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.

Hello all,

Currently I have ~26 bikes + 4 attack bikes + a couple of Land Speeder.

My current choices are:
Codex - More bike models for the same point but don't have free Scout move and Teleport Homer (which should be fine since I don't run Termies)
Dark Angel - Less bike per models but have Scout Move + Teleport Homer + cheaper Land Speeder Typhoon

Other choices that I am aware of but don't fully know:
Space Wolves
Chaos
Ork

What is the BEST codex to run a bike theme list? By best, I mean in term of tournament competitiveness and/or take all list (cheesy or not). I want something that is ONLY bikes. Perhaps a couple of fast units here and there but I want full control of where the fight will be.

Summary of the answers so far
Every codex bike army needs at least 1 bike command squad + 1 bike captain:

Awesome shootyness: Apo + 4 Plasma guns
Awesome deathstar CC: Apo + 4 SS + 3 LC + 1 TH (you can throw in Chaplain on bike, upgrade captain to Khan or Techmarine on bike with servoharness)

Then the second HQ slot + supports are tailored around these choices.
The useful choices are:

Typhoon Land Speeder (take 2+ for survivability)

Techmarine on a bike with servoharness (got plasma pistol + 2 Str8 powerfist attacks). The point is to get him into close combat.

Your favorite long range can opener (e.g. Predactor AC/LC, Vindicator, ...)

If you are going to combine them with Termies then I'd sugget DA. If not then I'd go with the Standard Codex. Be sure to add some scout bikers if you go the standard codex as they are amazing.

I'll second the Standard SM Codex if you want to go all bikes. You can still take Scout Bikes or Attack Bikes in your Fast Attack once you put a Capt on a bike. A Librarian with Null Zone and Vortex on a bike is fun as well.

Libby with Null Zone and Vortex

vs

Libby with Null Zone and Force Dome

for a bike squad with 2x melta + Attack bike with MM

Which option is better? I find this melta squad got crunked too fast.

Dark Angels- if you take Sammael as your HQ, then you can field Ravenwing as troops. Using land speeders for close anti-tank support with their FAQ'd Typhoons and MM's and your cruising.

Bikes are going to be a pretty little add-on to an otherwise non-bike army unless you have a way of making bike units scoring. As far as my limited knowledge goes, that means you're playing codex.

@Ailaros: I can play Codex with either Khan or Captain on a bike. Or I can play DA with Sammael. Those options give me Bikes as troop. I am not sure about the other races.

I play White Scars( codex bikes) one of the best things to do is play with Khan and outflank a ton of your army. as the game moves on they wont know what hit them when whole squads of bikes come rolling in off the edge.

dmthomas7 wrote:I play White Scars( codex bikes) one of the best things to do is play with Khan and outflank a ton of your army. as the game moves on they wont know what hit them when whole squads of bikes come rolling in off the edge.

Outflanking with bikes is not the best thing to do. If you go with C:SM then take the normal Captain. Turboboost+Combat tactics>>Outflank

I've played with both and personally I much prefer out flanking my army. I still get the turboboost and can instead come off the table edge and hit my enemies flank very hard while he is distracted in the center by others

dmthomas7 wrote:I've played with both and personally I much prefer out flanking my army. I still get the turboboost and can instead come off the table edge and hit my enemies flank very hard while he is distracted in the center by others

Believe me... It sucks playing against this tactic. He plays Khan a lot better than the Captain, yet I still hate both...

C:SM would be good because you can make them into troops...

Ailaros wrote:Bikes are going to be a pretty little add-on to an otherwise non-bike army unless you have a way of making bike units scoring. As far as my limited knowledge goes, that means you're playing codex.

Unfortuntly bikes are NEVER scoring units, even if they are troops.
It has been pointed out to me that I am mistaken here, it was my (miss-)understanding that a unit had to be infantry and troops to be scoring. I write this here for all of those who might read this, and not the rest of the thread where I also admit that I was wrong, so we don't drag the conversation off topic.

