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With the new SM codex out a lot of posts I read are "White Scars this" or "Bike Command Squads with Grav Guns that". Do they look good on paper? Of course they do! Are they actually doing that good in game? That's what I would like to hear. How has your experience been with them?

Well last tournament I was at (last weekend) a Bike army took third place after trouncing my own Eldar in the last round, so while I might be biased, I'd say yes they are living up to the hype. I know he also beat at least one other Eldar list and a triple Heldrake list as well.

I recently won a 5-round tourney with them. Bikers are really good troops for space marines, and white scars is of course the best tactic to run them with. Grav guns are awesome in the current meta, and is the best weapon to run on bikes.

They are not very fond of deamons though, In this tourney, I had two battles against deamons and managed to scrape by in both, but when all your grav is useless, you sure feel like an underdog.

Since deamons are so good and fairly common, this bad match-up is problematic, so the bikers need the right support.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Well last tournament I was at (last weekend) a Bike army took third place after trouncing my own Eldar in the last round, so while I might be biased, I'd say yes they are living up to the hype. I know he also beat at least one other Eldar list and a triple Heldrake list as well.

That's really impressive. What elements did he include to deal with them?

Maybe it's just my general apathy for a bike mounted force, or the price tag that goes with them that has me so skeptical. Then again you could buy up a few lots of DV bikes and modify them to be vanilla marines. Though on the tactics side it seems counter intuitive to me for a force to rush into shooting range of so many shooting armies that can easily out shoot you.

I run a white scars chapter tactics list that uses dual 2+ save chapter masters to tank hits from helldrakes. Then i hunt hell drakes with storm talons. Grav guns may be less than Ideal vs daemons, but bolter's kill the little ones just fine, and a tooled up chapter master can put the hurting on a demon prince.

Bike lists won both the feast of blades open and golden throne southwest this year

He may have won open but he tanked the invitational. He got 16th place, which is still really good given that it's top 16 out of 100, but it just shows White Scars was overhyped and is still inferior to Eldar and Chaos Daemons which made the strongest showings, along with 1 Necron and a few Tau.

 Eldarain wrote:
That's really impressive. What elements did he include to deal with them?

Two Rune Priests, Wheels, Khan, 2 Grav Command Squads, full Melta Bike Squad, 2 small Melta Bike Squads and 10 Grey Hunters in a Pod. I looked in on the Drake game near the end and the Drakes were all still alive; I think he just used the Runic Armoured Priests, Wheels, and his few Storm Shields to try and tank the wounds.

 l0k1 wrote:
Maybe it's just my general apathy for a bike mounted force, or the price tag that goes with them that has me so skeptical. Then again you could buy up a few lots of DV bikes and modify them to be vanilla marines. Though on the tactics side it seems counter intuitive to me for a force to rush into shooting range of so many shooting armies that can easily out shoot you.

I think you are missing the tactical subtleties of Scout; in no way does it force you to rush the enemy, in fact you can also use it to retreat or hide as well, not to mention Outflank. And those shooty armies all tend to be in range turn 1 anyway.

 l0k1 wrote:
With the new SM codex out a lot of posts I read are "White Scars this" or "Bike Command Squads with Grav Guns that". Do they look good on paper? Of course they do! Are they actually doing that good in game? That's what I would like to hear. How has your experience been with them?

I've had good luck with them. They do an incredible amount of damage to 3+ save targets like wraithknights or riptides. Against weaker targets like kroot, I just use the bolters.

The biggest problem with bikes is footprint. 30 bikes will cover your entire board, but only cover about 1000 points. So if your playing a 1500+ game you need to have plans to use the rest of your points. TFCs, stormravens, stormtalons, etc..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 l0k1 wrote:
Maybe it's just my general apathy for a bike mounted force, or the price tag that goes with them that has me so skeptical. Then again you could buy up a few lots of DV bikes and modify them to be vanilla marines. .

