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Was thinking of running something like 6 bike squads with grav guns, but they seem really unreliable on vehicles.

Would a command squad tooled up for meelee 4 squads with 2x grav guns and a combi grav, and 2 squads with meltas and combi meltas work better? Thinking I would really regret it if I say played orks and they were trukk heavy, or dark elder land speeders.

Grav guns are not strictly bad against AV. It takes 6 grav guns on average to wreck any vehicle 3 HP or less.

If you feel you need more AV ability think about taking a MM attack bike, melta bombs, or a stormraven in your army list.

If you run up against any of those lists then charge the vehicles.

Grav Guns, however, have a poor point to performance ratio for killing vehicles. They aren't a good choice for killing them. Other weapons are more efficient.

Grav Guns should be seen as having a single purpose, killing things that have 4+ or better saves.

And like any corner-case weapon, they should be used in a limited and precise fashion.

You should just have 1 squad be a dedicated Grav platform. The rest should have Meltas. 6 bike squads with Grav guns are going to be horrible overkill when Gravity weapons will be optimal, a single squad will be more than sufficient to fry that Wraithknight or Terminator squad.

If you come across a Mechanized list or a horde army of any kind you're Grav guns are going to do jack squat. 2 squads of bikes to kill a Rhino in a single turn is a horrible use of points.

That is not necessarily true. You have bolters for hordes and you have krak grenades for AV<12. This leaves flyers and AV13+.

Against flyers melta bikes are garbage. Since there is a flyer that can single handidly rip a bike army apart (ie helldrake) you will need to take a stormraven/talon or other AA.

This leaves you with AV13+. For this you are correct that melta is the preferred armament. However the number of tanks that have AV13+ on rear armour is very low and these tanks can usually be safely ignored (for the most part). If you need to kill it it still only takes 2 grav/combi-grav bike squads to do so.

Taking all melta is even more wasteful unless all you see is land raider spam.

I think the simple answer is run a mix of Gav and Melta. If you have 6 squads of bikes, your looking to table them before their flyers come on. Take your own Flyers to counter their Flyers, bikes do not do well against flyers.

I would say take 4 squads with Grav and 2 with Melta. I don't like Combi-grav on bike sergeants, your bike comes with twin linked bolters, so take a pistol. Only thing that should be combi would be combi-meltas on the melta squads.

The other answer to this of course is melta-bombs, but if your doing White Tide, you will not be able to use them unless your charged or Turn 2 (if you win the roll to go first or seize). Still, for the points, every sergeant should have them just in case.

I think 2 grav, combi-grav with a MM attack bike is a good combination for the FA/Troop slot bikes.

The Grav + MM for hard targets, but they can fall back to their bolters, albeit not the most efficient use of them but not bad for an anti-hard target unit.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You should just have 1 squad be a dedicated Grav platform. The rest should have Meltas. 6 bike squads with Grav guns are going to be horrible overkill when Gravity weapons will be optimal, a single squad will be more than sufficient to fry that Wraithknight or Terminator squad.

Except it won't. A squad with two Guns will only do about 3 wounds to a Wraithknight, and kill about 3 Terminators. A squad with two and a Combi will still only do 4 wounds to a Wraithknight, and kill maybe 4 Terminators. And that's all before we get to your biggest and most absurd assumption; that the enemy will allow this single squad to get to their quarry. Redundancy is essential in 40k. So two squads of Grav at least.

If you're facing Orks, then 1 Grav-gun is too many.
They're a very situational weapon, good against some things, rubbish against others.
Plasma is still the more flexible choice.

How many is too many?

I like to use this formula:

(Number of squads members +1 = Too many)

bikes are IMHO THE best place for grav guns.

 grendel083 wrote:
If you're facing Orks, then 1 Grav-gun is too many.
They're a very situational weapon, good against some things, rubbish against others.
Plasma is still the more flexible choice.

I think the very situational statement here is a bit off.
Sure they are poor vs some targets, but for the most part they can be effective against a wide range of things, and almost certainly will find something of value to hit in an opponents army.

Someone ran the numbers of here before, I believe they said that at a range greater than 12, the grav gun matches the plasmagun vs an armour save of 5+, and of course are much much better against targets with a better save.

In rapid fire range the Plasma gun becomes better than the grav vs 4+ saves, they are around the same efficiency against 3+ saves, and the grav is still better vs 2+.

The grav has the advantage of being better than plasma and meltaguns vs AV 13&14 targets over range (obviously melta is king within 6), whereas plasma is better against light vehicles.

Back on topic: I believe having a medium number of bikes with grav guns to be beneficial, somewhere around half of your squads. The others I would kit out for melta, to get rid of heavy armour and threaten T8 units, and flamers to help deal with hordes and blobs going to ground on objectives. I'm not convinced of the benefits of plasma over grav at the moment, though there are times when plasma would be a better choice.

