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On the forum their was a lot of mentions of bikes. How do you use them, whit what load out?
Could you make a list whit 3 bike elements, devastators aegis defense line and a quadgun plus some assault sqouads to mop up any remains.

Well here's the deal. Bikes are attractive for BA in particular now for a few reasons.

1) They move the same rate as jump troops. yay!
2) New FNP rules lets bikes take FNP on anything that's not STR10. Given that STR 10 is pretty rare, this is really nice, especially on top of jink.
3) The new dangerous terrain tests allow armor saves, and therefore, FNP
4) Attack bikes are particularly good because the multimelta is one of the best weapons in the game when mobile. (in my opinion, but cracking AV 14/13 can be key)
5) They get hammer of wrath even after moving 12". They are deceptively effective in hand to hand. Give your regular bikers two flamers for extra lulz and anti-infantry pain.

So, the short answer is that I like multimelta attack bikes and flamers on the regular bikes. Some might argue for plasma, but I like plasma to be twin-linked if possible, so I usually have las/plas cover that. Plasma is definitely a possiblity, thought, especially since they are relentless.

question about weapons on BA scouts. One option is to replace your bikes TL BG with ast. grenade launcher. Where do they get TL HB at? i see no option or any mention of that anywhere.

For HB you need assault bikes.

I forget. Can you attack an attack bike to scout bikers?

you can only attach an attack bike in a regular bike squad. scouts are scouts.

I haven't been all that impressed with the BA bike squads; I don't think they get enough options to be a true dedicated shooting unit and don't have access to Command squad upgrades to be a bad ass assault unit.

Now Attack Bike squads can be very cost effective in their role. With 2 wounds and Jink per bike, some schools of thought have them more cost effective than Missile Launcher Devastators.

The bike squads can get two flamer or two plasma guns. That's pretty good. They can assault after using plasma. That's good too. Don't forget about hammer of wrath, either. They aren't super duper badass like the DC, but they are cheaper than jump pack DC I think and harder to kill if they get FNP love from a priest.

Attack bikes, at least for what I want them for, are much better than ML devs. ML's are inefficient vs AV 13 or AV 14, while melta works just fine. Also, the attack bikes can help assault if necessary.

Now that I think of it, I almost never take devastators with Blood Angels. If they have to move to get a good shot, they lose a lot of firepower that turn. Also, I don't want to lose heavy weapons to small arms fire if it can be avoided.

Martel732 wrote:
The bike squads can get two flamer or two plasma guns. That's pretty good. They can assault after using plasma. That's good too. Don't forget about hammer of wrath, either. They aren't super duper badass like the DC, but they are cheaper than jump pack DC I think and harder to kill if they get FNP love from a priest.

Bike squads are not good in combat, it is best to keep them at a distance zooming around shooting. A JP DC model is 5 points more than a bike but has built in FNP and Furious Charge, base 2 attacks and Rage. Bikes are T5 and you still have to pay for the biker priest. We'll just agree to disagree here.

I think it depend on what you want to do. For example, a biker squad with two flamers can team up heavy support teams quite well.

I've used attack bikes way more than regular bikes, so I don't have that much experience with them. They might end up getting left out of my lists for the same reason DC usually are.

I don't like BA bikes for 1 reason.
They can't get a model with a 2+ save on a bike. So even if you attach characters to beef up the unit, you can't get a 2+. The unit is Krak bait. Just not quite good enough to make the cut.

Scout bikes on the other hand, I love. 6 blasts at S3 or 3 Shots at S6 have been good in most/all of my games. Sarg packs some meltabombs and that's it. Clustermines sometimes actually do things too.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I don't like BA bikes for 1 reason.
They can't get a model with a 2+ save on a bike. So even if you attach characters to beef up the unit, you can't get a 2+. The unit is Krak bait. Just not quite good enough to make the cut.

Scout bikes on the other hand, I love. 6 blasts at S3 or 3 Shots at S6 have been good in most/all of my games. Sarg packs some meltabombs and that's it. Clustermines sometimes actually do things too.

-Matt

The unit is also T5 and is only insta-gibbed at strength 10. They can jink for cover if they would get hit by something that ingores armour. Throw in a priest and you have a very tough unit.

If they are shooting krak missiles at bikes with two 5++ saves against them, I am probably winning.

I have tried bikes to various levels with BA, in the end there is one detachment I run quite often.

3 Attack bikes with MM /w a Priest on a bike. For 235 you get a threat that can ride with any other element and scare the pants off tank lists. Added bonus is the priest on a bike can move up to 24" to make sure the FNp bubble is where it needs to be.

I think regular bikers are a good special weapon platform, especially as bodyguards to the MM attack bikes. However, this is probably on viable in larger games.