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I have 2 all-comers armies - Ultramarines (800) and Chaos Knights (1500), so I'll frame this question in terms of those...

I'm well aware that weight of fire is the recommended way of dealing with these outcasts from the village people, but how on earth is it right that a unit costing a couple of hundred points that can easily kill a knight in a single fight phase can have a 3+ invuln save and a 5+ FNP?

These guys cause both my armies grief, although I'll admit that the knights are slightly better equipped to deal with them. According to MathHammer, it takes the following number of shots to drop a single Wulfen:

7 war dog autocannon shots from a War Dog
11 avenger gatling cannon shots from a Despoiler
27 bolter (or equivalent) shots from a marine

Then add on to that the fact that in the unlikely event that any wounds do actually get through, there's then a command point re-roll to immediately dampen any celebrations.

So what to do? With my knights I can spend the first few turns keeping my distance and pounding them whilst not achieving objectives, and with my marines I can basically roll buckets of dice all game long and achieve nothing. I may take my marine army up to 1000 points so is there anything for around 200 points that could put me out of my misery?

How do you guys deal with them, because right now it really isn't fun to stay at the YMCA...

Although this may well not help, MWs are the way to go. There are a couple ways to deal mortal wounds with chaos knights, but yeah, dont even bother trying to take em down regularly. In my experience, its either rate of fire or smites.

Yes my Despoiler has a Tzeentchian Pyrothrone so can at least smite. Perhaps taking the Vow of Dominance is a good idea for defence too - it might at least allow me to fight back and use the Thunderstomp stratagem.

I don't have any psykers in my Ultramarines army currently. I never had much luck with orbital bombardment, and I don't think I can access any of the other MW stratagems. Losing combat doctrines makes taking an assassin too much of a nerf now too

As Ultramarines, Aggressors and Thunderfire Cannons are likely your best bets. Tremor Shells will make the Wulfen move, at most, 7" per turn (if they roll a 5 or 6 for their advance roll).

A 3-man squad of Aggressors will spit 47 bolter-equivalent shots per turn. Combined with a Chapter Master, Lieutenant, and their not-inconsiderable number of power fist attacks on the charge they're one of the most cost-efficient answers to Storm Shield-bearing units.

For Chaos Knights, ally in a Chaos Space Marines Sorcerer with Death Hex. No invulnerable save, no problem.

Throw speed bumps in their way like chaff units in large numbers. Apply debuffs on them like Death Hex, or -1 to hit works really well as Wulfen are WS 3+ base. Make sure to screen if they are on the Hunt.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also suggest using small arms fire instead of Plasma, Las, or equivalent. I have had games where my wulfen survive a round of shooting from 2 Repulsor Executioner and hell blasters, but die to a wave of guardsmen fire.

Small arms fire will do it every time. 3 squads of 5 intercessors with auto bolt rifles and a thunder fire cannon is all you need. Thunder fire makes them not be able to move fast, then walk up and put 45 shots into them. Ap doesn't matter, number of shots does.

Also death hex will put a huge damper on them. Arhiman can cast it easily enough then a squad of 10 rubrics will do serious damage with veterans of the long war and prescience. 18 shots hitting on 2's rerolling 1's wounding on 3's and they have a 6+ save then 5++? You should drop most of them with that alone.

I play pure Chaos Knights so allies aren't really an option. According to MathHammer, with Vow of Dominance it would take 29 attacks from the Wulfen to kill my Despoiler, and as that's my only TITANIC unit it will be the target. That should hopefully give me time to take them down with gatling cannon and autocannon shots.

I am pretty sure Vanilla marines have access to Loyalist version of Death Hex. Just remove their invulnerable saves with a librarian and then shoot them up.

Works for my Death Guard.

Unless it got changed in codex hard to cast very short range. Wasn't considered good before new codex at least

Yeah, Null Zone is 6" range. With Wulfen your'e as good as dead by then.

You will be able to use an impulsor to null zone them. It's still a gamble, but if it works, its bye bye doggies.

You have access to a relic of Khorne that allows you to ignore invuln saves in close combat.

Yeah, but Wulfen swing even if you kill them in CC.

For Ultramarines, Aggressors are the answer.

They always count as stationary, so they can double tap. Take them in that fancy new transport, and drop them off and flame them. Each Aggressor gets 4D6 auto hitting shots with it's flamers... 12D6 shots will kill 2 of them. If they charge you, that's another 2 dead since you auto hit. Wolfen are very expensive, so at this point your Aggressors have paid for themselves, maybe pop Transhuman Physiology for a CP to keep from being wounded as much as possible, and hopefully an Aggressor or two survives to fall back and flame them again

My ultramarines also have a few squads of 5 scout snipers.

Snipers cause mortal wounds on a 6, and I have a heavy bolter in each squad so they can use Hellfire shells (causing more mortal wounds). I have Sergeant Tellion buff the squad that is going to be using Hellfire shells that turn so it hits on a 2+, usually rerollable based on who's in range to bubble them. For extra shenanigans, Guilliman, but that's getting to be the core of an army.

 Brother Castor wrote:
Yeah, Null Zone is 6" range. With Wulfen your'e as good as dead by then.

Ok I didn't realize that the loyalist version was so short range. Definitely going to have to screen your librarian, otherwise jump forward, hope it goes off, and then shoot them.

Do they come out of Stormfang or do they go On The Hunt? What delivery gives you the most trouble?

Stay out of melee, consider not using a weapon in melee in order to kill as few as possible, just a niche tactic if you have the firepower to fall back and kill them.

Assault Centurions, Aggressors, storm bolter SS Company Veterans, Scout Bikes.