One thing to try with codex marines on bikes, use a Master of the Forge with a conversion Beamer on a bike. Bikers become relentless, and a conversion beamer is a heavy weapon. So move the Bike 12" away, and put at that hopefull sweet spot of 42"-72" range for Strengh 10 AP1....... Although I don't know how effective this will be, as you can park him in a corner normally for max range for less points.....

dmthomas7 wrote:I've played with both and personally I much prefer out flanking my army. I still get the turboboost and can instead come off the table edge and hit my enemies flank very hard while he is distracted in the center by others

So you are just outflanking a portion of your army? So your opponent can focus on the remaining parts of your army while your outflanking units comes in as picemeal? Yeah, not really impressed by that strategy. Bike lists are all about force concentration and hit n run tactics with can you can not do that since you will most likely be stuck in CC, not to mention that you pretty much limits the amount of fire your bikes will suffer before the enemy can assault them.With a Kahn list they can shoot them up and pretty much finnish them of in CC, preferably after two rounds of CC, againts a bike list with a normal captain that is not happning.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Thaanos wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Bikes are going to be a pretty little add-on to an otherwise non-bike army unless you have a way of making bike units scoring. As far as my limited knowledge goes, that means you're playing codex.

Unfortuntly bikes are NEVER scoring units, even if they are troops.
One thing to try with codex marines on bikes, use a Master of the Forge with a conversion Beamer on a bike. Bikers become relentless, and a conversion beamer is a heavy weapon. So move the Bike 12" away, and put at that hopefull sweet spot of 42"-72" range for Strengh 10 AP1....... Although I don't know how effective this will be, as you can park him in a corner normally for max range for less points.....

Yeah, I think you need to (re)read the codex/rulebook...

Thaanos wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Bikes are going to be a pretty little add-on to an otherwise non-bike army unless you have a way of making bike units scoring. As far as my limited knowledge goes, that means you're playing codex.

Unfortuntly bikes are NEVER scoring units, even if they are troops.

One thing to try with codex marines on bikes, use a Master of the Forge with a conversion Beamer on a bike. Bikers become relentless, and a conversion beamer is a heavy weapon. So move the Bike 12" away, and put at that hopefull sweet spot of 42"-72" range for Strengh 10 AP1....... Although I don't know how effective this will be, as you can park him in a corner normally for max range for less points.....

There is nothing saying that bikes can never be scoring units. The fact that they can be taken as troops actually supports that they can be. The only reason that a troop is not a scoring unit is if it is a vehicle, swarm or effected by another special rule that prevents that. None of these conditions apply to bikes. Please show me where you are getting your information if you still believe this. All bikers are relentless default so this is true. I dont see a point in putting a man on a bike if he is just gonna park anyways. he is not going to benefit from being relentless if he doesn't move any.

I play nilla marines Bike army and i have to say that i love it. Dont bother maxing out your points on just bikes as i feel that a combined arms bike list is the best way to go. Take one or two squads of bikes and then a bunch of speeders, maybe a couple of las/ac pred. and a pair of dreadnoughts. I realise that the prevailing wisdom has it that you should only do something if you overload on it but with bikes, i think a little of the aformentioned units really helps you out.

and yeah.... take the bike captain that way your bikes COUNT AS TROOPS so that they are SCORING>

tedurur wrote:

dmthomas7 wrote:I've played with both and personally I much prefer out flanking my army. I still get the turboboost and can instead come off the table edge and hit my enemies flank very hard while he is distracted in the center by others

So you are just outflanking a portion of your army? So your opponent can focus on the remaining parts of your army while your outflanking units comes in as picemeal? Yeah, not really impressed by that strategy. Bike lists are all about force concentration and hit n run tactics with can you can not do that since you will most likely be stuck in CC, not to mention that you pretty much limits the amount of fire your bikes will suffer before the enemy can assault them.With a Kahn list they can shoot them up and pretty much finnish them of in CC, preferably after two rounds of CC, againts a bike list with a normal captain that is not happning.

The problem I see is that you can only use combat tactics to fall back out of CC if you lose in CC. With the added Toughness from being on a bike I don't see this happen much. Unless Im playing a PW heavy opponent. My force never comes in separated that much. It's possible sure, but using them differently if they come in small pieces is a part of adaptation. Waves of units coming in from different directions can overwhelm an opponent easily.

tedurur wrote:

Thaanos wrote:
Unfortuntly bikes are NEVER scoring units, even if they are troops.

Yeah, I think you need to (re)read the codex/rulebook...

It appears as I was mistaken, I thought that a unit had to be infantry and troops to be scoring. My apologies.

Ravenwing and Ultramarines are both fun and can put up a good fight. I play both, in fact I sometimes use Khan, they are always hard fought battles that require a delicate touch and loads of fore thought if they are to win.

dmthomas7 wrote:The problem I see is that you can only use combat tactics to fall back out of CC if you lose in CC. With the added Toughness from being on a bike I don't see this happen much. Unless Im playing a PW heavy opponent. My force never comes in separated that much. It's possible sure, but using them differently if they come in small pieces is a part of adaptation. Waves of units coming in from different directions can overwhelm an opponent easily.

