A little more conversation?

Hey guys,

“A little less conversation, a little more action”, a famous singer said once. Today there will be a little more conversation, a little less action. Nearly no new pictures today, but some information to the army list I posted yesterday.

I'm not going to post the list again, if you are interested, just have a look into yesterday's posting. The main principle of the list seems to be rather clear. There are two large units of Nobbikers that should be able to crush nearly every enemy in CC they charge. In addition to this these squads are troop choices thanks to the Warbosses and are therefore able to seize objectives and quarters if this is necessary to win. Beside this, the list only gives away seven killpoints and is therefore had to defeat in a KP mission.

There are two major aspects the player has to be able to do in order to be effective with this list. The first one should be really easy and is to contest or even seize more than just one objective at a time. When the unit includes a WB, there are eleven models on bikebases. This unit can cover large areas on the battlefield and is therefore able to be near several objectives. Because of this aspect it is crucial to check with the tournament rules if this is allowed (which should normally be the case). Otherwise this list could end a bit short on objectives, because Gretchin are not well known as very fast units and do not have any kind of transport vehicle in this list. If every unit can only seize one objective, the Gretchins have to be played rather aggressively and need to run nearly every turn in order to seize objectives in the middle of the table. It is crucial to protect them with one of the biker units, because Gretchin tend to die really, really fast …

Normally I would always leave all three units of Gretchin in reserve in order to hit the table rather late and just to grab some objectives deep in my own deployment zone, indeed they do not have other things to do in this list.

The second crucial ability the player of this list needs is to be able to do multi-charges. Against some (mostly MSU lists) it is not enough to attack one unit every turn, but you will need to destroy several small units in one turn. So you should really train this, before playing a tournament with this list (or just do it the way I do and do learning by doing during the tournament :P). Again the fact that the squads and there bases are rather big, make it easier to achieve this goal. You will often be able to block the way of your own models by turning other models at 90° and using the length of their base to block any way to get through. In this case you just have to move into 2” or, if this is impossible, to stay in coherency, meaning that you can freely move in any direction and attack another enemy unit.

When you get attacked yourself just stay cool, having eleven wound groups with at least 2 wounds and FnP the Nobbikers can take lots of damage before getting killed. (In play tests one of my squads was charged by a unit of Genestealers and a Trygon, after two round of combat I nearly used up all of my wound groups, but killed both units and was free to move on.) You should, however, make sure that your power claws are in the middle of your squad and can therefore not be bound by your enemy. In this case you can decide where your most powerful weapons will be able to attack and can even autokill some ICMs that are hidden within enemy units.

Most lists have to act rather different against different enemy lists. This is not always true for Nobbikers. Against rather shooty lists it is important to always use your turbo boost. That way you can claim your 3++ cover save and reach enemy lines rather fast, because you can move up to 24” every turn. Shots from missile launcher, lascannons or other weapons that could autokill your normal Nobz should be allocated to your WBs, because they have a toughness of 5 already in their profile. The remaining wounds are allocated until every Nob has one wound. It is important to save your power claws and the Painboy as long as possible, because those are the one's doing most of your damage and keeping your unit alive.

Lists that tend to go right into CC like Tyranids and stuff like that you always should try to get the charge or to force your enemy (especially Tyranids) to attack through terrain so that you can strike first. And never forget to use your guns against large units of infantry, I know that those are just Orks, but 33 twinlinked shots at S5 can do lots of damage to badly armoured enemies and can even cost monstrous creature one or two wounds, making the upcoming assault phase a lot easier.

And last but not least always remember that your WBs do not need to stick in the biker units. They are always free to leave their units which can come very handy when it comes to contesting objectives in the last turn or to kill small enemy units, because a single WB on bike with power claw has T6 and 5 armour ignoring attacks with S10 which is more than enough to kill lots of small units. You could even combine both WBs to a single unit if this seems to make sense to you in certain situations.

In the end I will take a look at the nemesis for this list: TH/SS-Terminators are for sure one of the worst things that can happen to this list. Because nearly every Marines has at least one squad of these, there are very few Nobbikers seen today. Their 3+ invulnerable save combined with their S8 attacks that can autokill our Nobs makes them to a real threat for our units. When this unit is also mounted in a LR we cannot even shoot at it and they will sooner or later be able to get an assault, because it is nearly impossible to hid a unit as large as eleven bikes anywhere on the table. As soon as there are two TH/SS units mounted in LRs in your enemies army, you can called it a 0-20, because there is nearly no way to win this battle.

A single unit can be killed by one of your units or a combo-charge, but it is always a matter of luck to pull this off (it is even worse, when we talk about BloodAngels with FC and FnP). When the enemy does not field a LR it is possible to outrun the Termis and you should try to shoot as much at them as possible, because sooner or later some of them will die, making them weak enough for you to attack them (still talking about units of 5 TH/SS, don't even think about attacking a unit of 6-8 of these guys). When I played against 10 of these guys with FC and FnP, I circled them with my bikes and killed everything of the remaining army (a large area terrain in the middle of the table helped me much with this) and in one of the last turns I sacrificed one of my units to lure them into his own quarter and was able to seize all of the remaining quarters and win the game, but this will not always be possible.

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this little article about Nobbiker and to come to an end, I'll show you some pictures of my finished Deffkopta.

Cheers Cleutin