impossible to do. Especially since the vast majority of weapons need to be within 36" to fire, with a few exceptions.

focusedfire wrote:
This is how I see these Biker nob lists. They are like slight of hand. Here, look at the big interesting thing as I try to slip this little thing past you. Question. How long before bikers get to you if your highly mobile? 2 Turns? The weakness with this build is that they can't fill the board, thus leaving manuevering room.

At most, you get 3 turns on a 4x6 table. 24" turbo boost to get to the middle of the table, another 24" to towards wherever you're hiding, and then 12" move 6" assault. And that kind of assumes your ork opponent is a moron. See the example at the end.

focusedfire wrote:
Now, What happens if you use those first 2 rounds to kill transports and the rest of the army? How many squads does he have left? How many squads can the bikers kill in 3 to 4 turns? Remember in two-thirds of the missions they have to objective sit so it's more like 2 turns. If they do charge you, just lead them away from the objective.

Then if you focus all the big fire power and tough units on one squad for those 2 turns. Chances are he has only one unit left. You have enough left to control one of the objectives and still challenge the other or others.

The "rest of the army" you describe is probably a single squad of boyz or grots. Which sit in cover, in a 4+ save, and since you're trying to stay away from the bikes, is most likely out of range. If you shoot at them, they go to ground and get a 3+ cover save.

The simple fact is you're relying on ridiculous amounts of luck to take them down with shooting, unless you have some means of ignoring cover saves. Getting enough wounds past a 4+ or 3+ cover save, when the targets are T5, and especially when they have FNP, is simply the next thing to impossible.

The one saving grace is that the nob bikers have a sweet spot - that's between 1750 and 2000 points. at 1500, those nob bikers are only 7 or 8 bikers strong (including the warboss) which means its easier to use massed shooting to kill models. Over 2000 points, many armies have enough firepower, or can swarm them with enough HTH units, that they can get the S8 attacks they need to take them down.

But at 1750, countering the bikers is a cast-iron dog.

Anyway, spread out 20 bikers in a line, and put about 6" separating the squads, with maximum separation between models. At minimum (with 1" wide bases) the nob bikers now have maximum dispersion against blast weapons (small blasts likely only hit a single model, large blasts hit at most 3), and the two squads cover 62" of table. No matter where you try to hide, you're getting charged on turn 2. If you move a farseer up to mindwar the painboy, you lose the farseer next turn, unless he's with a silly number of warlocks.

I understand the difference between deciever and nobs. Was just making point that they have a God-like ability to soak damage.

36" deployment was why I suggested a guardian, warwalker ML theme. Also Warwalkers hav scout/flank ability.

Wasn't suggesting ignore. Just clear out the extra stuff to give you maneuvering room.

As to blast temps once cc begins they're packed together afterwards.

As also a tau player I'm used to having to rely on rediculous amounts of luck to take things down with shooting.

Unless in area terrain cover save is limited to a certain arc of effectiveness.

Tau are used to speed bumping fast armies. Remember that 2 squads cant go every direction at once. Some star engines to boost right past the nobs Yes I said past.
Use mobility to break up his line. Stay on the edges to draw him away from the objectives. Spread out to where he can charge only one unit at a time. Cheap sacrificial squads to speed bump and consolidate them for your next round of firing.

Ridiculous amounts of luck or applied tactics. Stategy doesn't stop when you put the pen down.


Edited for spelling

If the nobs were spread across the board they would be easy to kill. Centurian99, what do you think about the jetseer mindwaring the painboy then dooming the unit? Then another Farseer in the back guiding the shooties. It wouldn't bother me if I lost the jetseer either. I'm not sure about the math-hammer but it seems this would greatly increase the odds in your favor(Eldar).

I say there is nothing you can do the orks rock.

(Off-topic) It's sad how many parents just let their kids loose to wander the web. Unsupervised they get into trouble start hanging out with unsavory Ork types. It's just a cryin' shame, I tell ya.

FAQ says coversave applies to mindwar. Also, these wounds can be FnP'd. kinda nerfs that idea.

too bad you can take 3-4 vortex grenades lol

0ldsk00l wrote:FAQ says coversave applies to mindwar. Also, these wounds can be FnP'd. kinda nerfs that idea.

These wounds that are caused by str 7 or lowerr can, Yes. Cover? Yus. it can. Everything bar cc gets a cover save nowadays unless your:

On your own, in the open, not gone to ground, without any special wargear. So I can deal with the cover save. The jetseer squad can always detatch and leave the mindwar seer to jet around & live another turn.

All this turboboosting, I bought this up in the tau stealthfield thread - You cant turboboost (as a nobz bike) through a unit and if you dont travel more than 18'', you just get a 4+

If you travel through difficult terrain while turboboosting (or just normally on bikes?) you aquire wounds for the entire squad, indvidually per model. No allocation. --This is what Im assuming people are prepared to recieve as theyve been able to boost to every corner of the map.

But, how I see it, just as you block lanes of fire with units.. you can block lanes of travel with units & as ive mentioned, some arent quite so sacraficial as they can easily do thier points in damage. Also if you do pump enough wounds into a nobz squad after the nth one, you start loosing nobz so thier not immune to mass str 7 > firepower.

To the point of the OP: In our group the Eldar player (only on of us still does) uses Pathfinders and Fireprisms as his answer to most problems. The pathfinders are actully there for to Infiltrate, Scout Move and Tarpit. Once the bikers are consolidated a bit, the Prisms start instakilling. If the Orks go around, they are still funneling themselves a tad.

I know those two units are out of favor as the FotM, but they never stopped being effective.

focusedfire wrote:
Unless in area terrain cover save is limited to a certain arc of effectiveness.

Ork Warbikes always get a 4+ cover save.

focusedfire wrote:
Ridiculous amounts of luck or applied tactics. Stategy doesn't stop when you put the pen down.

Good in theory. Extremely difficult/impossible in execution.

Blackarandras wrote:If the nobs were spread across the board they would be easy to kill. Centurian99, what do you think about the jetseer mindwaring the painboy then dooming the unit? Then another Farseer in the back guiding the shooties. It wouldn't bother me if I lost the jetseer either. I'm not sure about the math-hammer but it seems this would greatly increase the odds in your favor(Eldar).

Not really. They're no more easy to kill if spread out than they are in the open. Let's look at various methods, and assume that the painboy is mindwarred (even though a 4+ cover save and a 4+ FNP save means that mindwar is unreliable, because you need eight wounds inflicted. And we'll assume that the squad is doomed.

Guided warwalker squad /w scatter lasers.
24 shots, 18 hits, 16 wounds. Warboss takes 2, 6 nobs take 2, 2 nobs take 1. 4+ cover, 8 unsaved wounds...quite likely not on the same models, so your warwalker squad hasn't killed a single model. Since you caused no casualties, no morale needed. And that's from one of the shootiest units in the Eldar armory.

Warwalkers and guide farseer get charged and wiped out.

Oh yeah, what are you doing about the 2nd nob biker squad that's running around?

Razerous wrote:
But, how I see it, just as you block lanes of fire with units.. you can block lanes of travel with units & as ive mentioned, some arent quite so sacraficial as they can easily do thier points in damage. Also if you do pump enough wounds into a nobz squad after the nth one, you start loosing nobz so thier not immune to mass str 7 > firepower.

Easy to do in theory. Difficult to impossible in execution.

Recklessfable wrote:To the point of the OP: In our group the Eldar player (only on of us still does) uses Pathfinders and Fireprisms as his answer to most problems. The pathfinders are actully there for to Infiltrate, Scout Move and Tarpit. Once the bikers are consolidated a bit, the Prisms start instakilling. If the Orks go around, they are still funneling themselves a tad.

I know those two units are out of favor as the FotM, but they never stopped being effective.

Why would the orks even bother with the pathfinders. Turbo-boost at the fire-prisms, and you've got a 4+ save. stay spread out until you charge. Once you take down the fire prisms, then go after the pathfinders...

Why is everyone seeming to assume that the ork player will go after bait units that really can't hurt him, and instead go after units that actually have a (small) chance?

Centurian99 wrote:

focusedfire wrote:
Unless in area terrain cover save is limited to a certain arc of effectiveness.

Ork Warbikes always get a 4+ cover save.

Yes the Warbikes do. But, I was refferencing the grots hidden and hard to get to comment. The tactic is wipe out his back field and he no longer has enough units to control the board.

If he charges both bikers squads the same direction, he then limits the number of squads he can engage in HTH and with your manueverability it turns into a long table edge battle(An ork players worst nightmare)

If he splits his forces. You drive in between them and focus fire and assault the enveloped Squad.

You have a good chance of getting him down to One squad and when you do the game is yours.

Just an idea.

Centurian99 wrote:

Blackarandras wrote:If the nobs were spread across the board they would be easy to kill. Centurian99, what do you think about the jetseer mindwaring the painboy then dooming the unit? Then another Farseer in the back guiding the shooties. It wouldn't bother me if I lost the jetseer either. I'm not sure about the math-hammer but it seems this would greatly increase the odds in your favor(Eldar).

Not really. They're no more easy to kill if spread out than they are in the open. Let's look at various methods, and assume that the painboy is mindwarred (even though a 4+ cover save and a 4+ FNP save means that mindwar is unreliable, because you need eight wounds inflicted. And we'll assume that the squad is doomed.

Guided warwalker squad /w scatter lasers.
24 shots, 18 hits, 16 wounds. Warboss takes 2, 6 nobs take 2, 2 nobs take 1. 4+ cover, 8 unsaved wounds...quite likely not on the same models, so your warwalker squad hasn't killed a single model. Since you caused no casualties, no morale needed. And that's from one of the shootiest units in the Eldar armory.

Warwalkers and guide farseer get charged and wiped out.

Oh yeah, what are you doing about the 2nd nob biker squad that's running around?

What part of focused fire and remove whole units when possible is so hard to understand. If your looking for one squad to do all the damage your crazy. Now take the squad with 8 wounds and add the next firing units wounds and the squad effectivly stops being the uber-scary threat. Easily handled with warlock assault mop up.

If you've cleared the backfield, he's down to one unit by end of turn 3

I've given this question some serious thought, and I think the following is about as good as the Eldar are going to get.

Get a Mech Eldar army, transports full of Eldar, shooters or fighters.

The Orks can't hurt it at range, so when they drive up you drive right up into their face, do some insignificant shooting.

They can charge you, but you've moved > 6" so most of your vehicles (esp the holo field ones) should survive. Even the ones that die shouldn't hurt their cargo too badly.

On your turn you launch a full on shoot/assault (it gets doomed, your whole army dogpiles/shoots it, Banshees and Harlies charge preferentially, DA shoot, etc, you also get the guns from any of the ships that weren't trashed in their shooting phase) Your target is one of the two Nob units.

With your surviving tanks you tank shock/block the remaining Nob Bikers. The Ork player gets no choice as to where he moves the bikers (shortest distance is perfectly predictable/controllable by the guy moving the tank), so you ought to be able to shove them back a good ways.

If your blitz fails to destroy the one Nob unit you lose the game, but my math has the Eldar army winning. If you win, whichever unit took the most damage/rolled the highest on the massacre roll needs to jump surround and protect the other units from B2B contact, not hard as the Ork bases are large.

Now it's their turn, they've got a blockade of tanks (most of whom they can hit on 4+, some few might have been optimally positioned, and hence still have the speed protection), between their remaining Nob unit and the squishies. Bikes can go a long way though, I think they probably ultimately are able to move around the blockade and charge in, but if you've moved correctly they should only get the guard unit, which they'll obliterate.

For the final battle your blitz force, minus 1 unit and anything the other bikers got, repeats the process on the last Nob Biker squad. My math says that, once again, you'll get this, esp. if the unit you lost was a DA squad that had already bladestormed or some such.

That's my take on it anyway.

I personally hate elves, spaceborne or otherwise, so I don't know much about how to build armies within their dex. Is the above possible in a take-all-comers list?

Anything, one on one, against the Nob bikers, will lose. This is in the shooting phase or the combat phase. This is a given.

However, one need not and should not face them one-on-one. Feel free to throw your entire army at one unit of the bikers. You probably won't wipe them in one turn, but you'll put a hurt on them. They'll likely be forced to put wounds on some of the nobs and/or the warboss. Next turn do the same, and you should be able to break them. If they charge something, it'll probably die. Best that it does, as then you can shoot them again. But a one-on-one unit trade will always come out against the Ork player.

What about the second unit? Well, with vehicles, you can create a wall that they can't get through. If they're turboboosting to get a save or get around the wall, then you can do it again next turn, plus they're not charging. If they do charge, well, they're hitting on 6s, so there's a good chance most of the vehicles will still be around next turn. Even without vehicles, you still need to concentrate fire on a single unit, wear it down, and sacrifice units to the bikers if need be.

Kind of what 40Kenthusiast said above, really. But saying "x does y damage to the bikers, then gets charged and wiped" is really missing the point. No one thing in the Eldar army can do enough damage in one round to take out a full, strong biker nob unit. But an army, over a couple rounds, can, and that's how the Eldar (with their specialist units all trying to work together) are supposed to work. Easy? No way. But possible.

The heavy lifting is done by assault units + Eldrad in transports, which is a pretty middle of the road Eldar list. I didn't feel like I was asking for anything exotic.

0ldsk00l wrote:FAQ says coversave applies to mindwar. Also, these wounds can be FnP'd. kinda nerfs that idea.

Cover save does apply to mind war... but as it does not allow for an armor save, you can't FNP it. The precedent for that was set with dangerous terrain tests. Any wound caused to a model that does not allow an armor save does not allow FNP.


This thread has actually been a pretty productive one. Ignoring the few digressions (one of which I caused), we have seen everyone sort of work up a lather of ideas.

None of my take on all comers lists can beat orks. The closest thing I have to a take on all comers that can beat nob bikers is a wraithlord/harlequin/eldrad/dire avengers in BL serpents list.

In this list, as was mentioned, you just lob bright lances and EMLs into the nobs, try and maneuver for a mind war, force them into your harlequins, then pray, if you lose the harlies, just put 60 avenger shots into the unit. It probably won't do anything, but its your last chance. I've seen that game go eldar's way. You just need the dice.

I won't post the math, because it doesn't favor the eldar. But at least the list can stand up to space marines, chaos space marines and demons, while having that gambler's chance against orks.

There has been some great ideas in here for a more focused list against orks. Particularly the addition of karandras, I'll definitely be adding him just for some laughs against my regular ork buddy.

Centurian99 wrote:

Recklessfable wrote:To the point of the OP: In our group the Eldar player (only on of us still does) uses Pathfinders and Fireprisms as his answer to most problems. The pathfinders are actully there for to Infiltrate, Scout Move and Tarpit. Once the bikers are consolidated a bit, the Prisms start instakilling. If the Orks go around, they are still funneling themselves a tad.

I know those two units are out of favor as the FotM, but they never stopped being effective.

Why would the orks even bother with the pathfinders. Turbo-boost at the fire-prisms, and you've got a 4+ save. stay spread out until you charge. Once you take down the fire prisms, then go after the pathfinders...

Why is everyone seeming to assume that the ork player will go after bait units that really can't hurt him, and instead go after units that actually have a (small) chance?

If done right, the Ork has one choice. Get stuck in or lose the cover save for Turbo Boosting. You have to end up 18" away from your starting point to get the save. Pathfinders can spread out too... Also, I've seen a first-turn charge with pathfinders (running single-file to avoid having everyone stuck in). The tough part there is losing just enough models to no break.

Seriously, a much more effective take all comers list for eldar includes 1 or 2 gaint bike seer councils. They are crazy resilient and can pump out wounds in CC to everything besides terminators and biker nobs really.

Sprinkle in Prisms and bikes or Serpent mounted infantry for troops and you have a very mobile army that can hang in reserves if need be or speed around the board. The Seer bikes too the bulk of the killin' and the troops hang out to either deny KP's or grab an objective last turn.

focusedfire wrote:
What part of focused fire and remove whole units when possible is so hard to understand. If your looking for one squad to do all the damage your crazy. Now take the squad with 8 wounds and add the next firing units wounds and the squad effectivly stops being the uber-scary threat. Easily handled with warlock assault mop up.

If you've cleared the backfield, he's down to one unit by end of turn 3

You're vastly overestimating the firepower you can put out, and vastly underestimating the ability of the ork player to maneuver, the orks resilience, and your ability to avoid HTH combat. You talk about wiping out the "ork backfield" but doing that is pretty much counter-productive for your goal of taking on the nob bikerz.

The nob biker build we're talking about here is very specific. At 1750, we're talking about 2 10-man squads of bikerz, with painboy and warboss, 5 power klaws, cybork bodies for the 5++, and every model different. That leaves just enough points for a near-full sized squad of grotz or boyz.

Taking out that backfield squad is not easy. They're stuck in cover, and go to ground if they get shot. Good luck getting through ~30 3+ cover saves.

The nob bikers kill anything they touch. There's a few exceptions, but Eldar don't have any of them. The best they've got are fortuned warlocks (particularly biker locks) but that unit doesn't kill the nobs...it just doesn't die.

The vast majority of the shooting eldar have that can threaten nob bikers are in the heavy support slots. And it does a poor job.

Nearly everything else does jack squat. 6 squads of dire avengers bladestorming is likely to leave orks alive. Even assuming that the squad is doomed, 180 shots, 120 hits, 64 wounds, ~42 3+ cover saves, 11 FNP saves. You probably killed a model or two, but possibly killed nothing.

And that assumes you can get 60 models within 18". Which also means that all those squads get multicharged and wiped off the table.

Lets assume you go with three squads of warwalkers and the two farseers. Assuming that you've mindwarred the painboy (which is by no means guaranteed, thanks to the 3+ cover save...you can guide 1 set of shots. Assuming they've all got scatter lasers, that 72 scatter laser shots. 42 will hit (thanks to guiding one squad). Wounding on a 3+, so if the squad is doomed, 38 wounds. 3+ turbo-boost cover save, so 12-13 wounds. Killed a few models, probably. Now your warlocks can charge in and wipe them out...oh wait, there's a second squad, which now kills everything else...starting with the farseers, who are almost certainly within range.

Massed fire is a sucker's bet. S8+ shooting is a hail mary. Unless you've got simply ridiculous amounts of it, or a way to reduce their covers saves.

whitedragon wrote:Seriously, a much more effective take all comers list for eldar includes 1 or 2 gaint bike seer councils. They are crazy resilient and can pump out wounds in CC to everything besides terminators and biker nobs really.

