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 Ailaros wrote:
Your strategy doesn't work because any unit in the game can bore a hole into the bubble wrap with shooting.

Bubble wrapping, as we used to know it is dead, now that we can no longer remove models in the squad on the other side of the tank from the threatening units.

See the problem is, you read bubble wrap, when I never even hinted at it. Of course my tactic won't work, if you put down a fallible one and act like that's what I said...

Lines!!! Have we all forgot this age old solution? Get a handful of infantry squads and put them into lines to block your deployment. This serves two purposes. 1, the first enemy unit has to spend a turn or two out of play while they take the infantry unit out in combat. 2, those behind the front unit end up clumping together and makes them easier dispatched with battle cannons and the like. It also means the enemy cannot get through to your tanks until they have cleared these lines.

This is why I never understood bubble wrap. The lines can cover massive areas with the ability to combine infantry squads, they also negate much template damage since they're spread thin. This generally means that close combat is the favorable method of taking them out. After your opponant has past around three of these, much of their army is compressed into a much smaller area making ordnance templates so much more effective. I've used this tactic against necron warrior spam successfully on many occasions.

Still be weary about deepstrike though, have your deployment covered against all types of attack.

You could also turn this around and use your tanks as bait for the expensive enemy deathstar unit. Keep your vets just far enough away to waltz into rapid fire range with some plasma. once the enemy is done blowing your tank up. Then unleash a torrent of plasma on whatever deathstar was just there.

You could try a more outflank-y list, and force your enemy to choose whether to continue to your tanks, or double back against the troops you just marched in near his deployment.

Against horde armies, I always seem to get multiassaulted, just due to the footprint that their squad takes up. Against marines, you can usually space out your infantry squads.

I honestly don't understand why IG players complain about this. You have the most long range guns available to you of any codex and can take more of them than anyone else using squadrons. Pick a table corner, park a few LRBTs, maybe some other artillery or hydras. Camo Nets. Line up a few bare bones squads around your tanks. Put some special weapons in there to scare off any deep strikers or something fast. Wrap your Aegis around them. Camo Cloaks where applicable. Go to ground when needed. Use your superior range to slowly take out the biggest threats to you. The defiler lobbing battle cannons back at you, the vindicator slowly making its way to you. Once it's out of the fight pick off the biker death star or the drop pod sternguard. Turn 3 or 4 move 1 unit out to claim an objective or two. Go to ground.

Edit: Before someone says mentions LOS blocking terrain or the order in which you place terrain and fortifications, my group plays with the table set up with terrain before hand and it's relatively equally divided in every deployment type except vanguard which is hard to make equal terrain placement. And we place fortifications when we deploy and it's limited to an ADL so far. This has worked well for 3 different IG armies 3 or 4 weeks straight.

CaptObvious wrote:

lizardwolf19 wrote:


Easier said than done. I've faced an IG list with Nob bike star allied in before, and I tried to bubble wrap and speedbump. Because the bikes can move so fast, they can often multiassault around the edges of your bubblewrap and speedbump. They give up the +1A, but they don't really need it to begin with. When playing with bubblewrap units, table space is at a premium and bikes just skirt around or multiassault them. It works, but you have to position very carefully. Laslty, any shooting their army has (if they're smart) will be directed at making your speedbump's footprint small enough to multiassault around, compacting the problem.

This is exactly what happens.

People hear this and respond with "Well, the guard has the best shooting in the game, I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Just hit em with some large blast templates." As if I can just place a few blast templates where ever I need them, and not shoot down my own men. If you play imperial guard and your solution is "more big guns", and that works, you're opponent isn't thinking. I've haven't faced an opponent yet who didn't have a tight anti-vehicle strategy.

I think that careful infantry screening combined with bike-killing weapons is key, but it's not a hard counter.

This is a tough one, because in addition to a bike star, he has lootas camped everywhere, and 2 dakka jets. I'm convinced that all he needs to beat me is a bike star, the rest is just overkill.

edit - typo

Wingeds wrote:I honestly don't understand why IG players complain about this. You have the most long range guns available to you of any codex and can take more of them than anyone else using squadrons. Pick a table corner, park a few LRBTs, maybe some other artillery or hydras. Camo Nets. Line up a few bare bones squads around your tanks. Put some special weapons in there to scare off any deep strikers or something fast. Wrap your Aegis around them. Camo Cloaks where applicable. Go to ground when needed. Use your superior range to slowly take out the biggest threats to you. The defiler lobbing battle cannons back at you, the vindicator slowly making its way to you. Once it's out of the fight pick off the biker death star or the drop pod sternguard. Turn 3 or 4 move 1 unit out to claim an objective or two. Go to ground.

