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Okay, MEq players, what are your thoughts on building a good bike army?

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I would have though the basic core unit would be 5 bikes, with a meltagun and an vet sergeant upgrade with a powerfist, coming in at 200 points, if I?m not mistaken. Is the second meltagun worth the investment? Is the attack bike a good deal?

 

Should the list be all bikes, or is there a limit to how many bikes are worthwhile (Don?t say none!)? Should it contain supporting troops? 3 2LC/HB Preds is always tempting that doesn't really make demands on Heavy Support, but so are terminator / teleport homer combos. I won?t use infantry other terminatos, and I wouldn?t be seen dead using a drop pod, so please don?t suggest it!

 

What about HQ options? Should you run with two basic FotD librarians on bikes? Is a Chaplain worthwhile in this instance?  A T5 Adamantium Mantled, Thunderhammer wielding Chaplain doesn?t have much to fear really, and the bike means he will almost certainly get into combat.

 

Thoughts?

I thought about eventually buying some bikes and doing a white scars type army with my traits chapter. If I did it I'd have the traits that let you take bikes as troops and assault marines as elites.

The list works out to be 2 squads of Assault Marines as elites, 2 or 3 Squads of 6 bikes with two melta guns and a power fisted sarge, and then 3x1 Landspeeder tornado. The extra points would go to Pred Annihilators w/ HB Sponsons. I'd go with Chaplains attached to the assault squads since they'd do more CC damage than the bikes.

Not really uber effective, but it would be fun as hell to play.

when deciding on what you want to arm your bikers with it realy depends on what you want them to do.

ravenwing is in many ways similar to white scars, as it is i find bikes work better as shooting platforms than CC ones. even so i find the 2 flamers per bike squad to be an excellent loadout, leave tank and mosterous creature killing to the speeders and attack bikes.

 

personally the only reason i would field a scars army is to take a speeder heavy force of  9 tornado's for fast attack and 3 tempest speeders as heavy support.  otherwise ravenwings jink save and the masters speeder abilities make it a better choice IMO

Okay, MEq players, what are your thoughts on building a good bike army?

Use the chaos list? I can think of only one reason to use MEq list for a bike army and that is so you can easily reach 40% in troops. That isn't an issue for you so I see no reason to use the loyalist list outside of perosnal preference.

If you are going to the loyalist list, don't use the WS traits as true grit is nigh worthless and counter attack isn't worth 3 points by itself.

Librarians for HQs for sure. You are at a huge disadvanatge against hordes and their powers would help even the field a bit. Plus a mobile force weapon is great against the big baddies. One librarian and one chaplain wouldn't be bad either if you wanted a close combat monster.

I'd setup your squads with 4 bikes and an attack bike (2x MG, MM and fist). That gets you even wounds, the required 5 bikes and some real shooty punch.

I'd definitely take preds, maybe even AC/HB if they are backed up by several MG/MM squads and landspeeders. Terminator bomb is also a good idea but you'd be better off tailoring your list a bit differently then a full on bike army.

hope that helps

In the Ravenwing army there is only one bike squad:

4 guys, 2 meltaguns, powerfist veteran.

Anything less would be uncivilized.

In white scars, I'd take a long look at using scout bikes for your troop slots. 5 guys, powerfist vet, meltabombs and skilled riders is very very reasonably priced, and a 12" move before the game starts.

Terminators to teleport home onto scout bikes seems like a good bet, I think. Never really thought of that, but you could have a librarian command squad, 2 termie squads and 6 squads of meltabomb scoutbikers with powerfists and homers, at 2000 ptsish. maybe less actually

Normal bikes I am not a fan of due to escalation and such. You'll wind up with two bike squads and all your terminators or some such, which would suck. Also the ability to simply start all your termies on the table with all your bikes up in their face is neat too

Posted By mughi3 on 07/18/2006 10:45 AM

when deciding on what you want to arm your bikers with it realy depends on what you want them to do.

ravenwing is in many ways similar to white scars, as it is i find bikes work better as shooting platforms than CC ones. even so i find the 2 flamers per bike squad to be an excellent loadout, leave tank and mosterous creature killing to the speeders and attack bikes.

