Noise Marines in Escalation

[RolandTHTG]

Good report. Glad to hear things are starting to work out. One problem - Oblits are Slow & Purposeful, which means that they can't overwatch. though it didn't deem to affect the game too much, I 'd apologize to the guy, as 4 more guardians might have been able to cause another wound. 

[Phytoon]

Oh, I must've missed that. I thought in the book it just said that they can't run or perform sweeping advances.

 

Regardless, they all get 2 attacks in melee with power fists, that'll be enough to make short work of pretty much any infantry.

[Phytoon]

Alright, the next round happened, and once again, I won! Once again, though, I felt kinda bad for the guy, since I got really lucky in one roll which probably would have changed the game.

 

My list was the exact same as last time, with the addition of a single extra obliterator that I got as reinforcements from the last campaign session. He comes in at turn two from reserves, but doesn't do too much, though it was nice having an extra gun on the field.

 

We randomly rolled for terrain and objectives, and we got a pretty nice looking field, with ruins on both sides and forests along the middle. Three objectives were placed, with one in each deployment zone, and the last next to one of the forests in the middle. We also had night-fighting first turn, and that ended up saving some of my cultists, surprisingly.

 

My opponent was playing Blood Angels, and he had two furioso librarians in drop pods, as well as a jump squad and another librarian in reserves. His warlord was another librarian, and was accompanied by a ten-man squad of tactical marines, and I believe he had another squad of troops in reserve, but I can't remember fully. He deployed his warlord and attache in the ruins on one side of the board, informed me that everything else was deep-striking, and let me start deploying. I put my blast-master squads in the highest possible positions I could from deployment so they could see the warlord's squad. At first, I think he was just about 36 inches away, but he moved closer on his turn and my guys had a commanding view of the rest of the field, so it was alright. One of my squads was in difficult terrain next to one of the objectives from the start. I put the cultists up front in a nice orderly blob, with the bikes and obliterators behind them. The oblits were to my right so that they were closer to the noise marines in the ruins and had a similar view of the field, and the cultists were going to run straight for the objective next to the forest.

 

I failed to steal initiative, so he started first, moving his lord's squad forward and dropping in one of the furioso librarians right in the middle of my dudes. He had it so that he was just in front of the cultist blob, but to my right so he was closer to the obliterators. In his shooting, he had one guy from his lord's squad that was in range to shoot a bolter, so he shot my cultists, inflicting a wound, but because of the night-fighting he had stealth and shrouded, and he was shooting through a forest, so he got I think a 3+ cover, and he saved it with a five. Then he had his furioso manifest Blood Lance, putting the beam so it would hit my lord, but I denied the witch with a six. He then shot and killed two cultists with the storm bolter from the drop pod, which was close enough that they wouldn't get a cover save.

 

Report:

 

My first turn, I immediately started feeling bad for him, as I surrounded his furioso with my bikes, then walked the obliterators up next to him and moved my cultists away, towards the objective. First, my noise marines shot his lord's unit, hitting twice but only inflicting a few wounds because he had them spread out. Then the bikes unloaded the meltas at the furioso's rear armor, hitting and penetrating with both, but I just got crew stunned and weapon destroyed. So I had to shoot him with the oblits too, and they filled him full of lasers, getting two more penetrating hits so he was dead, but both results were explodes, so he exploded. It went four inches, hitting all the bikes, the oblits, and three cultists. All the bikes and oblits lived, but one cultist bit the dust.

 

His next turn, he was already feeling defeated, but he got his jump unit in from reserves. He placed it in the back of all my guys, and shot a melta and an infernus pistol at Zed, missing one and I made my invulnerable save against the other. Then there were three guys with regular bolt pistols, but he needed fives to wound my bikes with those, and they all failed to wound. The pod killed another couple of cultists, and the main squad opened a volley at the cultists too, since they were the only unit in range, but only killed one more because of the 5+ cover from the forest.

 

My turn two, I got that extra obliterator in from reserves, placing him behind his lord's squad. However, Helly decided that it was too early in the morning to fight. I moved my bikes so that they flanked the jump squad from the side that had the melta, and moved the cultists so they were finally in range of the objective. The oblits did a shimmy around the drop pod so they could see the enemy lord as well. I started shooting with the Brand, killing three of the five jump guys, including the guy with the melta, then I fired the two meltas, but only hit one, killing him. Then, the combi-bolter failed to wound twice. However, since the cultists were where I needed them, they were done running, and they fired off I think 12 shots, hitting with four and wounding with two, and he failed one of the saves, killing his last guy. Then the noise marines fired at the lord's squad, killing two more guys with the first shot, and one guy with the second because it scattered just a little bit. I had the three-man squad of oblits open up with twin-linked plasma guns at that squad, and got three more wounds from them, and finally, shot the assault cannon from the extra obliterator for an amazing one extra wound. His warlord had fearless, so there was not a morale check, and that ended my turn.

