How durable are bikers ?

[Vulshra]

In the new codex, I'm looking to run rw as the main body of my force, but I'm not sure they are sufficiently durable.

[ValourousHeart]

Armies with low model counts are always going to have questionable durability.  I've found that the best way around that is to limit upgrades and superfluous units to get as many models in the army as possible.  In other words, the 3 man bike squad with 5 or 6 upgrades do great when you just need them harass enemy units, but they don't do as well when they need to hold objectives and carry the army.

 

Another frailty issue I see a lot of players fall into is that they ignore land speeders and only take talonmasters.  Talonmasters cost twice as much as normal speeders, meaning you can double the number of wounds by trading out that 2nd or 3rd talonmaster.  The first talonmaster is always worth it, but the 2nd and 3rd are not as good as the first.  And if you are concerned about durability, then anything that gets more wounds into your list should be considered.

 

Personally I find with RW that Heavy Weapons are better than Special Weapons.  Save your upgrade point for units that are carrying heavy weapons and keep your bike squads basic.

[ValourousHeart]

Tactical Tortoise posted a video on How to write a competitive list in 40k.   https://youtu.be/e0tzYbL6gLI

 

He identified 5 types of units that all competitive lists contain.

 

I thought I would add to my post by giving my opinion on which RW units fall into those 5 categories.  As Trevvy points out some units can fill mulitple roles, so treat these as check boxes.

 

RANGED DAMAGE DEALERS

(self explanatory - units that can hurt enemy units while still on your side of the board)

• Land Speeders, Tornados, Typhoons
• Storm Speeders
• Land Speeder Vengeance
• Attack Bikes
• Dark Talon
• Nephilim
• Talonmaster 

 

AGGRO / DISRUPTION UNITS

(units that get into your opponents side of the board and apply pressure)

• Bikes
• Outriders
• Black Knights
• Invaders
• Dark Talon
• Nephilim

 

TANKS

(soak up damage)

• Max squad size Bikes^1&2
• Max squad size Black Knights^1&2
• Max squad size Invader¹
• Land Speeders, Tornados, Typhoons^1&3

¹Dark Shroud

²Apothecary

³Techmarine

 

COUNTER PUNCH UNITS

(a response team, like the Avengers)

• Sammael
• Captain on Bike
• Primaris Chaplain on Bike
• Talonmaster
• Ravenwing Champion
• Land Speeders, Tornados, Typhoons

 

UTILITY / SUPPORT UNITS

(non-damage dealing paths to victory, objective grabbers, and actions)

• Dark Shroud
• Apothecary
• Land Speeders, Tornados, Typhoons
• Attack Bikes

If you are going for pure Ravenwing, forget about actions.  We don't have any good choices for completing them, without taking a Legends Librarian on Bike for the Warpcraft actions.

 

When it comes to objective grabbing, the obvious choice is your DISRUPTION units.  It is what you will instinctively do with them.  The down side is that they can only control or contest 1 objective a turn.

 

When moving your RANGED DAMAGE units you should always keep objectives in mind.  It is very easy for speeders to move on to a cleared objective and still be in range of an enemy controlled objective.  So will effectively give you a 2 point swing on controlled objectives, +1 to you and -1 to them.

 

Then when combining the DISRUPTION and RANGED DAMAGE will give you a 3 point swing in controlled objectives each turn. 

 

High Speed Focus allows you to leave one unit per turn stationary on an objective but allows you to still Jink like you advanced.  But the rest of your units you want to keep moving to keep their Jink active.  I recommend keeping your RANGED DAMAGE units working in pairs.  This will allow you to either trade which objective they are holding, or have one take the recently cleared objective and the other take the objective that the first unit just abandoned.

 

CHEESY BUT LEGAL TACTIC - In order for a unit to remain stationary, all models in the unit CAN NOT be moved.  The main time this comes up is when INFANTRY units with heavy weapons want to fire the heavy weapon without penalty.  If any model in the unit moves, even if the one holding the heavy weapon didn't move, the heavy weapon is treated as having moved. (page 207 BRB)

 

JINK is only lost if the unit remains stationary.  Which means if you want to hold an objective with a RW unit and keep Jink active, you just need to move 1 bike or speeder around the squad.  This won't work with 1 model units.

[Karhedron]

Bikes are pretty durable. T5 and 3 wounds makes them more durable against small arms fire than normal Marines. Their Jinks save gives them some protection against plasma which is often the standard anti-marine weapon for a lot of armies. Also, 3 wounds means that it takes 2 failed saves against a 2D weapon to remove one biker which forces your opponents to waste some of their firepower.

 

Of course weapons that deal 3+ damage in a single hit will kill bikes but at least in that case they are not being targetted at units like Attack Bikes and Land Speeders.

 

Ravenwing also have mobility which is handy in objective based games. Having said all that, a pure Ravenwing army does limit your options as noted above (no Librarians for example). You may find that a mixed force with a strong Ravenwing element may be more successful.