FW Moirax w. lightning locks, autocannon War Dogs, dakka Despoilers w. gatling cannon and/or RF BC, flamer Tyrants.

Weight of shots is the answer. 6 Aggressors shooting twice without buffs should kill 4 of them on average, almost making their points back in 1 turn of shooting.

In my meta, as a Space Wolf player, I've given up on Wulfen and Thunder Cav as Necron Telsa is such an efficient weapon.

 vict0988 wrote:
Assault Centurions, Aggressors, storm bolter SS Company Veterans, Scout Bikes.

FW Moirax w. lightning locks, autocannon War Dogs, dakka Despoilers w. gatling cannon and/or RF BC, flamer Tyrants.

I have the autocannons and gatling cannon for my Chaos Knights, but may have to look at Aggressors for my Ultramarines. According to MathHammer, 5 Aggressors will spit out 95 shots and kill 3.5 Wulfen in a single shooting phase while the tactical doctrine is active.

Now if anyone can tell me how I kill Wulfen, but I play as World Eaters - I'd much appreciate it

My Chaos Lord on Juggernaut did do fairly well against them, but lost out to one hitting out when it was killed.

TarkinLarson wrote:
Now if anyone can tell me how I kill Wulfen, but I play as World Eaters - I'd much appreciate it

My Chaos Lord on Juggernaut did do fairly well against them, but lost out to one hitting out when it was killed.

General jist for this sort of thing is use weight of shots and screening.

If you box clever, you can position your juggernaut lord behind a screen, in such a position hat he is 13" from where they will be when they declare a charge, they won't be able t odeclare a charge on him, but can charge the chaff. Heroically intervene and you can kil lthem, and they will only be able to death-swing at your chaff.

How many attacks do wulfen output? As they cannot fly, perhaps a few cheap units of cultists can wrap around them and absorb the wounds for a few turns and hold them in place?

I've only faced wulfen once, and I killed them by charging a deffkilla wartrike in, killing half of them, then dying to their death-attacks, then popping "Orks is never beaten" to counter with death-attacks of my own, killing the rest of the unit, who could have done more death attacks were the wartrike not already dead. I lost the wartrike, but by then my dreadnaughts were in combat and he had done his job.

As with any and all high-damage awesome-saves unit, counter them by making them redundant. Thunderhammers cause D6 damage - so use single-wound models. They have a 3++ invulnerable save - so use a unit which doesn't have decent AP. their weapons have a strong AP - so use a unit with poor saves to start with.

All signs point to cultists.

You could null zone them, even with a 6" range, but you will need a jump pack librarian and be willing to risk his life

 godardc wrote:
You could null zone them, even with a 6" range, but you will need a jump pack librarian and be willing to risk his life

CSM only have Death Hex, which is admittedly a good spell.

And World Eaters don't even have that.

tie them up with cultists, Wulfen are WS 3 on the charge, WS 4 if not (TH/SS). and they don't have that many attacks to quickly chew through a blob of cultists.

I played a SW player at a tournament a while back and he was delivering his wulfen via a stormraven. I wrapped it with guard going move-move-move when it showed up in my deployment zone and then shot it out of the sky taking out his wulfen and a unit of something else (I forget). So I'd watch to see how the wulfen are delivered. Wrapping transports is my favorite tactic - no one seems to be familiar with what happens to the contents when a wrapped vehicle dies. Seriously I've had to show several people the exact paragraph in the BRB. Then they get all kinds of pissed off...usually because they just lost all of their real killers minus a couple of thunderwolves and characters that are still making their way down the table and now need to deal a bunch of bassilisks and tank commanders.

 Brother Castor wrote:
I play pure Chaos Knights so allies aren't really an option.

This is the problem which camt be addressed until you decide to take 'unfluffy' step into allies.

Fast moving, thunder hammer wielding models are mathematical hard counter to knights. (i.e. wulfrns, smash capts)

You need screens to prevent them from closing in so fast.

Small point games have the problem of falling into rock paper scissors.

1500 isn't small points but if you insist on bring only rocks you will loose to any one who brings paper.

I had to deal with 2 max sized packs of Wulfen last weekend with mostly TH/SS.

They're brutal in assault, and fast. You need to provide speed bumps, and barrage them with fire. Given how nasty they are, i'd make them and TWC as priority #1 targets. Shoot them with everything until they die.

 necron99 wrote:
I played a SW player at a tournament a while back and he was delivering his wulfen via a stormraven. I wrapped it with guard going move-move-move when it showed up in my deployment zone and then shot it out of the sky taking out his wulfen and a unit of something else (I forget). So I'd watch to see how the wulfen are delivered. Wrapping transports is my favorite tactic - no one seems to be familiar with what happens to the contents when a wrapped vehicle dies. Seriously I've had to show several people the exact paragraph in the BRB. Then they get all kinds of pissed off...usually because they just lost all of their real killers minus a couple of thunderwolves and characters that are still making their way down the table and now need to deal a bunch of bassilisks and tank commanders.

That's nuts to me. Wulfen are crazy fast and more durable than the stormraven.

Cheap infantry.
It takes a full turn or two for Wulfen to get useful unless you deploy right at the very front of your deployment or go to them and they cost at least a quarter of an army to field so use cheap units to keep them away from your expensive units.
Sacrifice a squad of Scouts to them every turn and they'll be lucky to make their points back.

Take to the skies.
Wulfen can't jump.

Rate of fire.
Wulfen laugh their asses off at the most powerful guns in the game but fear the same points investment in Lasguns.

Slow them down.
Wulfen aren’t fast compared to ANY other melee unit and even slowing them down by an inch per turn hurts them badly.