How to equip Jetbike Sky Hunter Squadron?

[Osric Sturmauge]

Hallo everyone! I hope that this is the right spot for posts like this - if not: I'm sorry!

I'm going to build a Sons of Horus force and will convert the bikes out of the dark vengeance box into 3 Sky Hunter Jetbikes... but I don't know how to equip them!
That's why I need the advice of you guys.

How do you equip yours?

Do you think a squadron of 3 is to small and additional Jetbikes are necessary?

I tought of either a Multi-melta or an Plasma cannon and nothing more...

Hm... well... the things I've got so far:

- Preator (master-crafted Paragon blade, Iron halo, digital lasers)

- 2x Tactical Squad (20 Marines per squad)
- Tactical Support Squad (10 Marines, Plasma guns)
- 2 Apothecarion
- Terminator Squad (5 Marines, 1 Thunderhammer, Plasmablaster, lightning claws for the sergeant)
- Veteran Tactical Squad (10 Marines, Powersword -> sergeant, 2 Plasma guns, Poweraxe)
- Heavy Support Squad (10 Marines, Missile launcher with flak missiles)

So... any advice?

(Wohoo... first post! Greetings from germany! )

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I would suggest making every third one have the ability to swap out weapons, and then you can swap MM and PC as required by your army build. If you have 6 or more, I'd suggest going with the Volkite weapon.

[Moonstalker]

Welcome to the B&C!

 

To copypaste what I have said elsewhere:

 

 

For the jetbikes, the squadron should come with (IIRC) 3 heavy bolters, 1
multimelta, 1 plasma cannon, and 1 volkite culverin.  Just go magnet
crazy on one of the jetbikes and bring whichever seems best at the
time.  From my limited experience with jetbikes, my vote is for the
volkite culverin if you have to pick just one.  Volkites are pretty
awesome, and it'll let you go ahead and spam volkite rays and heavy
bolter shells at infantry without worrying that you're wasting your MM
shooting at something not-a-tank (or having to get potentially too close
to something with your expensive jet bikes in order to use said MM),
and the randomness of plasma cannons does not fill me with joy.  I don't
particularly like heavy bolters, either, for that matter.

 

A little more of the theory behind that: melta is slightly less useful in 30k owing to the availability of armored ceramite on the toughest vehicles (which you would most want to use melta on), so suicide melta attack bikes/landspeeders/jet bikes probably won't actually do anything.  Legion Jetbikes are also twice as expensive as Eldar jetbikes, and the difference in firepower and toughness does not make up for the difference in price (besides Eldar jetbikes actually being scoring).  For their expense, I don't think you can afford to bring them very close to the enemy at all, so IMO the two real choices are plasma cannons and volkite culverins.

[depthcharge12]

Good job on picking the right forum brother ;) the Horus heresy is where it's at!

 

That being said, I personally will put a plasma cannon on mine. However, you already have a 10 man squad of plasma already o.O and probably don't need more.

 

 

Volkites are always fun and really good and have a better chance of hitting models and not blowing itself up! Plus you get the deflagrate shots ;) on top of that and it wounds marines on a 2+ as well.

 

 

The choice might also be made depending on what legion you are doing. I'm guessing by your avatar that you will do Space Wolves?

 

If so: then having one of them with a gigantic lightning/ray gun on them would be cool and kind of like Thor with his lightning maybe sort of...

[Armond]

I will be looking to magnetize to allow for different builds, but I think plasma will be where it's at for me and my Night Lord's force since I am lacking any plasma troops.

[Sanct]

The jetbike squad really depends on what you want to do with it.  Overall the volkite is best but you can't go too wrong with the other 3 choices (inc the standard HB) if you want to do a specific task (such as the if you want to ping a vehicle and then assault it with meltabombs or tie up it's contents) Even the plasmacannon is ok but other sources do it better

Problem is you're paying a ~25% point premium when you only have min sized unit and it doesn't really perform much better, than other options, at larger sizes since it's role isn't spectacular or unique

 

You could instead build it into a command squad with power weapons and hide it behind a raider (I presume you will have one to transport the terminators at sine point) for supporting an assault (fearless aura, 3 heavy bolters and then 12 WS5 power weapon attacks + HoW + possible Merciless Fighters bonus attack on a T5/2+ fastmover ain't too shabby for ~250 points)

If you really wanted to be cheeky you could take a dirt cheap Sons of Horus HQ and use a jetbike praetor, jetbike command squad and a scoring tactical/apothecary as an allied Iron Hands for the bonus resilience.

[Armond]

I will definitely be expanding the number of them from 3 to 6 later on.  I do have a landraider which they can use as a screen from LOS(Landraider will deliver my HQ with his Command Squad, all in Cataphractii Terminator Armor). 

 

I figure with the plasma cannon it can do some work on groups of troops as well as some light vehicles. 

[Osric Sturmauge]

Thanks for all the answers so far!

@ depthcharge12: I'm a playing SWs as my main-army - but for 30k I'm going for SoH

Well... I started to convert the bikers and I'll probably magnetise one of them to get the waepons changeable...
The other option is that I build a weapon that looks like something between plasma cannon and volkite culverin... some sort of experimental weapon that I could use as both variants...

Btw: Would you like me to post WIP pictures of the jetbikes?

[Honda]

I'm very interested in this unit because I really like the models and in my 40K army, I make good use of my speeders.

 

<Note: I do not have any of the books yet, so I'm pretty ignorant on how stuff works in 30K>

 

Regarding use, I've never been a big fan of "flying melta bomb" speeder, that always seemed like a risky waste of a resource. So I've always equipped mine as Typhoons (missiles + heavy bolters) and taken advantage of their stand off capabilities.

 

Now my general impression of 30K armies so far (and this may be way off) is that you have more infantry to deal with and that although rarer (as assumption), armor can be much tougher (i.e. ceramite armor). There doesn't seem to be a lot of light armor running around. So another observation is that units are really "fit for purpose".

 

Given that I intend to build space wolves, the jet bike squadron seems like it would be a credible anti-infantry and troop support unit, if configured correctly. Would others agree with that assumption?

 

In that configuration, heavy bolters, assuming they out range other weapon types (maybe not plasma) might be a journeyman answer to that role?

 

Without knowing what the Prospero book looks like, I envision large groups of foot wolf troopers interspersed with Custodes (I have 3 x 5 man teams), but for vehicular support, besides a Land Raider, it seemed like jet bikes would be a characterful way of providing mobile fire support.

 

Am I way off in this assumption, or on the surface, does that seem workable?

 

Cheers,

 

Btw: Would you like me to post WIP pictures of the jetbikes?

 

Is that a trick question? :)

[Osric Sturmauge]

First WIP pictures of the conversion

 

=> http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/287734-osrics-soh-wip/?p=3614387 <=

[grand_master85]

Well, as a Salamanders player myself, I have pretty much all the anti-infantry I need with the +1 strength to flamers (I've got a couple of Tactical Support squads rolling in rhinos). I'm goiung for a very fast/mechanised Salamanders army myself. Lots of smaller squads in rhinos, a couple of Sicarans rolling on the flanks for fast heavy support. I'm going with Multi Meltas myself. Sure, there is a lot of Armoured Ceramite in 30k, but not always. Plus, I get them twin-linked with my rite of war, and I don't really need any more infantry killing minis!