Need anti-biker help!

[Montuhotep]

Please.

There's a guy at the local store who, bluntly, is being a dick. He's an average player but got a tourney-winning guy to build his army list for him. It's essentially Korsarro Khan, 1 or 2 level 1 Librarians, and as many full bike squads as he can fit in for a given points cost (usually in the 1500 to 2500 points range). Each bike squad has two grav guns in it and a combi-grav for the sergeant. Attack bikes are multi-melta ones. Sometimes he has a Talon and/or a Stalker for anti-air duties. Occasionally he will drop the latter and the attack bikes to run a trio of Vindicators instead.

He also has an unnerving ability to whip out one or two Knights on occasion, one of each pattern.

With this army and a fair dose of luck he has beaten down everyone in-store including the manager and his bragging is now entering the vomit-inducing phase. Quite bluntly, I don't think anyone would mind if he'd built the list himself, but he didn't. It is unfortunate that he also has a most abrasive personality, a preference for blatant cheating and a track record of whining like a little bitch when he suffers a single casualty.

I'd like to take him down a peg or two.

Snag is that I run a mostly foot slogging Marine army (which can easily have rings run around it) with a Talon and a Raven in support - one escorting t'other. I have very little money for new plasticrack but I do have a bunch of Terminators available to me.

Aidez-Moi!

[Naminé]

Well, I'd first look to Inquisition allies with servo skulls to make his scout useless. Might also get some nice psychic support and death cult assassin squads.

Marine wise I'd take Imperial fists, 3 lots of devs with heavy bolters for the reroll ones. Bombard them with shots as they close in. Cover will protect your devs from the grav and once they're close the death cults mop up.

 

If going all marine look at fortifications (sD still works), replace the death cults with assault marines or even close combat scouts.

[Axagoras]

point value, because at 1750 and 1850 i have some mean codex marine lists. also if you have a chaos player, taking 2 biker lords with trimmings and with a ton of nurgle spawn will faceroll him cause grav wounds the squad on 6s and same with the bolters lol

[Aradiel]

personaly i would treat such player like a net troll. dont feed it.

he can play against himself

[BassWave]

I agree with Aradiel. If everyone refuses to play him, he'll either go somewhere else, or change his attitude. If he asks why you dont want to play, tell him its because he's a D. People with that kind of attitude dont deserve friendly interactions.

[Captain Idaho]

Personally I wouldn't play him but if you feel you must then it's a case of getting a bunch of Centurions, Tigurius and go for invisibility, Calgar for Eternal Warrior and the ability to take either Infiltrate or It Will Not Die Warlord traits, add an allied Iron Hands Chapter Master with the Shield Eternal and then laughing manically.

 

If you want to really make it an unfair fight, add a level 2 Inquisitor with Divination.

 

Even with jink, you should be killing or crippling his little 5 man grav squads.

[Axagoras]

cept you spend a turn killing 5 bikes with most of your army while they pump you full of grav and the knights butcher that cute formation... you can run tau and take riptides with fnp and interceptor, ally in a inquisitor with servo skulls and remove scout, use the nurgle spawn chaos lord idea, go mechanized flier IG or marine lists. theres tons of lists you can run to beat it, they arnt "fun" lists but they will get the job done (as long as he isnt deciding on weather to run knights before or after he sees your list...)

come to think of it a guard list with some of the s6 ap3 large blast arty guns and inquisitors would work wonders. servo skulls keep em at bay and grav guns dont really work on vehicles

[Captain Idaho]

Invisibility spoils the grav shooting though, as well as the two Captains taking the hits.

 

Knights in close combat are a problem potentially. Calgar does reroll armour penetration rolls and has 5 attacks receiving a charge. So not defenceless but a lucky stomp does win the day.

[Gideon999]

Really the knights are the issue here.   If he isnt running them, the centurion star with invis will crack his nuts pretty hard.   

 

if he DOES roll the knights your airpower can get behind them for some good shooting, but really massed melta or TH/SS terminators are probably your best bet.

 

Also - not to say anyone is wrong as your milage may vary, but grav is AWESOME against vehicles.   maybe not knights since they cant be immobilized, but a squad of 15 can kill any vehicle they shoot at with 3HP or less in one volley almost every time.   bear in mind that although they only cause a glance on a 6 when they shoot one, they also immobilize it.   The 2nd hit then kills it since duplicate immobiliized results just strip an additional HP.   All you need is 2 6's out of 15 shots and grav amps allow you to reroll those dice.    15 shots, average 10 hits at BS4, 2-3 will be 6's.

[Axagoras]

yea, math wise is one knight loses around 4 hp as they approach, then on the charge the other one takes 1-2 but then thats 8sd and 2d3 stomps that will ruin so much, just 1 6 on the stomp and GG most of the unit

[Captain Idaho]

Just to add so people are aware; no overwatch for Slow and Purposeful.

[thepowerofwar]

If you use some Chaos then Hell Drakes and the Burning Brand will take out bikers any day of the week.

[Jolemai]

Perhaps a Relic Sicaran will assist you with this task? Its main gun, the turret mounted twin-linked Accelerator Autocannon, fires six Autocannon shots, ignores Jink saves and has the Rending USR.

