Marine codex 'review' (#13): the 'other' fast attack.

Thanks to all who helped dig up pics of the elusive scout bikes and storm speeders.


Landspeeder storm: bad.

A speeder variant that somehow manages to be less durable, worse geared, but still priced like a real speeder.

"So what's the deal here? The internet tells me this is a 'finesse' unit, that's really powerful." The internet is very wrong about this thing.

Unsurprisingly, storms cost 50 points base, and have the 'scouts' universal special rule. For these 50 points, you get a bastardized version of a landspeeder, with two pieces of special gear. The storm itself is armor 10, which doesn't shock anyone. Normal speeders drop quickly enough to fire, but not as quickly as, say, an ork buggy, ork trukks, sentinels, and eldar vypers, because speeders are blessed with not being open topped. Storms, however, are.
This is bad for your health, and storms aren't 35 points each, like buggies.

So yeah, durability. The storm has none.
For 'fluffy' reasons, it's got an impressive ballisticskill of 3, and only ever has one gun, starting with a heavy bolter, that can be swapped for a heavy flamer, multi-melta, or assaultcannon.
Like the weapon options, and the storm itself, its 'special gear' isn't very impressive. One piece makes deep striking within 6 inches of the storm a lot less reliable, and the second piece lowers peoples' leadership if the carried scouts win a combat.
Yes, the storm is a transport, and transports are good. Transports that consume fast attack, thus directly competing with real, actual speeders, attack bikes, and rhino assault squads, are not good. Not one bit. The real kicker is the capacty - 5 passengers, and it can only ever carry scouts.

Maybe if it had been a dedicated transport.
If only it had come with a locator beacon.
If scouts were less bad at killing people.
Maybe, just maybe if the jamming beacon had been range 12.
'If's' and 'maybe's' are cute, but don't make bad units good. Storms are horrible, yet people suffering from forumitis declares it to be good. Why?

For the low, low price of 175 points, you get a scouting storm with a multi-melta, carrying a squad with a combi-melta and a powerfist. Execution is simple enough.
Deploy forward, scout move within 12, and slag a vehicle during the first turn, or get a first turn charge on something. So for the cost of a plasmaback squad, and a fast attack slot, you can maybe kill a vehicle, or perform a futile assault on infantry with your 5 scouts.
This is known as 'the melta torpedo,' and it's feared by scrubs and n00bs everywhere. It's such a reviled move, it's known to be 'cheesy.'

Of course, the move fails horribly, because people can use their own infiltrators or scouts to make it impossible for the storm to get close enough, deploy their armor further back, use tiny squads and cheap stuff to draw the storm out, and etc.
Not hard to beat, at all. So easy, in fact, the previously mentioned scrubs figure it out after the first time. Strictly one-use only.

"But -2 leadership if I win against your infantry!" Squads that fear scouts aren't gonna be in range, no matter what you do, and if they fear you, that's because they poof if you reach them. This means the cerberus launcher never comes into effect, and is a useless piece of kit.

What makes it good: it can scout.

What makes it bad: fast attack that's not a real speeder, an attack bike, or a rhino assault squad. Overpriced and impotent. Not suited for competitive play, and only slightly better in 'fun' games.

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Scout bike squad: good.

An infiltrating unit of bikes. Yeah, marines are crazy like that.
Also comes with the 'scouts' rule, and happen to be ridden by scouts.

Scouts, infiltrate, and bike combine to give you a unit that's always going to be right on top of the enemy. This makes scout bikes useful, and one of your book's unique units.

For the price of almost nothing, up to three scouts can replace their bikes' linked bolters with rapid fire grenade launchers. With these, scout bikers become highly effective anti-infantry units, capable of shattering pretty much any squad of light infantry, and rapid fire krak grenades are effective against both heavy infantry and light armor.

Scout bikes are the only thing related to marine scouts that's truly useful.
We've already established that you're never, ever going to take regular bikers as fast attack, which lessens the competition, but do the scout bikes have what it takes to compete with speeders and attack bikes? In a surprise twist of faith, they actually do - but this is because they do something no other unit at your disposal's capable of.

Are you ever in actual need of their services? Depends on your build, really.
Squads of scout bikers chew up light infantry at a very quick pace, much like predators. If you don't have predators for some reason or other, this is a very handy unit to have.
Because they're actually cheap and toughness 5, you can use them as make-shift combat units. Still not a good one by any stretch of the imagination, but they're effective enough at cleaning up weakened infantry, and get to charge after shooting, too.

In addition to your 3 mandatory grenade launchers, you can bling the sergeant with everything you'd expect (still only gets to pick one weapon), and he can even take a locator beacon. That's a fairly big plus, and makes many less than stellar builds possible.
Squads can be up to 10 men strong, but start a 3, for an initial 70 points. Nice and low, and combat squads let you split huge squads into two small ones - conserving fast attack slots, while still putting many of them on the table.

Of course, it just wouldn't be scouts if you couldn't take a 'fun' option. Enter: cluster mines. These are cheap, and make a single piece of terrain inflict a lot of hits on the first unit that enters it. Good, bad? Ineffective? Powerful? Mostly very ineffective. Still, the mines cost almost nothing, and are sometimes handy.

When not used to destroy large mobs of light infantry, scout bikers run disruption, and sometimes perform the classic stand-off biker role.
All things considered, effective at what they do, and cheap.
Their one true weakness is 4+ armor save. Entire squads can and will poof to massed enemy heavy flamers and equivalents, and combat against units that get to strike before you isn't smart. Out in the open, you're risking a quick death by autocannons and heavy bolters, too.

An important thing to note is the shotgun. Some (most) gaming groups house rule bikes of all types to be capable of shooting two guns. Normally, you get to shoot one gun for 'every rider,' but if you're in a house ruled gaming group, the squad's shotguns give scout bikers a lot more dakka.

Speed, instant jump on any enemy, disruption, very heavy anti-infantry capabilities, and all at an affordable cost. Ravenwing wish they were scout bikes, but as the codex declares 'you'll never be as good as vanilla.'

What makes it good: supernaturally fast. Destroys light infantry. Mobile, fast, and annoying for the opponent to deal with, like all bikes. Combat squads let you field up to six 'units.' Massed blast templates for cheap.

What makes it bad: carapace armor is a weakness. Not quite a combat unit. Only ever gets max of one meltagun. Not effective at all against heavy armor or elite infantry.