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.

I'm playing a friend of mine this evening in a 1500 point game where my army is to be all bikes (ravenwing attack squadrons, black knights, command squads, hqs on bikes, and his army is all hellions and jetbikes including hqs as well.
What general tips do you have for me (or him) in how to best execute this battle?

Get yourself a blackwing command squad with a banner of devastation, two of the biggest unit of bikes you can, and spam 4! shots per bike whilst moving with plasma talons for the scary stuff, keep moving since they can hurt you whilst moving and pack ap2 like it's going out of fashion, and good luck!

 nwabudikemorgan wrote:
I'm playing a friend of mine this evening in a 1500 point game where my army is to be all bikes (ravenwing attack squadrons, black knights, command squads, hqs on bikes, and his army is all hellions and jetbikes including hqs as well.
What general tips do you have for me (or him) in how to best execute this battle?

point and laugh at his hellions, then charge right into combat with them and laugh some more.

try to get into combat with the Jetbikes and having a flamer handy can be useful to get rid of their nasty cover save.

Thanks for the replies. Good suggestions all, and mostly in line with my existing game plan. Also, what are your thoughts on ravenwing banner, as well as champions for black knights. 5 pts for WS 5 and AP 3 at the cost of unwieldy. I don't have the DE codex with me as I'm not at home right now, but I seem to recall his fast guys having good initiative...

If his army is how you say it is, then it should be quite an easy win for you. Danner of devastation will mean even a small bike squad can rip though even a large DE unit, and you can even be a real threat to his vehicles with that many strength 4 shots. Got for melta over plasma, and if you have the choice heavy bolters or heavy flamers on attack bikes/Speeders.

On his army, shoot or assault, you should win. You high toughness means he will wound you on 5's/6's and your 3+ save will negate those wounds to almost nothing. Although I personally doubt his army is *all* hellions and jetbikes, because that would be a horrible army. But small hellions as troops work well if used defensively in reserve and a large unit can work if he gets FnP from Haem as well as tanking on Barons shadowfield. Large units of bikes are brutally effective, look up Mushkilla's battle reports. The amount of hurt a blade vaning unit of 9 will cause can wipe a small bike squad of the table, and 6 rifles plus blasters on the charge can pull a number of bikes aswell. But be aware that isn't likely to be his whole army, as a full jetbike squad pushes 250pts with a hellion horde about the same. Plus the Baron for 100pts your still dealing with about 600pts with which he could get ravagers (If its tailored, dissies will pull a number on a small model count army like this) or a Razorwing. He might also include a beastpack if he is sticking to the fast moving theme. If so, avoid combat with this unit at all costs and premeasure to avoid combat, then shoot at leisure.

Have fun, you should have the over all better army, but be aware of his DE trickery *Good use of nightshields make meltas useless*.

Alex

Alex, I do know for certain that he's bringing all hellions and jet bikes, as that was the game we decided to play for fun, we were like: hey let's see what happens if we both make fast armies, and so I said I'll take only guys on bikes, and he said only hellions and jetbikes, including the one that gives him the conversion to troop slots. There are no vehicles on either side of this battle, as agreed upon by us in advance. So I'm thinking melee, fire, and MOAR Dakka are the solutions here

 nwabudikemorgan wrote:
Alex, I do know for certain that he's bringing all hellions and jet bikes, as that was the game we decided to play for fun, we were like: hey let's see what happens if we both make fast armies, and so I said I'll take only guys on bikes, and he said only hellions and jetbikes, including the one that gives him the conversion to troop slots. There are no vehicles on either side of this battle, as agreed upon by us in advance. So I'm thinking melee, fire, and MOAR Dakka are the solutions here

all his units will have init6 or better then(actually I think they will all have init6) so unwieldy is fine. That said everything has 5+ saves or worse, so AP 3 isnt such a boon.

If he is just using hellions and jetbikes he is at a huge disadvantage, as hellions are terrible as I said. You should just ignore them, as even if a huge unit of hellions(400pts) gets into combat with your small bike squad(120pts), you will win as hellions are so bad.

Dakka will be very effective, but too much abuse of the salvo banner and the game wont really be fun for you or him. "Hey look, I shot half your army to death in the first turn, arent you so glad we decided to use these restrictions!"

If he has beasts, which are also fast. Kill them first. They will shred any bikes you throw at them in combat in seconds.

The Jetbikes can be very annoying and hard to kill, but with all your guys on bikes you will have a little resliance and can possibly hunt them down. Like I said, a flamer can do wonders.

Yeah I'm sad about the fact that my boosted toughness won't matter cause all his stuff is splinter weapons and so poisoned 4+, but it should help in melee as well as for dealing with those turbo boost blade vane attacks from the jetbikes. He really likes hellions for the model, and I gotta say they do look pretty darn cool, and as of now has only fielded them once, but he didn't have them built so he proxied, since then most of his stuff has been in venoms and raiders, and I get the feeling he's just itching to play some hellions. Also he seems pretty stoked on the grabber hook thingy that let's them pull my chars out of melee when they hit and run, which could be pretty scary if done right.

If its only Hellions and jetbikes, expect a lot of Jetbikes. Simply because they are amazing, and with those restrictions, he won't have much else to fill up the points with. 3 Units of 9 reavers with 3 Cluster caltrops each (No vehicles so I assume he will take these) will cause 12 blade vane wounds (18 bikes, 2 hits, 36 hits, 12 wounds, 4 dead bikes) and 20ish caltrop wounds (9 bikes, 3.5 hits average, 31.5 hits, 20 odd wounds, 7 bikes dead) so with that happening first turn you can count on your command squad not being there if he focuses on them.