 

His turn three, he got the second furioso in, and put it next to my obliterator on his side, and moved his lord out of the way. He had only a few marines left in that squad, I think just two and his lord, so he wanted to try and get him away from the noise marines' field of vision. The furioso manifested blood lance, and I failed to deny it, and it hit the obliterator, instant killing him, since he didn't have mark of nurgle like his brothers. The drop pod on my side took more potshots at the cultists, only killing one.

 

My third turn, Helly still didn't want to get up. I shot the lord's squad with the one noise marine squad that could still see him, scoring a direct hit for instant death on his lord and the rest of his squad, then the oblits shot at the second furioso, who had his side exposed, getting to pens for crew shaken and immobilized. The other noise marine squad did nothing, since they were going to be just fine sitting next to the objective, and Zed's bikes melted the pod in my deployment zone. He then conceded the game, since the only things left on the field was immobile, and he hadn't really inflicted serious casualties to my guys, so we ended it there.

 

 

 

What I learned: It really is better keeping the oblits in regular deployment. The way I was rolling reserves, they probably wouldn't have shown up until turn five. Also, having an immediate response to having a dreadnought dropped on my head is priceless. Other than that, it was mostly business as usual, with the noise marines providing long-range support fire while keeping objectives secure, and the bikes melta-ing face. I think it was a bad idea for him to place his five-man jump squad next to all my dudes, but honestly, if he had put them anywhere near any of my units, I'd have the bikes right over to get them. That's another thing, I can't have the bikes zoom off into the distance. They serve me much better from my own base, so they can run around between units and keep guys off my noise marines. I would usually run them as far as possible to go kill a tank or something, but I can easily have the oblits do that instead. They should be protecting not only my guys, but themselves, since a four-man squad is a pretty easy target.

 

Anyway, next week is 1250 points, so I'm thinking of bringing in my defiler, but seeing all the anti-armor and anti-monstrous creature stuff, I think I'd be better served by a sorcerer in a terminator squad. Giving all those guys MoT for a 4+ invuln doesn't sound bad, but I'm sure I'll find something to talk myself out of it. The way I'd bring my sorc would be 125 points, with two mastery levels and terminator armor, with MoT on him at least. I figure Doombolt would be a good anti-vehicle power, and I have other options along with it. If I don't roll Doombolt, then I can just take the primaris power, or hope that I got that one ability that lets me smack my guys around to roll on the boons table. That just sounds like fun.

[Tenebris]

I find the Sorcerer with MoS much more useful for his points than the MoT one. Slaanesh has great psychic powers and they work well with the rest of the army as for the terminators keep the Undivided so that your Sorcerer can join them and equip them with combimeltas for some vehicle hunting. Use the remaining points to either upgrade the lone Obliterator with MoN or to buy more terminators, it all depends on how many points remain at your disposal. 

[Phytoon]

Sounds good. I think I'll shove in a sorc with MoS and terminator armor, mastery level 2 for 125 points, then give him a unit of 3 terminators, all with combi-meltas and the champion has a power fist for 122 points. That's a 247 point upgrade to my 999 point list, so I have only 4 points left to spend. I want to keep the cultists around, since they worked as such a great distraction, but at the same time that 86 points I spent on them could be refunded, and I'll have 90 in total to put back into my list. I could use that to increase the termi squad to five guys and get a Reaper Autocannon, but at the cost of a rather expendable troop choice that has actually proven effective at capturing points.

[Capt_Darius]

I'd keep the troop choice, honestly. The cultists can either look non-threatening and steal an objective, or look intimidatingly huge and provide a nice distraction to cover everything else.

[Phytoon]

Well this week's match went rather poorly for me. But I know what I messed up, and for the most part I just forgot my target priority.

 

I went up against Tau, and he brought that fancy new Riptide model, so as soon as it popped out, I focused everything into it. However, this guy didn't really know all of his rules clearly, and on top of that, he allied in Space Wolves, and had only recently bought their codex, so we ended up stopping the game several times to look up how his stuff worked.

