Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Hot Mess – Adding Some VROOM VROOM to Bikes
Goatboy here. It is frustrating how kinda meh 40K bikes are. Here are some things we can do to make them actually worth it.
For decades, bikes were always an interesting thing in the game. Here you get on a giant vehicle option that you fly around in waving your sword, spear, or giant choppy thing. Your unit is coming in hot and fast ready to wreck your face. Heck a ton of the Death Dtars of old were built around units of these guys either as some kind of character option or just a bunch of jerks running around the table.
I still shudder recalling Nob Biker Death Stars
Which is what we don’t want to happen again. But it sure feels like we are still paying for those bad interactions with bikers decades ago. Sure we have a few mounted options that do good with the Squig Hog boyz and the giant super squig for Orks. World Eaters have some ok Jugger riders that run around with other daemons. Heck good ole Space Wolves keep the mounted dream alive as well.
All of these are cool, but they still technically work around a giant bike with some kind of crazy jet engine or insane tires riding down the battlefield and running over the competition. It just doesn’t feel right. So what do we do?
Make Bikes More Offensive!
We should make them punch better right? I think step one to doing this is to give them the Vehicle keyword. This is a two-fold change as it would give them access to Tank Shock as well as now being affected by Anti-Vehicle option. This lets you utilize a current rule and then “amp it up” a bit by letting fast units utilize this. I think we leave this keyword change to only bikers themselves and leave the mounted “monster” options out of it. Again we only want bikes to be good.
On the same lines as more offensive, bikers should do something that helps them due to driving a giant thing into a unit on a charge. A simple “furious” charge like upgrade with a plus 1 to strength and most likely an additional -1 AP would make the fact this giant thing is crashing into you. You mix both of these things and you get something that might be good as a great “counter” assault unit ready to zip round a wall and punch your business off.
Let Bikes Be More Survivable
Shooting someone riding a bike has to be hard so why not just always give them a 4+ invulnerable save to shooting? This still means when they get mixed in you can punch them normally but it at least shows that riding this death beast of a bike helps you out. I know we had Jinx and other things on bikers and we can create that as a keyword that makes their save better just due to being a better rider. Now Ork Bikers running around is not the same as an expert Eldar bikers so giving an extra keyword hit on it for superior bikers would just be a simple keyword add on – that can use used inline with the fluff.
Bike Characters Need To Attach
Every army that has bikes needs a character that can attach to their bike units. This way you can have a totally epic unit that rides around with the boss, causes problems, and wreck face. This is always the frustrating bit in 40K currently with the move to only having units that have models they can sell. I hope we see a return to some of the cooler leader options we have in the game but will have to wait and see.
I won’t say how many bike models I have but let me tell you it is a lot. In fact it is one of the few things I like a lot in the game besides giant stompy monsters. I just love the ability to zoom around, get close, and maybe punch the enemy in the face a bit.
What do you think? Would it be worth it to clean up and make bikes better?
