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Hi

I've had some fantasy horses kicking about for a while now, that I've always meant to turn into proxy bikers for my Black Templars army. But being something of an idiot when it comes to strategy etc, I've never been able to decisively resolve what they ought to be.
I've got 8 horses in all, more than enough that I could stick say a captain on one and a chaplain on another should I go the command squad route, and keep some versatility with regards to my HQ choice.
But are plain spaghetti bike squads a better choice? If so, what kind of load out is solid?

Thanks for your help, and all apologies for my rampant idiocy

PoserMcBogus

For most chapters, a bike chapter master with a command squad (including apothecary) is pretty stout. It's a fledgling deathstar that doesn't take too much of your points.

If you want to step up your deathstar game with allies, snag a biker sanguinary priest from blood angels, and put that chapter master in a full biker unit, and toss in several biker librarians in a conclave. Do this with iron hands and you have a brick wall of durability against anything below str 10, and doing it inside the fist of medusa strike force is even more ridiculous. (All the iron hands bikers will have 3+ FNP at that point...)

Any HQ works better on a bike.

If you run armored lists, getting the techmarine on one lets him zip around to fix tanks if you want, keep the range open for a c-beamer, or just thematically keep up with the wall of steal.

One of the major perks of bikes is 2 specials in a 3 man squad. That is both fast and relentless. Melta benefits from the fist option (although there are a lot of ways to get fast melta into a list) and grav really enjoys the second. Most people will recommend grav bikers, and with good reason. Combi on the sarge, point allowing. Extra bodies are not required these days, but can help the survivability of the squad.

If you want to go big, the command squad lets you take even more grav in one squad, and adds the apothecary for FNP.

You have 8 “bikes" to work with, so here is a thought:

TH/SS captain
4 bikers with grav guns
2 bike sarges with combi gravs
1 apothecary

This way you can either run a a captain with a command squad (leaving the sarges on the shelf) Or a captain with two troop pick minimum grav squads.

A lot depends on your collection and army style. You could always go off in left field and use scouts to make scout bikers. These can be useful for getting locator beacons for precision drops upfield turn one. Not as “strong” an option, but a fun one that can help a few lists out. YMMV

 Nevelon wrote:
or just thematically keep up with the wall of steal.

har har har. Only if you are playing Blood Ravens(?).

personally, I'm rather a fan of the Master of the Forge on a bike with Conversion Beamer, but then I don't play SM anymore.

Yo! Thought I'd try to res this thread for 8th ed. as I still haven't even tried building my bikers.
1d4chan seems to be dead set on melta bikers being the best, but also seems to insist that biker captains and chaplains are dead good too.
Am I right to be put off of biker apothecaries, as they can only heal other bikes, right?
Cheers!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW I want to keep my marines pure black templars thanks, so no other chapters allowed!

Deathwatch Black Templars.
As long as they have the silver arm and shoulder nobody will argue that they’re not Deathwatch, as long as they all have the Templar cross nobody will argue that they aren’t Black Templar.

All my Deathwatch have Ravenguard pauldrons because I’m too lazy to paint two lots.

I appreciate the input, but when I said I wanted them to be Black Templars, I REALLY meant that I want them to be Black Templars. Not Blood Angels, not Iron Hands, not Deathwatch.

The best use would be to mount scouts on them and call them scout bikes. It actually makes sense for scouts to be on horses anyways cause horses can go a lot of places bikes can't.

Scout bikes are one of the best options in the codex and they do benifit quite a lot from their reroll charge because they are trying to get close anyways to use their shotguns.

I second the scout idea. That seems like a good fit and idea.

Well I think BT call them neophytes or something but go for it.

Deathwatch bikers ftw, I considered a squad for my force but I think primaris will have some sort of bikey thing soon so it's pointless.

 posermcbogus wrote:
Yo! Thought I'd try to res this thread for 8th ed. as I still haven't even tried building my bikers.
1d4chan seems to be dead set on melta bikers being the best, but also seems to insist that biker captains and chaplains are dead good too.
Am I right to be put off of biker apothecaries, as they can only heal other bikes, right?
Cheers!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW I want to keep my marines pure black templars thanks, so no other chapters allowed!

1d4chan telling you Melta Bikers are the best is one of the reasons you shouldn't use 1d4chan. They offer lots of horrible advice.

objective markers? i love bikes, have most my orks on bikes andover 50 space marines biekrs... and while with the codex i have high hopes for the ork bikes (not being OP and tournament stars, but being a middle of the road choice that is not autolose), the space marines still sit looking pretty on the shelf. way to many points for what you get.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

1d4chan telling you Melta Bikers are the best is one of the reasons you shouldn't use 1d4chan. They offer lots of horrible advice.

Any particular reason for that? Should I disregard their input on Chaplains and Captains too?
If melta's no good, then should I just go for the 8th ed fallback and run plasma? Are flamers still as naff on a bike as they are normally?

If I do continue along the ol' melta route, I was thinking of kitting out the captain with a thunder hammer and combi-melta, to help with tank popping, and kind of stick him in with the other bikers (how awful is this?). With this in mind, what's decent for the Chaplain?

Cheers for the input thus far! I've mulled over the scouts thing, but I think the (monetary) cost doesn't quite justify it, as I've got heaps of marine bits to muck about with, and I've fallen in love with marines on horseback. And as @G00fySmiley points out, they might as well be paperweights by the sounds of it, so I may as well make them pretty.

Plasma is the fall back de-facto way to run bikers. Bikers with melta MAY be the best way to use melta guns, but that doesnt make them the best choice for bikers.

For my ravenwing army i run 1 large bike squad with plasma guns, 2 mininum size squads with flamers, and a squad with the plasma talons. I like flamers on bikes because you can advance and get their 4++ save while still getting to shoot those flamers and not care about -1 to hit. But normal marines dont get that 4++ so.... still a viable tactic i suppose.

Marine special weapons in general suck atm.

...so, plasma then?

I like scout bikers personally