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its is a "point and kill" unit. it will most likely kill whatever you shoot at. (unles orks, cuz orks) it can reliably wreck a LR as well. anything after that is icing.

 raiden wrote:
its is a "point and kill" unit. it will most likely kill whatever you shoot at. (unles orks, cuz orks) it can reliably wreck a LR as well. anything after that is icing.

As much as I love the squad, this statement is far from accurate. To reliably drop a Land Raider you need to roll three 6's, which means 18 hits, thus 27 shots. The squad puts out only 12 shots.

Yes they are good although you will struggle with just one grav bike squad. Because if you play some one who knows anything about them would simply wipe them off the board as quickly as possible, resulting in a very expensive distraction

Ive been really wanting to run a grav bike command sqaud, the only problem is every time i do it my my opponents throw literally everything at them. And of course the one time I had them hiding out of LoS they were eradicated by a lucky Orbital Bombardment. One of these days ill get a chance to try it! Or possibly i should reserve them, who knows.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Ive been really wanting to run a grav bike command sqaud, the only problem is every time i do it my my opponents throw literally everything at them. And of course the one time I had them hiding out of LoS they were eradicated by a lucky Orbital Bombardment. One of these days ill get a chance to try it! Or possibly i should reserve them, who knows.

Well they shouldn't be an obvious target. Your list should have other high priority threats as well as the unit having character support to tank; Wheels should start with them to tank a bunch. And if in doubt, just Outflank.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
So i've been running a biker command squad of five guys with grav rifles for a few games, but they never seem to do anything besides die horribly. I don't know if it's my opponents or just me, but they never unleased a salvo at full strength.


Would it be better to just have a biker troop squad with 2 grav guns and 8 marines? it seems that i need a lot of bikes to actually do anything

what is the Chapter Tactic you are using.

Bikercommand squad looks good with the apothicary, but if you are already running Iron Hands, 5+ FNP isnt that much better than 6+ FNP.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 raiden wrote:
its is a "point and kill" unit. it will most likely kill whatever you shoot at. (unles orks, cuz orks) it can reliably wreck a LR as well. anything after that is icing.

As much as I love the squad, this statement is far from accurate. To reliably drop a Land Raider you need to roll three 6's, which means 18 hits, thus 27 shots. The squad puts out only 12 shots.

sorry had a brain fart, it can reliably put it out of the game as far as a transport. can still shoot but eh. I never bring much mech so lascannons are meh for me. but your right. still. they are good enough at what they do haha.

also, don't all bikes come with TL bolters?

They will inevitably be targetted with mass priority until they are destroyed.

But this is a good thing.

Your opponent has to bring alot of his army to bear in their direction, giving you prime targets for them, meanwhile your less conspicious units can move into position and pick apart ideal targets as well.


Remember to take out anything that can kill them easily early in the game and they, along with a tanking chapter master or other characters will consume all your opponents firepower and focus.

i'm using white scar tactics btw, because bikes

white scars tactics are borderline OP for marines.

The improved mobility from scout moves and ignoring dangerous terrain is something akin to eldarish highjinks.

And the str 5 hammer of wrath attacks are amazing against anything not using 2+ or 3+ armor.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/561227.page

alright, posted the list this squad is in. can you give me examples of how to use this squad?

Another question: compared to, say, a grav centurion squad with a divination librarian in it, which one is better?

Eihnlazer wrote:
white scars tactics are borderline OP for marines.

The improved mobility from scout moves and ignoring dangerous terrain is something akin to eldarish highjinks.

And the str 5 hammer of wrath attacks are amazing against anything not using 2+ or 3+ armor.

No, not really. Nice try, though. They're still T5 dudes with a 3+ save. And cost more than 20 pts base.

Martel732 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
white scars tactics are borderline OP for marines.

The improved mobility from scout moves and ignoring dangerous terrain is something akin to eldarish highjinks.

And the str 5 hammer of wrath attacks are amazing against anything not using 2+ or 3+ armor.

No, not really. Nice try, though. They're still T5 dudes with a 3+ save and 4+ cover save. And cost more than 20 pts base.

fixed that, but White scars armies w/ 3-4 bike units and 2-3 3x tyhpoon units can hurt, a lot.

Martel732 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
white scars tactics are borderline OP for marines.

The improved mobility from scout moves and ignoring dangerous terrain is something akin to eldarish highjinks.

And the str 5 hammer of wrath attacks are amazing against anything not using 2+ or 3+ armor.

