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.

So I am still trying to decide on a direction with my Ork army. The Kan Wall I feel would get boring after a while using the same tactic over and over. Mechanized looks pretty cool been looking at some of Dash's battle reports. My local store has a mega force left and I was wondering how bikes worked out, I believe that's a speed freak thing not sure. Is it viable and how would a list work say 1500-2000.

Warbikes are good, and the Megaforce is a good value if you can get your hands on it.

Definitely viable, they can act as a flanking force (turbo boost T1 and drive into the side of the enemy) or you can use them to screen trukk mobz instead of taking a Big Mek with KFF.

Even though they're T4(5) with 4+ and 4+ cover they're still relatively fragile and can be broken by shooting, so you'll want to take a big mob of them to start, or several small mobs of 3-5 and use their mobility to keep them out of LOS.

As with basically all Ork units Nob with a PK and BP is mandatory.

Ahhhh warbikers. I need meself a biker banner now

The megaforce is great value - just beware it'll knock you like a ton of bricks as a purchase when the penny drops that you spent a large sum of money in one go

More Dakka has it relatively right. Bikers aren't as fragile as people could think - that constant 4+ cover save and higher T value really makes them durable. Add in those guns and yeah they'll tear new holes in units. Being bikers you want them to hit something and hit them hard. Turn1 turboboost and Turn2 you're looking for a target.

I run two groups of 6 with PK/BP nob leaders - you'll need those at least for any size mob. I did try three mobs of 6 in a 2000pts game; they drew alot of firepower away from my trukks which is always a bonus.

I run Speed Freaks, put my bikes in squads of 5 with the above wargear. 5 helps keep points down and stops from a morale check for losing 1 boy. I also tend to flank, and then dakka melee squads and assault shooty squads. I find their guns force morale saves on even beakie units without much trouble. I can shoot transports until they get tired of sitting still and can blow up heavy vehicles with an 18" assault range for the PK.

They will fold to things like psycannon fire, and vindicators, but those spent on bikes aren't spent on the 20-30 boyz running up their hershey highway with a fistful of choppa.

If you can get RedBeard to actually respond, he can tell you about warbikers. He had a pretty large biker build in a recent tourny and did decently well with them.

Warbikes are great flanking units, especially with a klaw, but make sure they got numbers

Having the min of x3 is just asking to get chased off the table as soon as one biker dies

If you're doing Warbikers, grab Wazdakka as an HQ. It allows you to take Warbiker mobz as troops, meaning you can practically fill the table with them (up to 9 mobs, along with 3 mobs of Nob bikers)

That'll give you some extremely fast Troops for objectives, and you won't need to even have footsloggers or Trukk/BW boyz if you don't want, giving you an incredibly fast army with some very impressive shooting, that's still decent in assault.

I hear nob bikers are pretty good. Right now I have a solid core of boyz and with this megaforce I will probably have 70 shoota boyz 50 slugga boyz. For HQs I have Grotsnik, AoBR Warboss, Big Mek KFF, Wierdboy and Ghazzy. I don't have currently any trukks or BWs. I do have some 5 boxes of Lootas/Burnas and just got done converting my Kommando Squad last night with Snikrot, I also have 1 box of kans.

I took 21st/250ish at Adepticon with the following list:

1850
Wazdakka
Boss on Bike w/ stuff
2x 8 warbiker mobs, w/ nobs
6 nob bikers, different, 2 klaws, banner, painboy, etc.
20 boyz, nob & 2 rokkits
battlewagon
kopta w/ rokkit
2 buggies w/ rokkits
snikrot & 9 kommandos

Full disclaimer: I went 2/1/1 in battles, so using soccer scoring (3 for a win, 1 for a draw), that's only 7/12 possible, little over 50% in battle effectiveness - and made up a lot of points in soft-scores.

It does okay as long as you can outplay your opponents. When faced with an equal or better player who knows how to deal with a mobile army like this, it has problems.

Warbikers are great if you can use their speed effectively, creating pockets of local superiority on the table and exploiting it. Against opponents who don't give you those openings, you don't have the hitting power to break through easily.

That said, they're massively fun to play and model.

If I were going to redo the above list, I'd probably ditch Snikrot, who didn't get me much. I liked the idea of him kinda messing with the opponent's head, but might be able to do that as well with normal outflanking kommandos. The lone kopta wasn't very useful, I'd either add more or ditch it altogether. Another wagon and another 20 boyz could be beneficial, both in providing screens for the bikes and presenting more bodies.

Nob bikers have certainly been a popular build, but plain boyz bikers not so much. i can see boyz bikers doing best in a Speed Freeks army where everything is racing across the table, making bikes a lot more survivable and their short range shooting not matter so much.

