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So I just recently started Warhammer 40k through a friend and I really enjoy space wolves. Their models are awesome and I was lucky to get a few from a friend who quit. I wanted to see if anyone had any advice for starting an army that is based around Murderfang, Bjorn, and Ragnar. These are some of the characters I currently have but I am not entirely sure where to go from there. Any ideas? I am not competitive yet but would like to create an army that doesn't just flat out suck. Any advice would be awesome.

Hey there !
So the SWs just got a new set of rules and are quite strong, as almost all power armor armies are right now.

It really depends on the direction you would like to go with the army and just HOW competitive do you want to be. It is a hard to "just flat out suck" wit this faction. Most of the core choices are at minimum playable with some choices being flat out some of the best units in the game.

My recommendation is to first decide whether or not you want units that are a bit more vanilla or if you want things that are a little bit more unique to the space wolves.

Without a doubt the Thunder Wolf Cavalry are the strongest unit you will have access to, IMO.
To support Murderfang, you may want some more close combat dreadnoughts to help murderfang in your elite slots and you'll want something to to shoot with as well. Keep in mind that because Murderfang and bjorn are characters they can benefit from the lookout sir rule when standing behind other units and even other dreadnoughts. Dreads in general are very strong this edition.

But realistically, start with getting the marine codex and the space wolf supplement, make sure you have a solid set of troop units that your characters can support. See which units you like the look of and which units sound fun to play on the table. It is honestly really hard to go wrong with this army and as long as you arn't aiming to be top tier competitive, I recommend with going with what looks like fun while also adhering to the force organization charts.

I personally like to run
grey hunters and bloodclaws as troops in drop pods.
Some combination of TWC and swiftclaws and skyclwas as fast attack.
some combination wolfgaurd terminators, wulfen and now assault centurions as elites.
I also like the stormwolf to carry my centurions,,, and maybe a troop with them...
I will occasionally play longfangs as heavy support and sometimes a rhino or razorback to carry things around.

But honestly. I am not the most competitive either and I wouldn't necessarily go with my preferences if they don't seem fun to you.

You have picked an army that is really hard to go wrong with. Just make sure you follow army construction rules and aim for fun. If you are looking for an ultra-competitive list, that is also definitely possible with this faction but that's a different question all together.

Hope my insights help

taynels34 wrote:
So I just recently started Warhammer 40k through a friend and I really enjoy space wolves. Their models are awesome and I was lucky to get a few from a friend who quit. I wanted to see if anyone had any advice for starting an army that is based around Murderfang, Bjorn, and Ragnar. These are some of the characters I currently have but I am not entirely sure where to go from there. Any ideas? I am not competitive yet but would like to create an army that doesn't just flat out suck. Any advice would be awesome.

Good news-right now Marines are quite strong, and moreover, they're strong across the board, so chances are you can pick whatever you like and you'll be okay.

I'd recommend looking at getting a Patrol or Battalion as the core of your army. You've already got two HQs (Bjorn and Ragnar) and an Elite (Murderfang), so some Troops would be a good choice next.

In general, though, is there any particular style of play you wanted to go for? Close Combat heavy, shooting heavy, mixed?

Regardless of what you decide, though, welcome to the hobby! Hope you enjoy your stay.

 JNAProductions wrote:

taynels34 wrote:
So I just recently started Warhammer 40k through a friend and I really enjoy space wolves. Their models are awesome and I was lucky to get a few from a friend who quit. I wanted to see if anyone had any advice for starting an army that is based around Murderfang, Bjorn, and Ragnar. These are some of the characters I currently have but I am not entirely sure where to go from there. Any ideas? I am not competitive yet but would like to create an army that doesn't just flat out suck. Any advice would be awesome.

Good news-right now Marines are quite strong, and moreover, they're strong across the board, so chances are you can pick whatever you like and you'll be okay.

I'd recommend looking at getting a Patrol or Battalion as the core of your army. You've already got two HQs (Bjorn and Ragnar) and an Elite (Murderfang), so some Troops would be a good choice next.

In general, though, is there any particular style of play you wanted to go for? Close Combat heavy, shooting heavy, mixed?

Regardless of what you decide, though, welcome to the hobby! Hope you enjoy your stay.

I would definitely say that my particular play style would lean towards Close Combat Heavy since I tend to be more aggressive in these types of games but since I haven't played before I am not sure if that would be the best tactic or not. I would be okay to mix in some shooting if that makes more sense. Thanks for the advice!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Type40 wrote:
Hey there !
So the SWs just got a new set of rules and are quite strong, as almost all power armor armies are right now.

It really depends on the direction you would like to go with the army and just HOW competitive do you want to be. It is a hard to "just flat out suck" wit this faction. Most of the core choices are at minimum playable with some choices being flat out some of the best units in the game.

My recommendation is to first decide whether or not you want units that are a bit more vanilla or if you want things that are a little bit more unique to the space wolves.

Without a doubt the Thunder Wolf Cavalry are the strongest unit you will have access to, IMO.
To support Murderfang, you may want some more close combat dreadnoughts to help murderfang in your elite slots and you'll want something to to shoot with as well. Keep in mind that because Murderfang and bjorn are characters they can benefit from the lookout sir rule when standing behind other units and even other dreadnoughts. Dreads in general are very strong this edition.

