Attack bikes

[oldmanlee]

Hi guys

 

How are people finding attack bikes in 8th are they worth taking at all?

[Chaplain Lucifer]

Still haven't tried them, but on paper they do have lack of accuracy, which for the MM is a deal breaker.

IMHO I think now it's better to have them in the backfield with HB, using range and the increased T and W to be a nuissance.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Yep, hitting on 4+ is not worth it for many one shot weapons

[dtse]

not worth it. they are more expensive now, and you are basically hitting on 4s, which sucks.  Would spend points elsewhere.  Not to mention multimelta is probably the worst heavy weapon now.  One might make a case for heavy bolter attack bike, but again, there are much better ways of getting heavy bolters in your army.

 

Bikes in general have taken a hit this edition, with loss of jink and points cost.  Obviously ravenwing tries to mitigate it by having bike-based aura buffs, but you get a lot less for your points now.  Toughness 5 is not as much of a thing anymore, and as terminators have shown, just adding a wound doesn't really mitigate much in this edition.  Grav guns are not as good despite losing the salvo rule, and there are plenty of better ways of stacking melta and plasma now in the index.  You won't be seeing white scar biker armies anymore, unless the codex gives something back to bikes.

 

Now let's say teh DA codex comes out and some form of ravenwing jink special rule returns thats better than a 5+ invuln....well then we will have to see!

[shabbadoo]

Toughness 5 is not as much of thing? Toughness 5 used to be wounded on a 2+ by Str 7 weapons, but now it takes a Str 10 weapon to do that, and lower Str weapons pretty much gained nothing against Toughness 5. Also, Bikes now have TWO wounds; Attack Bikes have FOUR.  Toughness 5 and TWO/FOUR wounds is not exactly garbage. Also, their bike mounted twin bolters now have DOUBLE the shots. The main upside of Attack Bikes specifically though, apart of having much better survivability and the ability to split fire, is the multi-melta and how the Attack Bike has an effective "re-roll that d6 damage roll for the multi-melta" range of 26" vs. moving Infantry's 18". Sure, it only hits on a 4+ when the model moves (in either case), but the damage potential is about as good as it gets short of a titan killing weapon. There is pretty much no reason to take a heavy bolter on anything that moves in 8E, unless it suffers no penalty to hit when firing heavy weapons when moving. There are just too many better weapons to be had on other units.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if we see Ravenwing and/or White Scars gain the the ability to disengage and still Shoot and/or Assault.

Edited July 14, 2017 by shabbadoo

[dtse]

Ultramarines just got that so it's unlikely they will give same thing to dark angels or ravenwing but I guess we will see.

 

Regardless of the numbers, if you are wondering about attack bikes just play them. I think you will be disappointed as I have been.

[sneakybamsen]

It all depends on the game you play. If you don't play competitively, attack bikes are OK. Not as good as they used to be, but none of our bikes seem to be.

 

I've tried the heavy bolter variant in a few games, it does feel a bit underwhelming when hitting on 4's with the heavy weapon after having moved. Also the twin bolter does the same or more damage in rapid fire range.

[Lion El Jason]

Drastic downturn in survivability.

-1 to hit with heavy weapons.

Reduced manoeuvrability.

 

Not as bad as land speeders which also inexplicably doubled in cost but yeah, bikes are duds in 8th.