Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Heh, it just won't end...this Iron Priest wanna be IC business.

I read the whole thing...

A lot of good points have been made. If you are on an extreme edge of this discussion, I don't agree with you.

My recent experience with SW is that they are neither underpowered, nor are they any bit overpowered.

I've been testing lists lately versus my highly tuned 13 vehicle IG army. Not everyone universally likes my list, but its been in the tuning process for 6 months and is tourney tested.

Our groups has been trying to find a great SW list by testing the extremes it can create.

Our first assumption was that TWC might be a spammable semi-broken unit. We tried 15 of them. 15 TWC with ML long fang support and minimal grey hunters with plasma was indeed a functional army. It didn't fail miserably, but the fact was we were all a little surprised in the fragility of the 5 man TWC. Its just 10 space marines with T5. That charge distance was of course rather insane, first turn charges on spearheads were happening, and high quality second turn charges were also happening. I'd just work on long fangs/troops with my long range weaponry, accept the thunderwolf charge to draw them into my copious amount of special weapons.

Next we saw the potential for a frightening amount of missile launchers. Two units of ML long fangs, typhoon speeders, logan and 5 man WG troops with a single CML termie. This army had ridiculous long range firepower, and decent counter-assault in Logan. But it loses horribly to any army that doesn't deploy and maneuver conventionally. Essentially if you arrived vertically against this army, then you only have about 30 marines to kill before you lock it up.

I've read a good deal of batreps corraberating the good and the bad of the codex. And last but not least i was beaten by a drop pod/logan SW army with long fang support in a recent GT.

I think what we've got in this dex is actually very similar to the SM dex. When IG hit the scene, it kind of blew the doors off of a lot of lists. It had a very different design concept, and the ability to spam a minimum of armor 12 shocked people. To most people it was recognized as a powerful book the moment it arrived. A few months in, people figured out what to respect and what to not be so scared of, and IG then settled into its current place of rest. Great book, not particularly unbeatable. When SM came out, people started focusing in on what they thought were the spammable, 'power' units. Everyone (myself included) misread sternguard, and tried to use them as a core of an army rather than the swiss army knife unit they really are. Then the terminator spam came and went after it was completely outmaneuvered and unable to kill more then a handful of units per game. More recently, people went hot and heavy for MMHF speeders and vulcan, but the non-existent staying power of the close range speeder, and the very short range of MM spam armies led to some bad beats to guys with missile launchers and lascannons. Nowadays, there are some SM armies giving me trouble. they might have vulcan in there, but they don't just take MMs, they have missiles and lascannons, they'll probably have a THSS unit, but not more than one.

Basically, this will probably apply to all marine armies, generals are going to have to just start building adaptive lists and then learn the capabilities of those lists. You can't out-shoot IG, you can't out-chop demons, you can't play attrition games versus orks. That really takes spam out of the equation. Rather than finding a power unit, I think SW players just need to shake out of the concepts and synergies that work. Unlike IG and like SM, the perceived power level of SW is going to go up in 6 months, not down.

Just my thoughts on the matter, some may be having success in their metagame right now. That is either due to the quality of your metagame, or you being a pretty dynamic list builder.

All space wolf armies i have seen are mainly based aroun a large unit of WG. This is often the most expensive unit in the army. My uncles list consists of the old SW battle force and the SM from AoBR plus other units. It's about 1300pts and 360 of theese are form WG.

I just find it a middle of the road boook and underwhelming; Im not saying the book cannot be competitive just that I think there will ultimately be 2 to 3 lists that come out of it that are very very competitive.


Alot of people focus on having 4 HQ et cetra but really it doesn't work as it reduces your points available already.


Its got numerous great units but they dont work well together in the same list while other armies have great units that do work well together.

It looks quite good a nice short range army with good long range support as long as you don't spurge on HQs.

Thats the same with every codex.. 2 or 3 lists that are decent :p

I would only rune 4 HQ if all 4 were rune priests because they are incredibly good and probably overpowered for what they do.. Each is basically a loota unit that can move and fire

You can make the same marine lists but with troop units that dont fail at everything unless you take Vulkan (and even then tactical squads are an embarrassment in assaults for only marginal benefits in shooting)

Granted my tournament SW lists that have been winning only consist of about 3 different units, so maybe the rest of the book is sorta "meh" but those 3 units are REALLY good

Hhmm not a huge fan of too many hqs.. I normally only run one or two.

