I know that CB data mines list uploaded to Maya for analysis and to feed Aleph. My question is how are where do bike units fall into place among the other units in an army. Are bike units auto-include or do their current rules leave them in the dust?
Honestly tables are the biggest issue I think. A lot of people inadvertedly skew tables against them. I've seen a few in various events where bikes can barely leave their DZ.
It does absolutely on the S7/S8 TAGs, but they are a lot pricer to bring than bikes and require a bigger commitment in your list.
On the other hand, make it too open and bikes will just die to ARO. Or fail to leverage their advantages and become suboptimal. It's tricky. Those can at least vault/climb/jump in more places while being able to afford a risk of low-power AROs.
It does. But not in the same way as for the motorcycles due to the height (and the "value") of the silhouette. MOVE: SCENERY AND ALLIED MODELS Any piece of scenery whose height be equal or inferior to the trooper's Silhouette Template does not block his Movement. By the way, allied troopers, and only allied, whose Silhouette Attribute be equal or inferior to the trooper's Silhouette Attribute does not block his Movement. Mask
It's a perfect storm of issues I think. Table cover issues aside, TAGS have the advantage of having full control of their movement. Bikes are impetuous troops with fast movements that largely have short range weapons. They can't get cover, and have to move a full 8 inches before doing anything. They are forced to be out in the open even more so than normal impetuous units, and good opponents can just ARO them to death from across the board. If they choose to dismount to mitigate the issue of having to move so far, then they aren't getting their value for the points you are paying. Granted, Pentheslia gets ODD and some get longer range weapons, but I think those issues hold back bikes in general.
Not all bikes are Extremely Impetuous, so you can often choose not to go screaming into the night. I use Mavericks a lot, the Rifle/FO is a fast specialist, the LRL brings some low SWC midrange firepower, and the Molotok is an amazing flanker. I'm not keen on the BSG as it requires getting into DTW range to use effectively. Desperados are overshadowed by Irmandinhos and Galwegians in vanilla as cheap sources of smoke but have their place in USARF, and the twin asspistol variant is surprisingly dangerous. In Haqqislam I find that Ghazis often overshadow Kum in the Smoke laying Warband role, the twins and Kasym have their uses though due to some interesting loadouts, and Mr. Beg makes an interesting aggressive Lieutanant if backed up by Chain of Command.
Well, bikes are pretty impractical for tactical combat, so that part is realistic. Kum are fabulous though.
But if you can't go screaming into the night, why pay for the bike? I think that illustrates the point. They can be successful, but largely the roles that they play can be filled by units that cost less, and the gap in cost between the two isn't justified by the advantages that come with being on a bike. Also all bikes are not extreme, but all are impetuous, so the no cover is still an issue for all of them.
Bikes can't take cover anyway so Impetuous is just a free order when you want it and a points discount, plus their speed and (for Ariadna & Haqq) smoke lets you flank your opponent so no-one gets cover. Bikes aren't rambos winning the game by themselves, but they're relatively cheap, and excellent as part of a combined arms force.
I'm definitely willing to concede that bikes can be one of those units where someone goes "it won't break through every game, but if you don't deal with this it will go to town." In that way they are nice because an opponent has to deal with them and the ones that have smoke or ODD can make that really difficult. Having said that, I just feel like the game right now doesn't let you capitalize on their speed because of their large base size, their inability to take cover, and their overall lack of ways to defend themselves at long range beyond smoke. But all of the situations in which I think a bike would excel are often mitigated by some part of it their stat block that shoots them in the foot. One example I can think of is that a bike, on paper, should be a FANTASTIC datatracker for missions where you have to assassinate a designated target. They move fast, some can throw smoke, they use "free" orders to get there, they've got it all. However, the large base size often means that they will have trouble getting there with without doing a lot of weaving on most boards (as @Flipswitch pointed out, these are units that cannot mitigate the issues of board construction like units with similar base sizes), so they lose a lot of their effectiveness in that role because their primary advantage, their speed, cannot be used to it's full potential;. It's not that bikes are bad, it's that they aren't good enough to, IMO, justify their inclusion in most situations over other units to do a similar job. Full Disclosure: As a vanilla Nomads player, setting a Moran up mid-field and covering it with a TR bot has been a pretty effective defense against them for me, but I'm aware not all factions may have something that effective available.
Bikes are particularly vulnerable to Koalas and Mines due to the Dodge penalty. OTOH due to their speed you can suicide them from multiple deployables, have a good chance to FTF the Moran and just get splatted by the TR Bot. This will go a long way to opening up the midfield and is a perfectly good trade. If you're having significant difficulty moving Bikes around a table it sounds like your table is too crowded. Yes they should have restrictions, but there's a significant difference between 'restrictions' and 'basically can't move effectively'. Like any Impetuous troops they work really well paired with a superlative attack piece: if your opponent refrains from AROing, the bikes have relatively free rain. If they put out enough AROs to stop your bikes, you can delete them with your attack piece: and the bikes have done their job without a single Impetuous order being spent. In my meta it's not uncommon to see 1-2 bikes in a YJ, JSA or USARF list. They're less common in vanilla Ariadna (at least in part due to the players lacking those models), and Gazi getting smoke reduced the prevalence of Kum bikers in Haqq. I'm certainly not surprised when I see a bike.
I would probably agree with this with regards to scatter terrain. I've never played overseas but have been told that here in the US the concensus seems to be that we use a lot more terrain.
I see them in my meta in USARF and used to see them in Haqq. They stopped showing up in Haqq awhile ago though.
I'm going to guess it was around the time Gazi got smoke.... but it's entirely possible that those two things were entirely unrelated he he he. If Gazi were AVA2 in Vanilla Haqq you might seem them more often, but running more than 4 Ext Imp Irregular troops is not really all that common. Also, if most of your scatter can't be vaulted by an S4 then it will generally hide S2s. Which will reinforce the preference for S2 Ext Imp over S4.
Well, that may be an interesting consideration for someone interested in, um, innovative scenery-building - keeping in mind that S4 are shorter than S2. They are also wider, so elevations will still be in a good shape to get a LoF on whatever tries to move behind low LoF blockers.