Having got about 8 hours sleep over the
last 2 nights and with a full day of lectures coming up tomorrow I
feel awful. But there's blogging to be done as we come to the
penultimate Fast Attack choice. I would write about things that I've
been up to, but I haven't done anything.
Anyway. Ravenwing Attack Squadron.
A single bike is almost double the cost
of a tactical marine, and for that you get +1 toughness, a Bike,
scout and hit and run. This is irrelevant, as unless they're Troops,
there is no reason to compare them to tactical marines. You can take
up to 6 bikers in a squad.
Rattling through the upgrades first.
Pointless upgrade of the day. You can swap your Bolt Pistol for a
Chainsword. There is no difference between the 2 other than the Bolt
Pistol can shoot, albeit not very well but at least it can do it.
Skipping right over that.
You can then give them special weapons
just like a tac squad, for the same points as a tac squad has access
to them. You can upgrade your Sergeant to have +1 attack and LD for
over 1/3 of the cost of another Bike. I'd say that this is worth
doing, your squad is pretty expensive and although you have 'and they
shall know no fear', you still run a maximum of 18” when you fail a
leadership check, which is a long way.
Leave the sergeant equipment alone. You
may want to consider Melta Bombs depending upon what you're doing
with them.
Now, you can include an attack bike for
10pts less than a Land Speeder, and upgrade its Heavy Bolter to a
Multi Melta for the same number of points. You can also put a Land
Speeder in the squad if you've maxed out which is a bit weird.
As for how to use them. You may have
noticed from a few of my previous posts that I'll say, if in doubt
slap some Melta on it, shove it in your opponent's face and call it a
day. Today is no exception.
The Attack Bike either comes with a
Heavy Bolter or a Multi-Melta. I probably wouldn't pay almost 50pts
just for a Heavy Bolter and for no other reason (at least the Heavy
Bolter armed Speeders screen for the heavier stuff). Therefore, the
only reason to take it is to stick a Multi-Melta to it and ram it
down your opponent's throat. For less than 150pts I can get a 5 wound
T5 bike unit with a Meltagun and a Multi-Melta.
The only problem is again that we're
not really seeing that many vehicles, we're only really seeing Battle
Tanks (which are bubble wrapped), and flyers (which you hit on 6s
with your 2 shots). The Multi-Melta might be able to get those Battle
Tanks but the Meltagun is unlikely to. So I'm not sure if this is
valid.
As for the Speeder, in order to make it
worthwhile you'll probably want a Typhoon Missile Launcher on that
thing whilst your Bikes take the hits. The problem is that a lot of
the Bikes durability is based on moving around. Missiles don't care
if you have Bikes just sitting around with no cover save. Therefore
you'll need to move around. In order to Turbo-Boost to get your save,
you want be firing the Typhoon, which is a waste. Bikes do their
damage by Turbo-Boosting to keep themselves alive before doing damage
when they get in close.
However, as Bikes, you can't expect
them to cause the most damage in the world. Where there unique
selling point lies is in their speed, and the T5 helps too. Bikers
are an excellent unit for 2 things. Linebreaker and objective
contesting. With Linebreaker you can have an 80pt unit sat in your
opponent's deployment zone with T5 and a 4+ cover save with a 3+
armour. Often at that stage of the game your opponent has other
targets to prioritise, so they may ignore them in the hope that they
will hold on to enough points to win anyway.
Objective contesting is another big
one. By turn 4 you should have been able to position your Bikes in
cover to get in range of an objective. It doesn't matter if you have
to take dangerous terrain, you'll still get your armour save anyway.
But remember, so long as there isn't a Power Fist in the claiming
squad then you'll be fine, as most of the time your opponent will
need 4s to hit you and 5s to wound, followed by your save. Then you
have the 12” move followed by a 2D6” charge with a re-roll.
You're probably going to get in.
If you're Troops or playing the
Scouring then you may even claim it, although I doubt that you'll do
enough damage to push the opposing unit off entirely. Remember that
you also have hit and run, so you can leave the combat at the end of
your opponent's Assault phase, soften the enemy squad up a little
more with shooting and then charge back in again against a weakened
squad.
So, in conclusion with the Ravenwing
Attack Squadron. This unit isn't for flying into your opponent's army
and causing havoc, it doesn't churn out an obscene amount of damage,
but it is a very useful little unit.
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