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This seems like a dumb question, but you can take a ccw on a bike but without a pistol does it give an extra attack? If not, why bother modeling a pistol or a chainsword considering they dont need either.

Nope, you need two melee weapons for the +1.

Bikers having access to chainswords is a legacy thing. When chainswords went from being nasty rippy things to having the same profile as a piece of 2x4, players already had them modeled on their bikers, and the official models at the time had one on the sergeant by default. So GW left it in as an option, to cater for those existing models.

Rules-wise, there's really no good reason to choose the chainsword over the pistol.

 insaniak wrote:
Bikers having access to chainswords is a legacy thing. When chainswords went from being nasty rippy things to having the same profile as a piece of 2x4, players already had them modeled on their bikers, and the official models at the time had one on the sergeant by default. So GW left it in as an option, to cater for those existing models.

Rules-wise, there's really no good reason to choose the chainsword over the pistol.

Chainswords are there so that Space Marine Bikers have a Melee weapon to replace with options from the Special Weapons list.

Only because that's the way they're currently writing the upgrades. They've had the chainsword option for a lot longer than the current armoury setup has existed.

 insaniak wrote:
Nope, you need two melee weapons for the +1.

Bikers having access to chainswords is a legacy thing. When chainswords went from being nasty rippy things to having the same profile as a piece of 2x4, players already had them modeled on their bikers, and the official models at the time had one on the sergeant by default. So GW left it in as an option, to cater for those existing models.

Rules-wise, there's really no good reason to choose the chainsword over the pistol.

No good reasons to choose ether option since your twin linked boltgun is super to the pistol as well. If you could fire both weapons it would be the obvious choice but since you can't both are equally useless.

 insaniak wrote:

Only because that's the way they're currently writing the upgrades. They've had the chainsword option for a lot longer than the current armoury setup has existed.

Yes, from memory in the previous codex they did not have the option and it needed to be FAQed in to allow special weapons to be taken.