Sprinkle in Prisms and bikes or Serpent mounted infantry for troops and you have a very mobile army that can hang in reserves if need be or speed around the board. The Seer bikes too the bulk of the killin' and the troops hang out to either deny KP's or grab an objective last turn.

I still prefer pathfinders over mounted troops. Mounted elites, fine.. But yeah, str 9 witch blades should be fine against nobz - its purely the 2+ termy save & the multiple orky saves which gets in the way. Doom & rending.. I like this alot.

Um I dont mean to drivial on but.. a multi charge from a seer concil squad & some harlies.. (doomed if you fancy, not nessicary) the I6-7 harlies put a couple rending wounds on the squad & then the slighly slower (but faster than ork) seers start dishing out str 9 hits.

Now if youve got a proper nobz biker squad with a few wounds on a few models.. the str 8+ (Vaping) hits still have to be put on unwounded models..right?

Centurian99: Your guilty of the same thing- Your overestimating the ability of the orks to do everything. Multicharging 60models with higher I is, atleast worth a few wounds. If you actually could charge 6 different squads with 9 models (remember, uve lost one) then the other guy is being a plonk.
Not allowing them to turbo boost right up the field is also a given, as I always seem to hear that turboboosting cover save as a norm.

whitedragon wrote:Seriously, a much more effective take all comers list for eldar includes 1 or 2 gaint bike seer councils. They are crazy resilient and can pump out wounds in CC to everything besides terminators and biker nobs really.

That's my operating theory right now. Building up my eldar between commissions, and right now my plan is to include a full jetlock council and some wraithlords, to give me a prayer against the dual nob bikerz. It's still not a good one, but it's the best shot I think exists.

whitedragon wrote:Seriously, a much more effective take all comers list for eldar includes 1 or 2 gaint bike seer councils. They are crazy resilient and can pump out wounds in CC to everything besides terminators and biker nobs really.

Sprinkle in Prisms and bikes or Serpent mounted infantry for troops and you have a very mobile army that can hang in reserves if need be or speed around the board. The Seer bikes too the bulk of the killin' and the troops hang out to either deny KP's or grab an objective last turn.

I can see 1 coucil in the 1500 to 1800 range but two seems like you would run out of points for anything else to deal with other armies. I have pretty much run a council on bikes at 6 or 7 warlocks and that is alot of points. Start mounting units in waveserpents, even cheap ones and you are out of points fast.

Cent, what do you think about my idea a few posts up? I don't think the Nob Bikers have any good counter to that.

40kenthusiast wrote:Cent, what do you think about my idea a few posts up? I don't think the Nob Bikers have any good counter to that.

Maybe...with that many units, it's tough to consider all the possible different variables. The biggest weakness is that I think you're going to lose speeders faster than you think...even if they're moving 12" (and need 6's) even one nob biker squad with 4 pK nobs and a warboss will toss out 20 S9/S10 attacks on the charge, and any hits will almost automatically penetrate.

Might work, although even with doom, you essentially need to collapse an entire army on one squad. you might kill off one squad of bikers, but my bet would be that you end up winning on combat res, which means your squads are pretty torn-up too. Plus, the whole thing is more or less predicated on mindwarring the painboy. Fail that, and I don't think you're doing enough wounds, unless you're running three squads of banshees. Even then....9 S5 attacks, 4.5 hits, 2.25 wounds, say 2 past the 5+ save. 81 S3 attacks, 41 hits, 7 wounds, say 5 past the 5+ save. Dooming adds another 4-5 wounds after saves...

Centurian99 wrote:

whitedragon wrote:Seriously, a much more effective take all comers list for eldar includes 1 or 2 gaint bike seer councils. They are crazy resilient and can pump out wounds in CC to everything besides terminators and biker nobs really.

That's my operating theory right now. Building up my eldar between commissions, and right now my plan is to include a full jetlock council and some wraithlords, to give me a prayer against the dual nob bikerz. It's still not a good one, but it's the best shot I think exists.

I agree about that unit. I, however, have shelved the jetlocks for the time being. The reason is that terminators are the best unit in the space marine codex, and nob bikers are the "best"/most popular unit in the ork codex. The space marines are the most populous army, and the orks are regarded as the most successful army in tourney 40k.

That is a recipe for facing a lot of termies and nob bikers in a tourney...

eldrad and harlequins backed up by around 4 bright lance hits per turn is an answer for terminators. And it doesn't get pushed and pulled by lash, but really the only difference we are talking about is trading eldrad and harlequins for a jetseer and jetlocks i think. You're going to risk some wraithsight fails if you play your bike council aggressively, whereas the shadowseer and eldrad tend to stay closer to the wraithlords. 6 in one, half a dozen in the other.

The Wraithlords are much more vulnerable than fireprisms/falcons. Karandras is a much better choice because of his smaller base size against the nobz. Also, he infiltrates and fleets, which could be a nasty surprise in a take all comers list.

Finding a way to fit fire dragons in will be even better because of multiple land raiders and transports.

This has been a really educational thread. Nob bikers are seriously the devil.

I love Phil Kelly's Dexes but he is guilty of always including one uber unit. Dakka Fexes for nids, unkillable Falcons for eldar (although they are not so uber thee days, but still good) and Nob Bikers now that trump all before them. Still, I prefer his overall excellent codexes with one broke unit to the garbage of codexes like the poor Dark Angels.

sabote wrote:
I can see 1 coucil in the 1500 to 1800 range but two seems like you would run out of points for anything else to deal with other armies. I have pretty much run a council on bikes at 6 or 7 warlocks and that is alot of points. Start mounting units in waveserpents, even cheap ones and you are out of points fast.

I may not know Eldar, but I do know Seer Council. If you have two squads, what else do you need to deal with other armies?

Step 1. Show up
Step 2. (insert dying sounds .mp3)
Step 3. Profit

Razerous wrote:
Um I dont mean to drivial on but.. a multi charge from a seer concil squad & some harlies.. (doomed if you fancy, not nessicary) the I6-7 harlies put a couple rending wounds on the squad & then the slighly slower (but faster than ork) seers start dishing out str 9 hits.

Now if youve got a proper nobz biker squad with a few wounds on a few models.. the str 8+ (Vaping) hits still have to be put on unwounded models..right?

You may want to look at what witchblades and singing spears do in CC. they are only S9 against vehicles. against non-vehicles they always wound on a 2+, but they are still considered S3 then. It's still going to be fairly hard for a squad of warlocks on bikes to take down a squad of nob bikers. They just don't have enough attacks, where the nobs have alot, at a usually high strength.

My take on this is that you have to deny the nobs some of their main advantages.

4+ cover save, 3+ Turbo boost sv
T5, T6 boss
Feel no pain
2 W

I think massed str 8 fire power is the best way eldar have to deal with nobs. With Str 8 fire power you bypass feel no pain and their 2 wounds. 3 Warwalkers with EML is only like 210 and shoots 6 missiles at 48in. 2 squads of 3 all with Missiles that are guided should put the hurt on bikes. At least enough to where other options for dealing with them become more viable.

sourclams wrote:

sabote wrote:
I can see 1 coucil in the 1500 to 1800 range but two seems like you would run out of points for anything else to deal with other armies. I have pretty much run a council on bikes at 6 or 7 warlocks and that is alot of points. Start mounting units in waveserpents, even cheap ones and you are out of points fast.

I may not know Eldar, but I do know Seer Council. If you have two squads, what else do you need to deal with other armies?

Step 1. Show up
Step 2. (insert dying sounds .mp3)
Step 3. Profit

QFT. That's what I'm trying to tell everyone. The seer council is only 1 notch worse than Nob Bikerz because they don't have two wounds!

I have run the jetlock unit for a long time so yeah I know how effetive it is. I ran it all thru ard boyz and into the finals. Sometimes it did great other times very average. It would just seem 2 units at such a low point total leaves you will little options. Blood Krushers would cause it issues. A librarian that gets null zone off against warding with the standard termi assualt squad will pound them into the ground. Heck a tatical squad of marines could spend 3 turns fighting them unless you brought something in to help.

Maybe I will just give it a try but thats a heck o lot of points.

lowkii wrote:My take on this is that you have to deny the nobs some of their main advantages.

4+ cover save, 3+ Turbo boost sv
T5, T6 boss
Feel no pain
2 W

I think massed str 8 fire power is the best way eldar have to deal with nobs. With Str 8 fire power you bypass feel no pain and their 2 wounds. 3 Warwalkers with EML is only like 210 and shoots 6 missiles at 48in. 2 squads of 3 all with Missiles that are guided should put the hurt on bikes. At least enough to where other options for dealing with them become more viable.

Eldar just don't have enough, even if you go with 2 WW /w EML. 12 shots, 9 hits if they're guided, and 8 wounds. 4 bikers dead if a 4+, less if its a 3+, -1 if the ork player takes a hit on the warboss. I'm assuming you screen the WW with something, but with 2 bikers squads, they're going to tear through your screen in nothing flat.

Unless you can negate their cover save, I just don't think shooting is a reliable option, because you're counting on your opponent to essentially roll poorer than average.

Eldar just don't have good options. Tau, Chaos, SM, and Tyranids have good counters, while Eldar (along with Witchhunters and Daemonhunters) have some OK counters. (actually, penitent engines for witchhunters will toast the nobz easily, and I've theorized that penitent-engine spam is now a viable and deadly combination). Eldar aren't screwed, per se (the only armies I'd classify as screwed are Necrons and Guard).

Well, Guard has a prayer (even if its not much of one), but Necrons is, as far as I can tell, totally screwed.

Centurian99, you can guide more than one unit. Eldrad can cast 3 times. Forming a central firing area with Dark Reapers, War Walkers and more can turn the nobs into mush. Any cc combo afterward can mop them up. As for the 2nd squad there are so many options. I think 10 wraithguard could screen them, the shooties, well. Your movements have to be planned carefully but thats what Eldar players have to do anyway. All kinds of pinning weapons are in the Eldar armory, this will slow them down.

There are enough exotic builds available in 5e that have a fair chance of beating nob bikers. These lists are not as well known but that does not deny them their prowess against nob bikers.

One major disadvantage of nob bikers is the extremely low number of units they can field. At 1750 you often only see three total units in a nob biker list. In a multiple objective based mission such as Seize Ground with DoW deployment and only 5 turns played it is very possible that a mobile army with many scoring units can beat the nob biker list hands down.

It is more than a list building exercise to beat nob bikers. You should exploit their weaknesses to captilize on the opportunity to achieve victory by understanding the mission rules. Two very fast resilient units that excel in close combat cannot be all places upon the battlefield at once.

This type of thinking is a better approach to beating nob bikers on a consistent basis with average luck at best.

G

I have play tested a combo of 3 vibro cannons, 6 EML's and 8 harlies with kisses and troup master with power weapon.

He had 9 nob bikers and a warboss to my 6 war walkers [EML], 3 vibros and the 8 harlies.

This was a test not a battle so we both deployed our units ona 6x4 as usual, now he got first turn and turnbo boosted. and was in range of the vibros and EML. my shooting went like this, 2 vibros hit, got 4 on the D6 at S7 and got one wound, they passeed the pinning test. 4 EML's hit and 2 instant killed nobs [he decided not to try the warboss just incase of this lol].

Now he charged the harlies and the harlies struck first. i got 21 kiss attacks and 4 power weapon attacks. hit 12 times with kisses [ 3 rendering] and hit once with power weapon. i inflicted 6 wounds and he failed 3 of them. and the harlies lost all but the troup master, he stayed and that the end of the road test, but im sure with the rest of our armies i could have taken down the nob squad

Dear Centurion,

What option do you think CSM have against the Bike Nobz? Noise marine shooting is ineffective, plague marine tarpit fails to the massive number of power weapons, Obliterators are shooting into the 3+ or4+ cover save....

I guess there is Abaddon in a Landraider, but your landraiders are no match for SM landraiders. Yes, you can forgo your obliterators to get Chaos Vindicators.
Do CSM have anything that negates cover saves????

I'm just not seeing any 'CSM takes on all comers' lists that can trash two nob biker units.

Better pray that all tournament organizers start putting three level buildings on the field. Except that the Ork player will just blow them up and your objective will go to ground....

2 13+1 squads of Guardians and one squad of DA. Backed up by 3 Guided EML Warwalkers. ~860 points including the Farseer.

After casting Doom:

S8:
(6 * 0.75 + 2 * 0.5) * 0.96875 * 1/2 = 2.664 (2 or 3 instant death)

Shuricats:

9x3 x 4/6 + (1+1) * 4/6 + 2 * 13 / 2 = 32.333 hits

Wounds:

32.333 * 0.5556 /2 /2 = 4.49

Toss in other shooting. Lets say insta-kill 3 and cause 4 wounds, if you get lucky you kill the Painboy. Against 3+ cover you kill one less.

Doomed Starcannons can be just as useful, assuming they hit. Although against FNP a Scatterlaser with 4 shots is the same as a Starcannon with 2.

I don't usually advocate Guide (or Eldrad for that matter) but I think it is useful in this case. Especially since D-Cannons are no longer S10.

The other thing to consider is good ol' crap Guardians in close combat. 30 Charge with Doom you caused another 3/4 wounds for your 300 points worth. Although they are wounding on 6+.

What I would say is bring along a Doom and Guide Farseer and a squad of EML Warwalkers in cover and you have less to worry about from Nob bikers.

-------
So concentrated shooting with Doomed S3/4 to get their model count down, if possible and then at some point hit them with close combat.

mikeguth wrote:Dear Centurion,

What option do you think CSM have against the Bike Nobz? Noise marine shooting is ineffective, plague marine tarpit fails to the massive number of power weapons, Obliterators are shooting into the 3+ or4+ cover save....

I guess there is Abaddon in a Landraider, but your landraiders are no match for SM landraiders. Yes, you can forgo your obliterators to get Chaos Vindicators.
Do CSM have anything that negates cover saves????

I'm just not seeing any 'CSM takes on all comers' lists that can trash two nob biker units.

Better pray that all tournament organizers start putting three level buildings on the field. Except that the Ork player will just blow them up and your objective will go to ground....

I'm not Cent... but I'll just give you the answer.

I think all smart CSM players have seen the nob biker armies. That means they have probably switched from 9 oblits to 6 oblits and a vindicator.

Lash one nob biker unit in for a pie, lash the other one back to limit its charge options.

clumped up bike unit... assuming the new bike bases, could take something like 14 hits from the vindi, then up to 30 hits from the 6 plasma cannons.

Assuming after a successful lash i can only get 12 under the vindi, thats just over 3 instant deaths. He is going to have to allocate like 10 wounds. Meaning he has a lot less control over which nobs are gonna bite it. Maybe the warboss, maybe the painboy, maybe a few power klaws.

Say he pulls smart, and then the following plasma cannon shots can only find clusters of 4. Thats going to be something like 20 hits. 16 more wounds to allocate to the probably 8 remaining models. 2 apiece with just a 3+ save. Gonna be around 6 fails in there, I'm guessing their might be a grouping of fails that costs you another nob, might have been your painboy. Now, just for fun, we throw in the bolters and meltaguns from 2+ units of plague marines. That'll cost you another nob.

Depending on the lash distances, and how the scatters and cover saves went, the orks next turn will be interesting. Not an auto-win for chaos, but I sure as hell would be worried as a nob player. What you are able to reach in CC on turn 2 is going to be very important. As is what mission you rolled. CSM can certainly make your 3 unit army a 1 unit army in 3 or 4 turns.

arggh i did it again (sorry for taking thread off topic again)

@Shep, no worries as far as I'm concerned. It's sometimes helpful to look at things from another persons/armies point of view.

mikeguth wrote:Dear Centurion,

What option do you think CSM have against the Bike Nobz? Noise marine shooting is ineffective, plague marine tarpit fails to the massive number of power weapons, Obliterators are shooting into the 3+ or4+ cover save....

Yep, abaddon is the closest thing to an Auto-Win against nob bikers. 6-10 S8 attacks at I8...

Chaos with Lash has lots of options, both agressive and defensive. Aside from that, the same things that Marines can do, Chaos can do. overpower them with S8 hand to hand, etc.

Blackarandras wrote:Centurian99, you can guide more than one unit. Eldrad can cast 3 times. Forming a central firing area with Dark Reapers, War Walkers and more can turn the nobs into mush. Any cc combo afterward can mop them up. As for the 2nd squad there are so many options. I think 10 wraithguard could screen them, the shooties, well. Your movements have to be planned carefully but thats what Eldar players have to do anyway. All kinds of pinning weapons are in the Eldar armory, this will slow them down.

I thought Eldrad could only cast a given power twice?

Pinning, against LD9 with a re-roll...

It amazes me how so many people think that the BikerNob equation can be solved by shooting that doesnt include large str8+ templates....lots of them.

(its exactly what BikerNob generals hope for in their opponents)

Airmund - you are correct, my bad. Maybe I can use the excuse that the whole biker thing threw me but I just got it wrong

Deadshane1 - Plate happy nid army? Id go for a majority leaper & flying tyrant army (although could psychic scream hamper that Base of LD7 more than the quickness of the wings..hmm) with some platey fexes running up behind.

Nids are actually pretty well off for a bunch of reasons. Namely:

Large availability of S8 blast markers
Large availability of S8 I2 attacks that ignore armor.
Large availability of implant attack

Nids are very well-off indeed, and really don't have to change a whole bunch.

focusedfire wrote:
If you've cleared the backfield, he's down to one unit by end of turn 3

I think your theory is very unrealistic. Your army is getting charged turn 2 unless you start in reserves. If you start in reserves you will not be able to guide and doom the turn you come in. Then after a weak salvo you will get charged. You move no faster than the Nobs so when the fast eldar units stop to shoot they get charged the next turn. The Nobs are always controlling the board, if you run they can chase you and you will be stuck in a corner or simply charged. This won't even take very long so it's not like you can use it to run the clock down. The tactic you describe would require you to have units that move 48 inches a turn.

whitedragon wrote:

QFT. That's what I'm trying to tell everyone. The seer council is only 1 notch worse than Nob Bikerz because they don't have two wounds!

Or 20 Power Klaw attacks. Or the ability to be resilient(Fortune vs FNP) while turbo boosting.