I think 7 squads of bikes is your number one problem. Have you actually tried fitting that many bikes on the table? You get traffic jams, range problems, you loose the ability to effectively deny a flank etc.

Bikes are extremely efficient with gravs, so bring slightly fewer bikes, put gravs on the bikes you do bring, as it is the best weapon they can use, and then fit in support to handle AA, hordes and anti-tank.

Orock wrote:
Was thinking of running something like 6 bike squads with grav guns, but they seem really unreliable on vehicles..

Buy melta bombs for the sergeant and call it a day. Between that and krak gernades you have enough to handle whatever you need to. If your grav gun immobolized the vehicle then your auto hitting it.

Orock wrote:
Would a command squad tooled up for meelee 4 squads with 2x grav guns and a combi grav, and 2 squads with meltas and combi meltas work better?.

No. They are to expensive for models with a 3+ save.

 Grey Templar wrote:
If you come across a Mechanized list or a horde army of any kind you're Grav guns are going to do jack squat. 2 squads of bikes to kill a Rhino in a single turn is a horrible use of points.

The most common Mech list is Eldar. Grav scares the crap out of me as Eldar. An immobile Wave Serpent might as well already be dead.

Quark wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If you come across a Mechanized list or a horde army of any kind you're Grav guns are going to do jack squat. 2 squads of bikes to kill a Rhino in a single turn is a horrible use of points.

The most common Mech list is Eldar. Grav scares the crap out of me as Eldar. An immobile Wave Serpent might as well already be dead.

Of course that is dependent on whether or not vehicles can take cover saves against the Immobilisation. Some say yes some say no, see YMDC for the full argument.

IMO, run a full grav army, and you still won't have enough. 6+ gaunt horde FTW. Or 5+ Guardian swarm.

Even with cover, once one immobilised gets through (which does ignore the shield), the serpent is a sitting duck that is limited in forward facing to fire the shield-gun. It's the one you hope for second after 'explode' if you get a pen.

Bikes aren't so good against hordes with bolter fire, but Grav bikes can still fire the TL Bolter, and you would probably have other anti-horde somewhere else in the list anyway.

Orks do run these guys called "meganobs" from time to time.

Martel732 wrote:
Orks do run these guys called "meganobs" from time to time.

Heh.. That's just it, they don't run.

Well, grav guns are great vs. heavy armor, but they struggle vs. tanks. So your Bikes would serve a particular role.

 Happyjew wrote:

Quark wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
If you come across a Mechanized list or a horde army of any kind you're Grav guns are going to do jack squat. 2 squads of bikes to kill a Rhino in a single turn is a horrible use of points.

The most common Mech list is Eldar. Grav scares the crap out of me as Eldar. An immobile Wave Serpent might as well already be dead.

Of course that is dependent on whether or not vehicles can take cover saves against the Immobilisation. Some say yes some say no, see YMDC for the full argument.

IMO, run a full grav army, and you still won't have enough. 6+ gaunt horde FTW. Or 5+ Guardian swarm.

But neither of the other options mentioned thus far for bikes (plasma or melta) are any better than grav against those two types of opponent you've listed.

I would say, that's what the rest of the army is for. If the grav-biker army were supported by 2 or 3 TFC, that would help mitigate the numbers provided by horde armies.

Grav-Guns are a bit unreliable vs vehicles for them to be depended on. The simple mix of Melta and Grav as already mentioned is the way to go. It will be rare a Grav bike squad will have no viable targets. Even traditional horde armies will have targets (carnifexes, meganobz etc)

My current list has podded Melta weapons for tank busting up close, Grav bikers and Plasma tacticals in Rhinos. Aim the correct weaponry at their optimal targets and your golden.

Grav will have good days and wreck any vehicle you point them at and bad days where they couldn't get that 6 if you paid them. Solid spread and back-up is key.

Grace guns are good but your punch against armor should come from attackbike multimeltas. The grav v plasma debate is close enough that I think it come down to local meta and personal preference (I like plasma for the extra range personally).

I like Grav because on bikes you have an effective 30 inch range, You get an extra shot, and it will be just as effective against most of the big meta targets in the game right now. They still have limited anti horde in the form of twinlinked bolters and worst WORST case is that they can charge in with their improved hammer of wrath and then hit and run out to help deal with hordes.

I would say three units of grav bikes combined with some other in their face element would be fine, but I dont see a problem with having more.

Also quite frankly if you are aiming for a tournament hordes are not a problem and being able to stay at 18 inches will pretty much keep you out of charge range as long as you want to be.