I've been revisiting the first army list I made for Nova back in February which focused on two of my favorite units from the space marine codex: bikes and dreadnoughts. I played a couple practice games with a variation of this list, but in all fairness, those were my first games getting back into 40k after a couple years off. The original list needed work for sure, but I probably lost these first games due to being rusty with rules and tactics. By the time I had found my bearings again, I had already moved away from the Master of the Forge and all those dreadnoughts.
The MotF on bike is still one of my favorite conversions and I'm determined to make him work. I've been working on incorporating a few other new units into my lists as well (Thunderfire Cannon, Assault Terminators, Land Raider Crusader) and thought I would try putting it all together into one list. Here's what I came up with:
Captain - Bike, Lightning Claw
Master of the Forge - Bike, Conversion Beamer
8x Bikes + Attack Bike - 2x meltaguns, Multi-melta, Powerfist
8x Bikes + Attack Bike - 2x meltaguns, Multi-melta, Powerfist
Dreadnought - 2x TL-Autocannons
Dreadnought - 2x TL-Autocannons
5x Assault Terminators - 2 w/ LC's, 3 w/ TH+SS
Land Raider Crusader - Extra Armor, Multi-melta
Ironclad Dreadnought - Seismic hammer/meltagun, Hurricane Bolters
Dreadnought - Plasma cannon
Thunderfire cannon
The biggest weakness off the bat is the low # of Troops choices. Of course I have the option of combat squadding the bikes and making 4 troop squads, but only if the mission calls for it as the full sized squads are much more durable. I can definitely see myself splitting one of the squads with the meltas and power first sgt. going off to do what they do best with the other half of standard bikes riding around with the MotF way in the back so he doesn't get insta-sniped and can get maximum range with his beamer.
The rifleman dreads open up some transports while the thunderfire, plasma cannon, and conversion beamer drop blast templates on anything that pours out and is bunched up. The LRC carrying the terminators and the IC dread deploy aggressively in hopes to draw fire away from the bikes and also keep people honest who want to charge in all up on my grill. I'm really liking this list. Not only do I think it will be fun to command, it's got a lot of decent ranged shooting, some scary counter charge / close combat units, really tough basic troops, and a spattering of heavily armored targets that will hopefully create priority issues for my opponents. Aside from the thunderfire, the rest of the army can be quite mobile.
I still have some assembly and painting left to be done before I can field this particular list, but this is something I'd like to try when I get back to playing games after the baby comes.
What do you think?