Ebay is your friend. I got 30 bikes for 200 bucks (including command squad and ICs) I had to strip them, but its well worth it to save 50%+ off retail.

If you've never played against them, it's hard to gauge how annoying they are. They're the strongest SM build at the moment

Drop pod builds can be fairly good too.

It is true that I've never played against an army with any sort of bike element, so my gauging of their abilities is limited. Perhaps if I ever get done painting my current armies I'll look into them more.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Drop pod builds can be fairly good too.

Drop lists will always be inferior to Bike lists, because you don't spend 200 points on useless transports which give up kill points and all your army, rather than 2/3rds, starts on the table.

Anyone have a link to a basic list/tactics thread for a bike army I can look through?

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
Drop pod builds can be fairly good too.

Drop lists will always be inferior to Bike lists, because you don't spend 200 points on useless transports which give up kill points and all your army, rather than 2/3rds, starts on the table.

A drop pod list is a different beast than a bike list.

First, the bikes are not the same price as the marines in the pods. For those 200 points you can buy 6 pods. In that you can bring 60 marines. At 14 points a pop that's 840 points. 60 bikes would cost you 1260 points.
Yes, bikes have other advantages, but my point is this : your paying for the built in transport that comes with the bikes.

This brings up a weakness of bike armies that anyone who has played them competitively will tell you. They have a huge footprint. Your only going to get about 30 bikes on a table before spacing becomes a big issue -- which is not where you want to be. Spamming bikes just does not work well.

Spamming drop pods works great. Drop pod armies have a strong alpha strike, and can deny an opponents entire first turn of shooting if they go second while getting that alpha strike. That's a significant advantage as that alone stops 1/5 to 1/7 of your opponents damage to your army.

Against some armies the drop pods are a lot more deadly. Seer councils, wave serpents and riptides all don't want you dropping down before they can buff up. A few well placed combi-plasma/melta will destroy those targets before they can mount an offense. I would argue that the drop pods are one of the most competitive in today's meta because of that.

Bike lists are good! I play one and really enjoy it. Drop pod lists are also good. They are different ways to tackle the same codex.

 labmouse42 wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
Drop pod builds can be fairly good too.

Drop lists will always be inferior to Bike lists, because you don't spend 200 points on useless transports which give up kill points and all your army, rather than 2/3rds, starts on the table.

A drop pod list is a different beast than a bike list.

First, the bikes are not the same price as the marines in the pods. For those 200 points you can buy 6 pods. In that you can bring 60 marines. At 14 points a pop that's 840 points. 60 bikes would cost you 1260 points.
Yes, bikes have other advantages, but my point is this : your paying for the built in transport that comes with the bikes.

This brings up a weakness of bike armies that anyone who has played them competitively will tell you. They have a huge footprint. Your only going to get about 30 bikes on a table before spacing becomes a big issue -- which is not where you want to be. Spamming bikes just does not work well.

Spamming drop pods works great. Drop pod armies have a strong alpha strike, and can deny an opponents entire first turn of shooting if they go second while getting that alpha strike. That's a significant advantage as that alone stops 1/5 to 1/7 of your opponents damage to your army.

Against some armies the drop pods are a lot more deadly. Seer councils, wave serpents and riptides all don't want you dropping down before they can buff up. A few well placed combi-plasma/melta will destroy those targets before they can mount an offense. I would argue that the drop pods are one of the most competitive in today's meta because of that.

Bike lists are good! I play one and really enjoy it. Drop pod lists are also good. They are different ways to tackle the same codex.

Agreed on that point about maxing out around 30 or so bikes. My current lists runs 3 bike squads (2 squads have Sergeant, 2xSpecials, 4 Mooks, and Attack Bike. 1 Squad is at full Strength plus I have 2 chapter masters) That comes out to 27 bikes and its usually pretty hard to bring all of them to bear on the same target w/o leaving myself open to being punished by blast weaponry. I mix my bike squads with other elements for a combined arms approach. I have a thunderfire cannon to dig out entrenched infantry. I have 2 vindicators for board control (I deploy both vindis in center of the board in cover, opponents measure 30" from the barrel of the vindi and deploy out of range) The vindis let my bikes fight at midfield, keeping opposing forces away from the objectives on my side of the table. I run 2x Storm talons to hunt enemy aircraft and make strikes on side armor or exposed targets.