Blackarandras wrote:Centurian99, you can guide more than one unit. Eldrad can cast 3 times. Forming a central firing area with Dark Reapers, War Walkers and more can turn the nobs into mush. Any cc combo afterward can mop them up. As for the 2nd squad there are so many options. I think 10 wraithguard could screen them, the shooties, well. Your movements have to be planned carefully but thats what Eldar players have to do anyway. All kinds of pinning weapons are in the Eldar armory, this will slow them down.

I just take the example armies in the eldar codex and table them. Like every single time.

Yes, Eldrad can only cast two of the same powers. Still thats two guides and one fortune that can be put on the jetseer council thats headed up for cc.( just an example) WC_Brain, what do you mean,"I just take the example armies in the eldar codex and table them. Like every single time.

WC_Brian wrote:

Blackarandras wrote:Centurian99, you can guide more than one unit. Eldrad can cast 3 times. Forming a central firing area with Dark Reapers, War Walkers and more can turn the nobs into mush. Any cc combo afterward can mop them up. As for the 2nd squad there are so many options. I think 10 wraithguard could screen them, the shooties, well. Your movements have to be planned carefully but thats what Eldar players have to do anyway. All kinds of pinning weapons are in the Eldar armory, this will slow them down.

I just take the example armies in the eldar codex and table them. Like every single time.

You better watch out when the ork player wises up and takes the example armies out of the ork codex.

WC_Brian wrote:

whitedragon wrote:

QFT. That's what I'm trying to tell everyone. The seer council is only 1 notch worse than Nob Bikerz because they don't have two wounds!

Or 20 Power Klaw attacks. Or the ability to be resilient(Fortune vs FNP) while turbo boosting.

The Nobz are better mainly because of the wounds and scoring. The witchblades threaten vehicles just as effectively as powerklaws, and the warlocks have a better armor save (3+) then the nobz, so the times where the inability to re-roll a 3+ vs a 4+ will be a big difference will be minimal. The council still pumps out alot of wounds at high initiative and also have access to psychic shenanigans.

The the Nobz get rokkits and dakkaguns, the council gets twin linked shuri-cats, destructor and mind war. The Nobz get powerklaws, the council gets witchblades, and the council can move in the assault phase due to their eldar jetbikes.

The Council struggles against wound allocation (although you have to do at least 11 wounds to remove enhance/embolden, which is still not an easy task with fortune), terminators (the 2+ save negates the 2+ to wound from witchblades), and Nobz (the FNP negates the effectiveness of the witchblades as well). Also, the Nobz have 2 wounds a piece and score. Aside from that, the Council is a rock solid unit that alot of armies will have an extremely hard time stopping, much like the Nobz. It really is the Eldar's best answer.

The Nobz are better, but the Council is no slouch.

WC_Brian wrote:I think your theory is very unrealistic. Your army is getting charged turn 2 unless you start in reserves. If you start in reserves you will not be able to guide and doom the turn you come in. Then after a weak salvo you will get charged. You move no faster than the Nobs so when the fast eldar units stop to shoot they get charged the next turn. The Nobs are always controlling the board, if you run they can chase you and you will be stuck in a corner or simply charged. This won't even take very long so it's not like you can use it to run the clock down. The tactic you describe would require you to have units that move 48 inches a turn.

Not unrealistic. What it comes down to is that with a well handled army the 2BikerNob squads against an equally talented mobility army can only take out out 2 squads a turn. At best, this starts 2nd turn and ending around 4th in objective games. Thats 3 turns = 6 squads =3 turns no coversave.

More like units with 36" movement(Star Engines)With Fire prisms and serpents.

You keep saying the army is charged on turn 2. Not the army just 2 units. And with eldar mobility after 2nd turn it should only be one a turn.

What this ork build has done is reversed the roles. Orks are supposed to fight a battle of attrition(Mob Army, winning through massed cheap units) and Eldar are supposed to surgically strike. With this ork build even the sparsly numbered eldar can win the battle using attrition tactics(If they so choose).

The only way an Ork player is going to control the entire board with 2 units is if he's not exactly staying in unit cohesion. How many units can 2 squads chase. Yes its going to require finesse and subtlety. Thats what Eldar are supposed to be, not warlock/seer spam.

Only reserve the warwalkers or warp spiders or swooping hawks whichever is your flavor and only if it fits the scenario.

Just ponder for a bit on this tactic and what army build and deployment you'd use. Not saying you gotta use it, to each their own.

focusedfire wrote:
Not unrealistic. What it comes down to is that with a well handled army the 2BikerNob squads against an equally talented mobility army can only take out out 2 squads a turn.

Highly dependent on too many factors, but if the Eldar are spreading out that much, then they're unable to concentrate fire the way they need to. Anyone who understands the assault movement rules can easily charge units that are 6-8" apart, and even 12" or greater isn't impossible. Against skimmers, it's tougher to do because you need to keep the powerklaws bunched up, but against anything that's on foot, a canny player can easily set up multicharges against units that are ridiculously far apart.

Remember, after the first assault move, there are only three moves to follow. #1 - Maintain coherency with a model that's already moved. #2 - Make base if possible. If #2 is impossible, #3 get to within 2" of a model in base if possible.

If you set up the squad properly, you can easily set it up so that only one model can make base on the initial unit. This is ridiculously easy, because bikes don't take difficult terrain tests, so always move 6". The next model will have to be within 2" of that model. After that, if you've set it up properly in the movement phase, you can make it impossible for any other bikes to get within 2" of the model that's in base.

Now you can start a conga-line. All you have to do is make coherency. With bike models being about 2" long, that means you can easily stretch out from your initial target. Every nob you've got is essentially 4" that you can stretch from your initial target. 10 bikes = 40" total.

Then your opponent does his reaction moves, and many more of your bikes are in base.

focusedfire wrote:
At best, this starts 2nd turn and ending around 4th in objective games. Thats 3 turns = 6 squads =3 turns no coversave.

Again, you need to read the rules for warbikes. Ork warbikes ALWAYS have a cover save. The best you can get is to go against a 4+ cover save, instead of a 3+ save from turbo-boosting.

focusedfire wrote:
More like units with 36" movement(Star Engines)With Fire prisms and serpents.

Great! Those units aren't shooting.

focusedfire wrote:
The only way an Ork player is going to control the entire board with 2 units is if he's not exactly staying in unit cohesion. How many units can 2 squads chase. Yes its going to require finesse and subtlety. Thats what Eldar are supposed to be, not warlock/seer spam.

The Ork player controls the board with a nob army, because those bikers can reach anywhere, kill almost anything, and resist ridiculous amounts of shooting. Unless you can negate the cover saves, shooting is simply not a reliable tactic to use to counter them. Super-fast movement can at best delay, but isn't going to defeat the nob bikers.

Blackarandras wrote:Yes, Eldrad can only cast two of the same powers. Still thats two guides and one fortune that can be put on the jetseer council thats headed up for cc.( just an example) WC_Brain, what do you mean,"I just take the example armies in the eldar codex and table them. Like every single time.

I meant table the nobs with the army examples in the eldar book.

I was being sarcastic in a light hearted sense. I think i giggled as I typed.

whitedragon wrote:

The Nobz are better, but the Council is no slouch.

I agree wholeheartedly. I only play Eldar and Chaos but I won't use a Seer bike council for 3 reasons.

1) Your opponent can stop Fortune.
2) The council cannot turboboost and use Psychic powers in the same turn.
3) I feel they are too pricey to be effective considering they are non scoring.

I got to say comparing witchblades to Power Klaws is a little suspect. All those attacks means nothing tarpits them, the only time I've seen them in combat for more than 2 turns was a clever use of lash to string out the Klaws to the back and the non-Klaw Nobs forward.

The council are a very good fast attack strong cc unit. There are other strong cc units but none of them as fast. They can only use the destructor psychic power everything else comes from a farseer, which will be similiarly effect but turboboosting - but the farseer and the council can be two different entities.

Centurian99 wrote:

focusedfire wrote:
Not unrealistic. What it comes down to is that with a well handled army the 2BikerNob squads against an equally talented mobility army can only take out out 2 squads a turn.

Highly dependent on too many factors, but if the Eldar are spreading out that much, then they're unable to concentrate fire the way they need to. Anyone who understands the assault movement rules can easily charge units that are 6-8" apart, and even 12" or greater isn't impossible. Against skimmers, it's tougher to do because you need to keep the powerklaws bunched up, but against anything that's on foot, a canny player can easily set up multicharges against units that are ridiculously far apart.

Remember, after the first assault move, there are only three moves to follow. #1 - Maintain coherency with a model that's already moved. #2 - Make base if possible. If #2 is impossible, #3 get to within 2" of a model in base if possible.

If you set up the squad properly, you can easily set it up so that only one model can make base on the initial unit. This is ridiculously easy, because bikes don't take difficult terrain tests, so always move 6". The next model will have to be within 2" of that model. After that, if you've set it up properly in the movement phase, you can make it impossible for any other bikes to get within 2" of the model that's in base.

Now you can start a conga-line. All you have to do is make coherency. With bike models being about 2" long, that means you can easily stretch out from your initial target. Every nob you've got is essentially 4" that you can stretch from your initial target. 10 bikes = 40" total.

Then your opponent does his reaction moves, and many more of your bikes are in base.

focusedfire wrote:
At best, this starts 2nd turn and ending around 4th in objective games. Thats 3 turns = 6 squads =3 turns no coversave.

Again, you need to read the rules for warbikes. Ork warbikes ALWAYS have a cover save. The best you can get is to go against a 4+ cover save, instead of a 3+ save from turbo-boosting.

focusedfire wrote:
More like units with 36" movement(Star Engines)With Fire prisms and serpents.

Great! Those units aren't shooting.

focusedfire wrote:
The only way an Ork player is going to control the entire board with 2 units is if he's not exactly staying in unit cohesion. How many units can 2 squads chase. Yes its going to require finesse and subtlety. Thats what Eldar are supposed to be, not warlock/seer spam.

The Ork player controls the board with a nob army, because those bikers can reach anywhere, kill almost anything, and resist ridiculous amounts of shooting. Unless you can negate the cover saves, shooting is simply not a reliable tactic to use to counter them. Super-fast movement can at best delay, but isn't going to defeat the nob bikers.

And if the biker spreads out too much he only gets a Nob or at best two in base to base and a nob within two inches. What happens if he's dumb enough to strech his line out that much. Stretch his line out the way you have them casually doing to "try" to control the board. How vulnerable to your assaults? Even th Kroot would do a number on them. But Eldar have much better than the Kroot.

Spread out isn't a prob because your using long range heavies to soften them up. Unlike Tau, you have squads that can actually assault the biker nobs and win once you take out 2-3 nobs and put a couple of wounds on them. You said something about the War Walk with EMLs and the prisms getting 8 wounds. The wounds you infilict in the ensuing hand to hand kill them because of "Remove whole models". Conduct a concert not bang the drum one beat at a time.

Sorry, you're absolutely right, I mistyped. Should have been with a reduced cover save of 4+. I wouldn't diminish a 16.6% increase in shooting effectiveness, though.

If you let an ork player control the board with just 2 units your doing something very wrong. You also seem to assume that if your using your mobility the he's controling the board. Not if your making him react to you. Lead him to where you want him.

He's not shooting or assaulting while turbo boosting either. You get him down to one squad the games yours except for maybe Annihalation.

The ork player is counting on going first. Just for giggles What happens if you roll to go first with an army thats got striking Scorps and then you say...I dunno...infitrate to get within striking distance of the third softer squad. What happens if you dump most of your fire power on the bikes while hitting the back squad with you scorps. What happens to his solid wall of bikers then? Does he just ignore the scorps or does one of the squads stay behind to deal with them? Leaving only one squad moving forward. Which squad does he move forward? The healthy one or the one you focused on and put 8 wounds and a kill or two? What happens if he assaults Scorps (Probably in cover) with the wounded squad?

The ork build is a house of cards

Your saying its futile. Or that we should use a battle plan that will probably leave 2-3 squads on the board. I advocate taking out the easy squad and focusing on one biker squad, so I'm shooting for 1-2 squads left at best for the biker nobs

Just caught the double post, very sorry about that.

Kroot? Seriously? Look, if you haven't played it, or against it - you really need to stop with the 'It's easy you just X'. It's a different animal than any other army, and it's usually not something the average player will even grasp after being told, until after they're beat over the head with it.

I know your kroot statement is off the cuff, but just for fun kroot vs. nob bikes. Lets say the assault vs. the bikes is perfect for some crazy reason, only 2 bikes (the one touched and the one engaged) can swing on the kroot. How many kroot would it take to win that setup?
Orks fight:
2 bikes touched: 8 swings
5.28 hits
3.49 dead kroot

In order to get 3.49 wounds back, doing the math in reverse you need on average:
7 wounds to get past feel no pain (4+)
14 wounds to get past armor save (4+)
42 hits to land (5+)
84 swings (4+)
28 kroot (3 swings each on charge)

So in order to TIE the combat, you need 28 kroot to be involved in a charge and only 2 slugga-choppa nobs on bikes available to return swing. Seriously.

I'm only making this point to illustrate the ridiculousness of the unit overall. It doesn't play by the normal rules of 40k, so stop postulating nonsense if you don't have any experience with the subject.

Surely the idea of the usage of the kroot units is to infiltrate them (up the field and away from you big shooties) and slow down the orky menance? Turbo-boosting is a bum but if you deny that to the nobz then your doing somthing right.

focusedfire wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

focusedfire wrote:
Not unrealistic. What it comes down to is that with a well handled army the 2BikerNob squads against an equally talented mobility army can only take out out 2 squads a turn.

Highly dependent on too many factors, but if the Eldar are spreading out that much, then they're unable to concentrate fire the way they need to. Anyone who understands the assault movement rules can easily charge units that are 6-8" apart, and even 12" or greater isn't impossible. Against skimmers, it's tougher to do because you need to keep the powerklaws bunched up, but against anything that's on foot, a canny player can easily set up multicharges against units that are ridiculously far apart.

Remember, after the first assault move, there are only three moves to follow. #1 - Maintain coherency with a model that's already moved. #2 - Make base if possible. If #2 is impossible, #3 get to within 2" of a model in base if possible.

If you set up the squad properly, you can easily set it up so that only one model can make base on the initial unit. This is ridiculously easy, because bikes don't take difficult terrain tests, so always move 6". The next model will have to be within 2" of that model. After that, if you've set it up properly in the movement phase, you can make it impossible for any other bikes to get within 2" of the model that's in base.

Now you can start a conga-line. All you have to do is make coherency. With bike models being about 2" long, that means you can easily stretch out from your initial target. Every nob you've got is essentially 4" that you can stretch from your initial target. 10 bikes = 40" total.

Then your opponent does his reaction moves, and many more of your bikes are in base.

focusedfire wrote:
At best, this starts 2nd turn and ending around 4th in objective games. Thats 3 turns = 6 squads =3 turns no coversave.

Again, you need to read the rules for warbikes. Ork warbikes ALWAYS have a cover save. The best you can get is to go against a 4+ cover save, instead of a 3+ save from turbo-boosting.

focusedfire wrote:
More like units with 36" movement(Star Engines)With Fire prisms and serpents.

Great! Those units aren't shooting.

focusedfire wrote:
The only way an Ork player is going to control the entire board with 2 units is if he's not exactly staying in unit cohesion. How many units can 2 squads chase. Yes its going to require finesse and subtlety. Thats what Eldar are supposed to be, not warlock/seer spam.

The Ork player controls the board with a nob army, because those bikers can reach anywhere, kill almost anything, and resist ridiculous amounts of shooting. Unless you can negate the cover saves, shooting is simply not a reliable tactic to use to counter them. Super-fast movement can at best delay, but isn't going to defeat the nob bikers.

And if the biker spreads out too much he only gets a Nob or at best two in base to base and a nob within two inches. What happens if he's dumb enough to stretch his line out that much. Stretch his line out the way you have them casually doing to "try" to control the board. How vulnerable to your assaults? Even th Kroot would do a number on them. But Eldar have much better than the Kroot.

Spread out isn't a prob because your using long range heavies to soften them up. Unlike Tau, you have squads that can actually assault the biker nobs and win once you take out 2-3 nobs and put a couple of wounds on them. You said something about the War Walk with EMLs and the prisms getting 8 wounds. The wounds you infilict in the ensuing hand to hand kill them because of "Remove whole models". Conduct a concert not bang the drum one beat at a time.

Sorry, you're absolutely right, I mistyped. Should have been with a reduced cover save of 4+. I wouldn't diminish a 16.6% increase in shooting effectiveness, though.

If you let an ork player control the board with just 2 units your doing something very wrong. You also seem to assume that if your using your mobility the he's controling the board. Not if your making him react to you. Lead him to where you want him.

He's not shooting or assaulting while turbo boosting either. You get him down to one squad the games yours except for maybe Annihalation.

The ork player is counting on going first. Just for giggles What happens if you roll to go first with an army thats got striking Scorps and then you say...I dunno...infitrate to get within striking distance of the third softer squad. What happens if you dump most of your fire power on the bikes while hitting the back squad with you scorps. What happens to his solid wall of bikers then? Does he just ignore the scorps or does one of the squads stay behind to deal with them? Leaving only one squad moving forward. Which squad does he move forward? The healthy one or the one you focused on and put 8 wounds and a kill or two? What happens if he assaults Scorps (Probably in cover) with the wounded squad?

The ork build is a house of cards

Your saying its futile. Or that we should use a battle plan that will probably leave 2-3 squads on the board. I advocate taking out the easy squad and focusing on one biker squad, so I'm shooting for 1-2 squads left at best for the biker nobs.


I offer that we agree to disagree.



Edited for spelling

This has been an interesting discussion, but some of your points are not backed up by the rules which diminish your tactics against Nob Bikers.

1. Nob biker players equip Nobz with different equipment, thus one gets to allocate the wounds in assault. They are considered a 'complex unit' and follow those rules.
2. You can't first turn assault with infiltrating Striking Scorpions. You have to set up outside of 12 inches and Scorpions don't have fleet. Additionally, with how LOS works in 5th edition, getting this close during setup is very, very difficult. Kroot were mentioned---bad idea. It's just a recipe to lose your Kroot very quickly. Folks may not realize just how mean a Nob Biker unit is.

I've played with them and against them and the Nob Biker unit is silly strong. I've lost the whole unit on a few occasions, the most effective was in the Ard Boyz tourney; Lash of Submission combined with three Defiler shots. Blood Angel builds can really do a number on them as well as massed Orks attacking them.