I agree with Kirasu on the Rune Priests.

Pychic Offense, Pychic Defense, Compititent in combat, Ld boost to a squad, tool box character when not using offensive powers, all for 400ish points when you factor in random upgrades to differentiate them.

Which means more tools: infiltrate denial, more pychic defence, random melta bomb.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well it really depends on what kind of HQ that can be spammed...
If I could get 4 Daemon Princes with my CSM army I would...I'd still have an excess of 3 still...

I've had fun with 3 wolf guard battle leaders on thunderwolve just add a squad of wolves each. Fun for every one.

Well I want to try:

10 Bloodclaw bikers, attack bike, wolfguard.
Wolf Priest, 3 Rune Priest.
16 man biker squad of 'Shoot Me' on it.

The problem I have with WGBL on wolves is that.. hes 170 pts with gear and he has 2 wounds and 4 attacks. However, I also have problems with the ENTIRE WGBL entry because hes horrible..

Guess what else has 2 wounds and 4 attacks? a thunderwolf.. and its 50 pts (or 110 with TH/SS)

Yeah the wolfguard battle leader is not that great of a HQ choice at all.

Rune Priest / Wolf Priest are the best choices imo. Simply because of utility.

Kirasu wrote:The problem I have with WGBL on wolves is that.. hes 170 pts with gear and he has 2 wounds and 4 attacks. However, I also have problems with the ENTIRE WGBL entry because hes horrible..

Guess what else has 2 wounds and 4 attacks? a thunderwolf.. and its 50 pts (or 110 with TH/SS)

? yes but did i say take equipment? no I said WGBL on a thunder wolf with a pack of wolves was fun. Wolfguard Battle leader on a wolf with 15 wolves x3 705pts. Watching them tear through orks, eldar/dark, guard, tyranids and daemons ... joy. (note if you really don't want to take any up grades at all so as to be unique just take the bolter on two, one replacing the CCW the other the pistol... but thats only if you really want to be tight)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hollismason wrote:Yeah the wolfguard battle leader is not that great of a HQ choice at all.

Rune Priest / Wolf Priest are the best choices imo. Simply because of utility.

I like them because they're cheaper then the others

Unlike IG and like SM, the perceived power level of SW is going to go up in 6 months, not down.

Good post, Shep.

First off, I think this is a very valid point. SWs are very similar to Marines, but they replace a fairly mediocre troops choice with a fairly fantastic one. This is a key because of the second point that I took from your post...

Which is that the metagame is very faddy and swirling. It ends up being very rocks-paper-scissors. In the end, a lot of games are won/lost in the metagame, and there's no "killer list" that can't be beat. There are lists at the leading edge of the metagame that tend to win, lists on the trailing edge that tend to get beat, cause everyone is tuned to beat them, and then lists that are just solid.

That's where the SWs are going to do well, because the Grey Hunter is a badass. He's got BP+CCW and Counter-Attack. This adds up to a model that's going to respond well to whatever happens in the metagame.

So, as the metagame swings from one army to another, there's no replacement for having a core of strong troops that will abuse anything that assaults them, can still get some solid close range shooting, and can get some good synergies going. Most of the SM builds rely on Combat-Squadding Tacticals to grab objectives, but don't really want or need Tacticals otherwise. Not so for SWs.

All in all, your post really solidified an opinion I've headed to for a while now: There's no such thing as a "killer" list. No matter how smart somebody like Stelek (thinks he) is, whatever he comes up with one day, will get destroyed by what he comes up three months later after the next Codex comes out.

On some level it's disappointing how rocks-paper-scissors 40K is. Lately I've been feeling like the games I've played were decided before the game started. My Drop Pod Sternguard played mech Tau and there was nothing left by turn 4. Then they played a guy with IG, and were tabled by turn 3. Things are really twitchy these days.

As far as the SW codex goes, I like it. I like how it captures the SW fluff and feel without being a massive change from Codex SMs. It's different enough to merit its own Codex, but similar enough that it's still SMs.