Edit: Before someone says mentions LOS blocking terrain or the order in which you place terrain and fortifications, my group plays with the table set up with terrain before hand and it's relatively equally divided in every deployment type except vanguard which is hard to make equal terrain placement. And we place fortifications when we deploy and it's limited to an ADL so far. This has worked well for 3 different IG armies 3 or 4 weeks straight.

Wingeds ... are you ... are you serious? Because I can't tell if you're serious. If you are serious, I see your point - all IG players should just dry their tears, and dial in some wins with a mech build. Am I right? If you're going to post, tell us something we don't already know about the Guard. If you're just trying to troll this thread - well played, you got me.

Unless you're just deploying randomly in your deployment with no game plan and no knowledge of the list you're playing against, 1 nob biker squad (which is a large point sink for an Ork army) shouldnt be tabling you or crippling your army. They may eat a unit or two, but you have 50 point 10 man squads you can throw at them. Feed the bikers a meat shield and rapid fire them apart next turn.

Your first and 3rd possible solutions in the original post pretty much stop a nob biker assault. And then Deceiver's comments about using your infantry in a line or two to slow down the charge pretty much counters nob bikers. I'm pretty sure bikes assaulting over and ADL incurs a dangerous terrain test and slows their charge. Then just hide your AV 12 behind the 14. Yea you'll be bunched up for blasts, but Orks don't have anything close to your range or str (SAG isnt reliable).

Battlewagons have very small AV14 fronts. The further you are away from them the better your chance of side shots. They're also hard to hit with large blast.

The ADL + Quad Gun should put a hurting on the dakkajet. And don't forget a 4+ save behind it, 2+ if you go to ground.

The solution is that you need your own fast counter assault unit. Use allies to get it if you need to. His bike star maybe able to beat your counterassault unit on its own. But you will get to shoot him first with a lot of your army (since he will be close), before hitting him with your counter assault unit.

Ally the new ravenwing with Samaeul. Shoot that grenade that enfeebles him, then hit him with a whole bunch of twinlinked plasma guns, and then charge him with your own bike star!

 Wingeds wrote:
Unless you're just deploying randomly in your deployment with no game plan and no knowledge of the list you're playing against, 1 nob biker squad (which is a large point sink for an Ork army) shouldnt be tabling you or crippling your army. They may eat a unit or two, but you have 50 point 10 man squads you can throw at them. Feed the bikers a meat shield and rapid fire them apart next turn.

Your first and 3rd possible solutions in the original post pretty much stop a nob biker assault. And then Deceiver's comments about using your infantry in a line or two to slow down the charge pretty much counters nob bikers. I'm pretty sure bikes assaulting over and ADL incurs a dangerous terrain test and slows their charge. Then just hide your AV 12 behind the 14. Yea you'll be bunched up for blasts, but Orks don't have anything close to your range or str (SAG isnt reliable).

Battlewagons have very small AV14 fronts. The further you are away from them the better your chance of side shots. They're also hard to hit with large blast.

The ADL + Quad Gun should put a hurting on the dakkajet. And don't forget a 4+ save behind it, 2+ if you go to ground.

What you say is true, but it is easier said than done. With bikes, you have a fairly good chance at getting assaulted by turn two (barring hammer and anvil, which is obviously a completely different story). Also, like it has been mentioned before in this thread, just making a line or speed bump won't stop the bikes. With the way shooting works now, it is very easy to blast a hole in a speedbump large enough to get a multiassault through. Once you get the multiassault, the bikes get all of your chaff in one or two rounds of CC. Additionally, the ADL does not stop Nob bikes. Yes, they take a dangerous test, but they only fail it on a 1 (rolled one at a time) and then have a 4+ followed by a 5+ FNP. Someone can mathammer that out, but it's not odds I would rely on to save my blob from a bike squad, and it doesn't slow their charge that much considering usually your guardsmen are fairly close to the wall, so they only have to get just beyond it to get drawn in.

 Wingeds wrote:
Unless you're just deploying randomly in your deployment with no game plan and no knowledge of the list you're playing against, 1 nob biker squad (which is a large point sink for an Ork army) shouldnt be tabling you or crippling your army.

