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Are Space Marine Bikes an all-or-nothing deal? Or can an army with just 8-12 of them work? I don't want to run a bike force, but I think I want to use them as part of a mechanized army. Do they have a place?

In large squads, I can see them being effective. Make sure to include an attack bike, outfitted with whatever it is you want the squad to accomplish. Same goes for the two weapon upgrades in the squad of normal bikers. Combat Squads helps with the versatility, as well.

Only the mounted command squad is worth taking plus MM attack bikes.

G

If you have Khan in your army their rather nice.

All bike-mounted is effective and fun to play. Bikes in combination gets risky unless you keep them scoring, and build your army to support them.

If you just want meltas to pop armor, MM attack bikes are your best bet. Otherwise you want to make sure it's max size and geared to handle everything. I usually run melta, multi-melta and flamer. Works great.

One tooled up unit of SM Bikes can be very effective, especially with a Bike Captain to make them scoring. If you kit them out with melta, MM AB, flamer, and PF and run the Captain with them, they can handle just about any threat on the field. I use a full bike squad in my mechanized army because it provides an offensive, scoring punch that Tacticals have a hard time achieving. I use the Bikes to take out problem units and either take or contest late game objectives while the Tacticals hold objectives that have been secured or provide extra fire support from their transports. Bikes also do VERY well coming in from reserve, as you can turbo-boost them to exactly where they're needed and really cause problems for your opponent. To be honest, I think mixing Bikes and Tacticals is stronger than having just one, as they shore up each others' weaknesses. Bikes are great at offensive objective taking and staying mobile while Tacticals can hold/defend objectives easier and can move around in cover without getting hurt (and can claim objectives on upper floors of ruins, something bikes can't do).