[Axagoras]

the sicarin will do some work, but I really feel that chaos actually has a great shot at rolling it, helldrakes (nerfed as they are) will murder his squads in short order

[markham82]

Legion of the damned also ignores cover saves, just a shame they only get combi-grav.

[incinerator950]

It is gratifying to put people down for using something somebody else made.

 

It is especially gratifying when you beat someone who is using something you made. Ah the Armored Core glory days.

[MisterDutch]

Well, being a rather new player myself, first of all I must say take my advice with a fair grain of salt.

 

I cannot really advice how to kill imperial knights, I also lose to those. 

 

However my 'trick' vs bikes might be useful.

 

I recently played a tournament and encountered an all-bikes list: a Ravenwing allied with White Scar army. Of course being a newb with a newbie allround Space Marine army I lost horribly. Some week later at my FLGS i saw that another guy was using a less competitive version of this army and I made an appointment with him for a game. I wanted to find a way to beat an all-bikes list! And in the case for him, I think I did. Of course its based on a single game so no 100% succes guaranteed but still.

 

My (Imperial Fists) army was led by a lvl 2 librarian who, luckily enough, managed to roll Invisibility and the shrouding spell (+2 Cover Save) from telepathy. Further i had lascannon centurions, missile devastators, plasmacannon tactical squads, 2 razorbacks with lascannon turrets, 1 squad of gravgun bikers and a captain with plasmagun command squad coming down in a drop pod. All except the drop pod were either sitting happily in a ruin, or behind my Aegis Defense Line.

 

The captain with plasmagun command squad coming down in a drop pod werent worth their points, TBH. Sure I can point them at whatever needs to die, but the bikes will simply jink to avoid the plasma fire, and then charge. I thought 'yay, now at least they are locked in combat' but they will simply Hit And Run. 

 

What saved my day was the mass amount of Lascannons, Missiles and Plasma Cannons that I had spread out over my army (see my list above). Part 1 of The Trick is this: fire with any of such weapon at a single bike squad, and ask him if he'd like to Jink. If he doesn't, he will most likely lose at least 1 bike because the weapons are AP3 or AP2 and they wound him on 2's. (which hurts for him, because bike armies are usually rather small: any losses will immediately weaken his army significantly). So he'll choose to jink. But if he jinks, that whole bike squad can only make snap shots next turn! For an army that tries to run in circles and shoot you to death, being forced to make snap shots is also a huge disadvantage. So he must make the impossible choice: lose guys, or lose slightly less guys and make only snap shots? But now comes Part 2 of The Trick... your next lascannon/missile launcher/plasmacannon is going to fire at a different bike squad. Each of such weapon that can fire seperately, targets a different squad. This way his whole army will be making snap shots if they want to survive, but if they do, they'll barely be able to scratch you in his next turn. 

 

Well, it worked for me at least, as he never realized that his only option was to try and assault me, but even if he did, I'm not sure if it would have succeeded for him. A lot of my guys were on ruins of the second floor. He was scared of my own bikes because they had the grav-guns, but I always made them invisible and shrouded with my librarian, so he couldnt really touch them. It was a field day for my centurions and devastators, who were blasting away bikes left and right. And his all-bike army was practically neutered: it's tactic is to drive around in circles and blast things within short range, but being forced to snap shot kind of makes the whole tactic useless. 

[thepowerofwar]

I just remembered that Noise marines from chaos  have blast masters that are str 8 ap 3 blast ignore cover.   But going to what a Loyalist would use would be a Blood Angels Furioso Drednaught with a frag cannon.  That shoots 2 str 6 rending flamer shots  .

[Jostal]

It sounds like this D (guy) isn't worth your time. Healthy competition against a good sport is fine, but Unhealthy, vengeful competition against a D-bag really isn't worth the stress it creates. Tell him he's a D and Boycott him. He isn't worth the stress.

 

(I experienced this once, and after many hours of stressful list building to beat the d bag i realized it was a waste of my time and stressing me out too much.)

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Become the brick wall to his flowing river, or better yet take a brick FROM a wall, and smash his miniatures into the river. if that fails refuse to play him because of reasons. 

 

on a more serious note can you provide detail to your own list? and what changes can you make with the army you have. 

[Axagoras]

has anyone had luck against him recently? cause not going to lie but 3 helldrakes ruins his whole army

[Jostal]

Legion of the Damned squads with Plasma cannons and Guns sound like a winner. I like the idea of Misterdutch's tactic of making his bikers jink all the time.

 

As for Imperial Knights, try to hit them from multiple facings, force them to pick between the lascannons at the front or the podding Melta dropping behind.

 

Remember, (errata) each Vet in a command squad can take a Special Weapon. Load the squad up with 5 melta guns. Boom. hehe. Run a couple cheap Librarians to increase the amount of command squads and now the skies rain melta. Sternguard work good for this too. Or 5 flamers for the bikers. Or lots of Plasma? So many options. (Barebones command w/ 5 melta and drop pod: 185 points. Add a devy squad at the front and you have some good shooty power to take out a knight. )