I know you are taking about theory. However do you think vanilla marines are good in cc? which is central to your thesis.
Khan's command squad can really hold itself in cc it is true, the only tactic is to use this unit to prevent assaults on your other bike squads.
OK I need to point out the anti bike tactic: You assault them, you keep them combat so they can not get away. If they want to rapid fire you let them if you can counter by counterassaulting by assaulting.
Waves of units sounds a bit like the somme :(. It is true that some armies will hate outflank, others not that is the advantage of the ravenwing. Though the other point is you can turbo boost down the flanks and hit the sides with your entire army. You could call this military tactic to refuse flank or maybe even to outflank - wait

A couple of things:

When you are not playing a kill-team game, your basically have two 5 man squad of bike, if you lose 1-2 guys (depending on how many you still have), you can fail your morale check and fall back 3D6 => W A Y further than most charge ranges.

When you are playing a kill-team game, since each 10-man bike squad (8+Attack bike) is 300 pts and 1 kill point, you are sinking less kill point per point. So technically, you can hit their soft units and win by kill point.

Between outflanking and Combat Tactics, I haven't been able to really compare since I have never tried Outflanking. Don't forget that Khan got Hit & Run.

@sennacherib: I agree with that analysis. I haven't finished building my all-bike list but talking to a few people say that bikes are like calvary, you hit it hard on their flank. Not fielding enmass and got stuck.

I actually think that eldar bike lists>marines. The jetseer council is an excellent death star, eldar bikes are faster- since they can jump terrain.

Check out the way of saim-han to see some of fritz's videos- he plays a mean bikedar

I can't really comment on the MEQ bike lists, since I've never played them and rarely played against them; however, my impression is that, in general, they tend to be fragile with a lower model count even than most MEQs. That's bad.

You mentioned Ork bike lists, which I CAN talk about reasonably. You have to take Wazzdakka in order to have scoring Warbikes; fortunately he's pretty useful. S8 Assault 4 gun, PK, and of course the 4+ armor and cover saves that Warbikers all get.

The strength of a Wazzdakka list is that Warbikes are reasonably hard to kill and very shooty. They're actually tougher than SM bikes in some ways. They're T4(5) and always have 4+ cover, plus a 4+ armor save. They can take a Nob with a PK, which added to the 3 attacks they get on the charge makes them decent assault units, and they all have Twin-linked S5 Assault 3 guns, so even a small squad is putting out quite respectable amounts of fire. They're 25 points each; not cheap, but not so expensive that you can't have quite a number of them.

The downside is that, well, they're Orks. Even TL, their guns only have a 55% hit rate; they can't get meltas, so they have to use assault or S5 fire against rear armor to crack tanks; and they can't get power weapons, so against dedicated, tooled-up CC units they'll lose in assault. They die just as easily as any Ork to Heavy Flamers, although they do get their armor save against regular flamers.

The other advantage of an Ork Warbike list is that you can take Nob Bikers, who have a well-deserved reputation as one of the nastiest CC units in the game. If you also take a Bikerboss, you can even have them be troops.


In a 1500-point list you could have (for example) 5 squads of 7 bikers and one of 8, all with a PK/BP Nob, plus Wazzdakka. In 2000 points you could add 2 more squads and a few extra bikers for a total of 8 units and 68 models. At any points level you could sacrifice 2 squads of Warbikers in exchange for a squad of Nob Bikers, and you can split them into a few more units (max of 9, filling all Troops and FA slots) in order to have more PK Nobz at the cost of fewer models overall. It makes for a fast, hard-hitting army that has some trouble surviving against gunline armies, but can do a lot of damage very quickly either in assault or with shooting.

Just remember that bikes can't go up in buildings, so any objective placed somewhere high is lost to you, and any squads hiding in buildings have to be taken out with ranged firepower, and that is not the strong suit of most pure bike lists.

http://www.3plusplus.net/search/label/Bikers

Kirby usualy has something good for you.

I would say hands down the best codex would be vanila space marine, and not white scars.

If you want HTH you are talking vanilla with Khan and possibly a chaplain. Bikes are great fpr T5 but A1 and only hitting with a max of 6 bikes leaves them wanting.

Khan + cmd squad + chaplain = a lot of points and a real dead opponent in HTH.

Sammiel = same points as Khan, can't attach to a unit and no bonus for units . HE has the firepower edge but is too costly for the firepower.

