I recently had a player pull out of Centurion because his Nob Biker Army wouldn't work in the confines of the tournament.
All of the competitive internet still sits back and rubbishes a Nob Biker army as being a one-trick-pony, but people in real life still fear their strength, resilience and speed. I'm real. I don't.
So I wanted to look at Nob Bikers in a bit more detail and attempt to come up with a way to make them work in a real-world situation.
Nob Bikers
Pros: Fast, T5, multi-wound, FNP, 5++, and can wound allocate like a bitch, deathstarCons: T4 for Instant death, expensive, deathstar, only really does damage in CC, requires a warboss to work as Troops.
Traditionally this list is 2 Warbosses, 2 x 10 Nob Bikers, 1 x 10 Grots. This leaves 5 KPs for you to sink all your firepower into.
So what a Nob Biker list often does is minimize its KPs and then runs a big fast dual-rock. I feel that this is not a good idea in today's MSU world, as having only 2-3 targets means they are going to eat a lot of fire. Small arms fire is largely irrelevant to a Nob Biker, but S8/9 can make your life a misery, quickly, let alone getting a guy who is running tri-Vindicators.
So let's apply that new theory BoLs learnt today, saturation.
What we need to do is present more quality targets for S8/9 fire than just our Nob Bikers...
fester's Nob Biker-rama @ 2000 points
HQ
Warboss, PowerKlaw, Warbike, Cybork @ 135
Wazdakka @ 180
Elites
6 Nob Bikers: PK / Big Choppa x2 / Big Choppa Bosspole / Big Choppa Waaagh Banner / Painboy, Cybork Bodies @ 395
Troops
6 Nob Bikers: PK / Big Choppa x2 / Big Choppa Bosspole / Big Choppa Waaagh Banner / Painboy, Cybork Bodies @ 395
3 x 10 Gretchin @ 40 ea (keeping the seats in the Battlewagon warm)
2 x 3 Warbikers, Nob with Powerklaw @ 110 ea
Fast Attack
3 x 2 Rokkit Buggies @ 70 ea
Heavy Support
3 Battlewagons, Deffrolla, Big shoota @ 115 ea
So, this list attempts to give you a large number of threats that demand high strength shooting to take the focus off your killing machines, the Nob Bikers.
Don't get me wrong, this is far from perfect, and I dont think it would work as well at 1750 or 1500, but you get the idea.
Has anyone seen a good Nob Biker list come out of the woodwork in the last few months?
