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 Bobthehero wrote:

Nerfed down to Str 8 AP 1, with a 100% mishap chance, since I will not kill Bikers outright, the drill and its payload goes after the Lootas

Oh wow, I guess that was with the 2nd Edition update. I should really get my hands on that.

Apparently, on the other hand, the Thudd gun lost its slow rate of fire.

I don't have the book, its just stuff I've read here and the FW pdf.

The fact that this thread has gone on for 2 pages leads me to believe there is no efficient way to kill Nob Bikers...

Having used them in about 12 games of 6th now I can say the only thing I have feared is a demolisher or similar S10 template, but even then 4+ cover has gotten me through the worst of it, also there's a Warboss on Bike in my unit (as I'm sure there will be in a lot of the ones you face) so he stays up front and eats the first S10 wound to make use of FNP.

I've eaten entire turns of IG, MEQ etc shooting and lost a wound, or at most my 1 non-tooled up Biker (that was eating first from 2 Storm Ravens)

Just food for thought.

Oh I think something like Jaws of the World Wolf will do a number on them, but who takes RPs with stock powers these days?!

 More Dakka wrote:
The fact that this thread has gone on for 2 pages leads me to believe there is no efficient way to kill Nob Bikers...

Or that people have differing armies and opinions.

Well, it's from a DKoK standpoint so no I don't think that factors.

It's the cover+armor+invul+FNP+T5 that's the kicker. I have yet to run into a weapon/combo of weapons that negate all 5 things at once.

No army has a weapon that ignores cover+armor+invul+FNP+T5.

Unless you know of a S10 Flamer Template that ignores Invul saves. lol

I've read an interesting article about Death Korps tactics.

I can give FNP to my artillery, as well as orders.

So fire on my target on a medusa would force the bikers to re-roll cover saves, ignore FNP and Insta-gib them.

Cool

I am not sure if anyone else has said this yet, but two words. Heavy Flamers. They are flame templates that you do not have to roll to hit (always a +), AP 4, and they are a tool that any command squad or veteran squad can hold. Along side that, most vehicles can replace their heavy bolter for one. That means hell hounds, chimeras, bane wolfs, leman russ, and hydra flack cannons can have them. Always a + if you like rushing.

Sadly, since you are part of the Death Korps, that is probably not your style. If you want to deal with those crazy speed freaks then the #1 thing you need is the Leman Russ Eradicator. S6, AP4, Large Blast, No cover saves. If you want to make sure (just for those occasions), an effective squad of 2 Eradicators with side sponson plasma cannons are only 400 pts. That will deal with not just your bike problem, but the vast majority of heavy infantry including Terminators, Mega Nobs, Tau Battlesuits, and all of those monstrous creatures out there.

Besides that, look into buying some colossus, bane wolf, leman russ exterminator (not recommended), chimera with heavy flamer+heavy flamer design, Valkyries with veterans wielding plasma or flamers and demo charges.

None of these will instant death the bikers (2 wounds) or ignore FNP, that's the issue.

pretty much just need volume of shots, since you typically dont have AP4 weapons that also ignore cover, or if you do you have what 1 or 2?
Its only a 4up, the reason its so good is its damn near impossible to cut it off or weaken that 4up without heavy flamers. I ran a nob biker missile against a BT list and he used some ability that reduced my cover...but i still had my armor so i didnt care (against those shots) lol. What scared me was the ~20 TL shots that hit on 3s, i had to roll baller dice to survive that with enough nobz to bother going in vs running away to deny him a point.

 Bobthehero wrote:
None of these will instant death the bikers (2 wounds) or ignore FNP, that's the issue.

Look man. If you want heavy instant death, then go with the demolisher cannons. If you want to deny them armor saves and cover saves, then go with fire. If you want range and that kind of deadly force than ordinance barrage weapons should be your choice. The only problem is minimum distance, and cost for those kinds of weapons. In the end, the more wounds you inflict that go around their armor, the better. It is like killing of terminators. You can go around their armor, but not the invul, so forcing them to make a lot of armor saves over a handfull of invul is sometimes better. Instant death is nice, but you need to double them. That would require S10 which is rarity to all armies. If you want that kind of firepower, get a psycher battle squad, manticore, a detachment of SM Assault Terminators (always recommended, because they are awesome), or demolisher tanks.