Stay generic captain on a bike or Khan. Sadly ravenwing's only offering is the synergy with deathwing and cheap typhoons but that is just not worth it.

DAaddict wrote:If you want HTH you are talking vanilla with Khan and possibly a chaplain. Bikes are great fpr T5 but A1 and only hitting with a max of 6 bikes leaves them wanting.

Khan + cmd squad + chaplain = a lot of points and a real dead opponent in HTH.

Sammiel = same points as Khan, can't attach to a unit and no bonus for units . HE has the firepower edge but is too costly for the firepower.

Stay generic captain on a bike or Khan. Sadly ravenwing's only offering is the synergy with deathwing and cheap typhoons but that is just not worth it.

How do you figure you only hit with a max of 6 bikes. Anything within 2 inches of a friendly with base-to-base can hit. I take 8 man squads and rarely don't get all of them into combat. those long but skinny bases easily get into combat. Also I find my ways to get my attacks in there. Almost always take the charge to gain attacks. 7 bikes with an attack bike will be 6 regular attacks, 2 from sergeant (usually PF or PW) and 2 from attack bike. Add one more all around from having the charge. build up to 12, 3, and 3. Builds that charge up to 18 attacks couple that in with the fact that before charging I can lay into them with 14 TL bolter shots along with the either melta or plasma I carry in those squads. Also the heavy weapon from the attack bike. (either 3 HB or a MM shot). That will be a total of 34 - 37 chances to cause casualties from a single unit. Definitely don't get into combat with units that have high S/High A but if you pick your battles you have a chance to do damage. One of the biggest down sides is the price of them. they will come in at about 25pts a piece and that gets pricey. In a recent 750 pt game I played a GK player who had more models then me on the field. . . That's saying something. Learned from that game that I definitely have to avoid CC with GK with all those PW hits doing damage to me quickly.

Ok well Im going to go against the grain and say Orks.

Wazdakka Gutsmek is the number one reason for this. He is a 160 point HQ that allows you to take warbiker mobs as troops.
Then toss in the Warboss which allows for nobz to be troops and can himself have a bike.

That sets you up for 2 HQ 6 Troop 3 Elite and 3 FA worth of bikes. Also Im not sure about others but every ork bike is twin linked which ive found helpful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
At 1760 points your laying down 62 twin linked bikers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Heres a Real quick biker list.

HQ Wazdakka Gutsmeck- 160
Warboss with bike- 100

Troops
x10 Warbikers - 250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

x10 Warbikers-250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

x10 Warbikers- 250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

x10 Warbikers- 250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

x10 Warbikers- 250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

x10 Warbikers- 250
Nob with PK and BP- 40

2000 points on the nose.

I think a ork bike army would be interesting as well. Im curious how they would play. May be my next project after I build a satisfying Tyranids force

I will see if i can get enough proxies through various people and give er a go. I just love wazdakka. He gives you warbikers as troops with no limit so he just makes an ork biker mob such a sureal possibility. If you drop the nobs you can toss in another biker mob as well but figured the nobs with PK may save the day against vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Allthough the one massive disadvantage i see is having to use a lot of hit and run style tactics to increase survivability. though that may actualy be an exciting challenge to work with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Its be a lot of fun to bring around 176 bikes to an apoc game, coupled with lots of battle wagons your looking at a very true to fluff evil suns speed freak list.

dmthomas7 wrote:I think a ork bike army would be interesting as well. Im curious how they would play. May be my next project after I build a satisfying Tyranids force

Good luck finding a satisfying Tyranids army...

OT: I know someone who runs an (almost) all bike army. The way he does it is with a generic captain and a librarian as his HQs with a command squad and several other bike squads. He does sometimes take Vulkan and a five man Hammernator squad in a Land Raider instead of the Librarian. I think that the twin-linking from Vulkan helps quite a bit with the anti-armor problems the list has due to the low model count. Also, he comes with Hammernators and a Land Raider; both of these things help with anti-tank.

@dmthomas7 How do you figure you only hit with a max of 6 bikes.


Sorry, brain fart, I was thinking of ravenwing squad setups and then applying the same to vanilla codex. Albeit the same does apply in the fact that you want max troops out there and 10-man bike squads are a bit pricey seeing you auto qualify for the two special weapons with any size squad. I would think the tendency is going to field.

6 x 5 man bike squads w 2 SW and sgt, 1 x cmd squad, 2 x HQ (captain + librarian or chaplain) and perhaps attack bikes or some other specials to cover for weaknesses in the army. Perhaps one maxed out squad of bikes but probably not too many.