For Eldar, tar pit them with non scoring units (Warlock/Farseer council with Fortune and Embolden) and get Karandaras in there sounds to be the most effective assault unit available. Multiple Warwalker squadrons sounds feasable, but I'll admit to not have used Karandaras or 9 War Walkers against Nob Bikers.

It was an off the cuff comment to illustrate a point and I would use them to infiltrate.

But lets look at two kroot squads of 14 or 16 (Not unheard of)charging each end.HHMMMM, 112 pts for a possible combat draw and the chance to nail the squad down for a turn

Not super easy to do but not impossible either.

focusedfire wrote:It was an off the cuff comment to illustrate a point and I would use them to infiltrate.

But lets look at two kroot squads of 14 or 16 (Not unheard of)charging each end.HHMMMM, 112 pts for a possible combat draw and the chance to nail the squad down for a turn

Not super easy to do but not impossible either.

Okay, lets. And we'll assume that you only get two nob bikers counterattacking on each squad, and to stack the deck even more, we'll assume that they're not powerklaws.

Nob bikers and 16 Kroot strike simo:

8 attacks on each squad. 5.66 hits (WS5 v WS4), about about 4.4 wounds (S4 v T3), so we'll say 4 wounds on each squad.

Kroot: 32 models with 96 attacks, 48 hits, 16 wounds, 8 saved by the 4+ armor, and 4 saved by FNP. Kroot lose combat by 4, so need to roll a 2 or 3 not to break and run.

Still seem like a good idea?

Assuming they dont get run down.. wont they then just get in the way.

And how many, roughly, wounds did that kroot squad score? 1? 3? One wound is equal to 1/2 a nob biker when kitted out. (Total divided by the no. of models. Counting the cheapest models is a unrealistic as those nobz will (evenetually) be ablative wounds for the pk nobz.)

How much did that entire squad of kroot cost? What did they stop the ork player doing?

Once you take these things into concideration.. it could be well worth it.

There is alot of merit to throwing in a sacrificial unit and cheap ones at that. After the nobs kick butt their subject to shooting, which I think is viable, ap1 and ap2 ignore fnp and double str weapons spell instant death. The Eldar have alot of ap1,ap2,pinning,and str 8+ weapons. Followed by a good cc option or two should leave you in a good position. Vibro cannons also can shoot into cc and think, not sure, they ignore cover saves. I don't suggest vibros in this would take up a HS slot.

Can somebody do a diagram or picture of a Nob squad multi-charging, so that these people understand that sacrificial speed bumps don't work?

Unless your sacrificial speed bump was literally spread across the entire board edge, those Nobs could multi charge any unit that they were within 18" of at the beginning of their turn. To block that large a charge range you need so many points of sacrificial speed bumps that they begin making up the bulk of your army.

I'm not sure how people deploy, but muti-charge doesn't threaten a defensive setup. What kind of terrain are people playing in?

Blackarandras wrote:I'm not sure how people deploy, but muti-charge doesn't threaten a defensive setup. What kind of terrain are people playing in?

What do you mean by defensive setup?

The only way to do it reliably against nob bikers (by that I mean to prevent your opponent from simply moving around it) is to essentially create "shells" around the unit(s) you want to protect. Each layer has to stretch from a board edge to a board edge (so you'll usually see semicircles on a single board edge, or quarter-circles in a corner. ) or completely surround a protected unit.

Elite armies can prevent the multi-charge by spreading out, but you limit their areas of influence and they wont overlap anymore.

Elite armies arent so great against bikernobs anyway.

Whatever....I'm drunk.

Haven't played for years, but what about using a squad of warp spiders to hop behind the bikes? They can't charge in two directions at once. The Str 6 is good, and the lack of AP is irrelevant for once. I doubt they'd survive long in combat if the bikes turned and charged, but if they have to charge back to where the spiders have hopped to, wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of the bikes?

Fifty wrote:Haven't played for years, but what about using a squad of warp spiders to hop behind the bikes? They can't charge in two directions at once. The Str 6 is good, and the lack of AP is irrelevant for once. I doubt they'd survive long in combat if the bikes turned and charged, but if they have to charge back to where the spiders have hopped to, wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of the bikes?

Full squad of 10 Warp Spiders = 20 shots. 14 hits, 9 wounds, 4.5 cover saves, 2.25 FNP...so three wounds total.

Nob bikers can safely ignore them.

Has anyone done the maths for an autarch with Maniblaster, power weapon and avatar charging them?

I can't visualize how with deploying well and terrain,ruins, hills,forest,etc., with turn 1 or not the bikers can engulf your army. You'll still get your shooting in and should be able to charge. Not that I would have much in reserves against nob bikers, but that is an option. Deep strike and outflank

One squad, infiltrating is a great speed bump.

Another squad, behind that by a few inches (2-10) also infiltrate also being a great speed bump.


Main groups of armies, yes. Multi-charging is a possibility (but ofc should be denied where possible)

But the most recent discussion is about infiltrating speed bumps. (Edit: Damn, that was a few quick posts.)

If im spreading my units out then I have to take difficult terrain tests. You have to take dangerous terrain tests. Fine by me.

The nob biker army has some inherent weaknesses such as low unit count in objective based games. Low model count only helps them in KP missions and then it is a big advantage for this army. Chances are though that you will play them in an objective based mission. Typically there are only three to four total units in a nob biker army. You have to focus on the two squads of nob bikers which takes the heat off of the other ork units.

From a power armor perspective using transports to mechanize your army helps and I would also use this approach with eldar. If your army is mechanized this forces the nobs to deal with your armor first. Once a squad of nobs has charged a transport to destroy it in close combat this leaves them exposed to both shooting without the 3+ cover save and counter assaults. You want to make sure you charge the nobs for the +1 attack bonus and anything else such as furious charge (Harlequins).

I would consider using fire dragons so that you can insta kill nobs with shooting. Also charge them with shining spears so that the exarch can insta kill nobs with the star lance at initiative. I would use fire prisms to kill the non nob units such as lootas. Once you have inflicted some losses into the nobs they have been whittled down... still tough as nails but now they are more vulnerable to failing leadership tests. You should concentrate on first killing the warboss in close combat first which is possible with a lot of high strength attacks. Once you kill the warboss the remaining nobs are even more vulnerable to leadership tests.

Another tactic is to kill one bike squad first... as a single squad of nob bikers is not half as good as two. Now mobility is on your side and the other one or two ork units are much more exposed.

G

Centurian99 wrote:

Fifty wrote:Haven't played for years, but what about using a squad of warp spiders to hop behind the bikes? They can't charge in two directions at once. The Str 6 is good, and the lack of AP is irrelevant for once. I doubt they'd survive long in combat if the bikes turned and charged, but if they have to charge back to where the spiders have hopped to, wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of the bikes?

Full squad of 10 Warp Spiders = 20 shots. 14 hits, 9 wounds, 4.5 cover saves, 2.25 FNP...so three wounds total.

Nob bikers can safely ignore them.

I wouldn't suggest they can deal wth them alone, nor in one turn, but 10 Warp Spiders is 220 points, and a tooled up bike unit even without a warboss is going to be in the 500+ region. They can be enough of a nuisance to be worth it, I'd think. If they don't distract the bikers with the first hop in behind them, they are free to go after the bikers again if they don't get into combat, or go rampaging at the grotz/boyz hiding in the corner.

Fifty wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

Fifty wrote:Haven't played for years, but what about using a squad of warp spiders to hop behind the bikes? They can't charge in two directions at once. The Str 6 is good, and the lack of AP is irrelevant for once. I doubt they'd survive long in combat if the bikes turned and charged, but if they have to charge back to where the spiders have hopped to, wouldn't that kind of defeat the point of the bikes?

Full squad of 10 Warp Spiders = 20 shots. 14 hits, 9 wounds, 4.5 cover saves, 2.25 FNP...so three wounds total.

Nob bikers can safely ignore them.

I wouldn't suggest they can deal wth them alone, nor in one turn, but 10 Warp Spiders is 220 points, and a tooled up bike unit even without a warboss is going to be in the 500+ region. They can be enough of a nuisance to be worth it, I'd think. If they don't distract the bikers with the first hop in behind them, they are free to go after the bikers again if they don't get into combat, or go rampaging at the grotz/boyz hiding in the corner.

10 Firedragons are 160 pts and do alot more damage then your warpspiders. 10 Dire Avengers with bladestorm are about 140 points and do almost as many wounds as the warpspiders. The warpspiders are a waste against the bikers. Not to mention that depending on how far away you jump from the bikes, they may be able to conga line a multi-charge that includes the unfortunate warpspiders and another unit in front of them.

Green Blow Fly wrote:The nob biker army has some inherent weaknesses such as low unit count in objective based games. Low model count only helps them in KP missions and then it is a big advantage for this army. Chances are though that you will play them in an objective based mission. Typically there are only three to four total units in a nob biker army. You have to focus on the two squads of nob bikers which takes the heat off of the other ork units.

The sheer survivability of the nob bikers and the fact they're troops, goes a long way towards minimizing that disadvantage, to the point that its almost an advantage. Except for some esorteric combos and terminators, there's no single unit in the game that can meet them head to head, and very few of comparable points that can do so either. Most of those are mutual-death situations, where you're going to lose whatever you throw at them, even if you kill of the bikers.

Having objectives in a lot of ways works in the Ork player's favor...because objectives, by their nature, tend to tie down an army. Even if you want to stay mobile, you've got to keep your units within the range that they can move in on turn 4/5 and secure the objective, which means that they have a relatively limited zone that they can operate in.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
From a power armor perspective using transports to mechanize your army helps and I would also use this approach with eldar. If your army is mechanized this forces the nobs to deal with your armor first. Once a squad of nobs has charged a transport to destroy it in close combat this leaves them exposed to both shooting without the 3+ cover save and counter assaults. You want to make sure you charge the nobs for the +1 attack bonus and anything else such as furious charge (Harlequins).

Really, the only time I think transports actually hurts the nob bikers is when the things inside are credible, effective threats against them...namely, units such as fire dragons (en masse), sternguard with combi-meltas, terminators with thunder hammers, abaddon, etc. Otherwise, all the transport player is doing is delaying, and when their transports are cracked, their ability to secure objectives goes down the tubes.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
I would consider using fire dragons so that you can insta kill nobs with shooting. Also charge them with shining spears so that the exarch can insta kill nobs with the star lance at initiative. I would use fire prisms to kill the non nob units such as lootas. Once you have inflicted some losses into the nobs they have been whittled down... still tough as nails but now they are more vulnerable to failing leadership tests. You should concentrate on first killing the warboss in close combat first which is possible with a lot of high strength attacks. Once you kill the warboss the remaining nobs are even more vulnerable to leadership tests.

Good basic points, GBF, but you forgot one key thing: unless you're Tau and have access to markerlights, or Guard with access to Hellhounds, or have some other way of ignoring cover saves, taking down nob bikers with non-massed S8 shooting is an invitation to Epic Fail.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
Another tactic is to kill one bike squad first... as a single squad of nob bikers is not half as good as two. Now mobility is on your side and the other one or two ork units are much more exposed.
G

Absolutely. Of course, you still have to be able to kill one, and relatively quickly. If you can't kill a sqad of nob bikers until turn 4, you've lost, because those nob bikers have spent 3 turns in assault and probably killed off 75% of your army.

I was crunching some numbers in my head and how is this unit for anti nob bikers (and my apologies to the OP, this is for marines, not Eldar)

A unit of Vangaurd vets, all with power weapons, a chappy and Khan, all in a LR.
comes out to 880 points which is no small chunk of the army, but neither is a squad of fully kitted bikers.

On the charge (and you should get the charge, longer reach and a nob biker squad is easy to hit).

You would put roughly 12 unsaved wounds on the squad and in return take about 8 unsaved wounds depending on the amount of claws which would most likely result in the nobs breaking. This pretty much wipes out your squad as well, but on the points echnage and KP exchange you come out ahead. That unit isnt just a Nob Biker killer either, it will beat the snot out of anything baring vehicles that it hits.


As for Eldar, you could potentially run a screening unit of gaurdians to screen your army. 20 of them can cover a lot of space. You take an avatar to keep them in the fight (hopefully) and then counter with everything you have. With enough focus fire from dragons, avengers and a combination charge of WL's the avatar and harlies, maybe with some warlocks to absorb claw attacks, you could pull it off...against one squad.

Phill Kelly, come on buddy! You always let one uber unit slip through

Reecius wrote:I was crunching some numbers in my head and how is this unit for anti nob bikers (and my apologies to the OP, this is for marines, not Eldar)

A unit of Vangaurd vets, all with power weapons, a chappy and Khan, all in a LR.
comes out to 880 points which is no small chunk of the army, but neither is a squad of fully kitted bikers.

On the charge (and you should get the charge, longer reach and a nob biker squad is easy to hit).

How the heck are you putting Khan in a Land Raider?

Forgetting Khan, vanguard + chaplain gives you 44 attacks. 33 hit, 11 wound, about 4 saves from the cybork bodies, so you probably don't remove a single model.

Nobs strike back at I3 with 16 attacks, 11 hits, 5 wounds, and we'll say two failed saves. Nobs and warboss strike at I1, with 16 attacks, hitting with 11, wounding with 9, each kills. Let's say you get lucky and put a powerklaw attack on the chaplain. Chaplain's now all on his lonesome, having lost the combat by 4, so he gets to make 4 saves.

I can't see any character making a difference. Even Pedro, with +1 attack, nets the squad an additional 11 attacks, 5.5 hits, ~1.75 wounds, so if we're generous, we give him 2 more wounds. When pedro strikes, he probably inflicts another 2 wounds, but since he strikes after the I4 guys, his attacks get placed on a previously wounded model.

So at best, we're talking a statistical draw, with Pedro and the chaplain locked in a combat.

Reecius wrote:
As for Eldar, you could potentially run a screening unit of gaurdians to screen your army. 20 of them can cover a lot of space. You take an avatar to keep them in the fight (hopefully) and then counter with everything you have. With enough focus fire from dragons, avengers and a combination charge of WL's the avatar and harlies, maybe with some warlocks to absorb claw attacks, you could pull it off...against one squad.

Let me repeat again, for the nth time...shooting weapons that are less than S8 is a waste of time, unless you have some way of removing the cover save or negating the feel no pain (preferably both). The army Does Not Exist that can attrit the nob bikers to death without getting charged and wiped out, unless you can fulfill at least one of the following conditions for your shooting:
A) Massed S8+ weaponry (i.e. multiple S8+ weapons in the same unit, or the reliable potential for multiple S8+ hits)
B) Ignore/negate the FNP Save
C) Ignore/negate the Cover/Armor Save.

Anything less Will Not Work with any kind of reliability. That's the simple, brutal math of it.

S6 fire? From a BS 3 shooter, you need 12 shots to reliably cause a single wound. To get the 12 wounds you need to reliably remove a model, you would need 144 S6 shots.

S5 fire? 192 S5 shots from BS3 or 144 from BS4.

S4 fire? 256 S4 shots from BS3 or 216 from BS4.

None of those numbers, by the way, takes the 3+ turboboost cover save into consideration.

Dear Reccius,

Just a couple of questions. 1. 12 unsaved wounds-unless you send your chappie and Khan against the warboss and kill him, 12 unsaved wounds kills what, ONE nob?? Does he get FNP for that nob? 2. Is he actually LIKELY to break, or is it less than 50-50 with the WBoss still alive using his LD? 3. Maybe he wants to break, unless you've found a way to surround him-he rallies back further than you are likely to reach, and then he has TL Dakka Gun fun with your survivors..... I think SM need Terminators to take on NBikers-you have to have strength 8 weapons IMO.

Destructor SMs? if you can get a librarain within 24 inches of NB's you could get rid of their cover save with flamers, and their Invulnerable save as well. Leaves you 'to wound' and 'FNP' to fight through....


What's the math on 2 Wraithlords vs. a NBS, or 2 WL with an Avatar. Flamers on the way in, assume doom and fortune?? Couple with skyleaping SH unit to take out accompanying grots without fear of return fire...

Centurian99, I consider everything you say because you back it up with your reasoning. However, I wonder if your motivation for your comments are because, you favor the Orks over the Eldar. Or would you say it's based off of pure logic(numbers)? The reason I ask this is because you have had little to say in favor of the Eldar. Despite the fact that the Nob Bikers are brutal, are there any combinations of Eldar that you think could stand up against the Nob Biker list?

mikeguth wrote:
What's the math on 2 Wraithlords vs. a NBS, or 2 WL with an Avatar. Flamers on the way in, assume doom and fortune?? Couple with skyleaping SH unit to take out accompanying grots without fear of return fire...

2 wraithlords kill 3 nobs. Actually, now that I think of it, adding in an Avatar hurts or flaming beforehand actually hurts, because the wounds caused by the avatar are used to keep nobs from getting 2 for 1 with instant death. Return attacks by the nobs should be enough to kill both wraithlords.

If you go with 3 wraithlords, then you've got 12 attacks, 9 hits, 8 wounds, inv saves 1/3, so either 5-6 wounds. If we say 5, then all the PKs are still alive. What happens next depends on how the orks counter-charged. If they pile in the warboss and 2 bikes on 1, and one on the others, one wraithlord dies, and the others take one wound on average. If they're spread out, its entirely possible that none die. The warboss may be able to kill a wraithlord by himself, but its by no means certain, and to get a reliable kill, you need to pile 3 powerklaws on 1 wraithlord. So in a pile-on situation, the orks do 5 wounds, and lose the combat, testing at -5.

Spread out, (2 pk nobs on a wraithlord, and the warboss by himself) the orks do 2 wounds on each wraithlord the pk nobs are engaging, and the warboss gets 4 attacks, 2.66 hits, ~2.25 wounds. Maybe he kills the wraithlord outright maybe he only does 2. Either way, orks lose by 3 or 4, which means that its possible they stay locked in combat. If there are 3 wraithlords left, the orks probably end up losing. If there's only 2, the orks could end up winning, at the cost of the squad essentially being destroyed.

Not a bad trade, if you consider that three wraithlords with wraithswords are 300 points.

The other thought, if you equip the wraithlords as I'm planning to (with a bright lance), that gives you a halfway decent chance of killing one or two bikers before the assault begins. Which makes a significant difference, as it starts to cut into the number of power klaw attacks coming back. Mindwarring a model in the unit can also help.

