Blob's Round 4 - Chaos Space Marines

In the final round at Blob's I was matched up against a really friendly and laid back player named Kevin who was playing Chaos Space Marines. His army had some scary stuff in it, such as Abbadon, Kharn, 3 squads of Plague Marines, a squad of Berserkers, Lesser Daemons, 4 Obliterators and a Land Raider Crusader. I used to play against Plague Marine heavy lists a lot back in 4th and early 5th edition, and it was from those matches that my desire for a bike heavy list was born. Toughness 5 Feel No Pain was and still is a force to be reckoned with on the tabletop. I was finally able to tap into those 2 elements when I built my bike army; T5 from the bike platform and FnP from the Apothecary in the command squad. With an abundance of plasma and melta strewn throughout my squads, I thought I would be in good shape against this list. For the most part I was, but my squads had a hard time holding out until the end of the game.

I unfortunately only snapped 2 pictures during this game as it was getting dark and we were all pretty tired at this point. But here's the big stuff I remember happening during this match. For the first time ever, I actually rolled a 6 to seize the initiative. I was then able to blow up a couple rhinos early on which seriously hampered my opponents' mobility. The primary objective this round was table quarters, and at this point in the game I had him confined to one quarter. On turn 2, all of my reserves came in and I proceeded to surround the chaos and close in for the kill.

I think that was where I went wrong, getting too close and charging in without enough numbers or power fists to bail my smaller bike squads out. I should have stayed a healthy distance away and continued to whittle him down with shooting, but whatever, it was the last game and we were both just trying to have fun. Abbadon, Kharn, and the Oblits squared up against Khan, the Chaplain and my Command squad. When the smoke cleared a couple rounds later, I had moonfanged Kharn and dealt 3 wounds to Abbadon (my rifleman took his remaining wound) but my command was wiped out in the process. As were most of my small bike squads. I didn't have enough to claim more than 1 table quarter by the end of the game. Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable game and I learned from it.

The whole tournament was a really great experience, despite getting my ass kicked lol, but hey it was another 4 games against 4 top notch opponents. Between Nova, Blob's, and all the practice games in between I think I'm finally starting to grasp the big do's and don'ts of a biker list. It's a type of list that clearly takes practice to make it work and is definitely not a point & click army. It offers a lot of flexibility and certainly mobility, but with that comes added complexity that requires more sound tactics and is less forgiving when you make mistakes (any low model count army is like that). But one thing's for sure, it's a hell of a fun army to play and it makes for interesting games. I've enjoyed all my games played with the bikes, and while I intend to try some more hybrid lists in the future, I'll have a hard time not choosing the bikes to be my basic troops.

Congrats to Dameon and Eric (both from the White Scars blog) for representing the white scars/biker list concept so well! Dameon finished on top at Blob's and Eric finished #3 at the recent Battle for Salvation tournament. Clearly, I need to be taking more advice from them when it comes to bikes ;)