 

personally the only reason i would field a scars army is to take a speeder heavy force of  9 tornado's for fast attack and 3 tempest speeders as heavy support.  otherwise ravenwings jink save and the masters speeder abilities make it a better choice IMO

The only problem I have with that opinion, is that Ravenwing Bikers are now PROHIBATIVELY expensive compared to other chapters bikes.  I really like the Master of the Ravenwing on a Speeder's abilities though.

Hi Torgoch,

I play a codex White Scars army with decent success, but then I am not tourney guy so keep that in mind. What I can say that as a fellow hard core Tau player (I used to post as GunDrone about 2 or 3 forums ago) Bike armies are a blast.  They maintain that skirmishing edge of your seat feel that tau have but in more of Base and less of a falsetto kind of way.  What is weird is that they seem to function in exactly diametricly opposite manner against certain armies (orcs and necrons specifically comes to mind).

General notes on bike armies:

• They are alot of fun to play, often they are small enough to hide most of the way to the enemy and with skilled riders all around you can  always zip through cover at minimal risk to catch units off guard.
  
• You need some foot sloggers to stay home and hold your quarters. In my experience pure bike armies tend to loose on objectives.
• As with anything you need tank busting and anti horde, the anti horde is easy with tornadoes and flamers and although some balls to the wall PF goodness and meltas go along way you really need a couple of Lascannons to keep heavy skimmers honest.
• You need some donkey stomping heroes along for the ride to rack up kills on MEqs or to take on large soft units and kind of anti-tarpit the enemy or to go on assassination runs. I am amazed at how often it is possible for a hero to carve out a PF, which is really the bane of any bike army.
• Since you should be able to almost always control the initiative, do so. With the Boost moves you can do all sorts of fakes to draw out/intimidate the enemy and then sucker Power Fist them.
  
• Focus your assaults. I always put one hero and one squad on a single enemy target to gaurentee my win, and am carefull with setting up my kill zones so they can survive into their turn.  My third squad not dedicated to CC will be the optimal shooty type vs the army in question that will do clean up duty on Tornado fodder.
• The Bike squads are functionally expendable.  It is rare that they survive my games, but at least they die well.
  

At 1500 I run:
3 x Squads of Bikes all with fists 2 of which have double meltas, 1 has double flamers
3 x Tornados
2 x 6 man Las Plas
1 x 5 man ML / flamer
Pimped Lord
Pimped Reclusiarch

With this list I have had large amounts of success. I have recently painted up a Techmarine, a Librarian (both on bikes of course), HB attack bike Pred and ML dev squad and really enjoyed them in a larger game.  What I have noticed with these are:

• Not surprisingly Librarians rock. What is a bit more surprising is that I think you only want one. Having a Lord spread that LD:10 goodness is VERY important for such low model count armies.
• The attack bike addition to a squad is bigger than it  might initially seem. The extra heavy weapon adds alot of fire power and having two wounds to give up instead of loosing two bikes (50pts vs 65+) .
• The Pred and ML dev are both what you would expect them to be: solid work horses.
• The Techmarine is a bit of a disappointment, for 116pts he doesn't pull his weight which is a shame because the conversion worked out really nice.

Hope that helps

Just as an authoritative bit on ravenwing. Ravenwing bikes suck at shooting. If you try to shoot only with them, you will be PUNKED.

They must have a powerfist and they must use it aggressively. I use mine for antivehicles more than anything (finish off vehicles you fail to melta) but throwing two T5 fist squads at an enemy fighty squad can have positive results..and particularly against enemy soft squads (e.g. Crisis suits).

The reason I would say steer clear of RW is both the prohibitive cost and the lack of meltabombs. Meltabombs will change the entire army for the better, and I'm sure they'll get them in the new DA codex.

