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Starting a new SW army and while I have bought some troops and others, I've not started assembling. What I was looking to do was make a 2500 "wish list" that I could build towards. I'm looking to make them quite aggressive. I'm really not familiar with the pro's n con's though I have done some reading. My thought was in a large game to be able to send two drop pods of troops to occupy the opp while my landraider gets over asap and unloads. The fast units would take a flank. Two smaller troop squads run behind to pick up any objectives. This is where I am so far. I was toying to see if I should add Wolf Guard to the troops? Or if I should have more cavalry to use on both flanks. I've broken it down into squads so you could see what I'd be running together.

Any pointers before I start splashing more cash and building would be much appreciated. Oh and currently this is around 2400 points so I have a little wiggle room.



Squad 1
HQ - Canis Wolfborne
Fast - 3 x Thunderwolf Cavalry (3 x SS + 1PF)
Troop - 10 x Fen Wolves

Squad 2
Elite - 5 x Term Wolf Guard inc Arjac, (WC/WC - SB/PF - SB/PA - WC/PF/CML) + Land Raider

Squads 3 & 4
Troop - 10 x Grey hunters - PF - Plas - MotW - Standard - DropPod
Troop - 10 x Grey hunters - PF - Plas - MotW - Standard - DropPod

Squads 5 & 6
Troop - 5 x Grey hunters - PF - Plas - MotW - Standard
Troop - 5 x Grey hunters - PF - Plas - MotW - Standard

Squad 7
Heavy - Long Fangs 4xML
Heavy - Long Fangs 4xML
Aegis + Quad
Rune Priest - CotS, JotWW, LL

I have a bunch of comments...

HQ's:
Don't waste any points on special characters (like Arjac or Canis). Sure they sound good - but they aren't worth their points AT ALL. The ONLY special characters you should ever consider taking would be Logan Grimnar - but he requires a list to be built around him, or Njal Stormcaller (maybe).

Troops :
At 2500 points, you should have a minimum of 50 Grey Hunters. But if it was me, I would take a full 6 units of 10 Grey Hunters each. Don't waste money on Blood Claws at first. It might be fun to have one big unit of Bllood Claws, but not until you've got 50 Grey Hunters.

When you have the cash, get some drop pods and or rhinos.

Heavy Support:
Long Fangs - Get a minimum of 10 missile launchers. Then play around with smaller lists. As your army grows, you should experiment with a few lascannons, heavy bolters and plasmacannons until you have enough to make 3 or 4 units of LF's with every loadout that you could concievably want.

Elites / Fast Attack:
If I were you, I would not buy more than one box of 5 fenrisian wolves. I don't really see them as a viable unit unless you field them in units of 15 wolves AND you field 2 or 3 units of them. But with that single box of 5 models, you can give fen-wolves as wargear to your Wolf Lords and Lone Wolves.

As for your wolf guard terminators - make sure you magnetize your arms so that you can change wargear without buying more models. Because - I promise you - you will get tired of your selected load out.

I have two reasons for never taking terminators. The second reason is that they rarely pay for themselves. But, the most important reason is that I built my terminators with 2xWC and/or TH + SS, glued the arms on and painted them masterclass. Now I can't change their wargear,and the stuff that's glued on cost's WAY too many points. So even though I paid ~$60 to own this beautiful looking squad, they never actually see combat.

Learn from my mistake and magnetize. The same goes for your TWC, because sometimes you'll want 3 storm shields and sometimes you won't want any.

Thanks for the input, appreciate it. Great shout on the magnets, Ill do that (done it on my Tyranids before, works wonders)

Ive taken on board your comments as well. Rather than use Canis, I might Add a Wolf Lord to a Wolf, I like the fluff and fancy making my force based around wolves. Might not be the most efficient but damn I'll look good

Arjac Ill maybe get the model (again, looks good) but use as a standard Wolf.

Something I Was considering, if I use a wolf guard with a storm shield and put him in the front of a GH unit footslogging, is he then a tough nut to crack as he needs to be dropped first before the GH take hits? I can imagine templates or sheer volume being an issue.

Volume of fire ends more Terminators than anything else. This applies to Storm Shields as well. That said, it can be very useful against Heldrakes, as if his model is closest to the Heldrake then you get to take all your saves against him until he dies. So that AP 3 can be mitigated.

And I would recommend the Terminator over the Storm Shield. Slightly cheaper overall, and unless its AP 2 you have a better save.

Really though, if you are walking them up the board use some cheap Fenrisian Wolves or a 15 man Blood Claw pack to take the hits. Your Grey Hunters are valuable. You want them in Rhinos and Drop Pods normally.

Dorrin wrote:

Something I Was considering, if I use a wolf guard with a storm shield and put him in the front of a GH unit footslogging, is he then a tough nut to crack as he needs to be dropped first before the GH take hits? I can imagine templates or sheer volume being an issue.

I play against another Space Wolf player who likes to put a terminator wolf guard in each of his grey hunter squads. This is how I deal with it. I move into 12" range with my grey hunters and rapid fire all of my weapons (8 bolters + 2 plasmaguns). Let's assume that he's put his terminator up front and that it is the closest model to my squad.

If the Terminator has a Storm Shield, then I first resolve all of the bolter shots. Sure he get's the 2+ armor save, but with 16 shots the odds of NONE of them killing the terminator are about 40% (precisely 40.07%). Meaning you have a 60% chance of killing at least the terminator with the bolter shots. After that, the 4 plasma shots go into the Grey Hunters at AP2.

On the other hand, if the Terminator does NOT have a storm shield, then you fire the plasmaguns first. In this situation, the terminator (with his 5+ save) only has a 16% chance of survival. Meaning that you have an 84% chance to kill AT LEAST the terminator with just the plasmaguns.

EDIT : If you put a Wolf Priest in the squad, the kill count gets even tastier.