 

We rolled for terrain, and ended up with a lot of it. I ran a river down the middle of the map for fun, and the other guy focused on setting up nice fire lines with cover for his Tau that I could ignore. We also had four objectives, so one went in each side of the board, one in the middle near the river, and another off to one side by a rock. We rolled for first turn and he won, telling me to deploy first, so I took the side with the two objectives and put my cultists as close to the river as possible. The plan was to run across the river and push him off that middle objective, and if nothing else, at least contest that while holding my two and potentially killing a bunch of communist space-fish.

 

His deployment had two of the hammerhead tanks (one of which was upgraded with Longstrike) and one of the missile suits, all way in the back. Then he had two squads of fire warriors and a squad of pathfinders with his HQ in it (Cadre Fireblade). He then had his puppies on the side away from his held objective, and had a rune-priest in with one of his fire warrior squads. The Riptide was in reserves, along with a bomber craft. I had the Heldrake, the Sorcerer and his squad, and my lone obliterator in reserves.

 

Before my turn one, he infiltrated his pathfinders with his HQ right in front of the river in plain sight of my Noise Marines. On my turn one, I shot the crap out of them, but a bunch ended up living and he passed his pinning checks, so I shot them with plasma cannons from the oblits. Before all that, though, I didn't know where to put my bikes, so I moved them back and forth so they could get their 4+ jink save, but ultimately they pretty much stayed put. I ran the cultists as far as they could go towards that river, but could only get just in front of it.

 

His turn one, he focused down my noise marines behind the rock, shooting absolutely everything at them, and it took all of it to get them. But he ended up with first blood. He had moved one of his fire warriors past his base objective towards the middle objective, and had his pups go around the other side of the rubble it was next to.

 

My turn two, Helly came in, along with the Lone Obliterator. I deep-struck him next to the middle objective and had Helly zoom in towards the pathfinders. Sadly, they were just 37 inches away from my edge, so she wasn't able to vector strike them. I moved the cultists into the river, and found out it was Iceblood, so dangerous terrain tests were made, and 17 out of 19 passed. Then I had the bikes jump over it, and they all passed, they were heading for that middle objective. All at once, though, there were no stragglers. I had Helly shoot at the guys on the objective, leaving the pathfinders for the noise marines (in hindsight, I should have shot the blastmaster first, then the baleflamer) and wiped out a bunch of the fire warriors there. The Blastmaster missed the pathfinders entirely, leaving me dissapointed. The lone oblit shot the fire warriors with the assault cannon, killing three of them, and Zed shot the Brand at the puppies, because the fire warriors were just out of range. I took out a bunch though, and it was enough to make me fail the charge since I cleared out a good two inches of models. (Again, in hindsight I should have aimed for different models, maybe in the back rather than the front.)

 

His turn two, he had his Riptide come in, and he tried using his nova reactor, but rolled a 2 (this is one of those times where we had to cut for a while to look up the rule, as I had to have him read the paragraph about the nova reactor like six times to see that it fails on a 1 and a 2) so he just took a wound. He had that shoot at Butterball, destroying her baleflamer, and had his rune priest do Jaws of the World Wolf (again, another pause because he was convinced it was automatic death with no saves allowed for a 24 inch line) and he successfully killed two cultists, because Zed's bikes all passed initiative, and one of the three cultists hit passed initiative. Then he unloaded his tanks on my lone oblit, inflicting one wound. 

 

My turn three, I had Helly vector strike his longstrike tank, getting four hits and glancing twice (I was hoping to break his gun, but couldn't) and then Helly left the board. The oblits turned around to go shoot at the Riptide, and the Sorc came in, deep-striking right next to that thing. BM shot the guys on the objective, killing a couple, but still leaving a bunch, and I moved Zed's bikes up for one last hurrah before they got torn apart by the tanks. I shot the Riptide with lascannons, getting three wounds on it, and then shot the fire warriors with fire from Zed and a lascannon from the oblit. We killed his rune priest, but died to overwatch from the remainder.

 

His turn three, the riptide killed itself, then the tanks finished off the lone obliterator and the cultists. He had been ignoring them for a while, so I continued to point out that they are not something that you can leave alone like that. After all that, I only had stuff on my side of the field, and he still had that middle objective. He didn't control his base one, but that just meant the two controlled objectives cancelled. Plus he had first blood and warlord slain. We had to call it here because the store had already stayed open an hour past closing for us, so he ended up winning. 