If you want to go the cheaper rout, then go with a lot of flamers, which most of your units can field. Use the Eradicator, field some ogryns which would equal them in CC or at least delay them, or you could just simply bane wolf them. Fighting any infantry based army Bane Wolfs are the best. poison 2+ AP3. and then you mount a heavy flamer, and the chem drops them all to one life and the heavy flamer (free) finishes off a large portion of the squad.

Medusa Siege Gun, 100 pts, str 10 ap 2 large blast, longer range than the Demolishers.

And I can make e'm either twinlinked or force to re-roll cover saves.

Noise marines from CSM spammed can get wear them out fast. Blastmasters ignore cover, shots hit hard enough and you cant make enough saves. Sure its not ID and you get invul and FNP, but thats 5s compared to 4s.

Nobz on bikes are down right tough, but you pay a very high cost for them for sure. I have a hard time employing enough scoring units in objective games vs my opponents when over 600 pts of my force is nobz on bikes.

forgot to mention enfeeble powers stacking. you can reduce the toughness of the unit significantly. Lost my nob bikers to that in a game against demons.

Dont take a psyker battle squad IMO, If you do it becomes long range priority target one. But if you plan on that and bring some other good killy stuff, then by all means.

Bored with this. IG can quagmire ANYTHING with enough shots. The problem is that most players don't want to deal with enough infantry to bother with this. If you are playing IG but don't want to bother with swathes of units of guardsmen, go play another army. Maybe Space Marines are more your style. At the local, there's a player that runs NOTHING BUT footslogging IG. A lot of people don't like playing with him because his turns take FOREVER. However, I like it, because I understand the strategy behind his movements, though it may take him 10 times as long to move his swarm of guardsmen while it takes me only a few to move my chaos marines. An easy way to get rid of ANY threat to IG is to have a squad of vets inside a blob, and some power weapons stuck in there. I've even had berzerkers fall to veterans after cutting through 3 squads of IG only to be unengaged as the heart of the IG struck home. It's really quite effective, as the point cost is nothing for him to lose a few squads to cut down a bunch of elite priced troops. Blob em up, Plain and simple. Any damage dealt by bikes should be ignored by IG, as it's not enough to cut through to the heart and do the real damage.

My nob biker missile runs me about ~330 w/o the boss (which is 155), thats not THAT big of a cost for a 1500-1750 game which is the norm i play at. Yea, i only have 5 nobz and a warboss, but its all you need. Sure, you can fully dek out a biker group to 10 nobz + painboy, 2 pks, waaagh, and cyborks but its total overkill. With those upgrades, its 595pts and thats w/o any bigchoppas or kombi scorchas. THAT is too expensive, as if you run across anything that does give biker nobz issues well then ~700pts of your army is worthless (counting the biker boss) and THAT will hurt you.
I would say it could work, but you would have next to no boyz after you get the loota/dakkajet cover (whichever youre going for) and the SAG in the background.

5-6 bikernobz is the most cost effective, the boss is even optional but usually a damn good idea. If you are paying 1/4-1/3 of your army on this missile i think youre doing your math wrong or taking pointless upgrades. This is all at Paitryn btw.

Markerlights and broadsides kill them. Twin linked, BS 5, take coversave down to 5+, no FNP, and instant kill.

As others have said, massed wounds work fine. Put 10 or more wounds on them and they will suffer. Feed them a unit to munch on. Rinse and repeat.

I still think FNP may be a bit of a red herring, volume of fire wise, I don't think it would have a huge impact any more than having a lucky or unlucky roll.

FNP becomes annoying, I find, when you're firing s7 etc guns at them.

I have fought full an ork army with two full nob biker squads twice. The first time engaging them, my terminators were the only things that seemed to be capable of standing in their way. 20 nobs charged the lines of 10 terminators. Terminators held for three terns in Close Combat but in the end faltered due to excessive amounts of wounds inflicted every round. The second game I tried something else. It would seem if you can get weapons equal of just equal to their toughness and/or capable of negating their armor saves, then they become ineffective. Wielding four land speeders with heavy flamers + multi-melta, and an ironclad dreadnought with melta + a heavy flamer (4x70 LS + 145 ICD = 425) were capable of not only stopping the bikers in their tracks, but actually wiped them off the table in three turns, while losing only two of the speeders to looters in the process. Nob bikers are like normal nobs, but they go faster, have a +1 to their toughness, and cost almost twice as much. That is a good thing for most people. Give them enough wounds and then it comes down to the numbers game, just like with Imperial Terminators.