? yes but did i say take equipment? no I said WGBL on a thunder wolf with a pack of wolves was fun. Wolfguard Battle leader on a wolf with 15 wolves x3 705pts. Watching them tear through orks, eldar/dark, guard, tyranids and daemons ... joy. (note if you really don't want to take any up grades at all so as to be unique just take the bolter on two, one replacing the CCW the other the pistol... but thats only if you really want to be tight)

Ok even without gear you could get 2 thunderwolves with the same stats as him.. I dont see a reason ever to use the WGBL.. less LD than rune priest and absurd cost

I guess if you need 18 thunderwolves.. but in any other situation, no

Here's the core of my "Word Bearers" army:

2x Rune Priest in Termi armor, Lightning/Jaws, Lightning/Tempest

2x Razorback GH squads
2x Razorback IST squads with melta

3x 5 ML LF squads

In short, that's 15 missile launchers, 4 TL HBs, and 2d6 unlimited range S7 psychic shooting attacks for 1110 points.

Many people are calling SWs a short range firefight army, and it's quite true they can be played that way ala Chaos Mech, but quite frankly you can put as many heavy weapons into a SW list as IG for a similar points cost... on Marines. Yes, you have an issue with ablative wounds, but most armies don't carry enough 36"-48" shooting to duel with the Fangs and pop transports and slow down whatever you spent your extra 900 points on.

This is [one of] the big strength[s] of the SW codex that Marines can't do; a dedicated gunline filled with heavy and special weapons that, unlike Tau and IG, you don't really want to get close to.

Personally, I feel that GH is overrated given everything else in the list. Yes they are better than CSM and the likes, but since when is CSM a imba uber spammed unit?

The gun line SW army scares me more. LF is very much the best of its class by a wide margin and splitting fire is also very good too in reducing overkill and allowing mixed weapons to work.

Wolf Guard is another unit that has great potential, in its flexibility in which members to split off which will be like combat squad for the wolves.

Add difficult terrain causing abilities, tarpit fenrisian wolves and enough options for a strong counter charge led by hq, it is probably the best gun line there is. SW still have other options to fill holes if the local meta is against such an army.

Kirasu wrote:

? yes but did i say take equipment? no I said WGBL on a thunder wolf with a pack of wolves was fun. Wolfguard Battle leader on a wolf with 15 wolves x3 705pts. Watching them tear through orks, eldar/dark, guard, tyranids and daemons ... joy. (note if you really don't want to take any up grades at all so as to be unique just take the bolter on two, one replacing the CCW the other the pistol... but thats only if you really want to be tight)

Ok even without gear you could get 2 thunderwolves with the same stats as him.. I dont see a reason ever to use the WGBL.. less LD than rune priest and absurd cost

I guess if you need 18 thunderwolves.. but in any other situation, no

missing the point they would be the only thunder wolves....

The above makes a great poiont that while yes ; Greyhunters are a awesome unit with the ability to take specials etc..( unless you put a wolfguard).

Ultimately they have a little more offensive power than a Space Marine Assault Squad.

Same number of attacks ability to get powerweapon.

The banner is a fantastic item yes, its one use.

Dirt cheap and great abilities but lets look at it.


Greyhunters are a generalist unit meaing they are just hands down great all around. Versus a chaos unit that can specialize to a degree with Mark of Khorne , Tzeetch , etc...

I dont have my book right at hand this is my add up.


10 man Greyhunter w/ 2 Meltas , Mark of Wolfen, Powerweapon , banner = 190 points

10 Man Chaos SPace Marine w/ 2 Meltas , aspiring with powerweapon 195 ; you can alter this
T5 ithink = 245
INI5 = 215
+1 Attack = 225
5+ invunerable = 235


Those values may be off. My point is that CSM can be more specialized and varied than grey hunters.

Sure you can also do
9 Greyhunters as Above - 1 melta , + Wolfguard w/ Powerfist 222 I think this is correct value.

You still are having marines w/ albeit a heavier assault punch


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Im just saying that a army with Greyhunters in large numbers is oging ot be good at responding to multiple threats , but it is limited to a degree when compared to other dedicated CC units.

@ Hollismason

In the words of the Governator as Mr. Kimble, "STOP WHINING!"

I wouldn't call it whining.
He's presenting a point of view, a (IMO) sound arguement.

There has been much lovin for the Grey Hunters, but I think the words he used were taken negatively by many people.

