How can I make my Jet bikes more effective?

Every time I use my jet bikes (6 bike unit with arena champion, 2 x cluster caltrops, and 2 x blasters)
they seem to get shot off the table before they can become effective. Maybe its just me, but it seems neither using cover or jinking makes a difference.
Any advice on how to run bikes effectively would be great!

I usually use a single unit of 6 with 2 cluster caltrops and no shooting upgrades. In my experience a single unit is either a suicide obj-grabber\CC unit or a distraction unit.

If your opponent has long range ignore cover weapons try moving from LOS blocking cover to cover. This forces to move his ignore cover to face them, ignoring other targers, or ignore them, letting them kill their designated targets.

If your opponent does not have ignore cover weapons, you either are extremely unlucky or using them extremely wrong.

Anyway lose the arena champ, and put the blaster only if you really need them, a single unit will be jinking more of the times.

Or he spends a lot of shooting to remove them which means you are using them perfectly fine. :-D

@aurynn, exactly. Keep them cheap and let them die.

With this kind of thinking, maybe I have been using them correctly...

Arena champion is better than the blaster as it lets you look out sir to protect the cluster caltrops. We have different grammatical structure from the apothecary scenario so this is still legal.

Maybe use a truck load of units? Like six 3 Reaver units?

alexthearchon wrote:

With this kind of thinking, maybe I have been using them correctly...

When you use them, do you still win?

Paint spooky skeletons on them and your opponent will be too spooked to shoot at them. Alternatively, bring things to escort the bikes that are even more threatening than the bikes.

In my local meta, I run a lot of bikes. Last tournament I think I had 5 units of bikers... Heat lances and cluster caltrops. I've found success with them by spreading them out behind line of sight blocking cover with their turbo boost and aiming at armor or units they can kill in assault the following turn. Positioning is pretty important.

Jimsolo wrote:

alexthearchon wrote:

With this kind of thinking, maybe I have been using them correctly...

When you use them, do you still win?

In my last two games I have. Mainly because they shot the bikes down, but ignored the Scourges with blasters.

See? :-) The key is not presenting only one threat. You have to make the enemy choices difficult. He can shoot the bikes (one of our toughest units) and ignore the other threats. Or shoot the more fragile threats that are not as versatile due to Reavers' ability to hurt both Armour and Infantry in 2 phases each turn.

A few (or a lot) of reaver units are a perfect "escort" for a grotesquerie in raiders.

They are both fast, aggressive, resilient units BUT must be used with care and intelligence. They are deadly to most infantry and vehicles and force hard decisions on your opponents target priority.

I personally found it nice to use them practically as a second grotesquerie, since usually I play the latter as a ballistic bullet to the enemy core; don't expect it to actually kill everything in a x" radius, just to make them all want to kill it. Same bikes. 4x3\6x3
Grots zoom flat out on a side, bikes on the other. 1st turn shooting. What the opponent focuses, dictates the weight of the t2 fire, usually weighting the army on the "unfocused" side.

Til now,worked nicely; it tendentially makes it easier to shoot\caltrop the back of things - turned to target the other aeldarki carnifex

I might seem like a broken record at this point, but when playing reavers always play 3 man squads. 6 man units have a larger footprint, which means harder to hide, which means dead reavers. The things that are good at killing reavers (flamers, thunderfire cannons, weapons with ignore cover) kill 3 reavers as easily as 6.

The problem that many people have with reavers is that they try to play them like SM bikers. Get them a leader, some special weapons, plant them mid field and hope they survive to assault next turn. Reavers are not that kind of unit. They are patient insidious hunters that swarm behind enemy lines by turboboosting preferably behind LOS, in range for an assault on their pray next turn.

Thank you everyone. This has given me some more ideas on how to run my Reavers more effectively. The idea of using them as an escort or a distraction seems like it will be something I will try next game.

The more you have helps as well. Often times it seems like in the early turns your opponent will try and focus fire them. This is why running them up the board with grotesques works well as it forces someone to choose what to target. If you have two raiders and 3+ squads of reavers in his face on turn one he will more than likely prioritize them leaving the rest of your army to do work. The reavers or the raiders may not all survive but,turntwo you should be in assault.

Also, if you run 3 man squads you won't have to take tests for being under 25% unit maximum. Single bikers can hide really well and make for excellent linebreakers and objective grabbers.

lament.config wrote:

Also, if you run 3 man squads you won't have to take tests for being under 25% unit maximum. Single bikers can hide really well and make for excellent linebreakers and objective grabbers.

Last man standing bikers have won me many games.  

Stupid easy to hide,
Not worth chasing or wasting special "do not need LOS" weapons on,
Expendable,
Great for soaking dangerous overwatch,
Long model = can do some blocking and wrapping,  
Still lethal if equipped with caltrops,
Ideal for scoring obj markers, behind enemy lines, king of the hill, table quarters, linebreaker, kill a unit,
etc, etc, etc...  

Nothing new to add than concur on some points mentioned already:

You need more than one unit. I think if a DE unit is worth having in your list, then 3 or 4 those units are even better!

There is a good argument for 3 or 6 members per squad. Why not do both by using a double CAD or CAD with a RSR detachment?

Also, really liked BizarreShowbiz' point that Reavers are a "play it a turn ahead" type of unit. I try and think: What could hit it in the next phase? How could the reavers not be hit? What could they be used to distract or tie up in combat?

I'll then subsequently roll 3 for my assault moves, curse the lack of fleet for bike units and watch them get smoked as they stall just short of a target.  They are so much fun to run and so utterly fickle!

One tactic I use to mess with my opponents head is to try making my armies entife foot print and what each unit is supporting change radically each game turn. DE's easy access to things that move 36" or more make this fairly easy to do.

things like scourge, beastmasters and hellions have very similar movement profiles (i dont like hellions, but they fit here), because of this they can greatly benefit from eachothers help when used together. Reavers are much the same, except able to support much faster things like venoms and raiders.

Reavers are also excellent choices for quick response to threats that you cannot devote less mobile units to in a kind of a first responder in case of emergency sort of way. Provided they have not been all shot down from being in one unit that gets pew-pewed to pieces on turn one.

Goes without saying that a great unit to support reaver jetbikes would be craftworld eldar jetbikes autarch, farseers, etc. but that really changes the whole battlefield role of the unit.

Time might jsut end up being the biggest boon to your reavers though, i would find it difficult to believe that the new gathering the storm book will not contain a formation for reavers. But that is only an educated guess.