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.

morning dakka,

I'm wondering how best to deal with a space marine bike squad as a vanilla space marine player. my opponent usually runs a 5-man bike squad w/attack bike and then joins his captain (on a bike) to that squad. they move fast (esp on the 4x4 board we play on), seem fairly resilient, shoot reasonably well and, I'm told, are pretty good on the charge. in the two games we've played so far I've only managed to kill one or two bikes, but I've lucked out and avoided the charge. I worry about them, though, because they're a scoring unit and highly mobile.

my games are 1000pts and I have tac marines (all weapons), a small assault squad (PA, flamer), sniper scouts, a small squad of tac termies (stormbolters only), rhino/razorbacks (TL HB or TL LC turrets), a land speeder (all weapons in the box) and a dreadnought (MM/DCCW) available to me (lists vary from game to game). since I don't have any Str 10, what's the best thing to be shooting at bikes?

cheers

Anything that ignores their high toughness and forces a bunch of saves. Autocannons are particularly good at this, but otherwise you generally want to fire anti-tank stuff at them. They have a 5+ jink (4+ if they turbo-boost) so if your opponent can roll well than they can be a pain to bring down.

Your best thing to shoot at bikes is things like plasma guns, assault cannons, auto cannons, ect. All the anti-light vehicle stuff. Also getting into melee is a good thing to do as well, if you pull it off.

One of the best tricks though is to drop a librarian with avenger in a drop pod and land near them. A str 5 ap 3 flamer tends to kill bikes dead.

 juraigamer wrote:
Your best thing to shoot at bikes is things like plasma guns, assault cannons, auto cannons, ect. All the anti-light vehicle stuff. Also getting into melee is a good thing to do as well, if you pull it off.

by getting into melee, I assume you mean charging them first to deny him all his bonus attacks and such?

I'm trying to work out a counter with the models I currently have, so no autocannons at the moment. I do have an assault cannon for my speeder, but it makes it pretty expensive. I was thinking I might be better off with typhoon missile launchers (2 krak shots). I have plasma guns for two of my three tac squads and for heavy weapons I could do missile launchers (krak) or plasma cannons. I'm leaning towards the plasma cannons in the hopes of hitting more than one biker. I should also mention that I'm trying to fit this counter into a TAC list instead of tailoring specifically to what he brings.

I run a command squad in bikes (1 apothecary , 4 veterans with plasma guns) plus the Capitan (storm shield, relic blade ,artifice armour) as a single unit and they are great , melee is not a problem to a appropriated equipped Capitan and the T5 and feel no pain works out great , the one thing I fear is Plasma Cannon spam since they can do some damage . TFC also can be dangerous.

One thing i notice is that a tactical squad in rapid fire range can be a treat , since they are 8 marines shooting bolter guns (with the sergeant) plus the other special/heavy weapons , and they normally can cause a wound or two/tree if you get bad rolls. So if you can get 2 tactical squads within Rapid fire range you can normally get 2 bikers killed .Also Hb are your friend ! once a devastators squad (10 men)with 4 HB killed 3 of my command squad in one turn.