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so I've decided to jump ship on my chaos projects and start a counts-as space marines list. The new formations, powers, rules and wargear are way too good/fun for me to ignore and I'm working on cool ideas for the army.

I run nurgle themed daemons/marines and I was looking that I'm sitting on 9 models (a mix of blight kings, nurgle heralds and the riders from the glottkin kit) on 40mm round bases and was trying to decide what to use them for.
then it struck me.. they're the perfect size for wulfen (plus i already bought the wulfen rulebook for the daemons stuff).

so as a new player to marines and not having seen wulfen on the tabletop yet can you guys give me some ideas on how to run them? How to make them very strong, buffs, strategies etc.
i do love good close combat units so maybe this will be a great fit!

I can speak to my own experiences with them. Whether they're ideal tactics or not I couldn't say.

Keep the squad small
Don't run a max squad. Five is plenty. As you want to upgrade to get the goodies, this unit will cost a pretty penny as it is. Better to pay for quality over quantity in one unit.

Run a minimum of two units... in the Wulfen Murderpack
Redundancy with them works twofold: you have a greater spread of the Curse of the Wulfen buff across your battlefield, and you force the opponent to deal enough damage to neuter both as opposed to just one. As you're running two units minimum, you might as well get the benefit of the new Wulfen formation. Besides adding +1 to your Curse of the Wulfen rolls if there are two units on the board, all of their attacks gain a bonus attack on 6s. Huge bonus, that. They're in an Elite slot, too, so your normal CAD can afford having them stripped out and replaced with some other Elite choice.

Pack leader is worth it!
The Pack Leader automatically gets a bonus attack for two CCWs, has one more attack than a normal Wulfen and with Rage will really tear into whoever it challenges. It's high Initiative and Shred really bump up the body count, so well worth having.

Run at least one Storm Shield and Stormfrag in each unit
This one is to taste, but I have received a fantastic return on the points spent adding these upgrades to the force. The way I run a squad is with a Pack Leader (Claws), two TH/SS and two Great Axe/Stormfrag. The redundancy on the TH/SS gives me a frontline on two flanks that the opponent has to break through first before getting to the squishy center and really frustrates the opponent when he can't quite bust them. The redundancy on the latter forces the opponent to kill both of them in order to prevent me from going at initiative when I charge units in difficult terrain. I deliberately put the Autofrags on the Axe men as the SS models are taking the brunt of the attack. The other benefit to having two Axes is they attack at Initiative the turn they assault. Not much goes at I5, so they'll stand a great chance of attacking twice the turn I charge should my opponent slay one (or both). S8 is usually enough to ID most things on the board, anyway.

Use cover.... or a Stormwolf
I typically run one on foot and the other in a Stormwolf dedicated transport. It's worked out well for me so far. The foot unit goes from cover to cover and forces the opponent to maneuver to get shots on them. The Stormwolf offers a great means of getting the other unit right where I want them. There's a risk the Reserve roll doesn't work out, though, so that's not ideal. Still, worth it if it means I can get the drop on a Wraithknight camping in the rear with a 36" move, 6" combat speed hover the following turn, 6' move, d6" run and rerollable 2d6" assault.


That's about all I can say about them. Haven't had the units fail to make up their points yet. Just be prudent about footslogging and you should be good.

I second everything that Tropic said except that I just use a Landraider crusader instead of a stormwolf. They are on the board turn 1 I feel that makes it the better choice.

Well, if you wanted to win, you could just not tell your opponents their rules and let them have all the rules the Internet thinks they have. You'd be running fleet beasts with S10 AP2 at initiative with 4+ FNP....

But in reality, I have seen them with pack leader, 2 axes, 2 shields on foot, as well as all axes in a transport. Foot squads tend to work a bit better in my experience, since they make use of COTW and draw lots of fire on those hammers.

So basically you want someone to "teach me how to doggie, teach me teach me how to doggie"
yes, my puns are that bad.

thanks for the input!
I'll have to run them a few games and get a feel but sounds like they could be fun to play around with.

I'm already running a bunch of plague toads as beasts of nurgle. but they're the same size as thunderwolves.... thinking of finding a way to convert plague marines to ride them that i can take off with magnets when i want to run them as daemons.

get them in combat as fast as humanly possible, and dont stop whirlwinding into new units and locking up. the longer there open to being shot at they melt like ice cream cause their baseline is paper thin

Curse of the Wulfen only affects other Space Wolf units, so simply allying in a Wulfen formation to Codex: Space Marines won't get you any buffs.

They still look like a good CC unit though

I've had great success puttin them in a pod, droping them into terrain, and launching next turn. SS seems to not be worth it for me - pts and initiative suffer for it, for a unit that if I allow to get shot at will die with or without that storm shield anyways, and if reaching CC I'd rather enjoy seeing them die as they'll have struck first and will unload even more attacks... if i1 they'll only unleash one salvo.

If I can't get them into CC they'll just die anyways.

So the trick is, getting them there.


I've tried stormwolf many many games and seems they're just not predictable enough coming in on a flyer... tried StormShield Landing Pad many times and it's ever so hit and miss, typically they'll just get shot down and grounded before making it.

Best success, land them next to terrain, even if you roll a difficult terrain check on a 1 and put your pod to 1 HP get the wulfen into ruins or out of sight. Then, charge!

They do so well to constrict back lines, eliminate whole tank squadrons with ease, drop terminators to their knees...

SS just get in the way. They wont save them if the opponent is given any real chance of shooting them down... their 4+/5++ will save them or nothing will. Just, be smart on their firing opportunities and make sure they reach CC by turn 2.