But realistically, start with getting the marine codex and the space wolf supplement, make sure you have a solid set of troop units that your characters can support. See which units you like the look of and which units sound fun to play on the table. It is honestly really hard to go wrong with this army and as long as you arn't aiming to be top tier competitive, I recommend with going with what looks like fun while also adhering to the force organization charts.

I personally like to run
grey hunters and bloodclaws as troops in drop pods.
Some combination of TWC and swiftclaws and skyclwas as fast attack.
some combination wolfgaurd terminators, wulfen and now assault centurions as elites.
I also like the stormwolf to carry my centurions,,, and maybe a troop with them...
I will occasionally play longfangs as heavy support and sometimes a rhino or razorback to carry things around.

But honestly. I am not the most competitive either and I wouldn't necessarily go with my preferences if they don't seem fun to you.

You have picked an army that is really hard to go wrong with. Just make sure you follow army construction rules and aim for fun. If you are looking for an ultra-competitive list, that is also definitely possible with this faction but that's a different question all together.

Hope my insights help

Thank you for the help I appreciate it! I am planning on grabbing the new codex for space marines and space wolves soon so once that happens I'll look into my options and go from their. Appreciate the tips!

taynels34 wrote:
So I just recently started Warhammer 40k through a friend and I really enjoy space wolves. Their models are awesome and I was lucky to get a few from a friend who quit. I wanted to see if anyone had any advice for starting an army that is based around Murderfang, Bjorn, and Ragnar. These are some of the characters I currently have but I am not entirely sure where to go from there. Any ideas? I am not competitive yet but would like to create an army that doesn't just flat out suck. Any advice would be awesome.

I'd consider starting with the space wolf combat patrol box, that'll give you some solid inital stuff. or wait till december and pick up the blood angels combat patrol box in september (everything in it is useable by a space wolf)

you'll need codex space marines and codex supplement space wolves.

Might be a good idea to hunt around on ebay for some OOP box sets/ bulk sales.

You can get things like intercessors/assult intercessors dirt cheap on ebay. Saw 5 Assult intercessors for £12 the other day.. crazy.

 Argive wrote:
Might be a good idea to hunt around on ebay for some OOP box sets/ bulk sales.

You can get things like intercessors/assult intercessors dirt cheap on ebay. Saw 5 Assult intercessors for £12 the other day.. crazy.

it's less crazy when you realize that the basic "beginners" starter box is about the same price as a normal box of necron warriors so chances are there is a surplus of the things as necron players get their troops together

BrianDavion wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Might be a good idea to hunt around on ebay for some OOP box sets/ bulk sales.

You can get things like intercessors/assult intercessors dirt cheap on ebay. Saw 5 Assult intercessors for £12 the other day.. crazy.

it's less crazy when you realize that the basic "beginners" starter box is about the same price as a normal box of necron warriors so chances are there is a surplus of the things as necron players get their troops together

For sure the market is very saturated. But £12 mark is super low IMO..
It does make sense of course. You basically had some sort of intercessor marine in almost every box set for the last couple years outside of BOTP.

It is a great time to start a marine army for sure and ebay is your friend right there.

 Argive wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Might be a good idea to hunt around on ebay for some OOP box sets/ bulk sales.

You can get things like intercessors/assult intercessors dirt cheap on ebay. Saw 5 Assult intercessors for £12 the other day.. crazy.

it's less crazy when you realize that the basic "beginners" starter box is about the same price as a normal box of necron warriors so chances are there is a surplus of the things as necron players get their troops together

For sure the market is very saturated. But £12 mark is super low IMO..
It does make sense of course. You basically had some sort of intercessor marine in almost every box set for the last couple years outside of BOTP.

It is a great time to start a marine army for sure and ebay is your friend right there.

assault intercessors also proably aren't all that popular with marines as they lack range

BrianDavion wrote:

 Argive wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Might be a good idea to hunt around on ebay for some OOP box sets/ bulk sales.

You can get things like intercessors/assult intercessors dirt cheap on ebay. Saw 5 Assult intercessors for £12 the other day.. crazy.

it's less crazy when you realize that the basic "beginners" starter box is about the same price as a normal box of necron warriors so chances are there is a surplus of the things as necron players get their troops together

For sure the market is very saturated. But £12 mark is super low IMO..
It does make sense of course. You basically had some sort of intercessor marine in almost every box set for the last couple years outside of BOTP.

It is a great time to start a marine army for sure and ebay is your friend right there.

assault intercessors also probably aren't all that popular with marines as they lack range

They certainly seem like the worse of the bunch for most chapters. Id take the rifles all day long.
But for wolves and other CC oriented marines they seem decent. So far more nieche.

You still would rather just run auto bolt rifle intercessors instead of the melee ones. Nice models though, and cheap to get with all the people buying the boxs with them.

2x5 TWC and a lot of TWC mounted characters seem to be a staple of SW lists, with the way heroic intervention works for SW and how 9th entices the players to take objectives ASAP, they seem to work very nice.