I run a wazdakka and biker warboss build sometimes.

Bikers as troops squads makes them easierr to swallow for utility, as they aren't eating into my fast attack, and the warboss lets me bring a nob biker squad in as troops also.

My only issue witht hem is when they run into something that ignores cover. Then they die depressingly fast :(

I'm just a bit curious, but just how often do you find things that ignore cover? Flamers and artillery are the only things that come to mind, so I guess a Guard, Vulcan or Sororitas list could be trouble.

Though with their speed and range, you really ...huh. Just realized something. The little AoBR rulebook doesn't have Dakkaguns, and I've been confusing them with Deffguns. Yeah, Bikers are fairly useless, except as fast 'footsloggers'.

Flamers- very popular hereabouts
Witchhunters magic bullets
Tau Special issue weapons (there's at least one - i want to say airbursting frag dispenser or similar)
Whirlwind missiles (popular around here too)

will append more when i can open up my self-batrep folder


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Flamer-lke template weapons - fricken banewolfs...
Some psychic powers

It's usually the short-ranged flamy death coming from on/inside a metal box that gets them. Their guns are so short legged that you pretty much have to get in flamer range.

HuH.

Magic bullets? Please tell me that's the actual name of the wargear. Actually, I'm not certain whether I want that or not. It'd be sad and awesome in equal measure.

I've seen a couple whirlwinds round my parts, but I've never actually had to play against them 'cept in Apocalypse, and there they had an Apoc special rule that meant they didn't scatter if a linked Landspeeder had line-of-sight to the target, so I didn't know if that was the cover negator as well or not.

It's not, unfortunately, but i couldn't place the name. Bolter and heavy bolter rounds that ignore cover saves, like psycannon bolts used to ignore invulnerables in the old DH codex.

Whirlwinds firing Incendiary Castellan missiles ignore cover.

Warbikers don't generally care about most cover denying weapons. Most of them are only AP 5 after all. Ork bikes confer a 4+ armor save as well as the cover save. So those magic missiles of doom better be AP 4 or the ork doesn't care.

The name of the WH gear that ignores cover is blessed ammo. And yes, they are deadly on bolter immolators against the right units. This is one of them. GOOD NEWS! nobody ever takes the things. As for flamers and castellan rounds... check the AP before saying they are good against bikers. Really.

Im trying out a foot sluggin combo myself and am gonna field 6 biker nobz with Biker WB...One variant im trying is to put 2 DD with 2 Scorchaz each to run alongside a Kff sluggas Loaded BW and followed by 2X 30 runners. Support is 10 Lootas for first turn dakka harasment and of course the minimal gretchin lot for either charge breaking or reserve OC. I cant seem to win with my orks so im trying out new tactics....please help !

notabot187 wrote:Warbikers don't generally care about most cover denying weapons. Most of them are only AP 5 after all. Ork bikes confer a 4+ armor save as well as the cover save. So those magic missiles of doom better be AP 4 or the ork doesn't care.

The name of the WH gear that ignores cover is blessed ammo. And yes, they are deadly on bolter immolators against the right units. This is one of them. GOOD NEWS! nobody ever takes the things. As for flamers and castellan rounds... check the AP before saying they are good against bikers. Really.

Just because they don't ignore the armour doesn't make them ineffective

Burnas are ap5. Hit up a termie unit with a bunch of them and you have sdead termies anyway. 4+ armour is still only 50/50 on the save, so they ARE effective.

Brunaz are not flame throwers by common tactics. Burnaz are burning cinder fury of crimson chaos fire orks who fight everything with more fire than needed. They will kill any unit you can hit with enough templates. Bikers still shoot them up, though.

Usually you'll only find 2-3 guys with flame throwers in a unit with 5-10 people who were smart enough to not carry a backpack full of fuel to a gunfight. Warbikers don't care about those, because they will never hit more than two or three each anyways.

Nurgulator wrote:Im trying out a foot sluggin combo myself and am gonna field 6 biker nobz with Biker WB...One variant im trying is to put 2 DD with 2 Scorchaz each to run alongside a Kff sluggas Loaded BW and followed by 2X 30 runners. Support is 10 Lootas for first turn dakka harasment and of course the minimal gretchin lot for either charge breaking or reserve OC. I cant seem to win with my orks so im trying out new tactics....please help !

Make your own thread for this please, instead of hijacking this one that bears little relevance to yours.

OP: I barely run into flamers or template weapons in my area, though I may do in the future when my friend gets his TAC IG army running. So template weapons in that sense so far have not been a problem of mine. As Notabot said, normally any sort of template weapon would have a high AP value, mostly 5. So Warbikers can still grab an armour save if they need it.

