Why use chainswords on bikers?

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**Scipio Africanus**

dmthomas7 wrote:
It's simple the bp is a the marines CC weapon. You may swap for a chainsword if you prefer it aesthetically. the difference between the two for a biker marine is none. There is no reason to not fire the TL bolters on the bike since you are relentless on a bike a can charge regardless. The only reason for the swap to chainsword is to allow it to be further swapped for a special weapon as they forgot to allow bikes to properly take special weapons. as the wargear entry is written you may only swap a melee weapon or bolter for a special weapon.

They technically do not need a bolt pistol on the bikes to begin with but every marine has a bolt pistol and GW likes to keep up basic themes throughout their armies.

Unfortunately, a bolt pistol is not a CCW for the purposes of these rules. a BP is a Bolt Pistol, Like a boltgun is a bolt gun and not simply classed as a "ranged weapon".

The Reason some of these options read Close Combat Weapon is because not every joe dick and harry carries a standard chainsword. Librarians, for example, carry a force weapon, or Chaplains, which carry a power weapon, and yet have access to these options.

**Gideon999**

A pistol can be a close combat weapon, from a fluff perspective anyways (pistol whipping, or just jam the barrel into the guys ribs and pull the trigger).

From a gaming perspective though, the pistol is the superior choice. As someone above said, you can choose to fire the pistol instead of your bike mounted TL bolters for those (admitedly ULTRA RARE) times when you might cause so many casualties with the TL boltguns that you could fail a charge whereas the pistols would cause half as many casualties and maybe still allow a charge.

Yeah, grabbing at straws there but it is a technically real in game reason to use a BP vs a chainsword. :-)

**Exalbaru**

[quote=Thairne the chainsword I get +1 A in CC, whereas the pistol might enable me to charge (and hide in CC)?

**easysauce**

Baines4652 wrote:
Page 51 of the rules states.

"If a model is not specifically stated as having a weapon with the melee type, it is treated as being armed with a single CCW.

The profile is S=user and AP=nil

I take from that every model has this regardless unless it states in a models profile is dose not.

So I take from this if a biker has a bolt pistol he has 2 CCW weapons and gains the plus 1 attack.

you only treat them as having a single CCW when they are not stated as having one...

the marine is stated as having one already, he does not get a 2nd unstated one,

and yes, a pistol is a melee weapon as well, so you dont get a bonus CCW weapon.... pistols have a melee weapon profile, hence are melee weapons... simple really.

even if pistols were not, the model would still be "counted as armed with a single CCW" not two