Also, the nerf of the Ravenwing speeder master to not be able to have bodyguard speeders made me put mine on the shelf.
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Another way I'd consider running a bike army is with loads of bikers and then assault squads with furious charge in your fast slots and tankhunting attack bikes in your elites (so be swift as the wind and the furious charge for assault/tac squads one).

As opposed to a normal assault squad army, you have fast mobile troops and mobile guns and you all start off the board in escalation. And best of all, no transports.

In the Ravenwing army there is only one bike squad:

4 guys, 2 meltaguns, powerfist veteran.

well that is one way to run them, but i prefer

sgt on bike, 2 bikes with flamers and a HB attack bike attached.

my bikes serve as my anti infantry force. if i am close enough to use melta guns i am almost always close enough to use flamers. melta guns could insta kill 2 guys, or force 2 cover/invul saves but as a take all comers list i find the flamers have the ability to would 4+ models each which makes it very good at killing troops especially in horde type armies. aside from a monolith the speeders can take care of anything else on the table from AV14 to MCs

Just as an authoritative bit on ravenwing. Ravenwing bikes suck at shooting. If you try to shoot only with them, you will be PUNKED.

as a long time RW player i totally disagree, it depends on how you outfit them. you load youurs out to do CC i do not. my force is specifily desinged to shoot and shoot alot(120 shots at 24" most of them from HBs and ASCc). i find it very easy to keep them out of CC and keep shooting it also helps i have lots of attack bikes with HBs in my army (11 to be exact).

granted bikes in CC tend to die horribly due to thier small size unit restriction when compared to even tac squads if you can keep them clear of CC for anything other than finishing off a few straglers or weaker opponants (like tau) in CC  thier shooting ability is truly devastating.

 

Also, the nerf of the Ravenwing speeder master to not be able to have bodyguard speeders made me put mine on the shelf.

i miss that option as well, but i still use him in every game, he just follows the fluff and stays in hiding hopping from terrain feature to terrain feature guiding his strike force and living to tell the tale. in some games he comes out near the end to do some drive-vy's with the ravensword and mabey a bit of shooting. especially if i have killed off the enemies  models that can shoot or shoot less than 24". since he can utalize his abilities by simply being on the table he is far to worthwhile to pass up using IMO.

 

as i said before aside from being able to fully utalize the tempest land speeder in a scars army the ravenwing just has to many nice options that make other SM fast armies rather inferior.

Getting into a shooting war with bikes is a loosing proposition against almost anything. If you are winning at it then you are playing against weak lists or armies that are not SAFH. Las/Plas Marines, Crisis Heavy Tau, or IG will always beat you barring statistical wackiness unless you run them down.  

On the other hand you can total run circles around most close combat armies and happily shoot them to pieces, but that should be obvious.  Even then if they have a decent mix of shooty and CC (foot sloggin' Orks with lots of rokits) you must tread carefully.

Mughi, loading them just to shoot is pointless.

I have 9 heavy bolters and 9 assault cannons in my list. I think that will suffice for antiinfantry. It always has.

In my normal list prior to the gay FAQ of lameness, I used 12 speeders and it was even worse.

Tell me how you blow up tanks exactly with no melta guns? Do you use the powers of your mind, or just throw dice at your opponent until he stops using tanks?

Even then, tell me what you do when someone charges your bikes with some jump packs. It's gonna happen if you ever want to use your flamers. And if you don't use your flamers but once or twice in a game why wouldn't you be better off with meltaguns?

spork i am not using them against weak lists, in fact i have used them in tourneys against

well designed guard, black legion, siters of battle, thousand sons, tau etc....

 

the ork game was totally one sided even though he had some good ap 2 & 3 he still has to hit with it   and i get my jink save  i lost 2 speeders and one assault cannon off of a 3rd, he lost all of his army.

Mughi, loading them just to shoot is pointless.

I have 9 heavy bolters and 9 assault cannons in my list. I think that will suffice for antiinfantry. It always has.

