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.

Deepstriking melta has become an increasingly effective means of negating high-AV armor in an alpha-strike. As a mech Space Marine player, these units seriously affect my deployment. For a number of reasons, I am considering adding a 10man bike squad to my army, and one of its roles will be to screen my vehicles on the first turn (they are tall enough to give a cover save to all vehicles except Land Raiders, Dreads and Speeders).

Here is my question: how much spacing should I leave between the screen and the vehicles? what is the smallest footprint that a deepstriking unit would need to not fall between the bikes and vehicles without mishaping?

CreepyCrawly

Its going to depend somewhat on how many deepstriking melta units the enemy has available, if they have heaps of relatively low cost units then then they can occasionally try and ride their luck and bit and force in risky deep strikes.

Usually Deep Striking melta units are going to be at least 5 strong, which means 1+4 guys in a ring around him. Thats about 3" across and as they can't deploy withing 1" without mishapping they need at least 5.000001" of gap to squeeze themselves in. If they are smaller than this (i.e 1 or 3 strong) then you would need to be in a bit tighter and obviously something like a Drop Pod isn't going to fit in to that small of a gap so you could be even more spread out. Unless you buy multiple squads its still going to be almost impossible to completely keep Deep Striking melta out of range (baring a terrible scatter), the best you can really do is keep them out of half range.

Having said that I'm not sure how you are giving Land Raiders cover with Bikes in the first place, they aren't that tall. The easiest way to block off Deep Striking melta is to use Rhinos or Razorbacks, at 35pts a pop they block off a much bigger area than bikes for much cheaper and will definitely give cover to anything behind them.

Yeah, I thought I had said that this wouldn't work with land raiders. You are right about screening them with rhinos.

I don't think you really need to push melta out of 12" range to protect land raiders. As long as you can push them more than 6" away, they're going to need a 6 to glance and another 5 or 6 after that to do anything worthwhile to a land raider.

But I agree that rhinos/razors and smart use of the table edges and corners is the way to go. Sometimes you can also use a beefy unit of scouts--they benefit more from area terrain, and the infiltrate and scout moves allow you to put them in places where rhinos & razors can't deploy. And they're cheaper than bikes.

Flavius Infernus wrote:But I agree that rhinos/razors and smart use of the table edges and corners is the way to go. Sometimes you can also use a beefy unit of scouts--they benefit more from area terrain, and the infiltrate and scout moves allow you to put them in places where rhinos & razors can't deploy. And they're cheaper than bikes.

also if you have a few extra points, you can grab the scout character whom can pop powerfists and melta's out of units to further increase the livelyhood of your vehicles.