Space Wolves at Game Matrix

[WestRider]

I took the new SW to the Game Matrix Tournament on Saturday, and learned a fair bit about the Units I took.

 

My List:

Ulrik the Slayer

WG Battle Leader on TW, TH/SS, Runic Armour

 

2x10 Grey Hunters in Rhinos, 1 loaded up with Plasma, the other with Melta

15 Blood Claws, PowerFist, 2xMelta, WG w/Combi-Melta & Wolf Claw, StormWolf w/Multi-Meltas

 

4 TWC, 1 SS, 1 Fist

 

First game was against Kingpin's Eldar. Jetseer with Mantle and relic Spirit Stone, 3 min DA in Serpents, 2 min Fire Dragons in Serpents, 3 War Walkers with Scatter Laser/Brightlance. Big Guns Never Tire with 5 Objectives, Dawn of War.

 

I screwed this one up right from the start. He spread out, and I deployed everything on one Flank, which did give me reasonable access to 3/5 Objectives, but I forgot just how much mobile long-range Firepower Eldar have, and it gave him far too much room to pull back and blast me while I was moving across the table. I still almost pulled it out, and if Ulrik had been able to solo a Wave Serpent in the last Turn, I would have had it.

 

Game 2 was The Scouring with Vanguard Strike. Again against Eldar, but it was a kid who'd never played them before, was using an Army his dad had put together for him to try. Not a bad list (3 DA Serpents, 2 Fire Prisms, 5 Rangers, 8 Warp Spiders with an Autarch), but he didn't really know what he was doing with it, and his Target Priority was pretty bad. However, I made a couple of mistakes, too (including forgetting that Sniper Rifles don't Pin anymore, and leaving my TWC sitting there as targets for an extra Turn because I rolled boxcars), so the inherent strength of the Eldar Army kept him in the Game pretty well. I kind of wanted to go easy on him, but he still had a winning score in the Game until I'd almost tabled him. I felt kind of bad about that, especially because basically all I lost was the TWC and most of my Plasma GH Pack.

 

Game 3 was my first experience with a Daemon Summoning list. 2 groups of Screamers, each with a Herald, Skulltaker on a Juggernaut with some Khorne Dogs, Lord of Change, walking Tzentch DP, and a couple of min Nurgling Units. Hammer and Anvil, Crusade with 5 Objectives.

 

He got some bad luck (failed the Grimoire and got bad Warpstorm Table results 3 Turns out of 4), and made some poor decisions (got too aggressive and let me kill off the Grimoire Herald Turn 1, Charged a full Pack of Grey Hunters through Cover with BloodLetters) but honestly, I still was pretty underwhelmed by the concept. It takes a LOT of Power Dice to get the Conjurations off reliably, and the resulting Units are kind of unimpressive. It also played really slow, but that was partly his unfamiliarity with the Rules, and needing to look things up constantly. We weren't able to complete Turn 4, so it ended up as a Draw based on the result at the end of Turn 3 (one Objective each, both had Linebreaker, I had First Blood, he had Warlord). I'm pretty sure if the Game had gone on, I would have had it, because my StormWolf had just come in on Turn 3, so I didn't have time to Disembark the Blood Claws and do anything with them. That almost certainly would have picked up Warlord for me, and might have taken me up 2-1 on Objectives as well.

 

Conclusions: The new Wolves have some good Units, but this is a bad build. I've got two psuedo-Deathstars, that are sucking up Deathstar levels of Points, but aren't delivering Deathstar levels of threat/damage. I also only have 5 real Units, none of which are particularly long-ranged, which means that MSU Armies get really overwhelming. I never got to take advantage of Rage on the Blood Claws, because every time, I either needed them to Multi-Charge to overcome my Unit-wise numerical disadvantage, or I was Charging something that I needed Krak Grenades against.

 

The Blood Claws in the Stormwolf exacerbate this, both because they're overkill against so much and because that's 43% of my Army starting in Reserves. In both Games 1 and 3, they didn't come in until Turn 3, which definitely hurt. If I'm putting that much in a single Unit in Reserves, I need a Comms Relay or some other Reserves Accelerator.