Well, less than S8 shooting may be statistically negligible against Nobs. It does take a lot of firepower to take them down, especially getting past that T5/3+/4+. It happens, though, as my Plague Marines can attest to.

And of course, most armies don't have all S8 shooting, but rather have lots and lots of less than S8 shooting. Where else, in a Nob biker army, are they going to invest these shots? Given 3 units, two of which are nob bikers and one of which is GTG grots, you might as well shoot at the nobs and hope to get lucky. Reliable? No, but you might get a few wounds on them, and against Nobs every little plink helps.

Centurian99, I've already stuck my foot in my mouth.

Blackarandras wrote:Centurian99, I consider everything you say because you back it up with your reasoning. However, I wonder if your motivation for your comments are because, you favor the Orks over the Eldar. Or would you say it's based off of pure logic(numbers)? The reason I ask this is because you have had little to say in favor of the Eldar. Despite the fact that the Nob Bikers are brutal, are there any combinations of Eldar that you think could stand up against the Nob Biker list?

I've got some theories, but since my Eldar are still being built/painted, they're only theories. (BTW, the day I play Orks under this codex is the day I give up the hobby).

Basically, I think there's a couple of things that Eldar can do. The problem is that most of them are fairly abusive. Things like Karandas+warlocks, and massed wraithlords are probably the best options, in terms of statistical reliability. The trick with both of them is bringing them into play on your terms, which is where the tactical abilities come into play.

Other options involve a lot of one-two combos, mostly starting with 2 squads of 10 fire dragons. Each squad inflicts about 6 wounds before cover saves, which means that your opponent has to either put wounds on his warboss or the power-klaw nobs. Either way, he probably loses about 5-6 nobs from those two squads, which allows banshees, harlequins, or warlocks to get in there and really do a number, assuming the squad is doomed.

Even though its not 100% certain (since the cover saves can be taken against it) mindwarring the painboy is almost mandatory, if you plan to use anything in your army that doesn't ignore armor saves.

An interesting thought I just thought up was to turn the tables with 3 squads of shining spears. 3 exarchs with startlances will probably destroy the nobs almost completely. The question is how viable is a 3-shining spear army against other armies?

Let me expand on the above thought.... What are the Nobs bringing with them? Boyz, or only a couple of units of Gretchin? Does it matter? Swooping Hawksx2 to skyleap, grenade them for 5 turns. Now the Orks have two scoring units-the Nobs, and unless the FAQ has changed they can't kill the Hawks.

An Avatar with 3 Wraithlords is less than a Nob Biker squad. In fact, you get two farseers as well......

How about Wraithguard as troops? Now the powerklaw attacks no longer inflict instant death, even the big choppa will not inflict many wounds...

Of course it might be hopeless against anything else.....

mikeguth wrote:Let me expand on the above thought.... What are the Nobs bringing with them? Boyz, or only a couple of units of Gretchin? Does it matter? Swooping Hawksx2 to skyleap, grenade them for 5 turns. Now the Orks have two scoring units-the Nobs, and unless the FAQ has changed they can't kill the Hawks.

An Avatar with 3 Wraithlords is less than a Nob Biker squad. In fact, you get two farseers as well......

How about Wraithguard as troops? Now the powerklaw attacks no longer inflict instant death, even the big choppa will not inflict many wounds...

Of course it might be hopeless against anything else.....

Wraithguard have one wound. :(

The big thing, is that a standard "balanced" eldar list will simply get murdered. That's not an eldar-specific thing... lots of other "balanced" listed from other codexes will also get murdered. Daemons, SM, and maybe Chaos Space Marines don't really have to visibly tool up to take on the nob bikers...almost everyone else does.

How do you put Khan in a land raider? Simple, you attach him to the squad. He does not come with a bike. you have to pay to give it to him, plain as day in the codex.

He gives the squad furious assault, obviously, and that vastly improves the hitting power of the squad.

And do the math for yourself, if a squad wins by three or more kills that gives the Nob squad a break test on a 6 or worse if they have a warboss, which is quite a bit less than 50/50 even with the bosspole.

If you throw in two storm shield powerfist combos in there they improve those odds even more and can potentially absorb a few claw attacks.

10 man vangaurd squad, 8 power weapons and two power fist storm shield combos, plus chappy and Khan.

32 WS4 St5 attacks, 24 hits, 12 wounds, 8 unsaved.

Khan Plus Chappy, 9 WS5+ attacks, roughly 8 hit, 4 wounds, roughly 2 unsaved.

6 WS 4 Power fist atacks, roughly 5 hit, 4 wounds, 3 str 8
unsaved wounds.

That gives you one wound on the warboss, three dead nobs and the rest all with one wound.

Then you have a 2/3 chance of stopping two klaw attacks. It is very likely you win combat by a large margin and the nobs break and you run them down.

I am not proposing that it is a no lose situation, just some brainstorming.

As for less than str 6 shots being worthless then what do you propose? To give up? With the nob biker army we are looking at there is nothing else to shoot at and the eldar simply dont have tha tmuch str 8 in their arsenal. Is it screaming efficiency? No, but it helps to whittle them down and if its all you have then hell, you shoot it.

My point was not that massed small arms fire wins the combat, it was that you throw everything you have at them the turn they come within range and hope the dice fall in your favor. Other than that, what? Run 30 firedragons behind a gaurdian screen with 3 WL's and an avatar? Its an uphill battle without a doubt.

Like i have said several times, nob bikers are the devil.

edited for spelling and forgot one point.

Actually now that I think about it 30 firedragons might not be a bad idea.

A 20 man gaurdian screen runs 165 points with a shuriken cannon. That can effectively screen the entire army.

Run 30 Fire Dragons behind that, with Eldrad, the Avatar, 3WL's with wraithswords 2 EML's, and a squad of pathfinders to sit on your objective gives you about 1500.

Advance and shoot using the guardians as a screen.

30 Guided fire dragons will hit roughly 17 times (assuming they are all in range of course), wound 14 times, kill 6 bikers and put one wound on the warboss. That aint bad.

The Wraithlords and avatar shoot and charge in to run mop up. You can effectively take out one squad, after that though its not looking so hot vs the second squad unless you have your big boys in a position to take the charge to allow for another fire dragon strike.

Is that army worth a hoot vs anything else? Who knows. But its something.

Yeah, Nob bikers are pretty blatantly rediculous.

Reecius wrote:How do you put Khan in a land raider? Simple, you attach him to the squad. He does not come with a bike. you have to pay to give it to him, plain as day in the codex.

He gives the squad furious assault, obviously, and that vastly improves the hitting power of the squad.

For some reason I thought he always came with the bike. My bad.

Hmm....
So now we've got:
44 S5 WS4 PW attacks, and 5 S5 WS6 PW attacks.
37.44 hits.
18.72 wounds
12.48 wounds past the saves.

Lets round that up to 13, to account for the potential of khan getting an instant death. 2 nobs have been killed. There's a chance that a power klaw bought it, which is tough to calculate, so I'll figure it with 4 klaws and with 3 klaws. We'll assume the painboy lives.

4 Klaws remaining.
I3: 11 attacks, 7.33 hits, 3.66 wounds, 1.22 past the armor save.
I1: 16 attacks, 10.66 hits, 8.88 wounds.

Orks lose combat by 3, so testing on 6. 42% chance of making it, if the bosspole is still alive, there's a 66% chance of making it.

Looks like you've got a winner... Of course, now you have to deal with the second biker squad. :(

What you've come up with is quite nasty, and fulfils 2 of the 3 qualifications I listed before - ignoring armor/cover, and ignoring FNP.

Reecius wrote:
As for less than str 6 shots being worthless then what do you propose? To give up? With the nob biker army we are looking at there is nothing else to shoot at and the eldar simply dont have tha tmuch str 8 in their arsenal. Is it screaming efficiency? No, but it helps to whittle them down and if its all you have then hell, you shoot it.

Nothing wrong with doing that. Just don't expect it to actually succeed.

Reecius wrote:
My point was not that massed small arms fire wins the combat, it was that you throw everything you have at them the turn they come within range and hope the dice fall in your favor. Other than that, what? Run 30 firedragons behind a gaurdian screen with 3 WL's and an avatar? Its an uphill battle without a doubt.

Actually, I'd probably go with 20 fire dragons and 10 banshees or harlequins. As the squad gets smaller, they become much more susceptible to "whittling", because the fewer rolls you're making, the greater chance of a statistical anomaly, and also because it becomes much harder for the ork player to spread wounds around. 10 PW wounds on a 10-man squad means 10 nobs left. 10 PW wounds on a 6-man squad means 2 nobs left.

I think with Eldar, what you have to plan on doing against nob bikers is twofold. One you need a tarpit unit...something that can get stuck in and realistically hold up one of those nob biker units. The only way I realistically see that happening is to either send multiple fearless units into HTH (where they'll hopefully last for two turns), or send fortuned warlocks in there. Meanwhile, you need a hammer to hit the other biker squad with, and actually do damage. Multiple wraithlords, fire dragons backed by some killy HTH unit, massed shining spears, or karandas and some sacrificial lambs will all do the trick. Eldar probably have the most reliable way of negating FNP, through the use of mindwar.

Reecius wrote:Like i have said several times, nob bikers are the devil.

Agreed. Hey any unit that makes someone tell me, "Well, those eight bloodcrushers are nasty, but at least they're not nob bikers"...

I agree, and this thread has been awesome because as I believe you said, I too am building an eldar army at the moment with the posibility of tournament play.

I agree though, 20 dragons and 10 harlies is not only more effective but also more valuable in pretty much every other situation that I can think of.

I think the 20 man Gaurdian squad with a warlock with conceal is a good all purpose tar pit unit. Its a bit pricey but it is fairly resiliant with fortune and the Avatar around to keep them fearless, plus you can always park them on an objective and go to ground. Even if they get munched in one turn they prevent the bikers from hitting the meat of your army, and then you throw the kitchen sink at them.

As for the marines, I was bating around some math and assault termies are actually far more cost efective than the mega vangaurd squad. 7 of them (5 claws and 2 hammers or all claws) with a chappy and Khan hits as hard, is more resliant and is a lot cheaper, plus still hits anything on the board like a ton of bricks.

7 assault termies with claws hits 21 times, wounds 16, leaves 11 unsaved wounds.

Khan and the chappy still put out 2 wounds (and as you said leave the possibility to instakill one of them).

If you have two t.hammers, that gives you 9 str 5 unsaved wounds and 3 str 8 unsaved wounds. Same odds as the vangaurd squad with far less points spent and more of your boys survive, making the wounds defecit swing heavily in your favor. You would almost assuredly break the orks.


=edited once for mistake in my math=

If I decide not to use my twin Lash army this year and keep playing my very enjoyable Eldar army I might be able to beat them by stringing out my squad of 13 bikes to keep the Nobs away for one turn. This would be really good if I went first for a free but salvo of 9 shots I would still get two rounds of shooting with my whole army except for the bikes if I went second. Anyone want to crunch the math? I'm assuming all 15 Str 8 shots can be fired for two turns.


3 Scatter Walkers
3 Missile Walkers
Falcon Bright Lance, Holo, Stones

9 Dire Avengers 2x Catapult Bladestorm
9 Pathfinders
12 Jetbikes 4 Cannons, Warlock with Spear and Embolden

5 Fire Dragons Tank Hunter

Eldrad
Jetaurch Lance Fusion Gun

Dear Centurion,

Wraithguard only get one wound, but ditto for Terminators faced by a power klaw. Wraithguard with fortune, reroll saves, which means that only 1/9 hits is a kill. And, you still have to hit them (they can be WS 5), and wound them. I think about 1/20 attacks will wound......It's not a win, but it is a potential tarpit, while the Wraithlords and Avatar, or perhaps Wraithlords and Shining Spears beat up on the other Nob Bikers....

Centurian99 wrote:
Forgetting Khan, vanguard + chaplain gives you 44 attacks. 33 hit, 11 wound, about 4 saves from the cybork bodies, so you probably don't remove a single model.

Khan comes on foot unless you buy a bike, so he is able to do this. secondly, he gives Furious charge, which makes that closer to 16 or 17 wounds (as power weapons) which means that an 8-man nob biker unit has to double-up the wounds before making saves (10-man unit gets a few less double-ups, but still several) meaning that each of the individually allocated bikers needs to make 2 5+saves each, MEANING that there will be quite a few who will fail both, pulling a whole model. Add in a IC with 5 S5 powerweapon swings that kill off a whole biker on a 6 to wound, and this becomes a dcent solution to the bikers.

That being said, I wouldn't bother ever taking khan without his bike. A khan-led command biker squad with powerweapons and tagalong chaplain is less dead bikers, but a heck of a lot less points, and a better unit to take in an all-comer list.

Edit: bah! beat to it! thats what I get for trying to respond before getting to the bottom of the page.

well, if you have 15 strength 8 shots for two full turns of shooting, assuming that they are all BS3, no one is fortuned or that the nobs did not turbo boost, you will hit 15 times, wound 13 times and kill about 6 with one wound on the warboss.

Thats is not bad actually. If you fortune the missle walkers it helps a lot, but then eldrad is no where near the rest of your army (I am assuming).

The only problem I see is that what you are proposing wont be possible as things like the firedragons or the autarch wont be in range for two turns because the bikers are so fast.

the pathfinders might also do some damage, hitting 6 times, 3 of which will be ap1 shots. That would give you roughly 1 ap1 unsaved wound, and .5 regular unsaved wounds.

Well, actually, that isnt so hot.

And by the way, math hammering this stuff is easy.

Just take the number of attacks or shots, multiply it by the chance of hitting .5 for BS3, .666 for BS4, etc, then multiply that number by the odds of wounding, then that number by the odds of bypasing any saves. Its really easy.

For example a squad of 9 marines shooting a sqaud of 9 chaos marines (9 is an easier number to work with in this case)

9 shots at BS4 gives you a 66% chance to hit (or 2/3 or .666) = 6 hits.
6 hits at a 50% chance to wound (or 1/2 or .5) = 3 wounds.
3 wounds at a 33% chanec to bypass armor (or 1/3 or .333) = 1 Dead Chaos Marine, or any MEQ on average.

See, its simple once you get the hang of it.

@Mikeguth
The powerklaws are what waste the WG, the fortune save does nothig to stop that unfortunately.

@Oldskool
Yeah, you got the gist of it, but I think Khan in a Landraider with a big squad of assault termies and a chappy is the biz.

It hits much harder than the bikers, is more resilient and is just as mobile while teamed up with the LRC. The biker command squad is bad ass too, but when you factor out the Land Raider which can do its own thing after delivering the cargo, the termy squad is cheaper and I think will give you more utility.

But that is just my opinion. I have run that type of squad many times and it hits stupid hard, the only problem is that after it usualy overkills its target it is just standing there to get hammered.

Same with the bike command squad though I would imagine, although I have not used that setup yet (but I wil soon, have an order in the mail for some new bikes!)

Reecius wrote:
30 Guided fire dragons will hit roughly 17 times (assuming they are all in range of course), wound 14 times, kill 6 bikers and put one wound on the warboss. That aint bad.

Had to poke at this... 30 firedragons will hit a lot more than 17 times, with one squad guided. without guide, 30 will hit 20 times, the guide on one squad adds in another hit or 2. 22 hits iscloser to 18-19 wounds, and even if turbo-boosted knocks out half the unit. Even better, with that many hits, he has to allocate and roll, so he has very little control over which of the nobs gets removed (good chance of killing the painboy).

Hooray for more bike players!!!!

The thing about the bike command is:
1: MUCH cheaper than any termie+LRC combo (290 vs. over 500)
2: MUCH faster overall, with TB, outflank, Hit'n'Run, etc
3: superkilly against all armies, especially since outflank gives you the jump on anything
4: Better overall because I already have them....

It has less total powerweapon swings than a lot of things...but then again, how many power weapons do you need?!

Also, if you play bikes together well, its pretty easy to keep the command bikes in at least 4+ cover after wiping a unit (TB another bike unit to obscure LOS for the command bikes after they massacre their target.)



As for how Eldar beat them, I run a mech-eldar army, and my general thought on this is to keep my serpents and falcons scooting 12" a turn, so that they are only hit on 6s, while keeping them under the fire of S8 guns (lances, pulselasers).

I know its not perfect, and wont stand up to harsh Mathhammering, but in this case I intend to not play the numbers, rather I would play the other player. If he intends to run such a HUGE point unit, I'll do my best to make sure those points are wasted. he can chase my skimmers all day, but he would still have to work pretty hard to bring them down. Afterall, I would wager that someone who runs such a 1-dimentional list in a tournament is probably pretty 1-dimentional in playing them. Give them a bright pink bunny-rabbit to chase clear across the far end of the board, and that nasty unit of hellish doom will be far far away from anything he can hurt.

Eventually, he will fail those 4+ coversaves ( always assaulting means no TB), and will run low on bikes. He is welcome to eat the occasional DA squad that falls out, but by the end of the game, he isnt likely to truly get his points back. and while he is doing this, I can go ahead and actaully play the mission.

0ldsk00l wrote:
I know its not perfect, and wont stand up to harsh Mathhammering,

Yeah you are right.

0ldsk00l wrote:
Afterall, I would wager that someone who runs such a 1-dimentional list in a tournament is probably pretty 1-dimentional in playing them. Give them a bright pink bunny-rabbit to chase clear across the far end of the board, and that nasty unit of hellish doom will be far far away from anything he can hurt.

A little history. This list was initially thought of by many as too gimmicky. The changes in 5th made it alot better. A player who was 0-22 with the new Ork Codex was given this army awhile back and did a complete 180 turn around. His actual tactical abilities are moving forward and assaulting. He rarely loses these days.

mikeguth wrote:Dear Centurion,

Wraithguard only get one wound, but ditto for Terminators faced by a power klaw. Wraithguard with fortune, reroll saves, which means that only 1/9 hits is a kill. And, you still have to hit them (they can be WS 5), and wound them. I think about 1/20 attacks will wound......It's not a win, but it is a potential tarpit, while the Wraithlords and Avatar, or perhaps Wraithlords and Shining Spears beat up on the other Nob Bikers....

Without an invulnerable save, I'm not seeing what you're talking about. The cover save from conceal doesn't help them at all in HTH, and for a large squad, most people I've seen go with conceal over enhance. With 10 wraithguard plus a warlock, and 21 power fist attacks that hit on 3+ coming in...you're going to have to be extremely lucky just to see the squad have survive the initial nob biker charge.