The Jetbikes *WILL* be his only hope, as Hellions suck so bad (They have an acceptable range attack to be fair...) so you should target them. If they get the charge they are also likely to win a small bike squad (6 models) if they shoot and charge, and will have a better chance if they back blasters and he gangs up (6 bikes, 2 shots each, 12 shots, 8 hits, 4 wounds, dead bike. 3 blasters, 2 hits, 2 wounds, 1.66 bikes dead.) Be aware that you won't make CC with his bikes, unless he is stupid with his 48'' move. Oh, and shoot at bikes without FnP first, as they will accumulate pain tokens fast with decimating a squad a turn. With FnP and turbo boosting they are surprisingly tough to kill (3+ save and FnP saves about 77% of wounds if my math is right). Good luck and slaughter hellions.

Id remove the black the knights and spam more bikers. Your bolters should do the job.

Id also throw a Land speeder Typhoon in to lay down some frag.

Was thinking about deployment, and assuming he starts on the board, if I get first deploy I'm thinking go on 12" line, scout up, and move upside everything will be silly close range so as to get rapid fire on plasma talons. I'm pretty sure he'll reserve a lot if not all of the jetbikes as they can get ANYWHERE with a turbo-boost the turn they come in, and then don't get shot to gak if I go first. If he goes first and has bikes on the board I'm thinking back my bikes up against my board edge, so he can't boost over them, making them save from caltrops. If he goes first and reserves bikes then I think I can play it forwar a bit cause they won't be having any caltrops till after turn 1, and it's be pretty funny if I got my stuff into melee turn 1 and then he can't caltrop me.

 nwabudikemorgan wrote:
Yeah I'm sad about the fact that my boosted toughness won't matter cause all his stuff is splinter weapons and so poisoned 4+, but it should help in melee as well as for dealing with those turbo boost blade vane attacks from the jetbikes. He really likes hellions for the model, and I gotta say they do look pretty darn cool, and as of now has only fielded them once, but he didn't have them built so he proxied, since then most of his stuff has been in venoms and raiders, and I get the feeling he's just itching to play some hellions. Also he seems pretty stoked on the grabber hook thingy that let's them pull my chars out of melee when they hit and run, which could be pretty scary if done right.

without foot troops or vehicles he wont have that many splinter weapons actually. Hellions do have an assault 2 splinter weapon, but you are going to hill all his hellions first turn or let them get into combat where they suck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
If its only Hellions and jetbikes, expect a lot of Jetbikes. Simply because they are amazing, and with those restrictions, he won't have much else to fill up the points with. 3 Units of 9 reavers with 3 Cluster caltrops each (No vehicles so I assume he will take these) will cause 12 blade vane wounds (18 bikes, 2 hits, 36 hits, 12 wounds, 4 dead bikes) and 20ish caltrop wounds (9 bikes, 3.5 hits average, 31.5 hits, 20 odd wounds, 7 bikes dead) so with that happening first turn you can count on your command squad not being there if he focuses on them.

The Jetbikes *WILL* be his only hope, as Hellions suck so bad (They have an acceptable range attack to be fair...) so you should target them. If they get the charge they are also likely to win a small bike squad (6 models) if they shoot and charge, and will have a better chance if they back blasters and he gangs up (6 bikes, 2 shots each, 12 shots, 8 hits, 4 wounds, dead bike. 3 blasters, 2 hits, 2 wounds, 1.66 bikes dead.) Be aware that you won't make CC with his bikes, unless he is stupid with his 48'' move. Oh, and shoot at bikes without FnP first, as they will accumulate pain tokens fast with decimating a squad a turn. With FnP and turbo boosting they are surprisingly tough to kill (3+ save and FnP saves about 77% of wounds if my math is right). Good luck and slaughter hellions.

basically yes, taking a command squad is probably not a good idea, as it is more expensive than more bikes and all bikes are going to die the same.

If I were he and limited to hellions and jetbikes I would try to double force org to get more bikes.(3 FA choices is REALLY limiting)
Baron+3 max bike squads+ 2 min squad hellions ~=1000 points. Going above 1000 will make his army markedly worse, as he will be forced to waste points on hellions. If he gets up to 2000 points, he can take 3 more bike squads and things get interesting again.

So if you want to be mean, play him at 1850 points and then laugh evilly when you kill 800 points of hellions in one turn.
If you want to be fair, aim for 1250 or 2000 as this will give him a chance.

At 1000 you or less I think the scales tip in the DE favor. You wont have enough bikes to threaten much of the board and his jetbikes will just mow anything down.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SheSpits wrote:

Id also throw a Land speeder Typhoon in to lay down some frag.

adding in vehicles while at the same time restricting the DE from using vehicles seems grossly unfair.

Yeah as stated I don't get vehicles either, and it's in the first post that it's 1500 points, so 1 foc. I decided on the command squad for access to standards and banners, as well as apothecary for FnP

I would honestly agree with lowering point value to 1000pts or 1250pts for fairness, but as he earlier said he WANTS to use Hellions. If he wants to handicap himself, so be it. But I just think it would be a more enjoyable game at 1250pts due to not having to over upgrade things when he doesn't need to.

Well then I guess this will be a learning experience of him regarding what points value his units work best at. Our group's ork player had a similar experience of finding where his foot-slogging army worked best at points-wise


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well I won, turn 4 table. Lost 2 of 4 attack squadrons, one to massed hellion fire and one to massed caltrops, lost one squad of black knights to hellion fire. He never engaged my command squad deathstar with apothecary, sammael, and dakka banner. helions went down to plasma/salvo bolter fire, 1/3 reaver squads died in CC, other 2 died to massed salvo bolter fire.