Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Having recently visited my local GW, I was surprised to see an entire army of bikes annihilate a Ork army, including several battlewagons. Is this a feasible army, and how many bikes should I use, as I only saw the end of the other guy's game
MC

Never done it myself, but I've seen some excellent Battle Reports and Army Lists based on this idea many times. A little Searchy-Fu in those sub-forums would probably sift out some gold.

Not a novice army due to low model count, but very effective.

Space Marines have access to a good amount of firepower. Plasmaguns or meltaguns on regular bikers, add a attack bike, and sgt with combi-weapon.

Command squads can be armed to be the HtH part of army. Add a special character, Khan or Shrike or go basic with captain or chaplain.

They are pretty good, actually. As was said, it is not for the novice. Very difficult army to use and takes a huge amount of finesse, but it can be rather brutal if it goes well. If you like mobile Meltas, this is one awesome way to get them.

If you rely mainly on bikes, make sure you have some line-breaker units, to free your bikes up when they get tarpitted. The bikecommand squads are good. They are crazy expensive tho, and have large bulls-eyes on them. If you want to outflank, make sure you have something durable with good ranged firepower or assault capability to keep your opponent occupied, otherwise he will dig-in like pikes against heavy cav.

Thanks for all the advice. I was also thinking of adding in a Land Speeder Storm, then putting a load of drop pods out as the storm could carry scouts which would have a locator beacon. Any thought on how good that would be? I know it woud require finesse, and that might be my problem.
MC

Bike/high speed armies, whilst cool, don't really suit your playing style MC, but I like that idea with the Storm.
I would do it for Terminators though, but thats just my personal opinion as I don't like the Pods.

Would be alright with quite a few bikes and attack bikes. If this is for the thingy MC I don't think a Landspeeder would fit into the small points capacity.

The OC-D

suppose, but it would look awful cool. LSS in't tht expnesive, as its only 125 pts with the storm and the scout squad. with the locator beacon it would come to 140pts, so a worthy investment. I'd need to try it out first though, and that would need a lot of proxies for our next game. Would anybody mind?
MC

The OC-D is right MC, it doesnt sound too much when you say it like that but when you try fit a whole working force together, you'll find you lack something which could cost you a game. Me and yani found this when playing around with our lists. But then again try it out when we next play, i could be horribly wrong and you could destroy us lol and yeah proxies are cool but only if you are actually gonna get the models at some point lol.


Elliotminorkid

true elliotminorkid, but if I get a load of bikes, then the army would be good, and if OCD helps me convert the damaged speeder, that will save me some time, and I've gotta get an army which will always work. Other than that, I might take a lead from an example in the SM codex.
MC

Oh and who can forget the possibilty of the drop-poding biker command squad of doom!

ok so it takes a particularly perverse reading of the rules to claim its legal - but HOW COOL would it be!

the pod crashing to earth, the revving of six cylinder engines, the the command squad bursting forth with TH + SS! HURR!

Bike marines are an unrecognized power build. They are not really a "finesse" army however, as the tactics with them are fairly straightforward:

Turn 1, turboboost close enough to the enemy that he cannot escape melta range next turn.

Turn 2, blow up all of your opponent's transports

Turn 3, assault weak CC stuff, shoot strong CC stuff.

One of the trick is to stay away from Khan.

Combat tactics can be used as a poor-man's hit and run for your entire army.

Sounds easy, but it does take finesse. You need to watch terrain like a hawk and if you need to split your forces, you must do it properly. If you get pulled into a wild goose chase or tarpitted, you are going to lose a chunk of models you can't afford. Also, you can turbo and be ready to Melta, but what then the guys jump out of a Land Raider and thrash you? What if they take away your cover saves?

I played SM Bikers and I think it is a tough army to play, but very strong too. I agree with the avoidance of Khan. He is a waste of points.

If you bring some nice support units for the bikes such as TH/SS Termies to handle assaults and Tacticals in Rhinos to defend/take objectives, it really boost the effectiveness of the army and shores up some of the weak points (CC and low model count/ability to hold/defend objectives).

em_en_oh_pee wrote:Sounds easy, but it does take finesse. You need to watch terrain like a hawk and if you need to split your forces, you must do it properly. If you get pulled into a wild goose chase or tarpitted, you are going to lose a chunk of models you can't afford. Also, you can turbo and be ready to Melta, but what then the guys jump out of a Land Raider and thrash you? What if they take away your cover saves?

I played SM Bikers and I think it is a tough army to play, but very strong too. I agree with the avoidance of Khan. He is a waste of points.

I dunno, maybe I have a better eye for 12" than most people, but it seems very straightforward to me.

Thanks for the advice, I'll consider it. Only problem with starting up the bike army will be that I'll have to spend a helluva lot of money on the basic troops. Slight rules query while I'm here. By taking a CM on a bike, could I take a Honour Squad with a bike Squad?

MC

extermikator wrote:Thanks for the advice, I'll consider it. Only problem with starting up the bike army will be that I'll have to spend a helluva lot of money on the basic troops. Slight rules query while I'm here. By taking a CM on a bike, could I take a Honour Squad with a bike Squad?

MC

Nope, nowhere does it say that the Honor Guard can take bikes, so they aren't allowed. Also, if you take a Chapter Master on a Bike but no Captain on a Bike, then your 5+ Man Bike squads won't count as troops, as the Mounted rule that turns them into troops is only available to Captains on Bikes.

Also, don't forget the Ravenwing Battleforce. It's a great way to build up a bike army at a significant discount.

willydstyle wrote:Also, don't forget the Ravenwing Battleforce. It's a great way to build up a bike army at a significant discount.

It most certanly is a great deal; they are by far the coolest looking bikes out there to boot. However, be careful, if you paint them anything close to RW colors may people may confuse them for DA. RW has vastly different rules and plays differenly. Just giving you the heads up.

You don't have to use the RW "bling", so you can model them as standard bikers.

That box is the best value ever. 5 Bikes, 1 Sarge, 1 Speeder, and an AB?! For $90?! Yes, please. Just model them up without the RW stuff and paint them according to what you want. Simple, cost-effective.

Thanks for the idea, hadn't thought you could take the RW box set and not use the DA parts. Thanks. Would a BS with a locator beacon be any good, as I thought that using that with a DP or Termies wouyld be pretty killer. Any ideas?

MC

If you're going to take a locator beacon and DS termies, you may as well go the whole hog and do a Dark Angels army anyway. Arguably vanilla marines are more efficient if you want mostly bikes and power armour troops, but if you want mostly bikes and termies, you may as well make one or both scoring, which you can with Dark Angels (plus you get free teleport homers on all the bikes, and you get half your DSing termies show up on Turn 1 with Deathwing Assault).

With the new rules for SM's, you get the rule, but only for DP's, so that might be a problem. Thanks for the critical analysis!

MC