No, not really. Nice try, though. They're still T5 dudes with a 3+ save. And cost more than 20 pts base.

Not only that, they have really big footprints. The base is about 3" long, so you can't put nearly as many on the table before you start to have space issues. As such, you can't really bring more than 30 bikes before you start to have big footprint problems.

30 3+ save models can explode really quickly against serpent spam. They need support.

With the amount of wounds serpents can generate, it wouldn't take armor saves too far off the Gaussian average to lose all 30 in a single turn. Extreme, but not as extreme as some of the crazy "solutions" people propose for serpents.

The footprint is big but have you guys seen the common CWE lists these days? Most of them are running 0 blast or template weapons as they max out on serpents, wraithcannon wraithknights, and spiders. When they do this it equates out to no templates whatsoever and so you can bunch up all you want.

It can also help to outflank any excess bike squads so they can come on from the side after your ranks get thinned.

I've seen D-scythes twice. Not a lot, but enough to linger in the back of my brain.

 ansacs wrote:
When they do this it equates out to no templates whatsoever and so you can bunch up all you want.

It can also help to outflank any excess bike squads so they can come on from the side after your ranks get thinned.

There are a few minor issues
- Your really limited by how much you can fit in a 24" range and be effective. Sure, you can pack the entire board with 60 bikes, but your never going to get a lot of them in range.
- That's great when you play Eldar, but what happens when you play a marine army with TFCs? Template armies do exist, and when they do they will cause problems.
- By oversaturating models you lose the ability of movement. Being able to go 24" a turn is great, but when you cant fit in 1/2 the board it becomes problamtic.
- Clumping up sets you up for getting assaulted by daemon players.
- As you continue to increase bikes you start to lose the ability to bring special weapons. Sure, you can bring 54 bikes as troops in one force org, but only 12 of those will be grav guns and 6 MMs. Your paying for a lot of bolters. You can extend this a bit by going into two squads of allied troops.

So what does it look like on the table? Well, these are 30 bikes spread over 48". They have been spaced evenly. While deployments are more than this -- there will be terrain in the way. From my experience, this is about what your saturation looks like when spamming bikes.


This is what it looks like when you half the saturation. As you can see, the models are much more densely packed. If you were bringing 60+ bikes, this is closer to what your deployment would look like.


I'm not saying that it can't be done. Though outflanking some and scouting others you might be able to do it. If you have 60 bikes, give it a go and let me know how it works! I only own 36 so that's my limit.

Wow that is a lot of bikes O_O i only have 18...

How many squads is that?

I usually stick to 30-36 bikes; as I don't play double FOC much...er, at all for like a year, and I cannot fit proper support elements (TFC and Stormraven minimum) if I take much more bikes.

However saying that, I could see a case for taking two FOC of bikes and outflanking them when there are blasts/templates on the field. I do agree that bikes alone are a bad idea. Any list composed entirely of one unit repeated is a bad idea.

I also understand and agree that yes if you run much over 30 bikes starting on the table you begin to have difficulties with spacing. However that is part of the wonder that is khan as he both allows you to scout and take all the excess bikes off the table and outflank them. Worried about daemons assaulting and boxing you in? Outflank a unit or two of bikes so when the come on they break the battle front into two.

To be honest though I only see this problem in games above 1850 pts. At 1850 I can just barely fit my support elements into the list.

i run 25 bikes and a LR in my list and i have no issue with spacing at all.

played eldar this week and he only managed to kill 3 regular bikes and 1 veteran on a bike in the first round of shooting.

As long as you utilize terrain gunlines cant hurt you much until your already on top of him.

How do you play them in your army? I have been running a command squad on bikes through 5th and they were way harder to field back then (points wise)

I run 4 melta guns, an apothecary, and a 2+ captain. Sometimes they do phenomenal, and sometimes I lose the whole unit in one round of shooting and pretty much lose the game.

The trick I've found is to not put them out front at the beginning. They have a huge move speed that is sexy and tempting to bust them out in the enemies face turn 1, but they really are just marines, so keep them back until you have time to set up your positions. When your other heavy targets are in good positions and your troops are holding a few objectives, suddenly your opponent has to choose: do I shoot the scouts holding the relic, the landraider crushing down my frontline, or the 5 bikers sitting around? Then you can pick and choose your targets and the group doesn't die as fast. I use them as a clean up crew once the enemy has been softened.
And it has seemed to work better. Best of luck!