I used to run a pure Ork Biker army with Wazdakka, it was extremely fun to play but they're weren't too competetive in my hands at the time.

The regular bikers are pretty fragile, if you're going to take them they're for shooting>assault, alot of shots and hits, but they still seem fragile.

Nob Bikers however, are amazingly tough. Especially if you individually equip them for wound allocation. A unit of nine with a Warboss is great.

I got two megaforces, back when they were available, they're definately worth it, for the price of one is not short of the price of the Bikers alone.

Tau can remove your cover save w/ markerlights too. All of it, if they hit you enough! My bikes survived, though and once they got among his vehicles - funfunfun.

I plan to run my bikes more just because they are fun. They are either a deadly unit, or a dead one that was a good bullet magnet.

Bike morale is tough - it's the most important roll (like a KFF for a Battlewagon list - make those 2-4 rolls and you are golden!)

Whoops wrong thread

To OP:

If you run large man Nob bikers... best tactic really is to point it at the bad guys and try to get into an assault by no later that 2 turn. The amount of firepower this unit can soak up is unreal. I've hauled ass to the standard IG Gunline list's (manticores, plasma vomitting tanks, basilisk) backline with a 9-man nob squad and they destroyed easily half the tanks by the end of the game.

Nob bikers are possibly the biggest fire magnet an ork can field... and they can almost take anything! What this does is that this allows your other unit move up the table virtually unmolested (at least, it does for me... my flg abhor nob bikers ).

Here's a 2000pt list I'm rather fond of:
HQ:
Wazdakka
Warboss on Warbike, PK, Cyborked

Troops:
4x Warbikers + 1 Nob biker w/ BP, PK
4x Warbikers + 1 Nob biker w/ BP, PK
4x Warbikers + 1 Nob biker w/ BP, PK
4x Warbikers + 1 Nob biker w/ BP, PK
8x Diversified Nobs w/ Painboy, 3x PK, 4x BC, 3xBP, Banner, Cyborked, etc...

Fast Attack:
1x TL Rokkit Deffkopta + Buzzsaw
1x TL Rokkit Deffkopta + Buzzsaw
1x TL Rokkit Deffkopta + Buzzsaw

Elites:
4 x Kommandos with 1 burna + 1 Snikrot
5 x Lootas
5 x Lootas

Tactic:
Constant 4+ coversaves for bikers... 4+ armour save... 3+ cover save it you turbo boost.

Total of 84 TL Bigshootas shots per turn in the troop slot! (3 shots per at STR5 / AP5). I've taken down Big Tyranid bugs, terminator squads with just the bikers.

The Nob squads are just mean... I've had a Chaos deathstar assault my Nobs... this consisted of 3 Terminators, 1 Chaos Lord in Termie + ID demon weapon, AND Typhus... The Nob squad wiped out that unit in 2 turns (opponent even assaulted the nob squad with his beserkers after the 1st combat round and the Nob squad feasted on them).

Wazzy just turbo-boost every turn for the 3+ coversave and still shoots 4 STR8 shorts for good 'ol tank hunting !

Deffkoptas are great for first turn assault (they can turbo scout!) or, if you go second... outflank with 'em. Great harassment unit.

Lootas are there to pop light transport (so that bikers/nob can charge!) or knock off wounds on monsterous creatures... even if they can shake/stun vehicle, that's golden as they're not shooting at your bikers.

This is kinda controversial... Snikrot's unit is there to mind-feth your oponent. He can crack vehicles... get to well hidden units... contest... he always does something good for me. Other Ork generals don't think he's worth is points or is better spent elsewhere.

However, there are flaws to this army... they're susceptable to anything that forces leadership tests (tankshock, pinning, PBS, etc) that can run the bikers off the board. The trick with this army to is get the nobs in CC asap. The other 4 warbikers FOCUSes their DAKKA power to one or two targets.

Another thing I like to do is to give the nob biker unit at least 3 Bosspoles... this is so that I'd always have a BP if some of the BP bikers dies... those rerolls are golden.

Also another problem is that during objective games, opponents would put the objective markers in terrain (where bikers take dangerous terrain) or put 'em on second/third floor where bikers can't even get them. My solution is to have the kommandos or deffkoptas contest those...

Another good tackit for the warbikers themselves is to ALWAYS try to put the first non-ID would on your nob... that way, you warbikers stays alive longer and it may not force leadership test that turn.

All in all... they're tough, pack a CC punch (nob squad) and can outshoot most armies (moar DAKKA!).