I opened up a blister of Space Marine bikes I'd bought a couple years ago and found that it was missing a sprue, so I only had 9 bikes and an attack bike. Even if I based them two each I could only get five stands with an added character, which I had but didn't want to commit to like that.

Well, a call to GW Wednesday resulted in an entire new blister arriving in the mail yesterday! So now I have 21 bikes, 2 attack bikes, and 4 characters on bikes. So here is my question: and sugggestions for how I should base them all?

I've got some magnets I could use to swap out characters on a base, so I have some flexibility there. How often do people field two squads of all bikes (without attack bikes)? Would the bases look empty with only two models on a base?

I guess the two main options I am considering are 8 stands of bikes with two of them having characters and most with 3 bikes per stand, or 10 stands with two of them having characters, with only the character stands having 3 per stand. Any suggestions?

Most Bikes around here are based two to a base, then a five unit formation equals ten Marines on Bike for a full squad, with an Attack Bike "remounting" two of those Bikers when added in.

The "emptiness" of the base is dependent on the size of the base, so you've got some control there.

One of the local Marine players uses multiple, 2-4, Bike Detachements in some of his armies to quite good effect; he very rarely adds Attack Bikes, using the formations purely as assault/support elements, often delivered via Thunderhawk.

I'd make a single "three-bike" base to put the characters in, per formation, and do the rest as two-bike bases... that way it sticks to the actual Codex Astartes squad size.

If you use 2p bases.. 2 to a base looks good.. if you use warmaster bases I would got with 3 to a base.

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Ya, two to a base. I haven't tried an all attack bike formation yet but I usually put one or two in with the bikes to lay a BM. I've found them to be pretty good when paired up with Pred. Destructors or Vindicators, using them to screen the tanks and support each other in assaults.

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I'm 'Merican... We don't have no pee money round these parts...

Which looks like it's a shame, those are some sweet looking bases, and you can't beat the price. What diameter are those?

2p are 25.9 mm, 1p which I use for things like Dreadnoughts are 20.3 mm

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Dang, those are bigger than even US quarters, and that's getting pretty pricey for bases. HOWEVER! I just went and looked at some of my old historical bases, and I've got some wooden 20x25mm infantry bases that are almost exactly 2/3 the size of a Warmaster base. Two bikes fit on them perfectly! I'll start getting the little buggers based up pronto.

Actually, Galeforce9 does a nice little deal these days where you can get a quart sized chinese food container of masonite bases in the size and shape you want for $15. I'm probably going to be ordering a quart size of 25mm rounds myself to finish off my Eldar with.

Another cheap option is to buy the tokens used by coin op businesses. You can get them for just a few cents a piece (6 or 8 cents each, I think).

Chris, we carry a megaton of Litko and GF9 bases down at GameKastle. We can hook you up