Eihnlazer wrote:
i run 25 bikes and a LR in my list and i have no issue with spacing at all.

played eldar this week and he only managed to kill 3 regular bikes and 1 veteran on a bike in the first round of shooting.

As long as you utilize terrain gunlines cant hurt you much until your already on top of him.

Demonstrably untrue. Some terrain helps gun lines.

 labmouse42 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
white scars tactics are borderline OP for marines.

The improved mobility from scout moves and ignoring dangerous terrain is something akin to eldarish highjinks.

And the str 5 hammer of wrath attacks are amazing against anything not using 2+ or 3+ armor.

No, not really. Nice try, though. They're still T5 dudes with a 3+ save. And cost more than 20 pts base.

Not only that, they have really big footprints. The base is about 3" long, so you can't put nearly as many on the table before you start to have space issues. As such, you can't really bring more than 30 bikes before you start to have big footprint problems.

30 3+ save models can explode really quickly against serpent spam. They need support.

I've seen this mentioned a lot lately, mostly by you labmouse, and I'm wondering what size tables ye play on? Because when I played against the White Scars at my last tournament he had 33 Bikes and had no space issues whatsoever.

I have an ork biker army which has 30 bikes (5 of which are koptas) and it also has 20 lootas and an Agies line. I have no troubles with getting it all on the table and ork bikes are wider than SM bikes.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
I've seen this mentioned a lot lately, mostly by you labmouse, and I'm wondering what size tables ye play on? Because when I played against the White Scars at my last tournament he had 33 Bikes and had no space issues whatsoever.

Now I admit, part of that comes from playing in 5th edition when range mattered. In 5th edition you could flank an opponent so you could bring your entire army against half of their army. Wave serpents don't care about range.

Try with 50 bikes. Let me know how it goes.

yukondal wrote:
How do you play them in your army? I have been running a command squad on bikes through 5th and they were way harder to field back then (points wise)

I run 4 melta guns, an apothecary, and a 2+ captain. Sometimes they do phenomenal, and sometimes I lose the whole unit in one round of shooting and pretty much lose the game.

The trick I've found is to not put them out front at the beginning. They have a huge move speed that is sexy and tempting to bust them out in the enemies face turn 1, but they really are just marines, so keep them back until you have time to set up your positions. When your other heavy targets are in good positions and your troops are holding a few objectives, suddenly your opponent has to choose: do I shoot the scouts holding the relic, the landraider crushing down my frontline, or the 5 bikers sitting around? Then you can pick and choose your targets and the group doesn't die as fast. I use them as a clean up crew once the enemy has been softened.
And it has seemed to work better. Best of luck!

huuuuh. That is actually some good advice! i always wondered if I was playing them wrong when having them up front. Thanks!

now about my centurion Vs command squad thing...

Martel732 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
i run 25 bikes and a LR in my list and i have no issue with spacing at all.

played eldar this week and he only managed to kill 3 regular bikes and 1 veteran on a bike in the first round of shooting.

As long as you utilize terrain gunlines cant hurt you much until your already on top of him.

Demonstrably untrue. Some terrain helps gun lines.

Terrain only helps gunlines by slowing their opponents advance. White scars do not get slowed by terrain........ AT ALL. Terrain only gives advantage to them.





Also, i play correspondingly to the mission and who im facing. with possibly only 4 scoring units i mostly rely on wiping out my opponent. againgst hoards, i stay at 24" and shoot em down, sending in either the command squad or cents up to destroy the big stuff. Againgst elites, i just table them by turn 3 in almost every game so far.

Eihnlazer wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Eihnlazer wrote:
i run 25 bikes and a LR in my list and i have no issue with spacing at all.

played eldar this week and he only managed to kill 3 regular bikes and 1 veteran on a bike in the first round of shooting.

As long as you utilize terrain gunlines cant hurt you much until your already on top of him.

Demonstrably untrue. Some terrain helps gun lines.

Terrain only helps gunlines by slowing their opponents advance. White scars do not get slowed by terrain........ AT ALL. Terrain only gives advantage to them.





Also, i play correspondingly to the mission and who im facing. with possibly only 4 scoring units i mostly rely on wiping out my opponent. againgst hoards, i stay at 24" and shoot em down, sending in either the command squad or cents up to destroy the big stuff. Againgst elites, i just table them by turn 3 in almost every game so far.

I did say *some*. And not everyone is using White Scars. If the Eldar have ghost walk matrices, they don't care either.