19/12/2010

Land Speeder Squadron or Attack Bike Squadron?

So as I was looking through the Blood Angels Codex at various options for future purchases my eyes settled on the Fast Attack section of the Army list. Now with options like a Vanguard Veteran Squad and the Baal Predator you would think there would be no contest in what options to pick but my eyes were drawn to the Land Speeders and Attack Bikes. Now I should first make it clear that when assembling an army I think about four things in this order:

1) Cost, how much of a hole is it going to leave in my wallet?
2) Does my force look like a real detachment, i.e. is it 'realistic in context'?
3) Does it look cool?
4) How much whoopass is it going to dish out?

Now cost wise an Attack Bike is
£15ish and a Land Speeder £18ish so the Attack Bike at first
looks like a winner, however you seem
to get a lot of cool accessories with the Land Speeder and more options (more on this later)
As far as in being realistic in context, either of them could fit in with my army theme. Maybe the Land Speeder is a little more Blood Angelesque (tm).
Looks wise I used to hate the current Land Speeder model however over the years it has grown on me. The Attack Bike still looks as cool as it always did.
Now onto the Whoopass factor, the Land Speeder has a couple of advantages over its land bound cousin. it is a skimmer, it can deep strike and it has more weapon options if an upgrade can be afforded. The Attack Bikes main attraction here is it is cheap.

After all this I can not make up my mind, I seem to be leaning toward the Land Speeder but it would be far to easy to load them up with extra weapons and spend more points on them than I want.

Any Ideas?

6 comments:

  1. I'm a big fan of Land Speeders. Multi Melta and Heavy Flamer is a solid load out that can deal with most situations. Not too pricey points-wise and you can send a couple up the flank as a good distraction unit.
    Attack bikes are meant to be really good bang for you buck units (points wise, not money wise). They're smaller than speeders so they are nice and easy to hide behind buildings/other tanks. I'm not really a fan of marine bikes (for looks reasons more than gameplay) though, so I've not used them myself.

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  2. Yeah, if I go for another Fast Attack choice I think it will be one or two Land Speeders

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  3. The one thing about the bikes are that they have two wounds and T(5) when being shot at. A down side is that they can get locked in Assault.

    The Land Speeder is A(10) so most anything can glance it. But it can not get locked in assault.

    I would go with the Land Speeders, they can move and shoot, which makes them a pain in the butt to deal with.

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  4. Yeah, the two wounds on the Attack Bikes made me think they would have more longevity but I hadn't considered them being caught in an assault (no doubt by some twinkied up Dark Eldar Wytches!) The Speeders are looking like the obvious choice.

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  5. Just food for though as I stumbled on this blog post:

    Wounds:Chance
    0 : 27.207%
    1 : 41.857%
    2 : 24.148%
    3 : 6.192%
    4 : 0.595%

    That's the math for 4x S7 shots at BS4 AP3 going at the 3x attack bikers with a 4+ Cover Save because it's very easy to put them behind some brush (not in it just behind) or turbo-boosted.

    Here's the same math vs a squadron of 3 Landspeeders with a 4+ cover save.

    Chance of atleast 1
    Shak : 55.921%
    Stun : 0%
    Weap : 14.012%
    Immo : 0%
    Wrec : 42.613%
    Expl : 10.657%

    That's a 42% chance to wreck at least one. 52% chance to take one out.

    I've tried Landspeeders before and was not impressed. I liked that they can go HF/MM for variety but at the cost they started to become losing one became such a huge loss. Remember squadrons of vehicles become wrecked on a 4 or 5. So glancing hits can wreck one possibly.

    I sold my Speeders and I'm going to be buying some attack bikes.

    Just my 2 cents.

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  6. Hmm food for thought there. I'm guessing with either Attack Bikes or Land Speeders, they are really to be used to distract the opponent away from other more valuable units, every High AP shot going towards a Land Speeder is one not going towards your Land Raider for example. If they are ignored they can really do some damage. At the end of the day they are a cheap disposable unit (points wise), cash wise you need to decide if £18 is worth spending on 50 points of fragile Land Speeder.

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