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What do you guys think about taking the following unit as a Tank Hunting Unit...

05 Warbikers: Slugga, Choppa, Dakkagun (TL)
__ Nob: Slugga, Powerklaw, Boss Pole, Dakkagun

165 points to provide a cheap threat that has be dealt with or will beat the equivalent of a TAC squad... Turbo-boosting the first turn provides them with a 3+ cover save and their T5 provides them with an edge in combat... it take about 4 bolter shots to fell one biker, 6 if you turboosted... On your second turn (provided your opponent has not dumped fire into it or made them flee) you can easily hit anything you want on the table... (Ideally a LR or the equivalent of a devastator squad)

People often underestimate how threatening the shooting is from them... 3 shots each even at BS 2 will hit 5/9 of the time because they are TL... the S5 means you wound on 3+ most of the time.

Total garbage, pure awesome, or just take a Deffkopta with a Buzzsaw and scout assault something expensive.

You're one bike short of a unit I use in every army.

They are a useful and good unit with a variety of strengths and weaknesses.

If all you want is a tank-hunting unit then deffkoptaz are better. Deffkoptaz are cheaper for the crucial pk/buzzsaw hits and with their scout move can get a 1st turn charge fairly regularly. Outflank helps them in games when you aren't going first and they can still probably charge without getting shot at first.

What the bikes have though is much, much greater survivability, superior anti-infantry firepower and superior assault capability. A deffkopta is always going to be a suicide tank hunter unit, a bike mob is tactically flexible and has a variety of roles.

Some of the roles I've used them in with my orks

1 - tank hunting, well its a very fast pk and in a pinch can go kill enemy tanks. If you play a lot of mech they can quite happily go hunt main battle tanks or try and open up transports. There's better dedicated anti-tank for orks but these will do the job just fine.

2 - screening, they have a 4+ cover save and can be deployed in front of your troops first turn to grant those behind them a 4+ cover save too. Obviously next turn they'll speed away to go attack something but during deployment you can use them to shield more vulnerable troops.

3 - backfield threats, there aren't as many of these as their use to be but orks, IG, marines (of all stripes) and eldar still often use shooty units that are vulnerable to assault and tend to stay at the back of the field. A fast assault unit is great for picking on these threats that are shooting up the rest of the army.

4 - a fast assault unit, 6 bikes compare very favourably to 12 trukk boyz. Although the trukk boyz have a larger charge range when we consider turbo-boost both units are looking at a turn 2 minimum to launch an assault against most enemies and if you're playing agressively that's very little difference. The combo of T5, 4+ and 4+ cover save makes them considerably tougher than a mob of trukk boyz even if you factor in having to blow open the trukk first. Aggressively you're looking at 20 str 4 attacks and 4 pk attacks on the charge vs 44 str 4 attacks and 4 pk attacks from the trukk boyz but when you factor in that the trukkers only have 12 str 4 shots and the bikes have 18 twinlinked str 5 shots and the gap narrows. Their added toughness plus their shooting power means less enemies will be hitting them and more orks will live to be swinging relative to the trukekrs too although power weapons will hurt a lot more. All in all as a fast assault unit they are superior to trukkers in my view only lacking the ability to score.

5 - shoot with them, 18" isn't fantastic for a shooting unit but it lets you stay at max range and out of assault range vs quite a few threats, daemons such as bloodletters for instace are a good example of an enemy that you can shoot at 18" and keep backing up to avoid a charge from. Bikes are surprisingly shooty and you can shortly whittle the unit down to a manageable size to either charge with the bikes or another ork unit.


Their main weakness is their leadership. Being only ld7 with no fearless they are very likely to fail a leadership check, especially if they get charged. Worse, with a small unit size it can be easy to make them break just through shooting. A bikerboss adds ld9 to the unit and helps with this but not as much as you'd think. Although a biker boss also works as a great anti-tank unit in his own right.

S5 shooting and one klaw does not make an anti-tank unit, unless you opponent only fields rhinos But as a fast multi-use unit with some anti-tank capability, it's just fine.

I like the idea, boys to keep the power klaw safe, cheaper than a nob biker mob, dakkaguns to take care of any pesky troops that are guarding the soft underbelly of those russ's.

Either get into assault ASAP or LOS blocking terrain-hop to keep things safe and open some tanks up 2nd turn!, sounds viable.

The other good tank-buster is zzap guns, 3 plus full crew + ammo runts is pretty nasty, though flimsy for the points...

The downside is that they will run if shot at with any force. If they were Fearless like last codex, they would be useful to turboboost and charge vehicles, but I think they are just going to die too much. I'm not sold on warbikes this gen, at least not in smallish numbers.

Skarboy wrote:The downside is that they will run if shot at with any force. If they were Fearless like last codex, they would be useful to turboboost and charge vehicles, but I think they are just going to die too much. I'm not sold on warbikes this gen, at least not in smallish numbers.

Hmmm yes and no.

Their leadership is their main weakness definitely. Most of the time that I have lost them its because they broke from combat or got shot and were under half strength.

But its fairly random as to whether you can shoot them enough to do this. A 4+ cover save (3+ on the boost) and T5 actually do an awful lot to help their surviability. The only tougher unit in the codex is nobz. I have had situations where, literally, an entire army has shot at them and failed to get past the cover save even once (they were contesting an objective you see). Equally I've had games where I fluffed all my saves and they broke and ran turn 1.

Generally though it is quite hard to shoot them enough to force the break check (and even then you only have a 25% chance of failing with your bosspole). What you need is quantity of firepower to force them to make saves and that can be hard to amass at greater than 18". Plus you can factor target saturation into that too, orks have plenty of units that require quantity of fire to drop, if you're taking a lot of these then whatever is shooting at your bikers isn't shooting boyz, etc.

If you throw Wazdakka (the HQ bike Option for Orks) in with the warbakers, THEN you have a solid anti-tank squad. His dakkakannon has 24" range, 8 Str and 4 AP As 4 and fires on a turbo boost.

The nob biker attachment is fine as a tank popper, using the warbikers as a delivery system for the kill. But it is a huge point investment for one purpose (but a good one if the Orks can target and pop isolated enemies).

I use a full mob of 12 in every army, they are my core unit.

They serve a great distraction purpose and escort my Bikerboss, the true tank hunter, to their lines.

I've popped land raiders between the nob and biker boss.

I've killed 4 TH/SS termies in 2 rounds of shooting then assaulted the remaining one.

Before the latest 'Nid codex came out they were my dedicated Tyrant killers. Haven't played against the new 'Nids yet but will try the same tactic and see.

And I've had them break and run after losing 6 or so. Ld is their only fault in my opinion. That and not being able to take any special weapons.

They're fun, fast, and can be hard for an opponent to predict. And I love rolling all those dice.

I would never leave home without them!