So far my only loss with the list was to a MSU dark eldar venom list (tournament game, the guy was a friend of mine who did mention that his list was built to kill mine).

If there is interest I can post/pm the details on my list.

Btw, How does your bike list look labmouse?

This is my 1500 list.
- CM on bike with PF, EW shield
- Five 6 man bike squads with 2 grav each
- 2 Stormtalons
- 2 TFCs

I'm making some changes to it. I'm going to drop to six 5 man squads with 2 grav each, but I'm not sure what to drop to get the 30 points.

I've thought about dropping to Khan, but the CM can deal with issues that Kahn cannot -- like tying up a wraithknight or riptide for a round or two. Scout would be nice, but I keep moving back to the CM.

As the list grows I'll probably take storm ravens. They can produce quite a bit of firepower with hurricane bolters.

 labmouse42 wrote:
This is my 1500 list.
- CM on bike with PF, EW shield
- Five 6 man bike squads with 2 grav each
- 2 Stormtalons
- 2 TFCs

I'm making some changes to it. I'm going to drop to six 5 man squads with 2 grav each, but I'm not sure what to drop to get the 30 points.

I've thought about dropping to Khan, but the CM can deal with issues that Kahn cannot -- like tying up a wraithknight or riptide for a round or two. Scout would be nice, but I keep moving back to the CM.

As the list grows I'll probably take storm ravens. They can produce quite a bit of firepower with hurricane bolters.

I have looked at khan a few times as well but with the inability to assault after scouting. And the bikes already High speed, I rarely find myself unable to get into firing range. Additionally the melee power that the chapter masters bring is rather effective.

My list runs as follows
CM with Artificer, TH, EW shield, Bike, Auspex, Digital Weapons
CM with Artificer, Burning Blade, SS, Bike Auspex, Digital Weapons
2 Bike squads with 7 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
1 Bike squad with 8 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
2 Storm Talons
2 Vindicators
1 Thunderfire Cannon

What are you thoughts on my setup? I've been considering dropping the vindicators to get a storm-raven, but I like the board presence that the vindis offer.

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:
He may have won open but he tanked the invitational. He got 16th place, which is still really good given that it's top 16 out of 100, but it just shows White Scars was overhyped and is still inferior to Eldar and Chaos Daemons which made the strongest showings, along with 1 Necron and a few Tau.

I disagree. Balanced White Scars do very well against both. The trick, as labmouse pointed out, is you can't invest too much in bikes. My typical 2K WS list has only 17 bikes and 3 attack bikes base.

 Thaylen wrote:
My list runs as follows
CM with Artificer, TH, EW shield, Bike, Auspex, Digital Weapons
CM with Artificer, Burning Blade, SS, Bike Auspex, Digital Weapons
2 Bike squads with 7 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
1 Bike squad with 8 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
2 Storm Talons
2 Vindicators
1 Thunderfire Cannon

What are you thoughts on my setup? I've been considering dropping the vindicators to get a storm-raven, but I like the board presence that the vindis offer.

This weekend I ran 3 storm ravens and 3 storm talons in a 'Skies of Death' build. Saying that I was surprised by the amount of firepower produced by storm ravens is an understatement. I would take one raven over 2 vindicators any day of the week now. The reason is this -- a vindicator will usually get 3 targets under its blast. Most people are smart enough to spread out when they see it coming. This means 2 vindicators will hit 6 targets causing 5 wounds with only cover saves. A storm raven has 1 TL MM, 1 TL AC, 1 missiles, 12 TL bolter shots. This means that its going to be delivering more wounds that the two vindicators. Unlike the vindicators I don't worry about scattering off. I can also skyfire with it.
To help mitigate points you could swap a storm talon and vindicator for a storm raven. You could even bring 2 ravens if you were so inclined.