 

 

What I learned: The cultists almost made it to that objective. The only thing I could've done differently would be to change my target priority. I should have focused his pathfinders down first before I went after anything else, because his HQ was in there, and I would have gotten a lot of points from killing them. I couldn't really say anything bad about how I handled the riptide, though it did kill itself which was rather lucky for me, but in that one hit on the Heldrake, he destroyed her only weapon, so she was basically out of the picture. He never did get that bomber in, but I don't think he really needed it. But, given a few more turns, I think I would have been able to get the sorc across the river, or at least close enough to kill his guys on that objective and even out the game. I feel like I put everyone in the right places, but the dice were just against me when it counted. For a while, I had him reeling from how much pressure I can put on the field with all the long range AP3 stuff, and I did insta-kill his rune priest with a lascannon, so I felt good about that. 

 

As far as my failings go, the biggest one here was shooting the front of the space wolves with the brand, rather than hitting them in the back so I could keep an close charge range. Failing that charge really messed me up, and I would've torn through the pups with Zed.

[Phytoon]

Well then, I lost the last game, but it was really close (until I noticed that objectives took precedence). I fought against Imperial Guard with Blood Angels allied in, and it was a pretty interesting list. There was lots of armor, and he had a flyer, the stormraven or whatever it's called, armed with 3 twin-linked lascannons. It also turned out that this was the last week of the league, which was 1500 points, and apparently I can't count weeks, thinking it was still 1250 week. Thus, I had to hastily add 250 points to my army to make it work. I brought another five-man squad of noise marines, a Helbrute with missile launcher and multi-melta, and added a cultist to the blob and dealed out 2 flamers.

 

The match was kinda long, and the reason I lost was because of a hasty decision on my part on our last turn. I'll sorta briefly cover the bulk of the battle, then go into a little more detail at the end.

 

Our campaign event this time was some kind of volcanic activity. We had to roll a d6 for each 2'x2' section of game board, and on a 1 or 2, that whole board was dangerous terrain, and all terrain pieces placed on it counted as primary objectives worth one point each. For the longest time, we both forgot that those were objectives, but I'll get back to that.

 

I won the first-turn roll and decided to go second, and the other guy put his tanks in the back of the map, on a hill. There was a little bit of cover because there was a statue next to the tanks, but he wasn't concerned about that, as he had a nice commanding view of the field. Then he had two sentinel walkers on my left side, in front of storm troopers and his death company with a chaplain, and behind all that was some tank with a strength 9 ap 2 large blast. The remainder of his deployment was on my right side, and included a couple razorbacks, one with guardsmen in it, and the other with a squad of sanctioned psykers. Then there was another squad of guardsmen in the back on foot. He infiltrated some ratling snipers after my deployment.

 

I put my helbrute on my left, right behind the cultists, and then behind those I had one of the Noise squads. In my middle field, I had another Noise squad, in some ruins, and slightly to their left was the third squad, behind a forest. All the way to my right was Zed and my bikes, set on melting those razorbacks and slaughtering some loyalists.

 

So as I've tried to describe it, we were on a 4' x 6' board, and his side had two of the tiles as dangerous terrain, the one on my left and my right, and the tile on my right on my side was also dangerous. Lucky for me, I only had four guys in dangerous. He had about twenty.

 

His guys got pretty messed up by the terrain, but he didn't lose way too many, and he still got to go first, so he tore into my guys with his snipers and the storm troopers. The tanks for the most part did nothing until turn two. My guys moved up, and since Helbrute got hit by one shot, he crazed and had to charge the closest thing, which was one of the walkers. He shot it with a krak missile and missed with the multi-melta, then made a surprising 11" charge and punched it to death. The noise marines shot at various things but mostly missed everything. The bikes got just out of the dangerous terrain, and were pretty close to the first razorback, but I had to flat-out to get there, so that was the end of my turn.

 

His second turn, his tanks blew up most of my noise squads, and he got his gunship in from reserves. He hit my helbrute with a lascannon, but I invuln'd out of it. Then he had his death company charge the cultists, and his chaplain charged the helbrute. The chaplain put one wound on the brute, and the brute would've insta-killed the chaplain, but he made his invuln from iron halo or whatever it's called. The death company (unsurprisingly) slaughtered the cultists. But I was fine with that. My turn, Heldrake came in and vector struck his razorback with the psykers in it, then torched the foot-slogging guardsmen, destroying all but three, giving them soul-blaze. The obliterators all came in, and the lone guy shot twin-linked plasma gun at the death company, and the three-man squad shot multi-meltas at on of the tanks on the hill. They immobilized it, and took off two hull points. Zed separated from the bikers, and went after the guys that were in the razorback, but had disembarked, and the melta bikers went after the razorback. Zed fired up the brand, taking out a lot of the guard, then charged, and the melta bikers immobilized the razorback and took off two hull points. My helbrute squished his chaplain.

