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So today I played against SW and charged a GUO, 10 daemonettes, and 10 bloodletters into a squad of T. wolf calv... only to be subsequently wiped out.

my question is, has anyone found an effective way of battling T. wolf calvary (w storm shields on everyone)?

:( the only way i do it is if i take a Nightbringer and really I'd rather put the points elsewhere instead of a hulking beast HQ

You rolled bad if 10 letters and a GUO didnt make a serious dent in T wolf cav in hand to hand.

Charge them with crushers and watch hilarity ensue. Im not convinced on the T wolf cav. Lots of points, and lysander, the mega council, or swarm lord will all wreck its face.

I'd tend to think that heavy anti infantry shooting would be the best way.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:You rolled bad if 10 letters and a GUO didnt make a serious dent in T wolf cav in hand to hand.

Charge them with crushers and watch hilarity ensue. Im not convinced on the T wolf cav. Lots of points, and lysander, the mega council, or swarm lord will all wreck its face.

Your right but the odds are only slightly in favor of that combo, but he may have had a wolf lord on one too in the unit with probably the beast slayer saga, that is the common setup, its an expensive unit, but they have crushed everything I have seen thrown at it.

Points wise its as expensive as the Nob biker set up but actually better with a permanent 3++, 5 attacks charged or charging with rending, probably with a T-hammer in there, and you can outfit each one differently to spread the wounds around, with the wolf lord crazy killer in there and it is an insane and scary unit with a potential 24" threat range.

Should outfit them all differently just to fit with the fluff of the SW army if you ask me.

One good way to deal with Thunderwolves is simply to blast them with many normal shots-- the storm shields are quite inefficient for this reason.

It sounds like the SW player was hot with his +3s. Best way to kill TWC is mass of wounds. There isisnt really much you can do unless you have a C'Tan or Callidus. Blood Crushers are also a good alternative since they are WS 5 and hit on 3s, wound on 4s (3s on the charge).

Soul Grinders will instant kill a few of them and even with TH, its still glancing on 5s.

AP3 yeah. I played Dark Eldar a week ago and he could hit very weill, but he just couldn't wound. Those he did wound on I made almost every single 3+ on. What hurt him on my bikes were my dice rolls on armor saves and he couldn't wound me. He is a new player and doesn't know how to balance out his weapons yet. Helping him with it, but it could take a while. It's very hard to have a well rounded army. Well rounded always depends on who you regularly face.

Pretty interesting advice in this thread. First of all four complex Thunderwolves only cost 260 points and pack 8 T5 wounds. You need to cause 5 wounds before the first model dies. A five wolf squad with two shields would cost about 350 points.

Telling people to counter it with Swarmlord and three Tyrant Guard is also a little interesting. There you have a 500 point Tyranid unit that to noone's surprise can destroy a 300 point Wolf Unit. The small problem is that the Wolves are so fast the Swarmlord will never be able to catch them with his puny movement unless the Wolves really allow him to. Lastly, someone said you should kill them with small arms by causing lots of wounds on them. I really can't see how someone's going to get a lot of bolter or heavy bolter shots off against a unit that advances for a turn behind a wall of vehicles and then charges out 24" and will be in close combat for the rest of the game with various enemy units.

TWC pay a lot of points for their incredible mobility and they will no doubt be able to choose which units to engage and which to ignore. The units the TWC ignore get blasted to bitz by lascannons and missile launchers.

Since you play Daemons, you must know that Bloodcrushers are stronger than TWC in a pepsi challenge where mobility is ignored. You could try making an extremely Bloodcrusher heavy list. You'll then probably be able to cover the field with enough units the TWC don't want to engage to make the TWC pretty useless in that particular matchup.

I also play Daemons and, although I personally haven't faced this combination on the board yet, I would do the following:

1. Bog down the Thunderwolves with another unit for a turn or two by charging something like a Bloodthirster (who has good invul saves and multiple wounds), or a cheap unit that has -alot- of models like 20 bloodletters/daemonettes, what have you into them.

2. Counter-charge the Thunderwolves with Skulltaker, on a Juggernaut, in a Unit of 4 Bloodcrushers, each with different upgrades. (Chaos Icon, Fury of Khorne + Instrument of Chaos and 1 normal). This uber unit comes in at 375 points total (200 for crushers, 175 for Skulltaker) and can then do the following:

Have Skulltaker allocate his six attacks at the unit itself, instant deathing any of the Thunderwolves that fail one invul save (If he rolls 4+ to wound), then depending on the result of that, either have the rest of the bloodcrushers put their 16 attacks on the wolf lord or unit. Granted this strategy might not have a 100% success rate, but I run them in my standard 1500pt list and they demolish pretty much anything that isn't Eternal Warrior in CC. (It's for this reason that, although i'm starting Nids too, I have 0 fear of their new Monstrous Creatures if I can charge them with Skulltaker, since he can one hit a Trygon and it won't even get an armour save!).

