Codex Orks: Part 8, Army Lists. Making Nob Bikers work for you.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Codex Orks: Part 8, Army Lists. Making Nob Bikers work for you.

Posted by fester

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, deathstar

Cons: 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?

Comments (11)

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0 Vote up Vote down

pimpdaddyork · 738 weeks ago

I don't like the little biker squads, I see one dieing followed by a failed moral test.

1 reply · active 738 weeks ago

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fester40k 73p · 738 weeks ago

I can understand that fear, but don't think of them as a CC unit, think of them as 4 wound, Assault 4 Lascannon. Their job is to scream forward and draw fire. Assuming they survive (slim, I know), the S9 hits from the PK into vehicles is their goal. For 110 points its the "best" anti-tank you can work into Ork Troops choices.

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MrDrumMachine · 738 weeks ago

Drop 1 big choppa from each nob squad to get the war bikers a boss pole and keep your wound allocation but it's easy enough to scrounge up the points for the poles you might as well do it in case you take 2 wounds on them and have to pull a guy. Personally I would rather have 7 Rokkit kans walking up behind the bikers instead of the battle wagons and even dropping a guy from each bike squad would let you get to 9 kans which is really no joke. Just what I would do though.

4 replies · active 738 weeks ago

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fester40k 73p · 738 weeks ago

Personally I prefer the S6/7 than getting a chance to stop my throwaway units breaking.
I agree on the Kans being generally scarier, but you can hide the army behind the Wagons if you want to play the the "armor shield" game.
This will stop all shooting at your meaty units. You will probably be getting side armor shotted anyway, so use the width of the Wagons to your advantage, with KFF cover of course. The wall will end up being something like 20+ inches wide

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snugger 43p · 738 weeks ago

Of course, in this list hiding behind a Wagon wall is at worse only half effective, since there is no KFF in the list. But they bring scary scoring targets to the table, and can keep up with the rest of the units speedwise.

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fester40k 73p · 738 weeks ago

Facepalm.

Nice pickup on the KFF. It's been so long since I wrote a list without one I didnt even check lol!

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MrDrumMachine · 738 weeks ago

Then you could drop cybork off the warboss and still keep all the same attacks, have to be a little more careful but it's not like it's ever been a good idea to throw nob bikers at a dreadnaught anyway.

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VT2 79p · 738 weeks ago

Even when 5th was new, I didn't fear n00b bikers.
Compared to ultra-killy/durable rocks of the past, it's tame, overcosted, and far too vulnerable to shooting.

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MrDrumMachine · 738 weeks ago

Part of the real weakness is that in order to really theme a nob biker list you create true hard counters for yourself. Namely in the form of any IG player with manticores. The odds of you being able to effect them before they have 2 turns of fire is very slim and if they get even reasonably lucky your army is in shambles. Str 10 is more prevalent than when nob bikers first started out and with a wide variety of other factors playing into it Nob bikers just aren't as effective as their points require.

That's not to say that there's no place for nob bikers in a list, it's easy enough to keep their cost down around 300 and have support elements throughout the rest of the army, but to have basically 2 nob biker units that are unsupported to do all the heavy lifting from taking out vehicles to capturing objectives I just don't see it.

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Archnomad · 738 weeks ago

As a note, Nobz need a Warboss. Otherwise I will Tank Shock them to all hell. =/

However I do think that they "can" work, if you take a smallish unit and make the bare minimum it requires to work, and even then it's "mneh". I think foot nobz probably work better, all told. :P

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Mike Noble · 738 weeks ago

Why not take some Kannons instead of the Wagons if you don't have a KFF? You need at least some kind of shooting. Also if you take a bosspole on the warbikers squads, morale won't be a huge issue. Not perfect, but at least they can be somewhat annoying to kill.