Email in: Marine bikes

"Hi Kirby! Long time lurker, first time, uh, writer....

Anyway, after surfing teh intrawebs, pouring over your blog, and checking out the situation at my local store, I have decided to build a biker army. I read Smurfy's series on bikers and the handful of emails you've responded to, but I'm a fairly new player and terribad at list building. For some reason I just don't grok the finer points. So, I'm building an army from scratch, but I don't know where I want this army to go. Actually, I take that back, I want it to go to a kick-ass army, but I don't know how to get it there!

So, I have three semi-related questions:

1.) If you were building Vanilla bikes from scratch and cost was not an issue, what would you do at 1750 and 2000?
2.) Rifle dreads are great, and I see several biker lists that use them. Whether you include them in the list or no, what method do you use to model them?
3.) With Dark Eldar suddenly bringing a boat loat of poison to the table, will that impact bikers that rely on the 4(5)T?

Thanks in advance!

Yours in Pink,
Brother Ed"

1) 1750 I'd prefer a Hybrid list like Fast'N'Slow. 2000 Hybrid and dual command work brilliantly. If you want to cross army books you can also use BA for Blood/Bling Rodeo which works very well at 2000 and 1750 as well.

2) Imperial Guard heavy weapons. Grab 4 autocannons per Dread, 4 3mm magnets, some greenstuff, pinning material, drill bit and plasticard. Using pins and greenstuff you merge two of the autocannons together (see picture), and add in the magnets to connect to the arms. Use plasticard to sort of make armor for the arm (not shown in picture).

3) Not rely. DE anti-infantry will be more potent against Bikes but things like Command Squads (or Terminators/Sanguinary Guard if BA) will crush face in combat or in a Hybrid list you have saturation, speed and the ranged firepower to shut DE down quickly.