Also, I forgot to mention- Any wounds you take back in return from the Thunderwolves attacking back- spread out between your bloodcrushers (Nob Biker wound allocation style), since they're all Eternal Warriors and so obviously won't be instant deathed or anything nasty like that.

Not sure why you think TWC are going to be in close combat every turn past the first-- are you still playing 4th edition? In some scenarios, Thunderwolves aren't even guaranteed a turn two assault, much less the opportunity to stick around or jump between units! Standard tactics work fine against Thunderwolves, you just have to be more careful with your screens because of that 19-24" danger radius. Fortunately, they have big bases, so that makes the job a lot easier.

If he outfits them with storm shields hes paying a premium to knock your power weapons down to his regular armor value.

I think just mass of shots would work wonders on him. My eldar army runs 2 squads of 3 walkers, if both were guided turn 1 that could make a mess of the T wolves.

10 Bloodletters should whipe out the TWC quite easily, as most player only add one or max two SS to the cav, as 30 pts. per model are goddamn expensive (90 pts. per model? = IMO fail), with furious charge ánd power weapon attacks it should be easy to kill any wolf but for the SS one, which should suffer some attacks too. And yeah, bloodcrushers would beat them anyway.
Of your buddy is playing all of them equipped with shields, the rest of his army should be quite small ;P.

We were playing 8k vs 4k/4k apoc/planetstrike. he had a wolf lord w/ SS/powerfist + 4 TWC, 3 with SS/no upgrade wep (he likes rending) and 1 w/ SS/PF.

So I charged in, as I said, with 10 daemonettes, 10 bloodletters, and my GUO. As others said, I didn't roll well (4 rending with the ettes, which he saved them all, 12 wounds with the letters, which he saved all but 1... and 3 with the GUO, which he saved all but 1). After that it was downhill, with him wiping out all the letters but 3, killing 2 ettes, and doing 1 wound to my GUO... after fearless I was left with barely anything, having only done a total of 2 wounds, 1 on his PF wolf, and 1 on a normal wolf.

With my chaos I can, typically, do well with massed shooting. But with daemons I have a hard time finding something that will do well in a typical game (one without PS rules where I can charge in after DS) vs the same combo. Yes, the squad is expensive, but with 2 wounds each, a 24" (possible) threat range, 3++ saves, 5 attacks each w/ rending, at str 5, and normally 1 frost blade or TH/PF, its so hard for daemons to combat that it seems. Especially with the immunity to ID from most things... its just a tough combo!

Needless to say I lost the apoc (I was the 8k team) pretty baddly, as my rolls were less than optimal lol... (lets just say typhus and kharne both got insta killed by lucky battlecannon shots... heh)

Wait, you did 19 armor piercing wounds and he saved 17 out of them? I think that was just super lucky rolling on his part.

Fetterkey wrote:Wait, you did 19 armor piercing wounds and he saved 17 out of them? I think that was just super lucky rolling on his part.

Oh trust me, my opponents were rolling dynamite... I knew the game was over when on T1 their vortex grenade took out my baneblade, I lost almost all my daemons (I ran around 1800 pts in my list), that combat I mentioned happened, and they killed all the berserkers I had with abaddon after popping his LR... After loosing over 1500 pts on T1 I just about cried lol

Dont feel bad Zid, the game wasn't meant for large-scale combat like that, and its not balanced at all, its just meant to be fun.

I dont even think apoc games are fun. They are just, "oh i killed lots of those, your turn to kill lots!" rinse and repeat.

I dont even think apoc games are fun. They are just, "oh i killed lots of those, your turn to kill lots!" rinse and repeat.

Exactly how I feel. I guess people's sense of humour and fun truly differ. I sincerely see nothing fun in throwing some 'apocalyptic' templates around that kill swathes of models outright. I have nothing against larger battles, but what they need to offer are different and new tactical challenges instead of actually being completely void of any sorts of strategy, balance or sense of competition.

A lot of competitive players don't think Apoc is fun because of what you just outlined. It always seemed to me more of an opportunity for 'Those Guys' to dump buckets and buckets of primered models onto the table and smash them into each other.

As to the OP, though, if your opponent is rolling better than the statistical average by 2-3x, and consistently, then there's nothing you can do about it. Simply scoop your models, and know that eventually the bell curve will swing back in your favor.

Yea, my game store basically says "Apoc day, bring your painted models!"

everyone brings what they have painted, we split the sides into Space Wolves vs. Everyone else and have at it.

I prefer Apoc, its no-stress, just have fun, throw some dice, play with toy soldiers, and hang out with friends.

yeah haha... we had a combat in that game where I charged some horrors into a squad of normal IG, just to have us tie combat and I slowly began losing more horrors... at the end of the game I had 2 horrors left and he had 5 platoon guys lol