If you want IG to have ranged ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION FROM AFAR!!! then you are looking at the right army, and yet the wrong one. There is no true army that can do that effectively without lacking for melee. And since you are worrying about bikers, you are destined to get into melee. Best thing you can do is F them over with things that they would never expect to hurt them. Such as Bane wolf with Poison 2+ and AP 3. Or a detachment of SM with sternguard, terminators, land speeders, honor guard, Thunder Fire cannons, land raiders with flamestorms, or devastator squads with lots of missiles. Failing Space Marines, look into some sisters of battle detachment. They have flame pistols and excellent melee that only those freaky priests with chainsaws can compare to. Failing that, grab some tau fire warriors with some battle suits AP 4 is their specialty. Failing even that, then just throw bodies at them. Isn't that what the Imperial Guard are good at? How long would it take for 10 nob bikers to get through 50 conscripts when a priest or a commissar joins the unit? How well would a nob biker squad of 10 do against two veteran squads with melta, flamers, heavy flamers, demo charges, plasma, and other special infantry weapons, while mounted in a chimera with two heavy flamers... FOR HALF THE PRICE!? In the end man. you are focusing too much on siege weapons and turtle tactics, when the codex astarties *chuckle* feth it. What the basic rules of hapkido tell you to use your enemies momentum and force against them. If they want to run head on and fast into your army, then let them. Just make it the most miserable miscalculation of their entire lives. How? Well, that would be a couple more paragraphs and I feel like I have rambled for too long already.

Fro gettin rid of Nob Bikers i would try to use something that lower toughness.
Currently i am aware of 2 thing,
Rad grenades from GK, which means getting into combat, which is not good.

Another option would be Dark Angles with Ravenwing Knights.
If you take allied detachment of Librarian on bike, unit of biker , and 2 units of Ravenwing knights (one is command), you get 2 grenade launchers that lower toughness.
Then you can instant kill them even with Missile launcher.

lacert wrote:
Fro gettin rid of Nob Bikers i would try to use something that lower toughness.

That's actually not a terrible idea, it's just not particularly efficient.
Biomancy, Inquisitors and DA seem to be the best ways to do it.

With OP's list, allying in an inquisitor might not be too difficult, although then you have to spend points on PA Gks, since Coteaz doesn't have rad greandes :/

I actually ran a nob missile against that librarian not too long ago. It does suck, because Str8 instapastes, however its not a flatout toughness nerf its only for the shooting from that unit. I had my T5 from every other unit firing at me. He instapasted once, but had 1 wound left anyway lol
And if its not for that unit alone and nerfs their toughness for a full turn for everyone, then my friend gimped himself because i dont know jack about that codex lol so it wasnt me going "Hold up the wording says this!"

 Vineheart01 wrote:
I actually ran a nob missile against that librarian not too long ago. It does suck, because Str8 instapastes, however its not a flatout toughness nerf its only for the shooting from that unit. I had my T5 from every other unit firing at me. He instapasted once, but had 1 wound left anyway lol
And if its not for that unit alone and nerfs their toughness for a full turn for everyone, then my friend gimped himself because i dont know jack about that codex lol so it wasnt me going "Hold up the wording says this!"

The Ravenwing works for all units. The codex DA says that every model in a unit hit by one or more rad shell suffers -1 toughness until end of turn. That should lower the Toughness against every shooting and CC attacks, not just from RW unit.
Just make sure you fire with the Ravenwing grenade launcher first.
So i believe your opponent was gimping himself if i use you words

If i missed something please give me page reference.

Biomancy psyker (not Dark Angels one, he has no excess to Biomancy) with Ravenwing would be a bit too much.

Hey, i just realised that i can instakill Mephiston with Vindicator and RW Knights. And probably a lot of other stuff to (orc Warboss on bike, if we are talking about nob bikers), but Mephiston is lacking invulnerable...

 zephoid wrote:
Simply grab 4 medusa siege guns and run 2x2. At 500 points, with maxed crew, they can dish out 2x2 S10 AP2 large blasts at 120" so sit them in the corner. Sure they get 4+ cover saves, but no FNP and they get ID'd easily. With Barrage on the medisa siege guns you can get around the warboss and snipe out the painboy. After that, quantity of fire can deal with them.

Medusas don't have barrage or the extra range any more, they are just normal medusa guns.