I stand corrected, had forgotten that they would ignore armor saves even if S wasn't double T. Back to the drawing board....

I'd suggest that too much of this thread focuses on the Nob Bikers doing what you want them to and getting all of the Eldar forces in the right place at the right time. It is not a discussion of how what tactics to use, or even how to modify a list, but is too much about designing and anti-Nob Biker list.

An army might realistically have avengers, dragons and pathfinders all together. The trick must be to use them in conjunction, not find one all-powerful answer to the problem?

I was thinking of my BA here regards to many of the points I made and these tactics are how I beat nob bikers. My BA list was not specifically tailor made to beat nob bikers either. Having a mechanized army forces the nobs to assault the tanks first, which guarantees your army the charge bonus. I have a lot of power fists and melta weapons plus Dante (preferred enemy and reduce enemy WS by -1 plus Corbulo for furious charge). With average luck I can kill one squad of nob bikers the first turn of close combat and if the warboss manages to survive he probably going to break and will not be able to regroup. This puts a dent in my army but now there is only one squad of nob bikers left and I have more mobile units and can win by holding more objectives. I like to deep strike a squad of jump infantry close to the lootas... they take one round of shooting then what is left pulverized the lootas. My opponent now has one scoring unit left while I have two to three. It's an easy win at this point which usually takes place late in the game.

I think these types of tactics can be used successfully by other armies such as eldar and that is why I posted here.

G

Centurian99 wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:The nob biker army has some inherent weaknesses such as low unit count in objective based games. Low model count only helps them in KP missions and then it is a big advantage for this army. Chances are though that you will play them in an objective based mission. Typically there are only three to four total units in a nob biker army. You have to focus on the two squads of nob bikers which takes the heat off of the other ork units.

The sheer survivability of the nob bikers and the fact they're troops, goes a long way towards minimizing that disadvantage, to the point that its almost an advantage. Except for some esorteric combos and terminators, there's no single unit in the game that can meet them head to head, and very few of comparable points that can do so either. Most of those are mutual-death situations, where you're going to lose whatever you throw at them, even if you kill of the bikers.

Having objectives in a lot of ways works in the Ork player's favor...because objectives, by their nature, tend to tie down an army. Even if you want to stay mobile, you've got to keep your units within the range that they can move in on turn 4/5 and secure the objective, which means that they have a relatively limited zone that they can operate in.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
From a power armor perspective using transports to mechanize your army helps and I would also use this approach with eldar. If your army is mechanized this forces the nobs to deal with your armor first. Once a squad of nobs has charged a transport to destroy it in close combat this leaves them exposed to both shooting without the 3+ cover save and counter assaults. You want to make sure you charge the nobs for the +1 attack bonus and anything else such as furious charge (Harlequins).

Really, the only time I think transports actually hurts the nob bikers is when the things inside are credible, effective threats against them...namely, units such as fire dragons (en masse), sternguard with combi-meltas, terminators with thunder hammers, abaddon, etc. Otherwise, all the transport player is doing is delaying, and when their transports are cracked, their ability to secure objectives goes down the tubes.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
I would consider using fire dragons so that you can insta kill nobs with shooting. Also charge them with shining spears so that the exarch can insta kill nobs with the star lance at initiative. I would use fire prisms to kill the non nob units such as lootas. Once you have inflicted some losses into the nobs they have been whittled down... still tough as nails but now they are more vulnerable to failing leadership tests. You should concentrate on first killing the warboss in close combat first which is possible with a lot of high strength attacks. Once you kill the warboss the remaining nobs are even more vulnerable to leadership tests.

Good basic points, GBF, but you forgot one key thing: unless you're Tau and have access to markerlights, or Guard with access to Hellhounds, or have some other way of ignoring cover saves, taking down nob bikers with non-massed S8 shooting is an invitation to Epic Fail.

Green Blow Fly wrote:
Another tactic is to kill one bike squad first... as a single squad of nob bikers is not half as good as two. Now mobility is on your side and the other one or two ork units are much more exposed.
G

Absolutely. Of course, you still have to be able to kill one, and relatively quickly. If you can't kill a sqad of nob bikers until turn 4, you've lost, because those nob bikers have spent 3 turns in assault and probably killed off 75% of your army.

Fifty, you need to read the rest of this thread.

In regards to nobs cover save you have to catch them in situations where they have not TBd then soak them. I can lay down 7-8 melta shots on one squad which equates to 3-4 dead nobs. If my opponent takes one of these wounds on the warboss all the better for me as now I only need to wound him twice in the ensuing close combat for the kill, which by the odds he will fail both 5+ invulnerable saves.

G

Blackarandras wrote:Fifty, you need to read the rest of this thread.

I've read the whole thing. I'm not saying nothing in this thread is useful, I'm just saying that a lot (not all) of it focuses on one-part methods to dispose of the bikers.

Fifty wrote:I'd suggest that too much of this thread focuses on the Nob Bikers doing what you want them to and getting all of the Eldar forces in the right place at the right time. It is not a discussion of how what tactics to use, or even how to modify a list, but is too much about designing and anti-Nob Biker list.

Um...exactly. The thread title is "How do Eldar cope with nob bikers?"

@oldskool
thanks for correcting my math, I was assuming BS3 with fortune on one squad, and I would still have been wrong! haha, I do the numbers in my head and I go fast, so I made a mistake, thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah, 30 would hit 20 times obviously, which would be 17 wounds most likely.

With guide on one squad its 1 or 2 more hits, which isnt amazing but it surely helps.

As for your point on already having the bike squad, that made me laugh because I already have a really nice looking squad for what I had previously described! haha, play with what you have, right?

I see what you are saying Fifty, we sholdn't be looking for a one unit solution, but if you read back a lot of people propose multi squad solutions to nob bikers.

The problem is that you don't have time to pull out a bunch of shenanigans, they charge you (very possibly multi-charge you) turn two. You have to have a hammer to smash them with quickly or die.

Fifty wrote:

I've read the whole thing. I'm not saying nothing in this thread is useful, I'm just saying that a lot (not all) of it focuses on one-part methods to dispose of the bikers.

There's a reason for that...namely, that you have to hit the bikers hard, or by the time you attrit them, they've caused so much damage to your force that you're screwed. It's also the reason why two squads of nob bikers are far better than one, because with most armies, its next to impossible to tarpit both units.

0ldsk00l wrote:
It has less total powerweapon swings than a lot of things...but then again, how many power weapons do you need?!

Against nob bikers - 44 S5 I5 PW attacks were barely enough.

0ldsk00l wrote:
As for how Eldar beat them, I run a mech-eldar army, and my general thought on this is to keep my serpents and falcons scooting 12" a turn, so that they are only hit on 6s, while keeping them under the fire of S8 guns (lances, pulselasers).

One turn of shooting, against a 3+ cover save, then your falcons/wave serpents are getting hit with 20 S9/S10 power klaws. Roughly three will hit, so that's 3 penetrating hits/turn.

Late-term objective grabbing is not the way to go in 5th edition, because of random game length. What happens if you zoom out on turn 5, and the game goes to 6 or 7?

Playing stand-off and shoot and trying to attrit them to death just isn't going to work well in 5th edition, because with only 5 guaranteed turns, you simply (in general) don't have enough time.

0ldsk00l wrote:
I know its not perfect, and wont stand up to harsh Mathhammering, but in this case I intend to not play the numbers, rather I would play the other player. If he intends to run such a HUGE point unit, I'll do my best to make sure those points are wasted.

Sounds good in theory, but even if all the nob player is forcing you to do is to stay away from his bikers, in an objective mission, that can be well worthwhile.

0ldsk00l wrote:and while he is doing this, I can go ahead and actaully play the mission.

You're not getting it...nob bikers EXCEL at playing the mission. Objectives? Great....since they're scoring units, the nobs effectively massive exclusion zones around the objectives where anything that enters, dies. Kill Points...well, the orks will have 5, maybe six. How many kill points are you fielding at 1750?

People are also talking about lootas in the backfield...Nob biker armies generally don't use lootas. They don't need to. The two nob biker units use up about 1500-1600 points by themselves, and the remaining points go into a squad of boyz or a squad of grots. With as many bodies as possible, you've got to dedicate more than just a single deep-striking squad to take them out...and if you do that, the nob bikers either come back and support, or they bend the rest of your army over the table.

If people were to take 100% serious Cent there would be no reason whatsoever to play against nob bikers... just shake hands and give your opponent full battle points. The fact is that nob bikers do lose such as in the ard Boys finals at least two of them lost there.

A fundamental tactic for beating them is to take out one unit fast. The remaining unit is not nearly as hard to handle.

Instead of just pointing out flaws in what people suggest here I would love to hear what you would use in an eldar army to beat them. I'm sure it can be done.

G

Centurian99 wrote:You're not getting it...nob bikers EXCEL at playing the mission. Objectives? Great....since they're scoring units, the nobs effectively massive exclusion zones around the objectives where anything that enters, dies. Kill Points...well, the orks will have 5, maybe six. How many kill points are you fielding at 1750?

People are also talking about lootas in the backfield...Nob biker armies generally don't use lootas. They don't need to. The two nob biker units use up about 1500-1600 points by themselves, and the remaining points go into a squad of boyz or a squad of grots. With as many bodies as possible, you've got to dedicate more than just a single deep-striking squad to take them out...and if you do that, the nob bikers either come back and support, or they bend the rest of your army over the table.

Also, I believe Moz's army (Best General Baltimore GT 08) had 2 units of bikerz, snikrot and kommandos, and 2 units of grotz. The kommandos with snikrot were an extra money shot in your face when you thought that you might have avoided the bikerz.

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
It has less total powerweapon swings than a lot of things...but then again, how many power weapons do you need?!

Against nob bikers - 44 S5 I5 PW attacks were barely enough.

That was a reference to the bikers overall. yes, that many may come up a tad short for THAT PERTICULAR list if I draw them in a tourney, but the rest of the time, it's almost overkill against most other things encountered in a tournament, which is why I dont run 2, or a unit with MORE powerweapons.

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
As for how Eldar beat them, I run a mech-eldar army, and my general thought on this is to keep my serpents and falcons scooting 12" a turn, so that they are only hit on 6s, while keeping them under the fire of S8 guns (lances, pulselasers).

One turn of shooting, against a 3+ cover save, then your falcons/wave serpents are getting hit with 20 S9/S10 power klaws. Roughly three will hit, so that's 3 penetrating hits/turn.

Late-term objective grabbing is not the way to go in 5th edition, because of random game length. What happens if you zoom out on turn 5, and the game goes to 6 or 7?

Playing stand-off and shoot and trying to attrit them to death just isn't going to work well in 5th edition, because with only 5 guaranteed turns, you simply (in general) don't have enough time.

If they are assaulting, they are getting a 4+ coversave. also, like I said, I am willing to feed them a vehicle in order to damage them. even with only a handful of S8+ weapons, a 4+ save doesnt save them from at least 2 turns of shooting. It wont wipe them, but it will really hurt them. (2 turns because they are getting shot by me the turn after they assault my vehicle, and assuming they kill it, they have at least one more turn of movement before they can make an attempt on another vehicle). Rinse and repeat.

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
I know its not perfect, and wont stand up to harsh Mathhammering, but in this case I intend to not play the numbers, rather I would play the other player. If he intends to run such a HUGE point unit, I'll do my best to make sure those points are wasted.

Sounds good in theory, but even if all the nob player is forcing you to do is to stay away from his bikers, in an objective mission, that can be well worthwhile.

plays both ways. if he in constantly trying to run down units that are worth a hell of a lot less than he is all game, he is wasting his time as well. in a KP mission, I can deny him my skimmers all game (18" move+assault vs 24" flat-out move), and he can't be everywhere at once, so whatever he has that is standing still remains vulnerable.

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:and while he is doing this, I can go ahead and actaully play the mission.

You're not getting it...nob bikers EXCEL at playing the mission. Objectives? Great....since they're scoring units, the nobs effectively massive exclusion zones around the objectives where anything that enters, dies. Kill Points...well, the orks will have 5, maybe six. How many kill points are you fielding at 1750?

People are also talking about lootas in the backfield...Nob biker armies generally don't use lootas. They don't need to. The two nob biker units use up about 1500-1600 points by themselves, and the remaining points go into a squad of boyz or a squad of grots. With as many bodies as possible, you've got to dedicate more than just a single deep-striking squad to take them out...and if you do that, the nob bikers either come back and support, or they bend the rest of your army over the table.

at the end of the day, they have TWO units that are going to stand a chance at capping objectives. compare that to 5 or 6 for the mech eldar. Toss a falcon on the same objectives they are tryin to cap, and it's contested. Easy to draw, not hard to win a mission like that. I never said my was was perfect, but it's what I would do to beat them (since I am not going to roll up a new list just to beat ONE army, because I dont want to lose to EVERYONE else). You can toss all the maths at it you want, but its all theoretical until you put some models down on the table across from me. until then, I like my odds, because I dont think that anyone who would ever use this list puts much thought into how to apply it.

Its like the monolith issue. Dont go crazy and try an annhilate it - go for the necrons. My point is, do the damage where you need to but try not to wipe the whole squad/s just because it can easily wipe any of yours.

Slowly saturate with wounds, then assault. Bah, silly orks. Id like to know if the mindwar issue has been clarifyed - What LD does the models use, its own in the stat line or the modifyed score in reguards to everything else.

Worse than a monolith; the bikers force you to pay attention to them unless you can tar-pit them, avoid them, or kill them.

Eldar will have trouble fielding an all-comers list that can handle Nobz Bikers also. It forces tourney Eldar to field 3 Wraithlords and possibly Karandras. You might be able to get away with just 3 Wraithlords though.

Biker Nobz make me want to buy a new Godzilla army for 5th edition.

Green Blow Fly wrote:If people were to take 100% serious Cent there would be no reason whatsoever to play against nob bikers... just shake hands and give your opponent full battle points. The fact is that nob bikers do lose such as in the ard Boys finals at least two of them lost there.

A fundamental tactic for beating them is to take out one unit fast. The remaining unit is not nearly as hard to handle.

Instead of just pointing out flaws in what people suggest here I would love to hear what you would use in an eldar army to beat them. I'm sure it can be done.

G

I've said what I think can beat them, and Eldar due have a fair number of options. The problem is that its a limited set of options, and a "fluffy" player that won't take those options has close to zero chance. You can't simply take the normal random hodgepodge and expect it to work.

The Nob bikers also seem, as I've noted, to have a "sweet spot" much as Godzilla nids did. At 1500, the nob squads aren't large enough. They're still tough, but its much easier to attrit them because they have less models to spread wounds out with. At 2000+, opposing armies have enough guns/assault power that they can swamp them.

But at 1750, it takes a careful, well-built list to be able to counter them, AND deal with the other army builds that are out there.

whitedragon wrote:
Also, I believe Moz's army (Best General Baltimore GT 08) had 2 units of bikerz, snikrot and kommandos, and 2 units of grotz. The kommandos with snikrot were an extra money shot in your face when you thought that you might have avoided the bikerz.

I'd love to see that list. I'm guessing his nob squads were not as large, which as I said, ultimately reduces their effectiveness.

0ldsk00l wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
It has less total powerweapon swings than a lot of things...but then again, how many power weapons do you need?!

Against nob bikers - 44 S5 I5 PW attacks were barely enough.

That was a reference to the bikers overall. yes, that many may come up a tad short for THAT PERTICULAR list if I draw them in a tourney, but the rest of the time, it's almost overkill against most other things encountered in a tournament, which is why I dont run 2, or a unit with MORE powerweapons.

There's the rub. Counters for nob bikers are sometimes vast overkill against other units, and come with their own drawbacks. The vanguard+khan+chappy combo...against non-bikers, they'll kill one unit that's not nearly as valuable, then be out in the open and shot to hell.

0ldsk00l wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
As for how Eldar beat them, I run a mech-eldar army, and my general thought on this is to keep my serpents and falcons scooting 12" a turn, so that they are only hit on 6s, while keeping them under the fire of S8 guns (lances, pulselasers).

One turn of shooting, against a 3+ cover save, then your falcons/wave serpents are getting hit with 20 S9/S10 power klaws. Roughly three will hit, so that's 3 penetrating hits/turn.

Late-term objective grabbing is not the way to go in 5th edition, because of random game length. What happens if you zoom out on turn 5, and the game goes to 6 or 7?

Playing stand-off and shoot and trying to attrit them to death just isn't going to work well in 5th edition, because with only 5 guaranteed turns, you simply (in general) don't have enough time.

If they are assaulting, they are getting a 4+ coversave. also, like I said, I am willing to feed them a vehicle in order to damage them. even with only a handful of S8+ weapons, a 4+ save doesnt save them from at least 2 turns of shooting. It wont wipe them, but it will really hurt them. (2 turns because they are getting shot by me the turn after they assault my vehicle, and assuming they kill it, they have at least one more turn of movement before they can make an attempt on another vehicle). Rinse and repeat.

If you've got everything mounted, then you can try and play keep-away...but if you're shooting, they can assault you. If you're not shooting, then they just keep turbo-boosting so that you have a 3+ cover save to deal with. Either way, you still have to maintain your distance, so you're staying away from the objectives, and letting the ork bikers control the field. If its a KP mission, then the orks can easily put you in a position where your vehicles are trapped, and can't get away.

0ldsk00l wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:
I know its not perfect, and wont stand up to harsh Mathhammering, but in this case I intend to not play the numbers, rather I would play the other player. If he intends to run such a HUGE point unit, I'll do my best to make sure those points are wasted.

Sounds good in theory, but even if all the nob player is forcing you to do is to stay away from his bikers, in an objective mission, that can be well worthwhile.

plays both ways. if he in constantly trying to run down units that are worth a hell of a lot less than he is all game, he is wasting his time as well. in a KP mission, I can deny him my skimmers all game (18" move+assault vs 24" flat-out move), and he can't be everywhere at once, so whatever he has that is standing still remains vulnerable.

Again, sounds good in theory, but on a 6x4 table, not easy to accomplish. In a KP mission, you're doubly screwed, because a smart nob player will focus on trapping the wave serpents. Kill the wave serpents, then kill the guys inside, and you're down two KP. Your shooting will hurt, but probably not kill, so you're down 2-0. Kill three wave serpents and the guys inside, and even if you kill both nob bikers (which will probably take the entire game, if it happens at all) and you've still lost 6 KP to 4 KP.