No, the biker squad alone doesn't cripple me, and certainly doesn't table my army. Sometimes I hurt them really bad but they're still on the table, or I miss, and they destroy me. Either way - the Nob biker squad is followed up by 2 dakka jets, and supported by lootas. I'd kill his troops, but they're usually hidden in the bottom floor of a building, out of sight. My quad gun is almost certainly gone by the time the dakka jets get in, and the biker squad is tough, so they're still around, chewing through 1 inf squad per turn.

I think the hardest thing about biker squads in general, is that sometimes it's Blood Angels with 1-2 multi meltas, sometimes its CSMs, or it's Orks ... they are fast, and you can't just let them live. They start out of LOS, and approach into LOS cover, and you're throwing every ounce of firepower at them. The rest of the enemy forces are getting free reign of the table.

I fought a CSM guy with a bike squad. In one turn I rapid fired plasma, and hit him with anything I could, killing him down to a single biker. It was the warlord, still capable of doing serious damage to my tanks, so I continued to shoot at him. Meanwhile, I'd done little more than fire a few shots at his guys behind his aegis line, and they gradually wore me down while I played duck-hunt with a single biker.

I'm not saying the game is broken, or that the Guard is weak. I'm just looking for people's opinions. I know the cheese Guard strat. In order of depth :

AEGIS
CHEAP INF
HEAVY WEAPONS / PLASMA / MELTA
AV14
AV12
CORNER OF TABLE

I know this strat. I'll use it in a 'win at all costs' situation.

I'm not complaining because this doesn't work! I'm complaining that little else does.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah - the more I think about this, I realize that I have 2 options.

1. Be sad because only 1 guard strat works.
2. Try using allies in unique ways.

I think a super-assaulty squad could a lot of fun. Something tougher that can tar-pit or eventually destroy bikers and other annoying units.

Sorry, before someone starts calling me stubborn for not just accepting the typical Guard build, I'd like to say - I don't play this game to dial in victories, I play because I like the challenge.

For mech guard GK's make good allies all you need is cotez and a 10 man strike squad there only jobs are in interfear with Deep Strikers and provide a solid counter charge unit. You could also take a Rhino and Combat Squad them. Put Cotez and 5 guys in the Rhino with 2x Psycannons and leave 5x guys on foot in the back field to sit on objective with the Artillary casting warp quake. The rest of the Army can advance and cause destruction. Also Cotez can cast Presience on the guys inside the rhino and Rhino itself. If he rolls up the 4+ invo power your rhino can have a 50/50 of ignoring anything that can kill it including CC attacks

I think you can only cast on the transports themselves. I'll have to check that though.

Its the transport or the guys inside it as long as the psyker is also inside it

Oh yeah then, I thought corteaz was outside the vehicle for some reason.

Have you tried Rough Riders?

From my experience with nob bikers stuff like Rough Riders will not work.
The only chance you have is feeding them with infantry and then once they won their first assault shoot them with everything you got.
So if orks go first and they attack in round 2 they will kill 1 or 2 units. You usually can't do anything to prevent that. But then they maybe only killed 200 points while being a 500++ point unit.
After that you have to have enough firepower to stop them which shouldn't be an issue with massive plasma, heavy weapons and even lasguns.
Just unload your whole army on them or do not shoot at them at all. If you want to destroy them they need all the attention. Usually it should work though if the rest of the enemies CC horde has not arrived by then. If you have a problem with that maybe you just need more firepower like plasma and Strength 10 ID artillery.

in my 1850 i always grab a hellhound to deal with anything from not bikers to exploded transport occupants. Sure it doesnt kill all of them, but with two flamers, fast vehicle, and torrent on its main gun it can often put 2-3 out of the fight. My heavy support is 2 manticores and a Executioner. 2 manticores would do wonders here, Iding one or two each. FOMT and blobs with auto/plasma can also throw a few wounds on them.

If they boost up first turn you could always do the unexpected: assault them. a 20 man blob with a commissar is not an unreasonable thing if your meta sees a lot of fast biker armies. You challenge his warboss with a sergent to keep the wounds down, lose 10-15 guys, pass a ld9 leadership test, then lose the blob during your opponents assault phase, giving you another round of blasting. Its very unlikely they can do 21 wounds in 1 round when the warboss is doing 1 max due to the challenge and the nobs will have taken a few casualties. If you are in danger of not losing the squad on your opponent's turn, assign the wounds to the commissar and make them test on -6 or worse. Double ones could lose you the game, but thats unlikely.

If you can take them down to half strength you can often stop them from multi assaulting since you have to move as many models into base with your primary target as possible. Also, an aegis line is really long. spiting your army into two or three groups could make it harder for him to engage multiple threats to his army.