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Hi guys!

After a long hiatus from 40k, my friends and I are getting back into the hobby. We last played around 8th edition i think.

I love the lore for wolves more, but I'm unsure how they play? Whereas I feel like deathguard are more of an all rounder army?? Wolves have always been primarily melee focused?? Whereas DG can perform in most phases?

Can anyone give me some tips on how the armies typically play, regardless of power level??

Cheers!

Choose the models you love. Rules change.

Your thoughts on how SW play is wrong.
Or at least highly skewed based on how you've probaly seen/read about how others CHOOSE to play them.

Are the Wolves good/very good at melee?
Yes they are.
BUT - they are also still SM with full access to 90%+ of everything generic Marines can take.
And for the most part? Anything generic the Wolves can't take us because they have their own version of it.
They can absolutely play in every phase of the game.
So if you want more shooty SW? You can do it.
If you want all kinds of vehicles? You can do it.
You want fast/stealthy/recon Wolves? You can do it.
You WANT a heavy melee focus? Yep. You can do it
You want to hyper-fovus on one facet? You can do it.
You want some mix? You can do it.

Being a subtype of loyalist marines means that wolves can play pretty much however you want. Want to go melee? You'll stumble into it by accident. Want to play shooty? Just grab a shooty generic marine detachment. Want to be sneaky? They can do that too. Want to be fast? Either pretend your bikes are driven by blood claws or grab some T-cav.

You'll benefit from every chapter-agnostic update and release, and GW won't leave you hanging for long because releasing marine content is a compulsive tic for them.

Death Guard are neat, but they have way fewer datasheets and are thus pidgeonholed in how they play a bit more. Plus they're not loyalist marines and thus will receive less frequent updates and could easily be left without any significant attention for years at a time.

Wolves are loyalists+. Death Guard are a subfaction of the marines GW loves less.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

You'll benefit from every chapter-agnostic update and release, and GW won't leave you hanging for long because releasing marine content is a compulsive tic for them.

I'm not sure I'd call a successful business plan that's been working for nearly 40 years a tic....

stroller wrote:
Choose the models you love. Rules change.

Exactly.

Take the models you will actually have fun building, painting, displaying, and playing with.

ccs wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

You'll benefit from every chapter-agnostic update and release, and GW won't leave you hanging for long because releasing marine content is a compulsive tic for them.

I'm not sure I'd call a successful business plan that's been working for nearly 40 years a tic....

Marines get frequent updates, was my point.

I think the Death Guard codex will be revealed in about 24~ hours. So probably worth waiting for that and seeing how they'll play with the new book.

As people say, Space Wolves can be built however they like. Quite a few people however who play them want to run Thunderwolf Cav+Wulfren - and that sort of makes them play a certain way. Nothing stops you playing a regular Marine force painted up in blue-grey, but it hasn't been the draw in recent years (decades?)

For a long while, the draw to Space Wolves was less the T-cav/wulfen and more that they were the "character-heavy marines." As in you had lots of named characters and lots of room to squeeze characters/wolf guard into squads giving you a lot of room to customize your dudes.

I'm not sure if that's still really doable with 10th's wargear system being what it is. Do they still have access to Lukas, Arjac, Ulric, Njal, etc?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
For a long while, the draw to Space Wolves was less the T-cav/wulfen and more that they were the "character-heavy marines." As in you had lots of named characters and lots of room to squeeze characters/wolf guard into squads giving you a lot of room to customize your dudes.

I'm not sure if that's still really doable with 10th's wargear system being what it is. Do they still have access to Lukas, Arjac, Ulric, Njal, etc?

For the moment they do.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Being a subtype of loyalist marines means that wolves can play pretty much however you want. Want to go melee? You'll stumble into it by accident. Want to play shooty? Just grab a shooty generic marine detachment. Want to be sneaky? They can do that too. Want to be fast? Either pretend your bikes are driven by blood claws or grab some T-cav.

You'll benefit from every chapter-agnostic update and release, and GW won't leave you hanging for long because releasing marine content is a compulsive tic for them.

Death Guard are neat, but they have way fewer datasheets and are thus pidgeonholed in how they play a bit more. Plus they're not loyalist marines and thus will receive less frequent updates and could easily be left without any significant attention for years at a time.

Wolves are loyalists+. Death Guard are a subfaction of the marines GW loves less.

yes, but at the same time the chance of catching a sudden chain of nerfs, because a different army (Ultramarines) are doing too good is much lower with Death Guard. It is the safer option army. SW when they are good are often good in the "not the way GW intended it to be" way and then the play type gets "fixed". DG can be bad, like all armies in w40k and they suffer from characterosis, but what army doesn't in a world where GW thinks that a hero is worthy a codex release.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
For a long while, the draw to Space Wolves was less the T-cav/wulfen and more that they were the "character-heavy marines." As in you had lots of named characters and lots of room to squeeze characters/wolf guard into squads giving you a lot of room to customize your dudes.

I'm not sure if that's still really doable with 10th's wargear system being what it is. Do they still have access to Lukas, Arjac, Ulric, Njal, etc?

It's pretty much guaranteed that any character which is finecast or metal will be gone with the codex, with a random one getting upgraded.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
For a long while, the draw to Space Wolves was less the T-cav/wulfen and more that they were the "character-heavy marines." As in you had lots of named characters and lots of room to squeeze characters/wolf guard into squads giving you a lot of room to customize your dudes.

I'm not sure if that's still really doable with 10th's wargear system being what it is. Do they still have access to Lukas, Arjac, Ulric, Njal, etc?

I don't think they've had their Codex yet (one of the reasons I think Russ is coming back next/with/around/rivaled to Fulgrim.) I would expect to see a crap ton of their specials move to Legends.