This week we take a look at the iconic entirely-too-fast Imperial support unit, 74-Z Speeder Bikes.

Fast, killy, and with lots of dakka, speeder bikes are everything any respectable mek could ask for.  Er, this is a Legion blog, right?.

Original article by Kyle “Orkimedes” Dornbos and Legion 2.6 updates by Evan “Doc Velo” Paul.

Pros:

• They are quite fast
• Very respectable firepower for their points…at full strength
• Some innate protection with Cover 1…egh, well, some
• They’re fast
• Did I mention the speed?

Cons:

• Fragile
• Vulnerable to units with Sharpshooter, Melee or Blast or. Yep, they’re pretty much just vulnerable to units in general now.

Overview:

80 points: Like most speeder support units this got more expensive with the Legion 2.6 rules change (by 5 points), we’ll get to why later although it is arguable if it was necessary.

3 health (per bike), white/surge defense, Cover 1.  3 health per model means you can take 1 or 2 wounds and it won’t affect your output at all, but Cover 1 is a lot less useful than it used to be.

Speeder 1.  Ignore terrain height 1 or lower, and perform a compulsory move at the beginning or end of your activation.  This is what makes bikes so fast and mobile.

Speed 3.  As fast as it gets, though its small notched base means it is actually less fast than a naked BARC (medium base), or T-47/Fluttercraft Attack Craft (large base).

Surge to hit.  Good stuff, combined with their solid dice.  A full two bike unit hits just as hard as the doubly expensive T-47.

EC-17 Hold-out blaster.  Hopefully, you can avoid using this, because it’s obviously worse than their main weapon.  Two black dice per model with surge isn’t terrible, though, if you find yourself in a weird position.

Ax-20 Blaster Cannon.  One red, one black, one white per model with surge, plus Impact 1 (which doubles to Impact 2 with a full unit).  These things hurt.  How much?  Let’s move on to the main event…

Upgrades

Given that there is only a Comms slot there aren’t really a ton of options that are really worth considering here. There have been times when fun lists have run HQ Uplinks with Veers or Comms Jammers (back when blocking orders on droids really meant something ya know?) but in all honesty, the most common situation is to not run any upgrades at all. That said, there is one worth considering if you have the points:

The emergency transponder is a nice way to make your initial dive that much more impactful by guaranteeing access to an aim token to spend, ideally when all your bikes are attacking the same-or-similar targets all at once. It’s especially good in Blizzard Force, where the ability to play this on 4 bikes makes their alpha strike quite formidable (since each pool will average 4.5 hits with that aim, and now only 1 of those hits is likely to get lost to cover).

Strategies

Speeder bikes definitely have a potential role in Empire but it’s one that needs to be executed with great care, lest your army starts to resemble most of the speeder bike crews in the actual fiction.

The Best Defense is a Smart Offense

Speeder bikes have an innate Cover 1, which helps them quite a bit as they have a hard time getting heavy cover with their flying stands a little bit but they can no longer use terrain to “upgrade” to heavy cover. 

With their Cover 1 and saves, a unit of bikes has a little more than 10 effective wounds (in other words, something close to 10 regular hits will typically destroy the unit, see the Effective Wounds article for how we arrive at this). For some comparison with other Empire support units at about the same cost as a naked speeder bike…

• Dewback with Flame Rifle: 13 effective wounds if they’re in light cover
• Range Troopers with DLT: 12 effective wounds if they’re in light cover which doesn’t count the fact that they’ll knock off one hit per attack with armor, meaning it’s probably closer to 14

Additionally, one of the biggest drawbacks of Speeder Bikes is the hit they take when that first bike goes down. It cuts their damage in half: one Speeder Bike is averaging 1.87 hits, which is rather paltry.

So, you ain’t bringing these things because they can soak up enemy fire, which means that the best defense is distance. Empire lists aren’t usually amazing at getting order control (Improvised Orders does help of course) which means that it’s even more important to have something resembling a plan for engaging late in a round (after most threats have already shot) and then disengaging as soon as possible. My general rule is that I won’t move toward a target unless I anticipate 1 or fewer decent return attacks during the same round. If you dive a naked 40-point Rebel trooper unit early in a round it’s true that you’ll have a decent-ish chance of just taking it out, but if that’s at the cost of your 80-point speeder bikes (which could have been scoring objectives) then you haven’t exactly made a great trade. Therefore, if you think it’s best to wait until the next round to dive in, you can prepare by being far enough out of range (essentially, being at a little over Range 4 is typically safe except for snipers) or being behind LOS blocking terrain when your activation finishes. Ideally, you’ll have a target in mind for the next turn, and you’ll be pointed toward that target as much as possible (since turning slows you down).

Be a Bully

All of the above is made much easier when your target is relatively alone. If they’re completely alone, then you can attack more aggressively and maybe even take an aim action, since your goal is to overwhelm them and weaken their return fire. In other words, as is true with all speeders, your offense should be focused on your opponent’s weak flank.

By contrast, since all your bikes share the same weakness, they should be attacking that weak flank together both to maximize damage done and minimize damage returned. Practice deploying your bikes in such as way that they all hit the same or similar target on the same turn, with none of them (ideally) being left out directly in-range of a strong enemy dice pool.

POI Diving

The models below are STAPs but Speeder Bikes have the same movement profile. Take a look at these two pictures, the first showing a starting point for a turn, contesting one of your friendly POI’s on Breakthrough, and the second showing where it can end its movement.

Unlike STAPs (which usually have to move around as a cohesive group to share order coordination) your Bikes can be all over the dang place (which is fine, as long as they’re safe, they aren’t gonna get many face-up orders anyway and they don’t need to be near their commander when they do) which is handy when it keeps your opponent guessing as far as what POI you may dive onto to ruin their day. Using Breakthrough as an example, successfully diving onto and capturing an enemy POI can turn what was going to be 1 VP for your opponent into 2 VP for you instead, a 3-point swing!

Unfortunately, these sorts of moves are best saved for happening late in a round so you can catch an opponent relatively unawares or, at least, unaware of what they can do to stop it. Given that you won’t often have wound control at all, this does represent a bit of a problem.

List Building (Updated for Legion 2.6)

Since its inception, Blizzard Force has been the most common home for Speeder Bikes, which continues to be the fact that you can play 4 of the damn things there.

Brian Labay’s Top 4 List (NOVA GT 2024)

This represents the most “typical” use of Speeder Bikes in the modern game. They are not the stars of the show (that’s Vader) but they are capable of laying down a lot of modded (via transponders) attack dice in Round 1 (or possibly Round 2) before, hopefully, successfully veering off to threaten far-away POI’s for the rest of the game.

Summary

• Don’t rush in your Speeder Bikes.  They are fragile for 80 points, and significantly less threatening at half strength.
• As a general rule, avoid flying directly into situations where you’re likely to get shot back at all, or at least shot more than once.
• Don’t underestimate Speeder Bikes’ speed.  Flank and surround your targets, or reach targets/POI’s your opponent thought were safe. 

In other words, be wreck-less by not being reckless. If you ignore this advice you’re likely to get…well you know.