Playing a defensive strategy against the nob bikers isn't going to win you the game. You have to be able to turn that defensive strategy into a reliable offensive one, and against Nob Bikers, that's tough to do, especially in a KP mission.

0ldsk00l wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:

0ldsk00l wrote:and while he is doing this, I can go ahead and actaully play the mission.

You're not getting it...nob bikers EXCEL at playing the mission. Objectives? Great....since they're scoring units, the nobs effectively massive exclusion zones around the objectives where anything that enters, dies. Kill Points...well, the orks will have 5, maybe six. How many kill points are you fielding at 1750?

People are also talking about lootas in the backfield...Nob biker armies generally don't use lootas. They don't need to. The two nob biker units use up about 1500-1600 points by themselves, and the remaining points go into a squad of boyz or a squad of grots. With as many bodies as possible, you've got to dedicate more than just a single deep-striking squad to take them out...and if you do that, the nob bikers either come back and support, or they bend the rest of your army over the table.

at the end of the day, they have TWO units that are going to stand a chance at capping objectives. compare that to 5 or 6 for the mech eldar. Toss a falcon on the same objectives they are tryin to cap, and it's contested. Easy to draw, not hard to win a mission like that. I never said my was was perfect, but it's what I would do to beat them (since I am not going to roll up a new list just to beat ONE army, because I dont want to lose to EVERYONE else). You can toss all the maths at it you want, but its all theoretical until you put some models down on the table across from me. until then, I like my odds, because I dont think that anyone who would ever use this list puts much thought into how to apply it.

Yep, because people like Marc Parker (vegas GT winner who ran Nob bikers and ran into a dual-lash army played by last year's Circuit winner and lost at Baltimore), Neil Cauley (who won Baltimore and Chicago), and Moz are tactical morons. Sure, some people will play Nob Bikers because they think its an auto-win. But other players will play it because its strong, and know how to get the most of it. Anyone can beat the first category, but to have a chance against the second, you need to know how to counter it and have an army constructed to do so.

Razerous wrote:Its like the monolith issue. Dont go crazy and try an annhilate it - go for the necrons. My point is, do the damage where you need to but try not to wipe the whole squad/s just because it can easily wipe any of yours.

Slowly saturate with wounds, then assault. Bah, silly orks. Id like to know if the mindwar issue has been clarifyed - What LD does the models use, its own in the stat line or the modifyed score in reguards to everything else.

0ldsk00l wrote:Worse than a monolith; the bikers force you to pay attention to them unless you can tar-pit them, avoid them, or kill them.

Absolutely. And that's the problem. The only units that can reliably tar-pit them are units with massive numbers of good invulnerable saves, are fearless, or are both fearless and can put massive numbers of bodies from multiple units into the nob bikers. Even then, they're generally only good for a game turn, maybe two, because combat res is going to do a number on them.

Avoiding them sounds good in theory, but when you're essentially giving up the area threatened by nob bikers, your own shooting is greatly reduced, and you still have to get past that 4+/3+ cover save and a 4+ FNP save.

Which leads to the only real way of dealing with them: Kill them. You have to go offensive on them, as soon as is convenient to you, and you have to stack the deck in your favor in as many ways as possible. Which is what I said earlier - there are three things you need to do. As long as you can accomplish two of them, you've negated many of the nobs advantages defensively. If you can accomplish all three, you'll probably destroy the unit.

#1 - Massed S8+ hits. #2 - Ignoring/negating the cover save. #3 - Ignoring/negating the FNP save.

Reecius wrote:I see what you are saying Fifty, we sholdn't be looking for a one unit solution, but if you read back a lot of people propose multi squad solutions to nob bikers.

The problem is that you don't have time to pull out a bunch of shenanigans, they charge you (very possibly multi-charge you) turn two. You have to have a hammer to smash them with quickly or die.

I'm glad someone got what I was saying

I take your point too. Moving on from the last thing I was saying then...

I suppose the only response to yours is that you either have to smash them early or delay their arrival.

Smashing is very difficult, as shown above. I doubt delaying them is much easier. Is there any feasible way of delaying them without playing into their hands? How easy or hard would it be to pin them? I am guessing extremely difficult?

Plasma launchers will find it hard to damage, so will long rifles, shrieker cannon MIGHT do it, Spinneret rifle yes, but it is only assault 1, sunrifle - strength is too low. Scrub that plan - you'll never force enough pinning leadership tests to make it likely one will be failed. Damnit.

Do you get cover saves from blast markers?

I knew you would mention 1750 being their sweet spot to address their losses in the Ard Boys finals. The thing is when nob bikers appeared in the tournament scene most players were not prepared for them. Now people do realize their threat and are working on ways to defeat them. I am sure they probably win some more events but it won't be as easy. Eldar is a tough army to beat them but there are other races that can go to toe to toe with them. You have to win the majority of your games by a massacre to win a GT so if the nob bikers win some games by a lesser margin or even draw/lose (* shudders to even contemplate *) that will knock them out of the top spot.

It will be very interesting to see how many nob biker armies are at Adepticon this year. I reckon there will be quite a few.

G

If lots of people play Nob Bikers then they may get draws against each other and knock each other off of the top-spots.

Of course, that is not much comfort to anyone they do beat!

Green Blow Fly wrote:I knew you would mention 1750 being their sweet spot to address their losses in the Ard Boys finals. The thing is when nob bikers appeared in the tournament scene most players were not prepared for them. Now people do realize their threat and are working on ways to defeat them.
G

He mentioned that because it is very true, I was going to mention that myself. Bill is just being logical while others are wishing and dreaming, maybe that is why he seems so negative to you. The simple fact is it is much much more difficult to beat than most think. I personally hate the list because it invalidates the competitiveness of every interesting army I make. Luckily I have a decent chance with my Eldar list if I replace the Autarch with a Farseer with Guide and Doom(or maybe Mind War), if it doesn't pan out though I'll just have to play Lash. A list with multiple Raiders may be effective. Other than that I can't see much of anything else that is going to win anywhere close to 50% of the time.

Centurian99 wrote:Which leads to the only real way of dealing with them: Kill them. You have to go offensive on them, as soon as is convenient to you, and you have to stack the deck in your favor in as many ways as possible. Which is what I said earlier - there are three things you need to do. As long as you can accomplish two of them, you've negated many of the nobs advantages defensively. If you can accomplish all three, you'll probably destroy the unit.

Except that, as the last 7 pages are saying, there is no way to effectively kill them WITHOUT making a broken list that will lose to everything else.

You keep saying that vehicles will be trapped. please elaborate on how this happens.

Additionally, I wasn't advocating dismounting to shoot at the bikes. It is still possible to have a rather large number of S8+ shots in a mech-eldar list on vehicles alone. Again, when they move to assault (getting on average 3 hits, which still leaves a decent chance for survival if that vehicle has holo-fields) their save reverts to 4+, and they lose that pesky FnP. If they assault the stranded unit on foot, it will most likely also die in one round, also leaving the bikers with a 4+ without FnP. 2-3 pulse lasers, and 2-3 TL bright lances will make a dent. far more than anything else proposed so far, and it makes the bikers work for their kills, and leaves them stranded in your turn.

Again, it's not the Ubar-killy nobbiker list of stupidbrokendoom that everyone is saying is a MUST to fight them, but it works against all lists well, and still has the grapes to take on nobs with a decent chance of success.

I think this is a strong all comers list vs nob bikers. I can't tell you what you will always lose to with it though. You can switch out eldrad for something else if you'd like. Force the bikers to charge the DA, when they get wiped in 1 round, they will have to consolidate, giving the fire dragons a chance to blow them up. The Wraithlords can take care of the other unit.

Eldrad 210

10 Fire Dragons, Exarch 172
Wave Serpent, EML, Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones 140
10 Fire Dragons, Exarch 172
Wave Serpent, EML, Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones 140

5 Pathfinders 120
5 Pathfinders 120
10 Dire Avengers, Exarch, 2 Catapult, Bladestorm 152
10 Dire Avengers, Exarch, 2 Catapult, Bladestorm 152

Wraithlord, BL, Wraithblade 140
Wraithlord, BL, Wraithblade 140
Wraithlord, BL, Wraithblade 140

1798

The sweet spot for nob bikers does not come across as negative but funny as always saying why they are so great. Sure they are great but at least we can look ahead and say they will probably not win the gladiator in 09. My point if people trying to beat this list just give up and decide it's not possible that is making it even easier for this broken list. People just have to keep working at it and they will find ways to beat the list and keep them from massacring each game. They do have their weaknesses and that is a lot better than having to have dealt with broken holo falcons. Personally I think Space Marines in general is the best way to hit them with the beat stick, be it assault terminators, VAS, iron class or vindicators. Probably Chaos as well... especially lash spam.

G

Here's what I've been thinking. At 1850 points, I would field something like this:

Farseer (jetbike, fortune, doom, spirit stones, runes of warding)
Autarch on bike (jetbike, laser lance, mandiblasters, fusion gun)
10 Warlocks (jetbikes, 2x enhance, 2x ebolden)
5 Fire dragons
10 Dire avengers (exarch w/ dual cats, bladestorm)
Wave serpent (twin-linked brightlance, spirit stones)
10 Guardians (scatter laser) + warlock (embolden)
10 Guardians (scatter laser) + warlock (embolden)
2 Fire prisms
Falcon (scatter laser, shuriken cannon, holo-fields, spirit stones)

Against Nob bikers, the guardians I would probably start in reserve -- there's no need to provide an easy target. The mobility of this force is key. I cannot avoid the Nobs, but hopefully I can meet them on my terms, meaning that I assault them instead of them assaulting me.

Call the Nob squads A and B. My first priority is to kill one nob in squad A so that it drops to 10 models. This should be accomplished with the long-range S8+ weapons (brightlance, pulse laser, prism cannons). The purpose here is to insure that squad A is not fearless. After killing one model in squad A, the long-range weapons will focus on squad B, hopefully killing another couple of models over two turns.

On the second turn, the seer council and dire avengers will shoot squad A, doing roughly 4 unsaved wounds (assuming that the nobs turboboosted and I've cast doom). If I'm lucky, the autarch, who should separate from the council, may also kill a nob with his fusion gun (he should shoot first). The council and the autarch will then assault the nob squad. It's important that the farseer not be in the front row -- I want him in combat but not in base-to-base. The autarch should be in base-to-base with only one nob, and that nob should not have a powerfist. The autarch should inflict 2 unsaved wounds and the seers another 4. The return attacks from the nobs should kill 2 or 3 warlocks, so the Eldar win combat by a margin of 3 or 4. It's unlikely that the ork player was able to perfectly distribute the 10 wounds he took this turn such that no model died, so hopefully his Ld is down to 9 or 8. With a Ld modifier of -3 or -4, the nobs are likely to fall back. Because the autarch is now a separate unit, I can use his I6 to try to catch them (the council will be only I4 for this purpose).

Now I have only squad B to deal with. Squad B is already down a couple of models from taking the S8+ shots. Quite probably squad B will destroy the council or at least the autarch (lest I repeat the move), but with only one nob squad around, it will be easier to try to avoid it and take long-distance shots. Once the squad starts doing something instead of turboboosting, I can also use my dragons to better effect.

It's not a guaranteed victory, but it's a strategy that I think has a reasonable chance of success. It will be rather harder if the nobs get first turn. Also I think the force is reasonably well-balanced and will stand up well to a lot of other lists, so it's not just a gimmick to handle the nobs.

Nice tactics and list warmaster.

G

The Farseer has to be in the front lines in cc, IC's cannot hold back as this would be cowardly.

You can seperate him from the squad, start of turn & then you could probably charge him in as was suggested.

Good tactics.. when the unengaged squad b goes down to enough models to be hit by a single blast (or is that somthing silly like 1-3 models with the biker bases?) link up ur prisms for mass-vapage. Im curious?

Right.. another thought I had was - a dire-avenger squad with defend (,bladestorm) and simmershields surive enough not to be completely wiped? I mean one less A per ork can be sniffed at & that 5++ is also somthing nice but I mean with that taken into concideration how big a nob squad can that setup survive against? 3 nobz (full health.. just for point of arguement here, it hasnt been whittled down) 4, 5, 6. Maybe a full 10? Whats do yee say?

If you want to tar pit them, then go 2 x 20 guardians with warlock and embolden, even if they chew through 15, you still have a good chance of staying

and if they do chew through the first 20, keep the other right behind them, as the nobz cant run into the seond squad and that gives you about 40 shots

Squig_herder wrote:If you want to tar pit them, then go 2 x 20 guardians with warlock and embolden, even if they chew through 15, you still have a good chance of staying

anyone feel like mathhammering the chance of making a -15 LD check with a re-roll?

Blackarandras wrote:The Farseer has to be in the front lines in cc, IC's cannot hold back as this would be cowardly.

False. The farseer has to move first when reacting to being assaulted or when making a pile-in move, but not when making an assault move. But, if you are in a situation where the farseer does have to be in base-to-base, just try to put him with one of the nobs lacking a klaw.

He can't attack untill he is in base to base contact.

Umm..Maybe I am approaching this wrong but...What about Wave Serpent Spam and you tank shock the heck out them? Heck, couldn't you fit 6+ Cheap Wave Serpents and 3 Falcons into 1750 points? Wouldn't they fail a tank shock sooner or later?

Green Blow Fly wrote:I knew you would mention 1750 being their sweet spot to address their losses in the Ard Boys finals. The thing is when nob bikers appeared in the tournament scene most players were not prepared for them. Now people do realize their threat and are working on ways to defeat them. I am sure they probably win some more events but it won't be as easy. Eldar is a tough army to beat them but there are other races that can go to toe to toe with them. You have to win the majority of your games by a massacre to win a GT so if the nob bikers win some games by a lesser margin or even draw/lose (* shudders to even contemplate *) that will knock them out of the top spot.

It will be very interesting to see how many nob biker armies are at Adepticon this year. I reckon there will be quite a few.

G

I'll not take that bet.

But I'll stand by the statement that 1750ish is a sweet spot of sorts for nob bikers.

Fifty wrote:Do you get cover saves from blast markers?

Yep.

0ldsk00l wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:Which leads to the only real way of dealing with them: Kill them. You have to go offensive on them, as soon as is convenient to you, and you have to stack the deck in your favor in as many ways as possible. Which is what I said earlier - there are three things you need to do. As long as you can accomplish two of them, you've negated many of the nobs advantages defensively. If you can accomplish all three, you'll probably destroy the unit.

Except that, as the last 7 pages are saying, there is no way to effectively kill them WITHOUT making a broken list that will lose to everything else.

Not necesarilly...an eldar list capable of beating nob bikers will be strong against most other lists. The real difficulty comes in creating a list that can beat both Nob bikers AND horde orks. That's the calculation that makes things like 3x Shining Spears much less appealing.

0ldsk00l wrote:
You keep saying that vehicles will be trapped. please elaborate on how this happens.

Without writing a whole bunch of books...I'll put it this way.

Turn 1, orks turbo-boost to the center of the table. They then threaten a 36" (larger, really) diameter circle in the center of the table. The best place for fast skimmers to move to becomes the sides. Once they do that, the bikers can move that circle so that it covers one third of the table (or both ends). The skimmers now can't really double-back, because if they do, they'll almost certainly have to move into the area threatened by the bikers. They've only got one place to run, the corners. once they're in the corners, the bikes are almost guaranteed an assault in the turn afterwards.

Now, the only way to really escape that predicament is to go flat-out and have star engines. Every one that does that isn't shooting. The whole time, if you separate, you're taking as many shots on the bikers as you can. If you can have half of your force shooting (while the other half is going flat-out), you'll probably have 5-7 S8 shots a turn. Maybe a bit more, if you've equipped falcons with EMLs or Bright Lances. Of those, probably about half will hit. 3+ turbo-boost saves will keep most of those shots from killing a model, so you'll kill one or two nob bikers a turn. Any error or misjudgement of distance, and those bikers are on you like white on toast.

This all assumes that the bikers are working together. if they spread out, they can threaten ridiculous amounts of the table, and force almost all of your skimmers to keep moving or risk getting assaulted.

0ldsk00l wrote:
Additionally, I wasn't advocating dismounting to shoot at the bikes. It is still possible to have a rather large number of S8+ shots in a mech-eldar list on vehicles alone. Again, when they move to assault (getting on average 3 hits, which still leaves a decent chance for survival if that vehicle has holo-fields) their save reverts to 4+, and they lose that pesky FnP. If they assault the stranded unit on foot, it will most likely also die in one round, also leaving the bikers with a 4+ without FnP. 2-3 pulse lasers, and 2-3 TL bright lances will make a dent. far more than anything else proposed so far, and it makes the bikers work for their kills, and leaves them stranded in your turn.

True, except if I was running nob bikers, I'd ignore your falcons, and concentrate on the wave serpents carrying Troops. Wave Serpents go down much easier than Falcons, and without scoring units, the Eldar can only contest. How many scoring units are we talking about in an all-mech Eldar force? 3 squads of Dire Avengers? Two squads of nob bikers should be able to easily account for two of them, and quite possibly the third.

0ldsk00l wrote:
Again, it's not the Ubar-killy nobbiker list of stupidbrokendoom that everyone is saying is a MUST to fight them, but it works against all lists well, and still has the grapes to take on nobs with a decent chance of success.

Success? I honestly doubt it. I'd say that you're looking at army with a good chance of drawing (in a non-KP mission), but to actually succeed, you have to be able to kill the bikers, not just run away from them.

Using your numbers, you're talking something like 2 bikers dead a turn from that shooting. Less if the ork player puts a hit on the warboss.

Green Blow Fly wrote:The sweet spot for nob bikers does not come across as negative but funny as always saying why they are so great. Sure they are great but at least we can look ahead and say they will probably not win the gladiator in 09. My point if people trying to beat this list just give up and decide it's not possible that is making it even easier for this broken list. People just have to keep working at it and they will find ways to beat the list and keep them from massacring each game. They do have their weaknesses and that is a lot better than having to have dealt with broken holo falcons. Personally I think Space Marines in general is the best way to hit them with the beat stick, be it assault terminators, VAS, iron class or vindicators. Probably Chaos as well... especially lash spam.

G

Agreed. Anyone who thinks that they can play their same Eldar list that they've been running and do well against nob bikers is seriously delusional. Unless they happened to include things that work by accident, they're going to, at best, eke out some draws.