You take down bikes in the same way you take down THSS terminators. Really, a 5x squad of nob bikes could be thought of as 10 terminators with a worse armor save.

You don't kill storm shield terminators with anti-terminator weapons, you take them down with volume of fire. Same with nob bikers.

You're DKoK, which means that you get access to a ludicrous supply of heavy stubbers, right?

Well, something I think you can take from this thread, is look at how long it is.

Now look at how much arguing there is.

Most threads this length have settled on a tactic, and then they just start arguing semantics (e.g. Do you really need 4 plasmas? Shouldn't just 3 be enough? How about a 4th russ instead? You get the idea)

The fact that everyone is still arguing, and still haven't reached a conclusion means the answer is pretty clear.

There is no efficient way to remove Nob Bikers.

Nothing will remove every save they have. They will always have an invuln, will always be T5, they will always be fast, they will always have good shooting, etc.. Any shooting attack powerful enough to negate their FNP can't negate their cover save. The only things powerful enough in CC to knock out their FNP is going last, and will probably get taken down by the nob it is hoping to kill.

Your best bet is to accept that it will take a hellish amount of fire to kill them, and then decide when the best time is to dump fire into them. Some armies need to focus on them turn 1, others will want to wait till late game. But no matter what, you WILL need to deal with them. Any sane player will make them scoring. Any sane player will have a painboy and cybork. Any sane player will have a WAAAAGH banner to make them WS 5 and at least one PK for them to make use of it.

Just accept that they will take a ton of effort to remove, and nothing will de facto kill them outright that doesn't cost at least as much as they do or more. They're considered one of the nastiest ork units for a reason, and they're why the green tide of shoota boyz and lootaz gets even scarier when you throw a unit or two of these bad boyz in.

MrMoustaffa wrote:They will always have an invuln, will always be T5, they will always be fast, they will always have good shooting, etc.. Any shooting attack powerful enough to negate their FNP can't negate their cover save.

... wait.

Something that's S10, at least Ap4, and also ignores cover saves? We DO have a tool to handle this:



And then really think about it for a moment. The bikes can spread out, but the deathstrike has a ludicrously huge template size. The bikes have cover, but the deathstrike ignores cover. The bikes are W2 and have FNP, but the deathstrike is S10.

Furthermore, a nob biker with all the kit can easily cost 75 points. You only need to take out two of them to make their points back. Put another way, a pair of deathstrike missiles costs less than even a small squad of nob bikers, and all you need is basically one shot to bag the whole lot - something that is much more achievable with two deathstrikes on the table (I mean, you've got a 2 in 3 chance of having one shoot on turn 2).

I think this is probably the hardest counter to nob bikers in the entire guard army.

Holy... might have to ally normal IG to throw that around.

 Ailaros wrote:
...Deathstrike...
I think this is probably the hardest counter to nob bikers in the entire guard army.

Of course you know the Nobs would destroy it before it ever got a chance to fire.

 Ailaros wrote:

MrMoustaffa wrote:They will always have an invuln, will always be T5, they will always be fast, they will always have good shooting, etc.. Any shooting attack powerful enough to negate their FNP can't negate their cover save.

... wait.

Something that's S10, at least Ap4, and also ignores cover saves? We DO have a tool to handle this:



And then really think about it for a moment. The bikes can spread out, but the deathstrike has a ludicrously huge template size. The bikes have cover, but the deathstrike ignores cover. The bikes are W2 and have FNP, but the deathstrike is S10.

Furthermore, a nob biker with all the kit can easily cost 75 points. You only need to take out two of them to make their points back. Put another way, a pair of deathstrike missiles costs less than even a small squad of nob bikers, and all you need is basically one shot to bag the whole lot - something that is much more achievable with two deathstrikes on the table (I mean, you've got a 2 in 3 chance of having one shoot on turn 2).

I think this is probably the hardest counter to nob bikers in the entire guard army.

So the only counter Guard has to Nob bikers is one of the worst tank/weapon systems in the game?

Great.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
...Deathstrike...
I think this is probably the hardest counter to nob bikers in the entire guard army.

Of course you know the Nobs would destroy it before it ever got a chance to fire.

Not if you throw hundreds of guardsmen in front of it. With it using camo netting behind an aegis defense line. With a squadron of 3 leman russes in front of them to block LOS to the enemy until you're ready.

I mean seriously, do you even Imperial Guard?