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Ive just completed the first round of a two round, round robin tourney, with SW, Eldar, Orks, Nids and IG competing at 1850. Nothing whacky, little D and relatively balanced lists.

However this SW list is 0-4 (3 bad losses, 1 very unlucky one.



The things I have noticed are:
- Long Fangs have not made their points by a long shot, they are usually focused down hard
- Priest with Hunters in the Redemmer also dont seem to make them back - they arent cutting it
- MSU Razors dont contribute enough and once popped the 5 man GHs melt
- Drop pod has been hit or miss

Overall Im thinking its a jack of all trades but a master of none?

Any ideas?

Priest with Hunters in the Redemmer also dont seem to make them back - they arent cutting it

Drop them from the list, or else use Blood Claws to really take advantage of the Priest's buffs.

Thunderwolves are better for doing melee, but I assume you want to be using regular marines.

Long Fangs have not made their points by a long shot, they are usually focused down hard

You can't really avoid your opponent focusing them down if they really intend to kill them. But what you can do is make that difficult, by hiding them in ruins, or taking an Aegis Defense Line or Bunker. You could also fish for Shrouded or Invisibility on the Telepathy table to buff their defenses.

Did you use Maelstrom missions for the tournament? What you have is basically an MSU army, so your goal would be to just out-score your opponent early and avoid being completely tabled.

No we used EW missions only Im afraid.
An aegis is a decent idea, I have a sideboard rule going so that might help in the 2nd rounds.

 DanielBeaver wrote:

Priest with Hunters in the Redemmer also dont seem to make them back - they arent cutting it

Drop them from the list, or else use Blood Claws to really take advantage of the Priest's buffs.

Thunderwolves are better for doing melee, but I assume you want to be using regular marines.

Long Fangs have not made their points by a long shot, they are usually focused down hard

You can't really avoid your opponent focusing them down if they really intend to kill them. But what you can do is make that difficult, by hiding them in ruins, or taking an Aegis Defense Line or Bunker. You could also fish for Shrouded or Invisibility on the Telepathy table to buff their defenses.

Did you use Maelstrom missions for the tournament? What you have is basically an MSU army, so your goal would be to just out-score your opponent early and avoid being completely tabled.

Space Wolves don't have access to Telepathy, unfortunately. ADLs are a solid choice for Long Fangs. If you run a Quad Gun or Icarus Lascannon with it, you can put your Ancient on it as a pretty effective use of Split Fire (since firing a Quad Gun or Icarus means only snap shots at ground-based enemies... except the rest of the squad can shoot at something else at full BS, thanks to Split Fire).

Razorbacks and Rhinos are just simply not a good choice in 7th Ed. Lots of armies can pop light armor without breaking a sweat (they're not even a speed bump to a well-built Eldar army). Since you're running mostly plasma and Melta as Special Weapons, Drop Pods are going to be a better choice. Land within firing range and pop enemy mech, MCs, or ICs.

Redeemers are nice, but they're very situation-specific, and enough fire is going to pop even a Redeemer pretty quick, these days. You might be better served throwing those points into more Rune Priests to try for Psyker powers that will give you Cover or Invulnerable Saves. Alternately, you could bring more Wolf Priests for the FNP and Preferred Enemy buffs. Put them in with your Troops to keep them from getting melted after their Drop Pod entrance.

Thunderwolf Cavalry is a solid choice. They're about the best cc unit in the game, and bringing a small pack of Fenrisian Wolves will be a cheap way of blocking Line of Sight against anyone shooting at the TWC...

Not really sure how tight the other lists are, but your SW list makes some basic mistakes;

1. Land Raider + Buff HQ + melee squad = BAD. Besides being obscenely expensive and a perfect example of "eggs in one basket" syndrome, melee should never be a primary goal unless you go ALL IN. The redeemer in particular is one of the bottom tier Land Raiders, as it's weapon loadout means it's painfully short ranged and painfully vulnerable to immobilization. It's sponsons and weapon loadout means firing more than one of those big flamers is almost NEVER going to happen. If you MUST take a LR, take a crusader, at least it has some reach and can carry more. In my opinion, the Land Raider is a dead choice in competitive play. The Wolf Priest is also a bottom tier choice IMO.

2. Long Fangs aren't stellar in the current meta. Too much firepower, too much ignore cover, too fragile overall. Lascannons are also a....mediocre choice. I generally suggest predators over them these days in a 1:1 comparison, and they'd be even better in your list, as you have some armor saturation to back them up. The Sicarian is also a mean choice if you can use Forgeworld.

3. Min/max razor spam. Your razors aren't free like a space marine chapter's would be, and that's enough to make them non-viable these days. Never mind the fact razor spam's been dead since 6th edition and only seen a slight revival because these ~150 point squads got a 40 point, or almost 30% price cut with the space marine formations.

4. Diluted list. The "jack of all trades, master of none" is really prevalent in your list. 1 heavy tank in the LR, 1 flyer, only 3 light tanks, only 1 pod, only 10 marines exposed to small arms at the start. This means that every weapon the enemy has has at least one PRIME target to pick out. The ideal lists overload one type of your opponent's firepower and leave the rest of it with nothing to do. Eg, Knight lists are so effective because they can only really be affected by anti-tank, and that renders all your anti-infantry tools a waste of points. Anything you can do to make your opponents seem like they are wasting points is a good plan.

5. You seem to have missed the vast majority of the good units available to Space Wolves. Thunder Wolves? Wolf Lord on T-wolf? Pod grey hunters, Forgeworld tanks....etc.

6. No formation freebies.

Your list, with some minor tweaks, would probably do better with the vanilla space marine codex frankly.

Thanks Carnage, top notch write up.
The main problem is that I dont own any TWC or Pods which are probably SWs best builds.
The core of the army is basically old 2nd ed GHs and BCs with some Dreads.
I'll motor on for the 2nd round of the tourney and then get spending