Grey Hunters are good, but don't warrent this much praise...I think that's the balanced and summary of his stance.

They are REALLY good generalists, able to hold their own in most situations, but the extent of their specilization is only limited by the Special weapons, which makes them both flexible and not flexible at the same time.

I wasn't being completely serious I just love arnold and the "stop whining voice" came to mind.

But I suppose I should briefly defend my postion why I think the OP is blowing hot air.

Wolves have better, cheaper CSMs.
they may have 4 psykers which can be devastating. there is a wargear that disallows deepstrikers and infiltrators or something, and they can be placed anywhere. This avenue has not been fully exploited and once it is will screw over a very many lists.

The davestators plus arg has already been discussed.

8 point fenrisian wolves! there is so much versatility here for cover saves etc.

Thunderwolves have wrecked house every game. yes they are vulnerable to demo cannons but what isn't?

Terminator wing option- always a nice touch

SC that gives attached unit relentless (logan?) WILL be placed in a podding devastator squad of multi melta death

Major Point is not that this Codex makes for the next ard boys winner, but it IS an amazingly versatile codex, with unprecedented combinations for marines. It tops all other MEQs in CC, Long Range, and Psychic Prowess. The choices are obviously cheap point-wise compared to other MEQs as well. The Codex has it all and yet it only represents a single chapter. (and with the goal of beating the horse further, compare the versatility, strength and fluff of this Dex to the Current CSM dex; it is laughable)

For the reasons above I support my earlier statement to Hollisman: "STOP WHINING!"


all in good fun

I don't agree with the statement that the Psychics are better; they just serve different functions and several of them are fairly semi useless.

Also, they do not get a stop deepstrike it just makes it so anything deepstriking suffers a dangerous terrain check.

your mileage may vary but I havent had any trouble with dealing with TW at all. They have 10 wounds T5 and 3+ save.


People will start to realize this eventually that they are a great unit but once people figure out that you can reliably kill them all on turn one to two with most fire power then it wont really be a issue.

The pychic powers are more utility oriented than offensive...which can be as powerful.

As to the Tempest's Wrath ( i believe it is called, the 24" aura ) makes one test dangerous terrain, and that's on a model my model basis.
So YMMV, but it can snipe models...

TWC's best quality is the unpredictability factor and the str 10 model.

Stand and shoot Space Wolves are where it's at. Mix in a small counter assault unit and the army is fine.

Well, marines are suppose to be flexible and it is up to the player to figure out how to use it.

I've kinda wondered, perhaps it is possible to build an army out of wolf guard combi-weapon spam. Has anyone explored this idea?

There is also the "flexible wolf guard assignment on game" idea. Lets say a list like the following:

--------------

2x rune priest

10x wolf guard, rhino, 2x CML, 2xcombi-melta, 1xpower weapons,1xthunderhammer

5x greyhunter, droppods, 1xmelta

5x greyhunter, droppods, 1xmelta

9x greyhunter, rhino, 1xmelta, wolf standard

long fangs

long fangs
------
The basic idea is this: if the opponent can be hurt deep striking, than add a suitable wolf guard to the drop units and use that. cml is then allocated to long fangs.

If the opponent can not be podded (eg. hoard), then allocate cml to the podding grey hunters which will be a scoring walking heavy weapon platform.

The rhino grey hunters will also be allocated a leader depending on expected role, which just a dude with another melta or just a boltgun, to a thunderhammer WG or the HQ.

----
Now the list will take a lot of hammering before it'd actually work...i'm just wondering if anyone is exploring this direction.

Ive been wrecking face with

3x rune priest
1x wolf lord on TW with goodies

3x grey hunter squads
3x long fang squads
1x TW squad

@Kirasu:
Where do the rune priests go?
The grey hunters? So that means not a 10 man GH squad...

Or the long fangs? And focus on living lighting?

I dont want people to think that i dont think that the Wolves cannot be competitive just that overall I find the army underwhelming.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
edit:

Also just off the cuff what are people using as their thunderwolves? my friend uses Ral Partha I believe giant wolves as mounts.

Empty Juggernaught bases....as my juggies with CSM riders are not assembled yet...
Though, I'm not sure if I'll end up going SW or just sticking with SM bikers though...they double up as attackbikes with a rider swap.