In my normal list prior to the gay FAQ of lameness, I used 12 speeders and it was even worse.

i disagree because my experience tells me otherwise. it is a small elite strike force but it also outguns just about anything on the table except iron warriors (altough i can counter that with a melta heavy tailored list if i wanted to) i have 21 heavy bolters, 10 assault cannons, 4 flamers and 17 TLd bolt rifles at 1850 and it is far from pointless as performance has shown.

Tell me how you blow up tanks exactly with no melta guns? Do you use the powers of your mind, or just throw dice at your opponent until he stops using tanks?

see those 10 assault cannons? they are far more effective than melta's against every army out there save a monolith or an iron warriors army(mainly because oblits have multiple wounds and an innvul save).

Even then, tell me what you do when someone charges your bikes with some jump packs. It's gonna happen if you ever want to use your flamers. And if you don't use your flamers but once or twice in a game why wouldn't you be better off with meltaguns?

yep it does happen from time to time despite my best efforts to avoid assaults. had a wraithlord sweep all my bikes off the table, of course by the time it got done doing that it was all he had left on the table and it died horribly to the 9 land speeder tornados  i still had on the table.

 

on the meta gun issue

1-flamers are cheaper(even more reason to take them if your only going to use them a few times in the game)

2.flamers ignore cover saves

3.flamers do more wounds

4.if i a assaulting a non-MEQ army like guard or tau i am killing off more models than i could with 2 melta gun shots if the even were to hit. and they are ususally in cover to garner it's benefits.

guard in a bulding with camoline-3+ cover save to shooting from 2 meta guns VS instant death and no save from flamers doing more wounds.

5.flamers don't have to roll to hit

I do love the flamers, but I tend to put Heavy flamers on my dropping dreads, so I keep meltas on my Ravenwing squads.

I'll sometimes run a single 4 RW bike squad with 2 meltas and a p-fist vet followed closely by a single RW H.Bolter attack bike on its own.
I'll use them in a number of ways.

1. My favorite: turbo them up one flank behind cover and let them eventually get around the back of the enemy deployment zone. This allows you to either tank hunt, draw enemy units out of formation, or mess with his reserves.

2. Hug the back of my LR Crusader (packed with assault termies) and soften up a hard target, destroy a loaded transport, or distract/destroy an enemy tank killer so that the termies + LRC can do their job.

3. Keep them back to defend my firebase against deepstrikers/assaults or to turbo out during endgame to grab a quarter/objective.


They're expensive, but fun!

And how, exactly, are you taking assault terminators, land raider crusaders and drop podding dreadnoughts in a Ravenwing army?!?!?!

Lots of good stuff here, thanks all. I like the idea of a unit of scout bikes, something I?ve always wanted to use but had forgotten existed (I read the marine codex about a year ago and promptly lost it) and also like the idea of 4+ bikes + attack bike 6 wound squad. Terminators probably aren?t a good idea if too much escalation around, point taken.

I?m afraid I can see no reason for playing bikes as a shooting force. Speeders do it all so much better, if that?s the army style you are going for. What I want to do is place 20+ bikes on the table and have a decent-ish chance!

Posted By KiMonarrez on 07/21/2006 10:56 PM
And how, exactly, are you taking assault terminators, land raider crusaders and drop podding dreadnoughts in a Ravenwing army?!?!?!

Mixed wing army, my friend. Its not the most cost efficient, but its mighty fun to play with!

Oh, I know it's fun to play with. With my Dark Angels, it's usually an either/or situation. Either I take Deathwing, or Ravenwing. Rarely both (as it's just prohibitavely expensive).


I just had the impression that it was a pure Ravenwing army... then you started talking about Deathwing Assault Terminators... and you just lost me.

If you are saying that you are not going to take any speeders then you will need to go heavy on the attack bikes to get the high volume fire power.

Are you going to go pure bikes (more fun but less effective) and if so are you going to do either WS or RW?