 

I still like the idea of Blood Claws in a StormWolf, I'm just not planning on continuing to run a full 15 with Ulrik, at least not at 1500 Points. The PowerFist is also probably too expensive. My next plan is to try something like 10 Blood Claws in there, with no upgrades but a Flamer, and maybe a regular Wolf Priest or WG Battle Leader to add a little extra punch against harder targets.

 

Ulrik, I think, needs a force that can be a bit more concentrated, so his Auras can actually affect more than one Unit. That was kind of wasted here, and a regular Wolf Priest with PE: Infantry would have done about 80% of what Ulrik did, for about 75% of the price.

 

The StormWolf itself was good, except that so many of the things I needed to shoot at were Eldar Tanks with 3+ Jink Saves. Another reason I prefer it to the 'Fang: having 3 (more or less) forward-facing Weapons plus a Turret lets you take really good advantage of PotMS sometimes. There were a number of times when I would drop the Multi-Meltas and Lascannon into a Tank in front of me, and then PotMS the Hellfrost Cannon into a clumped Unit of Infantry off to the side. It also helps mitigate the poor firing arcs on the Multi-Meltas, so you can put one of those into something off to one side while everything else engages something just off the centerline.

 

The two Grey Hunter Packs were everything I needed them to be. I'm going to keep shelling out for the extra CCW for now, that came in really handy in a couple of situations, especially against the Daemons. Losing the Wolf Standards and MotW does hurt, but they're still a very solid all-rounder Troops Choice.

 

The ThunderWolves, I had at a sort of awkward point where they weren't cheap enough to just be a fast harassment Unit, but they didn't have enough punch to really wade across the field under fire and still beat face. I think I'd probably either cut down to just 3-4 with a Shield and a couple of Meltabombs, or go all the way to a full 6 plus a Wolf Lord (not just a Battle Leader, I really wanted that 4th Wound, extra Attack, and WS6 several times) and probably also an Iron Priest and some dogs for ablative Wounds.

 

On a more Army-wide level, it also really hurt me that I didn't have any long-range threat starting on the field. Especially against the Eldar, who were able to fire off their Serpent Shields with impunity in the first Turn.

 

If I were going to just modify this List, instead of starting over from scratch, I'd probably go with something more like

 

Wolf Priest, Meltabombs

 

3x10 Grey Hunters, two in Rhinos, one in Drop Pod. One of the Rhino Packs has Plasma, the other two have Meltas.

10 Blood Claws, Flamer, StormWolf with Multi-Meltas

 

3xTWC, SS, 2xMeltabombs

 

(something from Heavy Support, probably either Long Fangs or a Predator, loaded out with Lascannon either way)

 

More likely, tho, I'd drop either the TWC or the StormWolf entirely, and double down on the other approach. If going for multiple StormWolves, a Comms Relay would definitely be showing up.

[pretre]

Thanks for the report! Gave me some stuff to think about...

[VonVilkee]

Great tips even for enemies! Good to know how you felt about things and what to watch out for.

[WestRider]

I was thinking some more about this, and a couple TH/SS Terminator Lone Wolves would have really helped out in all three Games as well. Strip the Blood Claws down like in the revised list, drop the PowerFist from the TWC, and that's enough Points to get two of those and upgrade the WGBL to a proper Wolf Lord. I might have to give that version a try.

[pretre]

Why not Harald? Isn't he a super cheap WL in TWC?

[WestRider]

I wouldn't call him super-cheap. He's only 30 Points less than the way I would build a ThunderLord and I would need to keep the Fist in the TWC Pack, because Harald just has a Frost Axe, so it only actually comes out as a 5 Point savings. I had forgotten about him, tho, and he would be a good option. He gives them Furious Charge and Outflank, too, which is pretty awesome.