 

His turn, he shot the melta bikers to death, lascannoned the helbrute, and wiped out the last of my noise marines. On his assault phase, Zed put the guard squad down to one guy. My turn three, the sorcerer still wasn't in, but the oblits annihilated death company, with Heldrake's help. Heldrake vector struck the tank that had been hurt, and destroyed it, then torched the last normal guy standing in DC, leaving only the squad captain. The lone oblit charged him, but had taken a wound in the previous turn, and the captain killed him. Zed finished off the last remaining guard and consolidated toward the other squad close to the building.

 

His turn four, the stormtalon shot Heldrake in the rear with the lascannons, and exploded her, and the rest of his guys pretty much just stood there picking their noses. The three-man obliterator squad got shot at a lot, but nothing wounded them. That captain from DC got ballsy and charged my three-man oblits, but they pounded him into a bloody smear. My turn, the sorcerer finally came in! We had to call it after this turn, but what I neglected to do was go into the dangerous terrain and kill that last guardsman standing in the building which counted as an objective. Instead, I had Zed turbo-boost to the other side of the field (still kind of in the mind set that he would need to help there). The oblits walked forward and finally killed the ratlings with twin-linked flamers, and the sorcerer killed all the storm troopers with Psychic Shriek.

 

In the end, I had 9 kill points to his 7. But he had that objective. If it had been a regular objective worth two, we would have tied, if it was three, he would have won by one. But it was only one point, so I thought I had won by one point. But then it turned out that those points take precedence over the other points, so he won with one point.

 

 

 

What I learned: I'm going to take some time and seriously restructure my playstyle, because I can't seem to win objective based games, even though I've got some of the best objective campers in the game. I could have won if I had Zed go after that one objective, but I forgot they were worth points, so I fell victim to that stigma that keeps following me, where I put units down to one man, but can't kill that last guy. I really like my list, but it just doesn't seem to have that extra push right when I need it, so maybe I need to regularly deploy more of my guys, rather than relying on deep-strike. I had no real trouble killing his units in this match, but poor luck on reserves rolls kept the sorcerer out of the match until it was too late to make a difference. However, I continue to be surprised by Zed, who is an absolute beast in melee, and with the brand, he can destroy half of a unit before he even charges in.

 

Basically, I'm certain that I'm covering all bases with this list, but I just can't use it correctly. I always end up losing my troops, or not targeting the enemy's troops, or not covering objectives enough. But this escalation league is over, and the next one isn't for 3 weeks, so I've got some time to sort this out. Honestly, I've fallen in love with my bikes, so I kinda want to play something like what the Dark Angels have, where the entire army is fast attack, but I don't think we have that.

 

Thanks again, to everyone who helped me out with my army. I really learned a lot from this whole experience, even though I lost most of my games and made a bunch of stupid mistakes. I'm sure in the future I'll be able to help out someone else looking for improvements.

[DominikB]

Nice games and bad luck on the last one. A quick question how do you load out your noise marines and how do you play them? And wouldnt they benifit from a rhino?

[Phytoon]

Nice games and bad luck on the last one. A quick question how do you load out your noise marines and how do you play them? And wouldnt they benifit from a rhino?

 

That's a good question, and one for which I'm still developing an answer. As it stands, I run 5-man squads of noise marines, with one blastmaster. The three other non-champion marines replace their bolter with close combat weapons. I have them plant themselves on objectives and fire away, and if they are in danger of being charged, I can instead run them up and charge my would-be assailants. I figure that the bolters would only be one extra shot at assault range, and those almost never make enough of a difference. Obviously, with strength 4 the same can be said about their melee, but if I charge in first, I can deny extra attacks, especially from Rage where I might not be able to afford taking them.

 

Recently though, they've taken more of a supporting role, as once the obliterators open up with lascannons, everyone seems to target them.

[DominikB]

I found 5/6 with blast master in rhino works well even if u end up suicide ramming squads with it in the end, but u give mine bolsters as I usually disembark (if I need and rapid fire), but use it as a bunker that can move and the 18" flat out has saved me so often

 

Am I right that the champion has BP CCW standard and not BP and bolter as per codex?