How many points is your list? The only thing that has me worried is that its got few models as troops. It seems like I could focus on killing the bikes and that puts you in a bad spot. Without troops your only hoping to tie most games.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Thaylen wrote:
My list runs as follows
CM with Artificer, TH, EW shield, Bike, Auspex, Digital Weapons
CM with Artificer, Burning Blade, SS, Bike Auspex, Digital Weapons
2 Bike squads with 7 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
1 Bike squad with 8 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
2 Storm Talons
2 Vindicators
1 Thunderfire Cannon

What are you thoughts on my setup? I've been considering dropping the vindicators to get a storm-raven, but I like the board presence that the vindis offer.

This weekend I ran 3 storm ravens and 3 storm talons in a 'Skies of Death' build. Saying that I was surprised by the amount of firepower produced by storm ravens is an understatement. I would take one raven over 2 vindicators any day of the week now. The reason is this -- a vindicator will usually get 3 targets under its blast. Most people are smart enough to spread out when they see it coming. This means 2 vindicators will hit 6 targets causing 5 wounds with only cover saves. A storm raven has 1 TL MM, 1 TL AC, 1 missiles, 12 TL bolter shots. This means that its going to be delivering more wounds that the two vindicators. Unlike the vindicators I don't worry about scattering off. I can also skyfire with it.
To help mitigate points you could swap a storm talon and vindicator for a storm raven. You could even bring 2 ravens if you were so inclined.

How many points is your list? The only thing that has me worried is that its got few models as troops. It seems like I could focus on killing the bikes and that puts you in a bad spot. Without troops your only hoping to tie most games.

Its a 2k list. The chapter masters tanking for 2 of the 3 bikes squads makes the 'kill the troops' approach a little more difficult than expected. I only have a sinlge storm-raven, but I will give it a shot. One of the biggest reasons I've not tried the stormraven in this list is the lack of board presence I'd have (500pts my list in reserves w/o reserve manipulation is a lot)

My vindicators are usually more about what my opponent won't do when they are around, rather than what the vindi's will actually accomplish.

I can see that. I've found that a single TFC does wonders for keeping my opponents spread out.

I personally like.... both bikes and pods

Im planning to run both 15 bikes and 3 pods at 1750 to get the best of both worlds!

In theory (from the armchair at least) it seems that bike lists are strongest against eldar and tau, because grav is huge against both and bikes have the mobility to keep up with both lists.

Some sort of pod element however seems to be better against demons, mostly beacuse we need the pods/barrage/orbital bombardment to really try and nail down the key elements to demon lists (aka: grimoire heralds and fateweaver). Also pods tend to allow us to try and break up the pincer surround movement that i always see demon players do in batreps and force them to assault the pod elements instead of the mainline army.


Khan (and therefore his scout) seems to be super awesome useful against tau/eldar

but a dead weight against demons and (soon to be) nids, because if you scout closer vs them they'll just.. charge you.

At a local 1500pt tournament recently I got my first look at a Grav Biker army.

He was running...

Decked out Chapter Master
Grav Bikes Squads with MM Attack Bikes
Dual Storm Talons
Aegis with Quad Gun
I think he had something else, though I can't remember what was manning the Quad Gun.

Round 1: Full point massacre against a gk player.
Round 2: Got massacred by a Venom/Ravager/Beastpack/Allied Eldar list. Game ended with the Baron manning his quadgun trying and failing to take off the last HP on his last StormTalon.
Round 3: Got massacred by the Dual Flyrant/Dual Tervigon/Doom/Guant list I massacred round one.

Had I scored a little better on tie breakers I would have drawn him round two, and he would have fared better vs my FE Suit/Riptides list. But, drawing DE and Nids was just rough for him games 2 and 3.