 

I also should have used Ulrik as my Warlord, instead of the Battle Leader. The Battle Leader died all three games, because his job is essentially to be the first major threat on the board, and in one game his Warlord Trait was useless, and in the other two I kept forgetting that he had 6+ FNP for his Unit. Kingpin reminded me a few times in the first Game, but I think there were a couple more where we both forgot, and given that they got wiped out in the last Game, too, that's at least another 11 Wounds I should have gotten a 6+ on, which would have let them hold on and deal a bit more damage. Ulrik, on the other hand, survived all three Games, and his Warlord Trait (Monster Hunter) would have been a total game changer in Game 3 if it had gone on, because the other guy had the Daemon Prince and the LoC as his Warlord.

[Lord Hanaur]

Yeah it was really unfortunate that the game ended after 3 turns.  As TO, I absolutely 100% wantto know if the game is getting to be too slow so I can prompt and push.  Ido NOT like slow play as the rules of the tournament probably made clear.  Slip me a PM if you felt that way.  If it was just the game going slow then no problem.

 

Good write up on that stuff.  I learned a little bir from it even though I havent seen the codex yet.  Im sure Ill get "introduced" to it quite soon though.

 

BTW, I fixed your record o nthe Standings.  It didn't alter your placing actually but It's now correct.

[WestRider]

No, I don't feel like he was deliberately slow-playing. It really came across to me more like he just had a complicated list that he didn't know well enough to play quickly. There's honestly a ton to keep of track of with that Army and a lot of difficult decisions to make, especially when he's constantly adding other Units, in unpredictable amounts and locations. Plus, third game tends to slow a lot of us down. And we had some ridiculously complicated Combats and I had to look things up a few times as well, because I hadn't played TWC more than a couple of times since last OFCC, and they barely got to do anything except get shot in the first two Games that day.

 

I'd also note that he wasn't leaving himself in positions where he was up in the score at the ends of Turns, wasn't playing in a way where slow play would have given him any advantages.

[Lord Hanaur]

Good to hear. Then its all good. Now you need to focus your energies on winning lists, Ambassador. We expect excellence from you !

[undertow]

My son was your Game 2 (Eldar). He normally plays CSM and does well with them, but his collection is in a bit of disarray, so he opted to use my old Eldar army. I need to get some practice games in with him and that army, we meant to before the tournament but ran out of time.

[Lord Hanaur]

practice games are good.  i get lots of those in.  Knowing your own army really well pays dividends in speed of play, in making sure you are ready for any rules questions that will pop up and also just in gauging the threats that each unit should be focused on.  

 

I am pretty excited to see the evolution of these Space Wolves.

[WestRider]

My son was your Game 2 (Eldar). He normally plays CSM and does well with them, but his collection is in a bit of disarray, so he opted to use my old Eldar army. I need to get some practice games in with him and that army, we meant to before the tournament but ran out of time.

Yeah, he seemed solid at the basic game, but said that was his second game with Eldar. Like I said, I felt kind of bad about it turning out to be such a stomp, but because of the way the Scouring Objectives turned out, he was up in score until the very end, so I kind of had to keep pushing.

[Lord Hanaur]

Never apologize for wins.  You deserve wins that you get.

 

Never apologize for losses.  You deserve the losses you get.

 

and on the rare occassion either one is not true well... Thats rare!  So shake it off and move along.

 

Thats how i feel about it.  You cant dictate your opponents skill or experience.  You just have to play whose in front of you.  =)

[WestRider]

I didn't feel bad about beating him. I felt bad that, despite the score, after about Turn 3, he really wasn't in the running anymore, and his Army was basically just a punching bag for my Wolves after that point. I like games where it's a contest all the way up until the end, not near-tabling blowouts where the other guy only lost a Rhino and one Squad.

[Lord Hanaur]

Those are more entertaining for sure.  Thats why I always hated the "massacre" scoring.  Remember that?  where you HAD to keep destroying people long after you wish you could stop?  I hated that scoring system. 

[WestRider]

Yep. Never did like that scoring system. I've had bad experiences on both sides of it.