Take the 4 corners

focusedfire wrote:Take the 4 corners

Great. I concentrate on the two corners that have your wave serpents in it, turbo-boost the bikers into a position where you can't move them far enough away, and charge them on the next turn.

Don't forget the after-thought unit, either. The squad of boyz or whatever is in the backfield, also closes off a portion of the table, and removes maneuvering options, because if you move into assault range of them, they'll charge you, and with the ridiculous-silly number of attacks orks get, at S4 and with powerklaws, they probably get some glancing hits in.

Which is why you get rid of them

Centurian99 wrote:[Without writing a whole bunch of books...I'll put it this way.

Turn 1, orks turbo-boost to the center of the table. They then threaten a 36" (larger, really) diameter circle in the center of the table. The best place for fast skimmers to move to becomes the sides. Once they do that, the bikers can move that circle so that it covers one third of the table (or both ends). The skimmers now can't really double-back, because if they do, they'll almost certainly have to move into the area threatened by the bikers. They've only got one place to run, the corners. once they're in the corners, the bikes are almost guaranteed an assault in the turn afterwards.

Now, the only way to really escape that predicament is to go flat-out and have star engines. Every one that does that isn't shooting. The whole time, if you separate, you're taking as many shots on the bikers as you can. If you can have half of your force shooting (while the other half is going flat-out), you'll probably have 5-7 S8 shots a turn. Maybe a bit more, if you've equipped falcons with EMLs or Bright Lances. Of those, probably about half will hit. 3+ turbo-boost saves will keep most of those shots from killing a model, so you'll kill one or two nob bikers a turn. Any error or misjudgement of distance, and those bikers are on you like white on toast.

This all assumes that the bikers are working together. if they spread out, they can threaten ridiculous amounts of the table, and force almost all of your skimmers to keep moving or risk getting assaulted.

And the situation you describe here takes easily 2-3 turns of the bikers chasing before getting their shots in on ONE vehicle. ASSUMING they kill it, they have lost themselves the game by wasting that much time as it is. 2-3 turns of shooting on the eldar side however will (by your math) account for 4-6 bikes. I like that math. I am more than comfortable scooting 12" a turn if needed. 6+ to hit is a pretty decent defense against dwindling numbers of bikers, especially if they dont max out on fists.

Again, as I have said SEVERAL times by now, it's not perfect. but nothing is. and tailoring a list specifically to fight them is far more problematic than finding a way for YOUR list to make a go at it. Any idiot can dump a bunch of $$$$$$$ on the new ubar-killyness and let it play the game for them (isn't that the topic of this discussion to begin with?), but it takes a bit of creativity and thought to work with what you have.

On another note, I saw the funniest anti-nob biker strat today: local guy was playing against SM, and the SM player took 2 thunderfire cannons. I think they are crap myself, but he kept pegging the bikers with supterrainian shells, forcing them to make dangerous terrain tests all game, and prevented them from ever turbo-boosting. a few rounds of lascannon shooting, and one demolisher shot did them in before they could assault.

Fun option #2:

when deploying objective markers in objective games, put them within 3" of a 2+ story building. deposit troops on the 2nd and higher floor, and sit back as the best he can do is contest, or shoot (crappily) at the dug-in troops, giving up the 3+ save, and exposing them to more fire.

Why do people keep proposing some wacky tactics to beat this list?

40K is not a game of crazy tacitcal manuevering. You have a limited amount of space and a limited amount of time to do anything. Nob bikers can go from one end of the board to the other. You cant run, you cant hide, and very few armies can shoot them to death.

Nob bikers are nothing like a c'tan or a monolith, neither is even remotely as deadly, I cant think of anything that has ever been in the game like this, maybe wolfgaurd from 2nd ed, but that is apples and oranges.

And Oldskool, face the facts man, you better bring the nastiest army list you can imagine (broken has no relevence what so ever to this argument) to beat Nob Bikers which are uber broke. No offense meant to you, but this is a gunfight, dont bring a knife.

Besides, I just do not understand why people cry cheese in a gloves off tounry situation. Bring your best and expect to play the best or do not come. A for fun game is obviously different, but you dont bring bikers to a for fun game in most situations.

What you have to do is make a unit or combination of units that can meet the bikers head on. The good thing is that if a unit or combo of units can do that then they will be good against nearly everything else in the game.

If this army is really popular then you can feel confident in investing a huge amount of points in a hammer unit or units.

Man, dual lash chaos, nob bikers are going to be tit for tat with one another.

For the pointy ears, after some thought I think this would be a good combo:

-20 dragons in wave serpents w/ EML

-10 Man gaurdian squad with serpent w/ EML (serpent transports harlies)

-5 man pathfinder squad

-10 Harlies w/ shadowseer

-Eldrad with 4 warlocks w destructor, embolden and enhance
in
-Falcon with b.lance, holofields

-Karanadras with eldrad & co. in Falcon

-3 Shinning spears with exarch + star lance

just around 2000

Why the trasports? To keep you safe from lash and to keep you mobile.

The army can reliably wipe out one nob bikers squad in a single turn and the trasnports can shield you from the other for a turn with tank shocking.

Still not a gimme, but so far as I go over the figures in my head, it works out fairly reliably.

20 Dragons will cause 11 wounds, one on each biker so you could kill some klaws or the painboy, and expect 5 or 6 kills.

The trasports should cause 2 str 8 unsaved wounds, which is another few dead.

and the combo charge with the warlocks and Karanadras plus the halries wipes any survivors with minimul casualties and runs down survivors.

All of this depends on correct positioning though, which comes down to luck and skill. It also assumes you can get the charge off out of the wave serpents which is not alwasy easy to do. But, if it works you stomp one squad and are in good position to hit the orther very nearly as hard or he has to run away from you.

What do you guys think?

focusedfire wrote:Which is why you get rid of them

How the heck is he getting rid of them, when everything is in wave serpents and falcons, and everything he's got is spending most of his time running away as fast as they can from nob bikers?

We've already established that you think you can afford to go after the backfield unit, and that it'll make a difference. We're talking about a Mech list here against the Nob Bikers of Doom, so you can at least try to not change the rules mid-game.

0ldsk00l wrote:
And the situation you describe here takes easily 2-3 turns of the bikers chasing before getting their shots in on ONE vehicle. ASSUMING they kill it, they have lost themselves the game by wasting that much time as it is. 2-3 turns of shooting on the eldar side however will (by your math) account for 4-6 bikes. I like that math. I am more than comfortable scooting 12" a turn if needed. 6+ to hit is a pretty decent defense against dwindling numbers of bikers, especially if they dont max out on fists.

If you're only moving 12", you're dead. If I'm running the bikers, I ignore your falcons/prisms, and go after the ones that matter...your wave serpents with the nice squishy stuff inside. In an objective mission, killing you wave serpents and the troops inside guarantees that you can't win. In a KP mission, each wave serpent is worth 2 KP, when you count the squad inside.

0ldsk00l wrote:
Again, as I have said SEVERAL times by now, it's not perfect. but nothing is. and tailoring a list specifically to fight them is far more problematic than finding a way for YOUR list to make a go at it. Any idiot can dump a bunch of $$$$$$$ on the new ubar-killyness and let it play the game for them (isn't that the topic of this discussion to begin with?), but it takes a bit of creativity and thought to work with what you have.

I understand what you're trying to do. I'm simply tellling you that it won't work, 90% of the time with the lists that most people are fielding. At best, you end up playing for the draw. If you want to WIN against nob bikers, you have to have a list that's capable of the three things I've said before...massed S8 attacks (that would be at least 15-20 shooting, or about a third of that from assault), be able to ignore the FNP, and/or be negate to avoid cover/armor.

0ldsk00l wrote:
On another note, I saw the funniest anti-nob biker strat today: local guy was playing against SM, and the SM player took 2 thunderfire cannons. I think they are crap myself, but he kept pegging the bikers with supterrainian shells, forcing them to make dangerous terrain tests all game, and prevented them from ever turbo-boosting. a few rounds of lascannon shooting, and one demolisher shot did them in before they could assault.

Nice trick (and that's a honest congrats, not sarcastic). Well done for the SM player. I'm actually thinking that in the right list, thunderfires have some use in a tournament list.

However, based on what you're describing, I'm betting there was only one squad of bikers. Now you have to figure out how to deal with two. That's a much more difficult ball of wax. They can pretty safely not worry about DT tests, and they're still moving 12" a turn. If they go second, its entirely reasonable for the Ork player to start off-board...depending on the opponent's list, it might even be the best play.

0ldsk00l wrote:Fun option #2:
when deploying objective markers in objective games, put them within 3" of a 2+ story building. deposit troops on the 2nd and higher floor, and sit back as the best he can do is contest, or shoot (crappily) at the dug-in troops, giving up the 3+ save, and exposing them to more fire.

You need to be able to get the objective more than 3" off the ground for that to work. And to be honest, I find that a bit more abusive than the nob biker list is (note for anyone who hasn't been paying attention: I don't play nob bikers. I don't play orks. I don't have any desire to play nob bikers and/or orks). .

Reecius wrote:
What you have to do is make a unit or combination of units that can meet the bikers head on. The good thing is that if a unit or combo of units can do that then they will be good against nearly everything else in the game.

Not absolutely, but quite likely. 2 squads of 10 dragons and 10 harlequins, backed by some farseer support, is a solid combo almost no matter who you're playing against (horde orks being the one exception.) But 3x Shining Spears...much more of a gamble.

Reecius wrote:
For the pointy ears, after some thought I think this would be a good combo:
-20 dragons in wave serpents w/ EML
-10 Man gaurdian squad with serpent w/ EML (serpent transports harlies)
-5 man pathfinder squad
-10 Harlies w/ shadowseer
-Eldrad with 4 warlocks w destructor, embolden and enhance
in
-Falcon with b.lance, holofields
-Karanadras with eldrad & co. in Falcon
-3 Shinning spears with exarch + star lance

just around 2000

Why the trasports? To keep you safe from lash and to keep you mobile.

The army can reliably wipe out one nob bikers squad in a single turn and the trasnports can shield you from the other for a turn with tank shocking.

Still not a gimme, but so far as I go over the figures in my head, it works out fairly reliably.

20 Dragons will cause 11 wounds, one on each biker so you could kill some klaws or the painboy, and expect 5 or 6 kills.

The trasports should cause 2 str 8 unsaved wounds, which is another few dead.

and the combo charge with the warlocks and Karanadras plus the halries wipes any survivors with minimul casualties and runs down survivors.

All of this depends on correct positioning though, which comes down to luck and skill. It also assumes you can get the charge off out of the wave serpents which is not alwasy easy to do. But, if it works you stomp one squad and are in good position to hit the orther very nearly as hard or he has to run away from you.

What do you guys think?

That's a rock-hard list. but with only two troops, you're somewhat crippled in objective missions. Theoretically, you could take on both squads at once, by sending Eldrad, Karandas, and the warlocks at one, while piling everything onto the other.

Green Blow Fly wrote:The sweet spot for nob bikers does not come across as negative but funny as always saying why they are so great. Sure they are great but at least we can look ahead and say they will probably not win the gladiator in 09.

G

At higher points the other units the Orks take pale in comparison to his 2 Nob squads while the other player just has more stuff to attack the same two Nob squads with. Up to 750 more points of stuff. You may think that is funny but the Nob Bikers aren't laughing. You say it is funny, then why did they do poorly at 2500 but get 1st and 2nd at 1750?

So yeah they probably aren't going to win the Gladiator... but maybe they can take down that Titan and Hierophant. That would be something.

Things people seem to not understand:

1) The warboss is soaking alot of those Str8+ wounds so Eldar Mech won't really be all that great against them.

2) Unless you killed a bunch from one squad before you charged you will almost certainly lose your entire beefy attacking squad(exception Warlocks) and then take autofail checks on all squads involved in the assault. 15 Power Klaws at WS 5 and 5 from the Boss has a tendency to completely destroy anything it runs into.

3) They aren't broken at all(since their are ways to defeat them), they just absolutely crush the list next door 95% of the time.

I am working on an eldar list to assassinate the n0b bikers.

In the mean time feel free to continue with the circular thrusts while eliciting the joy of play n0b bikers.

G

What happens if you tank shock the grots?

1) The warboss is soaking alot of those Str8+ wounds so Eldar Mech won't really be all that great against them.

2) Unless you killed a bunch from one squad before you charged you will almost certainly lose your entire beefy attacking squad(exception Warlocks) and then take autofail checks on all squads involved in the assault. 15 Power Klaws at WS 5 and 5 from the Boss has a tendency to completely destroy anything it runs into.

3) They aren't broken at all(since their are ways to defeat them), they just absolutely crush the list next door 95% of the time.

What are we missing? I am not seeing what you mean? I am not trying to combatative just curious if you see something I am missing?

The warboss can soak two wounds, the list we were looking at causes 11 average wounds, the ork player then has to put one on each biker. He will lose some klaws most likely, possibly the painboy if you get lucky. You can assume an average of 1 wound on the warboss and 4 or 5 dead bikers, leaving 6 or 7 alive. Trasports and Pathfinders shooting drops another 2.

The charge should slaughter the Orks and as Centurian said, you could actually tie up the other squad with the warlocks and Karanadras if you are fortuned. You as many regular attacks on big K as possible with a rerollable 2+, and the klaw attacks on the warlocks if you can. Also, drop eldrad and pick up a farseer with doom, fortune, warding and stones, I forgot that the elderly Eldrad cant fleet.

If you manage to Doom the squad you shot at, it wont make much difference for shooting as you wound on a 2, but in assault, the Harlies will cause an average of about 6 unsaved wounds at in 7. The warboss can only take one more if he soaked up wounds from shooting, but unfortunately at this point there are only 6 or less Bikers left, so one goes down (this is all assuming the painboy lives as well). The charge form the shinning spears also nets you one unsaved str 8 wound and one unsaved str 6 wound, killing off two more. That leaves you with 4 bikers. Even if miraculously it was all of the klaws and the warboss, which is HIGLY unlikely, you probably only lose the spears, but you win by a large margin on the combat res, breaking the squad and easily running them down.

The odds are in your favor by a very large margin. If you threw in the Karaandras squad, you would take maybe two casualties in return, but wipe out the orks.

The low amount of troops does suck though, and at 1750 you have some issues as well.

focusedfire wrote:What happens if you tank shock the grots?

You're quite focused on Grots. Re-rollable LD7 works around 80% of the time. Besides, you're more likely to see a single squad of boyz

I think we can all agree that Nob Bikers are broken. This unit really irritates me because it breaks the game. Look at all the crap you have to do to your army to beat this one unit. When that happens you know the unit is broken. Even theoretical counters are not full proof vs. these things...but yet the reverse is true for the Nob Bikers. There isn't a unit that they can't handle...and that's a huge rub for me. I lost a game vs. Nob Biker Orks this past weekend with my Tau, but it felt good to know I killed his precious Nob Biker squad. If only there was a turn 8! LOL.

Capt K

CaptKaruthors wrote:I think we can all agree that Nob Bikers are broken. This unit really irritates me because it breaks the game.

I disagree with this statement. Off the top of my head, lists that kill Nob Bikers: Jetseer Eldar, 6x Ironclad Rhino Marine spam, Assault Terminator in Land Raiders spam, Crisis suit melta/missile spam or melta/plasma spam...

It's a gimmick list. Just like Nidzilla, it'll be beaten by other gimmick lists.

Dont forget, implant attack 'stealers!

who was using Nob bikers Capt K?

All those lists are something that can allow you to compete with them...but your outlook is 50/50 at best. Also with those lists...you may beat the Nob Biker list, but get killed by something else your army can't handle because you tooled up too much to deal with them...yet the same isn't true for someone that is playing a list with Nob Bikers in it. The biggest frustration for me is that the Ork codex has an answer to everything in the game....everything. No other codex does. That should be a sign, don't you think? IMHO, an idiot can with with an Ork army now.

Capt K

sourclams wrote:

CaptKaruthors wrote:I think we can all agree that Nob Bikers are broken. This unit really irritates me because it breaks the game.

I disagree with this statement. Off the top of my head, lists that kill Nob Bikers: Jetseer Eldar, 6x Ironclad Rhino Marine spam, Assault Terminator in Land Raiders spam, Crisis suit melta/missile spam or melta/plasma spam...

It's a gimmick list. Just like Nidzilla, it'll be beaten by other gimmick lists.

It doesn't matter who it is. It's all the same when you face those lists...LOL.

thehod wrote:who was using Nob bikers Capt K?

CaptKaruthors wrote:All those lists are something that can allow you to compete with them...but your outlook is 50/50 at best.

So a 50/50 chance against the most uberly broken list ever is... balance, right? Even chances is balance, right? In addition, I give those lists a better than 50/50 chance. Assault Terminators in Land Raiders have better than even odds by virtue of being as mobile and harder to kill.

Also with those lists...you may beat the Nob Biker list, but get killed by something else your army can't handle because you tooled up too much to deal with them...yet the same isn't true for someone that is playing a list with Nob Bikers in it.

Jetseer Eldar don't do well universally? The only army I know of killing them with ease is... well, none really.

Nob Bikers don't do well against drop Crisis Tau (no cover saves) or Land Raider Terminators (6s to hit and 4-5 to glance = fail).

The biggest frustration for me is that the Ork codex has an answer to everything in the game....everything. No other codex does. That should be a sign, don't you think? IMHO, an idiot can with with an Ork army now.

But not all in one list. This makes them arguably the best codex, but they can only field so many elements in one army. Lists like Nob Bikers are only unbeatable if you firmly believe they are.

Nidzilla is far, far, far form a gimmick list, and nob bikers arent a gimmick either unless you consider a gimmick crushing your opponant.

A gimmick lists requires a tirck to work. There is no trick with Nidzilla or Nob Bikers other than being statistically superior to nearly every other army.

Also, out of curiousty, how do you think ironclad dreads beat nob bikers? The bikers should shread the Irondclads.

Well lets see,

6 ironclads all somehow charge the same squad giving you 12 hits, 10 wounds, 7 dead bikers.

Boss causes one pen, one glance on a single dread, and the klaws each average .25 for a glance and .25 for a pen, so with 3 of them you probably get one of each.

Yeah, I guess you are right, if you can somehow pull of that crazy charge you win, if the nobs charge you on their terms (only hitting say, three ironclads at once per nob squad) which they should as they are faster, you get hosed.

And demon hunters waste jetseer eldar, but then hey, they aren't really in the metagame are they!