Chaos Space Marine Bikes

I just finished reading the Bell of lost Souls article on Chaos Space Marine bikes and I was a little sad that the author decided against using them. So today I'm going to chat about chaos bikes, some of their uses and of course nifty ideas for armies.

Lets clear out the Con's first:
1 Wound a piece
Double the price of a regular Marine
Expensive Icon Options


Pro's
Very high movement speed
Turbo boost save
Small minimum squad size
Variety of options

Right - so lets look at possible squad configurations with these options in mind. The first option is to keep your bikes in reserve, turbo boost onto the field and grab objectives by dropping off out lovely daemon friends with the aid of Icon. For that we would run the following config:

3 Bikes with Icon of Chaos Glory - that comes to 109 Points. Now this is cheap but hardly versatile - It's a much better bet to add a 2 Melta guns. Now your sitting on a total of 129 points, but atleast you got a chance of popping the occasional tank after you have dropped off your Daemon friends.

The next option is simply a upscaled version of the previous. You have upgraded one of the bikers to a champ, and given him a powerfist. Now you can move up, fire the two melta's and if the vehicle is still standing you can hit it with 3 S8 Attacks against it's pitiful AV10 rear (most cases). This squad can still deploy daemons and terminators and comes in at 169 Points.

On the other end of the spectrum there's the assault bikes - A unit of Six, Champ upgrade, powerfist, 2 plasma guns and Icon of Khorne. That comes to 298 Points - Deep into landraider territory. What do we get for this price - 4 attacks on the charge each, meaning 24 Attacks total. 4 of these are S8 attacks. The unit is T5 which helps it survive retaliation. You still have the benefits and downsides of icons. The nice thing is that since you are relentless you can fire your plasmaguns before getting stuck into the enemy. So at the end of the day you will have: 4 Plasma gun shots, 8 Bolter shots followed by 24 attacks of which 4 are S8. Sure to put the hurt on enemy units. With the bikes 12" move you can really reach out and touch someone.

Here' you will find a theme list using Bikes, daemons and some good old fashioned choppy.

The HQ Consists of the following:
Chaos lord with Blood feeder, Mark of Khorne, Personal Icon and Bike - 175

Elites:

Troops:
8 Khorne Berserkers with Powerfist Champion in a Rhino - 243 Points
8 Khorne Berserkers with Powerfist Champion in a Rhino - 243 Points
10 Lesser Daemons - 130
10 Lesser Daemons - 130

Fast Attack:
3x Chaos Bikes with 2x Melta and Icon of Chaos Glory - 129 Points
3x Chaos Bikes with 2x Melta and Icon of Chaos Glory - 129 Points

Heavy Support:
2x Obliterators - 150 Points
5x Havoc Marine with 4 Melta Guns and Rhino - 150
5x Havoc Marine with 4 Plasma guns and Rhino - 170

Total Points come to 1649. Now as you can see this is a very unconventional list. It's got the following odd Units:

Lesser Daemons
Havocs in Rhino's
Khorne Daemon Weapon
Bikes

The list is nice in the following Ways: It's fast - everything moves 12" when embarked and deepstrikes onto the field. It has 4 scoring units, It puts a large number of T4/5 wounds on the table which helps against small arms fire. It's versatile in it's deployment and lastly it's got a monster in Close combat since most of the units here are pretty decent at it (yay Bersekers!).

Things to look out for -

The Khorne lord will normally pack 2d6 attacks, however if either of the dice roll a 1 then you don't get any chance to attack and take 1 wound. Most people worry that the chaos lord will kill himself without making his points back. And yes he will often kill himself (at least once every other game), but he is a monster in close combat. Consider this, a chaos lord has 3 Attacks + 1 from mark of Khorne + 2d6 = 8 to 16 attacks. Even with only mediocre rolling it's possible to get an average of 8 attacks. So send him after massively expensive targets, let him rip them apart. The sheer devastation will cause your opponent so much worry, that he will dedicate way too much of his attention to who ever carries this. If you want a safer option feel free to swap him for a twin lightning claw lord or other alternative. Basically he rides either alone or with your bikes and has some fun with the enemy.

Daemons - Although not slouches in close combat these guys really won't be able to take dedicated assault units, use them to clear things like Tau, IG, Small combat squads etc off of objectives and of course to contest and grab objectives.

Rhino's - since you are only packing 4 Rhino's your not exactly saturating the table with targets, be prepared to have some disabled along the way.

Bikes are the linchpin of this army, they deploy daemons, take side/rear shots to harass vehicles contest objectives and provide a unit for your lord to hide in. Try and keep them safe by not leaving them out in the open, and going from cover to cover if possible (the LOS blocking type preferably)

Comments and feedback welcome