[Phytoon]

The wargear entry says that they have:

Boltgun

Bolt Pistol

Close Combat Weapon (Champion Only)

 

So the champion has all three by default. Thus, not only does he always have one more attack from his characteristic, but he always gets one more for paired weapons (unless you give him a specialist weapon instead).

[DominikB]

This was FAQed :P and probably changed in later prints :P Do you find it worthwhile giving him a PW?

[Phytoon]

Not if I'm running them as a shooty squad. In that case, the CCWs are a contingent against being charged, since my guys will usually attack first. The 30 point blastmaster's hard to get around, making it difficult to justify spending more points on that squad. I mean, if they're wiped out, I'll lose the points anyway, but 15 points for a power weapon that could have been given to someone else would also be going down with them. I consider it a squad loss if they get engaged, because now I can't shoot that fabulous gun of theirs, and I'm probably going to lose the assault eventually because assault-oriented squads hit harder than me.

 

However, in an assault variant of this squad, all the point expenditure I make is on the champion or adding more models. In that case, yes I would give the champion a power weapon. A Lightning Claw, to be exact. Of course, in an assault squad of NMs, I'd also give them the Icon of Excess for the feel-no-pain rule.

 

Honestly, though, I think that slaanesh-marked bikers are better in assault than noise marines. The only thing the NMs have that they can't get is the doom siren, which is totally worth taking if you're going to do that, but you then have to worry about template placement so you don't kill the entire front line and miss your charge. However, that's not what you asked about, so feel free to disregard this last part.

[DominikB]

Thanks for the advice, yeah didnt see much point in it either, tbh also why they have bolters not ccw :)to add a bit more shootiness

In an assault squad Id be tempted to run lucius and double up the doom siren, also since we play no 2+ except on things which have this default (and SW termies) Lucius is still to be defeated in a challenge as well.

Sorry if i hijacked your thread and thank you for the advice

[Phytoon]

No, it's all good. I've made lists with Lucius in them instead of Zed, but for the escalation leagues, we're not allowed to have unique characters for warlords, so no Lucius there. But yeah, in some of my test games, I've seen Lucius handily defeat Khârn, and many times he does this from the grave. He's a great choice for an HQ, especially for assaulty noise marines.

[DominikB]

Yeah I wonder how using NM as an assault squad would work only used them as a shooting or last minute objective grab squad 

[Phytoon]

It all depends on how expensive you want to make them. However, Plague Marines will probably do anything they can do, but better. One of the big things for Noise assault squads is that they can take the icon of excess for feel-no-pain, but plague marines already have it on all their models. Sonic Blasters are garbage if you're running an assault squad, as there shouldn't be any point where you're not moving, and the blaster, while pretty impressive as a 2-shot heavy bolter on the move, is still 30 points. Pretty much all your points are sinking into your champion, or acquiring more models. Therefore, you're investing more into getting to charge range than the other elite choices. But once you're there, it will be glorious.

 

In my opinion, though, I think it would be better to run things that are truly meant to be in melee, like the berserkers or daemons, and perhaps even attach a single mark of slaanesh on a chaos champion and give him a power maul, so he'll hit first and knock all the enemies down to initiative 1. But that's just something I came up with for laughs, and haven't tested it yet. If I had ever been able to get my sorcerer from this league into melee, I'd be able to give a more insightful opinion on this, since I gave him the force stave and all the terminators had axes or fists.

[Tenebris]

Well, soon we will start an escalation campaign in my club and I cannot wait to field my Noise Marines. Today they performed admirably even with a subpar list, netting me and my friend the second place in the Doubles game but I really have to think out a competitive army for I am about to face some serious and experienced players with tournament range armies.

 

I like to see the bikers perform well and between your thread and Bonzi's you convinced me to invest in two CSM biker boxes (which you can see on my EC blog here on WIP). So yeah, I plan to field a Lord similar to yours but I would like to integrate the swift bikes with my terminators for a hammer and anvil tactic in the enemy half of the board. Luckily both squads have the tools to arrive there still combat worthy even with a dead biker or terminator here and there.

 

On a side note I was thinking to give my Bikers plasma guns. Rapid Fire weapons really benefit from a Relentless model IMO, the range is better too and seem to complement well the Brand.

[Phytoon]

That's very true, and the only reason I run them with meltas is because lots of people in my area run armor. Bikes with meltas tear through tanks, as they'll pretty much guarantee that you can get to the 6" range for the armourbane affect. However, strength 7 will wound terminators just the same as strength 8, and the extra shot would definitely help if that's what your local meta is like. Good luck in your games, I'm sure the bikes won't disappoint you.