Now, the player is a Fair player on the best of days, and his list, though attempting to spam Grav wasn't nearly as good as Labmouse42's. With a good player fielding well rounded list they can be truly effective, but there has to be an answer for everything. Raven's and Talons can solve the AA issues while TFCs control the ground game. I feel they are two critical units for Grav Biker Armies. The CM keeps them ticking and provides a powerful melee threat to handle some of the nastier MCs around.

I feel with the current Meta Grav Biker armies are quite powerful, but depending on what the new Nids, Guard, and Ork books bring for the first quarter of 2014 I see the effectiveness of the build waning. Though, with TFCs, STs, and even SRs I see them remaining a competitive and powerful choice. Actually, I see the meta as we know it getting turned upside down with these new codices.

I like the quick release schedule and all the options for list building in 6th - the meta is ever changing, all builds have counters, and tons of different builds are viable.

Bikes are in style at the moment, but gravs are already possible to counter by going deamons, mech-spam or orks. It is much more fun to make lists in 6th compared to stale 5th ed.

labmouse42 wrote:

 Thaylen wrote:
My list runs as follows
CM with Artificer, TH, EW shield, Bike, Auspex, Digital Weapons
CM with Artificer, Burning Blade, SS, Bike Auspex, Digital Weapons
2 Bike squads with 7 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
1 Bike squad with 8 bikes, PF, 2x Grav, Attack Bike
2 Storm Talons
2 Vindicators
1 Thunderfire Cannon

What are you thoughts on my setup? I've been considering dropping the vindicators to get a storm-raven, but I like the board presence that the vindis offer.

This weekend I ran 3 storm ravens and 3 storm talons in a 'Skies of Death' build. Saying that I was surprised by the amount of firepower produced by storm ravens is an understatement. I would take one raven over 2 vindicators any day of the week now. The reason is this -- a vindicator will usually get 3 targets under its blast. Most people are smart enough to spread out when they see it coming. This means 2 vindicators will hit 6 targets causing 5 wounds with only cover saves. A storm raven has 1 TL MM, 1 TL AC, 1 missiles, 12 TL bolter shots. This means that its going to be delivering more wounds that the two vindicators. Unlike the vindicators I don't worry about scattering off. I can also skyfire with it.
To help mitigate points you could swap a storm talon and vindicator for a storm raven. You could even bring 2 ravens if you were so inclined.

How many points is your list? The only thing that has me worried is that its got few models as troops. It seems like I could focus on killing the bikes and that puts you in a bad spot. Without troops your only hoping to tie most games.

Have you thought of replacing the storm talons with a stormraven? That would be ~30 pts.

Largo39 wrote:Khan (and therefore his scout) seems to be super awesome useful against tau/eldar

but a dead weight against demons and (soon to be) nids, because if you scout closer vs them they'll just.. charge you.

You do not have to scout forward. In fact against those armies you should try to go first and deploy to one side or centrally. You can then scout to the side so you refuse a flank and leave half their army out of position. It is pretty great actually.

I am loving bike builds right now. I do think that the major lacks in the army are handled very well by storm talon/ravens and TFC. The one element that these lists could really use is some really good reserves manipulation and some disposable chaff. I think an IG mix build might improve the army a fair amount but I am enjoying going pure SM for a while and so haven't really experimented with mixing yet.

Daemons are not a hard counter to this army as the bikes still have their bolters. The one lack that really hurts against daemons is a S10 weapon to ID those pesky daemon princes and perhaps some reliable ignore cover to deal with invisibility death stars...that or cheap chaff to act as road blocks.

So now that I'm interested in the bike builds. Can someone give a run down of the basic strategy and tactics?

I'm running my marines exactly the same as before, taking melta bike troops and maybe a plasma gun command squad.

Works every time, even against helldrakes. That hasn't changed between the editions or the rulebooks.

hey, i would like to ask about what the best squad sides for bikes. Everyone says that 5 man squads are best for more weapons, but what about 6 man squads? Even those seem kinda fragile. Also, do you guys add MM attack bikes?